Hi,
Good news!
I talked to Ray at Omni-Cinema Craft a few weeks ago and he told me they are pretty far along with testing their CCE-MP Compressor Plug-in. He asked me not to say anything until they are ready for a formal announcement. He said the code is the same as their Cinema Craft Xtream, which I think is their high end Hardware encoder. He said on a 8 core Mac Pro each pass is about 9x faster than RT. He said that they are tentatively planning on a price in the $500 to $800 range. I just received the following in an email from Omni (it sounds like Brian is giving a demo, probably at NAB):
Thanks for your interest in CCE-MP.
You can now tell your friends and we invite you to go ahead a post to wherever you like. Thanks for your patience. Product will be shipping in the first part of May 2008, and price will be available shortly.
You can now tell your friends and we invite you to go ahead a post to
creative cow or wherever you' like.
This session will herald in a new era of MPEG-2 encoding for optical media inside Final Cut Studio with the debut of Cinema Craft's MP Compressor Plugin. Based on the highly successful QuickTime Components architecture, the Plugin fits right into the standard Compressor workflow alongside the built in presets. Until now, the encoder engine inside CinemaCraft Encoder MP was used only for Cinema Craft Xtream, the "on-line" high end system that set the bench mark with high quality, Hollywood DVD titles. With the debut of Cinema Craft MP, Hollywood quality MPEG-2 encoding is now available for the Mac. Brian will go in depth with the Cinema Craft MP Compressor Plugin by walking through all the major components and settings. He'll also demonstrate real-world workflows for both television and feature film optical delivery that originate with Standard and High Definition content.
They also have this on their Web Site:
http://www.omni-cinemacraft.com/products_cinemacraft_encodermp.shtml
CINEMA CRAFT Encoder MP
CINEMA CRAFT Encoder MP is a plug-in developed for Compressor 3, the audio/video encoding application that is included with Apple's Final Cut Studio 2.
Until now, this encoder engine inside CinemaCraft Encoder MP was used only for the Cinema Craft Xtream, the "on-line" high end system that set the bench mark quality Standard for Hollywood DVD titles. This DVD standard for Hollywood quality MPEG-2 is now available for the Mac. CinemaCraft Encoder MP allows Final Cut Studio 2 users to encode their content to world class high-quality MPEG-2 files for DVD authoring without changing their workflow.
Call OMNI at (949)760-6664 to Find Out More About the New CINEMA CRAFT Encoder MP
Best Wishes,
Mitch
