Following the recent launch of the new M3-equipped MacBook Pros, Apple will soon be releasing an update for its Final Cut Pro to make further use of its own silicon. According to the company, its updated video editing suite will leverage a new machine learning model for improved results with object and face tracking. Additionally, H.264 and HEVC encoding will apparently be faster, thanks to enhanced simultaneous processing by Apple silicon's media engines.
On the user experience side, the new Final Cut Pro comes with automatic timeline scrolling, as well as the option to simplify a selected group of overlapping connected clips into a single storyline, and the ability to combine connected clips with existing connected storylines. As for Final Cut Pro for iPad, users can take advantage of the new voiceover recording tool, added color-grading presets, new titles, general workflow improvements and stabilization tool in the pro camera mode. Both the Mac and iPad versions of Final Cut Pro will receive their updates later this month.
For those who need to focus on music creation, Apple has also updated Logic Pro with some handy new tools. For both the Mac and iPad versions, there's a new Mastering Assistant which claims to help polish your audio mix, by analyzing and tweaking "the dynamics, frequency balance, timbre, and loudness." You can use this tool to refine your mix at any point throughout the creation process. Another good news is that to avoid digital clipping and to boost low-level sensitivity, both flavors of Logic Pro now supports 32-bit float recording when used with compatible audio interfaces.
If you're a fan of "Sample Alchemy" — a sample-to-instrument tool — and "Beat Breaker" — an audio multi-effect plug-in — on Logic Pro for iPad, you'll be pleased to know that both features have been ported over to Logic Pro for Mac. Similarly, the Mac app has gained two free sound packs, "Hybrid Textures" and "Vox Melodics," which can be found in the Sound Library. Some may also find the new "Slip" and "Rotate" tools in the "Tool" menu handy.
Meanwhile, the updated Logic Pro for iPad offers a better multi-tasking experience. The app now supports iPadOS' "Split View" and "Stage Manager," thus letting you quickly drag and drop audio samples from another app — such as Voice Memos, Files or a browser — into Logic Pro. There's also a new "Quick Sampler" recorder plug-in for easily creating sampler instruments from any sound, via the iPad's built-in microphone or a connected audio input. This update, along with a handful of related in-app lessons, are available immediately.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/final-cut-pro-uses-apples-latest-chips-to-improve-face-and-object-tracking-065025314.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Apple has developed a pad-like device that uploads and installs iOS updates inside the store prior to sale, eliminating the need for customers to do it later.
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The Pixel 8 and 8 Pro are already up for pre-order from $ 699 and $ 999 respectively with the Tensor G3 chipset providing the grunt. There’s a lot going on under the hood in terms of software, thanks to Google leveraging its use of AI with its newest flagships, adding or improving a number of enhancements […]
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Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a hacking group known for its activist endeavors, built an open source tool for developers to build secure apps. Veilid, launched at DEF CON on Friday, has options like letting users opt out of data collection and online tracking as a part of the group’s mission to fight against the commercialization of the internet.
“We feel that at some point, the internet became less of a landscape of knowledge and idea sharing, and more of a monetized corporate machine,” cDc leader Katelyn “medus4” Bowden said. “Our idea of what the internet should be looks more like the open landscape it once was, before our data became a commodity.”
Similar to other privacy products like Tor, cDc said there’s no profit motive behind the product, which was created “to promote ideals without the compromise of capitalism.” The group emphasized the focus on building for good, not profit, by throwing slight shade at a competing conference for industry professionals, Black Hat, held in Las Vegas at the same time as DEF CON. “If you wanted to go make a bunch of money, you’d be over at Black Hat right now,” Bowden said to the audience of hackers.
The design standards behind Veilid are “like Tor and IPFS had sex and produced this thing,” cDc hacker Christien “DilDog” Rioux said at DEF CON. Tor is the privacy-focused web browser best known for its connections to the “dark web,” or unlisted websites. Run as a non-profit, the developers behind Tor run a system that routes web traffic through various “tunnels” to obscure who you are and what you’re browsing on the web. IPFS, or the InterPlanetary File System, is an open-source set of protocols behind the internet, mainly used for file sharing or publishing data on a decentralized network.
The bigger Veilid gets, the more secure it will be as well, according to Rioux. The strength doesn’t come from the number of apps made on the framework, but by how many people use the apps to further the routing of nodes that make up the network. “The network gains strength by a single popular app,” Rioux said. “The big Veilid network is supported by the entire ecosystem not just your app.” In the presentation, cDc likened the nodes to mutual aid in the sense that they work to strengthen and support each other to make the entire network more secure.
Rious explained that VLD0 will be the cryptography — the protocols that keep information secure — behind Veilid. It’s a mix of existing cryptography frameworks, like Ed25519 to support authentication efforts and xChaCha20-Poy1305 as its 192-bit encryption support. But, recognizing that advancing technology will change cryptography needs over time, cDc already has a plan to handle updates. “Every new version of our crypto system is supported alongside the old ones” so that there are no gaps in security, Rioux said. cDc also put other measures in place like anti-spoofing, end-to-end encryption even at rest and data protection even if you lose your device.
Veiled and cDc aim to build an approachable internet with fewer ads and more privacy, according to Bowden. Veilid Chat, a messaging app similar to Signal, will be the first app built on the framework. You’ll be able to sign up without using a phone number, to decrease personal identifiers, Bowden told Engadget in an email.
cDc is currently in the process of putting together a community and foundation to support the project. “There are a lot of folks who can’t see past web3 as far as privacy (we are more like the web2 we should have had), and really can’t process the idea that we’re doing this without a profit motive,” Bowden said.
Known as the “original hacking supergroup,” cDc’s most noted accomplishments include inventing hacktivism, helping to develop Tor and pushing top companies to take privacy seriously. Notable members include former US representative from Texas, Beto O'Rourke.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/americas-original-hacking-supergroup-creates-a-free-framework-to-improve-app-security-190043865.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Smartphones these days are much more important as cameras than telephones for most people. Whether you’re shooting photos and videos as a professional, recording your life through images, or just a social media enthusiast, you’ve probably considered camera quality before buying a phone. The smartphone camera experience is good, but not great. Sure, the images […]
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Google plans to improve the video recording-experience on third-party Android apps such as Instagram, Snapchat with enhancements to the CameraX Jetpack library.
Mobile | Digital Trends
If you’ve got a recent Samsung smartphone and are struggling with poor sound when taking voice calls I feel your pain. I have a Samsung Note10+ and often really struggle to hear calls; we live in a bit of a signal black hole and at home-time, our quiet road is like the main highway with […]
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Fitbit brings new features to Premium subscribers including the Calm app, snore detection, and stress tracking.
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The Huawei Mate 40 is the next anticipated phone from Huawei, but we’re still a few months away from any kind of official announcement. That’s not going to stop the rumor mill, though. A new leak suggests that Huawei will adopting a freeform camera lens in the Mate 40, which should improve photos in one […]
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There's a problem with stuffing wireless connections into ever-smaller devices: they can struggle to maintain a good signal when there's so little space for antennas. MIT CSAIL researchers might have a fix, though. They've developed an RFocus "smart…
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Qualcomm took a different approach from the rest of the smartphone industry last year when it announced its 3D Sonic in-display fingerprint sensor. Instead of relying on an optical image of your finger for authentication, the 3D Sonic system uses ult…
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Stanford is joining the rush to create AI research hubs, albeit with a slight twist. The university is opening the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI for short) with the goal of drawing input from across the university and acr…
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You might remember that a few years ago, viewers were getting frustrated with clickbaity videos with misleading titles and descriptions (“You won’t believe what happens next!”). We responded by updating our system to focus on viewer satisfaction instead of views, including measuring likes, dislikes, surveys, and time well spent, all while recommending clickbait videos less often. More recently, people told us they were getting too many similar recommendations, like seeing endless cookie videos after watching just one recipe for snickerdoodles. We now pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics—on any given day, more than 200 million videos are recommended on the homepage alone. In fact, in the last year alone, we’ve made hundreds of changes to improve the quality of recommendations for users on YouTube.
We’ll continue that work this year, including taking a closer look at how we can reduce the spread of content that comes close to—but doesn’t quite cross the line of—violating our Community Guidelines. To that end, we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.
While this shift will apply to less than one percent of the content on YouTube, we believe that limiting the recommendation of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube community. To be clear, this will only affect recommendations of what videos to watch, not whether a video is available on YouTube. As always, people can still access all videos that comply with our Community Guidelines and, when relevant, these videos may appear in recommendations for channel subscribers and in search results. We think this change strikes a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and living up to our responsibility to users.
This change relies on a combination of machine learning and real people. We work with human evaluators and experts from all over the United States to help train the machine learning systems that generate recommendations. These evaluators are trained using public guidelines and provide critical input on the quality of a video.
This will be a gradual change and initially will only affect recommendations of a very small set of videos in the United States. Over time, as our systems become more accurate, we’ll roll this change out to more countries. It’s just another step in an ongoing process, but it reflects our commitment and sense of responsibility to improve the recommendations experience on YouTube.
— The YouTube Team
WhiteSmoke Writing Assistant is a program that will help you clean up and improve your writing skills by checking your grammar, diction, and spelling, which guarantees you’ll be writing better emails and stories in no time. Whether you’re using this for business or personal projects, WhiteSmoke offers a plugin for all major browsers and checks […]
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The support shared among readers in the comments section is one of the things we love most about the Engadget community. Over the years, we've known you to offer sage advice on everything from Chromecasts and cameras to drones and smartphones. In fac…
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Color coordinating things can be tough, whether you’re trying to match something for your next web project, plan on repainting a room in your house, or making a major purchase where color is a big deal. And unless you’re some kind of savant with colors, you’re going to have a bad time if you just try […]
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Bluetooth audio on smartphones and other gadgets still really isn’t perfect; the audio quality has gotten much better recently, but it still can’t touch the quality of wired headphones, and I feel like we don’t even need to mention the potential for connection issues. Qualcomm originally created AptX as a means to make Bluetooth audio […]
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SEO and search rankings on Google are vital aspects of any online business, but it can be incredibly complicated and difficult to really nail down. But the good news is that we have tools like SERPstash Premium that take some of the headache out of things to make your life a little bit easier. SERPstash […]
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The Google Home Max enjoys a rather unique spot in the market in that it incorporates the benefits of a smart speaker with sound qualities – including a big sound – that are close enough to more dedicated devices like Sonos speakers. As good as that sound is, the Home Max has fallen short for […]
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Amazon has been adding some pretty mainstream entertainment skills, like recapping NBA and NHL scores. But now you can ask the voice assistant how you did in your last Call of Duty: WWII match, too. The new skill, available in beta, will use AI and m…
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Instagram has announced a new feature to help you quickly take excellent photos of yourself or the people around you, emulating the portrait mode that we’re seeing on most new smartphones. The feature is called Focus and gives your shots a professional, softly blurred look and makes them quick and easy to share. If you’ve […]
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No matter what career you’re in or what hobbies you have, being able to read quicker will always be a helpful skill. It’s been linked to having more success in school and work, and we’ve got a bundle that will help you start your speed running journey. The bundle includes two pieces of software: 7 […]
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There’s nothing more annoying than a flaky internet connection, but we’ve got just the tool to help you fix that. NetSpot Pro is a helpful utility that analyzes your WiFi connections to set up the perfect network and eliminate dead zones and solve connection issues. It’s good to have in your toolbox if you spend […]
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If you rely on your smartphone for all of your photography, you’ll want to give the RevolCam a look. It’s a nifty little gadget that adds new features and improves the quality of your photos, all with a small accessory. The RevolCam features three different lenses and an LED flash, plus a selfie mirror. The […]
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There’s no shortage of music apps for your smartphone, but TSC Music actually promises something a bit different. How? By detecting the worst key frequency of your hearing and stimulating it.
The post Turn down for what! This innovative music app could actually improve your hearing appeared first on Digital Trends.
A company called Almalence is working on an app that drastically improves image quality in today’s phones, without requiring any new hardware. Similar to how HDR photography works, it samples the sensor multiple times for each image.
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Zepp is introducing an updated sensor that has a different form factor, allowing it to pack in more sensors, and utilize Bluetooth low energy. The company is also unveiling a new Smart Coach system in its respective apps.
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A new beta build of WhatsApp has an option that allows WhatsApp to share data with Facebook to “improve my Facebook experience.” Screenshots also show a document manager is likely on the way.
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We scoured the halls of CES this year for the coolest accessories we could find. This list’s the result: a charger that runs on salt and water, a dongle that improves your music, and more.
The post These 9 gadgets will improve your music, translate speech, and more appeared first on Digital Trends.