HD For Indies

CinemaTech: The DGA's Digital Day

Coverage of the Director's Guild of America's Digital Day.

LOTS of good stuff, read his synopsis then the full article if you want more. He has lots of good quotes etc.

-mike

Macworld UK - Be begins 24Mb London broadband trial

A UK firm is doing trial runs with new subscribers for a 24 megabit/second (that's 3 megabytes per second, just barely shy of a realtime HDV stream) down, but only 1 Mb/sec upstream (so 0.125 MB/sec uploading) broadband system based on ADSL2+.

And just 20 pounds a month.

Still, promising for the future of digital movie downloads and other broadband applications.

-mike

CinemaTech: Videogame / Movie Convergence

Another great link - this time to an article about how LucasArts (George Lucas' game division) and ILM (the visual effects folks) are sharing resources and techniques in their new common space in San Francisco.

Chief among them - using the realtime engine from gaming stuff to hand directors a previs (short for previsualization) tool - move the camera around the scene in real time, record camera lense choices, settings, and moves, and be able to hand off that data, rather than pre-rendered scenes, to the VFX crew. So instead of "here's a little movie that looks like what I want, reverse engineer it to make your finals", it is "Here's some scene and camera data with an animated camera path. Plug that in as a starter kit for the shot."

Very very cool.

Read Scott's thing, then go read the article. All good.

ILM is at the forefront of digital moviemaking technology in a lot of ways, I'd expect for someone to have some kind of indie viable software available over the counter in 3-8 years based on this kind of stuff.

It all trickles down.

-mike

OK, gang, I finally have some critical research to share -

As we prep, I have his 19" JVC studio HD monitor in my studio at the moment.

So I FINALLY have a "real" broadcast monitor to compare to the other offerings.

I set up a quickie interesting test yesterday to view the same HD signal in several different ways. I have a DeckLink HD Pro Dual Link card in my dual 2.5 GHz G5. When working in 4:2:2 mode (normal video), EACH of the two HD-SDI outputs both output an HD signal. So I can run two individual HD-SDI cables to two different HD-SDI sources. In this case, I'm running one to a BlackMagic HDLink plugged into an Apple 23" LCD display (1920x1200), and the other to an AJA HDP converter connected to my Dell 2405 24" 1920x1200 LCD panel. I can also see the footage onscreen on my computer.

And guess what, folks? They ALL look dramatically different. So which is right? The JVC CRT monitor is what is typically used to color correct footage, so that is our reference (even though I have yet to calibrate it, which I will shortly).

The HDLink/Apple setup is, by default, too bright. Dropping it to minimal brightness gets it closer, but not the same. The Apple is pinker than the CRT (I hear newer Apple 23's, even of the same aluminum frame vintage, are more yellow than pink after a manufacturing change).

The AJA/Dell combo is even brighter - I have yet to dial it in at all, so I'll justg say it is really, really bright for now.

The onscreen (computer) display is pretty bright in comparison as well.

The biggest difference I notice on the CRT is how much more rich and saturated the colors are as compared to the LCDs.

I have yet to plug the Dell LCD's analog inputs to compare, but I imagine I'll face similar issues there.

This is just a quick, uncalibrated, not too scientific look at it.

But in general, the LCDs are not a dead-on match for the CRT, ESPECIALLY using the default setups.

I'll see how close I can tune them to the CRT once the CRT gets calibrated.

But good stuff for comparison's sake.

-mike

HDTVexpert :: HDTVexpert: A FOLLOW-UP (on the 1080p HDTV article)

Last month's article on 1080p HDTVs was interesting, and he follows it up with some audience Q&A.

A good read to understand the consumer side of things.

All of this leads me to a couple of conclusions (for now):

1.) Most consumers can't afford a big enough HDTV to see all the benefit of the HD-ness -- that is, they can't afford a big enough HDTV to resolve all (or enough) of the detail at the typical viewing distances. I'm sitting about 8 or more feet away from a 36" SDTV. If I had a same sized HDTV in there, could I eyeball the difference? Enough to cost justify it?

2.) I think HDTV's rollout will continue to be slow. I think there will be a tipping point when 42" or larger HDTVs, with at least 1280x720 resolution, get below $1000, AND there is a clear winner in the Blu Ray vs HD DVD format war, AND players for that winning format are $200 or less.

...and I think that'll take 3-5 years.

This also makes me think that 720p as an acquisition format, for projects intended for home viewing, is not a serious detriment as compared to 1080p or 1080i - since most home viewers won't be able to discern the difference on their sets as they watch from their couch.

Visual effects production, projects intended for theatrical viewing, limitations of current 720p systems all affect the validity of the statement I just made, but in general I think it'll apply.

-mike

TECHNOLOGY CORNER - The elusive film look

Argues that HD video cameras can capture a film like exposure lattitude (well, I'd argue HOW well it does that), but more interestingly discusses the how and why of skin tone reproduction in film vs video. It discusses WHY skin tones look harsh in video and less so in film. So this gives some clues as to how to improve skin tones in video.

Anyway, an interesting read for the DoP and post production set.

-mike

AJW's HDV Info: 1080i Monitoring with HP (and other) LCDs

Adam Wilt has a nice write up on the HP & Dell 1920x1200 pixel monitors and how they work for HD image viewing.

Some good detailed info on how to use an LCD panel to watch your 1080p or 1080i video.

-mike

MacNN | G-Tech unveils quad-interface G-DRIVE

This is cool - USB 2.0, FireWire 400/800, and now eSATA all on one external drive. Groovy!

G-Tech makes really nice stuff, very solid.

-mike

DigitalProducer.com has a review of Sony Vegas 6. The author is already a fan of the software, so it is a largely positive review.

HDV is now supported, but is transoded using the Cineform codec and software. Cineform uses a wavelet based codec to convert the native HDV into their codec for all usage - playback, effects rendering, everything. So HDV is supported, but it is not natively supported.

Nested projects, new media manager, support for VST plugins, 60i to 24p conversion, support for DeckLink SD & HD hardware, and other new features are discussed.

Vegas is a pretty solid little editing app. I wish it edited HDV natively, but it doesn't, so that's that. But for folks on the PC side wanting a reasonably priced editor, this is pretty good.

It's primary competitor, Adobe's Premiere Pro, offers copy & paste integration with After Effects, an excellent motion graphics/compositing program. Integration with AE is a big deal - After Effects is a powerful program, I made my living based on it for a good 6 or 7 years.

Avid also technically competes in this arena, but Vegas' bang for the buck is tough to beat at this price point.

One of my main concerns with Vegas would be its ability to offline for online elsewhere - Avid projects hand up to higher end Avid products pretty seamlessly, and Final Cut has all kinds of exporting capabilities for EDL, XML, After Effects and Final Touch SD/HD integration.

I just don't know what all Vegas will hook into (and maybe it tells us in the article, I didn't have time but for a quick skim).

But if you're working in the Wintel world and on a tight budget, Vegas should definitely be on your short list of editing applications.

-mike

CinemaTech: An update on d cinema in the UK

...and along the lines of changing ways of movies being seen, here's an update on D Cinema in the UK.


-mike

CinemaTech: Stats on high-end theaters

Scott over at Cinema Tech reports on a Time article, and pulls some interesting stats:

In a down market, the boutique theater chain Muvico, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., company with 12 theaters in three states, has managed to boost attendance 2% this year. National Amusements, run by Viacom heir apparent Shari Redstone, is expanding its upscale Cinema de Lux brand of theaters, which sells 35% more tickets per theater than its sibling brands. At Pacific Theatre Co.'s swinging ArcLight Cinemas in Los Angeles, attendance has swelled 25% over the past two years.


Why am I blogging this? Because I see a change coming in the way movies are going to be watched over the next 10+ years. It's starting now - attendance at regular theaters is down, home theaters with big screens and DVD players are providing competition to going out to a movie theater (at least for the non-teenaged set that wants out of the house), cable and HDTV content are offering more compelling options for our leisure dollars, and especially our time.

Elsewhere in the article:

"It's counterintuitive--if attendance is down, why would you invest more in a theater?--but this template is one that is working."

...and that makes sense to me. If movie theaters are losing out to a better home experience, the fix is NOT to drop the price and amenities to make going out cheaper, but to compete head-on with the at-home experience....by making the going out epxerience NICER than staying at home.

If you have a big screen and comfy, sprawling couch at home, why not offfer a bigger screen, and at least a comfy, sprawling chair for going out?

If you have a fridge of beer and snacks at home, why not offer a full restaurant menu and full bar and waiters at the theater?

Compete by making the going out experience BETTER than home. THAT'S how to win.

(And that's why I love the Austin based Alamo Drafthouse chain so much - I have beer, pizza, wine, salads, waiters, etc. 5 minutes away from my house with a screen arguably wider than my house is long.)

: )

-mike

Cory Doctorow: Microsoft Research DRM talk

OK, this is a fun read for Freedom Phreaks like me. It talks about why DRM (Digital Rights Management) will be a Bad Business Decision.

It points out that only the movie industry thinks that they are so special that they feel they should have the right to disable your information reading device - after the sale.

I could get all wound up and screaming here, but Cory does it in a nice, patient, explanatory way.

DRM is bad.

-mike

Sharp Ships PN-455 Pro 1920x1080 LCD Monitor

Full 1920x1080 resolution LCD monitor, $9595 list, aboutg $6300 online (Google it). My dream wall display....

-mike

Cinema Minima PODCAST - Cyndi Greening & Mike Curtis on DV/HDV for Indies (Part 2 of 2)

Part 2 of our loooong conversation (mostly me technobabbling) is up and ready for download.

From Cyndi's ever-so-patient breakdown of what we discussed:

Post Production Color Correction Partnership using Final Touch HD

Understanding DV/HDV Compression
Uncompressed image data possible is 240 MB/sec
HDCAM tape formats compress data to about 20 MB/sec
HDV camera data is compressed to 3MB/sec

Can't color correct what was never captured and/or saved

Understanding compression nomenclature (e.g. 4:4:4 vs. 4:1:0)

Brightness and Color, Chrominance and Luminance, YUV, RGB
(for each four consecutive pixels, the compression algorithm uses
the first value to determine how many pixels to capture the brightness value and the next two values for how many pixels of color)

HDCamSR (can) capture 4:4:4 (as well as 4:2:2)
DigiBeta and DVCProHD captures 4:2:2
DV captures 4:1:1
DVD displays and HDV captures 4:2:0 (which isn%u2019t really 0, its on every other interlaced line)

Impact of compression on GreenScreen projects

Panasonic SDX900 sometimes called the 'Poor Man's DigiBeta'

Digital Cinema Initiative (studio) consortium agreements on digital projection and distribution

Projection Options:
2K size 2048x1080; 4K size 4096x2160;
CIE XYZ color space, frame rate, 12bit per channel format
Security issues to avoid copying
Nothing for an Indie Producer to worry about producing themselves for about a decade; distributor or studio will pay for enlargement/conversion

Digital projectors not an advantage for theater owners under current leasing plan

Danger of dark screens because of technical problems and/or security issues

Macintosh conversion to Intel Processors; possibly PC Express, quad processors

How he came to work in HD

Future SXSW Panel Discussion; HD/DV Camera Shoot Out

Direct to Disk Recording to Gain Resolution and 10 Bit per Channel color

AfterEffects vs. Shake vs. Real Time Color Correction with Final Touch HD

Stay tuned! Read the HD for Indies FAQ for more information!

Got this as a comment on the blog today:

Why would Apple wait to roll out high-end Intel Macs? Intel just announced new processors: 64-bit, increasing numbers of cores. If they'd stop gouging for multiprocessing, there's no reason that a dual-dual Intel Mac couldn't be available in 2006


...which is an entirely valid question to ask.

Here's some answers as I perceive it:

1.) OK, so imagine if Apple released a dual dual (two chips each with dual core CPUs) Intel box in January, 2006: what would you run on it? The high end apps that could take advantage of it: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, Maya, Shake, etc. - probably won't be ready at that time. And if they were rushed to be ready, how optimized would they be for the new platform?

2.) Apple has some nice hardware in the pipeline - the dual core, PCI Express Macs that I suspect (but don't have proof) will be announced this month should offer a speed increase. And if they ARE twin dual core models, they could offer a SUBSTANTIAL speed increase - possibly offering twice the performance in real world usage as compared to today's high end offerings. Perhaps, looking at the roadmaps of the two CPUs - one G5 based, one Intel based - there was a logical crossover point at which the Intel roadmap started to really (moreso than today) kick butt over the G5.

3.) There may be some logic to a careful transition also - by starting with the lower end products, where speed is less mission critical (laptops, consumer minis & iMacs), Apple can adapt to the new platform at an easier pace. To roll out the top end machines first might be to invite the transitional difficulties on your pickiest clients - not a recipe for good PR. While the high end folks might clamor for the high end hardware first, it might not be in anybody's interest to rush this gear out to them first. Is this fobbing problems off on consumers? Not quite - consumers are less likely to be picky about things like bus transfer speeds etc. than the high end folks.

So in the meantime, I think it makes sense for Apple to stay on IBM at the moment - until both the hardware and software are out there, Intel based Macs do no good for the high end users.

-mike

First Impressions on JVC HD-100U Camera

They got theirs and started to play with it.

They thought the honest 24p mode of this camera looked better than the CineFrame on the Sony HDV cameras, but the Sony cameras did better in low light. No full auto more - "This is not the type of camera you can hand to a novice, tell them to
keep it in Auto, and have them produce good results. You got to know what you're doing to use this camera."

Lots more observations and details in their write up.

Looks promising as a camera. But you'll have to get some extra software to get that 24p goodness into FCP - 720p24 is NOT innately supported in Final Cut Pro. Lumiere HD was showing some stuff at NAB to get it into FCP, however, so I'm looking forward to that.

-mike

Cinema Minima PODCAST - Cyndi Greening & Mike Curtis on DV/HDV for Indies (Part 1 of 2)

Cyndi has posted up the first part of our long interview from yesterday as a podcast.

From her breakdown/description of what we covered:

Various Flavors of HD
Various Resolutions of HD
720p = 1280x720
1080i or 1080p = 1920x1080
Currently, Panasonic Varicam Camera very popular 720p camera
Progressive versus Interlaced
(p) = Progressive; whole frame at once, more like film
(i) = Interlaced; every other line, traditionally for broadcast video
Early Canon XL2 and Sony DVX100A conversions from 30i to 24p possible but lossy
Also, other considerations must be in place, cannot change frame rate and so on
As an independent filmmaker, where to begin thinking?

Where do you want to go with this? What do you want for a deliverable?
Sony HDR-FX1 and Sony HVR-Z1U reasonably priced cameras for independent filmmakers
HVR-Z1U offers better controls and better inputs (XLR for audio) and better post-production options like true timecode.
Also, HVR-Z1U records at both 50i (interlaced) PAL and 60i NTSC frames per second allowing for PAL interlaced recording, converted to 24 progressive with a slight speed change
Comparison between higher end Sony F900 ($100,000 camera) and inexpensive camera; sensor, lenses, recording formats, latitude and sensivity
Discussion about Panasonic SDX900, larger sensor, 24p, better light latitude, uses DVCPro50
In Mike’s opinion, the best low budget cameras:
Sony PD170, Sony PD150
Canon XL2
Panasonic DVX 100A
HD for Indies Five Camera Shoot and Comments & Pictures
Post Production Tools for DV and HDV
Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, AVID and AVID Express editing
AJ and Black Magic DV input cards
F900 camera editing challenges because of cost of converting HDCAM to DV
Challenges with FAST storage
Right Camera, Right Editing System, Final Deliverable

American Cinematographer article on color space issues. Part 1 is a lengthy history of color reproduction and technology throughout the last century or so. The last few pages are the good stuff to my mind.

Part 2 is where things get really interesting, and starts talking about how film works with light, where gamma comes from, how camera negatives, interpositives, internegatives, print stock all interact, etc. Really, really good stuff.

If you want to start to understand how digital intermediates, film, and digital all work together, this is a great, GREAT article.

Some juicy geeky bits:

Let’s begin with analog camera negative as the recording medium. As of now, there is no proven digital equal to the dynamic range of camera negative. The negative records as close to an actual representation of the scene we place before it as the emulsion allows, but it is not necessarily how we see things. Film does not take into account differences in human perception, nor our eyes’ ability to adjust white point, as discussed in Part One of this article.

....

Negative film is not tasked with having to display the recorded image. To do so, the negative must be directly printed onto positive print film or, for releasing large numbers of prints, go through the intermediate photochemical processes of creating an interpositive (IP) and then mulitple internegatives (INs). A check print is made from the IN, and then the images found on the original camera negative finally can be displayed. Print film does not reproduce everything that was recorded on the negative. “The purpose of the negative is to capture a virtual scene,” says Kodak image scientist Douglas Walker, “but there is no practical way to reproduce those same luminance ratios. A scene can have a dynamic range of 100,000:1 or 1,000,000:1, and it would be cost-prohibitive to try to reproduce that in every theater. So you need a way of creating a rendition of the scene that is convincing, yet more practical to re-create. The purpose of print film is to do just that.”

....

The sensitometric curve of print film is much steeper than that of negative film. Just compare gammas: .6 for negative vs. 2.6 or more for print. As a result, highlights and shadows compress in the toe and shoulder of the print stock, respectively (see diagram a, diagram b and diagram c). “This is kind of the ‘film look,’” says Technology Committee chair Curtis Clark, ASC, “which still has gradation in the shoulder and toe, whereas with video it just clips. That’s something I think we have grown accustomed to culturally and aesthetically as well — having that ability to see particularly in the highlights and shadows because there are vital nuances and details there.”

....

Scanning at 2K resolution has been the most popular and feasible. A true 2K frame is 2048x1556x4 or 12,746,752 bytes in file size. (It is x4 because the three Cineon 10-bit RGB components that equal 30 bits are packed into 32 bits, which is 4 bytes. Two bits are wasted.) 4K 4096x3112 is fast becoming viable as storage costs drop and processing and transport speeds escalate. Spider-Man 2 (AC July ’04) was the first feature to undergo a 4K scan and 4K finish. Bill Pope, ASC screened for director Sam Raimi, the editors and the producers a series of 2K and 4K resolution tests, and all preferred the 4K input/output. The perceived improvement in resolution is that obvious. Beginning with 6K, that perception starts to wane for some people. There are scanners on the market that can scan a frame of film at 10K resolution. But scanning an entire movie at 10K right now is as rapid as using the Pony Express to send your mail. The ideal scanning resolution is still a topic for debate, though 8K is favored by many. “In order to achieve a limiting resolution digitally of what film is capable at aspect ratio, you really need to scan the full frame 8000 by 6000 to get a satisfactory aliasing ratio of about 10 percent,” says Research Fellow Roger Morton, who recently retired from Kodak. Limiting resolution is the finest detail that can be observed when a display system is given a full-modulation input.

....

“Pandora’s Box is open,” says David Stump, ASC, chair of the Digital Camera subcommittee. “The future is going to be digital somehow, some way, and will at least include a hybrid of film and digital cameras. However, there is no reason to give up a perfectly good toolset for one that does less. As a cinematographer, you can always raise an eyebrow by suggesting compression. The bad kinds of compression create sampling errors and the okay compressions use a little less disk or tape space.”

....

If compression is necessary, it is best to apply it as close to the last stage of the workflow as possible. Remarks Kennel, “From an image-quality standpoint, it’s risky to apply compression up front in the process, whether it’s in the camera footage or in the image being used in the visual effects compositing process. It’s better to stay with the whole content of the image while you are twisting, stretching, color correcting and manipulating the image. If you apply compression up front and you decide to stretch the contrast or bring detail out of the black during a color-correction session, you may start seeing artifacts that weren’t visible in the original image. I think compression is a good enabler and cost reducer on the distribution side, just not a good thing up front.”


...which is why, if you are going to shoot on HDV, you better get it as close to final look as possible in camera on set - since twisting the color later is likely to bring out artifacts. (Mike's Note)


“Every transfer from one color space to another color space, even if it’s the same color space, runs risks of sampling errors,” says Stump. “By re-sampling to any other color space, especially a smaller space, you can concatenate (link together) errors into your data that then cannot be reversed. They cannot be corrected by expanding that data back into a bigger color space. Some people will argue that you can correct the errors using large mathematical formulas, but I don’t think that is error correction. I think that is error masking. That’s a lot of work to correct an error that didn’t have to be created in the first place. On the Cinematographers Mailing List, I read something that was well said: ‘You should aspire to the highest-quality acquisition that you can afford.’ There are numerous hidden pitfalls in post.”

....

I’m probably not going out on a limb by saying that image quality on earlier 1K projectors was lwss than ideal — low contrast, obvious low resolution, a visible screen-door effect from the fixed matrix, and annoying background crawl on panning shots. The consensus on the 2K DLP projectors of today is that sequential contrast, roughly 1,800:1 (D-ILA has less) in a typical viewing environment, is approaching the appearance of a Kodak Vision release print. Vision print stock actually has a density contrast ratio of 8,000:1, or 13 stops, but the projection booth’s port glass, ambient light and light scatter caused by reflection reduce it to a little over 2,000:1. The more expensive Vision Premier print stock has a contrast ratio of about 250,000:1, or 18 stops to the power of 2. (Humans can distinguish 30 stops.)

Geeks, read this. Excuse me - Read This. Obey!

-emperor mikey, after watching "Rome" on HBO tonight

DMN Interview: Martin Bock, CEO of Medea:

Somewhat interesting article discussing storage and HD. Salient quote:

DMN: Is the move to HD accelerating now?

Bock: Both from a production standpoint as well as a broadcast standpoint, the answer is yes. It won't be long before the viewer at home will not be satisfied with anything but HD content. Obviously, given the choice he will want higher resolution. For this reason, the content must be developed in HD now, or it will be dated. The cost to deliver all HD to the consumer at home, however, will be driven by the delivery cost. This is in the process of maturing, but it is under way. We see the demand for storage support for HD broadcast rising rapidly today.


...what I've been advocating all along.

King Kong vs. the Pirates of the Multiplex - New York Times

NYTimes article on movie piracy.

Interesting to note that the studios netted $84 billion last year, and claims a $3 billion loss from bootleg DVDs. Then they say 6 of 10 movies lose money...and its the bootleggers and movie downloaders fault?

I don't think so.

Most folks that don't see movies in the theaters are content to wait for the DVDs.

That and the lame Hollywood fare is probably what is why sales are down.

Blah. Anyway, a good read.

-mike

Funky control surface - for Windows systems only - FresHDV writes a bit about this cool new gadget:

It's a "gamers keyboard/input device" with keys that can be stuck anywhere on a graphics-tablet-like base. The keys actually stick...they have a special mechanical adhesive on the bottoms, using the same technique that a Gecko uses to climb a seemingly flat surface. They stick tight anywhere on the pad, but remove with a twist. Keys are wireless and are powered by inductive coupling power.

"The Cave" CG effects done on Macs - Yahoo! News

A little blatant Mac plugging - they used Shake, Maya, and other Mac based tools to do set extensions and creature animation for The Cave, which I saw on Friday night (OK film, decent effects execution, wait for the DVD).

-mike

MacInTouch has a user comment about a concerning glitch copying large files to FireWire drives - when copying files over 1GB to a FireWire drive, they are not identical matches. Something to keep track of.

-mike

FresHDV | Recent surveys point to slow consumer adoption of High Def DVD formats.

Normally I try to avoid posting links to links to articles, but one of my new sites of interest is FresHDV.com. He's covering a lot of stuff I'm interested in.

He's got a story with links to two different articles about slow uptake of high def DVD players and burners.

Bummer.

-mike

JVC GY-HD100 24p Footage available for download

Not by me - from the folks over at DVXuser.com.

Some clips with explanations about them. NOT professionally shot, so keep that in mind. But a place to see some footage.

-mike

Scott Kirsner over at Cinema Tech was talking about larger films using blogs and video blog (vlogging, vodcasting) entries to drum up interest in their productions. Along the way, he mentions both King Kong and SuperMan Returns and their vlogs.

One of the entries concerns screening Panavision Genesis footage and the workflow involved, and the delays in their post production pipeline.

An interesting thing to watch, and see the realities of production with this newer kind of gear.

-mike

Studios Mull Changes to Movie 'Windows' - Yahoo! News

It is interesting to hear Robert Iger, the CEO-elect of Disney, talking about the possibility of releasing DVDs on the same day a movie hits theaters.

Of course, the theater industry loathes and fears this idea.


Before Iger's remarks, studio executives spoke of releasing DVDs simultaneous with a theatrical run only in the context of fighting piracy. Many studios are already premiering films around the world on the same date to undercut pirates who distribute illegal copies of films in China, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.


I think it's coming. I don't know when, but it'll be interesting to see.

How exactly will this affect indie producers? Will it be better or worse for them? I'm not sure. Have an opinion on this? Chime in on the Comments section, link immediately below.

-mike

TV Technology has this article on real world HDV usage.

Some good quotes:

So although the 25 Mbps of HDV is sufficient for acquisition, the artifacts from elaborate blurs and dissolves gained while editing on an HDV timeline can sometimes be too much.

Mike's note - this is why editing uncompressed pays off

"We have a highly tricked-out system to work on," he said, "and even using the 1080i/60 rate for improved graphics, it's as easy as cutting DV."

"I own 15 $100,000 cameras, so I am not all that happy that now I have a $4,000 camera that can sometimes compete with them. It all goes back to what you are shooting. If I'm at a rock concert getting a low-angle shot of the kick drum, HDV is fine. I might want the bigger cameras for the glamour close-up of the lead singer, though."

A good little read for those thinking about producing HD content using HDV cameras.

-mike

Intel's CPU roadmap for 2006 | MacMegasite

OK, still catching up - Intel revealed their CPU roadmap for 2006. Since 2006 will be the first year of transition for Macs from IBM/Freescale (used to be Motorola) chips to Intel CPU chips, this starts giving us clues as to where Macs will go.

For instance, I'd expect some of the first Intel based Macs to be based on the Yonah CPU, and either be a portable or a mini.

I don't expect to see PowerMacs on Intel until sometime in 2007 based on what I've read so far.

If Apple announces dual core (possibly twin dual core, so four processors) with PCI Express at MacWorld Paris Expo next month, that'd be a great high horsepower machine to buy (assuming it all works OK) and use for a couple of years until the heavy duty Intel PowerMacs ship sometime in 2007.

-mike

I missed this one, it's from last month - but the ever helpful staff over at Sonnet let me know that they had posted some benchmark results from testing their latest 8 port eSATA card with both Raptor and 7200.8 drives. The Seagate 7200.8 drives are my current preferred drives for HD usage.

There are detailed instructions on how they tested, and several pages of graphs showing the kinds of read and write performance that can be expected from 1, 2, 4, and 8 drive arrays.

Also very handy are the charts showing array performance falloff as data is written towards the "end" of the array - as regular readers know, a drive's performance decreases as it starts to fill up or write towards the end of its capacity. These graphs show exactly what kind of read/write performance to expect at any given point in the drive.

This is very useful information for figuring out where, in an array, performance falls below what you need for your given usage (such as your frame size, rate, color space and bit depth).

Geeky, but very straightforward information and useful information.

-mike

CinemaTech: Box office skid: Due to smarter audiences?

As always, Scott Kirsner is catching intersting things from around the web.

Busy today, not much time for comment, just blogging in a hurry. But an interesting read.

Macworld: News: Rimage CD/DVD autoloaders get Mac software

Mac software for bulk DVD burners (as in, make stacks of them).

Not relevant for everyone, but got me thinking about self publishing some specialty DVDs for indie related topics.

-mike

I just spent an hour on the phone with Cyndi Greening of Cinema Minima.

She'll edit out my ums/errs/ahhs and wildly tangential geeking and have a podcast of it up for Monday or so I think.

As soon as she sends me the link, I'll post it up here.

We talked about camera formats, the DV revolution 2.0 (HDV), the DCI spec, post production issues, how to pick cameras, etc.

I also discused that I'm working on some training DVDs for indies - including a "special edition" that will be shot on HDV, edited in FCP, and authored to a DVD Studio Pro 4 high def DVD.

Hopefully we'll do another interview in a couple of weeks, and I'll have more to report.

-mike

Yesterday I sat down with a 20 year veteran colorist and we had a nice long conversation about potential workflows, business models, and ways to work together. More on that once things are nailed down, but I think it will lead eventualy to a service that I'll be offering to you folks (and other filmmakers, etc.).

We also sat down and worked with Final Touch HD some more, and as a longtime veteran DaVinci operator, he's excited about working with it, and familiar with the workflow, and expects it to meet his quality expectations. We're going to be working with a short film project I'd previously worked on in order to run through a full project and find all the hidden gotchas and quirks of the software and workflow.

I briefly posted an article about the RAID 10 (really, 0+1) capabilities of Tiger because I thought it didn't have any. Then I was corrected by an astute reader and pulled the article and did some more testing, which is looking promising. At last, at last, a way to have high speed, fault tolerant storage on the Mac for something like $2/GB. As in, fast enough for uncompressed HD work. More info on how to, and performance testing, coming up on that one.

I've already posted two articles I'd previously started on about What's Wrong With High Def DVDs and DRM etc. A day of pessimistic griping. I think the industry should change it's path, but I don't think they are going to. Which means a year or three of slow sales for the industry and sucky, expensive hardware for us. Poop.

-mike

Sony, Toshiba give up on unified DVD format-paper - Yahoo! News

Well, no surprise to any regular readers, but there will be no HD DVD and Blu Ray compromise format.

Since the two technologies relied on very different approaches to fitting more data on a disk, and adopting one or the other would have meant giving up on the basis of one side's technology, since so much of the data structure and formats were the same.

HD DVD is based on a physical media similar to today's CDs and DVDs, with the actual readable part of the disk 0.6mm under a protective plastic covering.

Blu Ray relies on a more tightly focused beam reading closer to the surface, just 0.1mm under the surface of the disc.

And never the twain shall meet.

If a compromise standard were to have been developed, it would be what, 0.35mm below the surface? A whole new round of R&D to perfect it. Not gonna happen.

So both sides apparently are preferring a format war that will stall the adoption rate of the technology.

Mix that with the fact that the physical DRM is so severe that the media won't play on the vast majority of the existing HDTVs, nor on ANY existing computer monitors (won't THAT be fun!), that I think these are niche formats at best, if not DOA.

And I hate to say that, because I think high def movies in the home are going to be (or could be) a great thing.

As I've said before, LaserDisc 2.0.

-mike

Got an email from SoftRAID about the latest version of their SoftRAID RAID formatting software (that I like, use & recommend):


The 3.2.1 release is a minor bug fix release. We fixed one problem that
could result in a kernel panic. We also fixed a problem where after
running Software Update to update the OS, sometimes SoftRAID could not
get the proper permission to run. We believe we have solved this problem.
We changed or added a couple dialog boxes to make it easier to use
SoftRAID, and improved some error messages.

There are no major driver changes in this release.

On Windows Vista, DRM, and new monitors

I've had this one floating around in my drafts folder for a while, so in the midst of testing I'll (finally) get it done.

Ars has a good article on what the digital rights management is likely to be in Windows Vista, the next generation operating system for the majority of computers in the world. I'd guess that in about 2 years this will be what ships on all new computers, so PC users will have to deal with this stuff.

The main sticking point from an HD perspective is this: the DRM (digital rights management) is so severely strict that if you want to watch a bought/rented high definition DVD, you won't be able to watch it on any currently shipping computer monitor. Why? Because the resolution of the screen isn't high enough? No. Because it isn't a digital flat panel? No. Because it won't have some extra hardware that verifies it is a secured, locked down, no passthrough device. They want to use DVI or HDMI (a similar plug) with HDCP (hardware device copy protection). If your monitor does NOT have this technology (and right now, there aren't any on the market as far as I can tell), you'll only be able to watch a downsampled, standard definition version of it. Since there are no present computer monitors with this hardware, if you ant to watch an HD movie, you'll have to buy a new monitor.

So I digress from here into more home theater issues, off topic from the article -

So this is a good article covering the issues, but it stops short of asking the logical follow up - if the studios are so hell bent on excluding virtually all known HD display hardware, don't you think consumers (both home and professional/business) are going to simply ignore it as not worth it? If you have to jump through so many hoops, both technological and financial, then why bother? The player costs more, there are fewer titles than regular DVD, high def DVDs cost more, and it doesn't work with your current receiver and/or HDTV. Uh huh. Pass.

There's the issue of playback on PCs and Macs impossible without buying costly new displays. Uhh,riiiiiiiiiight.

There's the very real issue that, for one reason or another, you might not be able to play back content that was legitimately purchased due to the severity of these DRM systems. Look at how well DRM is (OK isn't) working for downloadable music in the non-iTunes Windows world. Now factor in multiple hardware manufacturers assembling stuff from multiple vendors and trusting that it'll all work all the time OK together. Okey doke.

Home theater stuff is devilishly complicated enough as it is withOUT DRM issues - optical or coax digital audio? DTS, Dolby surround, or both? Surround, center, and subwoofer connections, oh my. Consumers are just getting used to this stuff enough to plug it in and get it to work, but now there will be an extra layer that INTENTIONALLY makes some stuff not work. Or just the fact that it is so complicated that regardless of whether you do or don't have the right parts, you plug it all in and can't understand all the hidden gotchas of the DRM stuff.

As I was writing this, I was thinking how nice it would be to have some kind of a configuration assistant - plug in a new device and it auto configures itself based on the capabilities and plugs involved. Instead, the industry is heading the opposite direction, making things even harder to work.

All the so-called "liberal" features of the new DRM -- check in/out, ability to make downrezzed copies to laptops, portable media players, move it on a home network, etc. - are likely just a smokescreen for the severity of these DRM scenarios. Those "ease of use" features are possibilities within the spec - but based on Hollywood's current behavior, do you really think they will all be enabled and/or permitted on titles?

Then, there are the two, incompatible disc formats, with both sides committed to promoting theirs over the other guys.

And finally, there's the issue that the general viewership doesn't care about HDTV, doesn't know what it is and/or can't tell when they are seeing HDTV or some 480P picture, anyway, much of the time, unless it's on a really huge front projection screen. The size and native resolution of an HDTV that most folks can afford presently, combined with the typical living room viewing distance, results in a "perceived quality" that won't be that much better than regular DVD on a nice TV.

Which leads me to a further statement -

Until prices drop to get LARGE screens (greater than 42") for $1000 or so, most folks are literally not going to be able to see the difference, or at least enough difference to justify the price.

Add all this up? It's a recipe for a complete disaster.

Unless there's some hidden benefit somewhere that hasn't been discussed, I see a coming fiasco for the industry trying to push it, and a big pass coming from consumers. LaserDisc 2.0.

Joe & Jane Consumer, who made Hollywood rich from DVD sales, won't buy into this expensive, confusing, and quite frankly insulting scenario.

As much as I want all this to work out, I don't think we're heading towards the optimistic future that I was hoping for.

If I'm not looking forward to buying a new HDTV with HDCP to replace my current set, who will? And I'm certainly not going to be buying two playback decks, one HD DVD and one Blu Ray, especially at the anticipated $500 to $1000 price tags. Maybe, maybe at $200-$250 apiece, if I didn't have to buy an HDCP equipped TV.

Harrumph. That's my pessimistic take on it for today.

-mike

SOME WORDS ON POWER INTEGRITY FROM THE FIELD, more specifically from the School of Lessons Hard Learned, aka

"Hey Kid, see this scar right here? Ya don't wanna do that."

or perhaps

"Maybe 41 hard drives is a bit much to have plugged in all right next to each other"

Woops, actually popped a circuit breaker for the first time in the studio doing testing tonight. The fans in the dual 2.5 were spooling up dramatically, then everything went dark. Schizen.

Fortunately, I have 5 UPS (uninterruptible power supply) devices in place, and they mostly worked. One died immediately, I had too much stuff plugged in or something. But all the others kept on goin', just beeping most plaintively at me, like angry giant chicks hungry for more.....and NOW. The most important reason why I run it worked - a RAID 5 (SyncRAID) was in the middle of copying files across the network, and it was Stayin' Alive.

In the five minutes it took me to figure out what happened and reset the breaker, everything worked. The one shortcut I'd taken in my quickie setup in the studio (it's a mess as I prep for the colorist tomorrow, I've been shovelling terabytes around), I hadn't plugged monitors into the UPS devices. So when I came back in and turned them back on, I was so very pleased to see a copy progress bar still in motion, meaning that two computers and their arrays had survived just fine through the power outage.

My fear is that a power outage/interruption could cause directory damage that would hose the RAID 5, or at least require a rebuild - a biiiiiiig time consuming thing.

So, as always, keep all your stuff, ESPECIALLY if you have RAIDs, on UPS devices.

Most important are RAIDs, then computers, then single drive volumes (FireWire etc.), etc. on down to monitors last. And don't overload your UPS device, or when the power goes out it'll just blink off and do you no good.

There's a place that sells refurbed/reconditioned UPS devices, RefurbUPS.com, that sells reconditioned UPS devices. Normally, I STRONGLY recommend against used hardware. But an old UPS almost always dies simply because the batteries are toast. RefurbUPS just puts new batteries in and resells'em. I haven't bought any from them but a couple of friends have and rave about what a good deal it is.

So even if you're on a budget, it's no excuse to NOT protect your power.

Even after I got additional power outlets AND upgraded the electrical capacity of my house after buying it, I still have UPS devices, because you never know when you're gonna need'em.

This is the first time I can ever recall popping a breaker in the studio, but then I looked around and realized I had five computers, four large (19-24") monitors running....and a total of 41 hard drives*. A-ha, woopsie. Time to load balance all the plugs around the room a bit more.

File that under Things I Should Know Better Than.

: )

...but I do get Brownie Points (or more accurately, Scout Points) for Being Prepared and not losing any critical data.

-mike, one more scar averted (and I got PLENTY, believe you me)

* 41 hard drives equals:
-two internals in dual 2.5 GHz G5 (2)
-two internals in dual 2.0 GHz G5 (4)
-four internals in Server733 (an older G4) (8)
-two internals in G4/867 (10)
-two LaCie 1TB Bigger Disk Extremes (four in each, so 8 more, total 18)
-an 8x300GB array (26)
-an 8x400GB array (34)
-a 5x160 array (total 39)
-two more standalone FireWire drives (41)

Why'd I have all this crap plugged in? I'm pushing data around to consolidate it all in one place to I can tell what I have where, archive off stuff I care about, toss things I don't want or have archived somewhere, and have my two 8 drive arrays (finally) configured the way I want them.

OK, a little late not blogging while I push terabytes of data around the office to set up for some new testing. Man, the ability to hook two G5's up directly with a single standard Ethernet cable and copy files back to back just KICKS ASS. The gigabytes just slide by....anyway, on to bidness:

ATI Displays for RADEON - Read Me First

ATI has released version 4.5.5 of it's Radeon software for Mac based cards. I noticed that the X800 card that I have is NOT listed as supporting VersaVision display rotation capabilities - so much for my dreams of using my rotatable (just grab the side and turn it 90 degrees) Dell 2405 as the Ultimate Bins Monitor in tall mode with my X800. Gotta have an 850, not an 800 for that.

Gallingly, tons of older cards support it, but not the 800 per se.

Harrumph. Anyway, it's the latest. Keep checking sites like Accelerate Your Mac for reader reports on weirdness. And DON'T be the first to install new software, unless you have a backed up boot disk from beforehand!

-mike

Not much posting going on today - I'm actually back to real, hands-on lab work (Yay!).

I'm testing the new LaCie Biggest S2S (their 5 removable SATA drive enclosure and card combo). They were oh so very nice enough to send me the BIG one, 2.5TB, with five 500GB Hitachi 7K500 drives. Preliminary tests are interesting - I'm getting around 180 MB/sec transfers using my favorite benchmark, BlackMagic's Disk Speed Test Utility. This unit has some interesting and unique features with connectivity and fault tolerance. Full review on the way.

I'm also doing an in depth review and hands on nitty gritty with the Sonnet 8 port eSATA controller, with their latest v1.2 firmware. I'm finding I'm getting different speed results under 10.3.9 than I am under 10.4.2. I've also now got my own full set of Maxtor Maxline III 300 GB drives with up to date firmware, FINALLY, and that was it's own little adventure to get it going.

I also bought 3 more Seagate 7200.8 400GB drives, so I have a full set of 8, and I'll be testing those with a variety of hardware as well (Sonnet, Highpoint, Firmtek, etc.)

I had a loooong conversation on the phone with Roland from Silicon Color about their Final Touch HD color correction software, and while I can't share the details, it was a very satisfying conversation that gives me a lot of confidence about their future.

I also am doing some testing with a 23 year veteran color corrector who is looking into buying a Final Touch HD system of his own, that should yield some VERY interesting stuff about how well FTHD works for an experienced veteran, and how well all my indie/garage tech setup works compared to a more expensive, higher end setup.

All that is happening this week, so stay tuned!

-mike

FootTrack - capture, catalog, organize and search your digital video

Found this from a link on link on MacInTouch - it gives you a searchable database of all your footage. You can recompress footage to keep low res copies on your hard drive or server, search for clips using Spotlight, etc.

If you had a LOT of footage to keep track of (documentaries anyone?), this sounds like it might be useful. Haven't played with it yet, however.

-mike

The HD For Indies FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) has been updated once again. What I've changed:

I've added links to BUNCH more articles I've written/linked to having to do with workflow, why HD, Digital Intermediates, etc. I've also added links to the tape formats section that offer much greater detail on the cameras/formats/resolution issues involved, especially the "what's missing here?" article.

I also rearranged some stuff, but there is still much organizing to be done.

But if you haven't seen it yet, check it out - a LOT of questions answered in there.

-mike

Blu-ray wins two more backers, while HD DVD looks doomed

I wouldn't go so far as to say doomed, but things are looking up for Blu Ray and not to hot for HD DVD.

-mike

Everything Apple: CHUD tools reveal Apple's 970MP Quad Power Mac

A reader posted in the comments (thanks Russ!) the above link to some evidence about quad processor Macs - a couple of screen grabs in the developer tools, back from March 10th. So this all looks good that we MIGHT be seeing a quad processor Mac in the not too distant future...

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Sudden Motion Sensor and video editing performance

...as in, turn it off if dropping frames.

AppleInsider reports that IBM is ready to deliver dual-core PowerPC G5 processors.

What's this mean to us?

POWER.

The article states that these machines may be rolled out in September. It's already been confirmed by Apple that Steve Jobs will be keynoting at the Paris MacWorld. Steve only shows up at these gigs if there is major new hardware to roll out.

More importantly, AppleInsider claims to have seen a product roadmap that included TWO dual core chips, for a four processor Mac. Now, I don't know if Tiger supports four processors, but it'd be awfully nice to have four processors chugging away on our digital video needs. (I don't think it does, and I don't know that we'll see quad processors on Macs until the next major OS rev, but wait and see, wait and see.)

I also believe that these new Macs will be the first to have a PCI Express bus.

What's PCI Express? A new, faster bus than PCI or PCI-X. This will mean that more data can be moved around faster.

How does this help? For one, it means that applications that are presently limited by bus speed performance, such as Final Touch HD, will run much faster. My goal for Final Touch HD is to see it deliver realtime performance out of a BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme over a PCI Express bus in 1080i HD.

And even just dual processors would deliver on this potentially.

-mike

I met today with a client, a film director, full DGA member, who had looked at my site and couldn't make heads or tails of it - it was, as I imagined he parsed it, "all geeky stuff about computers, DVD players, and alphabet soup stuff I don't care about."

So why am I covering all this other stuff?

When I first started getting into all of this HD stuff, I was excited about the possibility of making movies for a bunch less money and doing a great job with it - being able to do things like control your own edit & color correction, do your own (or have someone else do) your visual effects for less, total control, edit in-house, stuff like that.

But the basic underlying assumption was that the ability to produce the film was a barrier to filmmakers, and to reduce the costs of making a good looking feature would help more good films get to market.

I was somewhat naive, to say the least.

The more I've learned about all this stuff, successfully completing the film is only a small part of the battle. Most films never make it to theatrical distribution. This is much more OK in this day and age of DVDs, Netflix, online downloads, etc.

Even Hollywood makes most of it's money from video formats, not theatrical releases. So why not you? While a theatrical release carries a certain cachet, and creates a sense of validity to a film, but it's not necessarily mandatory (but it certainly helps).

The business side of the equation is huge and not to be ignored.

I've also been spending a LOT of time and attention on the next generation DVD formats - HD DVD and Blu Ray. Why? Because I think that this will where a lot of indie films go in the future - or they should at least be available on this format in addition to standard DVDs (which I think will be around for years and years to come.)

High definition video needs a high definition playback format. And that format needs to be accessible and affordable to the general population in order to all work out right. So that's why I pay so much attention to the arcana of playback outputs, encryption, DRM (digital rights management), etc.

As for the whole Macs on Intel thing, well, I just think it is interesting, since Macs are my editing/compositing platform of choice. But it is relevant to editors and digital filmmakers, because it affects what they'll be working on in the future.

And all the other hardware/software stuff? I think it is interesting for the hands on, do it yourself types out there.

If you're looking for information on how to make your own movie, start with the HD For Indies Frequently Asked Questions. There's a link at the top right of every page. If you don't see it there, dig into the over 1300 posts available on this site by using the Google search bar at the top of every page as well.

If you're looking for general information about how and why to shoot HD, there's a nice section in the FAQ that links to some of my earlier rants/editorials on the subject. Or, just go back to the archives and look at my first dozen or two posts, there's a lot of good theory in there (although some of it is dated, wrong, or obsolete by now - much changes in a year or two in this industry).

And if you still have questions that can't be answered, feel free to drop me a line as well (mike at hdforindies dot com). I dish a lot of free advice if I think the questions are interesting (or at least easy to answer), but I may well respond that I don't have time to answer it for free but can do so on a consulting basis for a fee.

-mike

LAFCPUG Next Meeting

on Aug. 24th.

Toast 7 includes DivX, iLife browsing, much more - Yahoo! News

an official summary of the new features. Of note/interest to us:


Roxio’s Popcorn software enables Mac users to burn complete 9GB dual-layer DVDs to a standard 4.7GB DVD by compressing the video. That functionality has been built into Toast 7 Titanium, as well.

Motion Pictures HD is the latest version of Toast’s technology for creating slideshows from still images. You can use motion effects, transitions, titles and background soundtracks — what’s more, you can also add collages of multiple photos in a single frame (what the Roxio folks call the “24” effect, after the popular Fox television shows intros and outros). These slideshows can be burnt to DVD or DivX HD in standard and high definition video formats, for maximum detail.

Toast 7 Titanium includes ten different DVD menu styles that let you create your own custom DVDs similarly to iDVD. You can add chapters and slide menus using a slideshow shuffle mode. And because Toast now recognizes Video_TS folders, you can import individual chapters from DVDs you’ve ripped to your desktop, making it possible to create “Director’s Cuts” containing just the content you want.

Also new to this release is support for DivX, the popular MPEG-4 based compression technology that’s seen wide support on the PC platform and from some DVD player manufacturers, as well. Toast 7 Titanium enables users who have downloaded DivX content to drag and drop those files and burn them to a DVD that can be played back in any DVD player. The Toast 7 installer includes DivX 6 Pro encoding software for the Macintosh, which hasn’t yet been released to the general public.

Roxio has also incorporated DivX HD support into Toast 7 Titanium. DivX HD is a true high definition playback technology that lets you view content at 720p resolution — 1,280 x 720 pixels using progressive scanning. Roxio anticipates this will come in particularly handy for Mac users who have are working on iMovie 5 projects, which supports HD content, as well as Final Cut Pro 5.

Video DVDs containing DivX HD content can be played back on DivX HD-certified DVD players, which are already available. It’s important to differentiate these devices, which support regular DVDs and recordable DVDs encoded with DivX HD content, from HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, two competing high definition DVD formats that aren’t yet commercially available.

Toast 7 Titanium’s video conversion doesn’t end with DivX, either — you can convert videos to versions suitable for playback on 3GPP-equipped cell phones and handheld devices, H.264 players and Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). You can also extract audio tracks from video for use in iTunes or other audio applications, audio CDs and more. A printed Getting Started guide even offers detailed instructions for PSP users who want to move video onto their game players using a USB 2.0 cable.



...as well as direct integration with iLife apps - playlists, photo albums etc. show up in Toast and are burnable from Toast.

-mike

Movie Slump Stirs Tensions in Hollywood - New York Times

Theater owners bristle at the idea of simultaneous theatrical and DVD releases - they feel it's a death threat to the theatrical run business model.

There's a nice summation/good quotes over on CinemaTech.

-mike

Macworld: News: ATI realigns Mac retail roadmap

Quick MacWorld article summarizing the new ATI product line-up:

-X800 XT Mac Edition now $400 instead of $500, supports Apple 30"
-Radeon 9800 Pro (G4 & G5), 256 MB VRAM, DVI, VGA, s-video out, $300, supports Apple 30"
-Radeon 9600 Pro Mac Edition - 256 MB VRAM, $130, PCI not AGP, no Apple 30" support, but VGA, DVI and S-Video interfaces

I still prefer the top of the line X800 XT card for heavy graphics work, especially if you're going to be working with Motion, where it makes a huge difference.

-mike

At the end of every article is a little link that says (0) Comments (or (23) Comments or whatever).

If you click on it, you can read the comments that others have left about that particular article, or post your own.

PLEASE feel free to add to the discussion if you have any comments, questions, additional information, vaguely related tangents, or anything relevant to the topic at hand.

If you have a question for me that is not related to the article, feel free to email me at the address at the top of this page (mike at hdforindies dot com).

I'm getting increasing amounts of comment spam, including some that just drops a meaningless note and then says something to the effect of "please read my blog at blahblahwhatever.com." Some of these sites look suspiciously blank, like possible malware loaders.

So, in order to prevent possible damage to the Windows users out there (about half of you) or just garbage for you to read, ANY COMMENTS THAT AREN'T GERMANE AND HAVE LINKS TO WEBSITES NOT DIRECTLY RELATED TO HD OR ARTICLES WILL BE PROMPTLY DELETED, usually within a half an hour or so.

If you want to say you like or dislike something I write, disagree or call bullshit on something, or even the occasional "nice article", I encourage you to do so - just please don't post something to the effect of "that was nice" with a URL - it will be deleted for the reasons stated above.

If you want to say "That's interesting, I've covered the same topic at my blog, see link below" I welcome and encourage that - it's relevant and adds to the discussion.

OK, end of editorial ranting.

It just peeves me to have my blog used, abused, or misused by spambots or "see my blog" egotists.

Cuz on my blog, I get to be the egotist.

One per.

: )

-mike

Accelerate Your Macintosh, Think Secret and MacInTouch all have details of the new Toast 7, even though it isn't mentioned yet on Roxio's page yet.

User report on Toast 7 from Accelerate Your Macintosh -

Toast 7 is just starting to ship, and has long been the premiere disk burning software for Macs. OS X has added features that compete with it over the years, but Toast has always had a little extra to make it do more than the built in OS X support.

From the reader report:

Now for HD content: Toast 7 automatically recognizes 16:9 content and encodes video DVDs properly for 16:9 playback on widescreen TVs and letterbox 4:3 on standard TVs. I used Apple's VirtualDVHS 2 to capture HD streams from my Comcast/Motorola 6412 PVR. Toast 7 doesn't recognize these streams (although I'm told it will recognize EyeTV TS streams). I opened the captured TS stream in MPEG Streamclip and chose Export to MPEG. This converted the stream to an HD MPEG file which Toast 7 recognized. Toast re-encoded the MPEG to an SD 16:9 video for DVD with no difficulty. Toast also retained the 5.1 AC-3 audio from the original.

I also tested with 1280x720 HD DV files in iMovie HD. I was able to drag the video straight from the iMovie timeline as well as drag the iMovie Project file to Toast. In either case Toast correctly encoded the video and properly retained the 16:9 aspect ratio.

I tried a mix of 16:9 and 4:3 movies to be burned on one DVD with Toast. Using Toast's Automatic setting, the aspect ratio was correct for each of the movies.


Think Secret also has an article on Toast 7, including screenshots. From their article:

Dolby Digital encoding and decoding will also be supported with Toast 7, as well OGG and FLAC audio CDs and audio DVDs, while Toast can also convert audio between formats and sports a number of options for doings so.

Toast 7 will also feature the ability to convert video between a number of formats, including DV, DV 16:9, HDV 720p, HDV 1080i, QuickTime, MPEG-4, H.264, 3G, and DivX, with special pre-set options for converting videos for Sony's PlayStation Portable and iTunes (an interesting option in light of rumors surrounding a video iPod).

New menu settings and options for video DVDs and CDs include automatic and custom encoding settings, as well as easy to create iDVD-like themes. Otherwise, however, the interface of Toast 7 remains largely like its predecessor.


From a reader report on MacInTouch:

Toast 7 seems to have vast improvements over v6 in terms of video support. You are able to control compression rates as well as whether video should be reencoded at all. I burned a few mpegs downloaded from my Tivo and Toast was more than happy to leave the video alone while fixing up the audio. The results seem pretty good although I haven't fully tested the DVD yet.


-mike

I was reading a little article about BenQ planning to ship Blu Ray players in the first half of 2006 when I came across this snippet:

Sony, the key member of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), also plans to offer PC-use Blu-ray drives in the first quarter of next year, local industry sources pointed out.


The article didn't stipulate whether those were read only or burners, but I'd wager that burners would be available pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, this also looks like it means the PCI Express based Macs due this fall (and I got some confirmation on that, along with confirmation that there WILL be SOME kind of Apple video iPod type device) will NOT include Blu Ray SuperDrives. We'll have to wait until a MacWorld SF product launch for that kind of product. And, if Apple is true to form, they'll be announced at MWSF in January, but not available to Mortal Man until April or so. Doubt me? It's been that way for 5 plus years with spiffy new high end models.

-mike

Liked the Movie, Loved the Megaplex - New York Times is an interesting article in the NY Times about movie theaters that offer more than movies, soda, and popcorn.

Reserved seats, beer/wine/alcohol and real food are some of the perks being offered by theaters around the country.

Personally, I like the Alamo Drafthouse chain here in Austin - fun everyday food and wine/etc. for movies, including what I'd consider New Movie Food - pizza, beer, fried cheese, Italian sodas, wine, etc. Want to eat healthier? Veggie sandwiches and salads are available too. If a movie I want to see is showing at an Alamo (4 in town), I go there over other theaters, even if it's a drive.

Read that article, then read CinemaTech's comments on the same article::

(from CinemaTech):
Here's my prediction, which I don't think is too daring: over the next ten years, a brutal and severe movie theater shake-out will take place - the result of our increasing preference for enjoying movies at home. We'll go from 36,000 theaters in the U.S. to less than 10,000. But those that survive are going to be *fab*: giant screens, cushy seats, great sight lines, tasty food (not to mention booze), intelligent programming, and frequent visits from directors. (And along with it all, premium pricing.) The blah theaters will vanish.

I think this is a believable theory - 10 years may be too short a timeframe, but I think the gist of it is correct. I'd peg that timeline at more like 10 to 20 years, but we'll have to wait and see. I'm sure that high def home theaters and more movie delivery options (Netflix type services getting more popular, downloadable movies via TiVO/Apple iWatch/DVR/etc.) will have a pronounced affect on the rate of theater shrinkage.

It will be interesting to see these two forces competing - the uptake of digital projection with it's opportunities to showcase a wider variety of movies, while more options and better quality in the home compete from the other side. If one factor moves faster (move to digital projection with more movie choices) it will prolong movie theaters' lifespan in America, if the other (better home choices) moves faster it will hinder theaters' demise.

-mike

Macworld: News: Blu-ray Disc picks up more support

In the ever ongoing HD DVD vs Blu Ray war, it looks like Blu Ray is picking up momentum, even though HD DVD has the "better" name in terms of consumer recognition.

From the article:

Content makers are more evenly split between the two formats.

HD-DVD counts support from Warner Home Video, Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures Corp.

On the Blu-ray Disc side are Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures and Television, Sony’s Pictures group and now Lions Gate.

Despite these initial pledges of support, most providers have said they stand to release content on the competing format should it begin to become popular.

MacNN | LaCie improves d2 Extreme external hard drive series

MacNN has this article outlining new goods from LaCie.

d2 Extreme external hard drives, Bigger Disk Extreme (including rackmount 2U), Big Disk Extreme (1U rackmount), etc.

P S Technik Mini35 and the JVC GY-HD100, Pt. 1

My buddy Chris Hurd over at HDVInfo.net emailed me to let me know about a cool 5 part review they are doing - using the P+S Technik 35mm adaptor to use 35mm film lenses on the brand new JVC GY-HD100, that new 24p capable camcorder from JVC.

Long, detailed report.

This combo has several theoretical advantages over other setups.

With this camera, you can:

-shoot 16:9 not 4:3 (although many DV cameras also will)
-shoot a more filmlike 24p rather than 30i (although many DV cameras also will)
-shoot HD (HDV) not SD (DV) (only a few other HD cameras in this price range)
-shoot 24p HDV - OK, that's unique to this camera

With this P+S Technik 35mm adaptor on this camera, you can
-shoot with 35mm film lenses, gaining a shorter, more filmlike depth of field

The catch is that it's a bigger, heavier, more power consuming setup than the JVC camera alone. You also lose, according to the reviewer, 1.5 to 2 stops of exposure. Since this camera is already using 1/3 inch chips to gather HD not SD quantities of light, it is already pretty challenged in low light situations, and the P+S gadget only worsens that situation. So I wouldn't recommend this camera for night time street interviews, for instance, without a lot of supplemental lighting gear.

There are screen grabs, HD video clips, all kinds of ancillary goodies with this as well.

I'm just now myself digging into the details, but if you've been thinking about a 24p HDV shoot, this is definitely something to read.

-mike

Don't install that Security Update 2005-007 if you haven't already

Some issues - 64 bit applications (like Mathematica) won't run anymore, and there have been a number of networking difficulties.

-mike

CinemaTech: Entertainment Weekly on 10 top theaters

Entertainment Weekly in their dead tree version lists the "Top 10 Theaters Doing it Right" and the Alamo Drafthouse is number one!

If you aren't familiar with the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, check it out, it's an excellent experience. Recent goodness - for a special screening of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they had a special meal prepared (the place is built to eat, drink, and watch movies). We had a five course chocolate meal (shrimp, chicken, etc.) during the film. It was heaven.

At any given showing, you can have beer, wine, pizza, salads, sammiches, etc.

Anyway, check out the link.

-mike

CinemaTech: Roger Ebert on the digital cinema standard (sort of)

Ebert comments on the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) specification for digital cinema, and returns to one of his favorite wish-list items - Maxivision projection, which uses 48 frames per second projection, only costs about $12,000 to adapt a current film projector, and only uses 50% more film for a sharper, more fluid image.

-mike

Wired News: Mac Hacks Allow OS X on PCs

So folks HAVE been able to get the developer version of OS X to run on their non-Apple PCs, and there are two things of interest:

1.) Yes, it IS bypassing Apple's intended security measures that are supposed to keep that software only running on Apple hardware, and

2.) It is running mighty fast.


No one knows exactly why OSx86 appears to be running faster on the PCs than the Mac OS does on today's Macs.


Interesting times, indeed.

Dovetail that with the fact that Intel is about to spill the beans on it's new processor architecture lineup and things get mighty interesting indeed.

Perhaps Dvorak is right - perhaps Apple is planning on going OS only at some point in the future, and using this dev release as a "We can't stop them from copying it, demand was so high we had to make it available commercially." plan.

Yet more interestinger times, indeeder.

-m

do I really need to say much more?

The Hare Krishna standing next to the red headed girl in Viking Helmet, playing the accordian, wearing yellow rain boots, balancing on a board which is on top of a rolling cylinder, and they are harmonizing their music.

I mean, really. A redhead.

-mike

PS - But I'd very much like to say more. Honors, kudos, respect, and some kind of prize to whoever submits the best caption in the comments field. Please do! And click on the picture to see the high res version.

-m

Update: Blu-Ray DRM Plans Released

Another article on Blu-Ray's DRM. It does a better job of explaining in plain English how some of the DRM is (supposed) to work:


According to Fox's Setos, the ROM Mark is not a watermark, as it never leaves the disk and appears on a user's screen. Instead, the ROM Mark is a cryptographic image overlaid on the surface of the disc itself, which would need to be detected by the player before the disc would be played. Discs will not be uniquely labeled, but each movie title will receive its own ROM Mark, Setos said.

Setos said that the ROM Mark would prevent movies from being recorded with a camcorder in a theater and played on a Blu-Ray player at home.


What, so does this mean that we won't be able to burn our own content onto Blu Ray disc media? Home movies? Whaaaaa? This doesn't make sense. If it's not in the video content, but in the data structure itself, then a camcorder either can or cannot be used to feed content to the system. This I don't understand. Either Setos has mis-stated the case or this technology is far less useful than we expected. I'm guessing the former.

As for AACS:

There are some opportunities to make authorized copies, so that the content community could release a Blu-Ray disk and allow users to make a managed copy, let them use the content any way they like.


This is encouraging. However, note it says the possibility exists, it doesn't say that it will definitely be allowed on all discs.

As for the ability to "turn off" players:


If an exploit is published for a particular player, that player may be "turned off," or disabled, according to Setos, a process known as "revocation". He described a scenario where an exploit was published for a particular model of player. The player provider would then be obligated to update the player via BD+, while the serial number of an actual hacked machine could be detected and disabled.

"It detects if the product is properly operating," Setos said. "If it's a hijacked one, it will refuse to play."
If an exploit was released into the wild, Setos said the Blu-Ray content-protection scheme would identify and fix just those players that could be modified, and disable those that had been tampered with. How the player will be properly detected was not disclosed, however.

"We don't expect there to be any false positives," Setos said, when asked about the possibility for error.

"The consumer experience is paramount," Setos added. "If you turn off or otherwise revoke the working player, it's not a good thing."


OK, I'll believe it when I see it. If they can disable at a unique device level, then that's a lesser evil. It would also appear that if there is an unlicensed player on the market (at the manufacturing level), all of those can be disabled. I believe that is in place in order to shut off the flow of bootlegged PLAYERS built without paying licensing fees in China etc. by renegade manufacturers. This has been a problem with DVD players built without paying licensing fees to Phillips, MPEG LA, etc.

But this also means that modding or hacking your Blu Ray Disc player, even for fun, non-infringing purposes (think iPod modding to run Linux etc.) will be verbotten - it'll probably do something along the lines of checksum, and if your checksum doesn't match factory checksum, then your player won't work.

This whole process adds a great deal of complexity and cost to the system, but the manufacturers are willing to do it, because Hollywood won't provide content without it.

The interesting (sucky) part about all this, however, is who holds the keys to shut down the content. It would appear studios could make decisions about which players to deny by issuing updated blacklists on their movie discs. One day you buy a disc, and your player might stop working. Hopefully, their DRM is sophisticated enough to handle proper from improper, but this has not been the case with DVDs so far with their far less sophisticated DRM systems (witness my player that isn't region free that some discs this is region free, while my region free players plays those discs just fine).

-mike

Remember when I said How To Eat Fried Worms was shooting in almost my back yard? Now they're shooting in my front yard. OK, my extended front yard - the park across the street. From where I sit typing this in the studio, I can see the set and the kid actors.

My sister Kimberley came over with Mason (7) and Chloe (just turned 4) to snag a power strip (yeah, I tend to have a few lying around) and we walked over to check out the set, and watched them do a take.

The video assist was interesting - they use StormVision QV to capture up to 4 video taps' output simultaneously. The 4:3 area is pre-matted with a grey overlay for the 'scope aspect of the film. It looked like they were shooting with two cameras.

But these are just for onset playback, not for digital dailies - they are acquiring those in some other way (I need to ask about their workflow).

I've published more pictures at my .mac page.

And yes, I finally bothered to figure out how to post pictures directly on here. Hooray. I'm a VIDEO guy, not a web guy. : )

-mike

HDBlog.net - HD-DVD Support Waning, Blu-ray Prejudice Continues

HDBlog.net has some good coverage on this issue as well, as well as detailed coverage of the Blu Ray Disc security measures as well.

I forgot to mention in my earlier post - I'm rooting for Blu Ray to be the predominant format, as it holds more and would be advantageous for the computer users. We only need ONE format - and if more folks side with Blu Ray over HD DVD, I'm all for that. I'll cry no tears of HD DVD never really makes it off the launch pad.

The only downside would be that the Blu Ray folks would have no competition and feel less restrained to charge as much as they thought the market would bear, as opposed to fearing a competitor's cost cutting.

-mike

HD DVD offensive starting to crack, Blu-ray gets ammo

This is a really nice summary of the state of HD DVD vs Blu Ray (wish I had written it).

Discusses the security features of Blu Ray better than I did the other day, discusses how HD DVD releases have been scaled back, and more.

Salient tidbits:

-HD DVD was set to launch for this holiday season, now getting scaled back
-Paramount nixed ALL of their holiday HD DVD releases
-NBC Universal scaled their back 25%, to about 12
-Toshiba likely to be only player available for HD DVD for Christmas, at around $1000 for the player (yee-ouch!)
-Sony, Disney, 20th Century Fox on board for Blu Ray movies, Blu Ray expected to launch mid-2006
-BD+ security scheme allows for changing the security key - if Blu Ray gets cracked like DVD did, new discs can be encoded with a new key such that future discs will need to be cracked again (unlike DVD where once cracked, all discs ever are cracked)

More to read, check out the article, it's a good one (Ars Technica rocks).

-mike

HighPoint-RocketRAID 2220

Highpoint has a new Mac supported card - the good news is it does hot swap and hot spare, the bad news is that, like the prior Highpoint Mac compatible card, all the ports are internal. A pain and a hassle.

But it does support RAID levels 0,1,5, and 10.

-mike

Cinema Minima: New York: Machinima Film Festival 2005 November 12:

The one-day event will include screenings of Machinima films, workshops hosted by Machinima filmmakers, special presentations, talks with award-winning independent filmmakers, and seminars about Machinima production technique.


After reading the New York Times article about machinima recently, where one of the guys who does Red vs. Blue talked about the frustration of working at a low level on some Hollywood films and how he gained complete creative control with Red vs Blue, it makes me wonder if this isn't a more interesting avenue for personal expression in the entertainment industry.

Digital Media Europe: News - UK start-up offers video 'iTunes':
There are other outlets who currently offer movie downloads, but, due to the film industry's deathly fear of piracy, the only films generally on offer are B-movies few people have ever heard of.


found via CinemaMinima.com

CinemaTech: The life and times of Long Island clam-diggers

Talks about new business models for movies - simultaneous release in theaters, pay per view, and DVD. Theaters are being offered a cut of the DVD sales (one percent).

This business model was mentioned as a possibility in the past, now Cuban's doing it.

-mike

CinemaTech: The future of the video store

He covers an LA Times article on brick and mortar video stores' threatened existence.

-mike

Cinema Displays (Part 10)

This is a user's review of a Dell 2405 FPW on MacinTouch.com.

OK, first off here's the press release, and below are my comments:

(HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--BUSINESS WIRE--Aug. 9, 2005) In a move to protect against illegal copying and large scale piracy while leaving consumers the flexibility to manage and enjoy copies of their legally purchased content, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has adopted the most comprehensive content management system ever employed on an optical disc format.

The Blu-ray content management system includes three primary components: Advanced Access Content System (AACS), 'BD+', a Blu-ray-specific enhancement for content protection renewability, and ROM Mark, a measure unique to Blu-ray Disc to guard against mass production piracy or the mass duplication and sale of unauthorized copies of pre-recorded media.

'Content protection is a critical issue for next-generation media distribution,' said IDC's Joshua Martin, Associate Research Analyst, Consumer Markets. 'Finalizing the content protection scheme is critical for the launch of blue laser optical disc technology, and new protection schemes should allow for increased consumer flexibility while better protecting prerecorded content compared to current DVD technology.'

The foundation of the Blu-ray content management system, AACS(1), is a state of the art content management system that is many times more powerful than that used in DVD. Additionally, AACS enables new consumer usage models around network functionality and internet connectivity including managing copies, in an authorized and secure manner.

In addition to AACS, the BDA took a dramatic step in the battle against mass production piracy with the adoption of ROM Mark. ROM Mark, which is unique to Blu-ray Disc, is a new technology designed specifically to thwart large scale, mass production piracy, a problem that experts estimate costs the movie industry alone in excess of $3 billion per year in lost revenue. To combat this, the ROM Mark technology embeds a unique and undetectable identifier in pre-recorded BD-ROM media such as movies, music and games. While invisible to consumers, this ROM Mark can only be mastered with equipment available to licensed BD-ROM manufacturers, essentially preventing unauthorized copies of a disc.

The BDA also adopted 'BD+', a Blu-ray Disc specific programmable renewability enhancement that gives content providers an additional means to respond to organized attacks on the security system by allowing dynamic updates of compromised code. With these enhancements, content providers have a number of methods to choose from to combat hacks on Blu-ray players. Moreover, BD affects only players that have been attacked, as opposed to those that are vulnerable but haven't been attacked and therefore continue to operate properly.

'The level of unauthorized copying and industrial piracy associated with DVD not only jeopardizes studios and other content creators, but also results in increased costs and limited flexibility for consumers,' said Maureen Weber, General Manager, of Hewlett Packard's Optical Storage Solutions. 'It is good news for everyone that the BDA has adopted a series of measures that gets it right for the next disc format.'


OK, one thing at a time:

AACS - it's what we were expecting, and AACS enables new consumer usage models around network functionality and internet connectivity including managing copies, in an authorized and secure manner

I take this to mean that it may be possible to make a limited number of copies for backups, etc., maybe, if the studios allow it. "Network functionality and internet connectivity" - networking to what, and what capabilities allowed over the Internet?

OK, next part:

The BDA also adopted 'BD+', a Blu-ray Disc specific programmable renewability enhancement that gives content providers an additional means to respond to organized attacks on the security system by allowing dynamic updates of compromised code. With these enhancements, content providers have a number of methods to choose from to combat hacks on Blu-ray players. Moreover, BD affects only players that have been attacked, as opposed to those that are vulnerable but haven't been attacked and therefore continue to operate properly.


Renewability enhancement = the ability to update blacklists for invalidated devices. If Hollywood feels that your HDTV, Blu Ray disc player, or more likely your HDMI to analog converter is a possible device to bootleg from, they can update the list of "no play" devices to include your device. Then when you put in a new disk with an updated blacklist, or connect your Blu Ray disc player to the network/Internet, I bet one of the first things it'll do is connect to a site to get an updated blacklist. Poof! Suddenly, your device could stop working.

"Only affects players that have been attacked" - I take that to mean all players of a particular make and model, but it might mean modded players (if we're lucky). If it is the latter interpretation, legitimate matching make and models will continue to work, if it is the former interpretation, then your unmodded, perfectly valid player could stop working.

I don't see this as right or reasonable - I think the studios and Sony and the Blu Ray Disc Group should be busted for this.

Frankly, it is these kinds of draconian measures that would give a movie download service a shot...if they themselves weren't required to have similarly onerous security measures...which, of course, the studios wouldn't go for, and wouldn't release their content then. Drat.

Oh, and this ROM Mark thing - if it's like CSS on DVDs, it would prevent consumer Blu Ray burners from duplicating discs as well - no backups for you.

I'm concerned about the Blu Ray disc format - I like the idea of more room and storage, but with only a 0.1mm (yes, a tenth of a millimeter) to cover and protect the data layer, I'd think these things would be pretty easy to scratch.

I'll have more to say on this later, this is just my first pass at it.

-mike

MacJams.com - MIDI Keyboard Buyer's Guide for Mac Users

I don't know much about the audio side of things, so here's something of possible interest to the musician types out there. I'd received a couple of emails from folks asking about MIDI keyboard compatibility with Motion, and that's outside my area of expertise.

-mike

In the Ironic Department:

How To Eat Fried Worms is shooting practically in the back yard of HD For Indies World Headquarters (aka my house).

Where are they shooting? Well, not my back yard. In the alley directly behind (to the point they're paying her to stash gear in) the backyard of an ex-girlfriend/current friend girl of mine. We went and hung out just outside the set area where they were shooting, she wandered in and talked to some folks, but I felt a bit fraudulent to cut in and start talking to folks on the basis of "hi I'm a friend of somebody's yard you're shooting in."

But it was amusing to go over and chat, then walk out in the backyard and see flags, grips, booms, etc. all in her backyard with a 30+ person crew shooting in the alley.

They probably thought it'd be great to shoot in August in Austin - little chance of rain, just sweltering heat. Ha! It's been the rainiest August since I don't know when, raining at least once during the day for weeks.

I may go back and try to chat up the DoP during lunch break or something.

I'll post some pictures she took later.

It's nice to see more/continuing feature films shot in Austin, and not just by Robert Rodriguez.

They're shooting 35mm with video assist, I poked around the set just a little while ago (I dress like a grip on off days anyway).


-mike

Apple (UK and Ireland) - Pro/Video - VTV / Molinare

At this year's Tour de France, an interesting workflow was used - using some new software, they were able to capture into Final Cut Pro and actually start editing the footage within seconds of the capture starting - so as they were still capturing live footage, they could edit what was just shot/captured seconds ago from the same clip.

Yes, an Apple Rah Rah piece, but still interesting.

-mike

Macworld: News: macProVideo.com announces Final Cut Pro 5 Tutorials

No comment on quality, just letting folks know.

HandsOnHDV: A Complete Guide to the HVR-Z1U and HDR-FX1

Creative Cow reviews, and likes, this DVD about the Sony HDV cameras, the HVR-Z1U and HDR-FX1.

-mike

Sonnet has upgraded their SATA cards to be eSATA II compatible - now instead of 150 MB/sec SATA I, these are now 300 MB/sec SATA II.

What does this mean? Right now, not much. But for the future, this'll be handy for use with enclosures with port multipliers like the new ones coming out from LaCie.

This will mean multiple drives can be connected to a single port using port multipliers, and it'll be possible to get some serious throughput per CABLE instead of per DRIVE.

Prices are the same, $200 for the Tempo-X eSATA 4+4 (4 internal, 4 external ports), and $300 for the Tempo-X eSATA 8 (8 external ports).

They've also added Windows support, but for the moment that doesn't do much for me since there lots of PC SATA cards but few Mac SATA cards.

From the press release:

• 8 ports (8 external eSATA connectors for Tempo-X eSATA 8, 4 internal plus 4 external eSATA connectors for Tempo-X eSATA 4+4) to support up to 4 TB of storage
• 64-bit, 133MHz PCI-X Serial ATA host controller
• Works in any PCI-X or PCI slot
• Mac OS X and Windows XP compatible
• Supports SATA II and SATA I drives
• 48-bit LBA support for drives with a capacity larger than 137 GB
• Supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) through operating system
• Supports hot-swap drive connection
• Upgradable firmware enables future enhancements

The prior SATA I cards were one of my favorites for HD usage, I'd expect these to be good as well.

-mike

Flip4Mac - Windows Media Components for QuickTime

Got an email from Flip4Mac saying their QuickTime export component for Windows Media Video now works with Compressor 2 for easy batch encoding, even straight out of Final Cut Pro (I'm presuming that last part, but it should).

-mike

NY Times covers Machinima, which is the use of videogames as animation systems.

The hilarious Red vs Blue is disccussed.

Special effects are the new movie monsters, their visual excess gobbling up the real story

A dig at how effects detract instead of add to movies, and how it is an arms race rather than an artistic addition to the film.

Definitely worth reading, and even as an effects guy, something I agree with.

-mike

I got an email from one of the engineers at Sonnet, who informed me of some good new stuff:

Firstly, they have a new driver out for their Tempo-X SATA cards
Goals of this update:
-improved disk detection (reduce "RAID won't mount" problems), especially with Maxtors

Secondly, and of wider interest to the readership, they've published a great, very detailed and technical report on drive throughputs. Dig through it to find how different hard drives, the number of hard drives, software, etc. generate different throughputs.

Dig through it to get a better understanding of drive performance, and especially drive performance falloff as data gets written as the disks fill up.

-mike

UPDATED (YET AGAIN at bottom)

OK, if you haven't read the past several articles, this won't make any sense, so go read these:

Here's what started it all - why HD DVD and Blu Ray are at risk of becoming Laserdiscs 2.0

Here's where I first complied my Apple downloadable service conjecture (skip the Microsoft WM9 player part)

My guesstimate on release timetable and features and further thoughts on the thing

Here's where I realized iVideo+podcasts for sale=eBay for video content - not in the sense of auctions, but in the sense of something that can scale incredibly fast as a many-to-many architecture not relying on few vendors to populate it

...and I've added some other thoughts about features, market positioning, cable video recording and DRM towards the bottom as well.
end update - (except for bottom)

The Apple Home Theater Box or a New Mac

So here's yet another twist - what if the Home Theater Widget was the "secure" device in the chain that ANY computer would work from, but a new Intel based Mac (now with digital audio & video outputs in addition to VGA/DVI) would be the other option? Thus all output options would be secured.

Anybody could use the Airport Express style A/V brick to connect wirelessly to the next room from their broadband connected computer.

But the new Intel based Macs coming out next year (and the mini is expected to be one of the first) could have built in, or optionally installed, digital and analog audio/video connections so that it could live in the living room and plug straight into a TV.

The DVI spec is flexible enough (and HDMI is based on DVI plus audio anyway) that there could be a breakout cable thing to connect to a standard definition or high definition TV. The Hollywood studios look like they are going to require high definition video playback devices to ONLY play back high def content using HDMI (a digital connector) with HDCP (hardware device copy protection) in order to "plug the analog hole" to prevent copying. This could fulfill that requirement.

ATI already offers a DVI to analog component output adaptor for some of their graphics cards that support YUV functionality (component video). So why not have Apple support this functionality? One adaptor for analog (standard definition) connections, and another for digital (standard or high definition) connections.

This would solve the problem of how to have secured playback devices while still allowing any broadband connected computer to play back the movies.

So anyone would be able to buy a device to watch downloaded movies on their living room TV (or HDTV).

Option 1: You already own a broadband conneted computer

So you buy this under $500 box (under $300 if standard def only I'd bet) that lets you stream content from your computer to your TV or HDTV. Movies are secure, because purchased movies will ONLY play back through that ONE device (or other devices affiliated with that account - think about how iTunes works now with 3 computers). You mate/register/call it what you will your streaming playback device to a given account, or possibly a given computer. The DRM is satisfied that it's a secure path. Hollywood would then be more likely to sell their movies via this method.

There'd be some software to run on the Mac or PC in the next room (activated by pressing a button on the bluetooth based remote, natch) that controls the streaming, playback, UI, display etc on the screen.

Bonus round: when not streaming audio/video/pictures, it's a wireless range extender for your WiFi network, or a wireless access point, or a remote printer connector - all things the current Airport Express can do.

Option 2: You have no computer, or want a new/another one

The Mac mini is expected to be the one of the first Macs to go with an Intel processor. If true, it's a great platform for a home theater PC - already there are multiple websites dedicated to using it in this fashion, a faster computer with Intel's trusted computing platform DRM stuff would offer a secure, only-plays-on-this-box solution for the movie studios. Just plug it into your TV or HDTV and use it as a computer with a wireless keyboard and mouse, or just run the Apple media PC software so all you see are the movies/pictures/iTunes user interfaces optimized for TV usage. And use the Bluetooth based remote that rumors have been floating around about. There'd be a new application that was optimized for living room viewing distances to put a happy user experience on living room viewing range controls.

Now, roll this into the other 4 or 5 articles and that's why I think Apple's in a position to take off.


Conclusions:

Option 1 probably wouldn't offer as nice of a user interface as option 2 - since you'd be relying on the little streaming box for UI rather than a "for real" computer. If they shovelled more UI and smarts into the little streaming box, it's size and cost would go up - bad for sales. I thought about if the "host application" back on the broadband connected computer were generating a user interface and sending it as compressed video back through the little streaming box, that'd have some severe compromises, such as text quality, compression artifacts, etc., so I don't think Apple would go that route.

So while the streaming box would work, it'd probably have a more limited user interface than the computer plugged directly into the set.

The first generation standard def box would of course be supplemented by the second generation high def box, which would of course add more features, and probalby an upgraded user interface. Think iPod mini (SD) and iPod Photo (HD) in terms of features, cost, and capabilities.

Oh, and while we're at it? Having a cable input, or cable card slot and input, would be trivial to add, and if you streamed it back to the host computer (or recorded it directly if computer were plugged in), now you'd have a TiVO like device. But then Apple would be opening itself up to lawsuits based on the recent Grokster decision, in that Apple could be construed to be advocating piracy by putting the data on a computer....but maybe not if the content were locked to that computer.

Yeah, I'm gonna buy some more Apple stock.

-mike

UPDATE/POSTSCRIPT: Several hours after writing this, I'm thinking in the shower, as you do, and my mind wandered back to the iPod Video concept. And another possibility hit me: iPod Video could be just another iPod, but the dock for it could include the following:

-MPEG-2 (HDV is this also)/H.2664/DV decoder chips
-analog and digital audio and video outs (as described elsewhere recently)
-power
-FireWire
-docking connection for iPod

This way, the iPod merely becomes the medium of transit. You download movies to it, walk it into your living room/bedroom/friend's house with TV, dock it, and the UI appears on screen and lets you surf your choices. Whether the added brains for the user interface live in the iPod or the Dock is an engineering challenge, with pros and cons on each side.

As with iTunes, you could load your downloaded content (movies or music) to as many iPods as were paired to the account. Three or so computers per account, and away you go. This way, you could simply use your iPod as a carrier to move movies to a friend's house and watch them there, or watch in your bedroom/living room/kitchen wherever. So long as you're within the three machines paired to an open ended amount of iPods, you're good to go. Stronger anti-copying tech would probably be brought to bear since it's cake to pipe iTunes off an iPod with one of a zillion freebie apps, but it can be done.

This makes me rethink my "there will be no iPod Video" thing I said earlier. If it draws power from the dock, and the hard drive doesn't get overly stressed (throughput is fine even on current stuff, just thermal/lifespan issues I'm worried about here), this could work fine, while still keeping the iPod size & cost in line.

Actually, the only difference between this and the streaming thing is swapping out the streaming stuff and putting the iPod directly connected to it. You'd still be able to browse audio, vidoe and pictures.

But why not just put an iPod dock on the Airport Express Home Theater Gadget in the first place and have ALL this functionality?

Also, read the comments from the link below, Sasha maks some excellent points about wired vs. wireless connectivitiy, where Bluetooth really helps you (I'd been thinking of direct commands from remote to Mac in other room, remote to Gadget via Bluetooth and commands send over 802.11g makes tons more sense), and rental vs purchase sales models.

It also dawned on me that, like an iPod, the DRM scenario still works if you're going to be wired or wirelessly connected to a central computer to make it be fine and dandy to have as many Home Theater Widgets as you want affiliated with computers that are locked to an account, since you're not ripping off the studios. In the same way you can copy music to all the iPods you want that are married to your Mac, why not have as many A/V Gadgets as you need?

Oh, and what to call it?

iWatch.

-mike

...and then to tie it all back to this constituency, imagine if Apple started opening doors to indies for distribution in this format, much as they do for indie labels, or better yet, how they open doors for podcasts from anybody out there.

This could be eBay for video, in essence.

If the studios were slow to come out and sign on, Apple could certainly find other content to populate it - ours.

Not in the sense of auctions, but an empowering many to many distribution system that can scale up as fast as content gets into it. Apple would only have to set up the infrastructure and let the content flow in. Yeah, they'd become one of the biggest bandwidth users in the world, but if they bought/put the infrastructure in place and the cost of bandwidth was duly factored into the costs, it's doable. There'd be a required minimum cost per minute of video (or really, per MB of data), if only to cover the bandwidth bills and overhead.

Right now, they are merely linking to podcasts, so the traffic is links, not content. If they wanted to sell content, they'd need to host or co-host (or colocate or whatever) the content to protect it for access for only those who pay.

Along these lines, for anybody's content, there will be a necessary chunk of math to make this work - folks will not be willing to pay more than what a retail DVD costs for this stuff. Movie studios, just like record companies, are going to want the lion's share of the profit - it's their content after all.

For audio, the bandwidth isn't that huge - just 128 kilobits per second. But for video, even standard defintion video, something more like 2000 kilobits/sec will be required - 16 times more!

Downloadable movies won't work economically until a reasonable profit can be extracted from the 10-20% left over from the studio's cut, less advertising, less infrastructure and overhead, and less the bandwidth costs for a bulk purchaser like Apple. A quick Google search and I found that bulk commercial bandwidth is about $2/GB. A 90 minute movie at 2 megabits (sufficient with H.264 for 24p standard def) would be about a 1.35 GB - $2.70 for the bandwidth. Apple would surely be able to negotiate a much better rate than that. So then the question remains if there's enough profit left over from a $13-$20 movie to make it worth while. Apple squeezes out tiny margins on the iTunes Store purportedly, and I hear that the studios want a bigger cut when they renegotiate after current contracts run out. Will Apple make a smaller margin, or raise prices, or both? Unknown.

As a side note, that bandwidth price is pretty cheap - that makes me start rethinking some online stuff I've been planning on - it's just a question of how bulk is bulk?.

But if they were the first, large scale, well supported, easy access (think iTunes Store easy) place to purchase downloadable video that would easily play through to your TV without rocket scientist skills required, I think that could really go far and fast in the market.

And if indie producers could get their content into that system, such that it was findable in the way stuff is on Amazon or Netflix, it'd be yet another valid distribution model for folks to use.

But once again, just because we can bring down the costs of production (via HD as I've been discussing for over a year) and the means of distribution (Amazon, Netflix, direct sales, online, etc.), doesn't mean that every movie gets a decent shot at being seen. Because marketing/advertising costs are still the killer - there's no good way to get the word out, inexpensively, to a broad audience to get them to see your film, and especially, as ad folk say, to "cut through the noise" of the constant media bombardment that we all are subjected to daily. And no matter how cheap we make them or produce them or sell on a per unit cost, folks only have just so much time to see movies, and will only see X number per year. I suggested Netflix to my busy sister (two kids, 4 and 7) as a timesaver to watch movies herself. Her response? "I'd never have time to watch'em, even if they were sitting right there."

But that's a whooooole other blog to write about how to solve THOSE issues.

-mike

-mike

After thinking about it over the weekend, I think a more likely rollout schedule might be something like this (and this is all pure conjecture, I have zero inside info).

Mike's WAG on release timetable and features

summer/fall 2005: more downloadable videos from iTunes Store as Apple tests out compression, bandwidth, caching, etc.

sometime fall/winter (or Jannuary MacWorld?) Apple launches the iVideo Store (or whatever it's to be called)

no later than January MacWorld (be great to have it for Christmas) - Steve Jobs officially rolls out a standard definition version of this Airport streaming video doohickey. It has standard definition outputs only, including component video outputs. It uses a version of the FairPlay DRM. You might be able to burn a maximum of three discs of it ever using the DRM provided. Or perhaps you'd be able to play back the movies on probably three authorized devices (I'd like to see that be 5, but oh well) - such as laptop, desktop, and office. Or perhaps iPod Video, where the primary application isn't on little bitty screen but out of the device into a TV.

(after writing that, I think a January announcement to coincide with release of first Intel Macs is most likely)

-if, as I think likely, Apple might require an Intel based Mac with the Intel Trusted Platform stuff in it for iron clad DRM (digital rights management) for downloaded movie playback, that makes this whole scheme contingent on those shipping next year. And what are the systems that Apple is likely to convert first to Intel? Minis & iBooks - low cost, consumer oriented Macs.

-movies would be around 2 megabits/sec in the H.264 format, audio compressed as well with AAC or similar, and the download system requires broadband (this from stuff Robert Cringely was theorizing about). No problem to pull movies over faster than realtime on a lot of broadband installs. By the way, at 2 megabits, real world performance of first gen Airport (802.11b) would be sufficient - 4 to 5 megabits is the real world performance of those systems.

-Mac only to start, Windows version a few months later

6-12 months later, "due to popular demand" an HD version would be launched. Amid the fanfare, the HD output would only be high definition since Hollywood won't relent on the "analog hole" issue. Movies would be in 720p format at 24fps, and the hardware would handle stepping that up to the 720p60 broadcast standard via frame replication. Data rates in the 6-8 megabits/sec range would work fine. Perhaps Windows version announced at this time as well? While I'd love to see an HD version launched from the get-go, and see Apple cut off HD DVD and Blu Ray from the start, I don't think that likely. Sony would have to buy into this plan to make it all work, and Sony wants to sell Blu Ray players, and badly. Apple's plans would cut into that market, so I don't think HD would happen from the start. But I want it to....oooooooh so badly I want it to. Plus, teething issues, lack of HD sets in the market, bandwidth, scaling up the effort, etc. etc. etc..

Also, quietly amid the fanfare, the DRM would be tightened, as has been done with iTunes over the last few years. Getting the first version out with loose enough DRM to encourage folks in is the way they started, once it hits critical mass and goes mainstream, tighten it up, keeping the overall risk pool within the same size limits during all this time (lot of risk for small user base at first, smaller risk for larger user base later). Along those lines, perhaps the first versions will work without Intel Trusted Computing Platform stuff, but later versions will require it? Dunno, that'd piss off the consumers without it. I'm not sure how this gets worked out.

-people will grouse that the compression quality/datarate isn't as good as DVDs. They'll be right, but most folks will roll with it and not care - witness the iTunes Store's AAC 128 kilobit data rate, clearly inferior to CDs, but that doesn't slow folks down.

-if iPod Video rumors are true (and I'm thinking they're not, unless it's a regular iPod with the ability to play out video into a standard video device, aka TV), you'd be able to load movies onto this and cruise around with it.

Reasons I don't think the iPod Video rumors are true -

1.) those little hard drives in there? Last I heard they didn't have a huge rating for hours of use - they're designed for brief bursts of data transfer, not long sustained transfers - video usage would drastically shorten their lifespan (but this info may be out of date by now or for newer itty bitty hard drives)

2.) battery life - one of the things that made the first iPods possible was that they used a RAM buffer bigger than a song to briefly spin up the drive, load a song (or more) into RAM, then immediately spin down the drive to save power. Video is much much bigger than audio - this kind of caching wouldn't be possible, or the spinup requirements on the drive would be so frequent, that either way you'd need a LOT more battery to watch video

3.) And again, music is "backgroundable", video is not. You can listen to music and work, work out, drive your car, whatever. Video requires your eyes' exclusive use - you can work, run, drive, etc. and watch video. You pretty much have to be still and dedicate yourself to it. Vastly reduces the usefulness of a portable device if you have to hold still to use it. A portable shower would be handy while camping, but you're not going to use it on the go.

What I do think is likely is the gadget I've described:

-small device, not much bigger than a power brick, with analog and digital audio and video outputs

-uses 802.11g (Airport Extreme) to stream audio/video from a computer (Mac first, Windows later). Note that a Mac mini now would be fully adequate for the task

-uses Bluetooth to communicate with the Apple Media Remote (or whatever their rumored remote will be called)

-system REQUIRES 802.11g, but Bluetooth for the remote is optional. USB based Bluetooth add-ons would suddenly get popular if Apple didn't offer one

-a very generous RAM cache to handle streaming buffers for video - 10 seconds worth or more of compressed stuff

-will be able to play back not just bought & paid for movies, but also play back your own movies (if preconverted to H.264), as well as all your iTunes library.

-and watch and navigate your pictures & photo albums and slideshows as well. Set'em up on the computer, then play'em back on the gadget

-in all of this, it'll be recommended that you not be running other apps while movies are playing, and that you'll have to dedicate the wireless stuff to playback and not have concurrent internet connection (unless you have that on a different connection, such as Ethernet)

-probably won't be able to stream DV or HDV content. Both DV and HDV are 25 megabits, the theoretical max for 802.11g is 54 megabits, but real world performance is far, far less than that - 33 megabits max in a lab type setting with zero obstructions or radio interference, but in the real world around 22 megabits is typical. Since this could lead to frustrating customer experiences if the performance is on the edge, they might skip this, or have it as a buried option, or have a testing part to determine if your throughput is high enough, or something.

-video conversion on the fly for your own footage isn't likely - requires too much horsepower. Maybe for DV, unlikely for HDV. Then again, iSight can do H.264 in realtime, but it doesn't look that great. So maybe conversion on the fly, just wouldn't look as good as the high quality H.264 conversions (since those take so much more processing, not realtime).

-here's a thought - most DVDs are encoded in the 6-8 megabit range - I don't see why DVDs couldn't be played back "remotely" in this fashion from your computer, given a large enough RAM cache.

-the more formats it can decode (H.264, MPEG-2, DV), the more expensive the device would cost.

-some kind of encryption would need to be involved that could be decoded on the fly - Hollywood doesn't want DRM'd but unencrypted copies floating out there, too easy to copy stuff off that way.

-suddenly, you have a full fledged media system in your living room, with the best of both worlds - Apple long ago nailed it with the iPod when they figured out that you want to control and prepare your content with a good UI (computer, high res screen, keyboard & mouse), but play it back with a simple UI (iPod click wheel or now remote control).

Closing Thoughts

For all the Media PCs that have crappy user interfaces and complex loading procedures, this is where Apple shines. I recently read that Apple's motif goes something like this: take an idea that somebody else started with but has developed poorly (engineer built user interface), build your own, claim the technology as your own, and make it simple, clean, and easy to use (think iPods, iMovie, iDVD, etc.). This is really an area where Apple shines.

Combine this with Apple's positive experience dealing with the record labels, and they hopefully will be able to swing a similar deal with the movie studios, who are getting used to the fact that existing download services are overly complicated and limited (can't play back on living room TV), and they might be willing to play ball with Apple.

I really like this idea. Of all the companies out there, Apple seems to be in a good position to take advantage of all this. Of course, if Apple can't get the movie studios to buy into this, then this whole thing becomes a niche A/V geek product, not a massive consumer hit. Legal, paid for downloadable movie playback is critical to the success of this thing.

The guy who wrote Delicious Library (a GREAT app, BTW, go buy it to manage your DVD/game/book library) has been hired by Apple to work on user interface stuff - perhaps he'll be working on this product & affiliated software? I hope so.

There are all kinds of interesting twists and takes to this idea - if Hollywood is requiring a secured platform for movie downloads, then Apple could launch this product with the launch of the Intel based Macs.

For those who don't yet have an Intel based Mac, there'd be three options - either the movies would ONLY play on their one computer to the Apple home theater box, or movies would only play back on the one authorized computer, or if Hollywood insisted, movies wouldn't play back at all until they bought a supported system. For these folks, the Apple Home Theater box would work for their DVDs, home movies, iTunes, & photos, just not legally downloaded movies (driving them to bootleg downloads, but that's Hollywood's shortsightedness).

If Apple wants this to be REALLY mainstream, they'll need to make it compatible with Windows based systems. But if they did that, they could still hang a carrot out to Windows customers - sure you can play back music and downloaded movies with this thing, but if you want better support and integration for your photos, movies, and other stuff, you'll need a Mac. And if you want to organize/edit/etc., the iLife suite starts looking awfully nice, as would a Mac mini.

And after writing all this, to include all the features discussed, $400 and up launch price point for HD version doesn't seem unreasonable.

OK, that's enough for now - time to eat breakfast and go for a run and brainstorm on all this stuff some more.

-mike

I wrote this Friday night right after posting the "Hollywood Folly" piece.If you haven't read Friday's post about how screwy the high definition DVD thing is likely to be, go read that first otherwise this'll seem oddball.

So if HD DVD and Blu Ray are looking likely to be a minority play in the market, what's going to be some reasonable alternatives?

I see two possible viable options, one already on the market from Microsoft, and one from Apple that I think is on the way but I have no solid evidence.

The Here and Now: Microsoft's WM9 players

OK, the less exciting stuff first. Stick with me, the contrast between this and Apple gets interesting. As much as Microsoft irritates me, they've got a valid solution on the market, even though it has not been widely adopted. Microsoft's Windows Media 9 High Definition is so efficient at compressing HD down to DVD sized data, you can fit a full length movie onto an existing DVD's worth of data. In fact, Windows Media 9 High Definition is the basis of VC-1, one of three compression schemes to be implemented in HD DVD and Blu Ray (MPEG-2 and H.264 are the others). But it won't play on a standard definition DVD player since it's in a different data format. But, there are an increasing number of WM9 HD compatible players on the market. If, by some miracle, Microsoft could get more movies and more players out on the market, this is actually a decent solution for consumers and especially indie moviemakers. Here's why:

1.) The technology exists and works right now. These disks will even play back on a reasonably fast Windows XP system with Windows Media 9 installed.

2.) These players will, as I understand it, output a high definition signal on the analog component outputs. This is great for two reasons: 1.) this is the most prevalent HD connection on the market, and 2.) it's NOT this HDMI with HDCP crap required by the HD DVD and (presumably) Blu Ray players, since very few installed HDTVs have the HDMI w/HDCP feature.

3.) It's based on existing DVD disc technology, so no new manufacturing technology is required, just updated authoring tools. Great for indie distribution as well - it's cheap to author and manufacture.

However, it's still Microsoft. As good as they are at getting their stuff accepted in the computer world, this is a different market for them. It's still deep-geek territory at the moment, and the number of titles is very limited. Hollywood is looking to HD DVD and Blu Ray to make HD movies mainstream, and it's only at Hollywood's firm requirement are the HD DVD and Blu Ray manufacturers putting HDMI with HDCP (Hardware Device Copy Protection) as the ONLY high definition output on the players. So I don't see Hollywood playing ball with these WM9 HD players, since the still leave open "the analog hole."

But this is basically taking newish (and quite nice) technology and shoving it onto an existing platform and business model. Incremental rather than revolutionary. Personally, I think it's a very nice option, but there's something I'd rather see...

Option 2: Vaporware from Apple - HD movies to your TV at home over the Internet

Apple is rumored to be working on an iVideo Store, a place to download video content. Right now, they are just dabbling and testing - you can purchase music videos for a buck or two. Some in the press are getting all excited about this, I see it as merely a test that Apple doesn't really care too much about the music video market. It's practice for downloadable content of a SERIOUS size.

Presently, we have audio...

OK, a little background: presently, Apple already has a wireless streaming audio device on the market, you just may not have realized it. The AirPort Express will allow you to stream audio wirelessly from your computer to your audio system. It's tiny, easily confusable with a laptop's power brick it is so small. Just plug into into a power jack within audio cabling reach of your stereo, and you're golden. So all of your iTunes content will play back through your living room stereo. The Airport Express has analog and even digital audio connectors on it. It's great, I have one. I can stream music from my 50,000 song library (I own a LOOOOOOOOOOOT of CDs I've ripped to my server) into my living room. Because I'm extra geeky, I can use my laptop as a remote control to access content on my server and play it back in the living room. Geeky, but expensive and awkward. Most folks could use a laptop to stream to it, or start it playing from the desktop in their bedroom/study/wherever. This has it's limitations - there's no simple remote, and if you have a desktop, you have to hike into the next room to change the song. Hassle.

The rumor sites have been mentioning for some months that Apple is preparing a remote control to solve this problem. Whether it works by infrared, Bluetooth, or Airport (802.11g for the techheads) doesn't really concern me at the moment - it's a Media Remote Control.

The Vapor (for today)

Now, scale this idea up to include video. If I had an Airport Express, and added an H.264 decoding chip (and they're out there in commercial quantities, believe me), and added some kind of HD video output (unprotected analog component and more likely protected/secure digital HDMI with HDCP), then I could stream movie content. Where would that movie content come from? The iVideo Store. (Too bad iMovie is already taken as a name, it'd make more sense). If you had broadband, I'm convinced DVD watchable content could be streamed over DSL or cable modem in real time (with a reasonable buffer) to your computer, then to this little box, and into your TV or AV receiver. Realtime streaming could help address security concerns of the studios. Or, download it and watch at your convenience. 24p HD content could be entirely watchable at around 6-8 megabits - not realtime streamable, but watchable after about 5-40 minutes of progressive download, depending on your connection's speed, the movie's bitrate, the length of the movie, blah blah blah.

Based on some very quick and dirty research, Apple could have this kind of a product out on the market for under $400. Actually, under $300 if they were aggressive (so drop it to that by Christmas kind of a thing).

Why would this be so cool?

Because we could skip the whole "Who's flavor of shiny plastic disk do I risk purchasing?" that I made evident in my last post

Instead of hoping it's released on the flavor of player that you have instead of the other, if Apple were as successful dealing with Hollywood as they were in dealing with the music industry, everybody'd be onboard.

So movies on demand, in high def, in a flavor that you could (hopefully, or at least optionally) store for repeated viewing on your own playback stuff, would be a cool thing.

And suddenly, you're not reliant on a $500-$1000 player, just to your small, transportable, playback widget.

And unlike the Home Theater PCs that Microsoft is advocating, you don't need a super fast PC to do all this, you just need a broadband Internet connected computer of SOME sort (obviously Macs only to start, Windows boxes to follow), not some $2000-$3000 monster box. So any reasonably semi-modern computer would do. And hey, a Mac mini would be just fine now that Bluetooth (think remote) and Aiport Extreme (think streaming audio/video) are standard features as of a week or two ago. That opens the market up TREMENDOUSLY. I don't have stats handy about the percentage of US households that have broadband, but I guarantee it is higher than the number of households with HDTVS, or with $1000 to spare on a high def DVD player of dubious future compatibility, or $2000 to $3000 to spend on a home theater PC.

Just buy this little box, not much more than DVD players were 4 or 5 years ago, and start downloading from anywhere with broadband. Watch it in your living room. Want a remote to control the computer in the other room? Fine, we can do that for you too. Control and play back your movies with it. And oh yeah! Play back all your audio with it, and your home movies, and watch slideshows of all your pictures...you get the idea.

I also think that Apple's move to Intel chips over the next couple of years is related to all this as well. Early complaints about IBM's inability to deliver a low power laptop capable G5 chip were followed a month after the Intel announcement by an IBM announcement of....a low power laptop capable G5 chip. So that wasn't the reason for the switch. (I'll skip the whole "Where will computer speed be in two years when the transfer to Intel is complete." speech, suffice it to say I hope Apple will be happy with Intel's chip speeds at that time.)

Intel has some hardware based security stuff that would allow for the kind of limiting control that Hollywood wants. Hollywood wants tight control over who can play their movies how often. If the music industry was tough about DRM, Hollywood is MUCH tougher. While CDs and DVDs aren't that different in cost these days (that's a whole other issue for me to bitch about), the production costs of the content and marketing are QUITE different for those two industries. But if Apple could give a reasonable guarantee that casual copying by consumers would be limited to a few authorized playback devices, perhaps they could get Hollywood to back off on their "digital output only for HD" requirements. (Nah, on second thought, probably not, the "analog hole" would still be open - but it's a fun dream.)

I have zero Special Knowledge or connections to Apple about any of this, just my own thoughts and reading Bob Cringely's columns for the last few months, and a few emails from some readers thinking similar thoughts.

If Apple is NOT developing this kind of technology (even though I think they are), then I think they sure as hell should be.

-mike

-pricing? Probably same or a little less than DVDs - think iTunes pricing a la CDs

Creative Cow - Read Post - COW: News & Press Releases

new version of their green screen keying software, now with presets to handle the decreased chroma sampling of DV & HDV and other improvements.

-mike

Creative Cow - Read Post - HDV Format

...and folks aren't too impressed so far. As to the posting says, perhaps these are teething problems with the first units out there, and things will improve. But some problems, like banding in sky shots, don't sound very promising...or fixable.

-mike

Anybody else having trouble logging clips? I keep entering in and out points, clicking Update, clicking Log Clip, and my clips keep getting captured (when batch capturing) as way too long, using the last entered out marker. Frustrating and crazymaking, so I just manually grabbed all the clips off my HDV master tapes from the February 5 camera test to native HDV for testing (yes, I haven't forgotten, it just takes time to do this stuff).

If I took 2 minutes, I could go look on Creative Cow's forums to see if I'm either:

a.) Doing it Wrong

or

b.) Not The Only One, and it's an endemic issue.

I'm hoping I'm just doing something wrong.

-mike

Hollywood is being extremely protective of their content, to the potentially severe detriment of consumers - MOST of the HDTVs on the market will NOT play back high def DVDs in high def. And that's assuming that the movie you want to watch is published in the same format that your player plays - neither side is backing down from the format war, and Hollywood studios are (so far) aligning with one or the other, not both.

OK, so here's some stuff I've been mulling on when I'm in a pessimistic mood:

The HD Analog Shutout - no HD on your HDTV

It looks like the Hollywood studios are requiring use of an HDMI connector with HDCP (hardware device copy protection) for high definition video content on next generation formats, HD DVD and Blu Ray. Toshiba's HD DVD has already been shown with HDMI and stated definitively that the component analog outputs will work in standard definition ONLY, even though there is no TECHNICAL reason to prevent them from working in high definition. Sony, the primary backer of the competing Blu Ray format, also owns movie studios, so it's unlikely that they wouldn't require HDMI with HDCP as well. So this means that only newer sets with HDMI will be viable for watching high definition content. For all those who've already plunked down for HDTVs that lack this HDMI with HDCP, they are SOL. And frankly, think about it - who are the folks most likely to want to adopt high def DVDs? Probably those early adopter types who bought an HDTV to watch their DVDs a few years ago, prior to the introduction of this HDCP stuff.

So what does this mean? Imagine you spent $2000-$5000 on an HDTV a couple of years ago. You're into all this new tech, you love it. So HD DVD and Blu Ray discs actually ship, and you plunk down $500-$1000 for one of the first players (assuming you're OK buying into one of two competing standards) and you take it home and pop it in your player. Woops, your set lacks HDMI with HDCP, you only have HD component analog connections. Even though they work with all of your other high definition gear, the player will quietly downsample your HD signal to standard definition. You watch the movie, and frankly, it doesn't look any better than your regular DVDs that play on your kids' $50 player. Box it up and return it, you don't think it's worth it. You could be watching a regular DVD on a $50 player on a $300-$800 TV and it would look pretty much just as good.

It was a common supposition for a few years that buying a set that LACKED this and other digital shutouts (like hardware honoring the broadcast flag) would be protection against the onerous security measures coming. Looks like this is wrong, to the point that folks who have been early adopters will be punished.

Betamax vs VHS, Round Two

With HD DVD and Blu Ray, these two competing formats heading to market will both do essentially the same thing as far as consumers are concerned - play back high definition content, with enough room for a movie and extras, with web connection extras, and using VC-1, MPEG-2, or H.264. Most consumers won't even know or care about those last several things. Is it high def? Great. I'll buy it or not based on that.

BUT...with two competing formats, and Hollywood studios not committing to both formats, and first generation players in the $500 to $1000 price range, consumers are going to balk.

Everyone knows of, or has heard of, the Betamax vs VHS debate. No one wants to buy the losing format. With two competing formats, and the majority of movies available on only one format or the other, consumers will balk and not buy in. Who wants to buy a $500-$1000 player and be wrong? If players were $200, maybe $250 apiece, I, as a zealot, could see having one of each (and grumbling about it). But at $500 to $1000, I think the majority of people will decide to buy...neither.

HD DVD vs Blu Ray Equals PS2 vs XBox?

Perhaps we'll go through a period with both products on the market, but with some movies available on only one or the other. We've already got a situation like that - videogames. Some titles, especially those from game studios affiliated with the platform's parent company, only come out on one platform or the other. Want Super Extreme Fighter 9? It's only on Platform A, not Platform B. Maybe, in a year or two, they might port it to the competitor if anticipated sales would justify the effort but not threaten Platform A's market position.

Will consumers tolerate this? In videogames, it's been accepted because in the past it was too difficult to distribute games across all platforms due to the complexity of programming them. With movies, there's no such complication - it's relatively cake to author for either platform. But hopefully, since consumers have no experience like this with movies, they will balk, and balk hard at this. "Hey, I just bought War of the Worlds Three on high def! Dakota Fanning's KIDS are part alien! Let's watch it on your big TV!" gets followed by "Oh, dude, you've got the OTHER kind of player - the disc won't play here." will be considered too

Security Hassles

And even if it IS the right kind of player, other hassles can ensue - imagine you pop your disc into his player (or yours), and suddenly NONE of your movies will play on the player on that TV for some reason?

In the past security on consumer stuff has been mostly static - this is best exemplified by CDs and DVDs. Once their security (or lack thereof) was bypassed, the RIAA/MPAA couldn't do much to change their products to resist copying or "unacceptable" playback scenarios (unacceptable from the studios' perspectives). In DVDs, changes to region encoding is the only difference I've seen, but that's backfired. One of my three DVD players won't play a lot of DVDs because the discs claim they won't work on region free disks. The player is NOT region free, but the disks still won't play. Meanwhile, my Apex region free player plays them just fine. This is a nice example of what I think is likely with high def DVDs - the extra security will hamper a lot of legitimate uses, but there will still be mods, hacks, etc. out there that will be capable of circumventing the playback protection I'd bet.

While the next gen high def DVD formats will allow for dynamic and active copy protection such as updatable blacklists that ban certain devices from working with the high def content, somebody somewhere will work their way around it and get bootlegs out there. But for most folks, it's going to end up being a big pain - gotta buy a new player as well as a new TV, and then if your TV isn't big enough, you can't tell the difference. For legitimate users, however, this'll just make things ugly. There has already been talk of HDMI to component adaptors that would tell the security stuff (the HDCP) that it was a "secure" device, and pass on the HD analog component output. Now after having bought your $1000 player, and a multi-hundred dollar adaptor to make your HDTV work with the player, imagine you pop in a new disc that suddenly disables your high def player. "Buh-whaaaaaaaa?" you ask, in John Stewart like fashion - "What the hell?" There's retroactive, irreversible copy protection available. If the studios decide that your HDMI to component adaptor is a threat, in that somebody somewhere might use it to bootleg high def content, they can include UPDATED lists of "unacceptable" devices on their HD movies. When you pop it in your player, this list gets downloaded into your player's permanent memory, FOREVER preventing it from working with ANY disk with your little converter box. Then let the class action lawsuits begin. The fix? A partial refund, but not a working player setup I'd bet, and that'd be many years later. Not a pretty scenario.

An extra little evil tidbit - since both HD DVD and Blu Ray are expected to have online capabilities for extra goodies, that also means they'll have the opportunity to check to see if something's been modified in a way Hollywood doesn't like. Since updated blacklists can be accessed in many ways - shipped with the players, updated lists on movies themselves, and even uploaded when connecting via the Internet, it'll be tough to keep a modified system "clean." The really devious bit about this is that HOLLYWOOD, not the player manufacturer, holds the keys to your device's ability to play back content. Conceivably, if a player got shipped with a vulnerability, the studios could chose to issue disks that would disable ALL of those players. That's like Exxon reserving the right to disable your Honda if they don't like the way you drive. Or some crazy nonsense like that. Never before have content CREATORS been given so much control over content PLAYBACK technology.

But the TV isn't big enough to see the difference

OK, I'm winging it here based on casual observation, even amongst a VERY media savvy group of friends (I've worked in advertising, video, high tech and film over the course of my career), but most of my friends have TVs no bigger than 32 or 36 inches on average. And at typical living room viewing distances of 8 to 12 feet, frankly that isn't close enough, or on a big enough set, to really, REALLY get and appreciate the difference that HD offers.

A quick primer here - there's a limit to how small an object you can distinguish at a certain range. The further away, the bigger the thing has to be for you to discern what it is. Think about the "which letter is this" eye chart at the doctor. The further away he puts that chart, and/or the smaller the letters he puts up on there, the less you can perceive. Typical ideal viewer distance is about 3 times screen height away from the screen for a theater, or no more than 5 or 6 times the width away from the screen for homes. Skipping the math, most folks sit too far away from an HDTV to see all of it's detail.

A recent experience related to me made me believe that FILM originated material, transferred to HD, viewed on a typically sized biggish set (32 to 36 inches) viewed at normal living room distances (8 to 12 feet).

For more info on ideal screen size/distance, poke around in these links.

...and the TV's not that good anyway

We hear about how high the resolution is on HDTV all the time - there's 720p with 1280x720 pixels at 60 frames/sec, or 1080i with 1920x1080 with 60 fields/sec (which is arguably 1920x540 60 times a second, but whatever). While your HDTV might be able to TAKE IN that resolution, does it really display it? Or more precisely, ALL of it? Dig into the geeky specs on most HDTVs, and it can be pretty dissapointing. Cheaper panel based sets (LCD, LCOS projectors, LCD or plasma panels) often will have 1024x768 or less resolution - less than half of of 1920x1080 HDTV standard. Even the nicer, high end ones will only be under 1400x800. Recently, I read about some HDTVs that were honestly 1920x1080. They started at $10,000 and went up from there. UPDATE - Sony recently announced some new 50 and 60 inch rear projection sets with an honest honest 1080p resolution for $4000 to $5000 (Sony Expands SXRD Rear Projection HDTV Line With 50 and 60-Inch Grand WEGA Televisions
)

Part of this is because HDTVs are still fairly new - as panel prices drop and technology advances, and HDTVs become more of a commodity rather than a luxury item, prices will fall and resolution and quality will increase. But I'd be quite surprised if a large truly 1920x1080 panel based display were under $1000 in 5 years.

All this is to say, by the time most folks look at their not-so-high-defintion TV, at the distances they probably sit in their living rooms, it's not as stunning a visual experience as it could have been.

So what's on the market now, and where's it going?

Just for fun, I did a completely non-scientific sampling - I went to Dell's site and took a look at their 30" LCD HDTV - reasonably large, around the size a lot of folks would get. Panel resolution was 1280x768 - reasonable for the market and TV size, but not close to the 1920x1080 signal resolution. HDMI was not mentioned anywhere, nor was HDCP - so HD DVD (and probably Blu Ray) wouldn't play back in high definition on this $1800 set. What about a bigger set, won't it have better resolution? Completely wrong thinking sometimes - their $3000 42" plasma set had a 1024x768 resolution (and yes it's 16:9). Most folks will go for size and not think resolution. So the bigger picture is actually showing less information (but, depending on your viewing distance, you might be able to perceive more - see? It's complicated). But at least the larger set had HDMI with HDCP. Seems some do some don't from Dell, and it's not all size related - a 19" LCD screen did, the 26" & 30" didn't.

And why am I chosing Dell as an example? The TV manufacturers are TERRIFIED of Dell. Once you go digital/HDTV, there's really not much difference between a computer monitor and an HDTV, especially if you're talking about LCD - it's the exact same technology, and that changes the game. An LCD HDTV is just an LCD computer monitor with some extra circuitry built in.

Dell is a master of low cost, good-enough-for-most-consumers manufacturing and marketing. As a brand name, most folks are familiar with it. If they can make the hop from being perceived as a good quality, low cost PC manufacturer to being perceived as the same thing for TVs (not a simple challenge, though), they'll be rocking the industry. Far more threatening, however, is the fact that Dell is the single largest consumer of LCD panels in the world ALREADY. I'd say this clearly says that more LCD monitors are being sold than LCD TVs world wide, and that makes a gut level of sense. If Dell gets serious about moving a lot of product, they are the Walmart of sales. As McDonalds is to beef, Dell is to LCD panels. They can dictate terms and get pricing like nobody else in the business, and be a huge, huge threat to the Sonys, Toshibas, Sharps, etc. of the world.

How quickly are prices coming down, and how quickly is Dell passing on those cost savings? I've heard that he 24" 1920x1200 Dell LCDs are likely to get into the $500 range by year's end.

The likely outcome for the formats

I see three possible outcomes that would make me happy:

1.) A common unified format is announced before commercial release of HD DVD and Blu Ray discs.

CHANCES: Unlikely at this point - the technologies are so similar in so many ways in their data format, but so strikingly different in their physical format, that a last minute compromise such as what happened with DVDs is unlikely.

2.) Both groups stick to their guns and enter the market. Upon release to market, one format clearly becomes the dominant one, and studios flock to that format and drop the other.

CHANCES: Unlikely that there will be a clear leader, unless there is some "hero" title that everyone flocks to and wants and that tips them in that direction. Or perhaps if it seems most of the good movies are on one format and there is a clear majority that tips in that direction, swaying the other studios to switch formats. Even if so, I think that some studios would stick to their guns (especially those owned by Sony publishing on Blu Ray) and the two disc standard would continue.

3.) After a period of generally stagnant sales the studios realize consumers are staying away because of the format war, the studios relent and start publishing on both formats.

CHANCES: Of these three possible happy endings, I think this is the most likely. And it would most likely start from an HD DVD aligned studio deciding to also publish on Blu Ray. Sony, as the owner of Blu Ray and movie studios, would be unlikely to decide to publish on the competing format, until others had switched over and Sony realized there was a compelling, overall financial incentive to do so. The good thing in this equation is that the studios are somewhat autonomous and would scream and yell about losing potential sales on their movies since they couldn't serve X% of the high def DVD market at the expense of the Sony hardware camp's hardware group wanting Sony movies only playable on Sony affiliated formats.

And of course, there are myriad possibilities that would make me unhappy - the most likely scenario is that there is a standoff, and most movies are available exclusively on one format or the other, with low consumer acceptance, and consumer doubt, frustration, and turnoff due to the incompatible formats, requirement for a new HDTV, and lack of movies on their player after spending thousands of dollars for a new TV and player. Both camps would grit their teeth and hope for some event to make their format more successful than the other, and nothing significant happens, such that most movies are on one format and not the other. HBO or Cinemax? PS3 or XBox360? HD DVD or Blu Ray? Consumer hosings all around, and this time for the least viable reasons.

I don't want to be in that situation, would you?

And if the market does go down this dual format path, and consumer acceptance is low, I could see HD movie prices staying high, at a premium, unless someone (likely Sony, in an effort to push the format) dropped prices on the movies (over the recently murdered corpses of Sony movie execs trying to protect their division's profits) in order to invigorate sales of players.

Thus, Laserdisc 2.0

Apparently, Hollywood would rather see a slow, languid rollout of high def DVD technology and loose millions or billions in possible upfront near term sales due to consumers staying away in droves rather than risk losing sales to bootlegging and casual copying over the long haul. For once, they are looking long term rather than short term. But their long term view may cause a stagnant market, limited to the movie zealots - think the folks that had laserdiscs in the early 90s. It'd be something you've heard of, have one or two buddies with money who've invested in the format, but you don't own and only go watch something at their house that they've bought once every month or two after the newness wears off.

And unless your zealot friend has dropped serious coin, and has all the right gear, and hooked it up correctly, and set up the room right, you're not going to see all of the HD goodness in it anyway. And if you don't see a serious advantage, are YOU going to plunk down for your own? Probably not until the price differential is slight. And the price differential is likely to remain high until the player manufacturers and studios get serious about pushing the formats, and get desperate to push it out there.

Laserdiscs 2.0.

Rare, pricey, hard to find, difficult to play back, only in the hands of the zealots.

Blah.

Much of this could be avoided, however:

1.) Merging the standards is basically inventing something brand new, and would take years. Personally, I'd vote to Blu Ray and bag HD DVD, but I don't see that happening - Toshiba et al won't lie down and quit, no way. HD DVD is attractive to Hollywood with it's potentially lower manufacturing costs, but Blu Ray will be attractive to computer users with it's higher storage capacity. DVD's capacity was one of it's stealth advantages that got it into the market - folks liked DVD capacity for data, and once they had a DVD-ROM, they could play back DVD movies on their computers and especially laptops.

2.) Ditch this HDMI w/HDCP requirement. Yes, there will be some casual copying and bootlegging. But there's going to be bootlegging anyway. Look at every "secure" standard that's ever been out there - somebody ALWAYS finds a way. So take bootlegging as a given, and then look at casual copying, which is still very difficult to do from an HD analog signal. If I wanted to do it, I'd have to bring no less than $5000 worth of gear to do it, and a LOT of technical know how. Not many folks are going to have that capability. Hollywood needs to run the math - either accept a small, ongoing level of casual copying (which has ALWAYS existed, people can still tape off of the radio, don't forget) and get much larger sales right from the get go, since consumers won't have to upgrade their HDTV as well. Asking folks to upgrade their TVs TWICE to take advantage of the latest and greatest is only going to be appealing to a statistically insignifcant number of consumers. A rounding error.

3.) And again, if we have to have two formats, ALL of the studios should publish on ALL formats. And if Sony holds the line and only publishes on Blu Ray, I'm fine with Blu Ray being the common denominator format.

So where does this leave us, since none of the above three are likely to occur? What are our options? Tune in Monday, I'll have lots to say on how Microsoft and Apple each have their own possible options...

-mike

Just got an email that I'm topping the Blogs of Note list on the Blogger Dashboard page. So other bloggers might notice the site.

Fun!

-mike

Peter's Evil Overlord List

OK, if you're going to make a movie with an Evil Overlord, here's the list of things to AVOID, such as # 53:

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

You get the idea. Funny as hell, and think about all those bad 80s movies that don't follow all these guidelines. And 60, 70s, and 90s movies as well.

-mike

CinemaTech: Variety weighs in on DCI announcement

CinemaTech: AMPAS grapples with blurry boundaries

CinemaTech: Talk of L.A.

CinemaTech: A dispatch from the Directors Guild's "Digital Day"

CinemaTech: Dolby: 3-D, digital cinema, and "Chicken Little"

CinemaTech, my new favorite blog (that isn't mine).

He's writing about Dolby's move into movie servers for theaters (not the home). It'll be interesting to see if they can make this move - if projection goes digital, Dolby Digital Audio isn't necessary anymore (can just use uncompressed multi-channel audio).

Dolby was very, VERY serious about security at NAB - (see my NAB coverage) - to the point that the unit was fairly pricey due to security steps like the uncompressed footage never travelling over a PCI bus, the only place the uncompressed signal existed was on a board sandwiched deep inside the unit, in a glass case that would leave dust behind if it were cracked open.

Dolby talked about making these servers very sturdy and robust, to have a lifespan in the decades, not years.

Hmm - who else runs servers 10-20 years old? And who does it make sense for? And who's got parts if it breaks?

None of these latter issues are addressed in the CinemaTech article, but it's all interesting stuff.

-mike

Wired News: Auteurs Glimpse Digital Future

New tools for filmmakers - advantages of digital are touched on, but read about the dimensionalized 3D stuff using LCD flicker glasses. The original film is for the left eye, the right eye is a digitally processed version with depth added. Supposed to be stunningly good. Cost? About $8 million to adapt Grease.

-mike

HDNET is at it again - this time using RSS to put out HD clips (in high def Windows Media 9 format) on the web.

Cuban continues to make interesting plays in the media world.

I like this guy.

It's not so much that the footage is amazing (haven't seen it, but hey it's a shuttle launch, should be cool) but that they are trying different and new things to get the word out there about their services.

-mike

PBS | I, Cringely . July 21, 2005 - When Elephants Dance

Cringely talks about the purported iVideo service, Apple's online movie/video distribution system, and how Intel will play a part in it in the future.

Basically, everyone has a "fast enough" computer now for the basic stuff - mail, Internet, most gaming for most folks. The living room is the next challenge, and Microsoft knows it. So perhaps that's why Intel is teaming with Apple at this juncture, to take on the living room.

Read this, since it may become an important way for indies to get distribution in a few years.

-mike

Apple Mighty Mouse : Page 1j

headline says it all...

AppleInsider | Review: Apple Mighty Mouse

Apple came out with their own mouse yesterday with a scroll BALL, not wheel, and here's a review of it.

Blackmagic Design: Support Detail

Trouble capturing too many tracks of audio in HD with FCP 5? Here's the fix

Kit for installing 7 additional drives inside G5 Power Mac

Barefeats has all the relevant stats on the idea of installing 8 more drives in a G5 for an 8 drive RAID 0/1/5/10 setup using a Highpoint RocketRAID card (and it looks like all my woes with that came from using Maxtor Maxline III drives with early firmware versions)

I still am not in love with the idea - so it looks like the temperature and noise stays in line, but then you still have the lack of portability issue. But hey, it's your call.

-mike

CinemaTech: George Lucas keynote at SIGGRAPH 2005

I just found this great new blog - CinemaTech - and it's right up my alley. This article is on Lucas' keynote at SIGGRAPH, where he had some interesting things to say. Check it out.

Macworld: News: Alias announces Maya 7, MotionBuilder 7

New versions of 3D model/render/animate program and 3D character animation software. Good high end stuff, but don't think you can buy it and start cranking out good looking work - 3D has a STEEP learning curve.