HD For Indies

Hey all - got back into town and immediately into a job crisis, so I'm going to just dump my raw draft in here and clean it up later, so you folks can see what's up. I have TONS of info, notes, and coverage, I just need time to organize it. Patience, it'll come.

So YES this has holes and errors and omissions and notes, but start with this:

MWSF NOTES:

Christopher Breen takes a look at the new 20" iMac for use as a home multimedia entertainment device. He plays back music and DVDs with it. Problems arose: built in speakers not oomphy enough for watching movies "full on," Front Row is slooooooow to respond at times; and you can either adjust volume with the remote or have 5.1 surround sound but not both at the same time. Harrumph. If Apple wants to have a viable home theater experience, it needs to walk AND chew gum at the SAME time. For first time apartment dwellers and dorm students however, it's not a bad solution.

As for the choice of iMac and PowerBook to get Intel upgrades, after a day it makes a bit more sense - while I desperately wanted to see Viiv platform living room Minis, Apple needs to smoothly transition to intel before dropping anything crazy new on the market to avoid consumer confusion. Powerbooks were dying for an upgrade, and as I WROTE HERE FIND LINK, I think that MOST PowerBook users aren't actually doing anything "heavy" all that often. Most are doing what I'm doing rught now - surfing the web, writing email, a little MS Office work, playing back some media, etc. Occassionally, I do some heavy lifting with my laptop, but not all that often. With Pro Apps a couple of months away, that's a survivable thing. Then I'll just be impatiently awaiting the Adobe products to port over. Then again, how often am I going to be using those on my laptop? Apple did right on this one - for consumers, they have a perfectly acceptable machine to do a lot of consumer stuff right now. PLUS, having an installed base of machines that are quietly ready to handle heavy duty media isn't a bad thing at all either. Interesting to note a couple of small changes between iMacs G5 and Intel: better graphics cards that are upgradable to 256 MB (only on 20" model), and support for an external monitor that is NOT just mirrored, but fully independent (from what I've heard, I need to confirm).

new iMac specs (cribbed from Macworld UK:

A 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor;
512MB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM;
An 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
PCI Express-based ATI Radeon X1600 with 128MB GDDR3 memory;
160GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
Built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
The infrared Apple Remote, Mighty Mouse and Apple Keyboard.



2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo processor;
512MB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM;
An 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
PCI Express-based ATI Radeon X1600 with 128MB GDDR3 memory;
250GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7,200 rpm;
Built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
The infrared Apple Remote, Mighty Mouse and Apple Keyboard.


Build-to-order options and accessories include up to 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 250GB and 500GB Serial ATA hard drives or up to 256MB of GDDR3 video memory on the 20-inch iMac.


The graphics cards in the new MacBook Pro supports hardware decoding of . Proof is here, search the page for "H.264" to find the line. The question is whether Apple will be able to support it, or if the hardware is set up to only work with Windows to hook into it. I know, I know, it's hardware and should be agnostic, but you'd be amazed at how complicated it gets. (Thanks to Charlie Wood for pointing that out.)

I saw that ATI was demoing a bunch of stuff and scanned to see if Silicon Color was going to be demoing there. While scanning for them, I noticed that Aspyr would be demoing the game Stubbs the Zombie on Mac. It's a fun game of zombies attacking a 50's sci-fi town - except that YOU are the zombie. Based on the Halo engine, it's a cute game, ribald sense of humor, I can't wait to fire it up on the Quad G5 with 7800 GT card now that 10.4.4 has been released with its VERY improved OpenGL drivers. As a bonus, one of my best friends and former business partners Patrick Curry was CTO on that project, so go out and buy it and see some of his handiwork, you'll enjoy it.

La Cie introduced a bunch of new stuff, but for us the only item of serious interest was the Two Big, a two SATA II hard disk RAID in 500 ($500) and 1TB ($1000) configs. RAID 0 speed of up to 115 MB/sec. Hot swap, simple plug 'n play. Not sure yet whether it is port multiplied (single SATA cable to host) or basic SATA one-drive-one-cable setup. It looks like it is probably up to La Cie's usually high quality standards, but it does seem a bit pricey for the indie crowd.

Final Cut Pro changes

Final Cut Studio FAQ. Apple has quietly changed the bundling on Final Cut Studio - Final Cut Pro 5, DVD Studio Pro, Soundtrack Pro, and Motion are no longer for sale individually. If you need one of those by itself, you better get out there and purchase it quickly from a retail location, because whatever is in stock is all that is going to be available. From now on, you have to buy Final Cut Studio and get the whole ball of wax.

Apple has also announced a migration plan for folks who want the universal binary version (runs Power PC as wewll as Intel based OS X) of Final Cut Pro 5.x - you'll be able to trade in your current installer disks and pay $49 "sometime before the end of March" (from the FAQ link above). This is entirely reasonable - the new discs will install on either G4/G5/MacBook Pro/iMac Dual Core no problems. If you have older versions of Final Cut, DVD Studio Pro, etc., you'll be able to upgrade on a sliding scale, depending on what you've got and how old it is. See the FAQ link above for details, but you'd pay anywhere from $99 to $699 to upgrade.

Volume licensing is available for biz and edu clients for 5 or more seats at a time.

As with before, you can't run a copy of Compressor on one machine that has the same license as Final Cut Pro on another machine - got bit by that one the other day myself when doing a test install in the studio.

I'm also hearing that while you can technically launch FCP 5.0.4 on the Intel dev boxes (but not well), I'm not sure if it runs at all on the new iMacs and MacBook Pros. One person said on Intel dev boxes it was dropping frames all over the place (format unknown), someone else said DV worked marginally but nothing else, and Brian Meanie, product manager (I think that's his title, he's basically The Guy for FCP) basically said don't bother, it doesn't work worth a flip on Intel Macs and it DEFINITELY is not a supported configuration. So wait until March like the rest of us.

The timing is interesting - if they have an upgrade in March, that leaves them cledan room to say "OK, all you FCS v5 folks - you're taken care of." so that if (I'm guessing here, but this is what they've done several years in a row) they announce a new version of FCP 6 at NAB, and ship it either then or sometime between April and June, they will clear themselves of the "I just paid for a big upgrade and now you're making me pay again!" whiners. Come to think of it, this makes me think that this is PROOF that they are going to be coming out with a new version at NAB - if they were going to skip from v5 for PowerPC and have v6 that was universal binaries (runs on both), then they would just wait for NAB a month later to roll it out.

(Thanks to someone from TidBits for sending that link in!)

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Steve Jobs MWSF Keynote available as streaming QT here. Or you can read my detailed NOTES COVERAGE HERE

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Apple releases QuickTime 7.0.4, OS X 10.4.4, iTunes 6.0.2. All available via Software Update. QT 7.0.4 is I believe required for iLife 06, OS X 10.4.4 has a lot of bug fixes including purportedly dramatically better OpenGL performance, and I'm not sure what's changed in iTunes 6.0.2.

Apple also released iLife 06, which adds faster performance, better integration between the apps and the web, and a new iWeb application to build web pages with, that looks incredibly easy to use. GarageBand now has truly excellent podcasting tools, and everything is set up to do podcasting and video podcasting and have it be a snap to use. All very excellent. For detailed notes on all the new features of iLife 06, do a search for "iLife" on my keynote coverage HERE FIND THE LINK

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NEW MACS FOR USE FOR PRO APPS ONCE THERE ARE UNIVERSAL BINARIES:

I'll have a bunch more to say later in depth, but in short, they should be pretty damn rockin' once Pro Apps get out there. Guessing gets hard - the current PowerPC FCP stuff is heavily optimized for that particular chipset. Apple has long touted the G4 and G5's Altivec capabilities as being key to the performance of Final Cut Pro. Now, with the Intel platform, they don't have those SAME (and I stress same) resources available, there are different resources for vector processing - MMX SE etc. I asked Brian Meanie, FCP product manager, if the Intel stuff was harder to program these types of tasks for than PowerPC. Silly me for asking, he gave an excellently political answer that told me...absolutely nothing. "I'm still smiling." was the closest thing I got to a direct answer. Sigh. Oh well, it is his job to maintain positive spin and not divulge ahead of schedule. So I will have to seek firm answers elsewhere. It is tiresome that those most able to answer crucial questions sometimes are in a position where they can't give those answers.

DISREGARDING the Altivec issue for now since I have no firm answers, just going on floating point performance, integer performance, bus speeds, etc., I'm hypothesizing that the new iMacs should run an Intel optimized FCP 5.x at about the same speed as a dual 1.8 GHz G5 with stock graphics card, and the MacBook Pro (still hate that name) will run slower than that. Maybe it'll be better, could be worse, but I feel that is a vaguely safe assumption in terms of taking an early ballpark stab at it.

The lack of FireWire 800 is expected on an iMac (never had it), but is vexing on the MacBook Pro. It is a professional's tool, and FireWire 400 long ago stopped being as fast as modern hard drives.

Hopefully, we'll see some high speed stuff available for that ExpressCard slot in the future. A commenter posted that the specs for that bus (must have pulled it from Intel data, and I HAVE NOT confirmed this info) is good for 250 MB/sec (yes, megaBYTES), which opens the door to all kinds of intersting things, like the POSSIBILITY of having SDI and HD-SDI capabilities on a laptop. With a fast enough external bus (and it seems fast enough), and a fast enough processor (yep), the ability to do uncompressed SDI in and out of a laptop is compelling. 250 MB/sec is plenty to share between a capture card and a storage device. But oops, there's only one slot, so presumably only one card. Hmm. Well, you could have your storage on FireWire then (see? We're missing that FW800 badly!) and have an SDI card for capture/playback. A card with HD-SDI occupying that slot would only be good for capturing and playing back compressed media - no way to get high speed data in and out of the laptop. Of course, all of these cards would have to be MUCH smaller than the current lineup of cards, so this could all be moot anyway, unless the card was merely used as a plug for a larger outboard device (hmm...look at the BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme - a bunch of guts in a box with a slim connector to computer - something along those lines?). The possibility of high speed data port and HD-SDI on the same card is remote - too much stuff happening in too small a space, and no one company has the expertise all inhouse. And parterships are endemically slow. Maybe future MacBook Pros will have FireWire 800 again.

The MacBook Pro has a 1440x900 resolution screen, which is actually LESS than the model released just a few months ago, with a XXXXxXXX RESOLUTION SCREEN. However, it is still sufficiently high resolution to show a 720p image pixel for pixel (1:1 full resolution), so that's good.

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HD CAMERA SHOOTOUT GOING ON TODAY, WEDNESDAY JAN 11, 2006

There's a thread over on DVInfo.net about a camera test taking place today - they're pitting the following cameras head to head:

-Panasonic HVX200
-JVC GY-HD100U
-Sony Z1U
-Canon XL H1

and from the Big Boys League,
-Panasonic Varicam
-Sony F900

There are detailed specs of what they hope to accomplish within a one day shoot, and I must say it is a VERY aggressive schedule. I'm sitting on a plane on the way back to Austin right now (Wednesday 2:20pm California time), so they are probably well into their shoot, I hope it's going well.

I got an email Monday inviting me to attend, but unfortunately I wasn't able to - I've got to fly back to Austin and prep a job tonight for a client coloring session tomorrow.

I'm bummed not only because I can't attend, but because they are beating me to the punch - I've been trying to set up a similar camera test to take place in February using the exact same lineup of cameras, but with a little extra HD For Indies Luv that I'll detail later.

I should make a chart showing the features and pros and cons of all these cameras...that'd be handy...