HD For Indies

DiStudio | Editor's Notes

An interesting discussion on the need and attempt to create industry standards (and an industry group) for DI standards, esp. interchange standards - so that a change of X on Y vendor's system equals change of X on Z vendor's system as well with no surprises.

LOTS of implementation details to be dealt with. Also discusses some of the challenges in the new field, and a school setting up with SCRATCH stations.

That article is actually a follow up to last month's editorial,
DiStudio | Rods, Cones and Standards. It is passionately, concisely, and well written. My favorite excerpt:

Standards and best practices for over 100 years of filmmaking can't always help when new digital processes and pipelines are at play. There is no manual to consult, no offline forum for questions and debate. Where do aspiring DI artists go to get their questions answered? How does a producer disentangle different workflows offered by two different DI facilities?
(I'd jump in and say online forums -mike)

It's time that we do something to help the industry catch up with what we already know about the importance of the DI. It's all about standards and best practices, and the most proactive way to achieve and maintain them is for DI artists to form an association. We need benchmarks. We need readily accessible, consistent and accurate information. We need a forum for debate. We need to hear the voices and visions of top colorists.


Pardon me, unknown DI Studio writer, for lifting such a big chunk, but you nailed it so well it would be disingenuous for me to paraphrase.

I'll close as he/she did:

Let’s set standards, let’s create best practices, and let’s create a benchmark for the quality DI. Because if we don’t, no one else will.


Bravo!

-mike

(Thanks very much to reader Tom Dewitt for sending in that link!)

AppleInsider | Report claims iTunes movie service due in September

More fruit from the Disney acquisition of Pixar....Disney is rumored to be first subscriber to the iTunes movie service. Rumored pricing: $15 for new, $10 for old movies. Unknown at this time:

-pixel size (same as videos? If so, laaaaaaame)
-codec - almost certainly H.264
-data rate - highly dependent on the pixel size, so unknown - broadband a requirement!
-movie selection
-DRM will be Fairplay from Apple of course, but any new twists?
-can it be burned to DVD (I'm thinking maybe, or if not up front it is coming)
-HD versions of movies in the future?

If it turns out it is $15 for a small screen (320x180 or 480x270 or so), I vote it lame - too expensive for too little - just buy it from Walmart or Amazon or rent via Netflix...at which point you could Handbrake yourself a better copy, anyway...

-mike

Films That Come Over the Net Don't Come Easy - New York Times

Nice overview of the major movie download services, and their MANY shortcomings. There is as yet no service that is quick, clear, easy to use, with consistent rules and pricing that makes it easy to download and watch on your TV. I think we are still at LEAST a year out from anything so simple. But all of this is just starting, it needs time to settle out. Until there is a consistent format, and the industry de-freaks about maintaining ultra tight DRM (what happens if you sell/loose/break the Designated Viewing computer?), it'll stay a small niche player.

"Ultimately, what may hamper sales of downloadable movies may not be download times or trouble with DVD burning. The obstacle will be price. It is often more economical to rent DVD%u2019s from local rental kiosks or mail-order outfits like Netflix (www.netflix.com). So for now the best way to solve the %u201Clast 10 feet%u201D problem is still to get up off the couch."

....aka I read that as a big thumbs down.

(found via CinemaTech)

-mike

Videoguys Blog got'em though - they have the specs on Vegas 7. Items of interest for the indie crowd:

-"comprehensive" XDCAM SD/HD support - so does this mean 18 and 35mbit VBR as well as 25mbit CBR as well? And 24p?

-better AJA and BlackMagic support

-better HDV/SDI/HD-SDI support

-enhanced video monitoring (more modes I'd guess)

-and a bunch of DVD stuff too

(found via FresHDV.com)

AppleInsider | Apple reduces cost of ATI card for Mac Pro

BTO systems - now a $250 step up from base card

standalone card - $399

Both are $100 cheaper than before.

Card still hasn't shipped, systems with it configured have been delayed.

-mike

AJA has updated their drivers for all their Kona line of products with significant new features.

From the ReadMe file:

Features and Fixes from the provided Read-Me:

New Features:

Applicable to all KONA products: KONA LS/LSe, LH/LHe, KONA 3, and KONA 2

- Universal Binary build of KONA software, supports new Intel-based Mac Pro Desktop computers. A maximum of 2GB of system RAM is currently supported.

- DPXtoQuicktime and QuicktimeToDPX utilities are now included as part of the standard installation. They are put in the “Kona Utilities” folder automatically at installation.

- QuickTime codec playback support expanded to include QuickTime files in the Avid (DV and Meridien) codecs. Please note: these codecs are not included in the AJA installer package; they must be supplied separately. For playback of Avid Meridien codec QuickTime media the video output must be explicitly set to RGB mode. Avid QuickTime codec support is for playback of previously encoded media and does not mean the KONA card can be used as a capture card for any type of software-only version of Avid.

- Ability to set Color Range tags in DPXtoQTTranslator.

- Applicable to KONA 3, KONA LH/LHe, and KONA 2

- Added 525i23.98 format to KONA Control Panel format choices.

- Added 720p23.98 format to KONA Control Panel format choices (KONA 3 and 2 only).

- Added new up-conversion choice: 525i23.98 to 1080psf23.98 (KONA 3 and KONA 2 only).

- Added new down-conversion choice: 1080psf23.98 to 525i23.98.

- Added new cross-conversion choice: 720p23.98 to 1080psf23.98 (KONA 3 only).

- Support for Custom LUT files (KONA 3 and 2 only).

- Faster video switching between some formats (KONA 3 and 2 only).

- Ability to use downstream keyer graphics with RGB frame buffer formats (KONA 3 only).

- Downstream keyer support for cropped 2K formats (KONA 3 only).


Improvements and Fixes

- Improved 3/2 pulldown captures.

- Direct switching between apps that use KONA video.

- 10 RGB bit render to black problem fixed.

- Improved auto-format-select in KonaTV.

- Burn-in time code correctly shows colon or semi-colon.

The installers can be found on the support section of website, at http://www.aja.com/html/support.html


Support area Download links:
KONA 3: http://www.aja.com/html/support_kona3_swd.html

KONA 2: http://www.aja.com/html/support_kona2_swd.html

KONA LH/LHe: http://www.aja.com/html/support_konaLHe_swd.html

KONA LS/LSe: http://www.aja.com/html/support_konaLSe_swd.html


Mike's Comments: some very useful stuff in there, esp. the 720p=>1080p uprez option - I've talked to LOTS of folks needing that capability for Varicam projects.

CyberLink Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Support
Is your PC ready for Blu-ray Discs or HD DVDs?

Just download the CyberLink BD / HD Advisor (Beta) to find out. This tool will scan your computer and help you understand how you can make your system Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD ready. Scanning takes a few seconds and will provide you useful information and recommendations.

Interesting to check and see if you'll be ready or not.

-mike

UPDATED - SEE BOTTOM

Final Cut

When using an external video deck/camera with my MacBook, it is only recognized if it is plugged in and switched on when I boot my MacBook. If it is not, the MacBook defaults to the internal iSight and cannot be switched from that input even with an external deck present.


The fix - for now, gotta fire up the deck before booting the Macbook. A hassle, and probably one more reason why FCP isn't officially supported on the MacBook.

Update: Reader Gabriel Cowan wrote in to say:

There's another fix. If you turn on ichat or photo booth before starting FCP it wont default to the isight. At least that's my experience.


I don't have a deck to try that with right now, but if somebody else could verify that'd be great. But that sounds entirely plausible - that'd keep the iSight "busy" while FCP cranked up. Photobooth would be simplest, since it doesn't require a network connection.

-mike

Update Tuesday morning: the problem seems to be with board level support for higher level drive functions - the problem appears to be across ALL the Intel Macs running Bootcamp. But the situation CAN be fixed - at least for Mac Pros right now -

Slow SATA performance on Mac Pro in XP/Bootcamp - Page 9 - Mac Forums

Boring link title, but it includes detailed instructions on how to fix the throughput problem on Intel Macs. Scroll down to find the instructions on this page. This one is specific to Mac Pros, but I think it opens the door for the way to fix the problem on other Macs. Not for the casual user, definitely a strong DIYer's project.

Original credit belongs to some guy with a .Mac account, but his bandwidth limits were quickly hit - obviously lots of folks were interested in the fix.

UPDATED SEE BOTTOM

Red will be showing in the D-Cinema theater at IBC

Search the above page for "Red" and you'll find it promptly. They'll be showing 4K footage from the Mysterium sensor on a Sony 4K projector, so if you're wondering how good of an image this camera can make, this is proof positive. Actually, at this stage the full sensor has 4900 pixels across, (the shipping model will only use the stated 4520x2540, keep in mind). There will be a total of four screenings, so if you miss the first one, you'll have time to catch it later. (Sorry I was slow on this one, been swamped.)

How confident are they about how good it looks? Jim Jannard, founder of Red and never the shy one, said on both DVInfo.net and DVXUser.com forums:

"If our footage that we show at IBC doesn't look like film (without grain), you should all ask for a refund."


...that's pretty confident I'd say!

: )

I've been swapping emails with the team, they are really stoked about IBC and feeling good about it - no hemming, hawing, "Work in progress, we'll see how it goes" prevarications, just a general tone of "hell yeah!"

They'll be in booth # 7.821 at IBC.

This will NOT, however, be the end-all be-all conversation on final image quality on Red - my understanding is that they are showing footage derived from the RAW output of the sensor. This seems a reasonable approximation (assuming the final, compact, portable electronics don't alter image quality) for usage cases involving the as-yet-not-much-known REDRAID uncompressed data product - but most folks, most of the time, won't be shooting that way. While it should be possible to match the results they'll show at IBC with a REDRAID, most folks will, I'll bet, be recording to the Red Drive products, which will be recording 10 bit, full raster, REDCODE wavelet based compressed video. How much this compression affects the final image quality is still an unknown. But 4K+ source, scaled to 2K or HD, and then compressed, should still look pretty damn good - I know the guy working on the codec, and he's just the right kind of quality nut to make sure it's up to snuff.

Along the lines of the codec, I hope they have more to say on workflow at IBC - how's the codec coming, can we see some compressed footage vs. uncompressed to evaluate the differences, what are the odds we'll be able to at least play back in realtime in FCP when the product ships, what about other NLEs, what about transcoding for unsupported NLEs, etc. etc. etc.

-mike

UPDATE: Want to know what I saw when I visited Red during my LA trip? See the second picture here on DVXuser.com - the watch on the monitor? I was looking at images much like that when I visited. That's the very monitor and perhaps the same image I saw Jim working on when I visited. And when zoomed in pixel for pixel, from a foot away, to my eyeball I wasn't seeing any noise - just clean contone.

-mike

ProLost: Book Report

Stu Maschwitz is a smart guy.

That is one of the most understated things I may have ever written on here.

Stu is a very bright boy, and as he says on his blog:

I helped create The Orphanage, Magic Bullet, and eLin. The latter two are available through Red Giant Software.


Stu is working on a book, which I didn't realize, called The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap (Paperback). From Chapter 5 (snippet from his web page linked above):

I am mildly obsessed with small, lightweight, and above all inexpensive ways to move my DV camera smoothly and cinematically. Even as I sit in my director’s chair on a big commercial, designing a shot with a 30-foot techno crane, I can’t help but ponder how one might build such a thing out of PVC pipe and zip ties.

I'm betting we'll all want a copy.

I'm betting I'm going to do my damndest to hit him up for a free review copy.

You reading this Stu?

: )

And you should read his blog when he posts on it (git on it, boy!) - ProLost....WHICH HE WILL DO MORE FREQUENTLY...RIGHT???

Somebody wave their fingers like Ben Kenobi or somethin'. Make it happen.

-mike

Haven't verified this stuff myself, but this guy says he has working workflows for PAL DVCPRO HD for Varicam and HVX200. OK Euros, this one's for you!

Panasonic AG-HVX200: 720p25/50 P2-workflow with Final Cut Pro

and

720p50 Capturing & Editing in Final Cut Pro

Let the Online BEGIN!�


Shane Ross is onlining his DVCPRO HD project, and has some notes about getting into it. He wanted a particular look for some scenes, and started using the Magic Bullet stuff, but it was slloooooooowwwwwwww. So he created a look with the 3-way color corrector (psst....folks...you can do a LOT with the 3-way!) and saved a setting, and with a little help from Graeme Nattress made it a plugin for FCP, which you can download FOR FREE from the above linked page.

Shane talks about using an uncompresed 8 bit vs 10 bit vs DVCPRO HD timeline for mastering...I want to check in with him on that to see if he's doing the best possible thing.

Check it out.

-mike

(found via FresHDV.com)

The lost art of film editing - The Boston Globe

For all my advocacy of digital technology, it's all about the art - otherwise, it's just pixel wanking.

This is a nice piece bemoaning The Lost Art of Film Editing, citing some recent examples from this year's frenetic summer crop of films - even the indies are cut MTV style.

Pause your busy life and go read this one.

-mike

(Thanks to Paul of RoboGeek.com for sending this link in).

CinemaTech: Discs by mail

Damn you (sort of) Scott Kirsner - I'm pretty much willing to concede that when it comes to blogging how technology affects movies (after they are made), Scott's CinemaTech blog pretty much trounces anything else out there, including my own coverage.

(I'm kidding - I know, like, and have mucho respect for Scott, and can't wait for his book on how technology is affecting movies to hit the shelves...but he does outblog me in quality and quantity on these topics, slightly darn him)

Recently, he's been writing on how the discs-by-mail business may head to digital downloads in the future, and what the challenges there are (bandwidth, DRM, storage, etc.).

He also links to other folks' stuff at least if not more often than I do.

Erg - I started to make a list of "good stuff" to link to, but it's all good - just go to his main page and start reading, and follow on to the other linked articles he hasn't written. If you want to really take advantage of all the new distribution, marketing, and other advantages of our modern digital world, Scott's blog is a must read (and I'll bet his book will be too).

-mike

Mac Pro Review: Follow-up

MacInTouch has a nice follow up to their original review of the Mac Pro, dealing with memory issues, Boot Camp's abysmal drive performance, and RAID issues on Mac Pros.

The in-depth discussion on Boot Camp's poor drive performance under Windows is critical for anyone considering running "heavy" production apps under Windows, such as any video, graphics, compositing, retouching, etc. applications - until this issue is resolved, Mac Pros are not a valid OS X/WinXP dual boot solution for heavy duty users - and if you're reading this, you probably are or want to be one.

Also includes a nice explanation of RAID concepts for those unfamiliar.

-mike

Yesterday I drove up to Six Flags Fiesta Texas (in San Antonio) with Doreen and we rode roller coasters all day. (Hang on, this'll get HD relevant in a few paragraphs). The Big Three coasters there are the Poltergeist coaster, the Superman coaster, and The Rattler.

Poltergeist - the coaster equivalent of a taking crack just before skydiving into a hurricane - you start off with a bang, just about literally - you go from a dead stop to 60 in about 3 seconds - as an observer on the platform, it looks like some kind of unrealistic visual effect - by the time the last car is where the first was, it's going 50+ mph. As soon as you get up to speed (in 5 seconds of less), you IMMEDIATELY go into a fast 'n furious set of loops, turns, twirls, and overenders - if you look at the track from outside the ride, it looks like a big tangled ball of yarn. It doesn't take up much space, but loops in/under/over/through itself many times. The ride probably only lasts 45 seconds of so, but seems much longer, and you're in CONSTANT thrilling motion (as a tall guy, I kept feeling like the intertwined steel supports were constantly about to take my head off).

Superman - the theme on this one seems to be flight simulation, looping along like Superman would. The entire park is built into a valley, with the edges excavated out to make vertical walls. The Superman coaster's track loops and soars over the edge of the cliff several times, in big, clean, pure arcs and loops, fast and smooth. Oh, and to make it really feel like flight - you're sitting upright with your feet hanging free. We rode in the front car with our bare feet sticking out, it was GREAT - a thrilling sense of flight. I had on MP3 playing sunglasses, playing the theme from Kill Bill ("Battle without Honor or Humanity") and it was.....hmm...what's the phrase? Oh yeah - F*****G AWESOME.

For a finale for the day, we got on The Rattler, an older wooden coaster. It had a classic start where you leave the station and clank-clank-clank up a climb, and nothing else that day matched the sheer visceral intensity of the first dive and swoop it takes. We sat up front on that one, too, and I really got whey they call it The Rattler - it'll rattle your teeth out! Wooden coasters have a lot of give and shake, and we finished and Doreen asked what I thought of it - "It's like this" I said, holding up my half full water bottle in front of her, and then shook it vigorously into a froth - "that's my brain now." I later described it as "the epileptic indecisive coked up coal car ride." It wasn't clean, it wasn't pretty, but MAN it was fun! After the second time on it, I was ready to call it a day - too rattled. On my second ride through, though, I got to thinking about it - the first dive and big swoop were great, and the plunge into the dark tunnel (yes, actually through the rock) with an unexpected turn in total darkness were great, but other parts of the ride didn't measure up to that "maintain sufficient thrill level" mark - you're just going pretty fast and jerking around, but waiting for the next really cool thing to happen.

At the end of the day, I can't say which was "better" than the others - each presented a different kind of experience and thrill, each with their different pros and cons. Poltergeist was intense but brief, Superman was a consistent thrill without the peak experiences of the others (although footies al fresco into the oncoming breeze was a blast), the Rattler was shake-your-brains fun at first, but exhausting and kinda flat at times. And if I did have a favorite (hmm, now I'm leaning towards Superman), it is just my opinion, and yours may be different, based on what YOU consider to be the most fun (or even TYPE of fun). And also that I wouldn't want to pick one at the exclusion of the others - I'm glad I hit them all (and they hit me), and I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of those experiences - different flavors of speed and fun.

OK, so what does this have to do with cameras? This reminded me of some notes I wrote upon returning from my recent trip to LA where I saw a lot of cameras and vendors and facilities. Different vendors, different products, all try their best to be great for what they do - but everyone's definition of "best" or even "better" varies, depending on their goals, value systems, etc. Everyone's assumptions about what is most important probably varies, as does their ability to implement it as well as they'd like to. Also, in the end, some of it is going to break down to being a matter of flavors - you either like orange mango or you don't, or you like chocolate or vanilla better than the other and there's really no point in trying to argue you out of that position - it's just the way you feel about it. Bearing that in mind, read the rest below.

So I went and dug up my notes, written within a coupla days of my return from LA. I've tweaked a bit until I can get clearances from vendors (so I may supplement in the future, plus I have full writeups on Genesis and Dalsa coming):

Camera pros and cons, in no particular order:

Cameras, and products in general, are a reflection of the values and priorities of their makers. So the priorities of the makers come through in the product, either as a direct, intentional creation, or as a byproduct of the innate talents and capabilities of the companies and individuals producing them. After spending 10 days in LA visiting with camera makers, rental houses, DPs, colorists, etc., here are some of my thoughts and observations on some products out there:

Panavision has values of interoperability and compatibility with their extensive (and extensively field proven) range of accessories and gear while generating a very professional image in a self contained package.

The Dalsa Origin is the product of folks who make extremely good imaging sensors - so the camera is a no compromises image generation device. And it rocks at that task. The problem is, some compromises might be nice to have - 4K or the highway seems to be their unspoken mantra at this time. Smaller form factor, dual link HD-SDI, onboard recording capabilities, etc. would make this a much more flexibly capable system.

ARRI (whom I didn't visit with, just saw one at DGA Digital Day and chatted a bit with their guys there) made a digital version of one of their film cameras (the D-20), down to through the lens viewfinder with mechanical spinning shutter. Dalsa does that part too, giving a certain lovely characteristic to motion blur you don't get with non-shuttered imagers I've seen..

The Thomson/Grass Valley Viper (again, only saw at DGA Digital Day) is a very nice, technically astute camera with some clever details to the workflow - HD-SDI outputs with a log curve, it was AFAIK one of the first to do this. It is the product of a video technology company, and as such is has 3 2/3" CCDs and uses B4 mount lenses - so isn't quite the film camera replacement from a lens and DoF perspective.

Some pros and cons of the various cameras:


PANAVISION GENESIS:

Pros: shipping, multiple features already shot with it. Good looking image, FULL Panavision accessories integration and compatibility, HD deliverable (makes post easier), log curve (they call it Panalog, resets white to 70% and arcs/tapers it off above that level), compact form factor with recorder (integrates with SRW-1 without need or SRPC-1, which is built into camera). Also has dual link HD-SDI outputs if fully uncompressed is desired. Super 35mm sized image sensor. Panavision is a trusted name - see the long list of features already shooting on it. The name brand, and the quality that implies, clearly carries significant weight in Hollywood, as evinced by the list of projects already shot on it. Can record audio in sync with video. Single sensor CCD for cine lens compatibility.

Cons: 1080p is highest resolution, max frame rate is presently 50 fps, but can shoot variable frame rates, rental only from Panavision, limited availability (about 40 some odd worldwide right now). No mechanical shutter, and no through the lens viewfinding.

DALSA ORIGIN:

PROS: Shipping product. Extremely sharp images, extremely high resolution (4Kx2K, 2:1 aspect ratio), the only shipping 4K camera of the bunch. Also, extremely good dynamic range, perhaps the best of the shipping bunch from my personal osbservations. Super 35mm sized image sensor. Rotating mechanical shutter and through the lens viewfinding for film like motion rendering and DP familiar operation. Single sensor CCD (UPDATE - I had CMOS listed yesterday, that was incorrect, thanks to Patrick's quick eye to catch me on my mistake) for cine lens compatibility. If you want to go 4K, this is the one to beat. The workflow for 4K is also VERY well thought out, and the Codex device makes the much more manageable.

CONS: At present, it is BIG and unwieldy, and is something they need to work on. It can be handheld, as proven by some test footage I saw, but is a daunting beast to behold. But to my mind, the biggest detriment they face is the workflow - they shoot 4K, and they ONLY shoot 4K. At present, there is no HD-SDI out. You can only record 4K RAW Bayer pattern data out of the camera. Their currently recommended solution is to record to the Codex recorder, which is itself a model of flexibility and capability (more on it later, but it rocks). Which is fortunate for Dalsa, because they need all the flexibility then can get. 4K or the highway seems to be their unspoken credo. It would be nice to have options with this camera - such as 2K or ANY flavor of HD-SDI, or to at least have the option of any kind of compression for a smaller form factor. At present, if you wanted a Digibeta or SR copy, it would require some kind of processed output off of the Codex box. I feel they've overshot the market - but if they could shrink the form factor, add onboard recording, add 4K downsampled to 2K/HD/HD-SDI recording options, I think they'd have a real winner, more in line with the market's needs and desires.

The camera is also rental only - which helps for support (since the rates also includes support all through production into post production), but also means there is only one source to rent these from - Dalsa.

36fps max recording rate (camera capable of 50fps, but no recording solution capable of those speeds).

Dual sound audio - no provision for recording audio with picture, have to sync audio in post. Hmmph.

THOMSON/GRASS VALLEY VIPER:

PROS: good dynamic range (see Collateral or Miami Vice), nice color representation, can shoot 4:2:2 linear or 4:4:4 Filmstream mode (utterly uncorrected RGB output from sensor). HD workflow with LUTs, keeps the post more flexible and affordable than data or 2K. Can record audio in sync with video.

CONS: A video technology based device - 3 CCD design with a prism beam splitter, requires video style lenses, 30fps progressive max fps, 60 fields (half res) maximum frame rate. 2/3" not 35 or Super35 sized sensor...but that can be useful at times as well (Michael Mann liked it for Miami Vice). No mechanical viewfinder, and no through the lens viewfinding.

ARRI D-20:

PROS: from Arri, who has a strong rep for form factor, ergonomics, and accessories. 35mm or Super35mm sized image sensor (forget which), DOES have spinning mechanical shutter (has benefits for motion blur), and they are working on a direct data recording option as well (demoed at NAB). Can record audio in sync. Single sensor for cine lens compatibility.

Cons: HD resolution max, video frame rates, HD-SDI only recording, no onboard recording, no data recording as yet, how does offspeed work (recording and post extraction). Rental only.

SILICON IMAGING (no LA presence so didn't visit with, but drawing this from NAB visit and emails):

Pros: 2/3" sized image sensor (right?), detachable image block is tiny; very high quality, full raster, 10 bit highly efficient, relatively low data rate wavelet based codec (Cineform wavelet RAW codec). Very flexible frame rate modes 1-72 or so fps possible, and since disk recording it is cake to deal with offspeed in post. Mac support for codec expected this fall (maybe IBC?). Can record to the fully built up portable unit or just the image block and run a GigE cable back to a laptop or computer. With the (large) exception of Premiere Pro only editing, very indie viable workflow - low cost storage, low data rate native codec editing, affordable camera, etc.

Cons: you're married to Adobe Premiere for native codec editing right now. No HD-SDI recording option that I'm aware of. For editing or posting on non-WinXP environment,gotta export to other formats - is possible but cumbersome. Altasens sensor is decent but not outstanding, not in same league with Dalsa, ARRI, Panavision, or Red samples seen to date...then again, this is a very nearly shipping camera for $20K (w/o lenses), the price is entirely reasonable for the quality you get.

RED ONE:

Red One, if ships with specs as stated (YES unfair to compare shipping to unfinished, but let's just project forward a year and assume these are all still the same specs from everybody for the moment)

Pros: Can record up to 4520x2540 in data mode, purchaseable for $17,500 for the body (Viper is circa $80K I think), Super35mm sized sensor, windowable sensor, works with PL mount S35 and S16 to start with, Nikon and B4 mounts to follow for compatibility, 1-60 fps recording in 4K, 1-120fps recording in 2K w/S16 lenses, data, onboard, or HD-SDI recording options, records audio as well (at least 4 channels). Record RAW data to REDRAID, record Redcode full raster wavelet based codec to either solid state memory device or RedDrive devices (based on 2.5" SATA disk), or to any standard HD-SDI type device (if shooting HD resolutions). Shoot 720p, 1080p, 1080i, 2K, 4K, or 4.5K. Record (depending on format you're shooting) to to the above list. Purchaseable or rentable. I've seen some test images and....WOW.

Cons: New entrant, no working prototype seen or even test footage publicly screened as yet, unproven track record, brand new company and product. LONG way from shipping, working, proven reliable product. In terms of workflow...I can't think of a downside, knowing what I know. The final image quality, after compression and whatnot is still unknown, but I'd imagine it'll be possible to record images even better looking than what I saw (and remember, those were some of the very first tests) to a Codex or similar type device. Wait, that's not a con.

End notes.

OK, that'll give you something to chew on, I'm trying to get my world organized before I leave town for 2 weeks...

-mike

Getting memory upgrades right on the Mac Pro

Barefeats (as usual) has an excellent report on how RAM configs affect performance with the Mac Pros. Also opens with a discussion of the cooling issues surrounding the particular memory modules you might get.

Worth a read if you're planning on buying or upgrading a Mac Pro. As usual, I recommend third party RAM and hard drives instead of Apple's own for price reasons - Apple's gear is perfectly valid, just pricey. But with the Mac Pros, both RAM and hard drive configs aren't as simple as they once were, so be careful and do your research.

For more on drive stuff with Mac Pros, read these:

Best boot drive for the Mac Pro?

and

Seagate 750GB and Hitachi 500GB four drive RAID 0 inside the Mac Pro

-mike

Windows Vista 32-Bit CAN Play HD DVD, Blu-ray Movies - Gizmodo

MS recants - says 32 bit WILL be able to play secure HD content, but is up to third party developers to do so. So probably no out-of-the-box secure HD playback on 32 bit Vista systems, but POSSIBLE with third party stuff. Of course, the third parties will have to produce a sufficiently secure environment to meet the demands of the content owners (Hollywood studios)....which may or may not be doable to the C.O.'s satisfaction.

-mike

UPDATE - More details here.

No native HD DVD or Blu-ray support from MS to start with, all up to 3rd party developers according to article.

Canon Introduces Two Additional HDgc Portable High Definition Lenses at IBC 2006

Lenses for 1/2" and 1/3" CCD based cameras. More details at IBC.

These lenses would be appropriate for the kinds of camcorders I usually discuss - I'm guessing these should be compatible with the JVC and Canon HDV cameras, and the 1/2" lens with the Sony F350, etc.

I can't can't help thinking about the slide at DGA Digital Day, though, talking about how with a 1/3" imager, the lens has to be a bazillion times better than the lens for, say, a Super 35mm sized imager, since it is trying to resolve the same image onto a smaller area that has smaller pixels, thus less light per pixel...guess which camera I'm thinking about here...

AppleInsider | Mac mini shortage suggests product changes

Expecting a bump - maybe Core 2 Duo chips? But I still don't recommend these for any but the most Starving Artist as an offline editing box - Final Cut Studio is not officially supported on it...

-mike

Apple to recall 1.8 million notebook batteries - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com

To see if your battery is covered, click here. You'll need your serial numbers for the computer and the battery. I have a 12" Powerbook, and my original battery (which already was worn out and relegated to "last power resort" status) was one of the affected batteries; I've already filled out the form and a new one is en route. After filling out the form, I was shown this on the website:

Your request will be processed shortly and a confirmation email will be sent to you.

Apple will ship you a replacement battery (or batteries) as soon as possible after processing your replacement order. Shipping time may vary due to product availability. Once you receive the replacement battery, please return the old battery to Apple with the pre-paid shipping label and packaging provided.


then I got an email that stated:

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for ordering a replacement battery. Your request (Order number 2002441) is currently being processed.

It will take approximately 4 to 6 weeks for your replacement battery to arrive. Please note that shipping time may vary due to availability of your battery model.

Battery Exchange Program details and an FAQ may be found at:

http://support.apple.com/batteryprogram

We appreciate your cooperation with this exchange program.

Apple


...so 4-6 weeks...estimated.

Since I have a second battery not affected by the recall, that's fine. But for those for whom the affected battery is the ONLY battery, 4-6 weeks is a long time. Officially, Apple is saying to NOT PUT THE BAD BATTERY BACK IN after you've verified it is on the recall list, and to only operate on AC power (it'll run just fine with no battery in if you're plugged into wall power). Ummm....right. That's not going to work very well. You could keep using it, with the slim chance of thermal damage. But it is bad enough that Sony (maker of the battery cells) will be ponying up $170M-$260M to replace'em all.

Side note: sounds like they're on it, it'll be interesting to see how long it actually takes. I'm STILL waiting for the second battery I ordered with my MacBook (a different type, not affected by this recall), ordered back in the SPRING.

-mike

Motion 2.1: Rendering issues in 16-Bit projects on Mac Pro

If you use 16 bit float ("half float" mode) on a Mac Pro with the standard Nvidia card or an ATI X1900 card, you can get:

Dark outlines on text or shape object edges
Slight Luminance shifts
Feather size grows when using multiple shapes


...not good. The fix - don't use 16 bit mode in Motion 2.1 on Mac Pros.

-mike

Slashdot | No Full HD Playback for 32-bit Vista: "full HD content shall only be played at the full resolution where only signed drivers are used %u2014 only in the 64-bit version of Vista. From the article: ''Any next-generation high definition content will not play in x32 at all,'"

...OK that totally bites...Hollywood is waaaaaaaaaay paranoid these days, and I don't see a clear path being set - are they trying to lock out EVERYBODY no matter what, or just keep honest people honest? My perception is that the Hollywood decision makers would rather see HD fail rather than have it be exploitable like DVDs.

-mike

Panasonic Delivers its New Solid-State Memory Drive

It's an internal or external unit that lets you mount up to 5 8GB cards in it at once for bulk ingest. MSRP $1980.

Pricey - unless you're running a lot of footage through, the camera works pretty well as a reader. If you don't have the camera available (if it is out shooting), this is one option. Or for roughly the same money, Panasonic's own P2 Store hard drive.

(found via FresHDV.com)

Studio Daily | Katrina's Lessons

Are you insured? Backed up? Prepared for the worst? If you're working on a indie feature, odds are you're working out of less than optimal space, and it the process is taking a while. This story is about a videographer whose studio was destroyed by Katrina. He was underinsured on his gear, but did have loss of income insurance. As an indie, you probably don't have either of those, but I hope you do.

In any case, worth a read to CYA for risk analysis. Another indie project I worked on had a fire in their building and lost a bunch of source tapes for their documentary. Clones in a fire safe saved their butt.

So read, learn, and think about what could go wrong (never forget about hard drive crashes), and do what you can to be prepared for things to break, burn, flood, get stolen, or hit by lightning.

-mike

Studio Daily | Cine-tal Unveils an Open Architecture Visual Display Processor: eLumaHD

It's a hardware box that processes twin 4:2:2 or a single 4:4:4 stream. Can do 3D LUTs, calibration, color processing, has a frame store, range & gamut monitoring with alarms, split screen viewing, networkability, etc.

Shipping fourth quarter, no price discussed. Knowing what their other products cost, won't be cheap.

-mike

Hey all -

since I'm actively in production right now on the HD Shootout DVDs, I thought I'd spell out my current thinking (ever in flux) and ask you folks what you think about it.

Cameras Tested

For review and those who aren't famililar, I'll be including footage from all cameras tested. The shoot was put together by myself, Adam Wilt of DV Magazine, and Chris Hurd of DVInfo.net and HDVInfo.net. The cameras were (in order of price here):

Sony HVR-Z1U
JVC GY-HD100U
Panasonic HVX200
Canon XL H1
Sony F350 (new XDCAM HD camera)
Panasonic Varicam

Interested? Click here to email me with "Shootout DVD" as the subject line to get on the mailing list, and please put an "X" in the email to indicate which version you're interested in.

OK, so why should you be interested? Why, let me tell you...

What was shot

We shot 24p, 50i and 60i; we shot 720p, 1080p (or 1080F), and 1080i; we shot indoors, outdoors, on sticks, hand held, low light, standard lighting, people of varying skin tone color (blond and African American models), we shot greenscreen, we shot codec torture tests, we shot close ups, medium, wide, long shots outdoors, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. (I'll eventually post a complete list.) Four days of shooting, I have over 600 shots logged in. We also shot, while in studio, uncompressed straight off the cameras to hard drives - using HD-SDI when possible (Varicam, F350, and XL H1), and using analog to HD-SDI converters for those that didn't (all others). This was in addition to the native recording media (tape, P2, and XDCAM HD discs), so I can make comparisons between those as well.

So it'll be a pretty darn thorough runthrough, and should be indicative of most types of shooting situations. OK, we didn't do a car chase, white water rafting, or sky diving shot but you get the idea. If you're shooting a "normal" narrative piece, there will be something useful for you to evaluate for most of your scenes here.

WHAT'S ON THE DVDs?

Current plan, as of 2:40pm Wed., assuming I don't change my mind yet again:

SD DVD: These will be standard def DVD, with MPEG-2 compressed clips, as well as a data portion of the disc/s. Somebody suggested multi-angle early on, but to get 6 angles would require massively dropping the bitrate on each, so quality comparisons other than color/contrast go out the window. So I'm thinking of cropping in on a portion of the same detail from all cameras and putting it 6 up, stuff like that. Or butterfly comparisons (mirrored halves) for 1 on 1 comparisons. But you'll see what each of these cameras look like when compressed to MPEG-2 using desktop type tools. I'll include uncompressed still frames on the data portion on the disk, and the footage will have voiceover with commentary.

High Def DVD: At this point, it looks to be an HD DVD on a red laser 8.5 GB disc, since there are virtually no set top boxes out there. It'll play on recent Macs with recent OS X installed.

Windows users - I don't know about DVD Studio Pro authored HD DVD on DVD-R 9's playing back under WinXP with 3rd party DVD players, if somebody knows, clue me in, I haven't done any testing to date.

Multiple discs most likely for space reasons.

It will also include workflow commentary/diagrams/analysis, which varies camera to camera and gets pretty complicated right now.

I'm definitely going to do Final Cut Pro workflow for each camera, but considering doing Avid Xpress Pro and/or Adode Premiere Pro...but it'll depend on demand. If you're an Avid or PPro user, LET ME KNOW if you're interested in workflow for your app!

Might include more shots than the SD disc has, if I'm running out of room on the SD disc/s.

Planning to include SHORT video snippets in native media format of SOME of the shots on the data portion - it just isn't feasible to include them all unless I'm going to have a large number of DVDs in the set. Maybe the full set as yet another product? Let me know what you think.

The good news is, if you have the kind of Mac to edit HD footage on, this will play.

PRICING

I'm thinking of an indie friendly price for the SD disc - you get samples, some stills, and some commentary on the footage differences, but that's about it.

The HD DVD - will include more in depth coverage, workflow analysis for cameras involved, explanation of the formats and their differences, more shots, actual footage as data on a disc, etc., and will be priced higher.

For those that want the full kit of all of it, to see how footage looks in SD and HD, and get all the analysis, there will be a bundle that offers a discount.

So far, between prep for the shoot, the 4 days of shooting, and all the time I've spent in post to get where I am now (and still not close to finished), I'm already in the hundreds of hours spent so far, so I need to price it to make that worth while.

Why should you want to pay for this?

Somebody in an email exchange said (and I'm paraphrasing here) -

"Sheesh, I can get sample DVDs from Sony or Panasonic or whatever for free. Why should I pay more than cheap for yours?"

The answer is this - the samplers from vendors were produced who knows how, in different times and places. We have no idea, for instance, on that outdoor shot, how much scrim, flagging, and/or bounce card/s were used. We don't know the context. It's also very difficult to look at one studio shot from one camera, and compare that in a meaningful way to another studio shot of somebody else in a different environment shot with a diffferent camera. With enough careful lighting, skill, and time, you can get a good looking images from any of these cameras. Was that footage color corrected, for instance? How did it look plain vs corrected? If there was marketing budget, I'll betcha they had an experienced colorist on top notch gear doing that color correction - not indicative of what you'd get most likely.

On the other hand, the content on these DVDs was produced in the most bias free manner we could manage, with no overt agendas.

Also, more significantly - all this stuff was shot at the same time, by the same folks, under the same circumstances (as much as possible), so it is truly apples to apples comparable. We also meticulously logged as much info as we could about shoot settings, recording the format, bitrate, fps, shutter, iris, gain, ND setting, gamma settings, matrix, sharpness, knee, noise reduction, lens used, etc. etc. etc. - so you'll KNOW what the shot means, rather than wondering "Yeah, but was that wide open or not?" I'm planning on including all that info as well (in some fashion TBD).

WHAT I NEED TO KNOW FROM YOU FOLKS - FEEDBACK!:

PLEASE tell me the following:

-Does this sound appealing to buy in the first place?

-How much would you be willing to pay for these (and I'd like to know your "I'd like it to be" as well as the "I wouldn't pay more than.")

-Which product sounds more appealing to you?

-What is missing?

-What should I drop that you don't care about?

Feel free to copy and paste those questions and email me with the answers cut in.

Why again?

I'm asking all this now, because this product is a test for me - one of the (many) reasons I started the blog was to hopefully build an audience for products such as these. If there isn't much market, I'm not going to do these kinds of things, I'll look for other ways to make a living. So I need to make sure I'm on the right track...so tell me now, otherwise I'll assume folks aren't interested.

WHEN WILL THEY BE READY?

My initial plan was to get these done before I left for IBC in early September. At this point, I'm guessing IBC would be a logical time to release a new version of Final Cut Pro that could handle 24p from the JVC and 24F from the Canon - which would completely change all my thinking on workflow for those cameras. So I'm thinking I may be able to get the SD versions off to the replication house before I leave, but the HD version should wait until I know what's up with FCP.

Other stuff on the back burners:

Other stuff I'm considering doing to offer for sale: a huge BlackMagic vs. AJA HD-SDI card comparison, comparing what are the real world differences when capturing, editing, mastering, up/downconverting, add/remove 3:2 pulldown, etc. I've got all the gear, it'll just take a week or so to figure it all out, and I'd probably sell that for $10 or $20 as a downloadable (possibly secure) PDF or something.

I'm also thinking of doing a big "How much realtime performance do you get with what video format on what machine?" comparison. What are the limits, and can I do X & Y with Z format on such and such a Mac? Can I get a realtime cross dissolve, when I have 3-way color corrections on both shots, in X format on my Mac or the Mac I'm thinking of buying? If I have to render, how long does it take?" I've got everything from a 12" Powerbook up to a Quad G5 inhouse already, with AJA and BMD cards aplenty to answer all this. (And of course, Intel Macs would be tested too!) But again, it'd take a week or more to do this, so it's not something I can afford to do for free on the blog. Again, $10 or $20, with the idea that it would help folks decide if their present or to-be-purchased Macs were up to snuff for planned projects, and to know how camera selection affected that process.

OK, now it's feedback time - what do you folks think of all this? Feel free to use the Comments link below, or to email me directly if you don't want to discuss publicly - mike AT hdforindies DOT com.

And once again, shameless self plug:

Interested? Email me with "Shootout DVD" as the subject line to get on the mailing list, and please put an "X" in the email to indicate which version you're interested in.
-mike

AppleInsider | Apple unable to meet rising MacBook demand

Demand has been strong for MacBooks, so if you're thinking about getting one, either get on it now or be ready to wait. Expected to be caught up by end of September. So far, except for the failure that required a new motherboard (which was promptly fixed, except they replaced the hard drive too, glad I had it backed up), I'm totally diggin' mine. Except it runs so hot.

-mike

business2blog: B2Day : Scoop: More Details On Amazon's Unbox Video Service

Details on Amazon's upcoming movie download service. Some highlights:

-rent or buy
-Windows Media based
-DRM'd out the wazoo - rentals only watchable on one device
-gotta download fully w/in 24 hours
-purchased CAN be watched on 2 computers and 2 portable devices (WTF? only 2?), and can be burned onto DVD...but in a format regular DVD players can't read

More details, and full Terms of Service in the article.

Mike's Commentary: Doomed to failure. Too locked down, too difficult to mess with. Apple may face the same challenges when their time comes. But the DRM restrictions are nuts. Imagine if you rented a movie and the guy at the store said "OK, here you go - oh! But you can only play this movie in YOUR living room DVD player. If you want to start it in there and watch the rest on the bedroom player, no dice."

What all this DRM stuff needs to REALLY work, IF the industry is going to insist on total world domination, I mean total data lockdown, is some universal way of specifically identifying a playback device as YOURS. Or a friend of yours. SOMETHING. So that you can play it on all of your devices, and maybe loan or play back on your friends.

But that ain't happening. Not anytime soon.

So it's going to be messy and ugly and limited. Between DRM and the Beta vs. VHS quagmire of HD DVD vs Blu-ray, I think regular DVDs are going to be with us in the mainstream for quite a while.

-mike

I've been really trying to crack down and crank out the Texas HD Shootout DVDs before I leave town in September.

If you're interested in buying a standard or high def DVD from the Texas HD Shootout, with sample footage and comparisons, drop me an email to mike AT hdforindies DOT com with "Shootout DVD" as the subject.

I'm also fact checking and getting clearances to publish more stuff from my recent LA fact gathering trip.

In the meantime, some useful bits from around the web:

FCP tips:

The editblog � My top 10 Final Cut Pro tips

FresHDV's top 10 FCP tips

Pro App Tips - Supporting the Pro App community - a whole site dedicated to Pro App tips

Some Apple docs:

Mac Pro: Video frame rate appears to be slow in some programs

The fix:

If your build number is 8K1054 or anything less than 8K1079, use the Install discs that came supplied with your computer to perform an Archive and Install. This will update your computer's version of Mac OS X to Build 8K1079 and should improve the video performance.

------------
DVD Studio Pro: QuickTime and Simulator display incorrect gamma for MPEG-2 HD DVD content
The Problem:

When comparing your source video to encoded HD DVD MPEG-2 assets, it may appear that the levels have shifted and that the image is darker after compression. This is the result of incorrect gamma interpretation by QuickTime Player and the DVD Studio Pro Simulator.

The fix: it looks right on a set top box player....grumble...they need to update QT & DVD Player then.

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

Boot Camp Beta: MacBook and MacBook Pro frequently asked questions (FAQ)

....says it all.


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

Boot Camp Beta: Requirements, installation, and frequently asked questions (FAQ)

....again, self explanatory

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

Final Cut Studio: About external video-monitoring conflicts - again, self explanatory. When I get a conflict, or suspect I'm about to run into one (such as two devices having a slappy fight over who gets to control the AJA or BlackMagic card, I just turn video output off in the app I'm not using at the time.

-mike

Caught on Film: A Growing Unease in Hollywood - New York Times

Hollywood is concerned about movie profitability, and is having some of the same problems indies worry about (just with more zeroes after the numbers) - the high cost of effective marketing, and cost overruns on productions (or just high costs to start with). Hollywood is also having trouble with investors (sound familiar?) after unimpressive returns, and it also feels under pressure to knock one out of the park every time.

An interesting read. Nice to note that while piracy is mentioned early on as a threat, this is the first mainstream article I've seen that finally mentions the elephant in the corner - people, especially young people, have a lot of other forms of entertainment to enjoy other than going to a movie theater, or even watching a Hollywood movie at home on DVD or cable - there are games and the Internet to distract us without even leaving the house.

I've been reading that Hollywood's response to lowered profitability is to make fewer movies and possibly bigger movies. At first, I thought this was dumb - why pile all the eggs in one basket when you can spread the risk around? Why NOT make five $30M films instead of of one $150M film? Then I read about and thought about the issue some more - each and every film needs a marketing budget, and to have a shot at being big you need to drop around $30M on marketing, minimum, for each film. So your 5x$30M film package is not $150M, it is $300M when you spend $30M on each movie for marketing. Spending more money per movie also increases the odds (if the movie and trailer aren't lame) of getting a bigger opening weekend, which determines how many copies Walmart will buy 3-4 months down the road. So if you spent $150M on the Big Movie, and then $60M on the marketing, you're $210M in the hole, and dollar $210,000,001 is (in theory) where your profit starts (simplified math, no distribution fee in here etc.). But for the five $30M indies with their $30M apiece marketing budgets, you'd need to pull in $300,000,001 to start making a profit.

(YES Hollywood would probably spend more than $60M to push a $150M film. But I don't know how much they'd spend, so I'm just winging it here. Consider this napkin math for discussion. Speaking of which, feel free to use the Comment link at the end of the article.)

Marketing expenses are turning into a major factor here. While Internet and cable advertising allows much more targetted (read: cost effective) communication compared to the old days of the Big Three networks, it also means your audience is scattered, fractured, and has other things to spend their time and money on (cable, Internet, games, etc.).

Internet sites, direct mail, targetted cable ads, email campaigns, viral campaigns, synthetically generated buzz....they all can help, but not a lot. Witness Snakes on a Plane - the most internet hyped film in I don't know how long. Opening on over 3500 screens, it averaged about $4300 per theater. Feh. Not great - $15.3M for the opening weekend (including Thursday night sneaks - I went and saw it over the weekend, and the theater was surprisingly empty on a Saturday night.) Predictions had ranged from $20M to $40M.

If they can't do it (with Samuel L. "M.F." Jackson no less), who can? Probably not you and your indie. And the rest of Hollywood probably can't get it right either.

-mike, written in the front yard surfing somebody's unsecured Linksys router in the neighborhood

My home & office internet connection hasn't worked since Friday; so I've received no email nor had online access to post (I'm doing this from a neighbor's house).

The ISP isn't able to come out until Tuesday, so if I can manage to update the site, know it was an effort.

If you're trying to reach me, phone works best.

Still cranking away on the Texas HD Shootout analysis over the weekend....

-mike

MacNN | YouTube's music could dethrone iTunes - YouTube plans to put "every" music video online for free - so what does that do to Apple's $2 a pop model?

LionsGate spilled the beans that Apple has a deal with them and other studios to sell movies online and will launch sometime later this year.

MTV bought Atom (online games & videos) as well.

Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace.

There's a LOT of activity going on here - remember when AOL and Time Warner merged, thinking they could leverage Warner's content to AOL's subscribers? Didn't happen for a multitude of reasons, starting with the ability to get decent looking content to a large number of people was practically nonexistent at the time.

Now not so much the case now - broadband is booming, and there are between 100 and 200 online video websites, depending on how you count.

I don't know exactly where it is all going, but it is getting very, very interesting and indies should be paying attention to where all this is going in terms of possible new places to show and market their films.

I also read all this as this is a time of growth and acquisition, and sites are hungry for good content. Think of the boom in cable networks a decade or two ago, and how THEY were all hungry for good content at the time.

As always, go read the ever-on-it CinemaTech blog, written by Scott Kirsner, to keep up on all this stuff that I don't have time to cover in as much detail. He has covered all of this stuff.

-mike

AppleInsider | Apple updates MacBook, Xsan and Logic software

MacBook gets firmware update to adjust cooling fans

Logic Pro & Expres get updated for Mac Pro

Various Xsan software updated to v1.4, various fixes.

-MIKE

Programming | Fantastic Fest! :: September 2006 - Austin, Texas

FantasticFest has annoinced their third round of films to be added to the horror, scifi, fantasy, etc. film festival. My friend Paul Alvarado is involved, as are Tim League of Alamo Drafthouse (one of the best theater experiences in the country), and Harry Knowles of aintitcoolnews.com. The 8 day festival starts Sept. 21st, passes available online (start at the link above).

They are touting Bug (dir. by William Friedkin), but I'm most excited to see Renaissance, which takes the Sin City look and pushes the contrast back to where Frank Miller started - "Take METROPOLIS, BLADE RUNNER and SIN CITY, set them in Paris in 2054, run their widescreen visuals through an ultra-high-contrast B&W photocopying machine and you'll have a semblance of "Renaissance,"


Woah. Bitchin. SOMEthin'.

-mike

OK, several things up with Boot Camp, Apple's tool to assist users of Intel based Macs to run Windows.

Apple - Boot Camp

Apple has updated Boot Camp to version 1.1 (still public beta), changes include:

Features include:
• Support for the latest Intel-based Macintosh computers
• Ability to install Windows XP on any internal disk
• Preset sizes for partitioning a disk for Windows
• Support for iSight cameras
• Apple Keyboard Support
• Improved 802.11 wireless for Mac mini
• Support for 802.11 wireless connectivity in Japan and Korea

Bug fixes include:
• Optical LED for audio out no longer stays on when not in use
• Audio no longer plays on internal speakers when headphones or external speakers are plugged in
• Notebook Macintosh computers running Windows XP now go to sleep when idle
• Internal microphone now works on MacBook computers using Windows XP
• Date and time stay in sync when running Windows


I've been hearing about some problems with drives not running at full speed under Windows on Intel Macs, something about PIO not DMA mode on the drives.

XLR8YourMac.com has a list of a bunch of Apple Knowledge Base Docs if you want to know more about running Boot Camp 1.1.

VMWare is getting into the emulation game, too, to let you run multiple concurrent OS's.

Mike's Comments, or "Why Should I as an HD editor/post person care?":

Boot Camp is significant because it FINALLY lets you run OS X and WinXP (and soon Linux I'd bet) all on the same box. If you can only afford one box, and really like Final Cut Pro but wish you could run Fusion, or 3D Studio Max, or whatever other performance critical application (as in slow isn't OK) you wanted to, you can now do it all on the same box. And it looks like that box costs the same or significantly less than a similarly equipped Dell.

At this point, unless you're VERY comfortable going the white box route or building your own system, Apple is making a whole lot of sense....

...or will in the future. At the moment, Mac Pro towers have just shipped. All indications are that you should be able to install a BlackMagic PCIe HD card in a Mac Pro and have install drivers in both the OS X and WinXP partitions and be able to use the CARD fully under both operating systems. However, there's a catch...storage.

The other day I pointed out that Sonnet is working on Windows drivers for their card to work on Mac Pros under WinXP. I don't know Firmtek or LaCie's status. But Highpoint started as a Windows card company and then came to Mac, so perhaps their cards will work under both OS's. But...how should those drives be formatted? Can they be seen under both OS'?

If you're doing simple FireWire based ingest, you could use a standard internal drive. But RAIDs? That makes the situation more complicated.

I'm guessing that it might be possible to use MacDrive (a Windows product that lets WinXP systems mount, read & write Mac HFS+ volumes) to use Mac formatted volumes for data usage under both operating systems. But does Boot Camp let you see any other drive than the WinXP boot drive? Last I heard with v1.0, that answer was no (AFAIK). Again, we're still in beta, this is just the first rev and it isn't a shipping product, but there is definitely a ways to go before you can cleanly dual boot and use all the advanced features necessary to do full on HD production.

Even if MacDrive (or a similar product - maybe Apple should buy it? But only if they were going to support it....) DOES work to let you mount that RAID in time, will it work at full speed? Will it be uninterrupted service, so that frames aren't dropped?

In general, how will dual booters be able to access common media between the two operating systems?

Apple has announced that they will NOT be supporting Windows on Apple hardware - so who will? Will there be a niche market for phone or Internet (Skype?) based support of high end Windows apps on Apple hardware from a third party?

The prospect of The Ultimate Box, the "Yeah I can run that." without having to hear details, is tantalizing, but complex.

And definitely not here yet.

-mike

Final Cut Pro / Express Plugins by Eiperle CGM

Page with link to free LE version or full for pay version of aged film plugin:

CGM Aged Film LE is a tool designed to make your DV footage =look less like video and more like film. Use the presets as starting points, adjusting the controls to get just the look you're after.

-mike

In a hurry, so quickly: Intel Mac support, including Mac Pros, new versions of Xpress Pro and Media Composer expected (not promised) by December for ALL Intel based Macs.

Pro Tools expected for towers in September, full certification by December, M-Audio working on certificaiton as well.

Continuing support for PPC based Macs, and planned support for Leopard.

I find it interesting how long the press releases are from everybody vs. what it can be boiled down to.

: )

-mike

Hey all -

first off, quick note - I updated my WWDC coverage with Mac Pro vs. Dell comparison discussion, and news of the Cinema Display price drops. Scroll down or click here to see revised stuff at top.

Also, yesterday I drove up to Dallas once again, this time with filmmaker Sam Jorgensen to visit VPT and their HD 10 bit RGB 4:4:4 capable telecine suite. I took a G5 with HD-SDI card, RAID and a little secret sauce up there, got hooked up to their telecine, and captured the most pristine possible image off of their telecine with a log type curve applied to the image. I'll process 24p DV offline footage for Sam to edit with, and we'll conform to the uncompressed files later in the post process when it is time to do VFX (roto & compositing) and color correction on Final Touch HD. At six to seven hundred GB/hr, it adds up quickly though.

I've got it down to a science at this point, and I'm looking for vendor partners with 10 bit 4:4:4 capable HD telecines to team up with. If you are one, know one, want to recommend one, send them my way, email is mike AT hdforindies DOT com.

Took about a half hour from the time we pulled up in front of the facility until we were unloaded, hooked up, and recording the best possible image (better than HDCAM SR) off of their telecine suite. Sweet.

Today I'm catching up on my world, setting the studio back up, processing offline media for Sam, etc., and will hopefully have some time to write up some more LA trip coverage.

-mike

OK, so FINALLY my LA coverage can resume!

I'm going to be dealing with the trip chronologically - I've chatted a bit already about how I stayed with my friend Frank Reynolds, who is presently cutting a 35mm feature on an elderly Avid (running OS 9! Haven't worked with THAT in years!). So while I'm definitely a techie and like the benefits of the latest and greatest, it isn't always required to do what you want and get good results (but proven old workflows aren't as fun to research and play with and write about for me).

So, Day Two - I got a chance to meet up with Nate Weaver. I met Nate at the Texas HD Shootout in Austin, he flew down from LA to help Adam Wilt run the shoot. Nate's a director and DoP in LA, his site is nateweaver.net, but it is a bit out of date, and a new site for new biz name is under construction. Nate's an experienced, practical guy, I really enjoyed working with him and learned a bunch of real world, practical stuff during our 4 day shoot in Austin, I consider him a friend now.

I visited Nate in his home studio in the LA area and we hung out for the afternoon, chatting about this project, the working world in LA, etc.

Nate's been working on an XDCAM HD project, and as a shooter, DP, director, and editor on this job I thought it'd be interesting to hear his thoughts on the process. I usually put quotes in italics, but since this is so long that'd be a pain to read. So NATE'S stuff is in plain text, MY comments are in italics below.

I emailed Nate for some notes, he was gracious enough to write up this lengthy bit for me. Oh, and there are pictures of the shoot available here as well. Nate originally referred to XDCAM when discussing the XDCAM HD cameras and discs, I've changed all references to XDCAM HD just to be absolutely clear that standard defintion XDCAM is not involved in this project. Wordy, but unambiguous.

So, Nate's report:

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So for the last 4 years now, I've had steady work shooting rock concerts here in Los Angeles iso multicam-style. For a long time I was doing these with DVX-100s, then one with the Sony FX-1, then with the JVC HD100. I suspect I've done about 20 of these all told, anywhere from 5 to 9 cameras. My experience with the HDV cameras hasn't been great for this usage, I've found that they fall down a bit in low light (they are indeed much less sensitive than your average DVX-100) (Mike's comment - putting more pixels on the same size 1/3" image sensor means less light hits each imaging pixel, makes it tougher to get good dynamic range), and apparent resolution starts to go out the window when there isn't enough light to go around. Post however is just as cheap as DV, and you DO get a little sharper image out of the deal.

(Mike elaborates - cheap in terms of storage space and native ingest from the camera, no deck required. BUT more expensive in terms of processing power - due to the greater pixel dimensions and more CPU demanding codec, you can't get away with as much realtime performance with HDV as with DV. So the quantity of realtime effects you can stack up - cross dissolves, color correction, titling, etc. - is reduced with HDV. Faster machines always let you do more.)

When Sony announced a 1/2" tapeless HD camera (Mike's clarification - 1/2" imager, instead of 1/3" as the othe cameras mentioned above are) , I got interested. XDCAM HD purports to be all of the benefits of tapeless, but without the practical problems of direct-to-disc, and the archiving issues with P2. Your media is your backup, but the computer sees your footage as files. The cameras can act as decks, transfer method is firewire. Most of you know how it works, I'll cut to the job.

(Mike says - see my screenshots and commentary on the XDCAM HD import software for FCP for more info)

Not too long after July 4th, I got the call from Warner Brothers Records to shoot a concert for Taking Back Sunday, one of their artists. Usage to be for an upcoming DVD release. Budget was well, well north of DV land, but a little short of, say, HDCAM. HDW-F900 camera rentals wouldn't have been so out of the question, but the implications of that for post wouldn't have worked. * Varicam would definitely have worked, but I just thought XDCAM HD might have an edge on this job for resolution and post speed. Varicam eventually became my backup plan.

*(Mike elaborates - HDCAM requires HD-SDI import (requires a AJA/BMD card), and for best results, uncompressed workflow, which requires some kind of high speed, high capacity (up to 200 MB/sec, up to 600 GB/hr)) disk array system...both of which are pricey extras for a small editing setup. Varicams, while pricier than XDCAM HD, have a simple, FireWire based, relatively low (5.7-15 MB/sec) well supported import/export workflow. OH! And as Nate pointed out as we emailed this back and forth, F900 or Varicam would ALSO REQUIRES HDCAM DECK RENTALS, which are pricey - FireWire based ingest lets you use the camera itself (Varicam lacks FW port, so not for that one). Sony JH-3 playback only HDCAM decks are about 1/3 or 1/4th the purchase price of the full studio decks, but renting those still isn't cheap. Varicam requires at least an AJ-1200A deck, lists about $25K, dunno rental rates in LA. OR you go the traditional route and do downconverts of your HDCAM to DVCAM (if you're going to online and master on HDCAM, around $80 a tape in LA) or to Digibeta or similar if you're going to master to SD. No matter how you slice it, HDCAM adds SUBSTANTIALLY to your budget!)

So renting 7 PDW-F350s (the nicer of the two Sony XDCAM HD camcorders) all at once, even in Los Angeles where camera rental houses are on every corner, definitely proved to be a trick. Luck eventually dawned, and we found 6 available at VER in Glendale...almost brand new units. Kacy (sp?) at VER was very helpful in getting our order together, but admitted we were very much guinea pigs as far as they were concerned. I myself didn't consider myself much of one, I had been testing the Sony/FCP Transfer software for almost two weeks on downloaded MXF files.

(Nate in LA and Greg Boston in Dallas with a camera emailed and sent files around testing all this getting it figured out. I got in on some of that email exchange from Austin as well...Internet friends make figuring things out MUCH easier. Nate also gets big props here for doing PROPER pre-production research and testing to make sure everything was going to work right in advance. Indies? Are you listening? Hint hint... -mike)

I looked, each camera had about 7 hours on it. Interestingly enough, because the cameras were so new VER didn't have time to get 1/2" HD lenses for us, they instead gave us Canon J-series 2/3" SD lenses. I was a little scared of that, but I had assurances that the glass was good enough and wasn't going to make things soft.

My working schedule didn't permit me to get time in with a camera before the shoot to come up with a look as far as gamma, toe, and knee were concerned. I took one of the cameras home with me the night before the shoot, made some changes that I *thought* might help me out shooting a concert, and left it at that. Specifically, I went with Cinegamma 3, black gamma of 40, and a knee of 80. I wanted to pull some detail out of the shadows (concerts have lots of black space in the frame) that I could selectively crush out in post. I also wanted to have graceful transitions to overexposure for the stage lights, hence the knee at 80. I also got to look very briefly at the sharpness with the (admittedly high-end) SD glass we had been given, and was satisfied that if the image was being softened up by the non-HD glass, I sure as hell couldn't see it on my 20" HD CRT eval monitor.

Speaking of camera settings, there was another issue to think about. XDCAM HD by default names each clip on the disc with "C0001.MXF", and auto-increments a new clip each time the camera rolls. Long story short, if I didn't change this default behavior, I could potentially have a lot of clips with duplicate names coming into FCP. Sony of course forsaw this scenario, and allows you to set a custom prefix in the menus, so "A" camera can have clips like "CAMA0005.MXF", the CAMA part being the prefix you set. The clip number will now auto-increment even across disc changes, which is exactly what you'd want.

So the shoot itself came and went. Uneventfully, thankfully. My cameramen were equally bemused and impressed with the cameras, especially so when they were told that each load was going to last 90 minutes (in the mode we were shooting, which was 25mbit, 2ch audio). One commented on how nice it was to be able to stash a spare disc in his cargo pocket.

(Mike's comment - because of codec limitations in Final Cut Pro (which Nate was using to edit this piece), ONLY the 25 megabit constant bitrate (25 mbit CBR) is supported in FCP at this time (MIGHT change at IBC, wait and see). The other two modes - 18 megabit variable bitrate (VBR) and 35mbit VBR - are not supported by Sony's XDCAM HD software at this time, because Final Cut Pro doesn't support VBR MPEG-2 for editing at this time. So it is very frustrating that you can't shoot the best quality this camera supports, because Final Cut Pro can't import it via FireWire. You CAN over HD-SDI, but that's another article I'll write up soon...)

The next day I started bringing in the footage. Nobody had a deck available for another 2 days, so I kept one of the cameras to "digitize". I'll skip the basics of the flow, the info is available in a few different places on the web (see my link above - mike). There are a few things I learned however that aren't covered in the propaganda; you're smart to give a unique name to each XDCAM HD disc in the Finder before importing. This allows the Transfer software to have a unique name for each disc for better bookkeeping.
The clip naming prefix feature in the camera I found out does not work exactly as I had planned; I found out that the clip prefix is saved in the disc metadata while the MXF files saved STILL have the default naming scheme of C000x.MXF. The transfer software is SUPPOSED to change the name of each clip after copying (and wrapping to quicktime) to that clip prefix, but I found out that it doesn't always work and I wound up with some C000x.movs that I had no idea what camera they were from. (Interesting to note the "some" in that line - under what circumstances did it work vs. not work? Was it a camera reseting problem? Changing frame rate modes maybe changed the prefix? Rebooting the camera? What? -mike) That definitely was a drag. My theory is that the clip naming part didn't work when I had run the program independently from FCP, rather than running from inside FCP. Watch out. (Mike wonders aloud - Nate - did you verify that was the difference?)

I was also disappointed to learn that the name of each disc was not transferred to the "Reel" field upon import to FCP. Seems like a no brainer. I'd like to have a sure-fire path back to my MXFs on disc on large jobs.

People often ask me how I handle sync issues on these concerts, and it's a common question on message boards. My method is just to shoot. I don't use timecode slates, or jam the cameras with code before we roll. The F350 has the ability to be jam synced, but we couldn't get it to jam off the sync generator from the mobile recording truck. I suspect we wern't being given "tri-level" sync by the truck, but I'll never know for sure. It was not a problem in the end. Each camera had it's own code, which was just like I've been doing it for years. Syncing in FCP is fast affair for me, I use the audio reference on each camera. With practice it can be faster than typing in TC numbers to get things lined up. Having cameras that didn't have to break roll because of 90 minute run times keeps this simple.

The second question that often goes along with the above is how do you do multicam in FCP with HD? I use the multiclip feature in FCP5, and I make new offline RT media using Media Manager. The average G5 is only good for 3 or 4 simultaneous streams of native HDV, so having 7 cameras needed another solution. I create the multiclips using the native HDV media, and then select the multiclip in the bin, take the media offline (but leaving the files on the disc!), and then reconnect the multiclip to a second folder full of offline RT media, that has filenames of EXACTLY the same names as all my full res media. Then I edit the multiclip....I've gotten 9 Offline RT streams to play at full framerate in this manner. when I'm done cutting, I do the same swap job in the other direction. Throughout the course of editing a concert like this I may bounce back and forth between online and offline media maybe 10 times. There's some gotchas to be had, so test this thoroughly for yourself first to learn what they are.

Working with the clips in FCP was just like working with 1080 HDV. Fast, in my opinion. The HDV/MPEG-2 codec gets a bad rap in my opinion. The concert consisted of constant drastic lighting changes, and strobe lights in almost every song. Lots of instances where one frame was nothing like the frame before it, historically a real bad situation for low bitrate MPEG2. I'm not going over things with a microscope, but I'm certainly not noticing any compression badness that's got me bummed. 

(Mike notes - XDCAM HD is an MPEG-2 based recording format. HDV is also. XDCAM HD, in the 25mbit VBR mode, is a very similar recording data format to HDV - long GOP MPEG-2 (the audio is different, uncompressed and 4 possible channels with XDCAM HD). So Apple uses the new HDV 1080p24 codec to edit the XDCAM HD footage, but it IS "native" - you haven't altered or transcoded the image at all from source. Unfortunately, at this time, there is no native camera support for 1080p24 HDV footage - which would be darn handy for Canon's XL H1 in their 24F mode. BTW, Nate has a dual G5 with a BlackMagic HD-SDI card, and a 20" HD CRT for monitoring, and a bunch of FireWire drives for storage. We recently talked about getting a Sonnet SATA card and 5 bay external hotswap enclosure for fast, scalable, affordable storage for HD projects. All powerful and cost effective stuff.)

Oh, and my opinion on the broadcast SD glass on the camera is very positive. I've seen grabs and footage from lower-end industrial glass on the F330 and 350 and while still making an HD image, there was definitely some chroma and edge softness issues. Not so with the J-series Canons. I'm starting to think that there's a lot more to the issue than just simple "SD" or "HD" glass.

Alright, that's about it. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Before the shoot I was planning on buying an F350 for myself to get out of the HDV game, now I'm doubly confident of that decision.

-Nate

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This is all really good field info, Nate, thanks again!

Mike's Closing Comments: Sony gets props for getting XDCAM HD native support started on Final Cut Pro in a relatively short timeframe after product launch, including 24p support in the first version (we're STILL waiting for that in HDV). There's clearly still some cleanup work to be done - especially with the metadata handling. I also did some FireWire based XDCAM HD ingest recently and noticed it didn't honor my flagged Capture Bin setting - would be nice if it did. Adding 18 and 35mbit VBR support would be a lovely next step as well. I'm not sure how offspeed import works (you can shoot in 1fps increments from 1-60fps on this camera, and record it at 24, 25, or 30 fps) - but does it import correctly into FCP? I should think so, but haven't tried it yet myself (Greg or Nate? You tried yet Anyone else?).

-mike

(Photo lifted from Apple site, I figure they won't mind)

UPDATE WEDNESDAY

I forgot to include that the Cinema Displays had their prices cut - 20" is now $699, 23" is now $999, and 30" is now $1999. Closer to competitors, but still a bit more in cost. But lovely design - decide your priorities.

Macworld: Feature: Comparing prices: Mac Pro versus PCs which is close but not quite tit for tat - MacWorld comes up with a package $1350 more than a Mac Pro.

I'd argue the Dell had a better graphics card included (Quadro FX 3450 vs GeForce 7300GT), and the Dell comes with a 19" monitor, which Apple charges $700 for their 20" model. I'm guess the $350 upgrade to an ATI X1900GT might be a more equitable comparison (update - somebody commented (read comments) that these two are comparable, so more like a $600 difference, not $300), so taking those two things into comparison (how can you compare a system with a large LCD to one without?) the price difference is about $300 roughly. The Dell has a few more slots and USB ports, the Mac has more FireWire and optical audio i/o.

While I've heard numerous complaints about Dell's consumer support (and I've witnessed it myself with my own Dell 2407 monitor troubles), Dell biz support has online, "we steer your machine remotely" software included, and some other support stuff.

In the end it boils down to this - Mac Pros are cost competitive with a high end Dell workstation, and depending on how you want to slice it, probably cost less. But I don't think it can be effectively argued they cost more.

-mike

end update
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WWDC wrap up:

I've started writing my WWDC 2006 coverage about 3 times now, and each time bogged down in what I've nicknamed "blogstipation" - getting mired in the dozens of links, the handsful of products, and my writing process gets all...blocked up. I'm holding up the line of news, trying to finish one thing.

I'm halfway giving up instead of writing it all myself, it's too much to do, and getting too late, and others have done it well, so let me point you their way and add some comments. This is a bit slapdash, but all that's going to happen if I don't just give up and move on. Too many other things to do and cover!


Apple's Keynote viewable here of Steve Jobs giving his usual show. I haven't watched it yet.

Pictures from Keynote

As to the new Mac Pros, here's some articles and info:

Basics of the Mac Pros:

Apple's pages on Mac Pro:

Main Mac Pro Page
about the Xeon processor (with some benchmarks from Apple)
chassis design - with nice rollovers and descriptive text - actually quite informative and good page
Graphics card stuff
with some gaming benchmarks
Expansion covering storage, optical drives, RAM, and PCIe stuff
Performance - more on this below
Tech specs - well, duh.

Mac Pro Developer Notes here, with the deep geeky bits. Oh, and more here, here, here, and here.

Best third party coverage I've seen yet: Ars Technica coverage of Mac Pro - bravo guys, excellent as always!

Macintouch's Mac Pro: Initial Experiences report, which I'm sure will grow daily, and is worth checking in on - they like to get nitty gritty like I do, but aren't HD or video specific

As previously reported, here is a good takeapart photo gallery

No time for that? Here's a nice little 90 second tour under the hood of a Mac Pro from MacWorld (nice one guys!) that is extremely informative. That page also includes some other useful links, so dig around there.

Mike's Buying Advice If You're Going To Get A Mac Pro: Starting at $2200 for a Quad 2.0 box , $2500 for the Quad 2.66, and starting at $3300 for a Quad 3.0 GHz box, that's cheap power. Interesting to note that unlike previous configs, it is very clear that in the step up from 2.66 to 3.0 GHz, ALL you are getting for your $800 is a faster processor - no RAM or HD upgrades included in that. Welcome to Intel pricing, kids, here's your accordion, go sit in that boiling tar over there. Intel charges a VERY beefy premium for their fastest processors - $800 for 0.34 GHz is, well, owie - steep. My advice? If you're building some massive systems where $800 is a drop in the total bucket, and you've already got everything else you want in the system and that's not painful for you to part with the cash, go ahead and get the fastest so you won't be obsoleted as fast. If, on the other hand, you're Joe Indie, $800 will buy you that X1900GT graphics card AND some third party RAM AND an additional third party hard drive (maybe two), so I wouldn't pop for that unless there was some proven, mission critical advantage to the Quad 3.0 that the Quad 2.66 didn't have - such as X number of realtime layers that you needed to have, or YES the 3.0 does something in realtime that the 2.66 has to render. I'm not aware at this time of any such THRESHOLD (yes or no) type differentiation between the two, so until I hear of one, the 2.66 is my recommendation for most folks on a tight budget. I'd personally MUCH rather have a Quad 2.66 with a better graphics card, more RAM or another drive or two than a bare bones 3.0 GHz box. And, as always, Apple charges a fortune for their RAM and hard drives. An argument can be made for high quality Apple RAM, but not an overwhelming one. Find a good vendor with a no questions, money back/replacement/lifetime guarantee (and they SHOULD) on RAM and do that. Hard drives? Please. Buy third party, just good sources, and for GOD'S SAKE, DO NOT NOT NOT buy the non-retail, bare bones hard drives from Fry's, CompUSA, etc. - those are LITERALLY the ones everyone else has picked over and passed on. I have my favorite vendors I use, I'm sure there are others out there just as good - do some research, and ask and do not accept B-stock. Would you want a factory not-quote-spec parachute? Then why get a B-stock hard drive? Same logic.

Oh, and to pop it in here somewhere - Bluetooth and Airport Extreme are BTO, NOT standard, unlike other Intel Macs. Drat! But I figure this is just a cost savings gesture on Apple's part. If this is going to be your primary box, I recommend getting both of these options if you can afford it. I'll betcha lunch that by MWSF Bluetooth and Airport Extreme will be stock on these machines at or below current prices. They have to withhold SOME candy to get you to come back later...

Oh, and DO DO DO get the BTO option X1900GT card - it already helps with Motion, and with Leopard and what I expect of the next rev of Final Cut Pro (maybe NAB next year?) it'll make a performance difference. On a tight budget? Sit and suck it on the current stock card, and when the performance gains do occur, THEN buy a retail graphics card (price will be lower then than now...and I'll bet they might upgrade the stock graphics card by MWSF 2007 at the same price point as well).

Oh, and just to put it in somewhere - supposedly Dell's similarly equipped box is SUBSTANTIALY more expensive - some PC fan - find me a similarly equipped Dell to prove or disprove that one, OK? What I'd like to see: a 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, Quad 2.66 same chips, ATI X1900GT.

Benchmarks:

Apple's own are on the performance page linked above, roll over (not obvious) to see different apps' performance. Quick summary of stuff I care about:

FCP (unreleased beta version) DV rendering is 30% faster than Quad G5 for 2.66 Xeon box, 40% faster for 3.0 GHz box
FCP beta DV encoding to MPEG-2: same 30 & 40% speedup as above for 2.66 & 3.0 GHz
FCP beta HDV rendering (1080i60): 20 & 30% faster than Quad G5
FCP beta HDV 1080i60 MPEG-2 encode to HDV: both 2.66 & 3.0 were 40% faster than Quad G5 (so what's the bottleneck if not processor?)

Logic and Soundtrack Pro were 40 to 80% faster than Quad G5, depending on task, app, and box

...but one of my favorite quotes was about lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. Manufacturers can be counted on to make their products look good, so it helps to see independent testing. So therefore:

BareFeats: Mac Pro 2.66GHz versus Quad-Core G5/2.5GHz includes Photoshop CS2, After Effects, iMovie 6, and some limited FCP testing; as well as analysis and recommendations. I know and trust the guy running this site.

Macworld: First Look: 2.66GHz Mac Pro sets the speed mark - Compressor 2.1 was the only app that I cared about where the Intel based system beat the Quad G5...and then not by much.

Geek Patrol | Mac Pro Benchmarks are of purely scientific/geeky value, included to be thorough. Gives an idea of what the hardware can do, IF it can get optimized sofware

Mike's Mac Pro Performance Comments: Based on these benchmarks, I'm not seeing anything that makes me want to dump my Quad G5 for one of these boxes at this time. The architecture has some great capabilities, but AT THIS TIME I don't see major benefits to upgrading from a Quad G5. If buying new? I'd look carefully at what your needs are - if you need to do heavy After Effects, for instance, NOW, I'd say a Quad G5 is a better box for that task...NOW. Although the Mac Pro, even under Rosetta emulation, was close behind. If you're a dual booter, WinXP After Effects is way to go (if you're comfortable with that) until native ships. Once they ship an Intel native version of After Effects (next year I hope/presume), then we're talkin'...but not until then. Similarly, just take a careful and thorough look at your needs and applications, and KNOW what is native or not, supported or not, mission critical performance or not, and MOST ESPECIALLY, "fast enough" for your needs or not. I can live with non-native support for office type apps, but not graphic apps. I DO think, however, that in time the apps will run faster on this hardware. But compounding a lack of FULLY optimized apps for this box, and that it is Apple's first Intel tower, I feel no compelling need to sprint out and get one now. In a few months, after a tweaked version of FCP ships (I hope), and I'm sure all the 1.0 bugs get worked out, I'd like to have one so I have a pimp daddy Mac AND a pimp daddy PC. I like the idea of rebooting and my BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme works fine in either world - won't THAT be nice for maximum choice and flexibility!

Compatibility:

Again, double check your apps for compatiblity, but ESPECIALLY be careful about hardware - I now have a number of PCIe cards, and only SOME of them will work in a Mac Pro. There are two main categories I'm concerned with for editing:

1.) HD-SDI I/O - Both AJA and BlackMagic Design have announced current or imminently forthcoming driver support for the Mac Pro towers, so no problems expected there. (BTW, those are links to the press releases on Mac Pro support if you want more details.)

2.) Storage - at present, none of the SATA card vendors have announced support for the Mac Pros AFAIK. I checked with Sonnet and found a short message on their page that they are working on Mac Pro driver support but it isn't ready yet. I'd expect that Highpoint, Firmtek, LaCie, etc. are all working on driver support as well. But for the moment, external SATA drive arrays are SOL on connecting to Mac Pros. Apple is selling a PCIe fiber channel card (presumably same as before) with the Mac Pros, so XServe RAID users are in luck. Xsan IS supported on Intel Macs (I checked) so that is good news. ATTO, however, gets good points for stepping up immediately (which means it had prior access): "ATTO ExpressPCI SCSI adapters, Celerity Fibre Channel adapters, and ExpressSAS RAID adapters are the only PCI Express (PCIe) adapters available today that support Mac OS X on the Intel platform," the company said on MacNN

UPDATE 8:20pm - Barefeats report: Seagate 750GB and Hitachi 500GB four drive RAID 0 inside the Mac Pro has some interesting stuff going on about the internal drive ports. Read before buying! They also have a another report that goes into good detail on the overall box.

Upgradeability:

Apple has done an excellent job of addressing complaints about the G5s:

-RAM on riser boards, so literally a snap to install - no more pulling fans or awkward "I can't see what's going on here" installs - quick and easy, 8 slots for up to 16 GB or RAM - kudos Apple! And a fast (if pricey) architecture means full on maximum speed. By committing to this RAM architecture, it does push up the price point

-Optical drives - with no high def burners available from Apple yet, Apple at least is planning ahead, and has TWO optical drive bays in these towers. Standard is a dual layer DVD/CD burner, but I'm betting a BTO option of a Blu-ray (my fave and leading candidate based on prior Steve Jobs statements) or HD-DVD will become available by MWSF in January '07 at the latest. In the meantime, you can get two SuperDrives if ya want'em as BTO options.

-PCIe slots - a 16x, a 1x, and two 4x are the standard config, although the speeds can be rearranged...which I do not understand fully (somebody got a link to explain?). But the good news is that they FINALLY offset the graphics card slot, so that if you get a double wide card (more and more common for the Big Kahuna space heaters we graphics folks want to put in there), it will NOT block the adjacent slot, thus limiting your card configurations as well as total card count. HOORAY Apple, SO glad you listened on that one! Also appears that they are thumb screws, so tool-less. Another great example of Apple's attention to detail for this box.

-the power supply has also been moved up top as well. More details about the innards in the excellent Ars Technica article linked elsewhere, go read that.

-Storage - not just room, but an elegant solution for more drives inside the box, including drive trays, power, and SATA connectors...even two unpopulated connectors on the motherboard that can be externalized with a commonly available adaptor (offhand, I know MacGurus used to carry them, I'm sure others do as well). Firmtek/Seritek has a nice little two bay hotswap SATA enclosure with inexpensive cages. So if you wanted to do uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2, you could buy 5 additional drives third party, put two of them in the external enclosure/s (although a fixed drive enclosure or two makes sense too), and have a dedicated boot drive and a 5 drive SATA array. I've been against internal drive RAIDs in the G5 tower, but this tower is designed to accomodate 3 drives beyond the boot drives, with ports for two more. This isn't my most recommended solution, but for Duly Starving Indies, it'd be cost effective (but have some workflow limitations). Also a tantalizing idea - a prize to whomever can verify yay or nay as to whether these ports (and they are clearly SATA II, as evinced by ""two unpopulated 3 Gbps SATA buses for expansion" in Apple documentation) - do the 2 additional ports support port multiplication?((Last picture on page.)) If that were the case, you could then attach up to TEN additional drives to the Mac Pro in external port multiplying enclosures. It is possible but not necessarily likely - if they did this, they'd be ticking off a lot of third party vendors, like Sonnet, Firmtek, Highpoint, etc. But 3rd party developers are not Apple's first consideration. I recently set up a 10 drive port multiplying array (I'll be writing about the experience soon), so that's an enticing if unlikely possibility. Going back the internals of the unit, I see NO room to fit any additional drives into the Mac Pro without compromising room for cards. WELL, actuallly, I wonder if you could fit a drive or two in that empty optical drive bay...hmmm...hmmm...you'd have power and cooling in that vicinity already, you'd just need some kind of a mounting bracket. Accessory makers? Are you listening? Hmmm....again I prefer external solutions, but that ain't bad.

Also, more ports - a second USB 2.0 on the front, a FW800 as well as FW400 on the front, and on back another USB 20 port, and the ports have been arranged in tidy rows according to type. VERY nice (see pick at top of article, click to enlarge).

New XServes

Based on Quad Xeon like Mac Pros, similar specs, but in a 1U (but DEEP!) package that FINALLY has redundant power supplies. Like on the Mac Pros they listened and rearranged ports etc., and the card config offers the tantalizing possibility of a true HD editing station in a 1U package (attached to storage of course), with monitor, HBA card, and HD-SDI card. I've asked vendors and they say it sounds possible but they'll need to test with actual hardware, of course. Beyond that, I'm not terribly interested in these boxes other than as Xsan metadata controllers or other server usages.

As for Apple bragging rights, somewhere I read that Dell's similarly configured server was about $300 more (these start at $3K).

Links:

MacNN article: Xserves may be good for business

WWDC: Apple flirts with enterprise - are you Xserved?

MacWorld: WWDC: Xserve makes a strong showing

OK, more stuff:

Intel transition seen going as better than expected

Leopard is going to be OS X 10.6.

Things of interest to me:

-TRULY, full on, unqualified, 64 bit support. With concurrent 32 bit app support, side by side. NICE! Means everybody should be able to run as fast as possible. This opens the possibility that next year's apps may run faster on current Intel based hardware once optimized.

-QuickTime is getting some serious under the hood work done, I hope they tidy up some loose ends that have been hanging out for a while

-Time Machine - is a built in incremental backup and restore system - this sounds GREAT for everybody, consumers and pros alike - so few people actually do backups the way they shold (Um....me included), and this will make it a snap to do so over a network or to a local drive. Sounds like a cool UI, too, but I haven't seen it.

Resolution Independence - I've been waiting for this one a LOOOOOONG time - this means you can tell your UI to make the cursor 1/2" tall, REGARDLESS of the DPI of your screen. This requires some substantial reworking on the developer's side, but if done correctly, means you should be able to resize the UI elements the same way you resize Finder icons - so if you have a massively high res screen, your cursor, UI elements, text, etc. doesn't have to be itty bitty. Think this doesn't matter? Try seeing small text in an FCP bin on a 30" monitor at arm's length.

Information gleaned from here,

Leopard vs. Vista articles links here on XLR8YourMac.com

Developers got a preview copy to take home with them, and it didn't start long for their cheatin' hearts to start singin' - it's already out there on the warez scene as of Aug 11th.

MORE RUMORS! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

So now that we've addressed what HAS shipped, or has been stated to ship, let's talk about other stuff that hasn't happened or might not happen -

Multiple sources think we'll see Core 2 Duo chips in the Macbooks and Macbook Pros. Personally, while I'd LIKE to see the pro and consumer lines both get the faster chips, I'm betting Apple would like to see a pro/consumer split in their product lineup - so MacBooks Pros would get Core 2 Duos, and MacBooks....wouldn't...yet. Or at least it would be a pricier BTO option...or somethin'.

Sources for rumors: AppleInsider, MacRumors.com, DigitTimes.

Mike's Buying Recommendations, Final Thoughts

OK, you've waded through all this dreck you deserve SOME kind of a prize - so if you KNOW a Mac Pro is right for you, I'd be inclined to wait about a month (let's see if I can hold out THIS time!) or more to let the 1.0 bugs shake out, or find out if there are any nasty gremlins in there to be avoided. Once you DO decide to buy (if right choice for you), I'd get the following config:

-quad 2.66 (unless you're clear on spending the extra $800 for 0.34 GHz faster)
-standard RAM config (buy more third party)
-MAYBE bump up the standard drive to bigger...or not (third party always an option). If a single drive is all you're using for now, and you want to have Windows too, BIG drive recommended, either from here or elsewhere
-any additional hard drives? Buy from other reputable vendor, Apple is pricey (but hey, single source vendor ain't the end of the world, either!)
-single SuperDrive
-DO get the optional X1900GT, Bluetooth and Airport Extreme - I find they come in handy - Bluetooth sync to cellphone is AWFULLY nice for calendar/address book synchronization
-I skip the modem - can't imagine using it (unless you want to fax with it, but you should be faxing from an edit station anyway! What happens if fax comes in while capturing or worse, mastering to tape?)

Right this minute, if you want to do HD stuff and dual boot OS X & WinXP, I think BlackMagic has the advantage, because I know for a fact that you can take the same exact card and put it in a Mac or PC, so I see no reason why you couldn't dual boot with one of their PCIe based cards or Multibridge devices and have it work in BOTH OS X and WinXP. I've inquired just minutes ago as to whether AJA was going to consolidate their Kona/Xena lines, or at least allow installation of one of those in a Mac Pro and be able to dual boot, I'll update this article when I hear something back I can "share with the group", as they say. I don't know how similar the Kona/Xena cards are under the skin - are they engineered differently? Different firmware? Or is the Mac/PC split just a marketing differentiation? I don't know at this time.

Some further thoughts on those benchmarks - those Intel performance numbers in Adobe products weren't TOO bad....that emulated Rosetta performance doesn't blow when comparing a Quad G5 to these new boxes. But I think we need more performance testing done by more third parties to know what the emulated performance in working environments is likely to be.

-there's some kind of deal where you can save money on Final Cut Studio when purchasing with a Mac, so investigate that. If anybody finds the link that explains how to save on Final Cut Studio when buying a Mac Pro, PLEASE post in comments or email me (address at top of page).

-Apple also will deal aggressively for business purchases, so look into that as well - talk to their Enterprise sales guys, but don't expect then to know the video stuff, for that, a good VAR, like Omega in Austin or Silverado in California, or ProMax, or....etc. etc. etc.

OK, whee! Thank god, I'm done, and I can now move on. Blogstipation over! Ahhhhhhh.............I'll stop the metaphors there, in the interest of all parties concerned. Dinner time.

-Mikey, The "Super Colon Blow" Blogger

Studio Daily | Technique | Case Studies

My friend Frederic Haubrich (met him as developer of LumiereHD HDV app) directed a movie, and it is on the front page of Studio Daily today.

Rock on Frederic! His shot on HDV film, Tomorrow is Today, is a great case study of how to do HDV RIGHT. They shot on Sony Z1U at 50i (best camera choice available at time for budget), with a good DoP, careful post, and the results are good. Read on for good tips on how to shoot and post HDV properly for good results.

-mike

I mentioned this in my revised Public Apology article below, but only the really attentive will notice that I appended it and fixed spelling errors.

So for everybody else:

1.) I'm heading out of town for a day trip shortly.

2.) WWDC wrapup coverage still not finished, will have to be tonight when I return from...

3.) On way back from Fredericksburg to visit Rhonda of Day Off In Analog Land blog semi-fame (she is now married, congrats!) I'll be picking up a long lost XDCAM HD disc from the Texas HD Shootout. It accidentally was left in the camera, and went back to California, got handed off at NAB to Greg Boston and came back to Dallas, got handed off to Chris Hurd and he has it in San Marcos, and I'll rendenvous with him to get it.

4.) Tomorrow, I set out early for north of Dallas with a transportable studio - G5, monitor, RAID, Multibridge Extreme, etc. to go capture footage from that XDCAM HD. We shot mostly 35mbit, so I'll have to capture as uncompressed HD-SDI (ugh, what a pain). But I'll also me messing with 25mbit CBR mode native capture over FireWire for the first time, should be fun/interesting/informative.

5.) Saturday morning is neice's birthday party, gotta go splash around with a bunch of 5 year olds, is Mission Critical Application for the Soul. So it'll take until Saturday or Sunday before I can FINALLY start going through notes from the LA trip in chronological order. Just been swamped.

-mike

UPDATE 12:30AM LATE THURSDAY NIGHT/SUPER EARLY FRIDAY - got home around 9:30, after meeting with Chris Hurd and his wife Kelly from DVInfo.net for dinner, had a good conversation, and got the XDCAM HD disk from the Texas HD Shootout. I had some more complaints to deal with over on CML Future Cameras over my Red coverage, so that burned some time to respond instead of working on the WWDC commentary. Such is life. Now it is 12:41am, and I'm packing up a G5, array, MB-X, monitor, etc. to drive up to north of Dallas (4 hour drive) to Greg Boston's place, since he has an F350 with which to capture the footage from. We have to use HD-SDI capture, since most of our footage was shot with 35mbit VBR, which Final Cut Pro does not at this time support. If Final Cut Pro is updated at IBC, which is a possibility (FCP 5.2.1 was mentioned, then pulled, from Apple's site during the Pro Mac rollout), then it'll be might be possible to capture 35mbit VBR XDCAM HD footage natively...but by then it'll be too late, the Shootout DVDs will already have been made. Grr. Such is life, again.

So tomorrow is shot - 8 hours driving, 2-4 hours of capture/setup/whatever stuff, then collapsing, or possibly dealing with more CML scuttlebutt, which I am loathe to do. So - WWDC gets addressed first, then into my LA trip coverage.

-mike

We are cheating for IBC... - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking: "We will, unless a major castastrophy happens, show 4k footage at IBC. But it really won't be 4K. We will cheat. It is really 5K scaled down to 4K."

Get the full scoop over at dvxuser.com (my buddy Jarred's site).

-mike

PowerMax: Mac Pro taken apart!

PowerMax got a Mac Pro and took it all apart with a bunch of pictures. Interesting for the hardware geeks. Some really nice redesign touches on this one over the G5s - rearranged exterior ports (more FW and USB), rearranged interior giving room for oversized graphics cards that WON'T block a slot, room for 4 SATA drives as is inside the box, 2 more UNUSED SATA ports inside the case (any place to put 2 more drives? 6 internal drives would allow for one boot and a 5 drive array, perfect for 4:2:2 uncompressed HD work), etc.

My next question - how available, and how expensive, is this new kind of RAM?

Another nice point - obviously, these things are available immediately, as they promised. Nice!

-mike

I temporarily pulled my original article. I'm editing it a bit to more accurately qualify my statements. I've tried to reach the folks with the primary beef with what I originally posted, but after numerous attempts to contact via email and phone with no response, after over 72 hours I'm now putting this back up, edited a bit. In short, the original version of this article went up after a specific request to get online ASAP, and that created some false impressions in the minds of others, not helped any by some overzealous and/or indistinct phrasing on my part. If you read the original, you'll note this is about 98% of the same copy, just some qualifiers and clarifications thrown in on top. This is the first of a series of articles I'll post about my trip to LA now that I'm back. I've got a busy week coming up, so I'll be transcribing my notes and organizing my thoughts and doing further writeups between some paying work and long overdue deferred life maintenance, but it is all coming. Patience.

First off, let me start by saying that in my past Red coverage, I've often been told that I'd lost my objectivity, accused of drinking the Kool Aid. Well, read this, and then think what you will. Keep in mind I'm attempting to be conservate in my considerations here (but its tough - it's a really exciting product that looks like it is coming along great). So short version - I've seen images off the Mysterium sensor that is to be used in the Red camera, and even it its very first baby steps in a lab type environment, it is AMAZING. Long version...

...in a nondescript office building, in an uninteresting office park in southern California, I Saw Something.

I can't say all that I saw, where I saw it, or what exactly shot it, but suffice it to say, after nearly two weeks in LA, seeing footage at the DGA Digital Day on a Sony 4K projector; visiting Band Pro, Clairmont Camera, Plus 8, Panavision, and Dalsa; talking to reps, techs, VPs, and execs about their latest and greatest; and seeing a LOT of test footage from a slew of cameras....Red is onto something here. Something BIG. Something that if they continue to fulfill their stated specs and objectives, could and probably should substantially alter the landscape, ESPECIALLY for indies.

(Note for clarification - I saw GREAT looking footage from Genesis and Dalsa while I was out in LA visiting their facilities which they were kind enough to take the time to show me, I'll have more to say on them later.)

The kind of thing where if this goes right for Red, future film school nerds sitting in History of Digital Cameras 101 will be shown a graph of historical bang for the buck on one axis and time on the other. There would be a dramatic bend and point of inflection on the chart, and the professor would point at that sharp break in the line with his laser doohickey and say "...and this is when Red came out."

I happened to come visit Red on a perfect day - they were shooting test footage, some of their first from a full sized, "real" Mysterium sensor. Jarred Land of DVXUser.com was also there (pictured above from right to left are me (Mike Curtis), Jarred Land of DVXUser.com, Ted Schilowitz of Red, and the Red surfboard, and no this was NOT taken with the Red camera!.)

The test footage I saw off the Mysterium, which was early, straight-from-the-lab, pre-beta, not optimized, "we just turned it on and there it was" type of stuff, shot on a low end lens (some from a Canon EOS lens) makes me think that Red is truly going to be a force to contend with, that it will compare favorably with existing high end digital cinema cameras...at ANY price. I also think it likely that it will, IF they continue on the path that they've publicly and privately described to me, be considered at least a peer, if not a preferable option, to the existing, shipping, high end digital cinema cameras.

Many have said, based on the specs published at NAB, that "They just can't do it, because it can't be done." Let me tell you what I saw.

I saw images of a man and child side by side with beautiful, GRAIN AND GAIN FREE smooth, clear, clean skin tones. And I mean NO noise/grain/gain, just smooth imagery, looking at it pixel for pixel on a 30" Apple computer LCD display from a foot away. Framed from mid upper arm to over the head, I could make out EVERY hair, not just the ones the light caught just so. I could see the subtlest details in skin texture. I could see the subtle veins in a young child's eyes. I could see the pucker of skin around the man's facial hairs that needed shaving. Limned with a back light, I could almost make out the individual hairs on the edge of his ears, those tiny sub millimeter long ones we all have if you look close enough...and those weren't even necessarily in the focal plane. But I could discern that it was hair, not backlit skin, or highlight glow or anything like that. I could see shadow detail in his salt and pepper hair, and the only thing that looked like it might be blowing out was the highlights on his shiny, unmade up, unwashed forehead (there is a heat wave on, don't forget). There might have been data in that highlight to recover, I don't know for sure (the working bit depth that they are capturing is...quite impressive).

...and that was shot with a Canon EOS lens. I was at lunch describing the detail with someone, and realized I could, when peering close at that footage on screen, make out about as much detail as I could sitting across the small table at lunch, right there in person.

(I followed up with Ted to double check - that image WAS shot with the sensor rolling at 24fps - so NOT "just a still")

Now, I've recently seen footage from Sony's F350, F900, and F950; Panavision's Genesis, the Dalsa Origin, and the ARRI D-20. I saw that footage either on high quality monitors, or projected digitally or from film prints, either in well set up screening rooms or in everyday movie theaters, so it isn't quite a comparable viewing environment to what I'm describing here. I haven't had the chance to analyze footage as closely and consistently from the other cameras as I have here, nor side by side. But I was very, very impressed with the Red images I saw this way, and I've zoomed in tight and analyzed a lot of footage lately from some other HD cameras.

I watched the Red team, in a Batcave like warehouse setting shoot FOOTAGE (clarification - I'd said images before) of an Oakley watch on a turntable (this was shot with a Zeiss lens) - the buffed metal organically rounded links in the band showed no blown highlights, just verrrrrry smooth continuous tone, without the usually harsh video clip and falloff. At first I saw in the RAW Bayer image what looked like noise...but it was actually striations in the finely buffed metal - wow. The kind of detail you wouldn't even know existed on SD or maybe even a 720p camera, and it was abundantly clear here. Very clear subtle shadow detail in the patterned black watch face, fine white lines of the minute markers on the face crisply defined, and a bright red sweep hand...shot at 1/24th shutter while the watch was on a turntable IN MOTION. And it was amazingly sharp....even only using a portion of the imager's surface area. (At this point, the problem wasn't the sensor, but rigging up a disk array fast enough to capture all that data from full area of the sensor on set...so they had to window the sensor.)

The test footage was a bit dark, but that is easily attributable to the fact that the imager is not yet characterized, this is the rawest of possible output off the sensor that has just barely been manipulated, and they are just starting to get into their tests. This was not a staged demo of what they'd done before for my benefit, I just happened to show up on The Right Day and got to watch as they got it all going and they themselves gathered around to eagerly watch the results.

To my eye (and I admit I'm not cinematographer, but I've been working with digitized images from film and video for a living since the earliest 1990s *** see Footnote at end of article to qualify this a bit), this looks like they may well have one of the cleanest imaging video/d-cinema sensors I've ever seen pictures from. (That line is what I orginally wrote Wednesday night. Friday morning I saw footage from the Dalsa Origin - more on that later.) As well as a just INCREDIBLY sharp picture. As for exposure lattitude, required lighting levels to get these kinds of images, what aperture required etc., I don't know, I wasn't privvy to all the details involved, so that is an area that creates some wiggle room in terms of just how rockin' this camera is and just how significant that demo footage was. (After writing THAT line, two days later I saw an extremely impressive demo of lattitude from the Origin camera that I'd like to see anyone top.) As I learned at the Texas HD Shootout, nothing counts like controlled, well documented circumstances and side by side comparisons. But the Red footage (and FOOTAGE, not just still frames) looked damn, DAMN good, shooting a watch with metal links and a black face, and maintaining good tonal range throughout.

What they DID say was that they rated the camera ISO 320. I heard Jim mentioning F8 to get the depth of field he wanted in the shot.

Now, I saw shots from some of the other existing D-cinema cameras that were blowing out, but I don't know (and don't feel I have the judgement to know) whether that was the limits of the camera or a choice from the DoP on set. (This was demo footage at other facilities whilst in LA, shot by clients, not by vendor staff.) To really make a truly fair and accurate comparision, I personally feel I would need to shoot the same subject, from the same location, with the same lens (if possible), and screen in it in the same fashion at the same time, preferably with butterfly comparisons. (Or, obviously, shoot some charts and over/under subjects in a controlled environment for some of that info.) Since that can't be done yet, I need to withhold final judgement. All of the cameras I've seen this week (D-20, Genesis, Dalsa, Viper, Red) can make lovely, sharp, wide lattitude shots. I don't feel comfortable or confident to say which were better at what - the Dalsa, for instance, records 4K but they could only screen 2K with their Christie projector - so who knows if it was noticeably sharper than 2K or not. But I do feel confident in saying that if you were to plot out image sharpness and dynamic range, Red would be in the same area as the others mentioned. I'm not saying it would do worse, I'm saying it is competitive, but I don't feel comfortable declaring which falls where at this time with the knowledge I have. Plus, Red has only spent a very limited time, not years, optimizing their imagery off of this sensor.

What I saw from Red looked like a very nice professional digital SLR still camera image - and these were frames shot at 24 fps with 1/24th of a second exposure of a moving subject- so no closing of a gate or shutter, no black level resetting or flushing of an imager's CCD/CMOS buffers (that's one reason digital SLR images look better than video) - just REALLY nice, clean, smooth images.

I tend to look at a source image not so much for what it IS, but what it can BE - as someone familiar with how far you can (or can't) push a source image in color correction in post. While it is nice to have pleasing color "off the truck," beyond that I look for good shadow and highlight detail so I can push an image around in post to arrive at an ultimately pleasing image. I saw extremely good things in the footage from that regard.

Based on what I saw, I'm pretty confident that they should have some 4K footage to show at IBC (as they've stated was their intent), and that it'll make jaws drop. It sounds like they'll have something NICE planned to show it off.

So what do I think? Based on what I saw that day, I think Red is well on their way towards having an industry altering product here if they continue to deliver on their stated goals. A product that will force the other manufacturers to either respond by nuking their existing pricing structures, or as the market catches on to what Red offers (again, if they deliver as stated), the competitors will lose a significant number of sales to Red once the market realizes what Red is all about.

Along those lines, note that Panasonic has been lopping off prices on cameras lately, notice the $10K from of the SDX900 from about $27K to about $17K, to make room for the new high def HVX900 at the old price point of $27Kish. What will the other industry players do if Red arrives and delivers as promised?

Note that I don't mention how it compares to any camera in its price range, like the SDX900, the Sony XDCAM HD cameras, the specs for the unreleased HVX900, or the higher priced Panasonic Varicam nor the Sony F900. I don't think those will even be in the same league. I think both in overall net benefits of the package and individually category by category, Red is going to be either an outright winner or in the race with the higher end d-cinema cameras.

Comparing to what is known or expected to be on the market by the time Red is expected to ship in volume, Red wins in terms of:

-maximum frame rate capabilities - from low to high in fine increments (except for the high end specialty cameras that are impractical to do all your shooting with, although somebody recently said Phantom could be practical to shoot long form with - so I need to investigate that).

-resolution flexibilty (720p, 1080p, 1080i, 2Kx1080, 4K, 4.5K)

-shooting/recording mode options - from relatively low cost on board compressed recording for 720p/1080p/1080i/2K in 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 (or for that matter out the HD-SDI ports for traditional tape or data recording), and uncompressed RAW recording for up to 4.5K to the as yet unknown REDRAID device (that I know nothing more than the stated intent of having a data recorder that'll do 4.5K @ 60fps....Codex is a NICE HD/2K/4K recorder, Dalsa relies on that, more on those later)

price - the most competitive camera shipping at Red's stated price that I can think of is the Sony F330 XDCAM HD...and that's not even a fair fight between those two (granted, Sony's 2/3" 4:2:2 model due next year will be closer to Red's stated capabilities, but likely pricier....but may ship around the same time. And Sony may drop the F330/F350 prices by the time Red ships in any case. Oh, and the also unreleased Silicon Imaging camera could well be a competitor as well, with a plethora of similar features...also more on that later)

-accessibility - note that the Dalsa Origin, Panavision Genesis, and ARRI D-20 are ONLY available as rentals, not for sale at any price. Some of these rent for about $3K/day on a 3 day week - at that rate, it takes two weeks to pay for your Red body. A further update - a full package from another vendor, with camera, recorder, and lenses runs about $20K a week - enough to buy a Red body and some amount of recording stuff (not all clear yet).

Put all those together, I don't think anybody is going to be able to touch this overall combo, ESPECIALLY for the price.

About the only thing I can think of that folks could bitch about would be the lack of an onboard tape recording option...and I'm ready to be post-tape, data driven anyway. You'll have single/dual HD-SDI for recording to outboard tape if you want to do that....and the F950, Viper and Dalsa don't have ANY provision for onboard tape, the Genesis does, and the D-20 MIGHT in the future.

As I saw other cameras during the week, I kept trying to think back to which ones did how well in what situation. But I kept doubting myself about how good the Red was. But then I kept thinking of that father/daughter shot, and the smooth, smooth, clean, noise/grain/gain free tonality of it, and the incredible sharpness of the image, both on the 2560x1600 Apple monitor for that imagery and the watch footage on a 3840x2400 Viewsonic LCD panel as well. And that restored my faith.

CAVEATS AND POTENTIAL ISSUES:

I wrote a big thing a few months ago (also includes links to all my Red coverage up to that point) about how the biggest challenges I saw for Red were (after the price was set) how soon it would ship and how good the images would be. Based on the sample images and footage I saw, and a reasonable level of projection of what can readily be done to improve upon what I saw, the issue of sensor viability I think is now or will be soon enough put to bed. The Red team was very pleased at the quality of what they were getting, and I almost felt the emotional cheapskate for not being as excited or impressed seeing the same results....but I've trusted they were going to get there, I didn't have serious doubts. They said they'd do it, and they did it, so I wasn't too surprised.

Now that I've seen them accomplish this, and the sensor is working they way they wanted it to, I started thinking about what the next challenges are once the sensor (the core of this camera, and what really makes it significant) could be checked off the Worry List. Other things to be worried about now are:

1.) The codec - I don't know the full story on current development, haven't seen it in action, so that's a potential challenge for them to resolve on the timetable they'll need. A great image off the sensor is meaningless if it gets chewed to dogfood getting recorded. Can they get fast enough compression onboard for the frame sizes and frame rates they are discussing? And if they can generate that much data, can they record it all fast enough with the options they are discussing?

2.) The NLE support - getting an AVI or QT codec done after the core codec code is complete shouldn't be too hard, but getting Apple, Avid, Adobe, etc. (OK forget etc., those three are the VAST majority of the market, esp. for users of this product) on board to hook in under the skin, to do realtime performance, will be another significant challenge. I don't want just realtime playback, I want realtime 3-way color corrector, cross dissolves, etc., same as I'd get for any other HD/2K/similar footage. Plus, the NLE guys are ALWAYS slow to respond - I'd be very, VERY surprised if a new version of FCP or Avid or Premiere shipped with native support for Red next NAB. Look at how long it took to get HDV support after the format was announced and then after cameras shipped (and it isn't complete - hullo, HDV 24p? None yet as of this writing).

Also, since it will be competitive at the high end beyond the indie crowd, figuring out workflows for integration with high end post will be another challenge as well, but it should be entirely possible to convert to high bit depth TIFF or DPX or whatever.

3.) Typical manufacturing issues - can they get decent yields on the CMOS chips? Will there be any bottlenecks on part supplies, etc.? Not saying that I heard any such problems stated, just the same new product manufacturing concerns ANY new product has.

4.) Typical new business logistics - service and support, replacement parts, and a good organization to deal with in case something goes wrong, gets dropped or broken, can't be figured out, etc.

...and others I'm sure that might be more or less significant than those, but that is what popped into my head first.

OTHER STUFF I SAW:

-New form factor options that I'm betting they'll show at IBC - this will put a LOT of concerns to bed. They've been listening, and they're The Right Stuff.

-More granular detail on the camera itself - where stuff is and goes, so folks will have an idea of where the controls are, the ports are, stuff like that.

-More evolved ideas on the accessories....Ooooh! Good stuff, you'll just have to wait.

-I brought up some UI issues, and got great answers back.

-I brought up some workflow issues, and got good answers back - it's a bit early to tell some things.

-and more I can't discuss, but Good Encouraging Stuff.

So what does this imply?

If you were thinking about getting a reservation for one, I'd say Get It Now. During and immediately after IBC, the majority of fence sitters that were waiting to see footage quality will jump on in. If the image quality was the reason you were holding out, I can't imagine anyone seeing what I expect they'll have ready in a month and deciding "Nah. Don't want it."

The single thing that most impressed me today was the smooth, noise free, even tone of the images, with good dynamic range, even though it was in the controlled lighting environment of these tests.

Last I heard, they were around reservation # 340 or so. If they show 4K footageat IBC, and it is as good as I think it will be, I'd bet they take hundreds more reservations at IBC. And once the cameras do start shipping, the last of the fence sitters will probably jump in. So now's your chance - if you were thinking you might want one, put down $1000. It is fully refundable at any time, no questions asked. The company is founded and backed by Jim Jannard, a billionaire. I PROMISE, he is not going to take your money and run for Mexico in a live TV car chase. So it is financially risk free - put your order in, there will be over 300 cameras in front of yours so that you'd get a chance to see and hear about 300 units in the field before yours was ready. And even then, cancel if it didn't feel right. No way to lose money on this deal.

So, if you think my judgement is worth something, and were holding back to wait and see image quality, so far it looks incredibly promising - get in line is my advice.

Now, if you don't need one, don't want one, don't want to be an early adopter, don't want a 1.0 product....great! Then don't buy it. That is an entirely valid and justifiable position. I'm just saying if you were leaning towards wanting one, this would be a good time to act.

And another thing - talking to Jarred from DVX User, he said he's already seeing people on his Red discusion thread snapping up used lenses. The early 90s Nikons are apparently a great low cost way to go (according to Jim Jannard, himself a huge camera fanatic, which is why he started Red). So if you ARE planning on getting a Red, either now or in the future, it wouldn't be a bad idea to start picking up used lenses on the cheap before the rest of the market catches up and snaps up what is out there.

As I said in the first article, "So if you can, come to IBC to "say hello to my leetel frien'"....the dragonslayer. The industry changer. The Point Of Inflection."

You'll note I haven't changed a word of that sentence.

-mike

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Footnote:

*** So what is my experience to say these things? I made my living doing Photoshop retouching in the early 1990s, when we'd go into ad agencies and they'd tell us that it wasn't possible to do print grade retouching on Macs...and we'd be standing in front of them with the digitally scanned and retouched 4x5 and 8x10 transparencies to prove them wrong (1992ish). I was doing motion capture driven 3d animation composited photorealistically on top of live action plates all done on desktop computers...in 1996 (we won multiple awards for that one). I was doing 2K resolution motion capture driven animation (40-50 toon shaded characters) for B2B marcomm projects in 1998 (pan & scan over the final render). I was doing 300 element visual effect composites in 1080p HD on Macs in 2003, with multiply nested composites, time remapping, greenscreen keys, digital set extension, 2 1/2 D composites, etc.. I spent 6 months developing my own digital uncompressed 1080p 10 bit RGB 4:4:4 HD field recorder, and another 6 months working with powerful desktop based realtime color correction software (Final Touch), using it and working with the developer to iron out the bugs. For over three years I've been focused exclusively on researching how to use digital technology for moviemaking, doing R&D, consulting, and the occassional post job just to make sure my theories aren't crap. I've made my living for the past 15 or so years manipulating professionally shot still and motion images, working on multiple international award winning projects.

Last week I published a report about my visit to Red. I was excited, I saw great things, and wrote it in a hurry late at night. I then hurried to get it online, editing it slapdash/piecemeal on the plane, as a request was made publish ASAP so that it could be discussed publicly. No other vendor made a specific request, so no rush was placed on their coverage.

I sat down and started writing it and set out to be flat and objective, and stated so....and then quickly got emotional about it - writing how I felt about it. Emotionally true, not literally in every statement exactly factually true (I'm talking about the film school reference here specifically). I whipped out a draft that didn't quite say what I meant in my head. (New version clarifies this now.)

In the end, some have felt that my visits to other facilities were just a sham so I could say how much better Red was. This is absolutely not true. My visit to California was one I'd been meaning to do for months, and the anchor event to build the trip around was the DGA Digital Day. (The DGA was gracious enough to let me in as a non-covering journalist, and I appreciate it greatly). I called Dalsa, Panavision, Red, Clairmont Camera, EFILM, Technicolor, Plaster City Digital Post, Band Pro, and some other vendors as well as some clients to visit while I was out there. My intent on this trip was information gathering, meeting people to make face to face contact with, make some business contacts, and evaluate the LA experience for possible work.

However, the way I covered the Red story, some have felt there was a level of deceit or disingenuousness about it. While my article and the circumstances may have inadvertently given that appearance, that was not the case at all.

So I've pulled that article for the moment and I'm going to rewrite it. I am still going to say very positive things about Red, but try to keep my excitement in check and be very clear about the experience. I will also need to respect the privacy boundaries of all parties involved as well.

I've been getting a lot of feedback about my coverage, and I'm realizing this isn't just my little blog I write for fun, people are taking things seriously and it is time for me to pony up and be serious as well. I think my intent was misconstrued, but I also need to make my intent CLEAR.

To any of the facilities or vendors that I visited that feel I abused their trust and openness, that was absolutely NOT my intent. I am sincerely sorry if you feel that way, and am taking steps to rectify the situation immediately. If you have any questions or comments about any of this, feel free to contact me directly at mike@hdforindies.com. I try to live and learn, and I'm definitely learning from this experience - people react to their perception of reality, not reality itself (always a difficult distinction). Perception counts, and keeping perceptions in line with reality sometimes requires some extra work. There's one particular party that has voiced their concern most publicly and negatively about my visit, I've been trying to reach them for four days to rectify the situation, but to date I've had no response to emails or calls.

To preempt any questions about why I haven't covered anything else yet from the trip, I've been busy - I'm a one man deal, and after being gone for nearly two weeks, I had to dive back into my life - my Dad's 70th surprise birthday party was over the weekend, a planned complete emptying/cleaning/rebuilding of my studio room, catching up on email/bills/mail/etc. I've got a busy schedule this week, so I'll be working hard to get my non-blog work done as well as coverage posted. I was up until 2:30am last night working on some inhouse tech problems, for instance. It's all coming, it just takes time, I'm just one guy.

A series of detailed reports from my LA visit, a WWDC wrapup, some new info on storage, progress on the Texas HD Shootout DVDs....lots to do.

-mike

Update 4pm CST:

I've decide the fair thing to do is to do what I'd originally planned to do - to post about my trip chronologically - NO favoritism via placement, just reporting (well, blogging - call it what you will) in order. Facilities, vendors, etc. will be discussed in the order I visited them, which was pretty much the order in which I was able to arrange meetings with them.

So stay tuned. I'll be spending a few hours a day writing up notes and publishing as I go. I'm going to focus on WWDC, since it is so timely and topical, and then get to the trip coverage (which, with the exception of one vendor, have all been in their present state for some time and aren't "new" per se).

UPDATE 8:20 PM - Nah, no I'm not. I'm going to slightly edit and republish the Red article shortly.

Update Thursday morning: I'm trying to finish up my WWDC wrap-up coverage, but I probably won't finish before I need to leave for a day trip to visit an ex-girlfriend (now married) who has had a serious back injury from a traffic accident. Life is hard and sucky sometimes - it is Rhonda that I mentioned in Day Off in Analog Land the other year. I'm going to go visit her as I haven't in too long. Hi Rhonda! You rock. In any case, WWDC wrapup tonight, my LA trip coverage continues to be postponed, but it is just scheduling - on the way back from Fredericksburg I'm picking up an XDCAM HD cartridge from the Texas HD Shootout that accidentally stayed in the camera and went back to California, then to NAB, then to Dallas, then to San Marcos (Chris Hurd has it at moment) from whom I'll be fetching it. Then I go to north of Dallas tomorrow (4 hour drive according to the TomTom) with a G5 and RAID to capture footage from that disc, and doodle with XDCAM HD native capture, then pack up and drive 4 hours home. Saturday morning is neice's birthday party, and THEN I think I can start writing about LA trip this weekend.

-mike

Both engadget and macrumors are live blogging from WWDC, new machines:

Mac Pro replaces the G5

Woodcrest processors, up to 3 GHz, 4MB shared cache, 64 bit, ALL are twin dual core, 1.6 to 2.1 times faster than Quad G5, each processor on own 25 GB/sec bus. New enclosure - looks like G5, but different - FW800 on front, another USB port, TWO optical drives (making room for Blu-ray (most likely historically) or HD DVD when available I'd guess), up to 16GB RAM, 2TB internal storage (there's room for 4 internal hard drives, so could do 3TB w/750 GB drives), Radeon X1900 or FX4500 cards, Bluetooth and Airport (optional or included?), about $1000 less than similar Dell, 2.6 GHz model w/256MB RAM, Superdrive is $2500, graphics card on bottom, room for double wide cards (hooray! Doesn't block a slot!), SHIPPING TODAY,

Xserves
similar processor specs to Mac Pro, still 1U, more space than old model, BTO, $300 cheaper than similar Dell

Mike's Commentary: Well, this is exactly what we were hoping for. Quad processors, lots of room in the box, immediate availability, more ports, dual optical drives...all sounds good. Based on what I can tell so far, this sounds like a great machine, I'm not hearing of any "if only they'd done X or Y" feature lack. I hope they fixed FireWire 800 performance is my only major complaint I can think of, but since I've moved on to an eSATA world, I'm not really looking back. With Final Cut Studio native, if that is your primary tool, it sounds like it would be a good move for a lot of folks. If you need to do heavy Adobe stuff, esp. After Effects, it may not be the time to get the box you're thinking of. As I leave, Jobs is commenting on Leopard and new features, including Time Machine, which sounds like a backup system with multiple versions. Very, VERY interesting timing Apple, backups have become an especially major headache for me in the last year. I'm off to lunch, will update when I return.

MacRumors.com : WWDC 2006 Keynote - Live Coverage is a page that will live update via AJAX technology with what's going on with the keynote speech at WWDC. I couldn't attend (had to get back to Texas for my Dad's surprise 70th birthday party), but fortunately others will be there covering the news.

New tower Macs based on Intel chips are expected to be announced, possibly new Xserves as well. My own sources indicate no new RAID at this time. Leopard, aka OS X 10.5, will be previewed as well, and developers are expected to get a copy to take home with them to play with, indicating that it is fairly well along in development.

I'll update on here once it is over with all the big news. Ah - but as I got ready to post this, Apple Stores are down - proof that new hardware is indeed on the way!

-mike

Somewhat on topic: since last I posted, I've visited a bunch of other vendors, including some of the historical favorites of readers here.

Probably maybe off topic: I've been zipping around all day from meeting to meeting, and after my afternoon session, there was only one rational response to the technical deluge I've experienced the last 10 days....I went to a theme park and rode the rides for a few hours. No, wait, I did research on immersive interactive experiences, as Trumbull was talking about at DGA Digital Day (see? Now I can write it off as research).

Eternal praise and exhaltation to Charles for hooking me up with the VIP Go First In Line, cut-in-front-of-the-proletariat, hear-the-lamentation-of-their-women-and-children-that-is-best-in-life, I Feel Spay-Shull pass. I got to hit every major ride in the space of a few hours.

Rockin'.

Included in that was the Terminator 2 3D experience. It is a mix of live performers and some really good 3D. At least, the stereoscopic effect was extremely good, even using passive glasses (polarized projection I would presume). They used 3 screeens wrapping around the stage to give about 160 degree field of view. The stereoscopic effect was the best I recall seeing....perhaps because they knew exactly how big the screens would be in this controlled environment, and could optimized their parallax for that? I've read somewhere that when calculating the parallax for the left/right offsets, the size of the screen should be taken into account, so that if the screen is not optimally sized the parallax suffers.

I also saw the Trumbull directed Back To The Future ride simulator, and even though it is dated it was quite good and fun, due to the large, wraparound projection, and the powerful motion base used. On leaving it occurred to me that it would be a prime candidate for dimensionalization, to make it 3D in order to udpate the ride - it would be a great addition to the immersive experience. But....it is a VERY costly experience - I'd be very curious to know what the break even point would be (or how many years to amortize) if they converted the relatively short (10 minutes or so?) amount of footage. Less footage helps, but they can only show so many people a day or year - not nationally distributed. Plus, it is one attraction in a theme park of many attractions, so ticket sales are for the whole park - only a portion of the proceeds feed into possible ride budgets. In any case, it'd be fun to see what it would cost, and what additional marginal income (I mean that in the economic, not belittling sense) could be generated by making it 3D.

Some may say I should have sat in a Starbucks and written up all my notes, but HEY, it has been a looooong couple of weeks, I got four hours of sleep, and that was my designated play time in LA (plus I STILL got two meetings in Burbank on top of that). Bag that!

Oh, and you want to know about a colored camera? Or Dalsa? Or Genesis? Wait for it my friends, it will come. Need time to do a thorough, in depth write up.

-mike

The Long Tail: How shooting digitally changes acting

I was graciously allowed to attend the DGA Digital Day as a non-member, but I couldn't wear my press fedora - I was asked to not cover the event so as to allow attendees to express themselves freely - and oh, did they! There's some scathingly good golden nuggets not covered here, but there's still lots of interesting stuff included.

I'm extremely grateful I got to attend, I found the entire thing hugely rewarding and I hope I get to attend again next year in any capacity - it was particularly useful and informative.

Today was a couple of good meetings - I happened to catch the head of Clairmont camera rentals going to lunch and joined him and an associate, and another meeting was with a highly favored company of readers here, one of my specialties. More to follow on these and other adventures of the week, stay tuned, kids...

-mike

The NVIDIA Quadro Plex VCS is a dramatically new concept - what if you pulled the graphics card out of the computer and hooked a bunch of them up in parallel in an outboard box?

This thing should have some pretty amazing power, the catch will be how to access it - what are the APIs? How hard is it to program for? Will existing software benefit from it? Etc. It may well answer all that in the website, I just need to get going today and don't have time.

My mind immediately leaps to the possibilities of using all that power for editing related tasks, especially things like doing realtime de-Bayering from RAW (for Silicon Imaging camera, Dalsa, etc.), color correction, and zoom/rotate/pan type stuff....all in realtime....in as much as 4K resolution. With 2GB of frame buffer (1GB per card, 2 cards), that should give plenty of room to play with frames internally.

And there WILL be one with multiple HD-SDI outputs as well.
-mike

Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: First Head-to-Head Comparisons | High Def Digest

Highdef Digest has taken a look at the first titles (these from Warner Brothers) that were released on BOTH Blu-ray and HD DVD, so that there can finally be a head to head comparison of the same movies but on differing formats. The three movies were Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Training Day, and Rumor Has It (2 out of three decent movies).

The individual reviews:
Training Day
"Surprisingly, the differences between the two versions is substantial in more ways than one -- and unfortunately for the Blu-ray camp, it doesn't go Blu-ray's way."

The reviewer uses technical jargon incorrectly, and states some things that aren't true - he ascribes VC1 to HD DVD and MPEG-2/AVC to Blu-ray - this is incorrect, both systems are capable of using the exact three same codecs - VC1, H.264, and MPEG-2.

He observes some framing and luma differences between the two formats, finding HD DVD preferable (but I wonder if that is a setup thing in the player? Were they calibrated to match?), but observes more banding and compression artifacts in the Blu-ray, and that seems plausible as an honest difference between the compression used on the two formats for the same film.

It would be interesting to know if the same codec and transfer was used for both formats...then it would just be a player setup issue. If the movies fit onto the disk (if content does not exceed 15GB), then there's no good reason for the picture quality to differ - with the same codecs available and the same amount of space, for the same movie coming from the same studio, unless they re-transferred it (and why would they?), these should match. But at this point, the reviewer thinks the HD DVD looks better.

He flogs Blu-rays slow menu response time - this sounds like a legitimately troubling issue - but again, this is off the 1st gen player (as is the HD DVD unit), so perhaps this issue will get resolved with later decks.

With this Blu-ray movie, you can't bookmark your favorite scenes (like the HD DVD player is presently doing), can't zoom and pan

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Same cropping issues on Blu-ray, and again don't know if format or player (player I would guess....or at least hope), again Blu-ray darker than HD DVD. Audio was preferable on the HD DVD according to reviewer, with Dolby Digital-Plus on HD DVD and not on Blu Ray.
Picture looked good on both.

Rumor Has It

"As I noted in my earlier Blu-ray reviews of 'Training Day' and 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' the biggest differences I noticed between the Blu-ray and HD DVD versions are brightness and contrast levels, compression artifacts and a slight cropping on the sides of the image. Unfortunately, all three issues also plague 'Rumor Has It...', and in some instances the inconsistencies are the most notable of any of Warner's three launch titles."

Again, might be a player issue not a compression issue, need another Blu-ray player to know.

And yeah, I am kinda rooting for Blu-ray - I like the capacity and lack of Microsoft involvement.

-mike

Transintl aluminum notebook FireWire and USB enclosure

Rob-ART as always does a thorough job of reviewing drive stuff - here looking at an external case for 2.5" (laptop) SATA drives, this one with USB 2.0, FireWire 400 & FireWire 800 interfaces.