You could taste the level of excitement Monday at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center as Apple’s founder and uber CEO Steve Jobs kicked off the computer giant’s 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference. It was here that he unveiled the company’s latest “must-have” consumer electronics device, iPhone version 4 and the updated/renamed operating software it runs on, iOS 4. With this announcement Apple is once again poised to revolutionize the cellular market, not to mention how all of us communicate, work and live.

The redesigned and re-engineered device, notoriously leaked on tech website Gizmodo back in April, has been highly anticipated for months, and although news of it’s release didn’t include some much hoped for features – i.e. additional service providers (Verizon) and 4G capabilities — Jobs and Co. managed to load it with enough improvements and refinements that when all was said and done, the crowd of Apple faithful was left doing Snoopy’s “happy dance”.

iPhone 4, which ships on June 24th, sports a sleek new design that’s less rounded and, if you can imagine, more minimalistic feeling than previous iterations of the product. iOS4, is compatible with older iPhone 3G and 3GS models (however only the latter and iPhone 4 support all features) and packs over 100 new features including multitasking, the ability to group apps into folders, better mail, wireless keyboard support, 5x digital zoom and much more.

However, what’s likely to cause the biggest stir among video enthusiasts and a new generation of content creators is the addition of HD video recording (720p @ 30 fps or frames per second), and a new version of iMovie, Apple’s flagship, entry level desktop editing application. iMovie for iPhone is a $4.99 download from the iTunes App Store that enables users to edit and refine their newly captured video clips, directly on their iPhone.

Monitoring reactions online and in the “twittersphere”, I found it ironic that many who would have never had the chance to edit, were it not for the release of Final Cut Pro more than 10 years ago, were jadedly poo-pooing the new shooting/editing combo and it’s possibilities. Posts like; “it’s not something anyone would use for professional work”, or “Ugh, I dread the thought of the first iPhone movie”, were running rampant. Not for professional work? OK, I’ll give them that, but lets put things in perspective.

Although you might not see those occupying “professional” editing suites, honing their sequences on the new iPhone, you can rest assured that a new generation of filmmakers most certainly will be. Frankly, if I was Apple the NEXT generation is all I would care about. These are the kids who will get a taste of what it’s like to shoot a narrative, cut it, try to make sense of it, and then broadcast it to the world for all to experience.

Many of us remember getting together with friends and sneaking our parents Super-8 (or VHS) cameras to make our little films. Today, young creative’s with a desire to tell a story have the ability to do it cheaper, faster and with stunning quality. Then they can then disseminate their vision, (no matter how crude or raw it may be) with the click of a button to the rest of the planet.

iMovie for iPhone 4 is like a pair of water-wings for a new generation of media creators. For writers, directors, editors; anyone with some genuine talent and drive, it provides the fundamental tools to teach, tell stories and entertain and is a stepping-stone to the next level of the filmmaking crafts. And don’t be surprised to see iPhone generated clips being cut into “professional” productions. It’s happened so many times before.

Love them or hate them, it’s an exciting time once again for media creators courtesy of everyone’s favorite computer company. Hold on to your hats!

From Digitalfilms.com

Ever since the RED Digital Cinema Camera Company started to ship its innovative RED One camera, producers have been challenged with the best way to post produce its footage. Detractors have slammed RED for a supposed lack of post workflows. This is in wrong, since there are a number of solid ways to post RED footage. The trouble is…

iTC Calc’s design is clean and simple and looks like your typical Mac calculator, with a few exceptions. Apart from the usual number and mathematical operator keys, in the upper right hand corner of iTC Calc is a dialog box which, when tapped, let’s you choose from 6 standard frame rates of 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50 and 60 frames per second. So it doesn’t matter if you are working in film or tape, NTSC or PAL, or a combination of both, iTC Calc has you covered.

After choosing your frame rate, you flip back to the calculator screen and are ready to work. To the left of the frame rate dialog you can choose to view your calculations in timecode or frames, very helpful for making quick film to tape or tape to film conversions. A yellow button at the center of the top row of entry keys gives you the ability to make your calculations with an offset.

Tapped the wrong number while entering your code? No problem, iTC Calc has iPhone’s signature “swipe backspace” feature which allows you to erase the last digit entered. More than one wrong number? Just continue swiping until you’ve deleted all the numbers you want removed. It doesn’t end there. Tilt your iPhone into landscape mode (horizontally) and iTC Calc reveals its History and Durations windows.

Entering timecodes can be a mind numbing process so like a paper tape the History window let’s you check and double-check your entries and quickly and clearly view the results. To the right of the History button you’ll find the Durations button. Here, tapping on the TC In, TC Out or Dur buttons transfers the value from the calculator into the respective field. Tap and hold (long tap) one of these buttons and iTC calculates that value. The bottom section of this window calculates TRT, better know as total running time from values in the Dur window. Finally, if you get stuck, there’s a help button to walk you through each of the utility’s functions.

KPL bills iTC Calc as “The perfect companion for any producer, post-production producer, editor, Flame or After Effects artist and anyone else who has to deal with timecodes and frames”. To this I’d add those on set including camera or sound crew, script supervisors or video assist operators. In post, editors and their assistants working in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro or any number of other editing packages will find iTC Calc an incredibly helpful addition to their toolkit. You can find iTC Calc and its lighter sibling iTC Light sans History and Durations features in the applications section of the iTunes Store.

Watch out, Blu-ray: Apple is now offering high definition movies for sale—including the big-buzz “Twilight”—to iTunes subscribers for $19.99.

While Apple won’t be attending NAB, those familiar with the company’s plans say it holds ambitions of debuting a new version of Final Cut Studio, currently late in its development stage, at or around the same time the conference kicks off during the third week of April. Further details weren’t provided.

Final Cut Pro will be 10 years old this year and it and its offspring, Final Cut Studio haven’t seen a major upgrade in about 2 years. Other applications anticipated for new versions are the company’s video asset management software, Final Cut Server, compositing software Shake and Apple’s pro audio suite Logic Studio.

Final Cut Server initially generated much excitement and held real promise in the professional realm, particularly because of the lack of comprehensive media management tools in Final Cut Pro. Unfortunately, the software’s instability, unintuitive interface and underwhelming media workflow options have impeded it’s widespread adoption.

An exciting prospect is a seriously revamped or even entirely new version of Shake. The high-end compositing software has not seen an update since 2006 and Apple has been chided in the professional community for the products embarrassingly lackluster support.

Apple also has a replacement for its Shake high-end compositing software under development. It acquired that software in 2002 from NothingReal and last released a major update for it in 2006, when the company announced “Apple will no longer be selling maintenance for Shake and no further software updates are planned as we begin work on the next generation of Shake compositing software.” Apple was rumored to be working on a new replacement title under the code name Phenomenon, based on Motion code and expected for delivery in 2008, making its belated delivery appearing to be imminent.

Logic Studio is also overdue for a new release. The product has not been updated since its initial release in 2007 when Apple packaged Logic Pro with the other components which make up Logic Studio.

The more significant change applies to integration with Final Cut Server, a 50MB download which has been updated to v1.1. The FC Server update, which also requires an upgrade to Quicktime 7.5, addresses several issues. The first pertains to the checking in and out of Final Cut Pro projects. Server v1.1 now provides an FCP binary file (as opposed to XML) which solves several issues, including corruption of project preferences that have intermittently been known to occur when a project is checked in or out.  A second change enables automatic updates to FC Server assets when changed in another application (i.e. Final Cut Pro). This applies to the other apps in the Studio suite, however media files for Motion, DVD Studio Pro and Soundtrack Pro still have to be uploaded manually.

A final note; all Final Cut Pro workstations accessing Final Cut Server v1.1 must be upgraded to 6.0.4 and be running quicktime 7.5 in order for these changes to take effect . All edit proxy files will also need to be reanalyzed and recreated after the upgrade.

This multi-featured software can give a great productivity boost to any SAN-connected Final Cut Pro workgroup. The impressive list of features can be confusing at first glance so Doug Cunningham from Apple will be explaining the capabilities of this unique and powerful package. Come see how you can harness the power of this new software to unify and accelerate your Apple workgroup.

Space is limited so please RSVP to Steve Marshall at CMP if you’re interested in attending.