Apple’s new iMovie Pro. (aka Final Cut Pro X)

Say goodbye to the Pro Apps as you know them. The writing has been on the wall for several years, yet many Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio users continue to cling to the hope that Apple will make a major leap with Final Cut Pro and bring it into 64-bit computing, and finally address the numerous issues that have been on wish lists, sometimes for an entire decade.

Well, Apple demoed iMovie Pro at the FCP SuperMeet this past Tuesday April 12th and made absolutely no qualms about visually signifying the end of the Pro apps as we know them. There was no talk of Color. Soundtrack, Motion, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, Blu-ray authoring, 3D authoring, feature film features, etc. No the focus was solely on Apple iMovie Pro.

How did we get to this sorry state? Well, I think there was a conversation in January that sort of went like this:

Sony’s PMW-F3K (PMF-F3L) Specifications and high resolution images

PRELIMINARY PRODUCT INFORMATION FOR THE SONY PMW-F3

Here is preliminary information on the PMW-F3K’s features.

This information is subject to change.
More information will be made available soon.

Click on any image for a VERY high resolution photo.

You Tube Rents Videos – Mine Included!

YouTube recently added rentals to their streaming portfolio, and with a catalogue of outdoor adventure videos that were basically sitting dormant here, I decided to bring the entire video series into the new Millennium- including direct sales on Amazon, streaming on Amazon Unbox, rentals on YouTube and availability on Netflix’ portfolio.

I’m in the finishing the Amazon process with my first video there, and was just notified that two of my videos were approved for rental on YouTube.

TechThoughts Nears 100,000 Views!

TechThoughts continues to grow since I brought it all back here. Every day, more visitors return, and new ones visit for the first time. Remember, you can subscribe via RSS, and even e-mail so you’ll know when a new article hits. As this blog approaches its 100,000th visitor, I have a special contest.

Dell UltraSharp U3011 a 30-inch IPS monitor for critical color grading.

There’s a great article on the Pro Video Coalition about doing critical color grading using the latest generation of “in plane switching” IPS LCD monitors which offer the widest gamut of color and accuracy yet achieved on LCD monitors.

I bring this up because Dell has just announced a 30″ IPS monitor that may well be the de-facto choice for color grading do to its sheer size (as far as computer monitors go) and high resolution for a great price.

You see, whereas “broadcast” monitors cost a hefty premium, say $3000 and up for critical color work, these “consumer” monitors brandish price tags around $1000 and can be calibrated to work for critical color post.

OWC eSATA Upgrade Program for Apple iMac 27″ 2010 Models

Well, it’s finally happened. And the expert gurus at Other World Computing are the ones that made it happen, again. Giving Mac users the capabilities and features that our PC brethren have been enjoying for years now- eSATA ports.

Apple’s latest computers have Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. Decent graphics power, and beautiful IPS displays, but seriously lack for fast external disk I/O.

Apple has standardized on the obsoleted FireWire 800, but  the rest of the industry has already forgotten about FireWire. They have moved on to eSATA for speeds in the hundreds of MB per second as opposed to FW800’s mere 60 MBps or so. So a Mac user who wanted to use eSATA drives had to have a computer they to which they could add an eSATA card (Mac Pro or 17″ MacBook Pro). But OWC changes that game today.

Canon XF300 on the way for review. Questions? Tests? [UPDATE] It’s here.

Canon says that the Canon XF300 Professional Camcorder is on it’s way to me for test & review. This camera features 50Mbps MPEG-2 4:2:2 recording to Compact Flash (CF) Cards. This high data rate should push aside all issue with compression, even though it does use the older MPEG-2 codec as opposed to the newer MPEG-4 / H.264 / AVCHD codec that a lot of newer camcorders and cameras use. The advantage to MPEG-2 is that, with a lot less compression, today’s even faster computer should handle it with ease, as opposed to the much more difficult time today’s systems have with AVCHD footage.

Sony accepts orders for NEX-VG10: the large sensor camcorder gets REAL!

Sony is clearly sprinting to the large sensor HD camcorder finish line!

Looks like the race is over. Sony and Panasonic announced large sensor camcorders back at NAB but now Sony is showing off the goods. They are taking pre-orders starting today.

The goods Sony is offering look real good! As with many of the last consumer/prosumer models, you can expect the VG10 to come out in a prosumer model, with XLR inputs, and probably more video settings than the consumer model offers. But probably no different lenses.

The Alpha lenses from the digital still lineup are already designed to resolve far, far beyond the 2 Megapixels of 1080i60 HD video. So you probably won’t see different lenses than will be available in the consumer lineup, but it does open the door to the entire Minolta Maxxum line of SLR lenses, which are the basis for the Sony’s Alpha.

Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner writes to memory cards

The act of scanning a photo hasn’t changed since scanning was invented. Sitting at a computer, waiting for software to figure out what the next step is, waiting while the scanner moans through a scan, waiting while the software shows you the image, waiting while you save the file to disk, waiting, waiting, waiting. Which is probably why a lot of people don’t bother to scan all the stuff they should be archiving.

Pandigital’s latest, the Personal Photo Scanner, helps to cut down on that process by eliminating the computer as part of the scanning process.

Canon updates EOS-1D Mark IV and Rebel T2i / 550D firmware

If you were bothered by a shaky aperture when shooting footage with certain Canon lenses … The 1.0.8 firmware updates both the listed cameras.

Fixes a phenomenon in which the set aperture moves unexpectedly when shooting movies in manual exposure mode using some Canon lenses (such as macro lenses).