Final Cut Pro Studio 3 to allow realtime editing of 1080P H.264 video?
We know you Final Cut Pro Jockies have been itching for some more information about Final Cut Pro Studio 3. Beyond FCP S 3's existence, we are now hearing that you'll be able to edit full 1080P HD video in realtime. No more rendering.
While we don't have specifics, it sounds a lot like Snow Leopard's harnessing of those GPU cycles is going to pay big dividends for video editors. Apple's technology for using GPU's to perform traditionally CPU-intensive jobs is called OpenCL.
OpenCL (Open Computing Language), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.
You are probably going to need a pretty hardcore rig to take advantage of this speed as well. Don't expect to pull a 2 year old iMac out and edit HD video on the fly.
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Comments (22)
I think you might have meant Final Cut Pro 7 seeing as I use Final Cut Pro 6 every day! 3 would be many versions ago.
You might be thinking of the number 3 since Final Cut 6 is bundled with Final Cut Studio *2* All of us that use Final Cut Studio professionally are indeed looking forward to seeing what's in Final Cut Studio 3, and consequently Final Cut Pro 7
Sorry to be nit picky.
The post was updated while I was typing...
it was updated - took to long
Um... thats because it would be part of Final Cut Studio 3. Right now, it is Final Cut Studio 2. I use it all the time and I call it two. Sorry if you are too dense to figure that out.
More details will be interesting ... such as which video cards are needed to obtain this editing feature and if any of this sort of acceleration and facility will filter down into imovie.
You guys understand nothing about video formats and realtime editing. After Effects is not an editing program and it doesn’t edit H.264 or any other format natively. The AE timeline (same with Motion, Shake, etc.) is codec independent RGB. Realtime playback works by loading frames into the RAM. Once the RAM is full, no more realtime playback. Also with RAM playback the realtime performance shrinks when activating a video output card. You can’t have this in video editing apps such as FCP or AVID.
In NLE systems you need to have a native codec based timeline to edit. You can’t load everything into the RAM. This means realtime effects can only be enabled for PROPER EDITING FORMATS.
Stopp shooting with every crap format out there, think about the NLE workflow. Your wet dreams about shooting and editing anything won’t come true. Long-GOP editing is a pain in the ass.
Why are you talking about AE? This is an article related to FCP. The mention of AE in the original story was to point out how easy it is to manage proxies with it compared to other applications.
what? who said anything about after effects? you thinking is based on how stuff works now, and that you don't understand computers. if apple writes the code, the computer will do what they say. load up a mac pro with 12-16 gigs of RAM, which isn't too expensive for any pro work, and that would hold hours of HD for playback.
Mmm, not quite. It's true that the article didn't mention AE, but what he says is true: most compositing apps manipulate footage in an internal uncompressed format (RGB, YUV, 8/10/16bpc, half float, float) which usually taxes memory and quite often no pro video card is able to show withou an on the fly conversion to what that card is able to manage. And they do so because the idea is to work independently of input and output formats (obviously, your original footage is as good as the codec it was encoded with, but this way you don't compromise quality (up to a point) while manipukating it, and can choose output format degradation levels at the final stage.
While editing apps usually take into account the output format from the very beginning, the editor choosing a project setting corresponding with contemporary video formats (even DigiBeta implies a certain degradation). and what the pro video card is able to do. There are ways to cheat, but usually one intends to be able to preview through a given videocard and render effects to that videocard codec,
Apple can write whatever the code it wants: this is about hardware limitations and pro/cons of certain workflows. You cannot hold hours of uncompressed FullHD with just 12-16 GBs of RAM. You can use H.264 or ProRes for that, but you wouldn't scrutinize composites in compressed formats.
what? who said anything about after effects? you thinking is based on how stuff works now, and that you don't understand computers. if apple writes the code, the computer will do what they say. load up a mac pro with 12-16 gigs of RAM, which isn't too expensive for any pro work, and that would hold hours of HD for playback.
It's fine to see that FCP will have new improvements. But do any one know if there will be also pressing changes in DVD Studio Pro, e.g. BlueRay Support etc?
Is there somewhere in the web already a list with the upcoming features of the new Final Cut Studio ? Release Date etc. ?
Thanks-Rob!
hi
current final cut pro 6 can edit full 1080p video in realtime right now.
in the post title you specify H.264 1080p, which admittedly you can't edit right now... but then, you wouldn't want to anyway. h.264 is primarily a distribution codec, it's heavily compressed to achieve tiny data rates but at the cost of quality. you wouldn't choose it as an editing format.
The only thing I've really heard about FCS3 is that it is a massive re-write for most of the apps included. While I can't speak for the other apps, I can guess that like Final Cut Pro they were written in Carbon, and when Apple announced that they were ending support for carbon in the OS, err, not support, but, jeez, Carbon 64? Whatever it was that is making Adobe take forever to do a 64 bit version of photoshop. Anyway, the point is that Final Cut, and the other apps are being re-written in Cocoa. Hence why there has been such a long delay in the new studio. This has me a little worried for FCS 3, as anytime there is a massive re-write there are always quirks. I think FCS 4 will follow much quicker then the gap between FCS2 to 3.
Either way, FCS3 will be fully 64bit awesome, and certainly optimized for all the goodness of snow leopard. Final Cut, Compressor, etc, are certainly showcase apps to prove the power of the new OS and OpenCL. Of course FCS 3 will have to be backwards compatible with older machines tho, but on Snow Leopard they will really shine. FCS4 will probably be intel only.
Does this imply that FCP will suport straight editing of AVCHD files without decompressing them before with with ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec ?
Well... does anyone know? "Does this imply that FCP will support straight editing of AVCHD files without decompressing them before with with ProRes™ or Apple Intermediate Codec?"
This sounds very good to me.
BUT WHEN WILL it be here???
but when will it (final cut studio 3) be here?
in realtime..as long you don't put any fx on ...then render render render!
People have been clamoring for native H.264 support in FCP but just because it's in popular demand, that doesn't mean it's a good thing.
H.264 is designed as a delivery codec - Canon should not even be using it for acquisition. It is designed to deliver very small files at the expense of the processing power required to create them. But that's exactly what you DON'T want when you're editing.
H.264 needs a lot of processing - not only is it heavily compressed, the frames aren't even stored in playback order. So whenever you make an edit or add a filter, it's got to do a lot of decompression and recompression, slowing things down significantly. H.264 is a lossy codec so you would also experience image degredation if you keep recompressing the same clip to H.264 (e.g. if you export a .mov to Motion, export it as a .mov from Motion, color correct it in FCP and then export an H.264 from Compressor).
So you'd need a hardware decoder in order to edit it in realtime - or you could just edit in a codec designed as an editing codec. Why make life difficult?
This is what ProRes was designed for - it acts as an intermediate in situations where it is impractical to edit the source media directly and where the massive file size of Uncompressed 422 is restrictive.
So with ProRes you can get realtime editing of 1080P video with FCP 6 TODAY, providing your machine is fast enough. And, for the reasons stated above, it's a much better option.
Pro users have been waiting for realtime H264 support about as much as the Titanic waited for the iceberg.
It's a crappy codec - that's why REALTIME 1080p editing has been available on any decent system using a fast enough drive array when using a DECENT codec.
The introduction of ProRes as an excellent, non-Long GOP, visually lossless codec makes this irrelevent - Editors would want to transcode the crappy footage from a 5DII (which produces good low light footage admittedly) into something better before multiple passes of color correcting and effects degrade the picture beyond all recognition.
What I HOPE this story actually tells us is that FCS3 will support the Open CL and multiprocessor enviroment that gives much better RT playback (even with effects) - and allows FCP to catch up with Premier and Vegas, both of which smoke it at the moment.
....so will final cut studio 3 be really real time/fx too......course now it sucts