r Technology to Watch

HDR is the current buzzword, as the feature story It's an HDR World in the May/June 2015 of CGW details. Yet, despite the headlines from NAB 2015 and those since the conference, there is more news in the video segment of the market than cameras, monitors, and HDR. Indeed, there is other technology in the space making headlines.

Video Software Updates

Sony

Sony has completely revamped its video software line. It has introduced the Catalyst Production Suite, which includes Catalyst Browse, Prepare, and Edit. The company is accommodating a networked workflow - though it is pretty twitchy about anything resembling a cloud-based workflow, and no company has as good a reason for that as Sony after the hacker cataclysm the company has experienced.

Sony has also updated its more venerable products: Vegas Pro, SoundForge, and Spectra Layers Pro.

Catalyst adds an important capability to Sony's software workflow - ingest. Catalyst Prepare provides organizational tools that let video editors set up their content through the editing and post processes. It includes color adjustment and monitoring, and metadata support. Color tools enable the choice of industry-standard color spaces, including: Rec.709, S-Log1, S-Gamut/S-Log2, S-Gamut3.Cine/S-Log3, or S-Gamut3/S-Log3. Select the grading color space: Rec.709, Log, or ACES.

Catalyst Edit offers basic editing tools so that content can be cut together quickly. Catalyst Edit supports 4K and Sony RAW and XAVC.

Sony Prepare is available for $199, and the rest of the suite is still being readied. At NAB, we were told the Vegas brand carries on as well, but it looks as if the company's development work is going to Catalyst and Sony is taking the opportunity to revamp. Vegas has a solid base of professional users, but we believe it's been dwindling, as the Vegas team has been slow to make major upgrades, and, honestly the Vegas interface is difficult. It works differently and uses different metaphors than competitive products. Catalyst has a nice, clean interface, and maybe it's necessary to start from scratch in order to server a new generation of professional users.

Another challenge is likely to come with price. The full-featured Final Cut Pro X is only $299, and Apple has added a nice ingest interface. Vegas costs $599 and needs some upgrading. The Adobe video products are best bought for the $50-per-month all-you-can-eat price. Catalyst is going to have to fight hard to gain a position in this market. It won't have much trouble coming in under Adobe's price tag of approximately $600 a year, but then Adobe has a trained community of users. Catalyst has got to be really good and should probably come in closer to Apple's price tag than Adobe's.

The new 3D titles feature in Final Cut Pro adds templates and controls to customized 3D titles. (Source: Apple)

Apple

NAB is an important show for Apple, and the company is just as a much a presence there as its competitors, even though it doesn't spend any money for a stand on the show floor these days. It uses NAB as an opportunity to connect with its professional users and to roll out updates for Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor. This year, Apple is upgrading Final Cut to Version 10.2. The company has added support for 3D titles, some improvements to color grading, and new effects tools. It has added support for more camera formats and GPU-accelerated processing of RAW footage from RAW cameras, as well.

Final Cut Pro X gets a new logo (Source Ajax electronic and paper mache company)

The 3D titles feature is the biggest news and the most readily accepted feature. Apple has enabled easy-to-use 3D titles with materials, environment maps, templates, lighting, and edge features. Titles can be animated, of course - Apple has canned animations that can be dragged and dropped on the timeline. Users can convert 2D text to 3D with one button push. The titles are also supported in Apple's effects module Motion, so titles can be opened in Motion and further edited with multiple lights, cameras, and tracking.

The company has enabled presets throughout the Final Cut Pro and Motion product line. So, processes created can be saved as presets and instantly applied where desired.

Apple has also revamped its Effects tools. Color correction has become a function in effects with the new version. As a result, users have much more control over color as well as other effects. Final Cut Pro has improved the color correction dashboard so that users can see four Scopes simultaneously and choose which scopes they want to see. The Scopes are graphical views, including waveform, vectorscope, histogram, and RGB parade that give a picture of the luma and chroma so users can better match the color values of scenes. The effects also support the use of draw masks to separate elements for different treatments. Masks can be created using linear, Bezier, or B-spline smoothing. Shapes are supported for every effect. By moving FCP's color features to effects, Apple has enabled users to choose the order of how they want color-correction effects applied. In addition, Apple says the improvements in effects have enabled improved keyframing. Again, presets can be saved and reused.

Apple has added support for Panasonic AVC-Ultra codec family, Sony's XAVC S, XAVC, and XDCAM, JVC h.264 long GOP format, GPU-accelerated Red RAW processing with support for dual GPUs, and support for Red RAW anamorphic formats.

The new Final Cut Pro has support for dual GPUs when rendering for Send to Compressor.

Apple's improved organization and search tools have enabled the use of Smart Collections at the event and library level, meaning you can create and save search parameters.

Final Cut Pro has a new, consolidated import screen, which puts all the options in one place to improve organizatio

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