Yes, the iphone gets version 3.0 and some new features with it.
I wouldn’t normally post about this, but it’s a chance to try the BBC’s embedded video again. I’m so glad that I can embed this rather than the full presentation video where, I swear, the presentation ‘jazz-hands’ of the speakers was going to drive me to murder.
Unless there is some weird technology tic-tac going on here, whoever does the speaker training at Apple needs to get pockets in their trousers.
Avid has made little or no impression in the US newspaper video market but here in the UK it’s express software is fast becoming a standard. I cut on both Avid and Final Cut Pro and have done for a while and would have to say that love them both as I do the transition from one to another is not always easy.
If you start on an Avid I think you would find the move to FCP pretty straight forward. No suprise given that the editing paradigm is now the same across most of the big name apps. But going the other way? Avid can be pretty daunting on first go. It takes a few clicks before you even get something that looks like the interface and it can often feel a bit closed compared to FCP.
It’s worth sticking with though as, in some ways, it feels more solid and reliable.
Avid for FCP users
So if you are thinking of expreimenting or a change of job means making the switch then help is at hand.
As part of their more concerted approach to community engagement Avid have pushed the boat out on the tutorial front. Laura Congleton has a 4 part series on Avid for Final Cut Pro Users that covers most of the basics and a few steps beyond.
Well worth a look
Not more link bait. Although try putting iphone or Mac Air in to a post and watch Akismet go mental.
No, this was a post by Dennis Dunleavy which points to a photo essay shot entirely on an iphone by Mother Jones magazine Washington Bureau Chief, David Corn. And boy doesn’t it show just how ropey the iphone cam can be.
Dunleavy predicts that
Corn’s approach is most likely something that will remain with us in an age where anyone with a camera phone can snap away a kilter and publish the results instantly.
And even though he doesn’t see it as the death knell for photojournalism, it’s something we have to get used to.
Even if the pictures aren’t perfect, they still count as a visual record of events. The more people like Corn remain enthusiastic enough to play around with the iPhone at major events, the more extensive the visual reportage becomes. And that isn’t all that bad.
On lighter note, the vagaries of the iphone cam did make me look twice at a shot of Rudy Giuliani. Couldn’t quite put my finger on what it reminded me of…
No? Just me then.
OK, that’s shameless link bait. But I’m generally disappointed with what appeared at Macworld.
Yes, the new laptop is nice. Yes, I’m sure it’s a breakthrough in engineering. But I’m also sure it will probably find that it gets most of its business as an option for those who where also considering a PC laptop as long as it would come with diamonte cover.
After the recent flurry of cool hardware like the ipod touch and Iphone- truly innovative – I was hoping that they would give me more of what I moved to Mac for in the first place – killer apps.
When I decided to go Mac it was because Final Cut Pro and all the apps around it worked together. I was cutting on an Avid (which just happened to be running on a mac) using things like After Effects for the complex stuff. But even when PC’s got more powerful, when I looked at my PC laptop, I couldn’t see anything that came close to offering the flexibiltiy that the Apple software offered. I wanted that flexibility so I had to go mac.
FCP is now such a mature app that anything they add is just icing on the cake. There is no point in reinventing the wheel.
But until there is that killer app. That FCP that demands an air or a macbook pro. If I was PC based I would be finding less reason to make the shift this year.
Over the last few posts I’ve focused two of the three s’s that I think are areas to focus on for web/newspaper video- script and sequences. The last in the series was going to be sound.
In that way the web works I’ve come across a series of posts on the Apple website that says pretty much everything I want to say and more! Hurrah you say – less of that rambling idiot. But don’t get too comfy. I’m still planning to pop up a post with examples with more emphasis on sound and video working together.
But, whilst I flex my poorly subbed blogging muscles have a read of apples guide to Telling Stories with Sound
Doug Fisher has been busy working his way round the generally hated new imovie and come up with some gems of information.
He is collecting them in a…
Igonore the above. In the excitement of finding the tips I didn’t put two and two together and note that it was actually Aaron Miller who has started a new blog called Unlocking imovie.
Still, fantastic stuff and worth a look.
Sorry Aaron for the confusion.
Amongst the things going on I have found time to do a bit of playing around with the new imovie 08. Having seen the ad’s and a couple of the demo movies on the apple site I’d expressed a level of geeky impressed’ness so you can imagine I was keen to try it out.
The hype
Angela Grant had linked to my initial ‘geek love’ post, pointing out that quite a few people didn’t like the new package. I know that a number of features of the imovie HD are gone. Bakari Chavanu at MyMac pretty much covers pretty much all of them (some of his gripes are functional rather than features).
Looks like some serious ommisions here and people are noting more every day. But reading around it seems that the most common complaints seem to fall in to three main areas
The first one is a serious point. Having just upgraded my mac to run bootcamp and one or two other apps I know a mac is requires a serious cash commitment if you find yourself needing new features (and I would say that this isn’t the bit of software that demands that commitment). But with my ‘newspaper/journalist’ friendly hat on I would say I have little time for the last two as serious complaints.
Themes are always going to be old hat before you open the box and a lot of the bells and whistles where making the program bloated and obtuse to use. Mark Hamilton rightly points out that imovieHD ‘was a competent (although limited) video editing program’. He is right, and it that sense it’s a same to see some of the stuff go. But it was getting very close to Final Cut Express (for not far off the price tag) and, as a result, was no where near as easy to use as FCE.
But enough about the debate. Given my focus is on multimedia video for journalists, what did I think?
Update: Read my review of imovie08 to see if it lived up to my expectations…
The new version of imovie is out and it looks great. In particular the way you can interact with thumbnails by ‘skimming’ them.
Watch the video on the Apple web site and prepare to go ‘oooooooh’