Apple Final Cut Studio 2 Upgrade from Final Cut Pro (Mac) Review

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(More customer reviews)Final Cut Studio is a fantastic suite of products, and the package just got sweeter with the release of FCP Studio 2.
Motion 3 and Color are the standouts, in my opinion, providing unprecedented power for their respective capabilities in anything remotely approaching this price range. In addition, the whole suite provides a level of interoperability that's unparalleled, and blows away any competition in the industry today.
Given the suite's fantastic breadth and depth of functionality, however, the newest iteration of the core application of the bunch, FCP6, does come off as a bit disappointing by comparison.
While the Open Timeline and ProRes 422 are notable and worthy enhancements to the FCP canon, the app nevertheless continues to be hampered by some long-standing Achilles' heels, including various media management and UI issues. While everyone has their individual list of pet concerns, few knowledgeable users would argue that notable limitations don't exist.
Especially considering the two-year "hiatus" from FCP's last major release, this is an unexpected bit of a letdown. Clearly, the hard-working Apple team focused the bulk of their efforts on the other apps, and the results do show there (as noted above). [It's also worth noting that seasoned editors who've had experience on other platforms besides FCP, and who are accustomed to more demanding workflow situations as a matter of course, tend to be more mindful of shortcomings than the majority of users who may have used nothing but FCP, simply by virtue of a greater spectrum of experience.]
However, none of this is to take away from the FCP Studio apps' overall high level of quality, tremendous synergy, and unbeatable price point. For the money, it is hard to imagine a better value in the world of post-production today.

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Venture beyond mere editing with Final Cut Studio 2. Discover the intuitive power of new tools designed expressly for Final Cut Pro editors. Editing, motion graphics animation, audio editing and mixing, color grading, and DVD authoring are all part of the flow. Final Cut Pro 6 is at the core of a powerful and fully integrated post-production process that also includes Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Compressor 3, and DVD Studio Pro 4--and introduces Color, an advanced color grading application.

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Istopmotion 2 Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a fun little program, that's easy enough to use for kids, but has a lot of flexibility for more serious users. I've mostly played around with this making little animated movies with my kids like the one I've included here, which was made entirely in iStopMotion2, but you can export the files to edit further and add sound effects and such in other programs like iMovie and Final Cut Pro.
The basic idea is that you take a picture, then move the object to be animated slightly, then take another picture, then move again. You can decide how many frames per second you want to shoot. Obviously, more frames per second can produce less jerky animation, but it also requires much more patience and control. I like to stick to about 15 frames per second.
For photo inputs you can either use a live source or you can import stills from any camera. With a live source you can either shoot stills one at a time or shoot continuously, at intervals you select. For example you could have your camera shoot every 3 seconds, which would give you time to make a quick adjustment to your clay figure and then move your hand out of the way. If you mess up, you could just stop and delete the messed up frames.
A live camera source is easiest, since the program can show you an "onion skin," or a transparent layer from the last frame in the animation that serves as a reference point to figure out how far to adjust the next. It should be noted that not all camcorders can be hooked up as a live source to Macs - and this isn't really the fault of this program it has to do with the way the Mac is set up. Of course you can use the built in webcam on most Macs as a live source, but that's not always very convenient since you'd have to point the screen at the object you're animating and then you'd be interacting with the keyboard and would want to be sure to get your hands out of the way before taking a still. Any other webcam that you can use for live video chat on your Mac will work with this program, and you can also hook it up to any webcam that is compatible with your Mac or any Firewire based camcorder. As of now the program doesn't have any way of supporting live inputs from most HD camcorders, since they usually connect to the computer with USB ports and not firewire. At least, I'm not able to hook up my Canon VIXIA HFS10 and record "live" from it. Instead, I'm using an older miniDV camera I'd had around and stopped using when I picked up the newer one.
You can import a soundtrack, or add one later from within an editing program. You can add backgrounds and foregrounds, and while the ones included with the software are really more for kids, you can import anything you like. To add backgrounds, of course, you need to do something like greenscreening, so that you can cut out the background you actually filmed in. There is a "key" function with the program that allows you to select a shade and eliminate it, but I've found it's not as effective as the keying function you'd get in Final Cut Pro or other more dedicated compositing programs. Still, it's good enough for most kids projects, and that's the kind of project you'd really want to complete entirely within this program. For more serious work you'd be better off capturing the basic stop motion here and then exporting it for edit, effects, and soundtrack elsewhere.
Another very valuable feature is that you can set this up for time lapse photography, which would help to create very interesting animations for a science project, for example. One very cool feature is the "Rotoscope/Lip-Sync" function. What that allows you to do is, say, shoot a video of someone speaking a line that you want to include in your stopmotion video, and then import that video so you can see it side by side with your animation. You can then animate the mouth to match closely to the movements of the speaker in the video. You could also use this to match, say, the movements of a doll to the movements of a dancer, or match the walk of a clay figure to the movements of a real person walking. It's very useful.
About this video: it was very easy to set up and the whole thing took maybe 10 minutes to complete. Obviously you can do much more sophisticated animation with this software than I've done here, and if you look it up online you'll find some very cool examples of what can be done. I did this just to show what you can accomplish in a very short time, with very little forethought or planning. Not a brilliant idea, but I was writing this review and thought a quick animation would be valuable as an example. I didn't have any clay or toys with me, which is what my kids and I have mostly used at home, but then I noticed a poor little styrofoam cup and realized I could document its destruction. Enjoy!

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Turn Your Mac Into an Animation Studio!Create amazing stop-motion animations and time-lapse movies using your digital video camera web camera digital still camera or Macs built-in camera.Animate your story using your digital-video or web camera. iStopMotion 2 even supports your Macs built-in camera.Create characters and sets from clay or use almost anything you have around the house...toys action figures even your own drawings.Hours of Fun at Home - Let your kids tap their creative potential and be amazed at what they create. iStopMotion 2 is so easy to use your kids might master it before you do. iStopMotion 2 is a great way to tell a story where a bit of clay or a toy can be the star of your animated masterpiece. Join the growing online community who share their creations online.Use With iLife - iStopMotion 2 exports files that are drag-and-drop compatible with iMovie so you can add titles transitions music and sound. You can even use GarageBand to produce your own animated music video!Loved by Educators - iStopMotion is used worldwide by educators from all disciplines as a tool to help develop creativity in students of all ages. It can be used to hone problem-solving and communication skills so fundamental to all areas of study. The time-lapse feature is ideal for science class. Speed up slow processes like a blooming flower or melting ice.Key FeaturesStop-motion animation made easy.Supports Mac-compatible cameras.Virtual Stage provides fun backgrounds.Unique onion skinning for smooth animation.Create amazing time-lapse movies.Print your creations as flip books.System Requirements:Power PC G5 or Intel Core Duo512MB of RAM or more1 GB hard disk spaceGraphics card with 128MBMac OS X 10.4 Tiger or laterCompatible cameraFormat: MAC 10.0 OR LATER Genre:ENTERTAINMENT UPC:740569000461 Manufacturer No:1045

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Anime Studio Debut 6 Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been playing with Anime Studio Debut in my free time for about a week now (on a Mac, though this package includes installation discs for both mac and windows), and I'm a complete beginner. I'm pretty happy with what I've been able to do after just one week. Anime Studio Debut is a lot of fun, and is a very sophisticated and flexible program. It's very easy to get started animating simple things, but for more complicated designs it can be fairly time intensive. This video, for example, that I created in order to practice my animation skills, took several hours to create. (I posted this in October, which is why I made it Halloween-themed. I'm not always inclined to the macabre!)
The program is focused around creating characters whose design is flexible enough that they can be molded and shaped in a number of scenarios. That means that, even though it took me a long time to create this short video, more than half of that time went into creating the skeleton and now that I've created him I can pose him any way I like. To create a character you first draw the outlines of the various components of its shape (legs, head, chest, etc.) and fill them in as you like. Then, you can put "bones" into these elements to form an invisible "skeleton" (not like the visible skeleton you see in my video - that guy has invisible bones within his visible bones!). Then, to move it about you just select a bone manipulator tool with your cursor and then you can rotate the bones around whatever joint you've established for them and whatever parts of the body are "bound" to that bone move with it.
Once you have characters, backgrounds and objects drawn (each one established as a different "layer" of your final image), you can animate a scene. How it works is that you create all your characters and all the elements of a scene in different layers, and then, on the time line, you can have them interact. How you do that is very simple: there is a timeline that is comprised of 24 unique frames per second of animation, and you can set each character or object however you like on frame one and then, maybe, at frame 12 and the computer then creates a smooth path for that object between frames 1 and 12, and it will traverse that path in the first half second of the animation. Whatever frames result from your direct manipulation become "keyframes" and the computer interpolates results between them. For the skeleton's mouth I had to set "keyframes" nearly every other frame (i.e. every 1/12 of a second - I know there's a way to do this more easily, but I couldn't figure out how to use the free lip sync software that they recommend in the instructions). For most other things I found I only had to place elements every half second or so (for the moon and the clouds it was every half minute or so).
I like that you can animate each layer separately - here I set up the clouds and the moon and the pumpkin first, and then I molded the movements of the skeleton around those. I animated the mouth very last - and even though it's not very precise that took a lot of time to do - once all of the other movements were in place.
I really like this program - it's a lot of fun even though it can be very time consuming. One thing I found while working on this project is that it really needs to have some time saver features built in. For example, I found that while animating I was constantly switching between tools: I'd click on one tool and then make a minor modification then another tool and the back and forth was a real pain. I expect there are ways to assign tools to keys on the keyboard but I wish there was some way I could jump between "recently used" tools with a mouse click, so I don't have to move my hands from the mouse to the keyboard and back again or move the mouse back and forth between the drawing and the toolbar so often. There were other minor frustrations I had, where things weren't quite as intuitive as I'd have liked. Some of that is just a matter of getting to know the program, but it is worth knowing that while this is very easy to start out with, once you try and do anything semi-complicated, there is a learning curve. Still, it's a very flexible program - and, while the animation I created to illustrate it is pretty amateurish, I've seen enough to know that with time and effort this has the power to create very cool and exciting 2-d animations (and can even simulate some 3-d type effects).
While this is ideal for the aspiring cartoonist, this would be great for any creative and intelligent kids - and I know my older kids (11 and 13) were fascinated by it and will get a lot of use from it. Rather than let them watch cartoons, tell them to make cartoons. It'll take time but that time will be used creatively and productively and will be rewarding, and they will be forced to learn about attention to detail (because the computer doesn't know anything you don't tell it). Highly recommended for geeks like me and kids of all ages.

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The fun, quick and affordable way to create animations, Anime Studio is the ideal solution for first time animators, hobbyists and digital enthusiasts.

Complete Animation for Digital Artists
Create and Import Content Create your own art using intuitive vector-based draw, paint and fill tools. Easily import artwork from popular graphics programs and use pre-built content to get started fast!
Bone Rigging Saves Time Point-and-click to attach bones to your characters for easy manipulation and reduce production time over traditional frame-by-frame animation.
Advanced Timeline Control Inverse Kinematics moves your character naturally between keyframes for smooth animations. Add sound, special effects, and preview in real time with multiple layers to edit your animation.
Share Everywhere Export your creations to the most popular web and video formats supported by FaceBook and MySpace, or upload your animation directly to YouTube from within Anime Studio.
Anime Studio Debut Gets You Started Right Away
Free Characters Anime Studio includes Jace, Thorn, and many other exclusive, royalty-free, vector-based characters you can use for your own animations.
Free Tutorials Tutorials and sample files show you how to maximize Anime Studio's powerful features and get you animating right away.
Import Your Art Import your own illustrations or create unique characters for your cartoons. Animate anything within the reach of your imagination.
Bring Photos to Life Give life to your favorite photos. Import digital camera images, attach bones and easily turn your photographs into animated movies.
Features
New--User interface makes animating your creative vision easier than ever
New--Anime Studio's Sequencer gives you the ability to easily combine Video and audio, with animation
New--Upload your creations directly to YouTube from within Anime Studio
New--Improved drawing tools make creating original artwork a snap
New--Quickly make characters talk with built in Lip-Synching
Includes lots of ready-to-use content such as characters, actions words and props
Import Quicktime or AVI video
Import layered Photoshop documents
Pen tablet support lets you draw naturally with a pen tablet and recreate the sensation of drawing on paper
Incorporate audio files such as WAV or AIFF
Built-in tutorials and sample files get you up and running quickly
Special effects like motion blur and shadows
Export SWF, AVI, MOV, plus image sequences for the web, short or full length films
Render up to 720x720 resolution
Track, zoom, roll, pan, and tilt the camera

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