Apple hires Tim Dashwood, 3D movie and 360º video software pioneer

Apple’s new hire is an expert in the kind of high-end post production that needs serious Apple hardware. After recently reassuring those despairing over the future of the Mac Pro, with this hire they show that  they are serious about making sure their software keeps up.

The first sign that something was up came on Friday 23rd April. The products sold by Dashwood Cinema Solutions that work on Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and the Mac versions of Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Adobe After Effects CC were suddenly available for free.

Now the news has gone out that Tim has been hired by Apple.

Dashwood Cinema Solutions is effectively one man: Tim Dashwood. Creator of post production tools for the Mac for over 10 years. He first gained attention from Final Cut Pro users when he introduced plugins for making 3D feature films. In recent years he’s been making 360º video toolkits for Final Cut Pro and Premiere. His high-end toolkit cost $1,199 until Friday. It is used for high-end 3D VR video post production at places such as Jaunt, where it was used to make Pure McCartney VR. (for more on how these films were made, read my article over at fcp.co). Tim and I feature in this video on how VR video works in Final Cut Pro X with his plugins.

This is good news for those who use Macs to make VR video. As the tools are now free for editors and motion graphics designers, the barrier to entry is that much lower. It is unknown whether Tim has joined the ProApps team to work on future versions of Final Cut Pro X and Motion or has joined the OS team. If he is now with the OS team, it is possible that his technology (which is partially implemented in Quartz Composer) will be made available to developers on Apple platforms via updates to the AV Foundation media toolkit.

Although Dashwood’s 360VR Toolbox works well on current MacBook Pros, everyone agrees that the more GPU power you have, the better. Hiring Dashwood means that Apple expects to add much more GPU horsepower to Macs and perhaps iOS devices.

Good news for video editors, motion graphics designers and those wanting to tell their stories with VR video.