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New features to the localization process, whether these new features justify an upgrade for localization purposes. Everyone at JBI Studios is thrilled about the release of Apple's Final Cut Pro 7 (FCP), shipped inside the Final Cut Studio suite. While Apple describes 25+ new features on its website, here we take a look at what this upgrade brings to the localization process, whether these new features justify an upgrade for localization purposes, and how FCP now compares to the increasingly competing product Adobe Premiere Pro.
Two new features stand out: easy export and background exporting.
Final Cut Pro Localization: Background Exporting
Time spent rendering or exporting video is time wasted for an editor, or a production house. Fortunately it is typically only a small proportion of the overall video editing work, and low resolution renders for non final review stages help reduce processing time.
In the field of video localization, as opposed to video production, this problem is more acute. Indeed, low resolution renders are not practical since the first review stage is intended to be the final one. Moreover, the proportion of time spent rendering to time spent localizing is much higher than in production. If it took 3 days to edit footage into a 15’ video, it could take only two hours to localize the text inside it. What will not change however, is the time it takes to render that video. Any portion of the timeline containing text, or containing an asset with text embedded in it, will have to render. So will any portions missing render files, a common occurrence with hand offs of video source project files. In most case, it’s the entire timeline that needs to render. This means that for 2 hours spent localizing text, the editing station might have to render for another 2 hours. Multiply this by the number of languages, and one understands how rendering/exporting can create bottlenecks during the video localization process, and how the rendering time itself, although purely machine time, becomes a cost factor in the cost of video localization.
Is it for us multimedia localization professionals that Apple added the Background exporting feature? Probably not, but it does help considerably! Using Compressor , whether from the traditional Send to Compressor menu, or through the brand new share option, one can keep on localizing while other languages render in the background. While the editing station’s resources are finite and this could slow down editing, it should not affect localization much, since real time previews of effects are not needed when localizing text, and linguistic accuracy can mostly be verified with spot checks on the timeline.
Final Cut Pro Localization: Easy Export
The second feature follows Apple’s tradition of making technology more user-friendly. No technical prowess here, just the convenience of “sharing” (a word used by Apple as combination of export and delivering), your videos straight from FCP’s timeline to your final destination, such as an FTP, YouTube, iTunes, a DVD, or a Blu-ray disc.
Why is this so crucial in localization? Localized video typically have less rounds of internal review (only the localized text is being reviewed), and go directly to reviewers in a variety of countries. In one click the editor can now upload all versions to a corporate ftp. Better still, one can upload localized videos to a corporate YouTube account, making them instantly visible by reviewers around the world, thus eliminating the need for lengthy and troublesome FTP downloads.
Final Cut Pro 7 Worth The Upgrade? Yes!
Until clients upgrade to FCP 7 and provide source files, localizers have the option to stay with FCP 6. Nonetheless, while Easy export may be described as a convenience,Background exporting is such a time and resource saver that it will probably be worth the additional $500 to any organization handling a decent volume of work.
Final Cut Pro 7 Versus Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS4
Most of the features described here already exist to a certain extent in Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS4. FTP upload and background exporting are possible through the almighty Adobe Media Encoder and its “Load Premiere Pro project” feature. With the CS5 suite due out any day (and we sure hope it will be ready for our next newsletter), we do expect a tough challenge to Apple’s FCP 7.
That being said, for video localization without source files (such as video subtitling or text overlays), FCP does still gain the upper hand with its killer feature – match sequence settings to clip – which allows for instantaneous sequence setting match, and therefore native editing of client videos, shortcutting the quest for sequence settings that slows down so many projects in Premiere.
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