Echo Fire 2.0,from Synthetic Aperture, adds FireWire-based, NTSC (National Television System Committee) previewing to Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, and to any program that can play QuickTime movies.
Version 2.0’s greatest improvement is support for more applications. Any program that can export a QuickTime movie can now export to Echo Fire. Applications that can play QuickTime movies can use Echo Fire’s LiveFire feature to route video to an NTSC (or standard TV) display, a boon for scoring-program users tired of looking at tiny previews when scoring for video.
After Effects 5.0 offers FireWire-based NTSC preview capabilities, but Echo Fire provides extra features and controls, including real-time audio support. Press shift-spacebar in After Effects, and Echo Fire will take over, render your current timeline (to disk or RAM), and begin looping it out via the FireWire port.
Macworld’s Buying Advice
If your video production work frequently takes you outside your video-editing package, Echo Fire 2.0 is a must-have. Longtime Echo Fire users will find quite a bit of added flexibility in this upgrade.