64-bit After Effects

Adobe has just announced that the next release of After Effects will be 64-bit only.

This means that the application can access more RAM, which will give us a huge productivity boost in our widescreen, ultra-high resolution work. Larger image buffers, longer RAM preview caches, better image caching during renders—while we’ll have to wait and see what performance boosts result, the workflow improvement will be big and immediate.

Time Management on a Mac

Open the Date & Time system preference pane on Mac OS X

Activate Mac OS X setting for speaking the time aloud on the half-hour

When you’re working on a project, it’s all too easy to get lost in the zone. You’re getting work done, but you’re unaware of the passage of time. While this state of flow has some huge benefits, it makes it hard to manage your time effectively, especially if you’ve got multiple deliverables and tight deadlines.

Mac OS X has a built-in system option that speaks the time aloud on the interval of your choice—every hour, half hour, or quarter hour. It’s pretty unobtrusive, and the new voice for Leopard is vastly improved over the speech synthesis from Mac OS 9.

I have this enabled on my workstation to help keep me on track through the day. It just takes a few clicks. Open System Preferences, and open the Date & Time preference pane. From there, choose the Clock tab, and tick the Announce the time box.

Watchout 4.1—New Features

Dataton will introduce Watchout 4.1 at InfoComm, and they’ve added a couple powerful features that will address some of its weaknesses as a compositor—blend modes and travel mattes. Along with the other new features in v4, Watchout is expanding beyond a display tool and quickly becoming a more powerful creative tool in its own right.

AJA Ki Pro – Records directly to ProRes

AJA Ki Pro

I am a big fan of Apple’s ProRes codec; their marketing line is “uncompressed HD quality at SD file sizes.” We’ve been using it in-house for video since its release with Final Cut Studio 2, and we’ve been really pleased with the compression.

I am also a fan of AJA’s Kona line of capture cards; the quality and level of service is unsurpassed.

Needless to say, when AJA announced the Ki Pro, a digital recorder that accepts component analog, SDI, and HDMI and records directly to ProRes files, I was intrigued. This device previewed very well at NAB, and should be available for sale by the end of the month. I can’t wait to see how much this will smooth out digital workflows from acquisition to post.

Mind Like Water

Water Ripples

I’ve found myself having the “mind like water” discussion over and over with colleagues and clients in the last couple weeks. It’s a notion I borrowed from David Allen, which he borrowed from his martial arts training.

Picture a still body of water. Throw a pebble into it, and you get little ripples. Drop a boulder in, and you get huge waves. Water always reacts appropriately; you never get huge waves cascading from a little pebble. Water never overreacts, and always returns to calm.

As we get stressed, we tend to overreact and fail to return to calm.  We give small details undue attention, and avoid larger issues we should be paying more attention to.  The “mind like water” challenge is keep our responses proportional to our inputs.