Rumour Roundup: Apple NAB new products and software April 15 Sunday..! - Apple

http://www.macrumorslive.com/

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As promised, rumour roundup here:

http://www.usrbingeek.com/a/000919.php
"April 01, 2007
Apple's Big Announcements At NAB Disclosed

Saturday I got a tip from a very reliable source and was just able to confirm it with several others close to key Apple employees.

On April 15 Apple is having a press event at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference. It has been speculated and now is pretty widely accepted that Apple will announce a new Mac Pro, probably featuring 8 cores.

But I've been able to confirm they will also be unveiling OS X Leopard with its secret feature: Multi-Touch Display support! Multi-Touch was first seen at the iPhone announcement but Apple has not yet announced or introduced this technology in any other product.

As part of this monumental change we can expect to see up to 30" Multi-Touch LCD Displays, 20", 24" and 30" Multi-Touch iMacs, which by the way will feature quad cores, and last but not least, two Multi-Touch MacBook Pros models! No word on which processors the new MacBook Pros will have.

Remember that you heard it here first today!"

http://www.looprumors.com/article.php?nab-announcement,2704331022
"Apple has been peculiarly quiet leading up to this year's National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference. Recently, Apple updated its Final Cut Studio suite of applications to make them Universal Binary, capable of running on Apple's new Intel machines. While the NAB is for broadcasters and electronic media, Apple usually has a strong presence at this show and has traditionally unveiled new products during that time.
UPDATE: Information is trickling in that Apple will be releasing a universal version of Final Cut Express HD at the conference possibly alongside new MacBooks. The NAB conference runs from April 22-27."

http://www.macrumors.com/
"Apple's special event at the National Associations of Broadcasters (NAB) will be held this Sunday at 11:00am PDT, 2:00pm EDT. MacRumors will be providing live coverage of the event via MacRumorsLive.com.

Apple is widely expected to introduce an update to its Final Cut Suite, along with a possible introduction of a new high-end product named Final Cut Extreme. ThinkSecret has also mentioned a possible display update at or around NAB, and believes the 17" MacBook Pro may be updated to include a high definition display.

Apple's displays have not seen specification updates for quite some time, although they did see a price drop last week."

http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2007/04/nab_2007_a_post_before_the_mad.html
"What I will try and do is over the next few days try to give you some idea of what’s going on at least from the Adobe side of the house and what I may see in the few nanoseconds that I’m not in a meeting.

At a minimum, I think this will be an intriguing year for NAB. Adobe is going back to the Mac with all of its video applications, so that’s a big deal in and of itself. For me – it’s not about Premiere Pro, though I’m excited for Mac users everywhere to get Dynamic Link, Clip Notes and more on the Mac. Rather, it’s about being able to offer a solid suite of tools for the video professional regardless of whether they’re using Final Cut, Avid or Adobe. Perhaps that sounds coy, but I’m serious. I think we’ve got the best suite of tools that are integrated and that will work great with whatever NLE tool you choose to use. Do I want Premiere Pro to be used – absolutely, but I also believe that users want to get work done and learning a new NLE takes time. So – you need Photoshop Extended and After Effects, and probably a couple other of the products in the suite, you pick up Production Premium and they will use it with Avid or Final Cut. I’m okay with that.

All right, get back on track or I’ll have to name this post, ‘Musings on going back to the Mac.’

We’ll have some announcements (just like everybody else), so Monday ought to be full of NAB news. Check out CreativeCow.net and DigitalMediaNet.com for all the latest. I’ll try to post something as well."

3 Hours To Go...

what time does it start, in eastern? 2 pm right?

Yup, Pacific 11am, Eastern 2pm.

ahh still 2 hours :(

Welcome to the world of counting down to an Apple event. :smokey: :err: ...It's freakin 12 midnight for me right now. Luckily there's some good football (soccer) happening Live in Manchester, UK at the moment.... [Chelsea vs. Blackburn ...FA Cup]

wow. early.

http://www.Macrumorslive.com
is prepped and ready for action:

This page uses the latest web technologies to provide live coverage of this event. The page will not visibly refresh as it has in the past -- instead updates will be automatically inserted at the top of the updates section. Do not reload manually.
Apple's special event at the National Associations of Broadcasters (NAB) will be held this Sunday at 11:00am PDT, 2:00pm EDT, 6:00pm GMT; live coverage will be available here.

Cool...

11:09am - Rob Schoeben, VP of Apps and product Marketing. "Welcome, we have a TON to cover today, so I'm not going to to any kind of preamble. Just gonna dive right into it."

11:10am - "We are now over 800k paid Final Cut users worldwide. By the looks of things, a few of them didn't get in. But a lot of you are here, so thanks for coming." He's going over Final Cut community, books, plugins, all that fun business. "It's a Final Cut World." Here's a sample... showing some stuff done in Final Cut.

11:12am - All kinds of movies, TV shows, music videos, all done in Final Cut -- set to the Ramones cover of "It's a Beautiful World."

11:14am - "We get tons and tons of feedback. Editors live in this software day in and day out. At the same time, there are issues that haunt them. There are massive, massive amounts of content. We have to start working in parallel. What we've done is to combine the feedback we get from our customers with our obsession. We're introducing Final Cut server."

11:15am - Scalable from small boutiques to multinational news organizations. Interface works on PC as well. Media asset management: catalogues 100 file types, proxy generation, keyword searching, access controls. Workflow automation: workflow templates, watch and respond system, review and approve tools, automated encode and publish -- "It's an event-based system." [P.S. Apple Store just went down]

Apple Store Australia still up.

11:20am - Looks like CBS 2 liked it. "Everyone wants to tackle this problem. We thought about how to deliver this product to the marketplace: Let's be really aggressive. It's $999 with 10 concurrent users -- 99 bucks a seat to solve this problem. If you have more people to get involved in the process, for $1999 it's unlimited concurrent users. All you need is this piece of software, add as many as you want. You have licenses for everyone. Available this summer."

11:23am - "Let's turn our attention to Final Cut Studio. We've been working hard to make this the biggest upgrade we've ever seen seen in professional applications at Apple. Final Cut Studio 2. Final Cut Pro is version 6, and we're introducing ProRes 422." Can compress full raster HD quality video from 1TB to 170GB.

11:25am - "Not only are we working with the leaders, we're working with... "[Applause, RED slide comes up.] Showing a RED 4k demo.

11:27am - "Clearly it's going to be an interesting show this year." You need something with a bunch of ports in the back, you need a handle, and you need a whole bunch of linking lights on the front. "We turned to our friends at AJA." It's called the IO-HD.

11:30am - Video: "You can edit HD on location on your MBP -- it's everything in and out from ProRes. It's really a new paradigm in post-production. It's really made possible by Final Cut Pro, ProRes, and the IO-HD . I think it's going to be another Apple earthquake that shakes things up in the post-production industry."

11:31am - It will be introduced at $3495 -- "About a fifth of the cost of competing system. That's ProRes 422. We think this format is coming out of the gate really strong. Talking about formats: we heard you. Open format timeline. Mixed formats, resolutions, framerates."

11:36am - Showing new Motion integration, not having to leave the app to access Motion templates, text overlays, adding motion projects, etc. Unrendered video with effects and overlays previewing totally unrendered. Not [too] shabby!

Engadget:

11:39am - We introduced effects plugs -- they've added dozens of them. GPU-accelerated realtime playback of filters and effects. Switching over to ProRes -- comparing ProRes and uncompressed video, 127MBps vs 19MBps."Visually indistinguishable." The screen is split between the two formats, looks pretty freaking amazing.

11:41am - "We're just getting started. Going to turn my attention now to Motion 3 -- this year we're embracing 3D, extended all the familiar tools into cameras, light sources, navigation of 3D space... create the kind of graphics you want to create. We're adding paint. Particles, video, pictures, pen -- speed, pressure sensitivity -- and throw behaviors on the strokes to bring that paint to live. Something shockingly complicated in the past is now easy: match moving."

.............
Looks like Motion 3 -- gunning for AfterEffects :wow:

Holy Marconi!

11:46am - Syncing 3D animation to audio behavior, looks super easy. Now he's applying tracking behavior to motion tracking with highlight points -- attach animations and overlays directly to frame tracking points incredibly easily. "But I know that's not the kind of 3D you came to see. Reach under your chairs, there are 3D glasses." Har har!

:?: :?: :?: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow:

11:52am - Showing 3D camera perspectives, layer lists with virtual dolly pullups, sweeping behaviors, paint tools ("to add a swoosh -- that's a technical term."), all kinds of crazy 3D video editing effects. Editing particle systems, vector effects and graphics -- "you have a nice little checkbox here... 3D. Click on that, the particles appear in 3D."

11:54am - Big applause. "So that's a quick look at the new Motion. Let's turn our attention to sound. Soundtrack Pro 2. Aligning sound effects and audio with a 3-up video HUD. Advanced take management with composited audio tracks. Also embraces surround mixing at its core -- one of the key things, we do this in a single project, stereo and surround mix encapsulated in the same project." 5.1 support, panning and speaker-to-speaker automation.

11:56am - "The incredible new Conform feature. Change tracking, sync changes, difference highlights, accept or override..." Alec Little to demo now.

5.1 surround sound support. 8-)

We are 1 hour into the Session.

12:07pm - Take editor -- making a comp, select which portion of which take to use. Just grabbed four soundtrack takes and instantly composited them. Demoing sound effects, syncing sound effect with a video HUD, quickly synced a royalty-free sound effect in under 10 seconds. Demoing Conform feature -- new edits with cut (or added clips) that would otherwise take hours with a bunch of sound effects and bites can now be pushed through rapidly with grouped approvals of intelligently re-synced edits.

1.5 hours... ?? Can be up to 2 hours.

Cool :)

Cool :)

At me local Mac dealership and recently at a conference/exhibition I had quite a number of video/ad/music pros asking about moving onto MacIntels. The time is here. Final Cut Studio 2 [Final Cut Pro 6 + all these other goodies...] 8-)

MacBookPro for SD/ HDV (1080i) (??) editing ... Move to 4 core MacPros with 4GB to 8GB RAM... alongside CS3.

Frack the Leopard delay. This stuff is ready to go on secure, stable, Tiger platform.

...Da MacBookPro for HD 1080p to 4K editing with I/O HD breakout box thingy... Hmm... 8-) :smokey:

12:16pm - With a Mac Pro 8-core with this sample it will take us 16:45 in Compressor 2. In Compressor 3 it's down almost 3x to 6:02. I've encoded a 10 minute clip in less than ten minutes. Compressor 3 demo time.

12:20pm - Easy to use preset list that covers "pretty much any device on the planet you'd want to export to." Custom default presets, drag groups of batch preset encodes. Preview overlays and watermarks with a before and after slider. Integrated chapter markers.

12:23pm - Easy to spread multiple threads across as many processor cores as you want -- demo shows octo-core encoding jump to 100% across all eight cores. Shows live bookmarks in video, publishing to iTunes. All done!

Macrumorslive.com server seems to be pounded right now.

8 CORES AT 100% LOAD. OMFG

12:24pm - "Compressor rounds out the new Final Cut Studio 2. As you see, we've put our attention to the delivery side. All these products are included: still $1299. We've also made it really easy to upgrade, the move to FCS2 for $499. We've made it just $699 upgrade for any version of FCP from the beginning."

12:25pm - Final Cut Studio is available next month. "Let's go back a ways to NAB 1999." Shows crappy old box... "I know, we MADE that box! It's weird. We learned. Pro quality editing workstations cost upwards of $100k back then -- we wanted to bring that power to everyone. A democratization of the editing process."

12:27pm - "We want to do for color grading what we've done for editing. We're introducing a new application today: Color. Real time application color grading. I want to turn our attention to FCP editors the Coen Brothers." Showing a colorization demo from the Coen. Stylized color in O Brother... brownificated.

Here's the last bit for you guys not wanting to click on the link.

12:30pm - "Color is revolutionary and helpful. It seems calculated to appeal to us, we make movies from beginning to end."

12:31pm - "It's designed to be a natural extention of FCP. Same UI for 3-way color correction with RGB and luma curves, lift, gamma, gain, visualization of color in 3D space. Mattes from chroma, luma, saturation, custom vignettes, hue and saturation curves. Color effects -- string them together with a node tree. And Geometry. Bring all four of these things together and get what you want: a signature look."

12:32pm - Demo from David Gross, FOX Australia.

12:40pm - Showing gradients and multiple secondaries. Auto-balance tool for contrast, color, etc., and makes automated colorization adjustments. Drag and drop grades from clip to clip. #d scope, all the pixels representation of pixels in a frame. "It's like a lamp post, the lights at the top and the shadows at the bottom -- with a ring of color. Selects a 3D cage around the colorized pixels. Easily dragging the colors and changing whole portions of eyedropped video with keys and vignettes.

12:48pm - Supports custom shapes for colorization effects, not just circular and square. Now color effects. All these effects / look presets are easily exportable and emailed between editors. "Definitely going to become the weapon of choice for all the editors I know."

12:50pm - "Thank you. I hope David charges by the project, not by the hour. We wanted to do for color grading what FCP did for editing. First, you have to have a great product. There's only one answer: to include it in FCS2." Big applause.

12:51pm - "I had a weird feeling you were going to like that part. But now everyone can use color as a powerful tool in the editorial process. Now FCS2 includes all the applications I talked about before, and now includes Color. Editing unleashed. Recap: we think we've done our job."

12:52pm - Showing the final reel -- looks like we're almost done!

12:53pm - Yup, that's it! They're even playing "Feel Good Inc." as everyone walks out. We're pretty sure that its performance is mandatory at Apple events.

*

Well, even though We didn't see any New Displays, or iPods, or whatever you wanted, I feel as though it was a great confrence nonetheless. The software upgraded really needed it, and it's nice ot see Apple not focusing only on hardware.

Damn, and last night I was talkng the wife into letting me upgrade to CS3-- now I have to talk her into letting me upgrade this, too!8-) This is going to be a very expensive year...

If memory serves me correctly, the 8-core MacPro was released in the not-so-distant past... that was the hardware update leading to this announcement. Today is about pros, and 8 cores obviously does a good job with FCP2 (undersatement).

Some people will never be happy. As for me, I am beginning to tinker with the idea of getting back into some production areas I left when I retired from my old skuul...

-- Not available in Japan, yet; link to the store page comes up to th top page. Again. Until the localisation has taken place. Why not offer the English version (most pro production people here seak English anyways) untl then? Apple Japan really need to get their act together.

...Well, even though We didn't see any New Displays, or iPods, or whatever you wanted, I feel as though it was a great confrence nonetheless. The software upgraded really needed it, and it's nice ot see Apple not focusing only on hardware.

Agreed. Except, the Cinema Displays have not been upgraded in a bloody long time. :?: ...Nonetheless, the quality from what I see at the local Apple shop for 30" and 20" and previously (like 2+ years ago) in Sydney at ad agency, the 20"/23", for example, back then, it is pretty good.

The latest MacBookPro displays (matte) seem to be much better now IMHO, from what I previously saw like 6 months+ ago.

Serious pros for color grading, HD editing etc, I think they would be looking at CinemaDisplays or their own preferences with displays from other brands, and color calibration tools.

Them color calibration workflow is no walk in the park.

But I'm loving the new color grading stuff for digital. What used to be an intense film stock and developing-chemical-skillz stuff by cinematographers and color graders..... Which of course still takes place today for major big budget films.

But Apple just took a big bite out of Avid/etc. today. :smokey: ...with a bit of the latency in getting shipping FinalCutStudio2 software and AdobeCS3 AfterEffects... Apple would be looking for more serious Mac Pro, iMac, MacBookPro action around middle of the year through to Leopard launch.

Final Cut Express HD? I've seen the complexity of FinalCutPro 5, I think that's a good start. Just like at this stage, Logic 7 is like, OMFG, I though AbletonLive-Rewire-Reason2.5 was pretty complex enough...

Ah, drug(that's including alcohol and cigarettes) use to fuel/celebrate creativity. Doesn't work for everyone. :( :err: :lol: