Article Focus: Part 2: ProRes for HDV, with a splash of Color
As promised, here's part 2 of our preliminary look at The COW's Collected Wisdom on ProRes. The update from last week: 215 ProRes posts in the past week. That's right: the pace of ProRes posts has more than doubled. And they're spread across 11 forums. Nobody can possible keep up with all this!
Except for us. You took the effort to write 215 ProRes posts last week, so we've read each and every one of them and summarized the highlights for you here.
The big stories in part 2: ProRes for HDV, with a splash of Color. We've also got the latest tech notes from Apple, documentation you might have missed, and updates on the latest supported mice.
Really. Supported mice.
Before we begin, some answers to questions from Part 1
Apple's Tech Specs
In our mini-rant about companies with confusion-mongering minimum specs, we absolutely did NOT intend to include Apple. We've actually quite impressed with the FCS 2 specs.
Specifically, we like that they make recommendations for every application in the suite. So if all you're doing is taking video from FCP into DVDSP? You're good to go on any computer with a SuperDrive including a G4. Unless you're doing HD disks, in which case you need a PowerPC G5 or Intel Core Duo processor.
See? That's how specific it gets.
ProRes? "Capturing HD resolution video using the ProRes 422 format requires a Mac Pro with an Intel Xeon processor and a qualified third-party capture card."
No go on G5. No go with FW800.
But as noted last week, SD ProRes can be captured on a quaddy. Also as noted, many G5 configurations allow editing of ProRes.
As David Roth Weiss and others note, you can edit HQ ProRes as long as your drives can handle it: depending on the quality, you can be looking at twice the storage footprint and bandwidth of DVCPRO HD. Caveat editor.
But, for obvious reasons, Apple didn't go quite as far in documenting workflows with so many contingencies.
(See the end of the article for a note about our take on Apple, ProRes and pre-Intel Macs.)
The latest ProRes Tech Note from Apple We also like this Tech Note, which couldn't be clearer. Of course, it was posted on May 31, after our last newsletter went out--and indeed, after FCS 2 began shipping--but it's there now. And since all it does is take the positive statement in the specs (you need this) to a negative (you can't use a G5), it's not exactly new news. Unless you haven't read it yet.
Qualified Devices Finally, another cool link that's not easy to find if you go in the front door: the list of qualified devices, including mice.
What?!?
Anybody who wants to say that the specs are vague or incomplete is going to have to get in mind behind Logitech's V270 Cordless Optical mouse.
So, with supported Logitech mouse in hand, let's begin, shall we?
