New Avid DNxHD codecs
Avid has just made its latest version of the DNxHD codecs available on its Knowledge Base site. Scroll all the way to the bottom to get the codecs.
Import a QuickTime movie that has been compressed with this codec into an Avid editing application as DNxHD. You can “fast import” the movie if you select the 601/709 option in the Import Settings dialog box and import the video as DNxHD into an HD project of corresponding size and frame rate of the QuickTime movie.
Exporting from a non-Avid product: Export a movie at a size of 1920 x 1080 (1080i/p HD), 1280 x 720 (720p HD), or 1440 x 1080 (DNxHD-TR 1080i/p) for optimal quality.
Alpha: This codec supports alpha channels.
You read that correctly. The new DNxHD codecs now support alpha channels – a huge workflow enhancement for those of us using third party applications to create content for our Avid systems.
I haven’t tested them yet, but surely they are worth a try.
Working around QT 7.4 After Effects error
As noted nearly everywhere motion graphics artists congregate on the web including here, QuickTime 7.4 and After Effects don’t play nicely together. Apparently Apple’s movie rental DRM scheme is the culprit. Any QuickTime render from After Effects that requires more than 10 minutes will generate a permissions error.
There are two obvious options to address the issue:
- Downgrade to QuickTime 7.3
- Render an image sequence and then piece that sequence together in either QuickTime Pro or After Effects.
I’m not a huge fan of downgrading because you just never know if you’re going to break something in the process. If 7.4 is working for you aside from this pesky After Effects error, you might want to try this work around. It adds an extra step in After Effects, but it works. Follow these steps:
- When it comes time to render your After Effects composition, take that composition and nest it in another composition with the same settings by dragging the composition to the New Composition icon in the Project window.
- Select the original composition in the project window.
- Go to the Composition menu and select Pre-Render. The original composition has now been added to your Render Queue.
- In the Render Queue, edit the Output Module settings so that you are creating an image sequence. (I like .psd files for this because the file sizes are reasonable and the files are written quickly.)
- Now add the new sequence with the original sequence nested in it to your Render Queue. Set its Output Module to the desired QuickTime settings. Since this sequence will render in much less than 10 minutes, you should have no problem getting a valid QT movie out of After Effects without reverting to an earlier version of QuickTime.
This adds just a couple of minutes to your total render time, and you can leave After Effects to do its thing with a long render without having to manually piece the image sequence together in QuickTime Pro.
Office and NLEs
Office makes the world go ’round. The ubiquitous software suite is a must have… or is it?
Last week I added a Final Cut Pro workstation to my small studio setup and learned I’d exhausted all our Office licenses. Every editing system needs Office to open scripts sent as Word documents, to gather data for graphics stored in Excel spreadsheets, and of course PowerPoint — the all-purpose corporate monster that has destroyed human communication.
I was ready to bite the $400 bullet, but decided to give OpenOffice a try. It’s free. It’s being installed on a virgin system — what’s the harm? And Office 2008 on the Mac is new and relatively untested. I’ve used OpenOffice on Linux machines, and it’s reliably opened and written Word and Excel documents.
Mac OpenOffice users have to run x11 in order to run the GUI. x11 shipped with OS X 10.4 and ships with OS X 10.5, but I wasn’t up for the added complexity. I opted to try NeoOffice. It’s built on the OpenOffice source code, but behaves just like a native Mac application.
While there are certainly going to be incompatibilities between OpenOffice/NeoOffice and Office, I haven’t come across any with basic 2-column scripts and Excel tables in two weeks of regular use. I consider this a $400 discount on every new editing system I purchase. As an added bonus, both OpenOffice and NeoOffice run natively on Intel Macs. You’ll have to upgrade Office 2004 to 2008 in order to get that from Microsoft.
NeoOffice has worked so well for us that in this brief test that we’ve put off upgrading to Office 2008. We may just make a wholesale open source switch.
- OpenOffice Writer for Microsoft Word users documentation
- OpenOffice wiki
- NeoOffice wiki
- Eleven tips for moving to OpenOffice
After Effects CS3 8.0.2 update available
The awaited 8.02 update for Adobe After Effects is now available for download for Mac OS X and Windows, and through the Adobe Update Manager. It’s been my experience that the process goes a lot faster with the manual download.Support for direct P2 import into After Effects has been added. Mac users get Leopard compatibility.Originally the update was going to address issues with QuickTime 7.4, but the update was released without the QT fix. Adobe continues to recommend CS 3 users do not update to QuickTime 7.4. Known issues include failure to render files that take longer than 10 minutes to render.Some work arounds include rendering still image sequences and then piecing them back together in QuickTime Pro, or downgrading (just like the PCs do in those ads) to QuickTime 7.3 using Pacifist.No word on when a QuickTime 7.4 fix will be released.
- More details on the CS 3 update and a demo video on Dave Helmly’s blog
- Discussion of the QT 7.4 problem on the Apple boards
- Discussion of the QT 7.4 problem on the Adobe boards
- Download QT 7.3 here
ADDED January 25:
- MacFixIt solutions to QT 7.4 issue
More hints of Avid intentions
From Avid’s most recent 8K filing:
Avid Technology, Inc. (the “Company”) appointed Kenneth A. Sexton as Chief Administrative Officer of the Company effective January 21, 2008. In this role, Mr. Sexton will oversee all of the Company’s administrative functions, including finance, information technology, legal, human resources and investor relations.
In 2007, Mr. Sexton, age 53, served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of webMethods, Inc., a provider of business integration software solutions. In 2006, Mr. Sexton served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Infor, Inc., an enterprise software company. From 2004 to 2005, Mr. Sexton served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Axentis, Inc., a privately-held provider of enterprise governance, risk and compliance management software. From 2002 to 2004, Mr. Sexton was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Peregrine Systems, Inc., an infrastructure management software company.
A quick résumé check reveals that Sexton oversaw these or similar operations for webMethods during its sale to Software AG, and Peregrine Systems during its sale to HP. Axentis is privately held.
Like the new CEO, Sexton doesn’t have a history of sticking with the company for the long haul. Get in, fix it, sell it. Of course, as they say, past performance does not imply future results. But if I were a betting man…
