Archive for April, 2011

Sunday, April 24th, 2011

The Fruitygamer Podcast! – episode 27

by Warren Frey

Retina Displays on iMacs (not likely), iPhone 5 with multitouch button (crap) and Apple’s location tracking brouhaha (feh.) Three cynical Mac gaming jackanapes prognosticated on all these matters and more, including Real Racing 2 HDMI kludges, the utter awesomeness of Portal 2, and the fact that One Single Life isn’t quite what it seems.

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Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

The Fruitygamer Podcast! – episode 26

by Warren Frey

A Chip-less podcast this week, but Todd and Warren are in the same room at the same time. Will wonders never cease? Probably not. They covered the shrinking length of games, the abysmal Blackberry Playbook launch, Portal 2, Final Cut, an Apple television, and a surfeit of other exciting game related news. Excitement! Cats! Echoes!

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Monday, April 18th, 2011

Apple’s new Final Cut Pro X: excitement and terror

by Warren

So Apple rolled out Final Cut Pro X last week at NAB. The software is a complete (and necessary) rewrite of the venerable non linear editor, with great features like a magnetic timeline (so your sound and picture don’t go out of sync without you telling them to do so), automatic cleaning up of sound and one click color matching.

But there are also quite a few unanswered questions about FCP X. A lot of them have to do with tape based workflows and matching back to film, neither of which are particularly pressing issues for me. But one change does give me the willies something serious: the apparent lack of a Viewer.

“Traditional” (if there is such a thing) NLEs operate on the same paradigm as an old A-B tape based editing system. YOu set you in and out points on a source monitor, set an in and/or out point on a timeline, and edit. I’ve been using this system for literally decades, ever since I sat down at NAIT in front of two 3/4 VTR decks and made pictures come together with a mechanical “clunk” sound eevery time I made an edit.

But FCP X has a filmstrip instead of a viewer, and this might be a huge dealbreaker for me. Maybe it’s just that I’m old and grouchy, but for me scrubbing through a film strip just isn’t the same as having that source video right in front of me. I can see where they’re going with the metaphor, and it time I might even accept it, but for right now the thought of using a filmstrip to comb through video and then fix things via the timeline seems like a backwards way to work. It might actually be a better way to tell a story, but it’ll take me a while to wrap my head around the concept and embrace it.

But on a meta level I can totally see why Apple has made the changes they have in FCP X. The “pro” market for TV and film is important but fundamentally tiny compared to the exploding amount of content being crafted for the web, mobile and streaming video. My current job, as a digital media editor, means I deliver videos on a weekly basis to a specific niche audience but with production values if not equalling television than certainly approaching it in terms of quality and presentation. That’s just one example of many of people creating professional video that never, ever goes onto a television screen. This trend will not only continue, it will accelerate, and that’s where I think Apple is aiming the new, cheap and ultimately more adaptable Final Cut Pro X.

I just hope I can come along for the ride without too many bumps.

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

The Fruitygamer Podcast! – episode 25

by Warren Frey

Atomixmag on the iPad, Final Cut Pro speculation, the ten trippiest games on the iPad, Unpleasant Horse gets an Apple meat grinding, and Warren succumbs to Angry Birds, finally.

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Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

The FruityGamer Podcast! – episode 24

by Warren Frey

Apple moves to the cloud (maybe), the iPhone 5 is delayed until all 2011 (maybe), Final Cut coming to NAB (maybe) and this episode goes out a week late (definitely.) Also, a great ad from Apple.

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