HD For Indies

Got the 2nd replacement unit in today - good for Dell, I was thinking the other day that in my copious spare time (ha!) that I'd have to hassle them to get them on the ball. No such thing - they shipped the 2nd replacment after they got the first back, I didn't have to follow their children home from school in a windowless van or nothin'. (That usually works wonders for client service or cops with battering rams, whichever comes first. Yes, it's late and dangerous for me to be blogging).

So I'll mess with that this weekend, as well as the new laptop drive arrived, as well as Parts For Mysterious Project You Don't Know About Yet. I'll shave my head & scrotum and go into serious Dr. Evil mode this weekend on that stuff. If my girlfriend will let me (and yes, I'm talking about the geeking out part, not the other).

I'm working this week with a truly hairy set of variables for a client. Suffice it to say I'm glad editing apps don't face these challenges.

...and just raw gossip:

I went to the 4th Annual Mommie Dearest Roast tonight to FINALLY see my friend Dianne who's been hiding, excuse me busy, for months. She runs events under the Ultra Ultra banner, and also runs the Foodies group in Austin, where she is known simply as "Kitty". Taglines in the running for Foodies:

"Women Who Love Women Who Love Food"
and
"I Found My Girlfriend At Foodies"
to which I proffered
"It's like Fight Club For Girls"

...but without all the hitting and bleeding.

Which was inspired by.....dammit, I can't say, since I have a girlfriend who reads this. But it was a worthy.

The guy who puts the show on (at Alamo Drafthouse, of course) showed up in an outfit from the movie - Joan Crawford's swimsuit and robe. The low cut of the suit showed off his hairy chest and prodigious girth. But his boyfriend had the best T-shirt I've seen in I don't know how long:

Dirty Gay Wrestling-
Varsity Team

....and with that, I bid you adieu...

-mike

...so folks have been emailing and asking What To Buy lately. Most are looking to buy a system for a particular project, but I've been starting to think about what I want to buy and use going forward a year or two from now.

I like the idea of BlackMagic's soon-to-be-shipped Multibridge Extreme & Multibridge Studio - they are essentially an SD/HD capture card, HD/SD up/downconverter, HD-SDI-DVI converter all in one rackmount box that connects to your computer by a small, inexpensive PCI Express or PCI-X card that is simply a plug with no brains or guts (or minimal) on the card - all the real smarts live in the rackmount box. This is great for a number of reasons, including:

1.) You can upgrade from PCI-X to PCI Express by merely replacing the little stub card, not an expensive capture card

2.) If you want to be able to hook it up to another machine, you only need a second stub card (or whatever nice name they have for it is), and you can disconnect/reconnect a cable (don't know if it's hot or live swap capable thought) rather than having to open up two computers to deinstall/install cards. One minute changeover instead of 20 minute changeover. Want to be able to use it on any of 1, 2, 5, or 10 machines? Just buy more cheap stubs and keep the computers in cabling reach.

Since they are already promoting it as Mac and PC compatible, I'm pretty certain it should work in Apple's Intel based PowerMacs that will ship in 2007. Long life indeed!

Then I worried (because I do that a lot) that some cards purchased for G5 PowerMacs might not work in Intel based PowerMacs. I don't think there will be a hardware problem there - there are cards that work unmodified in Macs & Windows PCs already today, such as BlackMagic's video capture cards. The bigger challenge is whether the manufacturers will provide MacIntel drivers, and at what cost. This is a big maybe - I've had not one, but TWO multi-hundred dollar SCSI cards get orphaned because someone (Adaptec) didn't want to make drivers for the new version of the operating system.

This happens with products like printers and scanners all the time - new OS comes out, and they don't make a driver for their three year old printer. One would HOPE standards for $500-$2500 cards would be different from $50-$300 office grade computer equipment, but no promises.

Anyway, the point of all this is:

1.) bus agnostic devices (PCI-X or PCI Express) sound like a good idea, and all other things being equal, are probably a better idea than a card that only works on one type of bus.

2.) some cards will work on MacIntels in the future, provided the manufacturers make drivers for'em, so that'll be a good migration path too.

Also, been chatting with some folks about Final Touch HD - it isn't really real time, especially out the HD-SDI port. But when new Macs (G5 or Intel) ship with PCI Express (hopefully within a year), this situation should dramatically improve. Whether that will allow for the holy grail of 1080p24 RGB 4:4:4 footage displaying color corrected in real time out of dual link HD-SDI ports remains to be seen, and probably the developer doesn't even know for sure if that'll be possible (since that'll depend on unannounced PCI Express based HD-SDI cards that I haven't heard even rumors about yet). BUT it is a faster overall solution than Final Cut Pro for high quality color correction.

-mike

Girlfriend Melissa RAWKS LIKE SLAYER - since she helped me find the code glitch that was forcing the line breaks. There was a new option in the Blogger settings that was hosing it up, with the helpful "don't use this if you are having post layout problems." Turned off and demons vanquished. All hail Melissa, Destroyer of Unwanted Line Breaks.

-mike, pleased, done, and going to get a sammich

Kano Technologies Corporation today announced a new 4 drive SATA enclosure and card that requires only a single cable to connect to the host computer. SATA usuallly requires 1 drive per cable, this uses "multilane" technology (via an Infiniband connector & cable) to connect 4 drives with one SATA cable. They have a host card, but it's Windows only. Enclosure is $709, card $189.

-but at what performance? probably 200 MB/sec or less sustained. Talking to another engineer, he said the fastest BURST (not sustained) speed he's seen has been 220 MB/sec on a single SATA II cable.

Anyway, single cable is convenient and a lot less to troubleshoot. Mac products using this...someday.

-mike

UPDATE: I had earlier posted that this used a port multiplier, that is incorrect. It uses an Infiniband connector.

XL2 Free Run Time Code as an External Sync by Chris Hurd

Using Free Run Time Code as an External
Sync Substitute for XL2 Multi-Camera Shoots
an article by Chris Hurd

Kelly Dodds sent this in - thanks! Free run does create hassles when batch capturing, so you want to shoot with long handles - some meaningless footage before rolling, and don't cut until well after (5 secs or more) the action is finished.

-mike

WiebeTech announces reloadable RAID for SATA and IDE | MacMinute News: WiebeTech today announced TrayDock Extreme and TrayDock eSATA -- RAIDs with either 2- or 4-bay reloadable drive trays. TrayDock Extreme provides a hardware based Striped RAID for IDE/SATA drives and attaches to any FireWire host. TrayDock eSATA offers a software RAID for SATA drives and attaches to eSATA hosts. Pricing on the 2-bay versions start at US$349.95. The 4-bay versions start at $449.95. Both versions will begin shipping July 6, 2005

Another option for enclosures. Good looking. Wiebetech has a good record for making high quality products.

MacMerc.com: The Poor Person's Production Suite: The Poor Person's Production Suite is an ensemble of three, high-level Animation, 3D, Compositing and Video Editing tools that are available as free open source GPL applications. However, this is not a direct attempt to duplicate the production tools found in Apple's Final Cut Studio. It's an attempt to create a fully functional, professional software suite that is capable of generating high end VFX and 3D animation like those found in Shake and Motion and Maya. Don't be fooled, just because the software is free doesn't mean that it isn't of professional grade.

OK, this one's REALLY for starving indies. I have zero experience with the tools, just thought it'd be good to link to these since I've gotten some flack for advocating what's perceived as expensive hardware and software.

Easier/more direct link to the article here

-mike

Macworld UK - Microsoft inks HD-DVD deal :
Microsoft and Toshiba have reached an agreement under which they will explore ways to use Microsoft Windows CE technology in new high-definition optical disc players, top executives of both companies said in Tokyo on Monday.

...so much for being neutral! Based on Windows CE and VC-1 (a tweaked Windows Media 9 codec), this gives Toshiba a bigger partner to play with. As a reader pointed out, Sony, with it's competing Blu Ray standard, has perceived and real clout far beyond what Toshiba does with it's HD-DVD standard. With MS in it's court, that'll help. I believe Microsoft knows a thing or two about exerting force on markets...

-mike

Apple adds Radeon X850 (finally) as BTO Option, posts Motion/Halo benchmarks - $400 upgrade from the 9600 card, is faster, has 256 MB VRAM, one ADC and one dual link DVI (for 30" LCD).

PR Geekery:

16 parallel pipelines
memory bandwidth "up to" (most evil words in advertising) 34.6 GBps
-700 million vertices/8 billion textured pixels per second
SmartShader HD shader engine
Smoothvision HD with 3Dc (3D comb filter?)

this page on Apple's site has more info, including Halo & Motion performance stats

MacNN | Magic Bullet Editors 2 offers Motion, NVIDIA support - OK, this is HOT - this is the first thing that makes me reconsider suggesting ATI over NVidia graphics cards - if you want to use the Magic Bullet Film Look filters, it can now be done in realtime on the graphics card (or it will be in August when this ships). Lots of speed-ups for other stuff, too - up to 12 times faster than non-GPU accelerated stuff.

Also has de-artifacting for DV and HDV. $400 new, $100 upgrades ($150 if you want the box).

If you need the functionality this offers, this looks very promising. Keep in mind, however, that Magic Bullet for editors does NOT include the de-interlacing technology that's included with their other offerings.

Update - so based on reader feedback (thanks!) and a review on barefeats.com, I decided on a Seagate 5400.2 100GB drive. I ordered it from zipzoomfly.com. Should I have ordered from newegg.com? Maybe, but I've ordered in the past from zipzoomfly and have been sufficiently comfortable with the company. Should come in on Wednesday (while I'm at work). Then it'll be a an ordeal to swap drives. I'm thinking of either:

a.) backing everything up to a disk image elsewhere, pulling old drive, installing new drive, installing a clean OS X onto the new drive in laptop, then FireWire booting....aw crap, this is getting complicated and may not work, or require LOTS of handholding..

b.) buy a 2.5" external bus powered drive case to put the old 60GB drive into and transfer data after OS X install onto newly installed 100GB drive in laptop. Most likely to work the most smoothly, and I'll have a portable 60GB drive once done.

OK, who has a suggestion now for their favorite bare (empty) 2.5" bus powered drive enclosure? FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 is all that's needed, I don't have FW800 on my 12" PowerBook.. User suggestions appreciated before, feel free to chip in if you have a favorite.


end update

Hey all -

time to turn the tables - I need a new/bigger laptop drive - my current one has 3 GB available, and I want to get a 100GB replacement. I see several options. I'd like big (100GB plus), reasonably fast, but battery life is a higher priority than the last bit of power.

I see options from IBM/Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate, and Toshiba in varying rotational speeds.

Anyone have any suggestions, or links, or resources to recommend?


-mike

HDLink 1.7.1 - VersionTracker:

What's new:
provides interface improvements to the HDLink Utility and includes all the latest features including: LUT%u2019s for Panasonic VariCam & Grass Valley/Thompson Viper cameras, 'Blue only' mode for video noise, Interlace Simulation Mode, optional viewing of illegal YUV values, change settings without a power-cycle, support for displays lacking valid EDID data.

This is needed and useful.

-mike

John Battelle's Searchblog: News: Google To Launch Online Video Playback This Monday - normally I try to link to news not commentary of an announcement, and maybe commentary later. But this is a quickie overview of what's happened and what it might mean. I like that he isn't launching into typical propellerhead "It'll change the world!" hyperbole (as I am wont to do) but it's an interesting spin on it...especially in light of the Supreme Court's Grokster decision (see prior post below).

-mike

I've picked up some on-site consulting this week - a prior client of mine is asking me back to help them do some possible hardware optimization and to help them pick the optimal Windows based codec their specific, non-typical needs. Frankly, I think I rock at this kind of stuff, so it'll be good deep geek fun. Not going into specifics since I haven't discussed with them how comfy they are with public knowledge on this stuff.

So I probably won't be posting as much or responding to emails as quickly for the next week or two (or however long this project lasts).

-mike

Slashdot | Supreme Court Rules against Grokster This is Bad, Capital B Bad. This is a BIG step backwards against the Betamax case, which stated that if a device had legitimate non-infringing uses it wasn't guilty in and of itself of copyright violation. The Supremes said (unanimously!):

One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses.

This gets dangerous, and creates a seriously risky environment for people to make ANY kind of file distribution software since they'll be afraid of ENORMOUS liability at the hands of the content owners.

This is especially scary since it's the Supreme Court - there's nobody to appeal to. I'll need to read up more on this one.

-mike

OK, so why am I posting these? Because I thought they were all very interesting. Because if you are thinking about making a movie and want to actually make some money from it, you should read these to understand the system. Not that you'll get to use any of these tricks yourself, but merely to understand what you're up against, and what the real game/business these folks are playing.

Bunch of interesting articles on how Hollywood really works by Edward Jay Epstein:

Dumb Money - The madness of movie advertising. By Edward Jay Epstein

He explained that big opening-weekend numbers, even if they are expensively acquired, may pay off in later markets—specifically video, pay-TV, and foreign release.

The Midas Formula - How to create a billion-dollar movie franchise. By Edward Jay Epstein

Nicole Kidman's Knee - Or, how the insurance business runs Hollywood. By Edward Jay Epstein

Gross Misunderstanding - Forget about the box office. By Edward Jay Epstein

Concessions Are for Girlie Men - Arnold Schwarzenegger's absurdly advantageous contract for Terminator 3. By Edward Jay Epstein

Paranoia for Fun and Profit - How Disney and Michael Moore cleaned up on Fahrenheit 9/11. By Edward Jay Epstein

How To Finance a Hollywood Blockbuster - Start with a German tax shelter. By Edward Jay Epstein

How Did Michael Eisner Make Disney Profitable? - Not with cartoons. By Edward Jay Epstein

Once again, read how music clearances nearly killed a documentary - they planned ahead, but it still nearly took'em down...45% of their budget was music clearances. Read this to learn how to prepare for a verite shoot...

-mike

there's a glitch that's just stared where, well, you can tell. I'm trying to figure out why this is suddenly happening, everything is shunting over until after the Google AdSense Ads, maybe I'l just pull'em until I get this fixed.

-mike

The first defective Dell monitor went back - and on the way out, I noticed that it was clearly labelled on the side "REFURBISHED" so my suspicions were correct.

Harrumph.

I need to call Dell and have a very clear conversation with them about NOT sending me a refurb. While salespeople will swear up and down that refurbs are fine, they've been tested at the factory, DON'T EVER BUY REFURBS. This means that they passed the minimal tests at the factory. Why is it a refurb? Because it's a return. Why is/was it a return? Because somebody decided they didn't want it. And a goodly number of those are going to be folks that it didn't work for, or was unacceptable, for some reason. And a lot of those reasons might be things that would pass the minimal factory testing done. So it's inevitable that refurbs are more likely to have minor defects than new units.

In any case, if they won't promise to send me a new one, I'm returning the original. Whether I buy another one is a big fat maybe.

-mike

NEC's LED/LCD Monitor Breaks New Ground - this isn't ready yet for HD purposes - it's only 1600x1200 with a 25ms refresh time (too slow), and it's a bit pricey at $6,500, but shows how things may go in the future. Using LEDs to light the panel to give a brighter, sharper image than traditional LCD panels can.

-mike

updated - see bottom

AppleInsider | Inside Apple's Intel-based Dev Transition Kit (Photos)

interesting to note that this unit has PCI Express already - a very useful feature for faster throughput for HD applications.

For instance, BlackMagic's as yet unreleased Multibridge Extreme will interface via PCI-X or PCI Express, but even better, the guys at Silicon Color (makers of Final Touch HD) implied that it'll take PCI Express to get truly realtime performance from the software out the HD-SDI tap of an HD card.

More interesting details for the geeks in the article, including pictures.

-mike

UPDATE - I didn't catch this before:

Sources so far have reported absolutely no luck in their attempts to boot the included copy of Mac OS X for Intel on other PC systems. In their attempts to do so, they have reportedly been met by error messages stating that the PC hardware configurations are not supported by Darwin -- the underlying UNIX-based foundation to Mac OS X.


...so it looks like those were false rumors about getting the OS to run, even on these early boxes. Shoulda known...although it would be interesting to see if someone built an identical machine (same motherboard, graphics card, drive, etc.) if it would work.

-mike

Blackmagic Design: Software Downloads:
This beta version adds: Full support for Final Cut Pro HD v5 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), HDV playback via HD-SDI outputs, Multi-Cam editing, 12 channels of audio capture and playback, Dynamic RT Effects and VariCam, Gamma correction with custom lookup tables during RGB 4:4:4 capture. A bug causing sparkles during capture, with DeckLink HD Plus and DeckLink HD Pro cards, is fixed in this beta version.

Fixes a crashing bug when using JKL keys, too.

-mike

update - I installed this, but it said "the current version installed is more recent." So I installed anyway, and nothing worked. Harrumph. So I de-installed using the included utility, and re-installed, and now it works.

NOT an elegant solution! Needs to be fixed.

-mike

Photron - High-Speed Cameras and Primatte shoots 3000fps at 1024x1024, or 10,000fps at 512x512 pixels. Or check out the gallery of super high speed footage. Now, how good do they look? This thing is reall intended for scientific applications...

First off - the "color lines" problem is not present on the new unit, but this one:

a.) has a "dead spot" - doesn't look like a dead pixel usually does, it's softer than that. But it's dark no matter what, and

b.) Looks like a refurb anyway, not factory fresh.

I paid for a new, working monitor, they didn't send me one.

After an hour and a half on the phone, they send me a used, flawed one. Quite possibly one somebody else sent back because of the problems I'm seeing now. Or at least some of the parts in the box had clearly been used before.

So I need to get on the phone to Dell again....groan.

It's turning into not so great a deal. I may start looking into the similiar HP model.

In theory these monitors are great, in practice it's turning into a big PITA.

-mike

EVENING UPDATE -

on the phone with Dell notes:
NEXT ROUND, TUESDAY 6/21/05, STARTING AT ABOUT 6:18PM

-much clicking through menus until I get to "monitors and other products"

still on silent hold at 6:25pm...

line goes dead, 6:29pm....start over....

1-800-624-9896

3-1-4-3-(ENTER NON-EXISTENT EXPRESS SERVICE CODE - MONITORS DON'T HAVE THEM) - 6-

6:39 - still on hold...

discussed and in process

new CASE # - mike hides it (for second monitor replacement)

dispatch # for new monitor - mike hides it

spoke to Carlo

finished around 6:50

this time it went much better - native English speaker, replacement on the way no problem or quibbles...

single Serial ATA drive for the G5 Power Mac or iMac

Barefeats takes a look at the top SATA drives from Hitachi, Seagate, and Maxtor. Their performance results and my own experiences lead me to recommend the Seagate 7200.8 drives as the preferable choice for digital video editing, even though they aren't the absolute fastest. I've had ongoing, unresolved problems with some early production run Maxtors, and I'm still trying to get their tech support rep to get back in touch with me...

-mike

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Chroma Sampling: An Investigation - link to link to story. Short version - I wouldn't have guessed this, but DV via SDI is demonstrably superior to straight DV ingest. The reason for this is better handling of the color subsampling. If you don't know what that means, read the article, then you still won't understand why unless you're a really good geek.

: )

-mike

UPDATE - Wellllllllllll, it's not quite so simple. Read the comments, and if that doesn't clarify, read the article.

My take now:

DV over DV is more accurate, but doesn't produce as smooth a results as post capture, rendered smoothed DV or capture over SDI. BUT, it's not as accurate generation to generation. Again, it matters to know what you're doing and choose accordingly.

ProLost: Three Way Color Corrector in After Effects Geeky fun for color correcting in After Effects. Is this applicable to most filmmaking efforts? No, but cool for the tweaker crowd.

-mike

HD Testchart - geeky test chart. I'll have more to say later, just wanted to bookmark it for later reference. If you're trying to do any complex color space workflow testing, this is worth it.

Apple - Support - Downloads - Xsan Update 1.1 for 10.4 - now works with OS X 10.4 properly. From Apple's site:

The 1.1 Update delivers overall improved reliability for Xsan and is required for all systems running 10.4. It includes fixes for:

- using Xsan on computers running Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server version 10.4
- providing metadata controller services to 10.3.9 and 10.4 systems running Xsan 1.1
- accessing Xsan volumes larger than 16 terabyte in size
- greater server stability when resharing Xsan volumes via NFS
- handling quotas with no associated user or group name
- maintaining access to Xsan volumes when metadata controller failovers occur
- operating Xsan in environments with a mix of 10.3.9 and 10.4 systems

Important Notes:
If any system in your SAN is running Xsan 1.1 on Mac OS X v10.4, then your metadata controllers must also run the same. You can’t use a metadata controller running on Mac OS X v10.3 if any client is running Xsan 1.1 on Mac OS X v10.4.


There's also Xsan 1.1 for 10.3.9 available online as well.

Blu-ray, HD DVD merger talks scrapped | The Register: Surprise, surprise. Comments from both parties during the period of the negotiations implied there was little chance of a compromise. To do so would require either party to abandon their preferred format. Supporters of each format have, in the past, made it clear that physically the two formats are incompatible. The only way around the problem was to adopt one format's physical structure and add support for the other's data structure.

This is pretty much what I thought was going on, and is a nice synopsis of where we stand. Thanks Luis for sending this one in!

-mike

The New York Times > Technology> Review>
THE PHOTOJOURNALIST; Which Camera Does This Pro Use? It Depends on the Shot
- read this and think about digital vs. film, craft vs. tech, art vs. science. What is it you're REALLY trying to shoot again?

Macworld: News: FolderShare shares files via OS X, Windows, Linux - could this be useful in a workgroup environment? It'd probably be too slow (unless allowed to run overnight) for video sized assets. Useful at all for our purposes? I don't know, just wanted a way to find this link later...

...and yes, sometimes the blog is just my own memory hole.

DMN Forum - View Article Digital Media Net reviews Final Cut Pro 5, going over some of its new features, such as Dynamic RT, native HDV editing, Multicam editing, new codecs, etc.

-mike

MacNN | MPressionst 3.0 improves picture quality analysis - want to geek out on your encoding tweaks:

Users can also bring up two different compressed movies and perform a subjective left/right comparision by watching (in sync). Such a feature is "remarkably useful for determining if compressing a movie with a reduced bitrate has significantly impacted picture quality." Users can even compare movies compressed with different codecs (such as HD-DVD H.264 and MPEG-2).


Useful for when you're trying to get serious about how much content can fit on a disk.

-mike

LAFCPUG Next Meeting The LA Final Cut Pro User Group is one of the biggest and best in the country. Considering it's the local chapter for Hollywood, this makes sense. Their next meeting is June 22nd, they'll be looking at Final Touch, low budget filmmaking tricks, Compressor, and more.

-mike

Fedex just delivered my replacement Dell 2405 23" 1920x1080 monitor - I'll see if it exhibits the same problem as my prior one. I'll update this post later as I open it up and hook it up.

So it's Sunday and I'm finally opening it up.

And dammit, it looks a refurb - VGA cable is already attached to monitor with no protective covering on either end, the extra cables and CD are stuffed in a plastic bag, the CD is in a paper sleeve that's clearly been opened & used, the packaging is different, there is no quick start sheet, etc. Clearly, this is repackaged and sent out again. Some emailer or commenter previously said that in the birdseed type that they can send out a refurb as a replacement, but I'm tempted to reject this on general principle.

I'm hooking it up now to see if it has the same component problem, and check for dead pixels.

I'll update later as I learn more.

6:45pm - no dead pixels, running component test now to see if I get those aberations. On the prior monitor they showed up in about 10 minutes; they shouldn't show up ever.

10pm - left it running for a while, but the screens went to sleep. Leaving an image up to see if it causes the wavy line/color bars problems again.

-mike

Sonnet | Fusion 400 - eSATA Drive Enclosure Sonnet has introduced a good looking, hotswap SATA 4 bay enclosure. Purportedly very quiet with a small footprint. Looks very nice, very professional. Just based on looks, I'd rather have this sitting on my desktop than a Burly Box from MacGurus or the Granite Digital offerings. It also, however, looks to be a dead ringer for the arrays offered from Kano Technologies called X-SPAND product line that were shown at MacWorld (see first picture from my MWSF 2005 coverage).

At MWSF 2005, Kano said they were only offering these as pre-built arrays. Now they are offering as a standalone empty enclosure, apparently the same as the Sonnet product.

Both are the same price, $600.

Not having sat down with one, my first seat-of-the-pants comparison to the other options - the $405-480 MacGurus Burly Box 4 hotswap bays (price varies depending on options) and the $578 Granite Digital 4 bay hotswap - is that the Sonnet solution is smaller and better looking.

Haven't used any of'em, so that remains to be seen. In practice, they should all perform identically. As a practical matter, I'd want to be assured that all the drives mount every time. I note that the Sonnet trays appear to be of the direct connect type - the drive plugs directly in without additional cables. Skipping long geeky discussion, this is preferable for reliable connections and mounting, but does leave the drives more vulnerable to spills etc. when out of the enclosure.

Hotswap drives are nice so that you can pop out and put in another set to work on another project - a big advantage over fixed drives in a busy shop.

-mike

UPDATE - THERE'S LOTS OF INTERESTING CONVERSATION GOING ON IN THE COMMENTS - SCROLL TO END OF ARTICLE AND CLICK ON "COMMENTS" AT END

....so I spent a couple of hours with a client today here in Austin trying to resolve some workflow issues (this is what I think I'm best at).

The challenge:

-he wants to make a 15 minute sample video of the feature he wants to make.
-he wants it to be in HD, produced to highest possible quality standards
-he wants it to be a very motion graphics heavy piece - MOST of it is to be done in Motion, After Effects, or Maya
-he's got 3 Macs - a dual 2.0 for Maya work, a dual 2.7 for FCP (maybe he should switch those two - faster Maya/Motion/After Effects probably more useful than faster FCP), and a G4 to act as a server & data backup box.

This presents a bunch of challenges:

-should he build everything 1920x1080 uncompressed, so he can edit with final quality stuff?
-should he build everything at 1920x1080 and render to 1280x1080 DVCPRO HD for an HD offline?
-should he build his stuff and shoot his footage 60i or 24p? He'd like the option to go to film, but it's not likely. But he wants the option
-regardless of whether it's film bound or not, 24p or 60i? 24p can be "world mastered" to 25p PAL via a simple conform, and converted to 60i with 3:2 pulldown
-Motion projects don't play back full speed at HD res in FCP regardless
-Motion projects have to be built 1920x1080 if you want that as your final size, and if not, you have to use Export via Compressor to get a 1280x1080 DVCPRO HD 1080i60
-the 3 person team is going to spend 2-3 months putting this 15 minutes together. I'm debating whether they
-as my old creative director used to say, motion graphics and editing should be like an oil painting - first you sketch it out rough, doodle and play and change that, and as you get more sure about each part, lock it down and paint in the detail. Do NOT paint in detail right from the start, because you ARE going to change it. Putting too much detail, spending too much time polishing early versions is called "premature optimization" in software development - you've put too much effort into polishing a rough draft, burning time and resources on something that will never see the light of day. And do you WANT to ship a polished first draft? NO. You want to ship a polished 3rd or 4th draft. Drafts 1 & 2 got virtually no polish.
-this makes me wonder if it'll make sense for them to do even a DV rough of this thing - starting with a DV timeline to just sketch out the thing, then advancing to DVCPRO HD 1280x1080 to make sure things are working in HD, and then do a final re-render and online at uncompressed 10 bit 1920x1080. I dunno. Lots of work moving from one size to the next. Is it worth the effort or not? Depends on how much time they spend waiting around for stuff to re-render. If they can speed up their draft Maya renders 3 or 6 fold working in DV early on, why not? They'd just need to be checking HD renders to make sure they'll look OK, and not have funky aliasing or under-detailed 3D models etc., checking stills and short rendered HD movies as they go.

Lessons learned
-1920x1080 Motion projects don't play back full speed. Consistently.
-neither do 1280x1080, even doing a simple scale of a still image
-if you have dropped a Motion project into FCP that has NOT been pre-rendered, EVERY change you make such as titling etc. requires a re-render in the FCP timeline. Time consuming!
-the goal is to render as little as possible, yet maintain as much creative control as possible. Since any change in FCP requires re-rendering on the FCP timeline, it seems like it is worth pre-rendering out of Motion to a .mov file is the faster overall solution
-whether to build full sized uncompressed on all assets or make offline res (either HD or SD) sized assets was debatable - if they have the drive space and realtime HD performance, why NOT work uncompressed the whole way through? But do they is the question.

Other stuff:

-EXTREMELY TIGHT fling and naming conventions are required for this kind of project. I recommended a system that would let them track the scene, shot, draft vs. high quality (final quality) renders, source file version #, and render #, as well as track who worked on the file. All reducible to the filename so it could be determined at a glance. No, I'm not giving that away for free. : )
-filing conventions are important as well - I gave them a system to track and instantly navigate between source files and render files, and be able to back up all low bandwidth source files by dragging a single folder to a DVD. No, I'm not giving that away either.
-every project has it's own needs - we debated whether a SAN was necessary (it'd certainly be useful) rather than a dedicated file server on gigabit ethernet. Subtle changes in workflow and individual work characteristics made us veer between SAN, server, no server, RAID 0, RAID 5, etc. - THERE IS NO ONE SIZE FITS ALL SOLUTION. The best I've seen this put recently was a guy complaining about being asked what was the best digital camera to buy - his retort: "What car should you buy? Who should you marry?" It varies depending on a LOT of variables.

-mike

AMUG FirmTek SeriTek/1VE4 Review



REVISED STATEMENT
I originally posted:

detailed, but I'd quibble/disagree with some of their testing methodology as it would apply to video editing purposes.


...but apparently that caused some confusion/apprehension.

Let me clarify that - I'd like to see some more video-specific testing to make sure it met the needs of a video audience (which, with the right drives, it looks like it does, I was a beta tester on this card). They have a link to the barefeats.com article which does to video specific testing. I'm not disagreeing with their findings nor methodologies. The AMUG review does a good job of performance analysis for general purpose computer stuff, just not as video specific as I'd like to see - BMD Disk Speed tester, end of disk performance, video capture, multi-stream testing, stuff like that.

-mike

UPDATE - SEE BOTTOM

Was thinking about some production issues earlier, and it struck me - technically, I don't see any reason why Sony couldn't make HDCAM decks and cameras with a FireWire 400 port for native HDCAM acquisition.

"Buh-whaaaaaa?" you say?

Presently, the only way to work with the native HDCAM codec (the compressed, 22 MB/sec version, not the uncompressed 130 MB/sec version) is to use the HD-SDTI (High Definition/Datarate Serial Digital Transport Interface) rather than the more usual uncompressed HD-SDI (High Defintion/Datarate Serial Digital Interface). The only software that supports this is Sony's proprietary XPRI hardware/software combo, and it's pricey.

IF Sony were to make the codec available to other vendors, and if Sony built a FireWire port into their cameras & decks, it should be possible to treat HDCAM as we presently treat DVCPRO HD - pull it in over FireWire in the same zeroes and ones format that it is recorded to tape with. Technically, this is possible - even FireWire 400 reliably can do 22 MB/sec, that's less than half of it's theoretical (which nothing ever reaches). FireWire 400 drives can readily achieve about 35 MB/sec, so 22 MB/sec shouldn't be a problem if it's the only device on the chain. If any problems, kick up to FireWire 800 and it'd work fine.

BUT, I don't think Sony's going to be doing that anytime soon. IF they did eventually put FireWire (or i.Link as they call it) ports on their decks and cameras, it's likely that they'd make it only work with their software (why give your competition the same advantages you have, unless you think that'll be more cost effective?). Sony also now owns the Vegas software, and has been beefing up it's capabilities, and reps talked about having more integration/feature sharing between Vegas and XPRI over time. I could see Sony enabling Vegas to edit HDCAM over FireWire, and some time (years) after that point, allowing the codec to be used by other vendors by licensing it to them.

So my guess? In 2-5 years Sony might add FireWire to HDCAM decks, and cameras some time well after that (HDCAM is a professional format, and usually you're not capturing to computer from a $80,000 camera!). If FireWire were on camera, it'd be for recording to a disk based recorder or connecting to a nearby deck. Anyway, with FireWire on decks, you'd be able to edit with Vegas without an expensive HD-SDI card, and only have to store, capture & play back a lowly 22 MB/sec, not 120 MB/sec (for 8 bit 1080i60)

How computing intensive is the HDCAM codec? How fast of a machine would be required to decode it in realtime? I don't know. But I can't imagine it's hugely more complicated than DVCPRO HD, which even a 1 GHz G4 can decompress in realtime.

So, while I wouldn't expect this to happen anytime soon, and Final Cut Pro would be one of the later NLE's to support it (although Sony & Apple have been having a luv fest lately), it might happen someday years from now. HDCAM cameras and decks would probably have to migrate down in price before this was worthwhile, as well.

But in the meantime, it's just another irritating example of market forces keeping something useful out of the hands of those that want it.

-mike

UPDATE - Reader sleagaer pointed out this link to a PDF file outlining native Sony HDCAM Software codec support from Discreet for their high end post equipment.

-mike

CBC Arts: People prefer to see movies at home: poll - industry stuff - read this, and think about your next planned movie, and where it's really likely to be seen...and remember that Hollywood makes MOST of it's money from NON-theatrical release sources (DVD, pay-per-view, cable, etc.).

-mike

Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out - New York Times - a fun and interesting read from my favorite author, Neal Stephenson. When I worked at frogdesign, you couldn't really call yourself hard core unless you'd read and grokked Snow Crash (and later The Diamond Age).

-mike

DMN reviews Final Cut Pro 5

XML2Text - Communicating with Final Cut Pro sequence XMLs: "XML2Text is a simple but serious playground for FCP sequence XMLs. It will extract some useful information and allows to save this information in different formats"

a deep geek tool, I might be messing with this

(found via Philadelphia Final Cut Pro User Group website)

2-pop - Quick Rundown of Final Cut Studio's contents - nothing too new, but a good primer on what the parts are and what they do in Apple Final Cut Studio.

-mike

2-pop - Review of Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 camcorder - no new info here, but a good summary. I was hoping this might have some new info, such as CCD resolution on the HVX200, but no dice.

DivX releases new, high-quality video format | CNET News.com - new version of DivX released - for those not familiar, this is NOT the lame DVD format of a few years ago, but rather another codec (COmpressor DECompressor) on the market. It's been around for years and they are claiming to surpass Microsoft's Windows Media 9 and Apple's QuickTime H.264 technology in terms of image quality at a given data rate. Hmm. I'll download and do some tests and see for myself.

There are a bunch of Asian market DVD players that can play back DivX content, but they haven't achieved a lot of market penetration in the US. I hear there are

Saw Batman Begins last night. Reactions:

1.) Wow.
2.) Awesome.
3.) Bitchin'

Three (perhaps four?) alcoholic beverages during the pre-show (Phillipino Batman movie, Batman cartoons, old government equal-pay-for-equal-work ad featuring Batgirl) and movie probably enhanced the overall Dudeness of my enjoyment of the flick, too.

I really, REALLY enjoyed it, SOOOOO much better than the ridiculous rubber nipple days. My favorite movie experience of the year so far, liked it better than Star Wars for sure.

I think they'll do really, really well with this one.

I liked that it had SOME grounding in reality - rich guy, military toys, lust for revenge.

I liked that his gadgets had some kind of technological validity to them, and were home-made at first.

I like that they explain where he comes from, that he's just a guy that has trained to fight, that he gets bruises and hurts all over like anyone would that took on six guys and got the crap pounded out of him.

The new Batmobile ROCKS - raw, brutal, powerful, no points for style, just a brutal weapon. As befits Batman. A big, scary, brutal thing. As a cop describes when asked what ran over his car "A black....tank."

I would have liked to have seen a bit more "struggle" in his struggle between vengance and justice. The line from The Dark Knight where Batman knows he's at the point where he's beat the guy, hears the guy screaming, knows he's about to break the guy's leg....and just goes ahead and breaks it. THAT kind of struggle would be cool to see, but America doesn't like it's film heroes to struggle like that. (That's a whoooole other blog to get into that).

I'm already wanting to go see this again.

The ending was nice, too, with a clear picture of who the next bad guy is to be, and why on earth his foes would be dressing up and acting out.

OK, enough geeking for now. Go see and enjoy. Put your "thee-yuh-tuh" mind in your back pocket, just go out and be a boy and enjoy the show.

Splodin' stuff RAWKS LIKE SLAYER!

: )

mike does not actually endorse listening to Slayer, it's just a funny line Lexie said once and mike thought that was especially funny coming from such a Nice Girl as her

-mike

Sanyo plays both sides of high-def DVD fight - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com they are now members of both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Sanyo plans to make a key part of the machines that reads the discs for both formats _ apparently hedging its bet, as the two groups pour resources into a technology that is expected to revolutionize Hollywood movies and consumer electronics.

Creative Cow - thread on working with HDV using BlackMagic capture cards in Premiere Pro on Windows machines

Blackmagic Design: HDV support in Final Cut Pro 5 with BlackMagic cards

Blackmagic Design: How to achieve maximum quality with HDV cameras (I posted this one the other day, too)

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): MPG | Apple Final Cut Pro Keyboard

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Control Surfaces for FCP/Soundtrack pro

via Philadelphia Final Cut Pro User Group website

Creative Cow - Read Thread - This Todd guy worked on some camera tests for Superman, shooting with Genesis and a 35mm film camera. Interesting stuff. As usual, the further one travels from the root of a conversation, the more off topic it gets (this one closes 22 posts later with a comment about government manpower cuts - not exactly digital production oriented)

Cinema Minima: First live demo of high-definition over broadband - LIVE, not pre-encoded, HD over ADSL2+. Way o' the future! Someday. Europe is taking the lead on this stuff.

Mac vs. PC VI: Boxx 7400 Dual Opteron 275 Workstation - beats the ever-living hell out of a dual G5 in Cinebench, a 3D app. Also beats it in After Effects. But for my readership here, I think the key applications would be to see Avid Xpress HD on Mac vs PC, as well as some kind of standardized "get this done on your box" of Final Cut Pro 5 on dual G5 vs. Premiere Pro on dual Opterons. Cost should get in there somewhere, too.

-mike

Blackmagic Design: Support Detail - using one of their Multibridge devices.

(can also be done using an AJA HD10A input device, but it only handles the video. For audio, have to figure out something else)

-mike

UPDATED: Mike Skibra from BlackMagic Design also pointed out that the HD10A presently lists for about $1500 for video only conversion, BlackMagic's Multibridge product line starts at $2000 and has additional functionality as well (audio input, up/down conversion, etc.)

I've udpated the HD For Indies FAQ again.

If you look at the top right corner of the site, it's that first bold link under "Great HD Links" so you can always get to it.

If you started reading the site within the last year, these are worth reading if you missed them the first time around.

Not complete, but lots of good info in there. New links to topics include:

How to shoot HD then post it with no HD equipment
The case for Do-It-Yourself HD post: total creative contorl, on your schedule and budget
Why has HD cost so damn much?
Advantages of creating digital masters
The Business Case for HD: Why it's a better sell than DV for your independent film -
the motion picture film industry lives at the behest of the consumer 35mm film industry
Some thoughts on LONG term digital archiving
Why no 1080p24 in HDV or DVCPRO-HD - (although this has changed with upcoming cameras due later this year)
Backup strategies & risk analysis for HD quantities of data - geeky headline, extremely important topic
Quick tidbit - backup blues - an adjunct to that one
Thoughts on mobile editing with FCP HD -- go lite or go HEAVY
article on HD monitoring
Some more thoughts on backups
Thoughts on RAID Level 0
Why Final Cut Pro HD is so important
some non-definitive thoughts on Avid vs. FCP HD
DIY HD posting idea: Can't afford to buy? Rent, or buy then sell
HD Labs Report #1: SATA storage for uncompressed HD
Niche Topic: Shooting stop motion? Forget video camera, use digital still camera - also applies to time lapse

YES, I should have made all of the above links. Sorry, would take too long. Maybe in the pay version. ; p

-mike

Column from PC Magazine: Mac-Intel Aftermath

This is the kind of crap that makes me seethe. Dvorak basically postulates that Apple will promptly (well, in a year or two) release OS X for Intel for generic hardware, thinking that'll be a good idea. He then states that OS X on Intel will be victim to the same kinds of viruses/malware/spyware that Windows boxes are.

Insert the Charlie Brown yell when Lucy pulls away the football. Nah, that ain't right - because Charlie Brown was mad at getting duped, and that doesn't fit right now. More like the Sarge yelling at Gomer Pyle for his stupidity.

My response to Dvorak, as posted as a comment on the site:

I usually can't stand commenters that start off bashing the author, but I couldn't help myself with the message subject above.

1.) ALL existing viruses/spyware take advantage of the Microsoft operating system, NOT the Intel hardware. Macs will be JUST AS EXACTLY IMMUNE to existing spyware as the PowerPC current version. The only way spyware could become a problem on Intel based Macs is if Macs become popular enough that virus/spyware writers started authoring spyware/malware for OS X on Intel. Just because new OS X runs on Intel doesn't offer any new vulnerabilities.

2.) Technical possibility does not equal business opportunity. If (massive if) Apple were to release OS X for generic PC hardware, they'd have to support a much much wider user base - essentially the same hardware base as Microsoft does. Except that Apple would have to do so with it's much smaller QA budget. They'd have to sell it for MORE than Windows, since even with millions of sales, they'd have to cover hardware support issues for a much broader range of hardware. Keep in mind, they presently sell the current OS, for the very limited number of supported machines (a few dozen models going back a very few years, with it's very tightly controlled hardware support, right?) for $129 a copy.

3.) If they did sell 10 million copies for $100 apiece in the first year, that would be 10M*$100M = 1 billion dollars. Yes, that sounds like a lot of money...woops, that'd be 8 or 10% of Apple's annual income. How much money does Apple make from hardware sales, and how much of their anticipated $2.25B annual profit is represented in hardware sales? I don't know, but I don't think unbundling OS X for generic hardware is going to be the answer anytime soon.

I'd be very interested in seeing what the crossover point would have to be to make OS X worth switching over to software only. Y units of software only OS X vs. Z units of Macs sold with OS X installed. At the beginning, PC folks would be cautious, and the existing Mac folks would continue buying Mac hardware for the most part, and defecting to generic hardware in increasing numbers. I could see Apple branded Mac hardware sinking to 10-30% of overall OS X running hardware sold. How many software only OS X sales equals how many iMac/Mini/PowerMac sales in the overall sales mix? When Y factor greater than Z factor, then Apple will make the switch (or when they trust that it'll get there.) But NOT until.

4.) And if they did offer software only OS X, Apple would be losing two key advantages: control over hardware that is key to Apple's favorable ease of use & integration; and secondly if they looked to make OS X an OS for seriously widespread use, they'd be inviting the malware/spyware/virus crowd to start developing for OS X, since there would be numbers to justify it. Dvorak does have a point - Apple could sell the OS independently but won't until it makes sense (don't be OS/2!), and malware could be a problem in the future on OS X - but ONLY if new evil stuff gets written for OS X - NONE of the current Bad Things will run on OS X on Intel. From that perspective, it's useful for Apple to stay as a small percentage of the installed desktop - no incentive for evilware folks to develop for it - not to mention that the OS in general, with it's Unix basis, is not as vulnerable as Windows is.

Get your ducks in a row, Dvorak. They're scattered all over the pond.

-mike

Accelerate Your Macintosh! News Page - 6/13/05 - there is a new ROM (v109) availble for X800 cards, it helps with high end apps (Modo/Maya/Lightwave). If you're running OK now, probably shouldn't update. Read linked article for details.

Automatic Duck, Inc.

From their site:
Automatic Duck has heard reports from some early adopters that at least some of our products have problems in Final Cut Pro 5.0. Turns out that if one of our plug-ins is installed in FCP 5, no other third-party plug-ins will appear in Final Cut. This appears to affect things like DeckLink and AJA cards too.

We are on the case and working closely with Apple to resolve the issue.

If you are not already on our mailing list, subcribe using the subscribe form on the right and we'll let you know when all of our plug-ins support FCP 5.

The DV Show...Podcasting the Ins and Outs of Digital Video is a weekly podcast (MP3 you can listen to on computer or download to iPod/MP3 player) about desktop video editing and production. This week, I'm in there as they talk about the move to Intel from PowerPC. The coverage on the Intel switch starts around 12 min 45 sec into the podcast. I start in a little before 14 minutes. I state that PowerPC software will be available for 3 to 5 years, I meant to say for at least 3 to 5 years of high end software will definitely be available for PowerPC AFTER the switch. I'm done by about 19:45, about about 5 minutes of coverage on that issue. There's also a good segment on the podcast on underwater digital video shooting at the beginning of the show that is probably of interest to my readership as well.

The show is a mix of hobbyist/pro info, but is a fun listen, good driving to work stuff if you have an iPod.

-mike

As usual, the Philadelphia Final Cut Pro User Group site has a bunch of good info on it:

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Audio from Final Cut Pro 5 goes offline after processing in Soundtrack Pro: "Audio from Final Cut Pro 5 goes offline after processing in Soundtrack Pro: 'Audio sent from Final Cut Pro 5 to the Soundtrack Pro audio Waveform Editor may go offline in Final Cut Pro after you finish editing or processing the audio clip. If this happens, you will need to reconnect the media in Final Cut Pro. Please see the Final Cut Pro User's Guide for more information on reconnecting disconnected media.'"

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Final Cut Pro 5: About the Shift Fields filter: "Final Cut Pro 5: About the Shift Fields filter: 'Final Cut Pro 5 features a new filter called Shift Fields. You may have noticed that this filter sometimes gets applied to your clips automatically. This happens when you mix video from different sources into a sequence (known as a mixed-format sequence); the Shift Fields filter will automatically adjust the field dominance so that all clips are uniform.'"

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Apple Pro Training Final Cut Studio Tutorial overview: "Apple Pro Training Final Cut Studio Tutorial overview: 'Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro 5, DVD Studio Pro 4, Soundtrack Pro, and Motion 2 all come with two DVDs%u2014the Apple Pro Training Final Cut Studio DVD Tutorial and Apple Pro Training Final Cut Studio Tutorials%u2014that are filled with beginning and advanced tutorials and training lessons to help you learn more about the applications. Here's a look at what each DVD offers."

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Final Cut Pro 5 : Capturing HDV creates new clips at scene breaks: "Final Cut Pro 5 : Capturing HDV creates new clips at scene breaks: 'When you capture HDV footage, Final Cut Pro can automatically create new clips and corresponding media files each time it detects a scene or timecode break. This behavior is slightly different from the way it handles DV footage'"

Asigra Announces First Agentless Backup and Recovery for Apple Macintosh OS X Systems - this is deep geek, and may be more for my own notes than general usefulness. But these folks are claiming to have an agentless cross platform backup solution with bandwidth controls. What this means is that you don't have to have special software on each machine you want backed up; and you can allocate how much of your network bandwidth it's allowed to use. They specifically mention the video market. Anyway, a possible contender for good backup solution when this ships end of year.

-mike

(( Austin Film Festival )) Competition ) Trailer - a great local film festival that is very writer centric is the Austin Film Festival, coming up in late October, that is an excellent counterpoint to spring's SXSW Film Festival.

Trailer Competition Winners will receive:

Screenings of their Trailer before films during the 2005 Austin Film Festival October 20-27
Four film passes for the 2005 Austin Film Festival
Their Trailer featured in the 2004 AFF Program Book
Four All-Access Producers Passes to the 2005 Austin Film Festival, which provide admission to all panels, October 20-23, all films October 20-27, invitations to the Opening Night Premiere and Reception at the historic Paramount Theatre, invitations to the Filmmakers Happy Hour, and invitations to the Governor's Mansion BBQ (total value: $2,600).
A release print of the trailer on 35mm film from DVFilm
A viewing film industry audience of more than 4,000 people


This is a perfect excuse/opportunity to make something fun with your new HD camera and Final Cut Pro. While submissions have to be delivered as a standard VHS or DVD, winners can submit an HD version on disk/DVD-R for the final filmout.

If you have a hankering to try a little test project in HD, why not make it one of these, and win something too?

-mike

The Shape of Days: Mac OS X on Intel: Try before you buy?: "This is the most awe-inspiring stealth marketing move I've ever seen." - every kid with a cable modem will be able to run OS X 10.4.1, with iLife 05, on their PC.

Dell 2405FPW 24" widescreen LCD for $959 - dealnews.com

Good until Monday, so act quick. YES, this is the one I've been having trouble with, but it's still a good deal.

-mike

MacSlash | Whither Metrowerks? - Metrowerks' CodeWarrior has been a very popular tool to develop Mac applications with for years. So why aren't we hearing about them? Why did Steve Jobs say that the first step for Metrowerks projects was to port it, rather than wait for a new version?

Because Metrowerks is owned by Freescale. Who are they? I've heard of them, right? Yeah - they're the microprocessor division of Motorola. And since Motorola was only making chips for eMacs, Minis, and portables until IBM could deliver cheap, low power versions of G5 chips for those applications, Motorola has zero incentive to stay in the Mac development game long term. So they won't, so Metrowerks is a dwindling development environment. They'll continue to sell it, and it'll be possible to develop PowerPC apps for some time with it, but in short they're out of the game for ALL of the kinds of high powered applications you (HD editing readership) are interested in.

-mike

What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance - New York Times: In the end, Mr. Jobs was given no choice but to move his business to Intel, when I.B.M. executives said that without additional Apple investment they were unwilling to pursue the faster and lower-power chips he badly needs for his laptop business.'Technical issues were secondary to the business issues,' said an executive close to the I.B.M. side of the negotiations. Because the business was not profitable, I.B.M. 'decided not to continue to go ahead with the product road map.'

Mr. Kutaragi (of Sony) tried to interest Mr. Jobs in adopting the Cell chip, which is being developed by I.B.M. for use in the coming PlayStation 3, in exchange for access to certain Sony technologies. Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.



Interesting read with some new tidbits.

-mike

HDBlog.net - Blu-ray Camp Announces their Own Writable Format

Using spin coating rather than film coating, Pioneer & Mitsubishi say they've cut the price of BD-R (Blu-Ray Disc wRiteable) to 1/9th of the previous costs.

-mike

MacNN | Apple Xsan 1.1 update adds 64-bit support: Using Fibre Channel multipathing -- in which two Fibre Channel cables connect a computer to the SAN -- an Xsan client can theoretically achieve throughput of up to 400MBps.

I don't know if this is a new feature of v1.1 or if it's been there all along (I