Many HD camcorders are recording in the AVCHD format and until recently, it was difficult to find software that could edit AVCHD files. This video posted by David Helmly, the Sr. Business Development Manager for DV/DI for North America for Adobe, shows how Premiere Pro CS4 can edit AVCHD video.
An interesting comment from David regards 64-bit operating systems, their speed advantage in AVCHD editing, and how future versions of Premiere Pro CS4 will require 64-bit. This seems like a compelling reason to go with a 64-bit OS in your next system.
I’ve always been more a mac guy, but Windows has really gotten much better and Win7 64 rocks. AVCHD requires a beefy computer. A Macbook Pro is fine with 8GB of RAM. In future versions we will require a 64 bit OS- so, 10.6 or WIn7 64 . I’ve been doing early 64 bit testing on both OSes and the speed is much faster in 64 bit for AVCHD editing. It’s not due out for quite a while but AVCHD in 64 bit will make a lot people happy. In short, either OS is fine so long as it’s 64bit and lots of RAM.
The interview with Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin mentions how they flesh out their creative ideas with Sketchbook:
The Area:
In your creative process — how or where do you begin when creating a character?
Greg and Dave:
We banter a lot; a real lot. Any time a design or idea is put in front of us, whether it’s our own or for work, we like to argue and challenge each other’s ideas to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes the first idea is great, but with us, it rarely comes that easily. We usually need to think past our initial thoughts and prove to one another that the idea we settle on has a unique hook. If we can get there, we move on to a sketch. Usually that starts in Sketchbook as a series of silhouettes, thumbnails and scribbles. We’ve found that creating strong silhouettes is essential to getting a character design to read clearly on screen from any distance or angle. From there, we start thinking about inner details and color. The color is usually determined by the environment the character lives within, so that we can insure that it reads well and feels integrated. Then we move on to the final ink and paint.
Greg also uses 3ds Max and Maya for modeling:
The Area:
Greg, you mentioned that you spent time not only doing concepts but modeling as well – what application do you use for modeling? Do you find that 3D helps you visualize characters or is it the other way around?
Greg:
I’ve used both 3ds Max and Maya. When I started at Insomniac Games, I started using Maya exclusively. I also use Zbrush for digital sculpting. I love it. I find a lot of sanity in the ability to move forms in space. I really gravitate towards functionality, so being able to understand a form in the round is really a lot of fun.
At the 2009 IBC tradeshow, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that Nobelprize.org, the official Web site of the Nobel Foundation with more than 38 million visits each year, has standardized on Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Production Premium software for video production and the Adobe Flash® Platform to deliver online video content. Nobelprize.org chose Adobe solutions for an end-to-end, integrated workflow that will enable viewers to more easily discover exceptional content.
PersonalBrain 5.5 will be a free upgrade for all version 5 users and contains over 150 new features and improvements. In addition to many feature enhancements, the new version includes Thought spellchecking with dictionaries for: English (US and UK), Spanish, French, German, Portuguese (Brazilian and Iberian), Italian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish.
A list of the new and enhanced features for PersonalBrain 5.5.
Sony Creative Software Sound Forge Pro 10 is a professional digital audio editor ideal for audio and video production and multimedia projects. A rock solid 24/32/64-bit 192KHz digital audio editor with over 40 professional studio effects and processes, Sound Forge Pro 10 is a great tool for creating, recording, and editing audio. And as one of my favorite audio editing tools Sound Forge Pro 10 is also a powerhouse when it comes to extensive audio processing, mastering effects, and plug-ins.
New to version 10 is a performance optimization preference setting (Global media cache) which allocates memory for media recently accessed from disk. With incremental enhancements to version 9 Sound Forge Pro 10 is a high performance digital audio editing and mastering tool packed with powerful real time editing and mastering effects, ideal for audio/video producers.
Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), a leader in 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, and Parallels, a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software, announced that they have signed an agreement to make Parallels Desktop for Mac Autodesk’s preferred Mac virtualization software.
Autodesk will now support use of AutoCAD software, AutoCAD LT software, Autodesk Inventor Professional software, Autodesk 3ds Max software, Autodesk 3ds Max Design software and the Autodesk Revit software platform for building information modeling (BIM) on Mac OS X via Parallels Desktop. Autodesk added official support for these products on the Mac via Boot Camp earlier this year.
What I liked best was Adobe’s (successful) effort to unify the features of both applications in an enhanced Organizer view that makes it easier to organize, edit, and share photos and videos. For both Photohop Elements and Premiere Elements, the Organizer is very similar to the company’s Adobe Bridge software. It’s a nice, intuitive starting point for projects.
As you might expect, Photoshop Elements employs the same algorithms as Adobe’s professional-level Photoshop software, but the features are much more accessible to users. Think of it as Photoshop for very smart dummies.
Adobe Premiere Elements, the video-editing application, includes a new workflow that makes it simple to organize and find videos. You can preview video via the Organizer, which is similar in concept to Adobe Bridge.
As with the photo app, Premiere automatically scans videos in background and will flag problems like shaky footage and color and lighting issues. If you choose, the Smart Fix tool will automatically adjust these quality problems.
The quickest and dirtiest colour-to-monochrome technique is to change the image mode to greyscale in a photo-editing program. Slightly better is to use the colour-to-black-and-white converter built into every photo-editing program.
A more complex (and our preferred) method is to change the picture mode to Labcolour, select the Lightness channel, change its mode to greyscale, duplicate the layer using Multiply blending mode and then vary the opacity of the top layer. Are you still with us?
Now we have Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro, a plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture that gives us control over the conversion process that is akin to working in the darkroom, without the toxic mess.
SEP is expensive and whether or not it is worth the money depends on how devoted you are to black and white. There are cheaper alternatives, such as Fred Miranda’s BW Workflow Pro (fredmiranda.com), which does the job well but without the versatility and levels of control of SEP. It is an outstanding piece of software.
