HD For Indies

MORE NOTES ON TIGER INSTALL:

-Installing FCP & Motion (existing versions from 2004, not new 2005 versions) gave an error about permissions after rebooting - QMaster wasn't happy

-After installing FCP 4.5, DVD Studio Pro 3, Motion 1.0, and iMovieHD (gotta have that AIC!), ran Disk Utility - it found only a couple of very minor privilidges to repair. Looks like the Installer in 10.4 MIGHT be nicer about leaving things tidier.

-running Software Update after installing those only found DVD Studio Pro 3.0.2, Motion 1.0.1, and iMovie HD Update 5.0.2 - the other stuff that 10.3.x would install, having to do with the Pro Apps stuff, must already be included in 10.4 Tiger. Nice touch.

HOLY BATF**K, Batman! 1920 pixel wide movie previews look GOOOOOOD on 23" LCD. This is the best looking trailer you'll see outside of the movie theater, PERIOD. Better than broadcast TV by a longshot. The detail is AMAZING. Even film grain is maintained - it's FANTASTIC.

Even if you're running OS X 10.3.x, you can download QT 7 and probably see these as well. WOW. Unfortunately, a dual G5, with a 1920x1080 (or greater) capable screen is required.

You can go to the Apple - QuickTime - HD Gallery and either view the 720 res stuff, or for Serenity, BBC wildlife, and Batman Begins (aww yeah, you know which one to click on first), and download the 1080 res fatties.

It's nice that Safari has returned to reporting download speeds in KB/sec- even while loading QuickTimes in the background the downloads of the 1080 res stuff continues - at 100 and 180 KB/sec. Apple's servers (and Time Warner Cable in my area) are fast.

-mike

Too many little things to do a zillion posts, so here's a bunch at once:

BUNCH O LINKS ON TIGER RELATED STUFF

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger incompatibilities


Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Software with Compatibility Updates for 10.4

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Review (Macintouch's)

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger reader reports from Macintouch

Apple offers treats for Tiger users | MacMinute News downloadable goodies - dashboard stuff, scripts, etc.

(BTW, PDFs are viewable WITHING Safari now - NICE!)

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger : Page 1 BIG, fat, honkin' review of Tiger by the astute John of Ars Technica

Pro Applications: Some features do not work if drag installed or if copied following an Archive and Install

OK, THIS IS RELEVANT if installing Tiger - Archive & Install will NOT always work for your Apple Pro Apps, you may have to reinstall. After I just typed that, I tried launching FCP 4.5 on the PowerBook I just updated to Tiger - it launched OK, opened a new file, but I didn't do anything with it.

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Apple - Pro/Video - Geoffrey Richman - Murderball

interesting little read on WAY distributed workflow used on Murderball, my favorite documentary at SXSW

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Apple - Downloads - Video - CHV Text-collection 4.0

cool little text plugins. As usual, you should be visiting this page on a regular basis.

Second Tiger install, this on my laptop:

INSTALLING OVER 10.3.9 ON MY 12" POWERBOOK 1.33GHZ with 1.25 GB RAM, Bluetooth and Airport.

-took a coupla tries to get it to reboot and go into install mode - first time just kicked out DVD (not CD, DVD install disc) and booted into 10.3.x.

Second time started working.

Started Upgrade/Update install at 11:19pm,

at midnight it restarted

this is my "working" install, where I do all my email, surfing, scheduling, etc., so this isn't a throwaway install, this is the important one.

-it wants to import prior email, not just open it and run

-opening up the little magnifying glass (white on blue) reveals "16 hours remaining to index" or something similar. Indexing takes TIME. Be interesting to see how well it works once it is done.

-importing mail estimate keeps going up in time - apparently, I have over 65,304 messages (what happens when it tops 65,536? Will that be a limit? That's a power of 2).

-poking around, I see iChat AV supports Jabber now, which allows you to connect to more IM networks. Cool.

Using Activity Monitor, I see that the CPU usage is maxed out as Tiger does stuff in the background, presumably indexing mail and files in my User folder.

I'll let it keep running overnight for that.

Got Doom III running on the G5 - there's visible lagging at 1280x1024 res (less than 60fps), so I'll drop the res when I try it next. Got stuck for a bit when I selected a resolution that my monitor didn't support. Or more accurately, selected a resolution that the refresh rate was too high for my monitor (not the graphics card). Option Command Escape got me out of Doom III. Just that keystroke, not the usual additional clicking of an item from the Force Quit menu. A nice touch. Got about 10 minutes into (no violence yet), decided to quit (it's 1:30am) since I'm telling myself I'll get up at 7am to go run a 10K at 8am downtown (a 2-3 mile walk from here)

so far so good,

-mike

OK, to bed

Tiger by the tail...

So I decided to install Tiger tonight on a couple of machines - an Install Over on my PowerBook (after using Carbon Copy Cloner to back it up - I'm crazed, not foolish), and a Nuke 'N Pave * on a spare SATA drive in my dual 2.7.

* tip-o-the-parlance to Reagan for that turn of phrase

Dual 2.5 GHz G5 with BlackMagic DeckLink HD Pro, Sonnet Tempo-X 8 port eSATA, and ATI X800 GT graphics card. This is NOT the recommended way to do these things. In an appropriate world, I'd pull the non-graphics cards and install with just the ATI card installed.

Also worth noting that 10.4 does NOT install iLife 05 - just iTunes, no iMovie, no iDVD, no Garage Band, etc.

I did an Erase & Install, selecting Mac OS Extended (Journalled). The only other choice is Unix File System, didn't want that.

Clicking Customize, I opted to skip all the extra languages, and DO install X11.

I clicked Go at 9:45pm.

It first says "Checking your installation DVD" - this is the first time I recall seeing such a message.

By 10pm it was rebooting

10:05...STILL waiting at "Starting up Mac OS X" on the blue screen...force power down, pull cards. I suspect I need to revert the ROM on the ATI card.

20 minutes of frustration - trouble trying to hold down option to boot, then shift to safe boot after selecting alternate boot drive. Took 4 attempts until it actually reached the Finder.

After reverting to the v104 ROM on the ATI card, powered up again, and finally got it to work.

There's a nice section that says "Do You Already Own a Mac", and asks if you want to transfer info from another Mac (nice!), another partition on this Mac, or not at all. For this install, my Nuke'N Pave, I don't want to transfer any information.

If you enter your .Mac info, it'll pull your address etc. Useful but ever so slightly creepy.

-create a user account with password, and bugs me to renew my .Mac since it'll expire in July

and then you're rolling...

I do my usual thing with a new OS and start going through the System Preferences to see what's new.

Dashboard is cool - hitting F12 for the first time, calculator, localized clock, calendar, and localized weather show up. Cool!

RSS Screen saver - very, VERY cool! Gotta figure out how to get HDForIndies RSS in there...

In the displays panel, there's a new button called "Gather Windows" that pulls all the windows to the main screen - NICE! Has been a serious problem in the past when I had "ghost windows" on non-existent screens. Finally, a fix!

.Mac Synching - you can sync multiple computers to a .Mac account now - so that your bookmarks, calendars, contacts, keychains, mail accounts, and mail rules/sigs/smart mailboxes can all be synched. (It's a checkmark list, you can pick any combo of those items)

Went and checked out RSS support, wondering if I'd have to do anything to support it in the new Safari with HD4NDs - nope! Works right off the bat! Very slick.

Next up: install mission critical software to test systems.

In other words, Doom III...tomorrow I'll play with FCP, etc., and install a bunch of stuff and see if anything doesn't work.

Also at the same time, I'm installing 10.4 over 10.3.9 on my Powerbook 12" 1.33GHz.

So Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, is out today. There's tons of coverage everywhere, so I'll let the world take care of that for me.

But what I do know is this - you can download QuickTime 7.0 for your Panther (10.3.x) system now with Software Update.

But beware - you'll have to buy a new "Pro" key, even if you bought one for QT 6.

-mike

Raw notes from some testing follow below, but here's the take-away: do NOT install two new things at the same time in your computer in order to test a third item (software). This is just WAGGING YOUR ASS at the Gods of Chaos and asking them to smite it, complete with fingers in ears and "Nyah nyah nyah" shouted from the mountaintop. After much frustration and several hours of Trouble trying to make a new ATI X800 (dicey at best as far as I can tell) play nice with a Sonnet Tempo-X 8 port eSATA card by installing both AT THE SAME TIME, I got nowhere. I was trying to rush all this to get it running in order to mess around with Final Touch HD, but clearly not tonight. It's probably the X800 card's fault, I'm going to pull it and go back to my 9800 Pro card....tomorrow. And now, beer followed by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy....my analog/meat way of zapping my PRAM and rebooting.

OK, what was going to be an Exciting Report on New Bleeding Edge Hardware turns into a Tale of Blood.

Perhaps my new tagline should be:

"HD For Indies - we put the blood in bleeding edge!"

OK, here goes:

HANDS ON REPORT: ATI X800 Graphics card for G5

OK, this is stream of conciousness notes, not summary. So bear with it, if you dare with it.

Got mine in the mail yesterday, but no time to mess with it.

So today, sat down to get serious:

-pulled ALL cards from the dual 2.5 GHz G5.
-installed the ATI X800 card
-powered up
-it's working - I'm running 10.3.6 on this box, I learn (later) that drivers are already installed.
-set screen resolution to desired res (defaults to 800x600 or something)
-started up, downloaded all latest ATI drivers/ROMs/etc.
-installed them in order by date, after installing what came on the CD. BWAHAHAHHAHAAAAAAA.....what a fool I am.
-after installation was COMPLETE, it pops up a web page saying "If possible, install the drivers before installing the card..."
-this is the second piece of hardware I've ever come across that has suggested that. This is the dumbest thing. EVER. (The other was an ATTO SCSI card that required voodoo, live chickens, and nakedness under a full moon. to get it working. And let me tell you, clients aren't down with that. Especially when there's a security camera involved.)
-reboot
-UH OH - grey screen of doom - it tells me I need to restart, in about a dozen different languages. When the computer crashes so bad it doesn't know what language to speak to you in....trouble.
-hold down front power button and cold boot.
-comes up OK!
-set screen resolution AGAIN, since it "forgot" after reboot. I'm running two screens, a 24" Sony CRT and a Dell 1280x1024 LCD.
-while piddling with the screen resolution options, I notice 2K is an option - and it works on my Sony! 2048x1536@60Hz works, @75Hz doesn't. But still pretty cool.....and it's doing an (almost) correct stretch of 2K to 16:9 (16:10, but you could do analog adjustments to bring it in line)
-just for kicks, rebooted again to see if it would remember proper screen res. Warm boot, just selected "restart" rather than shut down.
-the right hand, smaller LCD is the default monitor for the apple logo at boot, but then it switches over to the left hand one for the login screen. Wish both were on left hand bigger screen, but don't think I could do anything about that without connecting monitors to different ports.
-WORKS! remembers resolution properly.

-I uninstall all AJA drivers (I'm planning on some testing between two Blackmagic cards, AJA will come back soon enough)

-I fire up Motion, but can't tell the difference between this and my 9800 card (it's been too long since I played with it)

-shut down, install BMD card....

-I'm feeling like an old Melissa Etheridge song (Brave & Crazy), so I install the Sonnet 8 port eSATA card too.

-fire it up. I notice somebody's business card is sitting in front of the fan for the PCI cards. Woops.

-the fan on the X800 is noticeably loud while booting until the grey of bootup gets replaced by the blue of the login screen, then it spools way down to the point I don't hear it over the G4/867 a few feet away (The G5 in on top of the desk 18 inches away from me as I type, just the clear plastic lid on it, not the metal side plate).

-I install the Blackmagic v4.8 drivers (hopefully v5 drivers soon to take advantage of Tiger)

...and "you need to restart" is 4 different languages. Crap. Cold boot, try again..

-another reboot, and it sits at the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen with the CPU fans running full (WFO) and not apparently making progress. This isn't good.

-manual forced power down, power up again

-sits on blue screen for a looooooooong time. Manual power down again.

-pull the Sonnet card

-power up again

-boots, but once again has forgotten it's resolution settings, reverting to 800x600 @ 60Hz

-shut down

-power up - works ok

-reboot - blue screens, fans ramp up to max, it just sits there

-force shut down, power up

-powers up OK, even remembers correct resolution

-reboot just to see if it will behave - it does

-shut down cold, power up again - works OK

LESSON LEARNED - The ATI card seems a bit twitchy. The presence of the Sonnet card doesn't seem to be the sole source of trouble, either - after pulling it, still had wierdness

-shut down, install Sonnet 8 port eSATA card, power up again - multilingual reboot screen. I don't see a pattern here, other than suckiness. Hopefully, when I do a clean install of Tiger on Monday, this stuff might be better behaved.

-on advice of Joel from Sonnet, installed the v1.1 firmware updater.

-upon installation, rebooted

-4 languages of doom. Shit.

-SHIT.

-hard power down (hold down button on G5 front), power up.

-if this keeps up much longer, I'm pulling the card and trying next week with Tiger.

-boots up normally, but fans run high. SATA drives don't show up, shut everything down cold.

-4 languages of doom, dammit, on power up.

-shut it all down, let sit for a minute to think about what it's done.

-power up drives, give them a minute, then power up G5

-gsod

-gsod

FUCK!

safe boot mode - still gsod (grey screen of doom)

-it's very very not happy.

-shut it down, unplug all eSATA cables (just for fun) & power up

this is a classic example of BAD TESTING METHODOLOGY - I have TWO variables - sonnet card & ati card - and I don't know if it's one, the other, or both causing problems.

NOW it boots. Dammit.

-just because this thing is already so screwy, I update to 10.3.9 from 10.3.8 - more bad practice, but I'm PISSED now. Never a good testing environment, either.

-who knows, the problem may be thermal for all I know.

-after all updates (including 10.3.9) downloaded, mandatory restart

-gsod

-force power down

-power up - gsod again

-force power down

-power up - surprise! again gsod

-safe boot attempt - got to Finder - now what to do? Switch to alternative boot drive - running 10.3.5

-even the attempt to just SHUT DOWN causes gsod

Screw this - going to go drink with friends and see Hitchhiker's Guide tonight at midnight

4 port hot-swap SATA host adapter and hot-swap enclosures

Rob-ART over at BareFeats.com has done a review of the Seritek 1VE4 card and 1EN2 enclosures. This is a nice review, he has some hard #'s on testing, and tests in pretty much the same way I would. He's even using the BlackMagic disk speed test utility, which is what I've been doing.

Definitely worth reading.

-mike

If that didn't make sense, I don't blame you. Basically, this: you can get the older, better dual 2.0 GHz G5 for LESS than the new ones. If you're looking to do HD stuff and can live without included Apple 30" LCD support and a dual layer DVD burner, it's a helluva thing.

Geoff Smith wrote in:

Hi Mike,

Saw your note on the old vs. new dual 2GHz Power Macs in light of the updates. Yesterday I had a thought along the same lines and went to the Apple Store's special deals area (under the "Sale" tab at (URL deleted, was a personalized web store link, you will have to manually find it -mike)Lo and behold they were listing the old dual 2GHz config (with 8 RAM slots and PCI-X slots) for a stunning $1899 (a $600 price drop in one day, and a machine more capable than its replacement, and $100 cheaper than that one to boot). I called the local Apple store in San Francisco and they had some in stock at that price, so I went down and picked one up. Just a note to let you and other folks know that these are out there and the pricing is even more aggressive than expected. I'm a happy camper.

Almost forgot, one more thing is that if you buy _any_ new Apple system after April 12th, you get to participate in the Tiger Up-To-Date program, where you go online and qualify the machine by entering your purchase date and serial number and they'll ship you Tiger for $10. Also, I bet if you bought one of these in person (even an older config.) tomorrow night around, say, 6pm someone in the Apple Store might even throw a free copy of Tiger at you :).

--Geoff



Thanks for pointing that out Geoff!

-mike

Red Giant Software at NAB

UPDATED: If I bothered to read CAREFULLY, I would have noticed that ONLY the 2.7 GHz is liquid cooled. I've edited below to reflect that.

Apple - Power Mac G5 - Technical Specifications

The above link will take you to the Apple tech specs page for the new G5 computers.

Because of a change in the new PowerMac lineup, the NEW dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac is NOT capable of uncompressed HD work - it lacks PCI-X slots.

The single 1.8 Ghz model never was suitable for uncompressed HD.

The two new high end boxes, the dual 2.3 and dual 2.7 GHz G5's, ARE appropriate for uncompressed HD work.

Essentially, the new names are misleading if you assume the processor speed=the same box. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

The easiest way to think of this is that they took their existing line - dual 1.8, dual 2.0, dual 2.5 - and just speed bumped them - to dual 2.0, dual 2.3, and dual 2.7. With a bit more RAM, nicer video cards on some, and dual layer DVD burners. That's it.

In the past, I've stated that the minimum computer to work with UNCOMPRESSED HD has been the dual 2.0 GHz G5. This was mostly due to the requirement to have PCI-X, not merely PCI, slots. Both the AJA Kona2 and Blackmagic Design's DeckLink HD line require a PCI-X slot, not merely a PCI slot to operate at HD throughputs. PCI-X is faster than PCI, and the additional bandwidth is required to handle uncompressed HD quantities of data.

PCI-X is also darn handy for the storage throughputs required.

SO - until vendors update their system requirements, things will be confusing and misleading. Since the dual 2.0 GHz box was the base requirement for a LOT of different hardware and software, due to multiple processors, a faster bus, and the presence of PCI-X slots.

SO BEWARE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS. DO NOT BE MISLED INTO THINKING THIS NEW, $2000 DUAL 2.0 GHz BOX WILL BE ADEQUATE FOR CERTAIN TASKS, SINCE THE OLD 2.0 GHZ BOX WAS.

Of the new product line, the dual 2.3 GHz box is the "new" baseline for tasks that previously required the dual 2.0 GHz G5, since it has dual processors and PCI-X slots.

One marked advantage of the new machines is improved graphics cards (including support for the Apple 30" display) and dual layer DVD burners.

It should be possible to get some kind of a deal on still in stock, dual 2.0 GHz boxes - something in the $2200 range I should think. It's definitely worth more than the "new" dual 2.0 GHz box, but not nearly as much as the new 2.3 GHz boxen. Would that be worth it? You'd get a lesser graphics card, slower machine, no Tiger, and single layer (not dual layer) DVD burner. I'd say not worth it.

End of dire warning.

It's getting to be time for new system recommendations, and I'll be doing that in the near future - recommended configs for uncompressed editing, with updates for new computers, new SATA cards and new drives on the market.

-mike

Apple - Cinema Displays

20" now $799 from $999
23" now $1499 from, what, $1800 -$2000?
30" still $2999

a bit more competitive, but better deals can be found elsewhere for similarly spec'd monitors.

Apple - Power Mac G5

new Macs as expected. Not dual core, still liquid cooled. Faster processors at the high end, slightly faster bus with it (1/2 speed), dual layer DVD burners, and 9650 graphics card at the high end (does dual DVI for 30 inch Apple displays).

dual 2.0 =$2000
dual 2.3 = $2500
dual 2.7 = $3000

as expected

NAB Notables, Episode 2

More Charlie White NAB coverage.

NAB Notables: Serious Magic, Matrox Axio and HD on P2
Charlie White's NAB coverage

Kodak Unveils HD System for Television Production at NAB

This was leaked last month, here's more info. Essentially a 16mm film stock intended for scanning, paired with a hardware box that emulates various stocks in real time.

Shoot once, get many looks. I'm looking forward to playing with this...

-mike

Canon on HDV

Article about the no-show factor of Canon at NAB. But Canon has said they'll have stuff to announce in the second half of this year. The author of this article thinks it'll be an HDV GL-3 in the summer, and by year and an HDV XL3 (XL2 successor) with interchangable lenses, etc.

macosXrumors.com: Amazon slips, outs new Mac G5 specs

I should make some crack about premature speculation here. But I won't, because I have taste. Almost.

This is all over the web, the above link is to macosXrumors.com.

Amazon's direct link is working for the moment, but look quick, I expect it to come down soon.

Yep, just as suspected - dual 2.0, 2,3, and 2.7 GHz G5's, at $2K, $2.5K, and $3K.

512 MB RAM, 160 (on dual 2.0 only) or 250 GB HD, 16x Dual Layer SuperDrives, OS X Tiger 10.4

AppleInsider.com is also reporting this additional tidbit about the dual 2.7 GHz model:

Sources add that this model also sports a ATI Radeon 9650 graphics card (one dual DVI one single) and a 1.35GHz frontside bus.

AppleInsider is also showing pallettes of these Macs being shipped.

This is what I'd call a "Shame Release" - rather than launching them at NAB to underwhelmed crowds, who were promised dual 3.0 GHz machines would arrive OVER A YEAR AGO, they are eeking these out with little fanfare between NAB and WWDC. So it is a speed bump, but they face no underwhelmed audience.

Shame on you, Apple...where's our dual 3.0 boxes? Yeah yeah yeah, point fingers at IBM/Motorola/Freescale, but seriously...it's time for a serious boost here, and hiding a product launch doesn't count.

However, if these are dual core, or don't have (potentially leaky) liquid cooling, I'll give some bonus points.

-mike

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): DV eStore Theatre from NAB

OK, this is EXCELLENT. So excellent I wish I'd done it. They've done video interviews at NAB and now they have the edited stuff compressed and online. Most impressive, check it out. This is 90% as good as being there, except that you can't ask your own geeky questions.

-mike

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Blackmagic Design Updates DeckLink Card Features on OS X

Did I say this yet? If not, they synopsize nicely - FCP v5 support for HDV playback, 12 channel audio in/out, etc. Click and see.

Pictures from Day 3 posted here, my visit to the Sony booth are up.

Lots of interesting things - the 4K projector (talk about SGI booth stuff), the XDCAM HD prototype, specs on the new HDW-M2000 deck that plays back all the HDCAM (not SR) formats and all the Beta 1/2 inch formats; underwater casings for the FX1 and Z1U, underwater casing for the F900/F700/F730/etc., XDCAM HD camera mockups, revised SRW-1, Sony's new 4K projector (that Landmark is buying a bunch of).

I'll get my notes posted up tomorrow that explains what all of this is, plus more.

Somewhere along the way I lost my pictures of the new cameras that shoot 1080p60. Only the SRW-1 can record the output from it (or some kind of direct to disk solution, but it would require 320 MB/sec to do so in 10 bit full raster!).

-mike

Roland at Silicon Color was kind enough to set me up with an evaluation copy of Final Touch HD (a thousand thank you's, sirrah!) and I will be digging into that once I get up to speed. It's a different kind of application for color correction than your typical Final Cut Pro plugin, it is it's own standalone application with an interface that I've been told will be familiar to traditional color correctors, but for desktop guys like me is something new. So I'll be ramping up on that one slowly.

In order to best play with FTHD, I called ATI to give them a kick - I ordered my X800 video card back on January 13th and hadn't heard peep from them. I emailed them in February, never heard back. Finally called today and they're going to get one in the mail to me tomorrow, I should have it later this week. This will (hopefully) help Final Touch HD run it's best, since it relies on OpenGL to do much of it's high speed magic.

I need to also finish my Kona2 testing now that 10 bit 4:4:4 is working with their v1.1 drivers, and do a Kona2 vs DeckLink HD Pro Dual Link write-up.

I also have some retesting to do with SATA products - I'd given up on the Highpoint RocketRAID card, after finding some incompatibilities with the Maxtor Maxline III drives I'd given up, but have heard of others using it successfully. I now have 5 Seagate 7200.8 400GB drives to doodle with, I'm going to see what kind of performance I can get out of those. I also want to retest the SyncRAID card with the Seagates and see if that fixes the problem with my G5's.

Tiger supports a poor man's RAID 10 implementation, but if it's akin to the RAID 1 performance of Panther, I'm leery of it - Panther (OS X 10.3.x) will lose synchronicity between the two drives in a RAID 1...and not tell you about it. Ever. If they haven't improved this aspect, it's a stop don't start, never mind kind of a problem. I'll keep bugging Tim about implementing RAID 10 in SoftRAID.

I had an interesting conversation with Rob-Art Morgan from BareFeats.com concerning a bunch of drive stuff, once he publishes, I'll link to it. One thing already known is that the Sonnet eSATA card won't fit in slot 4 of a G5 ever, so this limits your slot configuration options in a G5 when working with a BlackMagic DeckLink HD card (since they don't always fit in slot 4 either). More on this issue later, but basically it means you have to be very, very careful with your slot configurations for BOTH physical installibility and bus contention issues.

That and finishing the 5 camera SD/HD footage comparison, the scaling/de-interlacing options, etc., should keep me busy until...sheesh, I dunno - August?

Why no more NAB news over the weekend and today? Two words: Social Life. Mine's in beta, but it looks promising. Bowling 0.7 and Dating 1.2b1 ran OK without crashing, extensive field testing to continue...and yes, I am a geek, at risk of becoming a dork.

-mike

PS - I might have to run Halo, Doom III, or somesuch to verify full mission critical functionality of the ATI card as well. Then NO reporting will get done. Did I mention I have an addictive personality? 30 hours of Halo once...in a row. Must....stop...self......

: D

AppleInsider | Updated Apple Power Mac G5 systems en route to company stores

If true, WOO HOO!

Dual 2.0, dual 2.3, dual 2.7 GHz models. Probably $2000ish, $2500ish, $3000ish price points (pricing is my own guess).

A mild speed bump, lower prices for same price point (inevitable, Mr. Anderson), pre-installed Tiger, and dual layer DVD burners. If you bought last week, kick yourself.

Macworld: News: Apple releases Xsan Update 1.0.1

Bug fixes etc.

Why no original news over the weekend or today? Two words: social life.

-mike

Seritek External Dual Drive

Review of the 2 port card and 2 drive hotswap enclosure.

Build your own Sata Raid

1TB RAID based on Sonnet card, Burly Box, & Hitachi drives

Wired News: Search Battle Heads to Video

...all part of the Master Digital Plan....

BlackMagic Design has a page about me, my studio, and a project I post supervised, and talks a bit about the field acquisition device I've been working on.

Talks about the benefits of the 1200a deck, progress made on the drivers in the last year, my studio setup, how to get things done, etc.

Also a nice example of what color correction can do for you in FCP - there's a before/after shot.

...and frankly, it's all about ME, people, OK?

Let's keep the focus here, people.

(Yes I am so kidding.)

-mike

8 port external SATA host adapter and RAID

Sonnet eSATA 8 external port card RAID testing. 500MB/sec? Doable.

I have LOTS more news to tell, it just takes time to tell it. I have over an hour of audio notes, a bunch of pictures, and lots of stuff in my head to report, theorize, and conjecture on.

I got home around 1am last night and my house is a mess, cat's been sick, mail's piled up, car's at the shop, yard is a jungle, messages to be returned, etc. I'll be spending a few hours each day to get news from the show posted. So stay tuned, lots more NAB coverage coming, just gotta get back on planet earth first.

-mike

Macworld UK - Sony, Toshiba discuss joint HD disc standard

Discussions on merging HD-DVD and Blu-Ray creep forward. This would be good - one disk, one standard. Buy a movie, trust it'll play on your gadget.

So I'm packing up for my last day of NAB. Yesterday I saw the Sony booth, briefly hit eCinema Systems with their new monitor, saw the Andromeda and the 3D camera next to it, saw.....I can't recall, a big blur without my notes (which are missing, dammit).

So if there's something Way Cool that I haven't written about that I should have, that is of interest to the general HD public, please post a comment on this and I can check it later today. If you have a booth number, that would be great.

At this point I don't know if I'm even going to make it to the north hall, I have no idea what's in there.

So use the link immediately below this line of text to post a comment for stuff I should be checking out. Please keep it relevant, not "please go see Bizarre Widget Maker X that solves my unique problem." Thanks all!

Torrey Loomis of Silverado Systems was kind enough to take detailed notes and email them to me from Sunday's press event when they rolled out all their new products. Torrey is a VAR (value added reseller) that handles Macs for video stuff, he's a good guy to talk to if you need to get set up.

His notes follow:
Rob Schoeben – Vice President Applications Product Marketing

Overview from 2004 releases

Bunim/Murray Video
Reality TV overview
30-40 hours per day shoot
Pressure to finish quickly
FCP and Xsan—puts more editors on board
FCP better suited to handle—more flexible

2005--Year of HD Video
16 million HD homes by end of 2005

FCP better positioned to move folks to HD editing

Complete end-to-end solution for HD editing

Brian Croll - Senior Director Mac OS X Product Marketing
OS X 10.4 Tiger
Next big release of OS X
Ships 4/29/05
200 new features
Built-on UNIX
Latest shells and tools
Access control lists

64-bit processing
More than 4 GB RAM
Single process can access 16 Exabytes
Better windows integration

Spotlight
Allows user to find anything on desktop instantly
Built into the OS
Metadata and content searches
Smart folders—multiple file types, mail, calendar, Metadata mega search
Can add your own Metadata tags to your files

Dashboard
Instant access to Widgets
Calculators, weather, flight trackers...information at a glance
Can create your own widgets
Based on HTML
Hot key based

QuickTime 7
Standards based -
350,000,000 downloads of QT 6
Single format - acquisition to archive
H.264 – next gen MPEG open standard
MPEG-4 Part 10, ISO/IEC

Comparison photo between MPEG Part 2 and Part 10

iChat AV
4-way video conferencing
10-way audio conferencing

Just a few of the 200 features of Mac OS X

Frank Casanova – Senior Director at Apple
Demo of spotlight
Search for “BBC”
Spotlight window can organize by time, date, contact, etc...

Smart folders
Search for “H.264” by encode codec and copyright by BBC.

H.264 demo video
Did a Spotlight search for video
Full 1920 video at 8 Mbits
Full screen HD video of “Fantastic Four”

iChat AV demo
Scrubs demo of iChat AV
Four way video conference with three editors and one window with a Scrubs sequence
Creative parties can be involved and review edits with a virtual cutting room
Plays a scene in Scrubs for review
Producer wants to see alternate take
Editor plays alt take - producer likes it
Producer specs a transition, editor does it in real time and previews it in the iChat window
Another window for timecode for composer
Unknown if

Rob back
Need beautiful video, stunning graphics, the perfect soundtrack, next generation DVD’s

Introducing Final Cut Studio
Final Cut Pro 5
Edit anything, wait for nothing
Native HDV
Edit camera-native long-GOP MPEG2
1080i 50/60 720p 30
Hundreds of real-time effects
NOT an intermediate codec

Sony – Hiroyuki Sato – Sr. GM Digital Imaging Business Group
HDV products – HDR-FX1, HVR-Z1 cams and HVR-M10
HDV format chosen as most pop format by volume sold
30,000 cams shipped by March 2005

Rob back

Back to FCP 5
Edits anything – shows matrix
Native IMX support added
HD – uncompressed, HDV, DVCPRO HD

Real time
Dynamic RT Extreme
Frame-rate and image quality changes dynamically
Playback optimization based on CPU speed and video format
Maximizes real time performance

Panasonic P2 card
Solid state
Transfers files directly to Browser
DVCPRO, DVCPRO HD

Multi-channel audio
One pass capture of multiple channels
24 channel audio input/output
Work with 24-bit/96 kHz audio

Multicam Editing
on-the-fly editing during playback
Group up to 128 sources
Playback 16 sources simultaneously
4-up, 9-up

Paul Saccone Product Marketing Manager
Demo

San diego news clip in HDV
3.2 MB second
FCP tackles compute intensive tasks with ease
Scrubbing is seamless
Add real time effects
Plays real time backwards
All done in software

DVCPRO HD video
Dynamic RT Extreme
Playback video quality adjusts on the fly
Adapts from one stream to 16 on the fly

Multicam demo
Multiclips—three video and one audio
Shows where clips overlap
Three streams of HD – exclusive shot of Black Eyed Peas
Pumped up to 9 angles
On-the-fly rearranging
New button bar for multicam
Edited a sequence with a mouse—choices laid out after playback ends
Can change any angle to another angle

New demo with uncompressed HD
Uncompressed HD with real-time effects – two streams!
With titles, color correction

Panasonic HD
Support for P2

John Baisley President Panasonic Broadcast and TV Systems
AG-HVX200 P2 cams
MiniDV tape drive
3 chip 1/3” 16:9 progressive CCD’s
DVCPRO 50 and HD to P2
FireWire AVC and SBP2
Variable Frame Rates like Varicam!

Encouraged by Apple to incorporate HD into the camera
No deck is needed
Price is $5,995
Avail Q4 '05

Rob back

Motion graphics
Apple Motion recap
Mekanism demo –Rock the Vote

Motion 2 intro
Advanced animation—instant gratification
Film quality rendering
32 bit float GPU acceleration
8 bit, 16 bit float or 32-bit float
Unlimited RAM access
Replicator – innovative pattern-based design tool
Automat. duplicate graphics and movies along any pattern
150 replicator presets included

MIDI behaviors
"Play" Motion like an instrument
Trigger animation changes from MIDI devices
Adjust multiple parameters at once
Motion and After Effects – drag and drop Motion projects into AE compositions
Launch Motion from After Effects
Changes to Motion project automatically update

Real-time FxPlug
GPU accelerated 32-bit float plugs
Advanced UI controls
3rd party devs include Zaxwerks, Boris Effects, and DV Garage

Dion from Apple – demos Motion 2
Replicator places things on grid
Pattern can change geometry
Individual panes can be modified and altered
Keyframing greatly reduced

Motion 2 filters
3D rotation--adjust perspective
Boris 3D cube plug-in
Zaxwerks flag plug in real time
Earthquake plug built-into Motion 2
Mapped MIDI input to earthquake plug
Scrubalicious demo – MIDI keyboard created a 30-second commercial with just music key strokes

Rob back
Perfect Soundtrack
Introducing Soundtrack Pro
Built for digital audio post
Action based editing
Non-destructive and sample accurate
Action layer list with complete edit and processing history
Find and Fix
Automatically identify problem audio
Correct clicks pops hums
Selectively remove background noise
Audio processing - 50 pro DSP plug-ins from Logic Pro 7
Apply to tracks or clips
Supports Audio Units
Sound effects – 5000 cinematic sound effects and Apple loops
Explosions, impacts, foley effects, environmental ambiance
AppleScript Automation
Create AS droplets
Use Automator to streamline workflows
Execute scripts in FCP 5

Walter Murch / Sean Cullen video

Phil Jackson - Apple Product Specialist
Find and fix problems
Trailer – Batman begins with lots of pops and clicks
Automatically fixes clicks and pops in Soundtrack Pro
Sent back from SP to FCP 5
Allows you to create custom sound effects
Ships with lots of foley
Paste mixed a crash with a thunder effect
Adding some edge
Time stretched another effect and paste mixed into the track
Added a pitch shifter - combined two pitch effects
Actions list allows stepping through every part of the mix
Can re-order effects based on list
Fully supports control surfaces

Next Gen DVD’s
HD DVD and Blu-ray participants
DVD Studio Pro 4
Delivers HD on a disc today
H.264 for HD at SD bit rates
Author discs to current HD-DVD specification
Convert legacy projects to HD
Shows Clapton HD project in HD via DVD
Industrial Strength encoding
Optical Flow image analysis for format conversions
Qmaster distributed encoding
Integrated Dolby Digital Professional (AC-3)

Recap of Final Cut Studio

All available separately
As a suite - $1299
Upgrade $699

$499 from Production Suite
Available in May

Xsan environment at booth with 150 Tb
Shake 4 intro’d

Demo movie

I think I mis-posted this to Video Thing, Wiley's blog.

Here's my notes from the new high end cameras panel from the Digital Cinema Summit at NAB:

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: NEW HIGH-END DIGITAL CAMERAS

John Coghill - Dalsa
Franz Kraus - Arriflex
Jeff Kreines - Kinetta
Nolan Murdock, Panavision
David Stump, ASC, Moderator

David - film & digital are collaborating rather than fighting

3 chip prism based vs. 1 chip new camera

35mm lenses on HD cameras, depth of field & image quality

4:4:4 color space

film style accessories

talk about workflow, all the way to filmout- the WHOLE workflow

What makes these cameras so special?

John/Dalsa - 4K

workflow is the new mantra, a lot of intricacies to workflow, for cinematographers, they are worried that creative intent flows all the way through the process; Below The Line has an article on "DPs want pay for DI duty" - 2 things mentioned - Daviau said he couldn't have made Van Helsing w/out DI, Bob Richardson/Tarantino fight over control over Kill Bill.

how to will cameras ensure intent is carried through?
-metadata
-SMPTE .dpx - 4K 16 bit"format for the exchange of digital moving pictures ona variety of media between comptuer based system"

-flexible res indie, attributes in file header
-individual 16 bit files DPX inside folders, script supervisor info builit into that, each scene/shot/take recorded as a folder
-onset CDL (color decision list), look manamgement system can be embedded in file header
-render a full res "wedge" that can be embedded inthe CDL to be included inthe file header to make some basic decisions on set to go with the data
-when agreement is reached on a format it will be a siimple matter to implement within the .dpx header

"committees make progress one funeral at a time"

WHERE'S ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT FOR 35MM LIKE CQUALITY

Usability:
-compatibility with existing accessories, 35mm lenses, backfocus range, single chip, large format sensor
-optical viewing system with rotating mirror, SOA (safe operating area)
-simple user menus, not too many menu layers deep
-record via fiber up to2 2Km (cranes, remote spots w/limited space)
-records to drives
-bidirectional communication to send images to set

Image Quality:
-optical input - lots of exposure lattitude, spatial res, and "fill factor" are key (a catchall for how much of the surface area of the chip is capable of converting image into picture - minimal gutters?)
-they make their own sensors, their own chipsets
-conversion from analog to digital can't compromise images, highest bandwidth pipeline possible maintained - no video formatting
-record "digital negative" - no pre-baked decisions, you record 16 bit linear raw files, maximum room to mess with it
-good source to archiving

Workflow compatibility:
-capture to drives with digital neg quality
"DALSA Certified Post House" - (scary!)
-data centric approach enables compatibility with multiple formats and tools
-they have a 4K pipeline on their site for stuff to play with
-full screening room w/2K projector
-plan is to work w/post facilities to test facilities and certify the process, continuity of metadata etc.
-metadata - ensures elements don't get "lost" between multiple sights
-enables easy editing, conforms, synch sound etc.
-single source master philosophy
-dpx already supports film & TV formats - (film mfg & type, shutter angle, frame rate, etc. etc. etc.

Conclusion:
role of camera manufacturer changing:
-must take a system perspective
-must enable more than just great images
-must be compatible with familiar tools
-must integrate into the whole workflow

SHOWING DALSA SAMPLE FOOTAGE:

shots holds sky/clouds detail and mountain shadow detail

interiors seeing outside

seeing 12 stops of exposure lattitude, a couple more on the top end, 14 stops total

shot some night stuff, they couldn't get spot meter readings, saw detail on footage



JEFF KREINES, KINETTA
========================

-camera is designed for nonfiction and indie filmmakers, self contained recordeer

480 GB storage

records to "paranoid RAID", 12 drives, 10 drives primary, 1 RAID 3 parity, 1 hot spare

magazine in camera attach by bidirectional fiber link, can separate by a coupla kilometers, a single 6mm cable (3mm fiber optic inside)

-record 12 channels of 12 bit 96Khz audio, 4 analog, 8 digital

-workflow:
many different ways to go, store data in raw format, raw single sensor output like a digital still camera, get a 3:1 savings in storage space, don't do demosaic at time of capture
-data all stored raw w/metadata
-working w/Iridas speedgrade for Kinettta
USB cable into ccamera, load in up to 3D nondestructive LUTs, dual link HD-SDI, DVI LUTs for lots of stuff, looks recorded as metadata,
-don't ever mess w/your digital neg
-how do you store it inexpensively
-looked at HDCAM SR and nixed it, $100/hr, $100K deck
-two different options to store - using LTO3 tapes, uncompressed 400GB tapes, $100 each, 7 tape autoloader for $6 or %7K
-clones a mag to roughly realtime for almost 2 hours of stuff
-magazines are about 1 hour for 480 GB
-they also make a box that'll let you dump to a set of 6 drives
-one new exciting feature - new dynamic range expansion feature - camera is designed to be sensor agnostic, using Altasens at the moment, can run for hours on one battery (low power draw)
OLED viewfinder can be up to 10 feet away
-4 user definable buttons on the viewfinder
-camera designed to handle any sensor up to 16 megapixels, you'd need more than one magazine to record 4K
-concurrent photon amplification for dynamic range expansion - it takes 6 photons to make "real" data - if you add a little bit of light to that, or use more aggressively to reduce contrast
-have an integrating chamber, have RGB LEDs to boost around the sensor, all done optically around the sensor
-852x600 for viewfinder
-workflow: with Iridas, can make LUTs stored in camera, can plug laptop in via USB into a magazine, feed to monitor, can create new LUTs for every shot on the drive - can do a post shoot color grade onto the file header, can have multiple LUTs, do it into your hotel room
-workflow for smaller crews
-beauty of what they're doing serves different sets of users, not in competition
-JEFF STILL ISN'T SHOWING ANY SAMPLE FOOTAGE!!! DAMMIT!

Q: memory requirements for 100 minute of footage:

Nolan, Panavision guy:

don't limit yourself during acquisition is a lesson learned - don't limit to TV color space

"do no harm" during original acquisition

-they do ship more diffusion filters than lenses

-"the film camera that shoots tape" it was dubbed for the Genesis

Genesis uses all their standard cinema accessories
Millenium XL is about same size as their smallest/lightest camera, same weight about too
-super 35mm sized sensor
12 megapixel true RGB, no Bayer
1 to 50 fps
nominal exposure 400
dual link HD-SDI out
14 bit A/D
dockable VTR (no cables)
-10 bit log color
-custom gamma curve for extending overexposure lattitude
-wide color gamut for film intercut applications
-can load LUTs into the viewfinder to see what it would look like
-lens lateral color compensation
-can correct that lens on the fly and record an image without lateral chroma for pulling better mattes on green/bluescreen
-uses spherical lenses, will have anamorphic at CineGear
-they use a macrocell - a 6 pixel thing - RGB over RGB, 3x2 grid to make colors, these add up to make a pixel, like a Trinitron

Workflow:
-dual link HD-SDI 10 bit log, custom gamma curve
-raw image is flat and low contrast
-custom display boxes allow, can load LUTs made in PShop (nice!)
-can record all kinds of metadata
-provide to post facilities appropriate gray box and color cube for calibration
-load a LUT into a "preview box" to preview that way, without touching the raw source
Editorial opportunties:
on set downconvert to NTSC or PAL
-networked device with removable drive packs
-synced oaudio and time code
-listens for Genesis to go into record, it goe sinto record
-writes native Avid files
-collects scene and take info from other networked device, adds metadata
-remove disk packs, mount as Avid drives, cutting in minutes
WHAT ABOUT FINAL CUT PRO INTEGRATION?

Off speed tests done, showing in booth, check it out in Sony booth

ARRIFLEX GUY:

D-20 workflow technology
showed footage - looks like video, candle flames a bit sharp - the color is rich, and has very good color detail - come see their booth for more footage

goals of test:

-test in realworld environment, got some good screening material, proof of operational practice & workflow, got good feedback

D-20 modular design:
PL mount, optical viewfinder, mirror shutter,
-silent mirrored shutter
-camera control electronics down where they are expected
-wanted look & feel of operating traditional film camera
-CMOS image sensor, custom developed
-35mm format CMOS, ARRI custom development
-sensor can do 150fps, NOT accomodated in camera
-2880x2160
bayer mask
400 ISO equivalent
at least 10 f stops
on lattitude - most folks don't use film as rated, they are curious to see real world usage
-has three output boards - (they use metadata for digital and film related), so much intent gets lost with distributed production, wanted to fit into existing workflows. Have 3 different cards and electronic processes for different lookup tables, camera runs up to 60 fps, need dual link for that, log data stream for post, separate HD-SDI for monitoring, and an SD output for

HD and raw modes

alias free 1920-0x1080 @ 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 HD
LUT options including log/lin
variable speed - 1 to 60 fps (how to record/flag/extract?)
by using 3Kx2K that allows for an alias free HD

WORKFLOW:
shoot, conform/grading feeds all others
if film out, need a color management system to filmout

DI log workflow, need LUTs for video and projector outputs

4K digital cinema - they can't do it yet on their current imager (implies others can't as well)

If you pull a 2K out of the 4K

shows some image extraction if you pull subsections - zooming in

film offers res>2K, exposure lattitude>12 stops, archival advantages, high frame rates w/resolution, high quality, efficient film/DI stuff, worldwide workflow known

D-20: immediacy, no grain, no scratches/dirt/dust, no weave, cost of high shooting ratio

digital will complement, not replace film
DI provides a common platfor for material acquired on film & digitally

Q&A:
----

cost of media to store 100 minutes of footage:

400GB for 100 minutes for Kreines
TB/HR for Dalsa
D-20 size - HD as done now, so run the math there...
Nolan - same for his as well

Kreines said - Digital Cinema is a long way off for now...filmouts are going to be relevant for quite some time, against using dupe stocks for digitally originated stuff, use 5205 for affordable film stocks, make multiple original negatives rather than dupes, can take raw files, got into Iridas, work on timeline, go to film recorder

D-20 panel ready to run again:

AHH! some nice depth of field digital wouldn't do, good shadow detail video would never get, closeups of candles - OK, couldn't do vidoe for that well, outdoor stuff - Hmm...hI'm not loving it for some reason - maybe projection issues?

TAKEAWAY - image quality is pretty good, but film continues to sound better and better...costs of overall stuff! Kreines made no comment on image quality or cost or availability (later said looks like fall or 6 months from now). Somebody who's worked extensively with the Viper said that they were very underwhelmed with the Genesis after all the hype about it.

The Kinetta still sounds interesting, it's just taking a looooooooong time to get to market.

-mike

====================================================

OTHER NOTES FROM THE FCP MEETING:

COUPLA GUYS WORKING ON A JULIE DELPY MOVIE

Post supervisor "The Legend of Lucy Keys"

finishing post on the feature

new workflow for digital filmmaking

tapeless workflow

captured into 1200A via FireWire, tapeless until output at Technicolor

outputting TIFF sequence to color correct and transfer to film

Varicam let them be light on their feet, worked up to 30 setups a day

worked very fast

mostly shot handheld

up to 70 people on set - it's still important to crew properly

dailies were able to be brought into production as you shot'em

didn't have any issues with temperature

doing VFX, able to have somebody on set and be able to check it

mounted a leaf blower on the camera to get stuff blowing from point of view

the ability to see your exposure, WYSIWYG helps

brought the whole edit to the set on his laptop

shot a bunch of greenscreen, had a 1200A on set to do test composites as they shot it

were able to FTP shots to VFX vendor and ftp back

42" Panasonic to screen their stuff

the editor is working on 17" PowerBook, LaCie drive, and a 23" LCD to watch footage. cut a feature on your Powerbook.

used all the slate info, so the file gets named according to the reel/shot/take

-doing CC for movie will happen on a Technicolor grading station

-shooting ratio: 60 reels of 40 min each.

what would you do differently if doing something else?

audio - did separate audio for primary, and synced it later, 90% of what'll be used was from the slop track - shoulda recorded audio straight to camera

-they'll make an HD master to show to distributors and for screenings, they'll color correct that themselves, at Technicolor, they want to give them uncolor corrected as clean as possible for filmout - they'll match filmout to what they'd done in HD

Q: what did Avid have that you wish you had in FCP?

A: learning curve was about a week, likes it and wants to stay - sync issues were "spectacular"

Q: budget - A: shoot budget about $1M, total budget $1.2

Q: how much of a rough cut during the shoot - A: when they went back during the snow and flashbacks and during FX, had the assembled stuff ready to test for inserts for timing and for performance/continuity stuff.

had basic scenes assembled whiile director was out on set

Mike's Comments: eek - not meaning to sound snippy about it, but this isn't big news anymore. A year ago, yes. today, no. Maybe I just take this stuff for granted now. I'd be more interested if they'd captured uncompressed to disk (not feasible with much of their shooting style without Venom or CineRAM, but still....). Or I'm just spoiled since I've been playing with this stuff too.

==================

Ted Shilowitz from AJA:

making sure all the new features from FCP 5 work in AJA hardware

all the FCP 5 Macs at the Apple booth have AJA hardware in it

multicam, HDV (out their hardware), multi-audio in

at the high end of the market -

Apple doing a bunch of stuff for Sundance Channel, need a bunch of IOs

11 IOs all on G5's and Xsan, capturing a lot of formats down to DV25

-Fox wants to do games in 720 HD

-could Fox use DVCPRO HD codec, use for sports?

-did a bunch of pre-game stuff to prove it for other stuff

-fed from EVS "elvis" DDR boxes - simple UI stuff

-capture, cut it, push it back to elvis for playback

-Kona2 used in World Series - all the bumpers, all the highlights, all the stuff on the players, done in FCP w/Kona2

-for use in the Big Game - used for pre-game and bumpers for SuperBowl

-tons o'gear - 18 elvis DDR, 56 cameras, 24 NEP trucks for HD

-mobile studios in 18 wheeler rigs

-had 1 week of setup, 4 days before the game, have 2 FCP/Kona2 setups for pre-game packages

-FCP/K2 used for instructional videos for crowds

15 minutes before game start, editor and producer cuting in shots to the opening - shots are being cut into the 3 minute opening, literally a few seconds before needing to feed elvis for take to air

-same thing for Daytona 500

-within 6 months, went from experiment by Fox to SuperBowl and Daytona 500

-a chief tech said:

"there's 100's of millions of gear here...your FCP/K2 will see air...lots of stuff won't

-then they started showing new features of Final Cut Pro 5, all the nitty gritty things that got fixed or improved.

I remember something about increasing font size now resulted in changes in two places, and there was a lot of applause, but I was schmoozing and drinking and not paying attention from this point forward.

I went out in the lobby and talked to all kinds of cool people - the senior Panasonic guy in charge of the Varicam, heads of various user groups around the country, Graeme Nattress sat down next to me (maker of plugins, we've emailed a zillion times), Chris from DVInfo.net (he's just just the road in San Marcos from me), etc. etc. etc., drinky drinky drinky....

....I recall nothing technical after that, except that I didn't win anything in the raffle, especially the $5000 Video Workgroup Hub. Durnit!

Drink drinkety drinky.

I love scotch.

It loves me.

-AnchorMikey

PS-the Las Vegas monorail is a great thing late at night.

It's even better if you get on it going the intended direction.

So I've heard.

-Lost In Transcoding

At a very late night meal (too late to even call dinner) with Terence from the LA FCPUG, I came to this realization:

Perhaps the Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 camera is the first "razors & blades" camera.

The camera is relatively inexpensive for all that it does...and the media costs out the wazoo (since it's RAM). The camera sounds like like it might be fairly low margin with all the features they've shoved into. The MEDIA, however, is probably going to be pretty good margin. If not a first, certainly as their get their yields up and costs down. The P2 card reader station sure seems to be decent margin for them - it's cheap for a deck, horrifically expensive for a PC card reader. But as for that media....razor blades.

Not that I'm not psyched about it, I'm looking forward to this one more than the ProHD JVC camera. 4:2:2, easy edit workflow, all coolness.

The biggest question to me is whether they are going to go with a 960x720 res sensor, to match the 720p res of the DVCPRO HD codec, or go for 1280x720, in which case they would have a nice upconvert to 1080 res, since the codec for 1080p & 1080i is 1280x1080. Horizontally it would stay the same, just get stretched vertically. Or maybe they'll split the difference - use offset, wide green pixels like the Sony HDV cameras do at 960 pixels across. Then they could claim an enhanced resolution for the 1080p stuff, something closer to 1280 wide. (This is my sneaking suspicion of what they'll do, since it offers pretty good resolution, and lower pixel count for larger sensor pad size for better low light performance.)

It should be possible to record DVCPRO HD from FireWire straight to disk, either via an Enfocus (or similar) dedicated specialty drive gadget, or worst case scenario to a Mac running Final Cut Pro HD. I've already been cocktail napkin doodling on how to keep the Mac on, running, cool, and controlled in a backpack for run 'n gun shooting. Should I get a provisional patent rolling? Hmmm.....dibs.

Below are my notes on the P2 from the huge, awesome Final Cut Pro User Group meeting tonight:

I missed a bunch of it because Jan, the product manager, whipped through her slides so fast:


STATS ON PANASONIC P2 CAMERA:

1080i60, 30p, 24p

720 60p, 30p, 24p
24p 2:3, 2:3:3:2, 30p, 2/2 modes

480 60i, 30p, 24p
24p modes 2:3, 2:3:3:2, 30p modes 2:2

8GB card
108060i720p60 duration ????

720 mode, records ONLY unique frames

off frame rates on DV res too

SD memory card for setsups, 4 in card, 4 in camera

AVC, streaming and SPB2, file transfer, all levels of data 25mb, 50mb, 100mb on the firewire!!!!


USB 2.0 connection to computer

2 remote connectors, one for zoom/start/start, another for focus/iris

time code of all flavors, rec run, free run, time of day
2 xlr mike inputs
composite in/out
s video in/out
line level audio in/out
analog compontnet HD out (d)
720p cross convert to 1080i

2 p2 card slots
Prerecord prior to hitting record
loop rec
hot swap
thumbnail display (similar to SPX 800)
shot mark/tc stamp

5400 milliamp battery, 4 hours of record time

manual audio controls for 1 & 2, channels 3 and 4 only from built in mike

13x Leica Dicomar wide angle lense, 35mm equivalient

stereo mike that's usable, because it's a silent running camera

-neutral density filter

high res 4:3 LCD to handle the 16:9 stuff

when running 16:9, info goes above/below

zoom in for focus assist, pixel for pixel (like Z1U)

available to check while in record

viewfinder can be color or B&W



SMPTE
ALL THE SHUTTER SPEED STUFF THE DVX DOES AND MORE

auto/manual mode switch is obvious an discreet, not in a men

-audio selection area

camcorder w/no P2 is $5995, camcorder w/2x8GB cards is $9995

available Q4

production person's white paper is available in the booth (!!!)

P2 workflow:

shoot
mount drive
edit decisions,
edit
finish program
smart archive with metadata

start/stop DV detection works on the P2 - so auto scene detection on import

P2 transfer rate is 1 GB/min, bottleneck is at the hard drive, card can transfer 640Mbit/min, 260 mbit/sec transfer, 3 1/2 min at present P2 card transfer rate

4 solid state memory cards set up as RAID 0

8 GB card will be about $2k by time it ships

4gb cards presently $1700

there WILL be a PAL version of the camera

i've been very interested in Compression Master since Cleaner let their entire Mac development team go...away.

Here's notes from my interview with Compression Master folks:

Compression Master -

doesn't process in 10 bit at this time, if you codec flip it'll drop to 8 bit

-will do 10 bit, just not at this time, is on the roadmap

-can bring in whatever QuickTime codec you want that is installed

-can write out to any installed QuickTime codec

-they look for input from customers to add features

-H.264 support - they have their own H.264 encoder. Playback compatible with QuickTime's H.264 encoder. Open ended in terms of size and bitrate. We consider H.264 as a preview technology until the end of the year...it's not going to be commercially viable for awhile.

H.264 is going to be the codec they spend the most time on this year

They are thinking about splitting the product between a standard and pro model. The Pro model would be more focused on HD and HD res H.264 type stuff. It sounds like (I'm interpreting here) they are still noodling around about where to draw the line between regular and high end apps.

H.264 isn't ready for commercial deployment yet

MPEG-2 now has 2 pass VBR, different field encoding rates, can set peak rates to not be exceed (DVD Studio Pro cares about that),

in the resizing filter, you can scale fields independently if working with scaling from say, 1080i to 480i, it'll scale the fields independently and not screw up/blend/overlay one field into the other (except as appropriate). This is good.

-has deinterlacing options, edge detection to smooth out diagonal lines

-for indies that want to go from 1080i50, to 25p, to 24p, the deinterlacing quality is a priority. mess with edge detection on the deinterlace stuff, timecode is maintained (I THINK he said that, not sure....)

-conversion stuff for telecine and inverse telecine processing, with the combined with the deinterlacing. PAL-24p does involve processing fields, not just conforming

-they have an automatic scaling choice, a combo of blinear and bicubic. Better than After Effects? Hopefully as good he says. Scaling pre-processing is what people like.

Low pass - if shrinking something a LOT, low pass will just take one set of fields only to scale from

-they have an RGB filter

-smoothing and sharpening capabilities, no rocket science there

-Can encode Windows Media 9, the ability to do MBR (multi-bitrate), a link assembly to have multiple bitrate versions all linked together (QuickTime has done this for awhile, since version 4 or so I think). You can either make the MBR grouping on the fly, or have a preset that does'em all

-can't play that WM9 MBR back on the Mac, though. Maybe the new Flip4Mac will do it (from Telestream)

-price is $395 - that's why a pro/hd/high end version

-on the writing to codec side - can import any installed QuickTime stuff, can't do Cineon or DPX, they are working on MXF stuff for IMX

-so CAN write to any QuickTime codec that is installed on your system, BUT it's limited to 8 bit RGB. Didn't ask about RGB<==>YUV conversion

-their higher end version, Compression Engine, with a Watch Folder is $5K per seat. OUCH. That's a HUGE price boost, doesn't seem right to me.

Huge makes RAID stuff for HD usage

HUGE RAID stuff:
-4 gigabit capable system now, 2 LUNs of 5 disks, total of 10
-400 GB drives
-4TB of raw capacity, less capacity for RAID 3
-RAID 3 only.
-70 mb/sec outer zone per drive, about 40 at inner tracks
-stripe across the two LUNs for guaranteed throughput of 160 MB/sec, scales up to 240
-RAID 0 or 3
-list price
3 models:
160 GB drives, 1.6TB 7350
250 GB drives, 2.5TB 8500
400 GB drives, 4.0TB 12,400

roughly for list prices

this is surprising - 10 drives should be capable of up to a lot more - 240 MB/sec as RAID 5? That barely requires 4TB throughput....so be it. Once again, the RAID controller is the bottleneck by far - that's why the 15 drive Medea is so much faster - 3 LUNs of 5 drives each.

NAS box, 4TB, RAID 5 or RAID 10, 25 streams of DV for multiple users, connects over GigE, $15,000 or so, has hotswap drives, dual power supplies, everything but the server motherboard is hot swappable

Foundry has some new stuff, the OFX (Open FX) format is taking off, have lots of adopters

G-TECH

FireWire 800 hotswappable RAID with SATA drives, RAID 3, 3streams of 8 bit,2 of 10 bit in realtime, goes up to 2TB, 640 GB will be $1599, 2TB no price yet, 2.5 TB soon, hardware RAID 3

G-Safe - smaller 2 drive RAID 1 setup, hardware RAID 1, no striped reads

additional trays available to rotate stuff through

June for $499 2x160 G-Safe

G-Tech's nice but kinda pricey stuff


AHHH, VEGAS.....sitting in the buffet restaurant in my lovely hotel casino....the entire room shakes. HARD. I'm sure if I set my silverware just right it would buzz and jingle. Air conditioning system? Monorail? Coin sorting machines? Wood chippers for cheaters? (a la Fargo?) I have no idea.

Nobody is happy to be working here. Sort of a "Your punishment for staying here is my complete lack of respect or enthusiasm for serving you." system.

JVC booth - The GY-HD100U ProHD camera notes:

-the HD-SDI setup they were demoing was simply an AJA HD10A component hidef analog to HD-SDI converter. Let's you record uncompressed HD right out of the camera to...something.
-DTE (direct to edit) - record MPEG-2 to a battery powered hard drive
-the showed me some 720p60 25 megabit MPEG-2 encoding....on their different, more expensive, not the same MPEG encoder. So it looked quite nice on playback...but again, how much CC can it take? The higher end 7000 series camera that they are showing, $28k with no lense, will use a "similar" encoder. Hmm. Those external boxes to encode/decode are about as much each as the camera without lense is...each. And 25 mbit is better than 19, but how well is that heavily compressed 4:2:0 going to hold up to color correction, compositing, or a key?
-they chose CMOS as lower cost, lower power consumption as CCD
-CMOS won't give a vertical streak when shining at a light source at night.
-Dead pixels due to cosmic rays don't happen on CMOS according to this guy
-very low power draw on this camera - no CCD, no tape transport.
-June/July on the GY-100U
-1.1 megapixel sensor on 100U
-higher end camera (the 7000) will do 25mbit instead of 19.2, but


more on JVC camera -

talking to Frederic from Lumiere, after a coupla drinks -

he THINKS that 720p24 is more data per frame, because the datarate is still 19.2 megabits/sec.

-there are flags to duplicate frames on output, 24p recording on ProHD is more efficient and generate a better quality than 30p recording

Sony Booth:

preview of XDCAM HD stuff - 4:2:0 (4:2:2 possible but not being shown), 25 megabit, 35 megabit (inconsistent info), long GOP MPEG-2....no product until next year, they're just testing the waters for reaction....I'd strongly encourage 4:2:2 35megabit or more bandwidth...gotta key this stuff, gotta composite this stuff, ya know? single head XDCAM is capable of 72 megabit transfer rate

-also have two (one studio, one more mobile) HD cameras with 1080p60 capabilities...can record it to an SRW-1.

-in a year and a half, they'll upgrade the F950 to have 14 bit A/D converters, for the F900, in 2006 sometime

-software upgrade to SRW-1 to do 24.0 fps in summer/fall. Can (will?) be able to record at 3fps and play back at 24fps (or whatever set up as). Camera records to a buffer, then dumps the buffer to tape. Shoot 3fps, it fills up a buffer in the Genesis, then dumps that buffer to tape. So the deck only periodically records information, in wait state inbetween buffer dumps. Hence no flagged/duped frames to strip out, the way the Varicam does

IKEGAMI'S EDITCAM X10
-It's an HD camera that records to DNxHD, Avid's high quality codec. They are saying it can only do 145mbit, not 220 at this time (due to newness of facility, etc.) Interesting to note a computer codec drove a virtual tape format. It's 145mbit, not 220, claiming because of drive throughput limitations. 220 mbit = 27.5 MB/sec...OK, that makes sense for 2.5" drives. The new fast 7200 120GB Hitachi drives might change that
-might be a first - codec first, camera recording format thereafter


ARRI BOOTH

-Arrilaser recorder - talking about 4fps at 2K in September of this year
-ARRI D-20 - going to be rental at first, since they want to be able to baby it
-no stated ETA yet
-no stated price yet
-sensor is roughly 3K x 2K - it downsamples to HD res, after extracting a 16:9 section from the 4:3 sensor. If you put an anamorphic lens on it, it will use the full 4:3 sensor, and scale that to HD sized. The camera outputs 10 bit linear 4:4:4 RGB.
-60fps progressive max
-camera sensor capable of 150 fps, none available for that - 1.5TB/sec for 150fps!!!
-60fps 10 bit RGB is nearly 500 MB/sec
-it's a pipe issue - they have a 10Gbit interface on/in the camera
-they say they chose that to be industry compatible
-he gave an answer I wasn't entirely thrilled with about log "for us it is irrelevant...we create the final picture" so linear is OK. Hmmm...I'm not convinced.
-roughly $3000 to $4000 a day rental rate with package, including lenses etc....ouch.



IKEGAMI'S EDITCAM X10
-It's an HD camera that records to DNxHD, Avid's high quality codec. They are saying it can only do 145mbit, not 220 at this time (due to newness of facility, etc.) Interesting to note a computer codec drove a virtual tape format. It's 145mbit, not 220, claiming because of drive throughput limitations. 220 mbit = 27.5 MB/sec...OK, that makes sense for 2.5" drives. The new fast 7200 120GB Hitachi drives might change that
-might be a first - codec first, camera recording format thereafter

2-pop - Panasonic AG-HVX200

2-pop's coverage

P2 CAMERA INFO FROM NOAH KADNER, demo artist for Panasonic and Guy Who Knows His Shiznit

Panasonic will do 1080p24 for sure.

-they haven't locked in res of the sensor yet

-they want good low light sensitivity, which fights having a higher resolution sensor, so they're seeking best of both worlds. This camera is a ways from shipping.

-Those P2 cards are smallish - 12 minutes of HD 720p60 or 1080i30 on the 8 GB cards. So 15 minutes of 1080p24 it would seem from extrapolation.

-Final Cut Pro can see the cards "appropriately" when in the P2 card reader (the $2500 device). You CAN put the P2 cards in the PC card slot of your PowerBook now and it will show up as FILES. Those files can be imported into FCP, but not as gracefully as the P2 import process. Need some driver work to make it work smoothly...but they have 5 months to work on it.

-I'm guessing they might make a smaller, 2 slot PC card reader for a lot less within a year, since the camera only has 2 slots, and desktop folks balk at $2500 for a PC card reader.

-can you FireWire directly from camera to PowerBook to capture live? If has miniDV, it's gotta have a FireWire port, right? And can't you FireWire out of the thing to a computer to capture realtime via FireWire? Or just DV over FireWire? A good question for down the road.

--back in Panasonic booth asking around----

P2 card import of 1.3 GB of data into FCP via driver- takes about 3 minutes, and the progress bar lies about how long it will take.

-the P2 cards are hot swappable - the cards will rollover from one to the other and keep recording. So you could record endlessly if you can download the cards faster than you are shooting...which is possible in theory. The hard drive thing is 60 GB drive, the battery socket is the same lithion ion battery that is sold at Best Buy consumer battery etc.

-can Finder copy over the P2 card content as files, not as FCP import, which is tidier and seems to preserve metadata better.

-640 mbit/sec can pass on the card's bus on P2 cards themselves.

-but the PC Card bus speed on laptop limits to 4 or 5 times realtime (of SD or HD? Not clear)

-They make tower solutions, an internally mounted P2 card reader to be mounted in the front of a tower chassis computer. He mentioned PCI bus, so maybe it hooks into that? Wicked fast transfers then.

As for chip sensor native resolution: they're messing with "low light and optical...we're trying to make a nice comparison...can't really discuss that right now."

-as for resolution and how 1080p will be handled, "like the Varicam does, it'll cross convert, so on the card you'll end up with 1080p24" which makes me think it's a hardware upsample. If you started at 1280x720, that's not so bad. If you started at 960x720, that's not nearly as good.

-Panasonic still has not finalized chip resolution

-keep in mind, it was a mockup and some specs

I'm very interested to know if you can record off of the camera over FireWire straight to a Powerbook wedged slightly open (to keep it on) in a well ventilated backpack. Since the camera is a long way off, we don't know. If you can FireWire DV out, can you FireWire DVCPRO HD out? Remains to be proven. That would be groovy, then you could record to a hard disk drive that would cost less than a single P2 card.

-mike

APPLE BOOTH, visit #2

FCP 5 native HDV editing DOES TAKE MORE RENDERING than other formats of similar size (such as DVCPRO HD) due to the long GOP structure and the need to do so much backtracking. So some simple things require a render that otherwise wouldn't. Faster processor required to edit HDV similarly to DVCPRO HD. This is the opposite of what I was told yesterday, and this is Mary (spoke to her at MWSF), so I trust her more.

CAN capture directly to uncompressed from HDV with a preset

-Apple says HDV is visually lossless up to the 4th or 5th generation of recompression due to compositing, effects, etc.

-CAN use AIC if you want withing AIC, it's installed with FCP 5, but like iMovieHD, capture then is not (n