Final Cut Pro Users Group SuperMeet kicks its sponsors to the curb

Each year at the NAB Conference, the Final Cut Pro User Group holds a SuperMeet of FCP user groups around the world. It's an unofficial event, in that it's not officially part of the NAB schedule, but it's become known as the signature event for Final Cut users each year. Apple has participated in the event from time to time, but has never been the primary sponsor, and isn't listed as a sponsor for this year's event.

Yesterday, a flurry of rumors broke out about last-minute changes at this year's SuperMeet. Official sponsors of the SuperMeet, including AJA, Autodesk, Avid, Blackmagic Design and Canon, received notices from the event organizers that their presentations were being canceled. Presenters such as director Kevin Smith and DSLR cinematographer Philip Bloom were "uninvited". The SuperMeet webpage deleted a list of all the presenters and presentations, and substituted the following: "The Final Cut Pro User Group Network is excited to have a very special guest presentation at the 10th Annual Las Vegas FCPUG SuperMeet. Come to see a surprise sneak peek at something very special - you really do not want to miss this one!". That's it.

Word began to leak out that Apple plans to use the event to announce its new version of Final Cut Studio, and had demanded that the organizers drop all the other presenters and sponsors from the event. Neither Apple nor the event organizers are saying anything about the changes in the schedule, but it's fairly clear that the SuperMeet will serve as Apple's launch event.

You may ask why Apple didn't just schedule its own event, which it could have completely controlled. The problem is that Apple isn't an exhibitor at NAB, and many conferences (most likely including NAB) have contracts with the hotels that house attendees that prohibit them from making space available for events run by non-exhibitors. Since just about every hotel of any size is offering space through NAB's housing office, that would make them unable to host an Apple event. On the other hand, the SuperMeet organizers are also exhibitors, so they can do whatever they want with their event.

My problem with the whole thing is how the SuperMeet's sponsors are being treated. These are companies that have spent a good deal of money, both this year and in previous years, sponsoring SuperMeet events around the world. They were flying in presenters and paying their fees and expenses, and they were looking forward to having access to the SuperMeet's audience. Now, only a week before NAB, they've all been "kicked to the curb" by the SuperMeet's organizers.

If I were a sponsor, I would think twice (or more than twice) about sponsoring future SuperMeet events. The SuperMeet's organizers have said that sponsors' money, support and loyalty aren't worth as much as the opportunity to host the launch of a new Apple product. That, to me, is a bad bargain for everyone involved.

Working on "The Feldman File" video podcast

After writing about video and new media for five years, I think that it's time to launch a video podcast. One of my objectives is to keep costs down as much as possible. Last weekend, I shot a test episode, where I learned a few things:

• I suck as a host. Okay, let me rephrase that: I need to work on my on-camera presentation skills.
• Audio recorded on a consumer camcorder quickly goes out-of-sync with audio recorded with an external recorder. I'm now experimenting with a variety of ways of bringing the audio back into sync with picture (using the audio recorded from the camcorder as a scratch track for identifying sync points.) Update, October 26th: Singular Software's DualEyes looks like the synchronization solution I'm looking for. It's a standalone application that can synchronize the audio track from a camcorder or DSLR with externally-recorded audio. It can correct for drift (the problem I'm dealing with) as well as align tracks in time. DualEyes currently only works on Windows, but a Mac version is in the works. At $149 (on special for $119 until October 30th) it's the most cost-effective solution I can find, and it requires minimum effort.
• I'm trying to do everything with Apple's iLife '11, which may or may not work, and avoid having to buy Final Cut Studio or Adobe's CS5 Master Collection. Either one will cost me at least $1,000, even with upgrade pricing from Adobe.
• You can get a ton of light out of inexpensive fluorescent fixtures. I considered LED lights, but their light falls off quickly, and even the least expensive "no-name" light panels are around $300 each. Instead, I bought a pair of Flashpoint Cool Light 4s from Adorama with four 45 watt compact fluorescent bulbs and stands for under $200.00. Each fixture throws the equivalent of 900 watts of light at 5500K. They remain cool, require no special power or separate circuit, and replacement bulbs cost all of $6.99 each.
• I'm using a Sanyo Xacti GC-102 camcorder and an Olympus LS-10 audio recorder that I've owned for some time. The Sanyo is priced comparably to Flip and Kodak models, but it has a flip-out LCD that lets me see myself while I'm shooting to insure that I'm framed and in focus. There's a fair amount of low-light noise with the Xacti, so I need to wear lighter colors without patterns to cut down on noise.

My video and audio editing skills are a bit rusty, and I'm on a learning curve with the iLife applications. There are no third-party books yet available, and Apple's online help leaves a lot to be desired. So, I'm taking my time. My hope is to shoot a usable episode this weekend and release it next Monday. I'll post new episodes here, on YouTube and iTunes. In the interim, if there's anything that you'd like to see in the podcasts, please email me at len (at) feldmanfile.com.

Intel's Sandy Bridge...and a little Mac (and Final Cut Pro) speculation

At Intel's IDF Conference, the company provided more details about its new Sandy Bridge architecture. According to Anandtech, the first Sandy Bridge processors will be shipped for performance-level (gaming and media creation) PCs in early 2011, and will migrate to entry-level PCs in 2012. One major change in Sandy Bridge is that its GPU core should provide performance easily double that of Intel's existing integrated graphics. It won't keep NVIDIA or AMD up at night, but it should be good enough to lessen the demand for add-on graphics cards in entry-level PCs.

Sandy Bridge has an integrated MPEG2, VC1 and H.264/AVC decoder that Intel claims will use only half the processor power for HD playback as existing processors. It also has a AVC encoder/transcoder that, in a demonstration, was able to transcode a three minute 1080P 30Mbps video into a 640 x 360 iPhone video in 14 seconds, at a rate of 400 fps. This gets into the performance range of high-end, GPU-accelerated encoders. Sandy Bridge will also have an enhanced Turbo Boost feature that will allow the clock speed of individual cores to be boosted beyond the normal thermal design power (the maximum safe power dissipation of the chip) for brief periods of time.

Okay. so I said something about the Mac in the title, right? According to Anandtech, Core i3, i5 and i7 processors with Sandy Bridge architectures will ship in Q1 2011. Every MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro ships today with at least a Core i3. Next, let's add Light Peak, Intel's new 10Gbps optical competitor to USB 3.0. There's no support for Light Peak in the first Intel chipset announced for Sandy Bridge, but that doesn't mean that it can't be added.

Add it all together, and it sounds like the Apple notebook and iMac product lines will be fully refreshed some time next year with a combination of Sandy Bridge and Light Peak. There goes the I/O limitations of Apple's notebooks and desktops. (Apple won't have to reengineer the Mac Pro right away--they can simply offer a PCI Light Peak card.)

Let's throw one more thing into the mix. There's been a lot of rumor and speculation surrounding the next release of Apple's Final Cut Studio, with a battle between bloggers--some saying that a new version will be released no later that NAB in April 2011, and others saying that it won't happen until 2012. The "2011" school says that the new version of Final Cut Studio will have Adobe Mercury Engine-like performance, but the "2012" school says that's not possible without major architectural changes. If Apple is writing the next version of Final Cut Studio to take full advantage of the features in Sandy Bridge, it most definitely is possible in the 2011 timeframe.

So here's my semi-informed speculation: In Q1 (perhaps late Q1), we'll see the first updated MacBook Pros with Sandy Bridge and Light Peak announced. New iMacs will follow. Then, in the April timeframe, just before NAB, Apple will announce the new Final Cut Studio that takes full advantage of the new computers ("great time to upgrade!"). Deliveries of everything will occur by the end of Q2.

The Next Generation of Red

Red,NAB,Red One,Scarlet,Sony,Panasonic,Canon,Apple,Final Cut Studio

In some previous blog entries, I discussed the new products announced by Red at NAB. Scarlet, the "3K for under $3,000" camcorder announced for shipment next year, takes Red into an entirely new market segment, one in which the Japanese consumer electronic vendors (primarily Sony, Panasonic and Canon) have long played.

The current Red One lists for $17,500, but by the time lenses and accessories have been added, the cost can easily double (or more). At that price, there's enough margin for video system integrators to make money, and the systems are expensive enough for rental houses to have a steady market.

However, at $3,000 plus accessories, the Scarlet will clearly be a prosumer product that should sell in quantities many times that of the Red One. From interviews with Red executives at NAB, it seems clear that they see a market much bigger than that served by the mail-order video resellers such as B&H.

At the show, Red executives talked about the company's close relationship with Apple. It seems to me entirely possible that Scarlet, in a package closely integrated with Final Cut Studio, could be sold in Apple's stores, possibly even exclusively. This would give Red street-level access to consumers and media creation professionals around the world, without having to vet a sales channel store by store.

There have been rumors about Apple purchasing Red, but as I've written about previously, I think that Apple's hardware-agnostic approach to professional audio and video (as opposed to its hardware-centric approach to everything else) has worked in its favor vs. Avid. By buying Red, it could alienate its largest hardware partners, but by simply reselling a Red-branded Scarlet in its stores, it would remain agnostic, yet share the spotlight with the company that is fast becoming the Apple of video cameras.

Please keep in mind that this is speculation on my part; I have no inside information. However, I've felt for a long time that the design of camcorders needs a major overhaul in order to make them more usable, and that Apple is ideally suited to design and build such a next-generation product. A reselling partnership with Red could be the first step to such a product.