HD For Indies

Rosetta Compatibility: PowerPC Applications on Intel Macs

For those looking to make the jump early to Intel based Macs, bookmark this link - it is the Rosetta (G3/G4/G5 emulation for Intel based Macs) compatibility test list - and it tells us whether the software runs, doesn't run, or sorta runs.

A VERY useful resource considering that it may take a year or more for some of our crucial production apps to get Intel native (like, say EVERYTHING Adobe makes).

Some useful tidbits right off the top (yes=runs under Rosetta, no means doesn't run at all):

Adobe Creative Suite - yes it runs, but with a speed hit
Apple's DVD Studio Pro, FCP, FCE, Motion, Soundtrack Pro - NO - won't run at all
Macromedia Dreamweaver/Fireworks/Flash 8 - YES
MS Office 2004: yes
Elgato's EyeTV - no
-mike

DV - Features

OK, this is MUST READING for anybody thinking about shooting a feature with a sub-$10K HD camera - as in the HVX200, the XL H1, the GY-HD100U, and/or the Z1U.

Long, long, long article, registration required. This link takes you to the features page, there is no direct link, but the article in question is titled "Four Affordable HD Camcorders Compared" and is presently the top link.

There is SO much good info in here, this is mandatory reading.

It talks about the true measured resolution off of all of these cameras, and all kinds of killer details about how they compare and how it all looked in usage.

The interesting bit of summary was how close they all came out in the end in terms of quality, and therefore workflow and shooting ease start to get much more important.

Go read it all, it'll take you a while.

I'm planning on incorporating much that they learned into my own testing to be done in a few weeks.

-mike

AppleInsider | Jobs and Iger comment on Disney's acquisition of Pixar

Steady readers will have seen me go on ad nauseum about Apple's possible consumer electronics forays that I expect this year (and to kick off on April 1st, Apple's 30th birthday). To sum up, I expect an Intel Viiv platform based Mac Mini that will have standard living room plugs - as in video and stereo hookups, in addition to the computer display and headphone jack hookups. I expect at some later point to see an Airport Express A/V type of gadget, a small wireless device with similar connections that can stream MPEG-2 and H.264 content wirelessly from a computer elsewhere in the residence to the living room/TV, the video equivalent of the audio iPod (minus the portability, of course). But it would solve the "How do I get it from computer to living room?" quandary.

Some quotes that either support those ideas, or at least trigger some interesting thoughts (these pulled from the above linked article):


Bob Iger was the first person Steve Jobs called when Apple decided it was going to market with a video-capable iPod. Jobs would not comment on any new products or potential partnerships with Disney, but said: "It's gonna be a pretty exciting next five years."

Mike's read: lining up comment for future products. As I felt the Intel deal was more about (or at least in part) about the consumer electronics play and a way for Apple to dramatically increase it's market share, I think the Disney move will have HUGE payoffs in terms of getting ALL of Disney's content on board with online digital distribution over Apple branded products. Disney has their own consumer electronics division run by an old co-worker of mine (Hey Chris!), and whether they'd want in on the action to is a very interesting question to see how it would play out.

Apple has spent years trying to build a better computer and get the world to buy into it, and while it has arguably built a better computer, the world doesn't care much (reflected in terms of market share) and has continued to buy Wintel systems. It is my guess that Apple realizes, after the success of the iPod, that the path to LARGE growth is to get into CE (consumer electronics) markets and work that angle rather than toil away on the computer side with a poor return on their investment of time and resources.

"I fully hope that the relationships between the companies will continue because its been so good," Iger said of Disney's recent collaboration with Apple and its iTunes distribution service.

Same song, second verse.

"I think Steve will be a big voice in many respects, and I think that's a good thing," Iger said of Jobs' new roll at Disney.

If true, that lends credence to Steve being able to pull Disney content to Apple consumer electronic devices.

Asked whether it can capitalize on emerging distribution opportunities -- such as Apple's iTunes and iPod -- Disney executives were hesitant to comment, saying the goal, above all else, is to make great animation films. "The rest takes care of itself," the company said. However, Disney conceded that it is open to whatever technology or means will get its products to people "on a well-timed, well-priced basis."

OK, now keep that in your head and read this:

"You may watch your favorite live action film three, four, or five times in your life," said Jobs. "But for a great animation film, your kids may watch it a dozen or a hundred times." He believes the opportunity to view these movies on other devices will eventually play an important roll and expects strong demand from family members to watch certain films from many places on many devices.

OK, BINGO. I can totally vouch for this - my neice and nephew have seen Toy Story dozens of times. My sister dropped big cash for an in car DVD player for the hours she spends with the kids in the car all of the time. If there were a little player for them? And the files it played worked in the living room too? BIG market. Kids movies are almost a different viewing/playback/monetary thing than grownups' (I'm avoiding the connotations of "adult" here) movies, and suddenly makes a lot of sense for an Apple CE device. Excuse me, SERIES of devices.

And on another note...

Pixney or Dixar?

It'll be interesting to see whether this effort turns into a Pixney (happy sounding name, happy results, good melding of cultures and talents, beautiful animation and storycrafting from Pixar, good marketing and distribution from Disney) or a Dixar (ugly name, mangled sequels, Toy Story characters in Disney, and bad merchandising, more lame "movies as Broadway musicals," spinning of Walt in grave).

I had fun thinking about the name stuff - Pixney I read somewhere else, but Dixar I came up with. If you were going to have good and bad characters in a movie, it's pretty obvious which is which.

Well, this answers a lingering question - it looks like Apple WILL support BOTH HD-DVD and Blu Ray. Steve Jobs publicly stated last year, with the (now gone) head of Sony that Apple would be supporting the Blu Ray format for high def DVDs. And, not that there was doubt, also the HD-DVD standard is now confirmed and the 1.0 spec supported.

Just a few minutes ago, Software Update popped up with DVD Studio Pro 4.0.3, with teh following description:

DVD Studio Pro 4.0.3 updates compliance for the 1.0 HD DVD Video standard content specification to Tiger and Panther based users. Users with DVD Studio Pro 4.0 or later need to install this update to ensure their projects are compliant with the 1.0 HD DVD Video standard content specification.


... so that answers that. Glad to hear the spec has been finalized, or at least that is a (somewhat) reasonable assumption to draw based on this announcement.

Woops, the above is a bit misleading - to be clear - it was known all along that the intent was to support HD-DVD, but this PROVES it with a SHIPPING version 1.0 spec suppported.

-mike

Sharing Full Quality HDV from iMovie HD does not export correct aspect ratio (1920 x 1080, 16:9)

Tech note for those (poor souls!) who have to use iMovie 6 for their HDV projects

How Pixar Adds a New School of Thought to Disney - New York Times

Nice NYTimes article. Talks about the culture inside Pixar. Things to be learned for anyone.

-mike

Macworld: Review: iMovie HD 6

OK, for the TOTAL bottom enders, iMovieHD is a place to start...not a great place, but a place to start learning SOMETHING.

I'd much more recommend Final Cut Express, but hey, ya get whatcha can.

I especially liked all the new Themes, they are actually quite nice.

I think it was the FresHDV guys that clued me in to this, but the Josh Oakhurst Official Site is pretty darned good.

Why? Because he's doing the kind of hands on reporting that I wish I had more time to do these days, talking about the real world limitations of Final Cut Pro, Xsan, and the pros and cons of The Small Four (the 3 HDV and one DVCPRO HD sub-$10K cameras).

The Jan 25th entry has some kvetching about Xsan's lack of robustness, and then a very detailed and nice bit of opinion about the JVC vs Sony vs Panasonic cameras that are under $10,000.

Worth starting to track - I am.

-mike

Fast Company Now

He attended a panel on this stuff and has comments - the most salient of which (I thought) was this -

While the future looks bright for filmmakers making their first $10,000 movie, and trying to make some of that back –and also get noticed -- using something like Google, it isn’t so clear for filmmakers who’re used to working on multi-million dollar projects, and being guaranteed substantial salaries up front.


Marketing remains a huge challenge - how to cut through the noise? And don't tell me website and email campaigns, if it isn't from someone I know, I blow right past it.

-mike

CinemaTech: Some thoughts on what `Bubble' means for theaters and studios

I'm slow posting this one, but indies should be thinking about this type of thing, watching how it works, and thinking about whether this could be a viable choice for them.

Here's a slice of his coverage to give you an idea of what he's talking about:

The movie is being released simultaneously in several places: on DVD, on a premium cable channel, and in theaters. (The DVD release will be a bit delayed %u2013 until Tuesday.) That aggravates theater owners, who are accustomed to having exclusive rights to show a new film for several months. And they%u2019re right to be on edge: %u201CBubble%u201D could mark the start of a period of brutal, Darwinian winnowing for cinemas. But Soderbergh%u2019s latest production may also be the curtain-raiser for a new era in Hollywood: an era in which presenting consumers with a smorgasboard of viewing options, at different prices but on the same day, will reduce piracy while creating new efficiencies and growth opportunities for movie studios.

....

If simultaneous release proves viable, the operators of movie theaters will suddenly find themselves in a hyper-competitive marketplace. Some will fail. But others will reinvent the movie-going experience, perhaps by offering cushier seats, more satisfying food, less-sticky floors, alcoholic beverages, and waiter service.

An interesting read.

-mike

FireWire Depot - FireWire USB SATA - PCI Express Card FireWire 800 1394b / USB Combo UFC2412

Headline says it all...website says backordered until Feb 15, 2006.

WD Caviar SE16 SATA 300 MB/s 500 GB Hard Drives ( WD5000KS )

The title is a misnomer - 300 MB/sec is the BUS speed, not the drive's speed. Key features:
-7200 RPM
-16MB cache
-500GB capacity
-quiet (purportedly)
-NCQ (Native Command Queueing, but this causes trouble with some SATA cards, like the Firmtek ones)
-$350 or less street price - drives are getting CHEAP!
-I used to do a lot of drive testing myself, but there are plenty of viable solutions out there, and barefeats.com does a good job of it, so I've just been looking to Rob-ART over there to do that kind of thing (until I get biz more stable and have more spare time)

: )

-mike

CinemaTech: Sundance panel: `Puccini for Beginners'

Read this if thinking about doing a low budget digital film with a production company like InDigEnt. Sounds very hard, very low pay, profit sharing for...little indie personal (vanity?) projects.

I agree with what one commenter on here said already - why get a production company, why not just do it all on your own? Startup capital is one reason. Long discussion that I won't go into right now, but every indie should be thinking about very carefully.

-mike

AppleInsider | MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon content now on iTunes

MTV will now offer among others:
-Laguna Beach
-Beavis & Butthead
-Jackass - TV series not movie
-Punk'd
-Wonder Showzen

Nickelodeon will offer Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob Squarepants, and Zoey 101

And the good stuff (in my book):
-South Park (!!! - which should hold up great under compresion)
-Comedy Central Stand Up - a bunch of stuff
-Drawn Together (my latest guilty pleasure)

All in all, not huge stuff, but rounding out the Apple offerings. Will help if/when Apple offers a consumer living room solution. And then hopefully offer higher res versions.

-mike

CinemaTech: From Sundance: Creative Independence, and How to Keep It

OK, I'm catching up (or trying to) on my backlog - Scott Kirsner's at Sundance and taking detailed notes on panels. So attention all producers and filmmakers out there - here are some suggestions from some Big Dogs of indie filmmaking on financing your film, why maintaining final cut (the edit, not the software) is so important, etc.

I consider this vital reading for the business side of filmmaking.

Some choice quotes:

one key to retaining creative control is figuring out "how...you hand over the project as late as possible to the financier." As soon as you take money, he said, you lose a little bit of the vision.

....

"The money has a personality," Christine Vachon said. "You have to try to fit the personality of the project to the money. Sometimes we do it successfully." Other times, not.

......

Ted Hope said, "I would try to avoid developing within the studio system as much as possible."

.....

(talking about having creative control and final cut of a film):

Payne said, "I have it now, and say don't leave home without it." He got it with "About Schmidt," and that became a precedent. "I compare it to a loaded gun. The safety is off. It's in a locked box. But it's under my bed. Knowing that, I'm so much friendlier to comments [from studio execs and others involved with the film.]"

He continued: final cut is "a principle that's taken for granted in Europe -- like George Bush is an asshole -- that here is under discussion." Big laugh.

...and it's hard to top that, so go read the rest yourself.

-mike

OK, here's a quickie:

Question:

On Jan 30, 2006, at 12:44 AM, Genevieve wrote:

Hello!
Your site is great!
Quick question..

Intel Imac v G5 Imac? what are your thoughts. I need to do Final Cut
Editing and have heard so many conflicting views on each Imac.. What
do you think?

Mike's Answer:

On iMacs:

1.) G5's cancelled this week, they're EOL'd (End of Life) - see here.

2.) Intel iMacs won't run FCP worth a damn until end of March, when Apple tells us it'll ship the Universal Binary version of FCP 5.x.

So wait if you can, don't if you can't.

I expect the Intel version will run rings around the G5 version on iMacs, based on dual core vs. single core of otherwise roughly comparable processors, except for the Altivec accelerated stuff which is a Big Unknown, and might pull the results closer together. Or, if my suspicions about FCP 6 are right (and they are just guesses with no confirmation), then GPU will start to affect FCP performance more than a little, so I'd recommend getting the better video card Just In Case. Of course, my guesses about the next version of FCP 6 were based on Apple really hooking into Core Video for FCP, but the Intel switch might possibly have delayed that, I don't know. Some have suggested manpower would be divided to port to Intel, others have suggested additional staff was brought in to port and the original team would still be cranking away on FCP 6 features. Again, I don't know for sure either way. But the long term smart play would be to get the Intel iMac when you were ready (with the better video card), wait for Apple to ship the Intel version of FCP (sometime before end of March, but could be the 31st), and go with that....if you can afford to wait that long.

Of course, the BEST FCP box is still a tower G5, preferably a Quad if you've got the budget.

-mike

AppleInsider | Amazon plans full-length feature film streaming

-smaller studios would allow streaming full length movies (NOT download to keep)
-therefore putting content on iPod or other PMP unlikely
-different models under discussion, but buy DVD online and watch streaming until it arrives is a likely possibility
-or streaming purchase price goes towards future DVD purchase price
-thus Amazon would largely be giving away the service, not as strong an incentive to make it good as if it were a freestanding service
-streaming never looks as good as progressive downloads, all other things being equal

Accelerate Your Macintosh! News Page - 1/23/06

Reader report on success using a Raptor 150 GB drive in a dual 2.7 G5. This is probably the ultimate boot drive for a G5.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 1/25/06 - 2nd report of WD Raptor 150GB drives - BAD BAD THINGS - data corruption and various awfulness - waiting for final verdict, but NOT buying one until it gets a clean bill of health

-mike

Wired News: DV Studio Can't Make a Buck

A very blunt, painfully true assessment of what it takes to make a DV based film. It ain't the making, it's the distributing that kills the economic viability of this approach.

Some painful but true quotes from the article:

Sixteen different filmmakers have directed InDigEnt's first 16 films, perhaps because making an ultra-low-budget film is so grueling.

'I will never make a movie again like this,' said Puccini director Maria Maggenti. 'That's nothing against InDigEnt. But I want a huge crew and big cameras and tons of money. I want to be able to pay for my locations. I want everyone to get a decent wage.'

Maggenti, a writer for TV series Without a Trace and director of 1995 Sundance hit The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, said she worked on Puccini around the clock for more than four months, yet was paid just $1,500.

'The only reason I was able to do it was that I work in television making good money,' she said. 'But this is not viable as a living. (The InDigEnt model) is for rich people or for poor people who have nothing to lose.'


...and I'd have to agree with that. Read the article, it is sobering truth.

Now, the REALLY interesting spin is this: will non-DV digital productions done on the cheap-ish (and YES I'm talking about HDV especially, and HD in general) be able to do any differently than DV? Is it the digital-ness, the low production value, the lack of marketing muscle, the off-mainstream content, the low resolution of DV, something else, or some combo platter that is making these approaches fail?

-mike

Netflix to support High Def DVDs at launch

Netflix announced it will:

"carry the first movies available in HD DVD when the new high-definition
format launches in late March"

"Netflix said it will make the high-def DVD titles available at launch
as a way of supporting the next-generation DVD format and signaling its
belief that while initial adoption may be limited the market will
eventually migrate to high-definition. "

"we're committed to making the full range of titles available at Netflix
the moment they're introduced,"

From the sounds of the press release they will carry BOTH BluRay and HD
DVD movies.

Thanks to Luis from Pitch Productions (he of the HVX200 test footage) for sending that in, the above synopsis is from him verbatim. Thanks Luis!

CinemaTech: Tips on South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival

Scott talks to Jarod of SXSW about best time to go, best places to go, etc. if you're going.

-mike

Disney to buy Pixar for $7.4 billion - Yahoo! News

OK, so it happened.

Interesting details:
-$7.4B deal (Jobs bought it from Lucas for $10M and built it up from there)
-Pixar has creative control over Disney's animation efforts. WOW.
-Ed Catmull and John Lasseter will run house of mouse animation as well as Imagineering (theme parks etc.)
-Jobs is now one of the biggest shareholders of Disney
-Jobs gets a seat on the board

OK, those are the known facts. My GUESS, as I stated the other day, is that this will get Jobs what he was really after - a seat on the board of Disney, and the ability to leverage that position to push for what he wants in the consumer electronics market - such as downloadable movies for future Apple video consumer electronics, which I'm expecting to be announced April 1st (Intel based Viiv platform, etc.). Picture an iLife box that can play downloaded Hollywood movies. The opportunities then are huge - if Apple can get an HD movie service rolling, they could preempt the whole HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray thing. Whether people will be willing to buy movies that only play on their limited number of devices remains to be seen - remember DIVX, the DVD format? You'd buy the encoded DVDs for cheap, and pay to unlock them. As expected, the service cratered, and discs stopped working eventually. I routinely take DVDs over to my sister's house, or take them on family trips so her kids can watch Monsters Inc., the Incredibles, etc. wherever we go (we travel for Thanksgiving often). With Apple's plan, I'd need to bring MY player along as well. Lame. So there is a limited opportunity there. We'll see.

So how does this relate to using HD for independent filmmaking? I think that once Apple gets a foothold in that market, indies will (in a year or two) have access to that market as well. In the same way that the iTunes music store now lets indie labels get their content in there, I see no reason why indie movie projects won't be able to get into the game as well over time.

Can't get theatrical distribution? Can't get your DVD into Walmart or Blockbuster? Don't think of that as the end of the world. There's Amazon, there's Netflix, and in time ther will also be some kind of Apple Movie Store.

Or at least, that's what I think/hope/expect.

-mike

PS - my buddy Paul Alvarado has also posted his spin over at RoboGeek.com. He writes pithier summaries and has a link to his detailed April 1st prediction, which is in line with my own expectations.

Completely random thought:

I'm a big movie geek - I see'em all when I can - artsy stuff, action stuff, the whole gamut from flicks to movies to films to art.

And I see trailers - boy do I, as I'm sure you all do too. I have several 1920x1200 screens and enjoy firing up the Apple QuickTime movie trailer pages and running it through the studio speakers (Alesis Monitor Ones, Long May They Reign).

BUT...

I think we're getting burned out from overkill and oversaturation. In the last year or two, the studios have taken to running teasers and trailers six months in advance (or it is nine? Feels like eight or nine).

And maybe that's just too much.

Last year ticket sales were down seven percent I've heard said. Why? Is it alternative forms of entertainment like HDTV, the Internet, or video games? Or just that folks are choosing to see fewer movies? Or just that the movies kinda suxored last year, and the Aggregate We said "Feh - let's stay home."

Maybe, because the studios have been trying to amp us up on it for six months (think Kong trailers), they've overshot the mark. Since they've programmed us to wait for six months, maybe too many of us are subconciously thinking "I'll wait three more months and get the DVD." (The actual window is around four months these days.).

So how about it Hollywood - between the seemingly yearlong ad campaigns and the one third year wait for the DVD, have you trained us to be patient and just wait "just a little longer?"

I wonder if better results could be had with a shorter (think 1/2 the timeframe or less) and more dense (not quite twice as much ad placement) - if Hollywood could get more of us more excited in a shorter period of time, would there be a sense of urgency that has become lost now that the ad campaigns are DEFINITELY longer than the wait from theatrical to DVD release?

Certainly something to think about.

Also, other random tidbit that I've talked about privately but didnt' think to blog on until Frank Reynolds (NYC indie editor, he cut In The Bedroom among others) reminded me:

once hi-def DVDs are the norm, and seasons of TV shows will be released in the new format, there will be a strange split in the quality of the shows, such that the original STAR TREK series might actually look better in hi-def than NEXT GENERATION. The reason being that the original Trek was finished on film, and prints still exist from which hi-def transfers can be made (even though they'd be "side-letterboxed" at 1.33) where NEXT GENERATION, though shot on film, was finished on video (and the special effects for at least the early seasons were video-composited), so they won't look any better in hi-def.

We had the theory that TV shows from about the early-to-mid-70s up to the early 90s would be the ones that would not benefit from hi-def DVDs, since these would be the shows that either were shot on standard-def video, like sitcoms, or were shot on film but finished on video, so no prints exist. (Before the mid-70s or so, TV shows shots on film were done like mini-movies, with a final print. But somewhere along the line, it was more efficient to telecine the footage and edit and finish on video.) At about the early-to-mid 90s, the networks started to realize that hi-def was coming, so they prepared for it....I heard that even IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT in 1994 were finishing episodes in preparation for hi-def.

We even had the "crazy" theory that earlier seasons of MASH might look better in hi-def than later seasons because of this.


Yeah - he's totally right - older shows shot on film will if re-telecined to HD (and if it's the FINAL show and no effects required) will look BETTER than more recently shot stuff. How's that for unexpected? This assumes that original film can be tracked down, is in good shape, no new FX to be done, if not final show the source footage and a matchback EDL exists somewhere so that it wouldn't be monstrously expensive to eye match the whole thing back to a conform.

But it is an interesting point to make.

-mike

CinemaTech: From Sundance: Panel on 'The Thousand Channel Universe'

I'd like to consider Scott Kirsner my proxy at Sundance (he's not officially) - but he's covering a lot of the same stuff from the same angle I would, but perhaps smarterer.

: )

He sat in on a panel that discussed indie distribution, online marketing, digital distribution, and other juicy tidbits you should all be interested in. Go read it.

-mike

Showreel article : HDV on the set of 24 A day in the life of HDV

This is a long, detailed, GREAT article about the shooting realities of working with HDV. To summarize misses the detail points - IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING SHOOTING YOUR INDIE PROJECT ON A SUB $10,000 HD CAMERA, YOU MUST READ THIS.

They go into the practical shooting details that I would miss (as a post oriented, not shooting oriented, kind of guy).

There - motivation enough?

-mike

UPDATE Tuesday afternoon:

Some choice pull quotes:

As expected, the JVC stock lens was loaded with chromatic aberration. This was a non-issue, as the lens was interchangeable and we were anticipating that for high-end drama work we would be using something akin to the Mini35 with cine lenses anyway. The fixed Z1 lens does not ‘breathe’ but it too exhibits some CA, but less so than the stock JVC.

The Z1 blows away any flipout LCD display, with its strong feel and extremely bright light output. Daytime exteriors are shootable without using an LCD hood. The JVC flip-out LCD is no different than any LCD screen I’ve seen on other cameras, so it’s not so bad, but normal. However, the JVC’s ‘focus assist’ is an excellent idea. Activate this and it switches the viewfinder to black and white and highlights in blue the areas of the frame that are in focus. I found this extremely useful when needing to focus quickly and accurately on set.

..............

The two directors were impressed by the images. Brad in particular, fresh from his recent HD experience, was interested in the compactness and the quality. There appeared to be a soft filmic quality to the images,compared to either the F900 or the Genesis, but what was more interesting was that the much-coveted 35mm shallow DOF was obtainable with the Z1 using a static ground glass cine adaptor (the Guerrilla35) with Nikon SLR lenses. However, we found that a follow focus and camera assistant was mandatory with a 35mm cine lens attached.

This reinforced the need for us to get hold of the P+S Technik Mini35 for the JVC and the Canon for stage two of the tests. Although I can’t pre-empt later test results, we are becoming increasingly convinced that the Mini35 should no longer be considered an accessory, but something that could make using 1/3in HD/HDV for dramatic TV series a real possibility. Varous Sundance dramas already attest to this.

....................

From my initial use of the cameras, neither yet exhibits a satisfactory depth of field control out of the box because of the small millimetre of the normal lens. The whole world is sharp. Right away, I have issues with this for drama. I have shot enough 16mm drama where you are continually pulling out walls to move yourself far enough away from the cast to be able to throw the background out of focus, so that the viewer is not distracted and we can tell them exactly where to look and where to focus their attention.

So we pulled in the Guerrilla 35. This was my first time with any of these devices and I was impressed. Using the prototype with a small set of Nikons I had a great deal of fun lensing our cast with this more acceptable depth of field. But focusing a real actor moving quickly is a big challenge on these smaller cameras.

Sony’s Z1 is an excellent camera as a replacement for the PD150, plus it does HDV. But focus is a bust because it will not return accurately to a mark on the barrel or with a focus unit. I resorted to what I had done on my daughter’s movie with the PD150 – I used the built-in automatic button to punch it up whenever I felt it needed it. I would also use a large monitor, perhaps to operate with on a tripod – or at the least to have someone watching focus like a hawk.


...and so forth.

Great, GREAT hands on detailed stuff that I wouldn't figure out as a non-shooter.

-mike

NitroAV has another 4 port SATA card on the market.

It has four external ports, BUT is a PCI card, not a PCI-X card, thus the top sustained throughput is about 90-100ish MB/sec, not 250ish as is possible with a PCI-X card. So this would be suitable for any standard definition work, compressed HD work, and uncompressed 720p24 work (no 720p60, no 1080p24).

But it is $60. It is based on a Silicon Image chipset (same as some of the other cards on the market). They also have a PC Card version as well for the same price.

-mike

AMUG WiebeTech SilverSATA V Five Bay Enclosure Review

A very thorough review of Wiebetech's 5 bay port multiplied SATA enclosure. We'll be seeing more of these in the future. But this one's pretty expensive - over $1000. But this type of storage is what I expect to see more of this year - 5 SATA drives, one cable to host machine. Very interesting to see the throughput tests they did - including empty and nearly full results. Based on their results, ASSUMING these data rates could be maintained without dropping frames, it looks like this kind of a setup could be used for uncompressed HD work if partitioned off at the end (gets a little too slow).

(found via FresHDV.com)

21st Century 3D: 3DVX3 Press Release

These guys had a booth at NAB last year and I covered what they were up to - namely taking two of the Andromeda modified DVX100A's and running them synchronized up to get stereoscopic imagery. So if you need to make a low budget 3D live action movie, here ya go - this is the answer in this budget range. I'll have more to say about Andromeda soon as well.

-mike

Reader mail time. Reader's mail in italics, my responses in plain text:

Hello Mike,

I am an indie filmmaker based in North Carolina and I have a few questions of advice for you before I build my new HD post production suite. I am very new to HD so please excuse my lack of knowledge. Any links you can provide me with for advice is much appreciated!

I will be purchasing the HVX (and five 4GB P2 cards) within the next month and I want to build the best possible editing suite I can for under $10,000

Here's what I'm thinking:

-Apple Quad (should I wait for the intels?) I will not need to start post on my next project until April.

Are you buying this box to do post JUST for this project, or to learn on it and do other work between now and then? If just for this project, quite possibly wait for Intel Mac towers later this year. If need a box now, Quad G5 is plenty powerful.

If you're not planning on posting until next April, and don't need to learn on it or do work on it before then (but you well might), then I'd say don't even bother worrying about this stuff until next January or so - THEN evaluate the gear on the market at that time and see how it fits your needs. It is good to plan ahead, but you're planning way too far ahead. This market moves too fast to peg your needs this far in advance. The one good thing you can do is assure yourself that $10K is sufficient for your editorial needs NOW, and if it is enough now, it definitely will be later.


-Apple Cinema HD Display (23 inch)

sure, or Dell to save some money, are $879 if get the deal (see barefeats.com for details from last week). You also haven't mentioned broadcast CRT for viewing the video, that can be necessary as well depending on how much work you intend to do inhouse (or how far down the post process you intend to take it).

-Black Magic Multibridge Extreme Card

it's not a card so much as a box, and is overkill for the HVX. DeckLink HD Pro Single Link PCIe when ships better fit, or AJA's Kona LHe is shipping now and a good fit for your needs. Don't forget storage! You haven't mentioned storage, how much you'll need, and how fast it'll need to be depending on whether you plan on finishing uncompressed or not.

-Final Cut Studio (should I wait for FCP 6 in April?)

depends on how soon you need the gear. Again, if need now, buy now, if can wait, wait. Also, it is likely to be ANNOUNCED April, may not ship to May/June/July/who knows for sure.


I am also concerned with burning HD-DVDs. Can you provide me with any helpful links about this? Will DVD Studio Pro allow me to burn HD DVDs that work on SD-DVD players?

the stated plan is for DVD Studio Pro to be able to burn high def DVDs, I imagine both will be supported, but Apple's only public statement I'm aware of leans towards Blu Ray for built in. I haven't seen any recent comments about when they'd be included in Apple gear. Readers - anybody else heard anything?

NO, NONE, WHATSOEVER high def disks made by anybody will play on standard SD-DVD players - think about it - DVDs were invented nearly ten years ago, why should they be able to play this brand new format?

Do the new intel Macs allow you to burn Blueray discs?

not built in - still regular DVDs

Are Blueray discs compatible with SD DVD players or just HD DVD players?

just Blu-Ray

Daring Fireball: Macworld Expo 2006 in Review is a nice compendium of detailed analysis of Apple's new products from MWSF.

Good details on many fronts. (Yes, I'm still the lazy blogger). I'm going to be working on my detailed MWSF coverage soon.

-MIKe

I've long been predicting based on tea leaf readings that Apple was going to make a serious push into online video media distribution, but new twists arise:

On a front page article in the Wall Street Journal, it is revealed that Disney is in serious talks to acquire Pixar. The article talked about the likelihood of a $6.7B acquisition cost which would leave Steve Jobs as the single largest shareholder of Disney stock, and a likely seat on the board of directors.

There have been rumors to this effect in the past, and I thought the most interesting part of this was because Mouse House wanted to acquire a SUCCESSFUL animation group since they couldn't seem to do it themselves. There was much wrangling over whether Pixar could effectively launch their own animated films with another distribution company, especially since Disney has sequel rights to Monsters Inc, Toy Story, etc. that could open same weekend as whatever Pixar came out with next, and steal their thunder. Or at least threaten to.

Now, I see things differently.

My personal pet spin, or at least the slice of the deal that I find most interesting right now:

Steve Jobs is sacrificing ownership of Pixar in order to gain a seat on the board of Disney, and thus be a big part of the Big Seven movie studios, and be able to push the deals in online downloadable movies in much the same way he's been able to push downloadable audio. By being an integral part of Disney, he'll have the clout to push content for the hardware I'm now expecting April 1st (thanks Paul of Robogeek.com for sending me down that path). It'll be Intel Viiv platform, plug into your TV or better yet HDTV, be Mac Mini cheap (OK, a bit more), and tie into an online downloadable movie service. Not just last night's episode of Lost, or the Rose Bowl (Go Horns!), or music videos you have to pay for, but actual Hollywood movie content.

Starting with Disney.

Most likely some Pixar movies, I'd imagine.

(Oh, plus he'll get a few billion dollars of his own. I'd hate to pay his taxes this year.)

Who wants to bet me that it won't be possible by May/June to download Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles onto a new Intel based Mac?

While it would inevitably tick off consumers by having an HDMI connector with HDCP, and no HD analog connectors, that is what the Hollywood folks would insist on - they felt FAR too burned by DVDs being cracked and ripped so easily and have vowed to never get hit that way again.

Oh, and if Apple REALLY wanted to blow the socks off the market, they'd introduce an HD model, and a certain percentage of consumers interested in HD would skip the pending replay of the Betamax/VHS War 2.0 also known as HD-DVD vs Blu Ray and just get downloadable HD movies instead.

Present prices for HD-DVD and Blu Ray players at CES that I saw were no less than $500 for an HD-DVD player and as high as $1800 for a top of the line Blu Ray player. If Apple had an $800-$1000 box that would play high def content on your HDTV, surf the web, rip & organize & buy and play digital audio, show your digital pictures, etc.....would YOU want one?

Think about it - it'd come with iLife 06, so you could rip CDs to it, sync your iPod on it, capture & edit DV & HDV on it, burn DVDs (and eventually your own Blu Ray discs on it, as Apple voiced an opinion in the format war last year), organize & show your Photos, make web pages, etc. etc. etc. etc. Starts sounding like a pretty good deal. If you had an HDTV to watch and control all this stuff on, and a wireless keyboard and mouse, it'd be pretty darned cool.

There are implementation details to work out - UI that reads well across the room (rumors of resolution independent UI has surfaced for future OS X), Front Row needs serious speed enhancements to get smooth, a TiVO like functionality with TV Tuner would certainly add to the value of the mix (there's an HDTV recorder thingy that connects to USB 2.0 for Macs NOW, however, saw it in El Gato booth at MWSF), hardware connectivity issues to be addressed, and most importantly licensing deals to be cut with the movie studios to make them comfortable to get into this game. Then issues of backing up all this data, how to make it more portable (a TRUE video iPod, with high quality HDTV connectors would be great).

I would happily buy one.

Hmm. I'm thinking about selling some Dell and buying MORE Apple now. I'll see if it still makes sense in the morning (it's nearly 1 am in Austin).

-mike

UPDATE NEXT MORNING In the light of day, this theory still sounds good. It would also explain perhaps why the keynote was so lackluster in the beginning and so much time was spent on iLife - perhaps the hope was that this deal would have been cut and Jobs could announce the partnership, or the movie service, or SOMETHING more than what he did.

-mike

UPDATE: ...and now this link is more info on Premiere Pro 2 and After Effects 7. Premiere Pro gets native HDV support and the ability to drop 24p on 29.97 timelines (it adds 3:2 pulldown and plays out in real time).

FresHDV | Fresh news & views for videographers, editors, filmmakers, directors & producers. has a nice synopsis of the new Adobe Production Studio - After Effects 7, Premiere Pro 2, Encore 2, etc.

I'm still swamped at work, so Matthew has a nice writeup that's as good as what I'd do, go read that instead.

And read that forum link at the bottom, the second poster.

: )

-mike

Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 PCI Express SATA II host adapter for Power Macs

Again, this must be Lazy Blogging Week - just go read Rob-Art's excellent review of the Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 PCIe card (YES it works in Quad G5s) with special attention to the needs of uncompressed HD video editors and RAID 5 capabilities.

In short, COULD be used for HD work in theory if carefully partitioned, but the tail end perforformance is too low (180 MB/sec). Also, since it is CPU based to do the heavy math for for the parity data that makes RAID 5 work and be fault tolerant (protects your data in case of a drive's failure in the RAID), it would be sucking resources from the host CPU that you'd want available for RT video effects.

In short, I don't think this approach is going to be a good one for RAID 5.

-mike

Video Thing: HandBrake on Macintels

Wiley Wiggins sent me a link about Handbrake working on the Intel Macs, so you can encode H.264 in REAL TIME. Not sure about frame size, but that's mighty impressive right out of the gate.

-mike

Adobe After Effects - New features

Adobe announced After Effects 7 yesterday. Some key new features for Folks Like Us:
-redone UI easier to navigate and control
-Graph Editor - easier control of keyframes
-HDR color support - this is a biggie for the FX crowd - you have High Dynamic Range imaging support, and can do 32 bit float compositing in the Pro version, and will composite stuff in a more realistic fashion (mimics real light behavior better)
-Timewarp - uses motion vectors for better time stretching - be very interesting to see how good and how fast it is at 60i to 24p conversion
-more file formats supported (HDV, camera RAW, OpenEXR, AAF, 10bit YUV, 32bit TIFF & PSD formats
-OpenGL acceleration - hopefully usefully now, first time didn't make much difference
-Flash video export (now that Adobe owns Macromedia)
-tight integration with Premiere Pro 2, which I'll write about soon

-mike

TidBITS: Pro Video Apps Now Only in Final Cut Studio

Here's where I found that info on Pro Apps:
-Final Cut Studio only option, can't buy individual apps anymore
-Universal Binary (runs on Intel Macs) due by March 31st
-upgrade pricing

I've been swamped today, but got a great email from longtime reader/commenter Bruce Allen, who sent this in:

Mike

Some thoughts on why Apple isn't talking about battery life.

Tom's Hardware just reviewed a 2.0ghz Core Duo PC laptop with X1600 graphics. Batery life was very dissapointing:

They did more tests and decided the problem was not with the CPU, but actually with either the X1600 itself, or Intel's Sonoma chipset not shutting down unneeded PCI Express lanes, etc:

So, maybe Apple, Intel and ATI were working up till the last minute to fix the bug.

By the way, I predict After Effects 7 will be released tomorrow. The LA motion graphics organization is having a meeting and the Adobe After Effects product head will be there:

Also, have you seen the Toshiba M400? Dual core tablet PC, mmm... The last one had a GeForce so maybe the new one will have good gfx too (without the power problems of the X1600, I hope):

About XP and Vista on Intel Macs, I agree that Vista is almost definite. XP might also be possible, because it's possible that the EFI BIOS replacement thing that Apple is using can emulate an older BIOS:
"Intel Australia, while being careful not to comment on Apple's hardware specifically, says motherboards based on the Intel 945 chipset already support EFI and can boot Windows with no problems."

Hope you're doing well. Happy new year.

Cheers

Bruce


I followed up with an email saying that was so good I'd like to post it, so he consented and added this bit more:

No problem Mike, it would be an honor

I scoured the net today for some other reviews of Core Duo laptops with X1600s to see if they were are also having battery problems.

An Acer (2.0ghz duo, X1600 w 256mb RAM) is not

This Eversham one is, though (1.83ghz duo, also X1600)

Again, I'd guess that Apple is having similar problems. The Acer shows that you _can_ get good battery life out of a Duo and X1600 though, so there is hope.

The Acer's specs are pretty cool, actually. Similar to Apple's specs, except it has ExpressCard and PC card slots, memory stick readers, 1680x1050 screen, S-Video, better DVD drive, 2.0ghz instead of 1.83ghz, 120gb hard drive instead of 100gb. It does weigh more and it is thicker though.

Heck with it, let's just wait for the faster, 64bit Merom in September. I'll bet Apple will make a great 17" using that.

Cheers

Bruce


(side note - MacBook Pros (or MacBooks Pro?) do have Express card slots, but lack PC card slots - the above left some ambiguity)

I'm still curious whether the lack of Firewire 800 and PC card slots is a temporary thing with this model or a permanent shift in the winds. If so, bad news for video editors for now - FireWire800 has been the fastest laptop external drive bus widely available, and with no PC Card slot, no direct reading of P2 cards from HVX200.

-mike

Specialized Communications Corp. makes a gadget called the Cineporter that will certainly flame the interest of all the HVX200 folks out there - think of it as a giant P2 card that attaches to the underside of the HVX200 and gives 100GB of storage for about what an 8GB P2 card costs. Yes, it is bigger and heavier than a P2 card, but for the money, for the po', it's a great idea. $2200 US for the 100GB version, three other sizes available.

And no, I'm not dead, just super busy on color correction projects at my new digital color correction business. I still will post all the detailed MWSF coverage (LOTS of products I haven't even mentioned yet of interest for HD & editors. When work slows down enough for me to do a website for it, then I will.)

Thanks to Torrey Loomis of Silverado Systems for pointing out I hadn't linked to this yet.

-mike

Hey all -

Ran into my friend Paul Alvarado of Robogeek.com at the 20th Anniversary party for the Austin Film Society. We talked shop about the new Intel based Macs, and I expressed my dissapointment that they didn't have the Viiv platform Minis that plug into the living room TV that I'd been hoping for, with downloadable movies, yadda yadda yadda (that I've been writing about since last August).

He pointed out that the keynote was kind of flat, that a lot of time was spent on minor details of iLife that weren't really keynote worthy, and that perhaps something big had to be ditched at the last minute.

He also pointed out that Steve Jobs made of point of telling the audience that April 1st, 2006, was the 30th anniversary of Apple computer, and that he wouldn't be seeing many of us before NAB otherwise, so just wanted to point that out.

So Paul is predicting, and I'm agreeing with him, that April 1st could be a great day to launch some dramatically new products, such as downloadable movies (maybe in hi def? Or is that later?), Intel Viiv based Macs that are intended to live in the living room connected to the TV, with an improved Front Row system to control it all.

So there. Think on that a bit.

-mike

OK, I'm slow posting this one and will have more to say later, but basically, if you're familiar with the excellent Kona2 card, and you've been waiting for a PCIe version, you're gonna be happy.

Everything the Kona2 could do? This does that. And a few more goodies:

-RGB 4:4:4:4 - so now you can do an alpha channel on your RGB film style projects. Excellent news for compositors and production folk who need to render with alpha
-downstream live HD keying - so you can pass a 10 bit HD signal through the system and add a keyed graphic, such as a logo bug, lower third, whatever
-oh, and it'll work in those killer Quad G5s boxes
-$2900, so $500 more than a Kona2 board
-the connectors are a little different - there are tiny little
-a different breakout box - the K3-Box. It is not compatible with the K-Box, so old board/old box, new board/new box ONLY, NO mixing and matching. Same inputs/output layout as K-Box, but with different connections to the card
-there are new features lying dormant on the card - the hardware is done, but the software isn't, and they aren't saying what it will do, just "more stuff"
-Ted Schilowitz, smiling his best I-know-something-you-don't smile, said that he felt clients would be pleased with having spent the extra money when the software comes out to enable those features

Mike's Comments: Hmmm...I've talked to Ted off the record about desirable future features in the past, so I feel a little too close to the inside to speculate - it wouldn't be fair to Ted. But you folks go right ahead and speculate alllll you want. I'm betting it'll be pretty cool though, if I'm right, and WILL be worth the extra $500.

Note that the product is called Kona3, not Kona2e. They feel there are enough changes to warrant a brand new name/revision. That says substantively new/different/better features to me.

Take a look at the feature set of this board. Take a look at their competitors products and what they offer. Take a look at the inputs and outputs on their board and think about what could be run through those.

-mike

MacNN | Windows XP incompatible with Mactels

Bummer. Read on for details as to why, but looks like Vista might not work, either.

-mike

PS-Sorry, Charlie...

4-cam comparison -- initial response - DVXuser.com - The online community for Digital Filmmaking

Barry Green has posted over on DVXuser.com their initial observations of the four way camera shootout (extremely similar to what I'm doing in a month).

Here's a teaser:

I'm sure everyone wants the meat first, so here it is: the XLH1 and HVX tied for noise performance, the HVX is more sensitive than all of them, the XLH1 has the best horizontal resolution, 24F mode ain't progressive scan, the Sony is the cleanest noise performance but the loser in all other test-chart categories, and the JVC surprised us all by being a very strong performer.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way (and you're all scrounging around to find your jaws, since your jaws all dropped when I said the XLH1 was just as noisy as the HVX), I'll expound a little.


So read the whole thing, I'm sure you'll be into it all.

-mike

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

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

MWSF NOTES:

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

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

new iMac specs (cribbed from Macworld UK:

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



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


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


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

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

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

Final Cut Pro changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

----------------

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

--------------------

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

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

-----------------------------

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----------------------------------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey all -

well, it was a looooong day over at Moscone Center in San Francisco today. It is 9pm, I just got back to the hotel and caught up on 90 new emails since this morning. I have TONS of notes, pictures, audio recordings (great note taking methodology), and thoughts in my head about all that has happened today. Whooof! Too much.

I'm beat, I've had minimal sleep for three nights in a row now, I've been madly on the go since 6am, and tomorrow on the plane I'll be doing a full write-up of all that has transpired. But for tonight, just a few thoughts, based on thoughts during the day and notes from commenters (thank you all!) to the keynote notes I posted. So here's a bunch of random thoughts:

-no FireWire 800 in the MacBook Pro (and boy, that is NOT as graceful and elegant a name as PowerBook), nor in the iMac. Why not? For one, there never was FireWire 800 on iMacs, that's pro feature, so that's OK. But what about the 15.4" MacBook Pro? (God, it's going to take a while to get used to saying/typing that.) Some I spoke to today guessed it was because Apple is moving away from it, but I'm more inclined to think it had more to do with Intel motherboard designs that Apple may have been working with to make this motherboard, and getting this product to market. This new ExpressCard slot (and I'd never heard of that until today) is, according to some reader comments, good for 250 MB/sec - plenty fast enough for SATA and FW800 and whatever you want. I'd expect to see

-Final Cut Pro is no longer available as a standalone thing - just Final Cut Studio. I don't feel too bad about that, because clients used to get just FCP and then realize they needed the rest. But what if I want X # of seats of DVD Studio Pro or compressor? Can't be done any more (OK, you couldn't license Compressor individually, but you get the idea).

-Final Cut Studio cross grades are $50 in March. Good deal, that's reasonable for the Intel and PPC version. You just have to trade in your Final Cut Studio installer disks from the older version. Fair enough. That to me says that that will be for Final Cut Studio with Final Cut Pro 5.0.4 or later. Note that NAB will be the next month - if you've just paid to get the Intel compatible version (a universal binary actually for PPC as well), you'll be primed to pay again for another upgrade if they should introduce it at NAB. But will they? I talked to Brian Meanie, product manager (I think that's his title, he's The Guy for FCP) and he said they are happy with the performance of Intel so far. Actually, he didn't - he gave perfectly political answers, and did a perfect job as project manager - durn him! I was asking about a substitute for Altivec and....ah hell and drat it, I'll have to refer to my notes since he phrased it so carefully and well. He's really good at the political side of his job, and it can't be easy. I'll write about the perils of Intel migration later. The point of all this is that there might not be a brand new, feature laden version at NAB if they've been swamped with Intel porting and optimizing. But somebody else pointed out that those are two different teams potentially - new version folk and porting folk. We'll have to wait and see, too many variables and I could believe either side as being reasonable and believable.

-some sources said current FCP will not run at all (crash/fail to launch) on Intel Macs, others said only DV will work at all, and poorly, under Rosetta. I'll have to confirm myself.

-MacBook Pro and iMac Intel Dual Core - what lumpy, inelegant names! Now that we have Intel chips inside, this seems to start a trend of, well, lumpy and inelegant names. May this get fixed as soon as possible - I'm not happy with these names. I understand Apple's desire to rebrand and clarify the distinction, but bleargh...not easy names to say or deal with.

Went to dinner with Andreas Wittenstein of BitJazz, maker of the Sheer codec - damn he is smart. I'm going to do an interview with him and lay out the benefits of his Sheer codec as soon as possible, like next week or so.

Saw lots of cool stuff today - Kano, Sonnet, Firmtek, G-Tech, and others all had cool new storage stuff, the new Macs, new iLife 06 (and I think I'm going to look into migrating HD4NDs over to it, and it does NOT have to use .mac I found out - hooray! Can publish to another location, like my server.

OK, my eyelids are literally drooping - expect a huge update tomorrow night, but probably nothing until then since it is a travel day for me.

-mike

Apple - iMac

Apple's page on the iMac - read up on the specs. Really, it is just a new processor in same enclosure, and wickedly faster.

Also, for those about to ask - I don't recommend using this for Final Cut Pro HD yet, since it isn't native on Intel. How does it run? Can you capture? I'll find out today. This applies to the MacBook Pro laptops as well.

-mike

Apple - MacBook Pro

Here's Apple's page on the new laptops.
-1440x900 native res screen
-1.67 or 1.83 GHz Intel Dual Core
-80 or 100 GB drives on the two models, is SATA now, not ATA
read up on full specs here

OK, the executive summary:

-new laptops called MacBook Pro (replaces powerbooks) - $1999 and $2499, 15.4 inch screen, built in iSight, Intel Dual Core chips, 4-5 times faster than PowerBook G4 processors, 1 inch thick, etc., 1.67 or 1.83 GHz

-iMac Dual Core - exact same case and form factor and price, but with 1.67 or ??? GHz chips, 17" & 20"

iLife 06- iWeb for web stuff super cool and easy, podcasting tools, runs on Intel Macs natively, ships with'em, etc.

NO NEW VIDEO STUFF OF IMPORT (SNL doesn't count)

NO VIIV PLATFORM MACS

TRANSITION TO INTEL BY END OF YEAR - THUS POWERMACS (or MacPro whatever) by end of year, as well as servers - maybe Sept. announce, ship November? Minis and iBooks in spring/summer? Servers towards year end?

OK, I was wrong on a lot of this stuff, but was at least right about new laptops!

MacWorld SF 2006 Keynote Notes -

OK all, here's my raw notes from the Keynote, as I took'em:

-STARTING LATE, JUST GOT INTO THE OVERFLOW ROOM - (the Kids Table) AT 9:07, HE STARTED PRESUMABLY AT 9AM

-sold 32 million iPods in 2005

-iTunes - songs purchased and downloaded - 850 million songs - hit a billion song mark in the next few months

-selling 3M songs a day
-over 1B songs a year run rate
-83% market share
-(showing off some new Keynote features)
-TV shows content - started selling about 90 days ago, since launch on Oct. 12th, sold over 8M videos
-added sports w/ABC and ESPN - Rose Bowl Game - 15m min condensed version - all the key moments - all 4 BCS games
-Rose Bowl #1 v ideo
-more content - Saturday Night Live - today - Samurai Delicatessen w/John Belushi - Coneheads At Home, Blues Brothers on SNL,
-lots of Best of SNL buyable on iTunes starting today
NEW ACCESSORY FOR IPOD - a remote that is also an FM tuner, clips onto clothing - plugs into Nano or 5th Gen iPod, you'll get a radio screen, can set preset stations, etc.
-$49 goes on sale today
-Chrysler - is the first of the Big Three to announce Major iPod integration support this year - over 3M CHryusler/Jeep/?? moddels will have iPod integration -
-over 40% of cars sold in US this year will have option of iPod integration
-did an ad with Winton Marsallis - "Sparks" - nice looking spot!

-rest of day talking about Mac - SO THEREFORE NO NEW IPODS

APERTURE
-is for digital photogrpahers
-the tool for photographers the way FCP is for filmmakers
-at launch,they made a video, they're showing an excerpt.
-the ability to lay it out on the screen makes it easier according to their guy in video
-(side note - I've heard some bitching about Aperture because it is slow and doesn't integrate as well with Photoshop as some folks would like)

Widgets
-over 1500 widgets available for Tiger
-few more new Widgets - Google widget, new front end to Address Book, snok conditions, new calendar, white pages lookups,
-(IF THEY'RE BURNING TIME ON WIDGETS, THIS DOESN'T BODE WELL FOR HUGE NEW THINGS)
-10.4.4 IS DOWNLOADABLE TODAY - SO BETTER OPENGL PERFORMANCE

iLife 06

-"a giant new relase" says Steve
-"propel us further ahead of anything else in the world"
-iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iTunes

iPhoto changes:
-"incredibly fast" had a 25,000 photo limit, up to 250