Setting Up Your Encoding Software - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 511

Table 30-8 Power Tools for Compression Assistance

Product Description

Final Cut Pro HD Although this is a video editor it also provides other

capabilities such as effects and title-sequence compositions.
A totally neglected feature of Final Cut Pro is the FXScript
language. This does some amazing damage repair on your
video. Areas of an image can be copied between frames under
script control to do garbage removal. The express edition is
also useful but has some limitations.

Cinema Tools This is an add-on for Final Cut Pro so that it can manage a

database of time codes and edit decisions. This enables you to
import film and edit it as if it were video. Then the editing
decisions can be exported back to a film editor for cutting.
Once the film has been properly ingested and the database set
up, Final Cut maintains all the metadata via Cinema Tools.

Motion This is a new application that provides some very easy-to-use

effects and motion-graphics rendering. It is very inexpensive
to buy but is only available on Mac OS. Motion is a useful add-
on to a studio running Final Cut Pro but is cheap enough to
appeal to people who only use iMovie.

Apple LiveType This ships with Final Cut Pro and you can use it to create

replacement titles.

Adobe After Effects After Effects has some powerful analysis mechanisms built in

for motion tracking. This fixes gate weave, especially the
compound gate weave that is introduced by the camera and
telecine fighting one another.
By carefully setting up the necessary key frames and
defining expressions at those points in the sequence, you can
ensure that parameters will be adjusted as the movie
progresses. Another particularly strong area is the time-base
correction and video scaling. This program also works for
high-definition formats.
Extra functionality in the form of plug-ins can be purchased
from third-party developers. These are incredibly powerful
and some contain entire script-driven rendering engines.
Connecting them to your key frames with expressions allows
you to replace just about any pixel in the image under script
control.

Discreet Combustion This is an alternative to After Effects that is designed to do

similar things.

Pinnacle Commotion Another alternative to After Effects, this is also very powerful.

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