HD For Indies

AppleTV Take 2: New Software, Same Hardware is my third piece up on the new Pro Video Coalition site, which I'm a part of (more details in a forthcoming announcement).

It is (IMH unbiased O) more than the title suggests, outlining what the hardware capabilities of the AppleTV are, how they compare to other high definition options in broad strokes, and what it may mean for the industry.

The most important thing to realize about AppleTV Take 2 is that it is the EXACT same hardware (with a bigger hard drive option, which we've had for months) as before, but with new features enabled via software, such as direct movie rental and purchase, etc. While the video quality is better on many other options (HD PPV, Xbox 360 downloads, Blu-ray and HD DVD), the simplicity MIGHT make a compelling case for the set top box - will it be like music and MP3s and iPods, that we want simplicity and choice over quality? We'll have to wait and see.

Be sure to check out all the other articles up on Pro Video Coalition as well.

-mike

Labels: Apple, AppleTV

You can pre-order a Time Capsule (either 500GB or 1TB) from the HD for Indies Amazon Store:
Apple Time Capsule, 500GB version - $299.99
Apple Time Capsule, 1TB version - $499.99

HD for Indies gets a small commission on the standard Amazon price to help keep HD4NDs on the interweb tubes.

You can also order one of the sexy new MacBook Air models:

MacBook Air - 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM, 80GB hard drive - $1794
MacBook Air - 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, 80GB hard drive - $2094
Macbook Air - 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, 64GB solid state drive - $3093

You can also order an AppleTV as well:

AppleTV - 40GB model - $229
AppleTV - 160GB model - $399 as of 10am Wednesday, should drop to $329 shortly.

You can also get reasonably priced HDMI, toslink, and component cables ($2-$10) on the online store as well.

Labels: Apple, hardware, MacBook Air

This afternoon is a great example of the distinction between RELEASED and AVAILABLE. The new iPhone software has been released, and OK, is technically available as of this writing (1:35pm CST), but is not ACCESSIBLE at the moment - Apple's servers are apparently beswarmed with folks trying to get the new update. If it lasts the afternoon, understandable, but if is still the case tomorrow, utterly unacceptable.

In theory, the new iPhone update is available immediately, but Apple may be a victim of its own success...and not planning their IT infrastructure for the hit.

When the movie rentals are available, they better not have this problem....

-mike

UPDATE: Here we go...


Got it installed, and of course immediately wanted to see how well the Locations feature worked. Sitting in my house, I hit the button and the circle (indicating "You're in this circle...somewhere") looked to be something like 1/2 mile wide...encompassing my entire neighborhood. Walked outside on the porch, hit it again, and it narrowed it down to about 3 blocks, almost centered on my actual location (across the street and up the short block). Pretty good! Not as good as GPS, but certainly a boon for "Where the hell am I?" when travelling with no GPS.

Ooops - then again, hitting it again inside and the Circle of Confusion is a mile or more wide - not terribly helpful. So Step One is to go outside - it DEFINITELY works better outside than in.

-mike

Labels: Apple, iPhone

Shortly after the keynote ended, these became available via Software Update if you're running 10.4.11 (haven't tried from 10.5.1 yet, can't check at the moment, middle of massive backup).

iTunes 7.6:

Rent and download your favorite movies with iTunes on your computer or directly to your living room on Apple TV. Enjoy rented movies in sizes up to 720p HD with surround sound on your Apple TV and sizes up to DVD-quality on your computer. Transfer your rented movies from iTunes to your iPod or iPhone and enjoy them on the go.

Also, purchase and download your favorite TV shows, music, and more directly on your Apple TV. Effortlessly transfer purchases made on Apple TV back to your computer with iTunes.


QuickTime 7.4:

QuickTime 7.4 addresses security issues and delivers:
- Numerous bug fixes
- Support for iTunes

This release is recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.

For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798.


iMovie 7.1.1

This update addresses issues when publishing movies to a .Mac Web Gallery, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.


...and probably will help with AppleTV content viewing for the .Mac stuff.

Installing all of it right now.

Labels: Apple, AppleTV, Mac, OS X, QuickTime

Steve Jobs is giving his annual keynote right now, here's the highlights:

-iPhone getting substantial software updates, including better Maps with GPS-LIKE but not really truly GPS capabilities. Other improvements as well. Should go live today, but isn't live yet (I'll check later tonight). SDK coming in February for 3rd party apps.

-iPod Touch gets Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes, and Weather....for a $20 upgrade done via iTunes. Your iPod Touch is now an iPhone sans phone...for $20.

-New gadget called Time Capsule that works with Leopard's Time Machine to wirelessly do backups. Is a fully featured Airport Extreme Base Station with a hard drive for Time Machine backups (for multiple machines, presumably). Halle-F'in'-Lujah. I'm buying a 1TB model for my parents so I don't have to sweat backups for them. Available February.

-OK, now it gets juicy - iTunes will do movie rentals...in HD All the major studios are in. Over 1000 films by end of February....but 30 days after DVD release (doh! Major acquiescence to the studios!). Can start watching in less than 30 seconds IF you have a fast connection. 30 days to start watching it, but only 24 hours to finish it (lame! 48 or 72 - you rent movies for 2-3 days, right? This'll harsh on the parental watching, where movies are watched in snippets over several days).

-Apple TV "Take 2" - FREE software update out in a couple of weeks, price cut to $229. Syncs w/computer, but computer not necessary - can buy and interface directly from the AppleTV (finally!). Can rent movies directly from AppleTV while sitting on the couch. Movies in SD or HD (gonna be 720p24, I promise) with 5.1 (5.1 HD only it seems). Also does streaming pics from Flickr and .Mac, and streaming YouTube. Can buy TV shows and movies directly as well (and those'll sync to computer as well - can you have AppleTV sync with TimeCapsule? That'd be GREAT). Movie rentals are $2.99 for SD catalog releases and $3.99 for new releases, and HD are $4.99. Note it says HD for for rental, but I haven't noticed HD movies for SALE. Drat. Over 100 HD titles to start, more coming. Different/improved UI. TV shows $1.99/episode, syncs back to Mac/PC.

Some DVDs will come with pre-compressed versions for iPod - Family Guy: Blue Harvest stuff that slipped out last week is included in that.

-MacBook Air - tiny skinny laptop with no optical drive, 1.8" hard drive (80GB HD, or 64GB SSD, yes that's Solid State Drive). 0.8 tapering down to 0.15 inches thick. 13.3" screen, backlit keyboard. Aluminum exterior, dark (plastic?) interior. Large trackpad, multi-touch aware. So iPhone touch UI is migrating to Macs, first in this product. GOOD. The catch will be we'll need an OS and application upgrades to support it. But it is a good thing. 1.6 or 1.8 GHz processors, so slower than current Macbooks, but not massively. Software to access a Mac or PC's optical drive since none included. ONE USB 2.0 port, no FireWire mentioned, mini-DVI, NO ethernet port. Bluetooth of course (2.1+EDR), but minimal connectivity. Oh - $99 external SuperDrive module if you want it. Even with wireless on, 5 hour battery life (I'll betcha that's with the SSD not HD though). 3 pounds. iSight. 1.6 or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo. 2GB standard RAM, dunno how expandable. $1799 to start (not bad). No mention of the GPU, but obviously lightweight, light grade presumably.

No "One More Thing."

So...Apple's already down more than $9 for the day, since nothing particularly hugely exciting announced. I'm surprised the Mac Pro update was last week, since this is a thin MWSF for the overall market. Really just some nice/expected software/service updates, and a niche laptop.

The iTunes rentals and HD movies are the big deal for this readership. Apple TV Take 2 - OK, thanks, getting it closer to what it shoulda been in the first place. Maybe I'll update my AppleTVhacker.com website. Next step - getting indie content access to that system.

-mike

UPDATE:

MacBook Air Links & Details:

Apple - MacBook Air - with additional links for design, features, wireless, Mac OS X & iLife, and tech specs.

Apple - MacBook Air - Guided Tour

Macbook Air GPU stats from the website:
Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory

Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors

iPhone/iPod update info:

Apple - iPhone - Guided Tour Update 2 - Large - for the new features.

Maps - uses info from WiFi and cell towers to get approx location. New button to find location. Also have Drop Pin (to mark a location) and a Traffic button. Gives you your location with a circle to give an idea of where in the circle you are. There's Search and Directions buttons.

Drop Pin - lets YOU set a location, and save as a bookmark, move it around etc.

Hybrid view shows streets and sattelite views merged - like Google Earth does it.

Can save an icon on homescreen to be an icon on homescreen. No biggie.

-you can rearrange icons on your Home Screen

-send SMS to multiple people

-iTunes movie rentals - can't rent straight to iPhone, but can sync rentals to the iPhone.

-chapter markers now in iPhone - good for podcasts too

-song lyrics, Google Mail IMAP, and other benefits.

AppleTV Take 2 Info:

Apple - Apple TV - Guided Tour

Rentals will play on Mac, PC, iPods, iPhone, or AppleTV. Can rent on AppleTV, sync back to Mac, and sync iPod/iPhone to watch in multiple locations.

-new improved UI, easy searching

-individual movie info gives plot summary, can show preview, or let you rent in SD or HD (HD is a buck more).

-movie starts downloading, SD movies will be ready to watch in short order. HD obviously takes longer, but they don't say how long. I'll of course give a hands on review ASAP when the software comes out.

-24 hours to watch as many times as you want, but if you're halfway through after 20 hours..SOL

-TV shows can be bought a day after they air

-no mention of HD for TV shows, only one price, so presumably still HD only

-Flickr & .Mac, or your own photos seen on your TV at high res

-podcasts viewable via AppleTV as well - nice.

Apple - Time Capsule

Overall, a B- Stevecast. Nice updates, a few useful new products, but nothing that makes me want to OMFG go buy it right now.

So, products:

Mac Pro: updated last week but lets lump it into MWSF - I'm happy with my current OctoMac, when they get Blu-ray burners in'em I'll start getting That Itch again to buy

Laptops: I feel no urge to get the MacBook Air personally. And it isn't a viable lightweight FCP box either - hello, no FireWire means no capturing video, and OH YEAH - no reasonably fast external storage. USB 2.0 is barely fast enough for DV/HDV but not any of the heavier codecs like DVCPRO HD (full rate) nor ProRes....so count it out, besides the GPU limitations.

Time Capsule: yep, I'll get one...for my Mom & Dad. No rush for now for me - I'm looking at back devices with 10 times the capacity (or more) for my studio needs. But for backing up boot drives and apps and iTunes and photos....hmmm, maybe I will get one.

iPhone: no new models, but new software later today that I'm VERY excited to get, especially the locations feature, which was my #1 feature I missed the most.

iPod Touch: for $20, you're an iPhone, sans the phone stuff. Good deal.

Leopard - no big changes, but Time Capsule is a hardware product for a software feature/function

iTunes - rentals - GREAT. HD rentals, even better. HD purchased movies? Hello? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

AppleTV - a heap of updates and upgrades that should've come out, frankly, 6 months ago. Will it be a viable competitor to everything else? Yeah. Will it supplant DVDs etc? Nope. My most interesting thought from various conversations with friends - Can Apple make the Next Big Thing for media devices in the home? Mike Says No. Here's why:
-ultimate device would let you DVR TV content, burn to DVD (or HD DVD or Blu-ray), have TiVO type functionality, sync to iPod/iPhone, let you buy/rent videos, distribute to the other formats you want, etc. Apple won't do that. If they offered DVR functionality, or integration with cable TV, they'd be undercutting their rental/sales iTunes content - no way they'll do it. So they're out. Be interesting to see who can supplant the cable set top box and DVD player as the next content distro methodology of substance.

Apple's "Go it alone, brave new frontier, don't look back" ethos has served them well in the past - but it'll bite them here. TV is too big to ignore (and so are DVDs, for that matter).

-mike

more updates:
More details on Apple's iTunes movie / HD rentals - Engadget HD
-1280x720 @ 24p still max (hardware limitation w/H.264)
-HD rentals ONLY available via AppleTV, NOT iTunes
-5.1 only on SOME HD rentals
-hmm....when it goes live, time to get AppleTVhacker.com back up and rolling...

Hands-On: MacBook Air Hands-on - with LOTS of pics. Thanks to Matt of FreshDV for the link (and the one below).

..and MUCH more importantly for us road warriors, MacBook Air doesn't have a user-replaceable battery - Engadget

DAMN. That's a MISTAKE in my book. Deal killer. Not buyin' one, even for Mom.

Labels: Apple, AppleTV, MWSF

Some simple Apple Online Store twiddling shows:

-stock quad 3.2 GHz (no changes but for processor speed) will ship in 3-5 days (with standard ATI 2600 HD card)
-two quad core 2.8 GHz stock box ships in 1-2 days (with standard ATI 2600 HD card)
-two quad core 3.0 GHz processor box ships in 3-5 days (with standard ATI 2600 HD card)
-two quad core 3.2 GHz with the NVIDIA 8800 GT card is 3-5 weeks from shipping

...so as usual, those wanting top end graphics card...will have to wait. And it is not at all uncommon for shipping estimates to be just that - estimates. It is not unheard of for it to take months for new GPUs to actually ship to customers.


-mike

Labels: Apple, Mac, Mac Pro

Apple - Mac Pro - Performance - has a series of interactive graphs to compare between the new 8 core 3.2 GHz boxes and either a Quad G5, a quad core 2.66 (last gen) Mac Pro, or the previous 3.0 GHz 8 core Mac Pro (which I've got).

Of particular interest are the FCP tests (right up front). The numbers below indicate how much faster the NEW 8 core 3.2 GHz is over the mentioned machine. I wouldn't be surprised if the new Mac Pro had a SAS RAID, either.

Quickie rundown, comparing the new 8 core 3.2 GHz to:

HDV rendering
faster than Quad G5: 1.8x
faster than Quad Mac Pro: 1.4x
faster than Previous 8 core Mac Pro: 1.2x

ProRes Rendering
faster than Quad G5: not shown
faster than Quad Mac Pro: 1.4x
faster than Previous 8 core Mac Pro: 1.2x

HDV encoding
faster than Quad G5: not shown
faster than Quad Mac Pro: 1.9x
faster than Previous 8 core Mac Pro: 1.1x

ProRes encoding
faster than Quad G5: not shown
faster than Quad Mac Pro: 1.3x
faster than Previous 8 core Mac Pro: 1.1x

After Effects CS3 Nightflight benchmark
faster than Quad G5: 2.8x
faster than Quad Mac Pro: 1.9x
faster than Previous 8 core Mac Pro: 1.1x

They have a bunch of other tests including audio, Maya, etc. I'd be curious to see Motion and especially Color benchmarks, to see if performance improved there, as the PCIe bus was a limiting factor (among others) to achieve 1080 resolution realtime performance.

But as compared to the prior 8 core Mac, which cost less, the performance gain is very modest - 10, sometimes 20% for video applications according to Apple's on tests.

RAID cards:
SAS RAID 5, 3x300GB: 250 MB/sec reads, 197 MB/sec writes (sequential)
SATA RAID 5, 3x1TB SATA: 165 MB/sec reads, 127 MB/sec writes

Simultaneous FCP streams:
10 bit 1080i60:
SAS: 1 stream
SATA - can't do it

ProRes 422 HQ (which is 10 bit) 1080i60: 5 streams for either SAS or SATA

ProRes HQ 720p24:
SAS: 14 streams
SATA: 11 streams

Keep in mind that SAS setup costs $1800 more and holds less than 1/3 as much content....but it is faster.

Labels: Apple, Mac, Mac Pro

Super short version: slightly faster processors, new graphics cards, NO NEW HD OPTICAL DRIVES - so we wait for NAB apparently, as expected.

Apple rolled out new Mac Pro models today.

The deal, marching down the config options:

New Harpertown Processors, available in following configs:
-single quad core 2.8 GHz ($2299 base price)
-dual quad core 2.8 GHz ($2799 base price, so +$500)
-dual quad core 3.0 GHz ($3599 base price, so +$1300)
-dual quad core 3.2 GHz ($4399 base price, so +$2100)

Welcome to Intel based pricing. As usual, be smart about when to buy and NOT to buy the tippy top CPU - is it worth the money? Depends.

RAM - standard 2GB, can config from Apple up to 32GB...for an additional $9100. Ouch! Few users will actually see benefit from that. And NO, gobs of RAM will not make REDcode crunch any faster. I SWEAR.


RAID Card
-glad they have it, but still limited to 4 drives, and one needs to be a boot drive. They have cut the price form $1000 to $800, though - a good start guys. REQUIRED WHEN SELECTING SAS DRIVES.

Hard Drive Options
-you can get a 300GB, 15K rpm SAS drive - saw that and thought good, ultimate boot drive. But dammit - if you go one SAS drive, ya gotta go all SAS. And that 300GB SAS drive is $800. Ouch!
-you cn now get 1TB drives internally in addition to 500 and 750 GB drives. Drive costs have been dropped to more reasonable prices as well...but still higher than third party pricing.

Graphics have all new choices, it appears ALL cards will support two 30" displays. Also includes PCIe 2.0, which is 2x faster than the prior version, new on this box.
-default is ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT w/256MB VRAM, you can get up to 4 of them to drive up to 8 monitors up to 30" apiece
-NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB is a $200 bump up
-NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 has 1.5GB VRAM for $2850 extra. Guess who needs that.

Displays
-no changes - 20, 23, & 30 are still $600, $900, and $1800 a pop (actual $$$ less $1)

Optical Drives
dammit, no changes. 1 or 2 16x dual layer SuperDrives, NO BLU-RAY OR HD DVD OPTIONS. Drat. Wait for NAB to see the next cards be turned over.

Wireless
-appears Bluetooth is built in, Airport extreme card is $50

Fibre Channel Card - dual or quad 4Gb cards for $600 or $1000

The Rest - appears all the same. Oh, wait - you get the new flatty keyboard, which I like, expect for the wretched Caps Lock key.

BOTTOM LINE

Speed bump. New, presumably faster GPUs (need to read up on those more). The box I'd want is just shy of $11K with monitors. Ouch.

As usual, I am available for consulting on system configurations, which inevitably has more to do with what you want to do with it rather than what the available options are. The process can be steered by price or appropriateness for a given task, or the more interesting blend of the two to optimize every dollar spent.

Apple - Mac Pro - Technology - Processor:
-45nm process
-2.8-3.2 GHz Harpertown quad core processors
-12MB L2 cache per processor, 6MB per pair of cores
-two 1600Mhz front side buses
-up to 25.6GB/sec processor bandwidth - GOOD
-800 MHz DDR2 buffered memory
-SSE4 SIMD tech
-256 bit wide memory architecture

Apple - Mac Pro - Technology - Graphics
-PCI Express 2.0
-ATI HD 2600 XT with 256 MB, two dual link DVI ports (supports two 30" displays)
-NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT has 512 MB VRAM
-NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 has 1.5GB VRAM



UDPATE - Apple also introduced new 8 core Xserves

Labels: Apple, Mac, Mac Pro

About the Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update - looking at the description, I didn't see anything vital for editing purposes, BUT, only after you update can you see Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 as an available update (see article on those changes here).

So, YES, you MUST have 10.4.11 to update to 6.0.2. The MANY benefits of that are outlined in the article above.

Other updates:

Apple - Support - Downloads - DVD Studio Pro 4.2.1

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Still images added to DVD Studio Pro project now encode correctly
-Now correctly supports following HDV formats for native use in NTSC HD projects:
-720p24/30/60
-1080p24/30
-1080i60

DVD Studio Pro now correctly supports the following HDV formats for native use in PAL HD projects:

720p25/50
1080p25
1080i50

-Now correctly supports following H.264 formats for native use in NTSC HD projects:

720p24/30/60

Apple - Support - Downloads - Color 1.0.2

LOTS of meaningful changes in here, thanks to intern Gideon for summarizing and quoting below:

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5 (what about 10.5.1? Anybody try it yet? Let me know in the Comments, please!)
-AVCHD and AVC-Intra formats are transcoded by FCP on import as either ProRes 422, ProRes 422 (HQ), or Apple Intermediate QT files.
-XDCAM EX media is imported by Final Cut as XDCAM HD, which is supported by Color for import, but not as Original format or as an Export Codec.
-Improved Round Trip Support for Upconverted Media Rendered by Color.1.0.2

Improved Handling of Aspect Ratio and Field Dominance
The following issues with Aspect Ratio and Field Dominance handling have been fixed:

After a Final Cut Pro to Color round trip of a sequence combining standard definition and high definition HDV clips, the aspect ratio of each clip rendered by Color now matches that of the original media.
Instances where interlaced sequences sent to Color and then back to Final Cut Pro would have their interlacing set to None have been fixed.
Instances where sequences with non-square pixels sent to Color and then back to Final Cut Pro would have their pixel aspect ratio set to Square have been fixed.
Improved Image Processing
The following improvements have been made to image processing:

Improvements have been made to address color and luma shifts appearing in some formats.
Visible noise introduced by adjusting the Luma curve has been reduced.
Instances of artifacts in mattes created by the HSL qualifiers have been eliminated.
Improved Project Reconforming
Color’s Reconform command has been improved:

Instances where the Color Timeline did not match an updated Final Cut Pro sequence after a reconform operation have been fixed.
Instances where Color would send a version of the project that existed prior to a reconform operation back to Final Cut Pro have been fixed.
Color now properly reconforms altered Motion parameters from Final Cut Pro sequences.
Improved Rendering of Clips with Speed Effects
The following improvements have been made to the handling of clips using speed effects from Final Cut Pro:

Keyframed secondary vignettes now work properly with clips using speed effects.
Clips using the reverse speed effect now render with the proper frame range in Color and are sent back to Final Cut Pro with correct In and Out points.
Any Volume Can Be Used to Save Color Projects
Color will now function properly on systems with home directories saved on any volume or partition, and the Default Project Directory can be set to any volume or partition you choose.

Improved Media Handling During Final Cut Pro to Color Round Trips
The following improvements have been made to media handling during Final Cut Pro to Color round trips:

Clips that start with 00:00:00:00 timecode are now sent back to Final Cut Pro with the correct timecode.
Final Cut Pro programs containing nested sequences with cross dissolves on the first clip no longer cause problems in Color. This corrects the issue covered in the Color 1.0.1 Release Notes.
Improved Handling of Motion and LiveType Clips, and Offline Media
The following improvements have been made to the handling of Motion and LiveType clips:

Motion templates, Motion projects, and LiveType projects all appear as offline shots in the Color timeline, instead of as gaps as in previous versions of Color. These media types, although unsupported in Color, reappear when your sequence is sent back to Final Cut Pro.
Offline shots in the Color timeline no longer obscure shots in video tracks underneath them.
Fixes to Undo
The Undo command has been fixed in the following instances:

You can now undo operations in the Render Queue.
The Reset Secondary and Reset All Secondaries buttons can now be undone.
In the Primary Out room, using the Undo command after clicking the Reset Primary Out button now properly restores the Ceiling Red, Ceiling Green, and Ceiling Blue parameters to their former state.
Attaching and Detaching shapes can now be undone.
You can undo the application of a saved effect in the Color FX room.
Operations in the Shot List can now be undone.
Creation and removal of shapes in the Geometry room can be undone.
Many of these fixes correct issues covered in the Color 1.0 Release Notes.

-Superimposed text tracks no longer affect playback
-copied and pasted grades are now autosaved properly
-Improved text fields

Click once within any field to place the text cursor at the position you clicked.
Double-click within any field to select the word at the position of the pointer.
Triple-click within any field to select the entire contents of that field.

-Adjustments and corrections made in the Secondaries room now appear correctly in the Color application's video scopes
-Keyboard Shortcuts fixed and updated

The keyboard shortcuts for Copy Grade > Mem Bank 1-5 (Control-Option-Shift-1 through 5) have been fixed.
The keyboard shortcut for Set Beauty Grade has been changed to Control-Shift-B.
The Rooms > Shot List command (Command-9) has been fixed.
The Rooms > Project Setup command (Command-0) has been fixed.

-Hiding Color no longer causes rendering to pause
-Modifications to supported keys for the CP100 control surface include:

F4: Alternate panel encoders
F5: Set scope resolution to 100%
F6: Set Scope Resolution 25%
F7: Parade Waveform
F8: Histogram Waveform
In the Secondaries room:

F4: Alternate Panel Encoders
F5: Toggle Secondary
F6: Toggle Secondary In/Out Control
F7: Toggle Vignette
F8: Previous Secondary
F9: Next Secondary


Apple - Support - Downloads - Compressor 3.0.2

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Compressor and Apple Qmaster updates may disable any existing clusters you have configured, so set'em up again
-To use Compressor distributed processing feature with 10.5, you must manually enable NFS
-filter pane of Inspector now includes Color tab for adjusting color space settings. Only available for H.264, Apple ProRes 422, Apple Intermediate Codec, and JPEG output formats. HOPEFULLY THIS FIXES THE GAMMA ISSUES!
-Square Pixels Pop-Up Menu is now called Correct for Pixel Aspect Ratio


Apple - Support - Downloads - CinemaTools 4.0.1

-Compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Pull lists show the correct value in Footage length, Time length, and Count length for speed changes
-Exported film lists includes information and warnings about issues occurring during export process
-Change lists exported from FCP and Cinema Tools now support same PDF formatting as other lists that you are able to export
-When importing an ALE file, the frame rate for the sound timecode now matches the Sound TC rate of the database you are importing

Apple - Support - Downloads - Motion 3.0.2

-3.0.2 compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5
-Supports 50fps
-60fps Drop Frame Timecode Support
-Master templates playback performance enhanced
-Master templates can be moved and scaled without render problems
-Master templates used in FCP sequences with mixed frame rates or rates that don't match master template are no longer improperly scaled.
-Field dominance settings are correctly reported in PAL FCP sequences containing master templates
-Printing to video renders properly in FCP sequences containing master templates with drop zones
-In FCP, opening a master template containing drop zones that have been cut and pasted no longer causes FCP to stop responding

Apple - Support - Downloads - Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2 - I'm not enough of an audio guy to detail the changes, but go knock yourself out....

Also see Red public software updates here

Labels: Apple, DVDs, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, software

UPDATE - Scott Simmons has a nice bit on some of the new features here:

The Editblog � FCP updated. Now more Avid-like

Nice breakdown of the new features in Final Cut Pro 6.0.2.


Oddly, it isn't showing up in my Software Updates (probably because I need to update to 10.4.11 first, also new UPDATE YES THAT'S WHY), I had to go dig it out after hearing about it elsewhere. So here's one place to get it:

Apple - Support - Downloads - Final Cut Pro 6.0.2

NOTABLE IMPROVEMENTS (found here: Final Cut Pro 6 Release Notes)

-6.0.2 compatible with 10.4.11 and 10.5, ONLY
-Sony XDCAM EX support, but requires the Sony XDCAM extra here
-supported formats under XDCAM EX:
-1080p24/25/30 VBR, 1080i50/60 VBR, 720p24/25/30/50/60 VBR
-can either connect camera directly, or put the SxS card in a MacBook Pro's ExpressCard/34 slot
-the format suports 25mbit CBR (constant bitrate) or 35mbit VBR (variable bitrate)
-when capturing from the HVR-V1, can capture to native codec, or Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), or ProRes422
-has some nice notes about optimal workflows for working with 24p on 60i and 3:2 pulldown removal, etc.Hell, I'll just quote it:

24p/60i on tape: Capture to the 24p Apple Intermediate Codec or Apple ProRes 422 codec, then output to the HVR-V1 camcorder in 24p/60i mode.
25p/50i on tape: Capture to the 25p Apple Intermediate Codec or Apple ProRes 422 codec, then output to the HVR-V1 camcorder in 25p/50i mode.
30p/60i on tape: Capture to the 30p Apple Intermediate Codec or Apple ProRes 422 codec, then output to the HVR-V1 camcorder in 30p/60i mode.

-support for had drive based HDV cameras via Log & Transfer, such as Sony HVR-DR60
-AVCHD o Intel Macs (1920x1080 interlaced) such as Panasonic HDC-SD3 and HDC-SD5, spanned clips NOW recognized since 6.0.1 didn't properly recognize them
-AVC-Intra support - Log and Transfer window, BUT: must transcode to ProRes, Intel Mac only, no audio playback when limited playback capability (due to too slow of a Mac???), full video preview requires Mac Pro, Panasonic's AVC Intra codec must be installed. So - LOTTA caveats there
-720p50 DVCPRO HD native support now works right
-Canon HDV 1080F24/25/30 setups!
-more setups, such as HDV-Apple ProRes 1080p24 ProRes 422 for Sony HVR-V1, and HDV-Apple ProRes422 and the same with ProRes HQ - EXCELLENT
-60fps Drop Frame Timecode support
-50 fps timecode in ALL timecode fields and project properties, including 50@25 timecode format for decks and EDL compatibility
-720p50/60 support for JVC's GY-HD200 and GY-HD250 cameras
-improved BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) support concerning iXML support
-Skipping Directories in the Reconnect Files Dialog - I'll use this a LOT, as I'm constantly relinking files
-Hiding Clip Names in the Timeline
-New Playhead-Centered Zooming Commands in the Timeline:

Zoom In on Playhead in Timeline: Keeps the Timeline playhead centered while zooming in (regardless of the selection in the Timeline).
Zoom Out on Playhead in Timeline: Keeps the Timeline playhead centered while zooming out (regardless of the selection in the Timeline).
Scroll to Playhead: Horizontally scrolls the Timeline so that the playhead is centered in the window.

-Opening a Nested Sequence Displays the Playhead in the Expected Position
-Holding Down the Shift Key Forces Final Cut Pro to Open with an Empty Project
-Gamma Import Option Has Been Renamed
-“Show as Sq. Pixels” Option is Now Called “Correct for Aspect Ratio”
-Log and Transfer Window Improvements
-FxPlug Plug-in Improvements
In Final Cut Pro 6.0.2, FxPlug plug-ins display collapsible parameter groups in the Filters tab of the Viewer.

New Apple Events Support
Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 responds to three new Apple Events that allow you to:

Query which effects are currently installed
Query which projects are currently open
Select specific clips based on UUIDs.
For details, go to http://developer.apple.com/appleapplications.

-Lost Render Files for Duplicated Sequences Issue Resolved
-Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 projects are not backward compatible with Final Cut Pro 6.0.1. - SO UPDATE ALL AT ONCE!
-for latest 3rd party stuff:

For P2 driver software from Panasonic: Go to https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/download.htm.
For Sony XDCAM Transfer software and XDCAM EX plug-in: Go to http://www.sony.com/xdcam.

WHEW! Lots of good stuff and new goodies.

I wonder if retimed (especially ramped retimed) shots work after being Media Managed? One of my biggest online editor gripes.

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2

Apple CEO Jabs HD Camera Makers || The Mac Observer

Steve Jobs picks on consumer HD camcorder makers for not making true, full, high definition images. A fair complaint, but considering there are cameras costing many tens of thousands of dollars that don't resolve full 1920x1080, it isn't exactly picking on a kid your own size.

Or is this also justification for the half res mode in the new iMovie? Were they finding consumer pushback due to long render times at full res, and with 1/4 as many pixels to push around at 960x540, most folks couldn't tell the difference?

Conveniently/interestingly, AppleTV does 960x540 as well - but that is the maximum resolution supported for a 30p or 60i image. It will do 1280x720, but only up to 24p.

So would it not be fair to complain AppleTV can only make less than full res video from 1920x1080 sources?

-mike

Labels: Apple, AppleTV, cameras, hardware

from Apple online store description:

The Mac Pro RAID card offers improved performance and data protection to your Mac Pro system — up to 304MB/s of sequential read performance in RAID 0. Ideal for video and creative professionals with demanding storage needs as well as for tower server applications, this hardware RAID option supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 0+1, and Enhanced JBOD. It has 256MB of cache and an integrated 72-hour battery for protecting the RAID cache. The card occupies the top PCI Express slot (slot 4) and connects to the four internal drive bays.

To enable your Mac Pro for hardware RAID, select the Mac Pro RAID card option and two or more hard drives in bays 1 through 4. Each RAID level has minimum requirements for the number of hard drives:

RAID Level Drive Requirements Benefit
Enhanced JBOD One to four drives A non-RAID configuration with the ability to migrate to a RAID set at any time
RAID 0 (striping) Two to four hard drives Maximum performance and capacity for the most demanding I/O requirements
RAID 1 (mirroring) Two hard drives Maximum protection for critical data
RAID 5 Three or four hard drives Data protection, up to 199MB/s of sequential read performance, and efficient capacity utilization
RAID 0+1 Four hard drives A mirror of striped drive pairs providing performance and data protection
The Mac Pro RAID card supports the creation of multiple RAID sets in a system and multiple volumes per RAID set. For optimal disk utilization in a RAID set, all hard drives should be the same size. Your Mac Pro system ships with each hard drive individually configured in the Enhanced JBOD level with Mac OS X installed on the drive in bay 1. Using Apple's RAID Utility software, you can migrate the drives into a RAID set without reinstalling Mac OS X or reformatting the drives, or you can customize your RAID volumes to meet your exact requirements.

Please note: The Mac Pro RAID card occupies one of the available PCI Express expansion slots.


Key thing of note - 199 MB/sec read speeds under RAID 5. Magic number for uncompressed 1080i60 10 bit 4:2:2 video: 200 MB/sec is the usual recommended number. For 1080p24 10b444 RGB: about 230-240 MB/sec. Whither write speed, Apple? Write speed is almost always slower in RAID 5 than read speed, so if read is about 200, and that's the minimum for uncompressed HD, where's the write speed? It is probably lower, and that's a bummer.

Also, that 199 MB/sec - will it hold that through the capacity of the array, or slow down as the drives get full...like most other storage? Remains to be seen.

More later, I'm testing an Octo Mac with a Highpoint 2322 RAID 5 right now, and it works pretty darn well....

There's new versions of iWork, now with a spreadsheet, and iLife, now organizing stuff by Events and yielding TONS more storage space for .Mac accounts (with my 2GB bumped to 20GB, and those who paid for 4GB bumped to 30GB). That's now enough space to back up all my photos...I THINK (double check).

iPhone output is mentioned in iMovie, and you can now FINALLY store all our video in one place in iMovie, organized by Events. Gotta read more, but I'll pick it up at a store ASAP to doodle with. I hope it has improved multi-machine sync capabilities as well...but I doubt it.

-mike

Labels: Apple, hardware, Mac Pro, storage, workflow

UPDATED with Windows product info, see bottom

Similar to Geoff Frost's post on HVX200 production tips, my other intern, Andy Nelson, has been doodling around with a Canon HV20, and I asked him to post his notes on his experiences with the HV20. Below is his article on dealing with 24p. BTW - if looking to figure out how to get optimal results out of the HV20, FreshDV's interview with Bruce Allen (he of recent Cinegear report) has some EXCELLENT specific details on hands on usage and testing on how to get the most out of the HV20.

This is thematically similar to Steve Mullen's recent piece on dealing with the V1's 24p in Final Cut Pro

More coverage to follow on that, but here's Andy's report on the HV20 and 24p, my comments in italics:

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

For a thousand bucks the Canon HV20 isn’t a bad little camera, especially after putting some work into getting 24P from it. The HV20 uses HDV, so it only records 60i to tape and adds 3:2 pulldown for its 24fps mode. You can, however, acheive some pretty good results with a reverse telecine to remove the pulldown for full-on progressive beauty. To do this I began by capturing with the Apple Intermediate Codec, as to bypass the temporal compression of MPEG2 that comes with native HDV, and then went two routes for the reverse telecine…(Mike comment - the MPEG-2 compression is from the source HDV, by transcoding to AIC, FCP can process that footage faster, and your recompression/generational losses will be less. This was with FCP 6 not 5.x, BTW)

The Hard Way:
The first way I did this was using Cinema Tools (After Effects or something like JES Deinterlacer will also work ...but using After Effects, with its RGB processing, can clip superwhite and sub-black values - mike). After opening my clip in Cinema Tools, I used the Reverse Telecine button at the bottom of the window. Cinema Tools does not do a “smart” reverse telecine, you have to tell it where to start and what to do. 3:2 pulldown puts the 24P footage down as 60i on tape in a pppii cadence, p for progressive frames and i for interlaced (three progressive and two interlaced, hence 3:2). Essentially, you must tell Cinema Tools what frame of this cadence you are starting with.  The button brings up a window with options for Capture Mode, Fields, File, and Frames. It is quite a process to determine the Capture Mode and Fields options, while File and Frames are rather straightforward.  This diagram from the Cinema Tools manual was helpful...


Capture Mode has to do with the repeating frame sequence of the clip. I used “Field 1 – Field 2,” which means that my footage contains both fields with Field 1 Dominance, as opposed to the other options: Field 2 Dominance, Field 1 Only, or Field 2 Only. 
Mike's continuation of that - ...and then export that in some high quality codec, preferably 10 bit, such as Apple Uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 or ProResHQ - THEN process via Compressor, THEN bring the levels back in FCP when you color correct (or maybe in Color - I need to check that round trip workflow to see if superwhites and sub-blacks are maintained).

-andy & mike

Labels: Apple, hdv, NLE, workflow

iPhone will soon support Adobe Flash - iPod/iTunes - Macworld UK

"Apple will introduce built-in support for Adobe Flash on the iPhone in the 'next couple of months', according to a leading technology pundit.

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg believes support for Adobe's ubiquitous online standard will be introduced into the iPhone in the form of a future software update."


Just because a pundit says it doesn't make it so. I've heard both sides - that they need to add it, and also that they never will, due to a burgeoning format war in the mobile content delivery format space. Adobe's Flash Lite vs. hardware accelerated H.264 and MPEG-4 on iPods and iPhones. The mobile market is VERY fractured - if Apple comes out with more phones at affordable prices in the future, they could do to phones what they did to MP3 players. And price matters, but not indefinitely - people know quality when they touch it, and they want it. Whether they can afford it is another matter.

-mike

Labels: Apple, iPhone

This one's perfect timing - I spent a big chunk of today working with Jen White, a DP friend of mine, introducing her to Color and having her run it through the paces on a music video she shot. So then I see this:

Creating Node Trees in Apple Color at FreshDV

"The lovely and talented Wendy Gribble (Graeme's better half) has shared an informative tutorial on Apple Color over at Ken Stone's site. The article talks walks you through creating node trees and dealing with interlaced sources. She also shares a quick example of the G Smart Denoise plugin, part of the Nattress Advanced Plugins for Color package. And while you are over at the Nattress site, snag the free G Blend blending mode plugin for Color."

I STILL think that indie DP's should be looking at Color as the back half of their process (if they can't afford to have a serious colorist do it for them) - I think there is a lot of talent to be found (as well as a lot of egregious beginner's mistakes to be made) from folks shooting video and then treating it in Color - much like there was a LOT of bad Photoshop art & retouch in the 90s, but out of that came some fine talent and a new ethos about image making.

-mike

Labels: Apple, Color, post, software

AppleInsider | Apple may extend multi-touch to computer mice

"Apple Inc. has filed for a patent describing a computer mouse having a touch-sensative shell capable of accepting multi-touch finger gestures, similar to the surface of the company's iPhone handset."


Ooooooooooooooh. Nice - after messing with my iPhone all weekend, I started downloading pix from it into iPhoto, and I wanted to zoom in and started to reach for some kind of multi-touch controller - but it wasn't there. I stared at the little scale slider and had one thought: "Lame."

Don't you hate it when you suddenly feel all your cool gear is instantly obsolete, out of date?

Multi-touch will be BIG. When I can get a laptop that has normal and multi-touch modes (frogdesign designed a laptop that had a double hinge design that would tablet or normal mode). Have a "real" keyboard and touch tablet (which itself could multi-touch), and then touchable screen - THAT would be killer. I'd buy one, and pay what - a $500 premium?

EDIT - ah - here's that Vadem frog designed back in 2000 (thanks to Mark for digging this out of the archives). So imagine a Macbook variant with a screen that flips like this:


More iPhone notes:

Design on Wall Street / frog in the News / frog design My former boss and fellow iPhone line waiter Mark Rolston (he was in a lawn chair at 1pm right after this interview on Bloomberg News Channel waiting for his own, about 30 people in front of my group) talks about the iPhone before release, and the expected flaws, and how it'll be received by the industry - and whether/how fast RIM will react. Way to go Mark! Also, way to go on dressing up for national news - I see you wore a t-shirt without visible logo, touche. :D

Mark told me some years ago that a lot of cell phone UI and OS are pretty much written ground up each time - so UI and functionality changes are a big, hairy, obnoxious deal - think how rarely you hear about cell phones getting updates available. Unlike with iPhone, where it is just a cut down OS X, with an API and *nix underneath, allowing for easier updates, with a built-in distribution methodology (updates via iTunes just like an iPod).

Other notes on iPhone - there is no way to Bluetooth beam or even email your contact info to someone. Feh.

You can't Bluetooth to use the iPhone as a modem for your computer. Double feh.

On the Go playlists either forget themselves entirely or I'm doing it wrong - twice I've spent time putting together playlists, and it is gone later.

BTW - I've continued to add, on a daily basis, to the end of my egregiously titled iPhone post from Friday.

-mike

Labels: Apple, hardware

THURSDAY UPDATE - SEE BOTTOM FOR COOL NEW FEATURES

My Apple contacts dropped me a note to let me know Final Cut Studio 2.0.1 was out:

About Pro Application Update 2007-01

Pro Application Update 2007-01 updates the following components

Apple ProRes 422:
Delivers improved encoding performance for Power Mac G5 computers.

ProAppsEffects:
Delivers filter improvements for Motion 3.0 and Final Cut Pro 6.0 customers.

PluginManager, FxPlug, ProFX, and FxPlugWrapper:
These shared components deliver updates to Effects Support, 3D Support, and Versioning Support.

Helium.framework:
Delivers improvements for SmoothCam. This update is required for customers using Motion 3.0 and Final Cut Pro 6.0.
Requirements for this update:

Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later
QuickTime 7.1.6 or later

Apple - Support - Downloads - Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 : "Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 contains several updates, including:
- Improved stability
- Support for the AVCHD format through the Log and Transfer interface
- FXPlug improvements with Motion and third-party applications
- Improved master template support
- Resolution of issues with long filenames (greater than 32 characters, up to 255 characters) on non-HFS file systems (network or Xsan volumes, FAT32 volumes, and so on)

This software update is recommended for all users of Final Cut Pro 6.0."

Final�Cut�Pro 6 Release�Notes

Apple - Support - Downloads - Color 1.0.1 : "Color 1.0.1 contains several updates, providing the following fixes:
- Improved stability
- Improved metadata support from Final Cut Pro
- Improved single-display mode
- Floating-point processing on computers with NVIDIA graphics cards
- Dissolves of 2K files during rendering

This software update is recommended for all users of Color 1.0."

Color Release�Notes

Apple - Support - Downloads - Motion 3.0.1 : "Motion 3.0.1 improves stability and resolves performance issues that may be encountered when using Motion 3.0 on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macintosh computers. This software update is recommended for all users of Motion 3.0.

This update Includes specific fixes for:
- 32-bit float projects
- Rendering of intersecting 3D groups
- Final Cut Pro integration"

Motion 3 Release�Notes

Apple - Support - Downloads - Soundtrack Pro 2.0.1 : "Soundtrack Pro 2.0.1 contains several updates, including:
- Improved stability
- Improved performance
- Delay Designer surround effect plug-in

This software is recommended for all users of Soundtrack Pro 2.0."

Soundtrack�Pro�2 Release�Notes

Apple - Support - Downloads - Compressor 3.0.1 : "Compressor 3.0.1 contains several updates, including:
- Improved performance
- Improved stability
- Provides compatibility updates for Apple Devices

This update is recommended for all Compressor 3.0 users."

Compressor�3 Release�Notes



Mike's Comments:

the good stuff is:

FCP 6

-AVCHD support - as expected, ONLY transcoding to ProRes or AIC is supported - this dodges the whole huge processor load and having to handle another long GOP format. Actually, AIC is an unexpected option - ProRes is what they discussed at NAB.

-FCP doesn't calculate transcoded sizes, so you need to pay careful attention to disk full situations when ingesting. Once again, VideoSpace (see blog from a few days ago) will help.

-AVCHD files are tiny. AIC and ProRes are NOT. From the release notes:

AVCHD has a much higher compression ratio than the Apple ProRes 422 codec, so the ingested files are significantly larger than the original files. For example, a 2-minute native AVCHD file is about 200 MB. After transcoding to the Apple ProRes 422 codec, the file size can be as large as 2 GB.


-can't set in and out points for AVCHD in Log & Transfer - bummer. Gotta pull in the whole clip at once. Maybe will be fixed in future, maybe not. So long takes - ESPECIALLY pay attention to estimated converted size. FCP really should give you some guidelines on this - while AIC and ProRes are variable (non-fixed) bitrate, a guess would help.

Motion 3.0.1

buncha little fixes, over a dozen bug fixes, some nice tweaks and changes to in depth stuff - read the release notes (link above)

Color 1.0.1

-drop frame now supported in sequences and media timecode - hooray!
-Color Corrector 3-way now converted to Primary In filters - NICE! Obvious and needed to happen. But due to Y'CbCr vs RGB issues, the conversions are approximate and not exact. But a good place to start. But only one CC 3way filter per clip - stacked 3way filters (wait, that sounds dirty) won't carry over.
-Cineon/DPX sequence EDLs support transitions now (biggie for film crowd), but linear dissolves only
-256MB or greater NVidia cards can now do floating point processing, they couldn't before
-ceiling and floor IRE now purportedly works right - I had trouble with this in Final Touch a year ago
-Pan & Scan settings now flow to FCP correctly
-960x720 render artifacts fixed
-read the known issues, there's still lots of things to be careful of. You absolutely cannot assume that any FCP project that you make will flop into and out of Color just dandy - there's still lots of things that can go wrong!

Compressor 3.0.1
-256 kbps for iTunes plus audio stuff
-custom pixel output ratios
-auto-center cropping (nice!)
-podcast fixes
-iPhone format support
BTW - I just realized I can blog from my iPhone. Oh My God.

Pro App Update

-encoding improvements for G5's for ProRes - should improve performance

Thursday Update

I happened to be working on some workflow issues for a client (they wanted to efficiently color correct hundreds of individual HDV shots and deliver to 8 different deliverable files from HDV down to 160x120 quicktime files...for an interesting usage scenario), and I sent them a bunch of customized Compressor settings to use for their specific needs. Final Cut Pro doesn't quite want to work in individual file batch mode, you have to alternately cajole it and beat it with a stick to get it to do it.

But in doing so, I learned a bunch of cool new stuff. I had sent them some presets that cropped 16:9 source down to 4:3 center cut - but it wasn't doing it for them. A little R&D later I figured out that was one of the new features in Compressor 3.0.1 - the ability to intelligently crop down to a given aspect ratio, THEN scale those results down. A very common need in this world of 16:9 source and 4:3 deliverables - awesome!

So DEFINITELY run Software Update for Compressor 3.0.1. And be clear and careful about usign it on 3.0 version of Compressor, because 3.0.1 has features 3.0 doesn't - so update ALL your machines. On the 3.0 system, the intelligent cropping got ignored, so their 16:9 source got squarshed into 4:3, rather than center cut and scaled down.

-mike

FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE - a sharp eyed reader noticed that AVCHD support apparently is only for Intel Macs - can anybody else verify? Read the comments for more on this.

Labels: Apple, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE

Santa Rosa-based MacBook Pro review roundup - Engadget

Ars Technica is my favorite/most trusted of these sources.

-mike

Labels: Apple, hardware, Macbook Pro

Barefeats points out new option: TransIntl.com - 4GB FB-DIMMs x 8 = 32GB

They point out how Compressor 3 and After Effects CS3 can use that much memory when they spawn off processes to render or compress more/faster.

Pricey at nearly $650 apiece, though.

-mike

Labels: Apple, hardware, Mac Pro

Macworld: Review: Final Cut Pro 6

My review of Final Cut Pro 6 for MacWorld Magazine is up right now on their site (top article at the moment, ahem. Pride.).

I discuss Open Format Timelines, the advantages of the ProRes codec, touch on some issues with SmoothCam (which is otherwise way cool), surround sound audio, the (optionally) huge 55GB install (make room on that boot drive, buddy!) and some of the other refinements to the application.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE

I'm bringing back the concept of the Blogwad - everything that I either didn't have time to properly address during the week, or that didn't merit it's own post, or that came in on Friday and therefore gets lumped in with the rest of the blogwad.

I've at least broken it down into categories - post software, post hardware, acquisition, cameras, general...and iPhone, since there's so much going on with that.

POST SOFTWARE

IRIDAS Extends DualStream Stereoscopic Technology across Product Line | Studio Daily - very niche, but good to know

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Click-thru Tutorial: Magic Bullet Looks | Studio Daily

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Click-thru Tutorial: GenArts Sapphire | Studio Daily

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Interview with Automatic Duck's Wes Plate

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Getting Intimate with CineForm Intermediate Part 2 (I trust you can follow the links to part 1)

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Creating Node Trees in Color and the special case of interlaced video (Final Cut Studio 2) -good Ken Stone tutorial, thanks to a sharp eyed reader for sending this in.



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POST HARDWARE

MacNN | MacBook Pro 17" Hi-res: Best LCD yet

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MacNN | Overnight 200GB, 250GB laptop drive upgrades - if you don't want to do it yourself...but what about data backup and data integrity and security?

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Matrox MXO 2.0 review

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ACQUISITION

Codex Digital Announces Portable Field Recorder | Studio Daily

9 pounds, carbon fiber, rubber weather seals, HD to 4K, size of a lunch box, powered by standard batteries, can do dual link 4:4:4, has Infiniband, Ethernet data connections, can do 10 gigabit optical I/O, 8 channels of audio, wireless MP4 video output, Red One RAW output (!!!), this sounds incredibly cool, useful, and improved - I should write more on this later...

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short version - 4K capable S.two to be shown at CineGear

Press release:


S.two Corporation’s DFR4K™ Digital Field Recorder announced at NAB 2007 will premier at Cine Gear Expo 2007.

New 4K capable portable recorder will feature in movie making workflow demonstration with the Dalsa Origin 4K camera.

Reno, NV—June 22nd 2007— S.two announces it will demonstrate for the first time its new 4K recording solution at this week’s Cine Gear Expo. The new DFR4K™ features full integration with Dalsa Origin 4K cameras using InfiniBand Fibre connections. The coupled systems will be shown on the S.two stand #T4 at the Wadsworth Theatre and Grounds June 22-23, 2007.

The DFR4K plays Dalsa 4K images in real time up to the maximum supported frame rate of the Dalsa camera. This closely coupled integration with Dalsa Origin cameras adds all the capabilities of the camera plus all the on set convenience, productivity, efficiency and robustness that S.two has shown on many completed feature films, the most noted of late being David Fincher’s ‘Zodiac’.

An Industry “first”, the 24V DC powered DFR4K™ production units allow the camera to be free of location logistics so that true ‘run and gun’ style movie making can be done in 4K resolution.

This debut showing of the DFR4K™ prototype heralds a complete set of DFR4K™ products for all extended resolution cameras and projects allowing a full choice of palettes for the discerning filmmaker. S.two extended definition workflow will be fully adapted for 4K movie making including offline, archiving and post integration. The DFR4K™ extended definition workflow is added to S.two’s HD, HD RGB, 2K and 3K products supporting other leading cameras.

“As the leading uncompressed digital film recording company, S.two is pleased to be able to provide our field portable, field proven, compact DC powered recording solutions to higher resolution users, bringing our un-rivaled on set experience and reliability to an emerging 4K market” states Steve Roach, Vice President, S.two. “The DFR4K™ provides 4K users a proven end to end workflow with the same benefits S.two has supplied on multiple movie projects around the world.”


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CAMERAS

Ikegami and Toshiba Provide Details of Advanced New Tapeless ENG Camera, Editing and Production System | Studio Daily

=======

Press release:

DALSA and the Digital Cinema Society (http://www.digitalcinemasociety.com/) are co-hosting a 4K presentation at the Cine Gear Expo, the industry's premiere film, video and digital media expo. The event which takes place on Saturday, June 23rd will explore 4K for production, post, and projection. Various samples acquired in 4K RAW with the DALSA Origin camera, edited in HD with Apple's Final Cut Pro, then conformed using EDL into the final project for color correction and creation of the DCP will be projected in 4K via the Sony SXRD Projector.

Following the screening, James Mathers, President and Co-founder of the Digital Cinema Society, will moderate a panel made up of Cinematographer David Stump, ASC; DALSA's Rob Hummel; Sony's Andrew Stucker; Denis Leconte of Pacific Title, as well as Directors Anurag Mehta and Joe DiGennaro.  The presentation is a great opportunity to find out the benefits and challenges of Digital Filmmaking at 4K resolution.

The time slot is 10-10:45 AM on Saturday, the 23rd at the Wadsworth Theatre at Cinegear.  Note:  You must be registered for the Cine Gear Expo - Free of Charge Until June 15: For more information on Cinegear, visit http://www.cinegearexpo.com



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Zacuto to offer turnkey HD camera packages with Redrock M2 adaptors

Press Release:

Zacuto and Redrock Micro today announced Zacuto will begin offering turnkey digital camera solutions equipped with the Redrock M2 adapter.

"We've had great success providing camera packages setup for the Redrock M2 and have gotten to know it very well," said Steve Weiss, Marketing Director at Zacuto. "Offering our customers complete packages including Redrock's M2 made perfect sense to us. We are thrilled to be teaming up with another US manufacturer."

"Zacuto is putting together fantastic camera packages for digital cinematographers," added James Hurd, Chief Revolutionary for Redrock. "We're delighted to be working with a company that maintains a strong reputation for quality, expertise, and customer service."

Zacuto targets their cinema bundles to customers requiring a complete camera package and have a budget ranging from $20,000-$30,000. The Zacuto cinema solution bundles will include a Zacuto-branded Redrock adapter kit, Panasonic HVX-200 camera, Zeiss Nikon-mount lenses, tripod, Zacuto support system, fitted Zacuto case, and other needed accessories.

Redrock's M2 35mm lens adapter is always available directly from Redrock's website, available with other Redrock accessories including the award-winning microFollowFocus, microMattebox, and microRemote. Redrock pricing starts at $995 for complete SD solutions, and $1,295 for HD solutions.

Redrock and Zacuto will both be at Cinegear Expo 2007 in Los Angeles June 22nd and 23rd. Redrock will be in Booth 30 (located near Panasonic and JVC booths). Zacuto will be located at Booth 77.


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GENERAL INFO

Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

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Cinematical Seven: Tips for the Indie Filmmaker - Cinematical

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Shooting Animation Verit-Style for Surf's Up | Studio Daily

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HD DVD Production - white paper details on HD DVD structure/setup

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Apple`s Safari for Windows offers simple interface, good performance but not essential

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MacNN | Apple patent: power adapters for security

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Mac OS X 10.4.10 Released

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YouTube to Test Software To Ease Licensing Fights - WSJ.com

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CinemaTech: Could new RealPlayer spark legal action?

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SoftRAID 3.6 doesn't work under 10.4.10 - so don't upgrade yet!:

"SoftRaid 3.6 does not recognize 10.4.10, and will not allow access to preferences for changes or statistics. The only option is to close the software. To paraphrase the error message, it says that I don't have the proper OS installed and that I should install 10.4.X.

I sent an inquiry to SoftRaid, LLC about this and I received an answer back in under 5 minutes as follows:
'Either go back to 10.4.9, wait until 3.6.2 is out, or ask to be on the beta list for 3.6.2. This is caused by Apples hack to make a 10.4.10 possible, which violates their naming standards.'"


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IPHONE

iPhone data plans to surface before launch day - Engadget
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AppleInsider | New iMac, iPhone hints turn up in Apple software update

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AppleInsider | AT&T exec: iPhone data plans to be announced June 29th [Updated]

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AppleInsider | Apple retail stores to close, re-open ahead of iPhone

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AppleInsider | AT&T recommending "Crowd Control Devices" for iPhone launch

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AppleInsider | Apple gets new EU extension; iPhone dock; 7.6 percent Mac share

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Apple - iPhone - A Guided Tour - new on Apple's site.

EDIT 9:45PM - I'm watching this right now on my HDTV via my AppleTV (the file is Apple TV compatible, natch). My garage got burgled today - my trusty mountain bike (Bridgestone MB-1, heavily modified over last 16 years) got stolen, and my car pilfered. Drat it - so much for my comfy neighborhood vibe - alarm to be used EVERY time I leave the house from now on. But anyway, feel better sitting home tonight and locking all the windows, etc. Back on topic - the iPhone has more little features I hadn't noticed before, so that's good. A silent ringer dedicated button. Speaker and microphone both on bottom (odd!). Another speaker up by your ear. Sleep/wake button is nice - can still receive calls and listen to music, but the big screen is off to save battery. The speaker on the bottom is for speakerphone mode - nice! Conference calling is nice and easy - I could never figure it out on any other phone system before without going to the manual. Lots of subtle quality UI touches. The cost is starting to not matter as much seeing all this - this is how it ought to work. If they released a phone with no video, no audio, and just the UI in a smaller form factor..it'd sell just fine. can surf multiple simultaneous pages - keep'em open. Email on iPhone can read/view JPEG, PDF, Word, Excel, RTF, HTML, etc. The keyboard is "smart" they say as it catches typos, etc. They suggest starting with your index finger and then advancing to thumbing - "in about a week you'll be typing faster on the iPhone than on any other phone" - so get ready for a learning curve. Still only being demo'd in vertical keyboard only mode - I've always been wondering when they'd get a wide mode keyboard mode - I have fat thumbs (and all that...oh never mind). Stock widget is exactly like the OS X widget. Google Maps - it doesn't seem to be self-aware of where you are as some has hoped - you have to tell it where you are. Traffic updates can be live - nice! YouTube - yeah, gotta be on WiFi from what they seem to be saying. Has an airplane mode - no WiFi, Bluetooth, or cell signals come out of it in this mode (well thought out!). Set your ringtone - they don't mention loading your own, but part of me wants to use this one (NSFW).

Whew!

That'll hold us for a bit...

-mike

Labels: Apple, blogwad, cameras, Cineform, codec, Color, disk based recording, Final Cut Studio 2, hardware, high end, iPhone, Kirsner, Mac, NLE, plugin, post, post equipment, tutorial, workflow

How many gigabytes of space does 3 1/2 hours of 1080p23.98 ProRes HQ take up? Now you can quickly answer that - Digital Heaven's VideoSpace has been updated, and now includes settings for Apple's new ProRes codecs and DVCPROHD 720p50 codecs. It also now offers automatic selection of fps for PAL & NTSC codecs. The big deal with this OS X Widget is that it can calculate time or storage space requirements (based on the other).

I use this thing DAILY, and other than Safari, Final Cut, TextWrangler, etc. is probably one of my most used pieces of software. Simple but perfect for the task of figuring out how much space and/or how much time is a given codec, frame size, and frame rate. I emailed to whine about lack of ProRes inclusion a few weeks ago and they said they were working on it - excellent answer.

If you're an editor (or producer) trying to figure out how much space you'll need, this is PERFECT. You can even specify how many tracks of what type of audio for perfectly accurate datarate calculations. Also useful to figure out how fast your storage needs to be. Can I say any more nice things about it? I don't know, I just Luvs It - and it is Free As In Beer.

Other handy info as long as we're talking datarates -

MB/sec * 3.6 = GB/hr

What's that mean? If you multiply the megabytes per second of a given datarate by 3.6, you get gigabytes per hour. MB/sec is handy for figuring out how fast your storage needs to be (add 25-35% for healthy QuickTime overhead room), and GB/hr is handy to know how MUCH storage you need. (Yes, I figured that out by myself, and am thusly proud of it - see the screen grab above for an example of MB/sec as compared to GB/hr) : )

Other Digital Heaven news:

DH_Grid and DH_Guides are two other bits of FCP related freeware you can download when getting VideoSpace.

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Digital Heaven's Final Print:

"Final Print is a standalone application which prints a list of clips in a bin or markers contained in a clip or sequence. This provides a very useful workflow enhancement when handing off a project to someone else for further work.

NEW! Version 1.5 now available
Adds printing of bins and markers on source clips"

Not free, but still darn handy.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, OS X, software

Apple - iPhone - Internet in�Your Pocket

see the row of demos at the bottom? Far right is now YouTube.

SchaaaaaaWEET!

YouTube is converting (or will they start accepting?) videos to H.264, which iTunes, iPhone, (AppleTV anyone?) can access. Of course, this will work best when in range of a WiFi network you can get on, and it'll be interesting to see how long it'd take to buffer a video over the EDGE network (and also what the data rate plans will cost - I'd hate to have a 3 digit data bill from getting bored and watching YouTube....

And as long as we're talking geek, there's always this:

Waiting for Your iPhone: Five Ways to Handle the
Unbearable Stress

Yes I am probably silly for wanting one, but I do. My friends are doing it. I am powerless and weak.

Must.....obey.....Steve......

Has......new.....shiny.......

-mike

more coverage:

MacNN | YouTube coming to iPhone, live on Apple TV

"Apple today announced that iPhone users will be able to enjoy YouTube's originally-created content on their iPhones when they begin shipping on June 29. A new Apple-designed application on iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube's content to iPhone over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks and play it on the iPhone's 3.5-inch display. In addition, Apple announced that YouTube is now live on Apple TV, following its announcement last month."

Labels: Apple, iPhone

AppleInsider | Apple prepping major Xsan update

"Specifically, the Mac maker hopes to allow Spotlight searches within Xsan and guarantee a seamless experience with Leopard when it launches in October. Many of Leopard Server's new server programs such as iCal Server and Podcast Producer will be recognized out of the box by the update, those people say."


This would be darn handy for workgroup stuff.

-mike

Labels: Apple, software

iPhone Delivers Up to Eight Hours of Talk Time

So it is somewhat of a stretch to call it HD related, but it IS a content playback device.

And I'm being pulled into the "Ooh-I-want-one" vortex of geekiness on it.

Here's the fun new stuff:

1.) longer talk time: 8 hours of talk time now, 6 hours of internet use, 7 hours of video playback, 24 hours of audio playback, up to 250 hours (more than 10 days) or standby mode

2.)glass not plastic screen - perhaps because fear of a scratched screen was such a prevalent concern, Steve Jobs said “We’ve also upgraded iPhone’s entire top surface from plastic to optical-quality glass for superior scratch resistance and clarity."

3.) Also a couple of charts from Apple's PR release with claimed battery life and comparisons to other smartphones.

In related news, AppleInsider | Regulators O.K. Apple's Bluetooth headset for sale alongside iPhone

"Federal regulators this week gave Apple Inc. the go-ahead to begin selling its seldom-mentioned Bluetooth headset alongside iPhone later this month.

Apple has said little about the pen cap-like accessory since introducing it back in January alongside its first-ever mobile handset -- iPhone. Similarly, it has not said how much it plans to charge for the device or precisely when it will be available."

Labels: Apple, iPhone

In a previous article, I'd linked to a useful article that discussed how to substantially increase your Compressor 3 encoding times. They made brief mention of how to make the necessary adjustments "in System Prefs" but I went and looked and at first blush (10 seconds spent) didn't see how to do it. Then I was encoding some 720p24 footage on the Mac Pro to high def H.264, and realized, after seeing it still had a couple of hours to go "Ya know, I really should figure that out...right about NOW." So I went and figured it out, and for your edification, here's a walkthrough of exactly how to do it, click by click, as a screen grab walkthrough.

Click here to go to the picture page, and Start Slideshow will walk you through the Step By Step.

Wave the mouse over the picture to see the pause/forward/back controls - da usual iWeb stuff.

How many instances to launch? Depends on your machine, but if you're a dual or quad core box, 2 is almost CERTAINLY going to be an improvement over the default single instance. The BareFeats article's chart showed an 8 core Mac Pro doing best with 8 instances, so as many as you have cores is one possible answer - but It Could Depend, I don't know yet, and I don't know exactly WHAT it depends on as well - bus speeds? Source clip datarate & disk transfer rate? How compute intensive or light the encoding is per frame? Long GOP vs. I-frame only - does it substantially affect optimal # of cores? I'll have the interns do some benchmarking next week hopefully to learn some more, but I'm certain whatever answers are learned, carefully qualifying those answers with details on testing methodology will be key.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE, software

Fast And Furious: No iPhone SDK Means No Killer iPhone Apps - Gizmodo:
"So no SDK == no access to iPhone's cool frameworks == no revolutionary apps, no real new concepts coming from third-parties, no eye candy available for anyone but Apple and no possibility for some really crazy games that will fully exploit the graphic and multi-touch power of the iPhone."


I have to say this is a pretty good argument. Read on. The good thing is that we'll still have good video performance on the device.

Thinking along those lines, watching QT in a web page should be doable, but not downloading it to save on your iPhone's media library, I'll betcha.

But this argument is also of the moment - this is just where we stand, now, before the product even ships. In time, I'd be very disappointed if they don't release an SDK. But this is at least a place to start, if a limited sandbox.

-mike

Labels: Apple, iPhone

Slashdot | Apple Confirms No ZFS in Leopard: "'Despite recent rumors about the possible inclusion of ZFS as the filesystem of choice for MacOS X 10.5 'Leopard', an Apple executive has denied this possibility. "

So there you go.

BIG IMPORTANT UPDATE - the article has been updated, ZFS WILL be an option in Leopard.

What Apple meant to say was, "ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

Labels: Apple, OS X, software

Color/Final Touch - lots of heavy bugs and issues. - Reduser.net

Poster "laguun" did a nice job of organizing a bunch of quotes from the manuals relating to workflow related issues, and discussing their possible ramifications. Nice work, sir or madam! Further discussion ensues. If you're thinking about doing serious work with Color and never used Final Touch, you really ought to read this.

-mike

Labels: Apple, Color, post, software

Apple's ProRes 422

Big long article I wish I'd had the time to do on the ins, out, details, and caveats of Apple's ProRes codecs. I'm not saying much here, but this is a long, detailed article going into the pros and cons of this new codec that you'll likely be using in the future if you're on a Mac.

Footnote: I have detailed, extensive, further thoughts on Final Cut Studio 2, ProRes, Color, etc., but I have to wait for certain articles to be released in other publications before I can say more. All my info and knowledge is, of course, available to my paying consulting clients at any time.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE

WWDC turned out to not be as warm-n-fuzzy special as I'd hoped - just a bunch of Leopard demos and iPhone details, and Safari 3 beta for Mac & Windows. Good, but not spectacular.

My thoughts on the biggies as they apply to what I/we do:

-full 64 bit support - good - means faster apps for us
-Time Machine - automate backups - we need these, and by far not enough folks do it
-Spaces will be nice when you're doing several things at once - It is entirely reasonable to imagine having FCP, Photoshop, Motion in spaces, or for later in the production pipeline Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, and FCP
-new Finder & Desktop are nice but not stupendous
-searching across the network will be handy (maybe Spotlight integrated next year?)
-Core Animation promises more pre-scripted motion graphics goodness in the future
-Boot Camp improves for running Windows apps on your system for those apps not on OS X
-Safari 3 beta for OS X...and XP and Vista as well - yep, Apple is making a free Windows web browser. Apple probably realized that iTunes was a tease of the Mac experience on Windows, and since iTunes already had so much web connectivity, it probably wasn't that hard to make the port.
-new and improved iChat may make remote work more viable. Somewhere I have a link about how to use a second Mac to stream Final Cut Pro video output to a client over iChat..improvements may make it work better
-Back to My Mac will be nice for remote work - your laptop on the road and your machines back home know each others' IP address (syncs via .Mac) - if you forgot something you can snag it (if not too big to pull it over broadband)

A lot of this stuff I don't particularly care about, but the thing that'll make me buy it for all my machines will be 64 bit support, Time Machine, and the ability to Spotlight search across the network.

Here's Engadget's posts on the matter, good summaries:

Apple's Mac OS X Leopard fully unveiled - Engadget

iPhone to ship on June 29th at 6pm - Engadget - 6pm, drat! So does that mean the line builds all day? I'd been planning on hanging out with some friends in line in the morning, this puts a dent in that plan.

That also makes it awkward - 6pm California time? Local time in each time zone? How will that work?

-=====

Apple announces third-party software details for iPhone - Engadget - third parties have to be a web app - therefore have to have a data connection, either WiFi or burning minutes/kbytes on your plan. Less than optimal, but it does let 3rd party developers in.

==========

Safari 3 for Windows - Engadget - yep, Safari for Windows, Apple - Safari 3 Public Beta - download it here for OS X, Vista, or XP.

MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE - I went to dinner with one of my oldest friends who is developing software that iPhone's presence potentially affects. I asked him what he thought of this third party developer situation, and he said it was excellent spin on Apple's part - they get to pitch it as "We were listening to you, and here's how we're going to support you." when in fact it is a "feature" that iPhone has had all along - the ability to load fully functional, Web 2.0 + AJAX type pages. But it still requires a web connection, and it isn't any new functionality whatsoever - 3rd parties are relegated to only what can be done with the sandbox of web pages. To me, that fits into the "Gee, that's mighty white of you." category.

I also talked to this same friend about geting an iPhone, and was equivocating saying I wanted to play with the software based touchscreen keyboard before I plunked down $600 for the thing. He was already shaking his head before I got to the end of the sentence. "Dude - you're talking to someone who bought a Newton." After I finished my laughing fit, he further elaborated - not MessagePad 1.10, NEWTON. He also bought an original Macintosh. Not a Mac 512KB, a MACINTOSH, back when there was precisely ONE product in the lineup.

I'm sure Jobs loves guys like that. (And I love him too, just for slightly different reasons).

Other comments - new folder icons - eh, not so great to me.
-mike

Labels: Apple, OS X, software

Steve Jobs live from WWDC 2007 - Engadget

Since I'm not there, I can't live blog this one like I did at the pre-NAB event.

But Engadget has a crew there, live blogging it, with pictures no less! Their coverage has already begun.

I'm looking forward to more Leopard details, and I'm HOPING they'll share more details on the iPhone, such as whether you can get it engraved like an iPod, futher details on the service plans, etc.

My personal longshot tech prediction - since we didn't see iLife '07 at MacWorld (oops, edit, meant to say iWork), we'll see it here, and it'll be all iPhone friendly - optimized to sync & format with/for iPhone. Am I right? Dunno, but we'll find out, starting in a little over half an hour...

I've got a client conference call at the same time (drat! Must...Schedule....Better....), so I'll come back when it is over and summarize The Good Stuff as it applies to what we do.

-mike

MacRumors.com : WWDC 2007 Keynote Live Coverage is live updating as well, blog style - newest at top.

Labels: Apple

Apple - Boot Camp - new version 1.3 released (still in beta):

Changes in Boot Camp 1.3 beta
Boot Camp 1.3 beta contains several updates and is intended for all new and previous Boot Camp beta users.
Boot Camp 1.3 beta includes:

Support for keyboard backlighting (MacBook Pro only)
Apple Remote pairing
Updated graphics drivers
Improved Boot Camp driver installer
Improved international keyboard support
Localization fixes
Updated Windows Help for Boot Camp


274 MB download

Labels: Apple, software

MacBook Pro "Santa Rosa" - CPU crunching

updated Tuesday, see bottom

Barefeats continues to offer some excellent benchmarking results on new machines. They compare a 4 core Mac Pro, one of the new MacBook Pro models, an older MacBook Pro, and a newer MacBook. Photoshop CS3 was nearly twice as fast on a Mac Pro as compared to a MacBook, the difference in After Effects CS3 was about 3x, Compressor 3 about 3x, Motion nearly 4x. This page alone is a good example of the general performance you'll get for your money in media manipulation apps. The new MacBook Pros are generally about half the speed of a 4 core Mac Pro.

MacBook Pro "Santa Rosa" - 3D Gaming

The other day I was talking to a client about the just announced new MacBook Pro models with improved graphics performance. I said I knew they had a new graphics chipset, but I had no idea how fast it was. Well, now I do - Barefeats is on the job, and they ran Doom 3, Halo, Quake 4, etc. on 4 core Mac Pros, iMac Core 2 Duo, the new MacBook Pros, older laptops, etc.

The results: when running GPU intensive games, the new MacBook Pro is surprisingly robust - coming in FASTER than a 4 core Mac Pro with a base 7300) graphics card on most tests! The X1900 in a Mac Pro still blows everything else out of the water (confirming my "it's worth the $300" supposition), and the built in graphics in my MacBook are just anemic - the Mac Pro with X1900 card gets 120 fps on Doom 3, and the MacBook gets....5. Yes, five. For GPU heavy applications like Motion, Color, etc., the new MacBook Pro is significantly faster than its predecessor - 10-50% faster in these tests (except for Halo where it was slower, go figure)

Tuesday update:

A few more tidbits:

MacBook Pro "Santa Rosa" - 128M vs 256M VRAM: "The MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo (256MB GDDR3 video SDRAM) was at most 9% faster than the 2.2GHz MacBook Pro (128MB GDDR3 video SDRAM). If we average all the results, it was 5% faster." Looks like the extra video RAM isn't worth the money for increased GAME performance. Whether that makes a difference for Motion, Color, etc. remains to be seen.

MacBook Pro "Santa Rosa" - 3D Gaming: "The new MacBook Pro with the GeForce 8600M runs 3D accelerated games significantly faster than the previous 2.33GHz model with the Mobility Radeon X1600."

Labels: Apple, hardware

AppleInsider | Apple to adopt ZFS as default file system for Leopard

Seems to be confirmed based on his statements, that Apple will reveal next week that ZFS is the official file system for Leopard. In part this will make Time Machine much easier to implement, but also has other advantages. Read on for more details.

-mike

Labels: Apple, OS X

Final Cut Studio 2 supports the preview and playback of CAF (Apple Core Audio Format) audio content.

CAF content included with Final Cut Studio 2 is compressed using the Apple Lossless codec. When you use this CAF content in Final Cut Pro, you can preview it normally in the Viewer, but it will need to be rendered in order for it to be played back in a sequence at full quality.


Sounds like somebody goofed in QA, or they had to do it too squeeze the content in. But sheesh, after a 55GB install, you STILL have to compress AUDIO to fit it on the disc?

-mike

Labels: Apple, audio, Final Cut Studio 2

Final Cut Studio 2 and 8-core Mac Pro

Rob-ART, ever on the job over at barefeats.com, has updated his 8 core Mac Pro testing compression - three cores dedicated is not hugely slower than 8 cores - 692 vs 586 seconds.

The odd thing is comparing to a 4 core box - 3 cores there took 1096 seconds for presumably the same test.

I'll email him and see if I can figure out what's up - anybody else with relevant info, do please share.

-mike

CORRECTION - NOT 3 or 8 CORES, 3 or 8 INSTANCES of Compressor - NOT the same thing!

My bad - I'm trying to govern the throttle on this how much news, how much detail thing today.

Labels: Apple, Final Cut Studio 2, software

Warp Speed Workflow #5: First Look: Motion Tracker in Motion 3 at DVcreators.net

tutorial on tracking on Motion 3

Labels: Apple, NLE

AppleInsider | Apple may introduce iPhone developer kit at WWDC - report: "Apple Inc. at its developers conference next week may introduce a software developers kit (SDK) that will allow third party developers to write small applications for its upcoming iPhone handset, according to a published report."

Hmm - curious to see how extensible it is.

Labels: Apple, hardware, iPhone

LITTLE FROG IN HIGH DEF: RAYLIGHT 1.0 FOR THE MAC: "Marcus van Bavel...the creator of the Raylight plugin for Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas, on the PC side of editing applications, has just announced the release of Raylight 1.0 for the Mac."

Hmmm. Since we can transcode (or really just re-wrap) to QT, that doesn't require this. I can envision situations where it is useful, but I don't know if native editing is that big of an advantage. The fact that there is now a cross platform solution is nice, but...I'm not convinced how useful this is. Keep tabs (as will I) on Shane's progress as he doodles with it.

Labels: Apple, Final Cut, NLE

Apple - MacBook Pro

At first I thought this was just a speed bump, no total redesign - not the case! Some of the cooler features:

-2.2 or 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processors for a bit more oomph
-NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics w/128 or 256 MB VRAM. YES.
-802.11n wireless - if you have an 802.11n router, is about 5x faster in theory, in practice STILL 3-4x faster
-if they didn't before, they now have MagSafe power cords like my MacBook - damn handy (I saw it coming - my 5 year old neice walked/tripped right over the cord on a recent vacation, this is a SERIOUSLY good feature)
-15" model's LCD is LED backlit
-4MB of L2 cache
-800 MHz frontside bus, 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
-as a commenter pointed out
-4GB RAM max, not 3GB like last models
-other minor system board tweaks as well

Model lineup:

15" 2.2 GHz Macbook Pro
2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1440 x 900 resolution
2GB memory
120GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 128MB SDRAM
$1999

15" 2.4 GHz Macbook Pro (differences from above model are in bold)
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1440 x 900 resolution
2GB memory
160GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM
$2499

17" 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro-(differences from above model are in bold)
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1680 x 1050 pixels (unchanged - still no 1920x1080!)
2GB memory
160GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM
optional 1920x1200 screen for an extra $100 - a total no-brainer, MUST have for editors

Mike's Comments

A nice speed bump, but nothing too huge here (EDIT - except for the 1920x1200 res screen, so you can finally display a 1920x1080 image pixel for pixel full screen). The GPU bump I presume will be an excellent improvement for running Motion and FxPlug stuff. 2GB RAM standard is nice. Dual layer burner on all models is nice, as is 802.11n.

Relevant options include bigger or faster hard drives (the stock 160 on the higher end models is 5400rpm, you can get a 7200 rpm 160 or a 4200 rpm 200GB drive).

RAM configs have changed as well, comes with 2GB standard (hooray!), but instead of 3GB max the only upgrade option is to jump up to 4GB (for $750, ouch) - this is a GOOD thing, considering how RAM hungry the new Final Cut Studio 2 is.

Bigger hard drives are good too, as a full install of Final Cut Studio 2 is 55 GB (yowza!).

They are all rated to run Final Cut Studio 2 I'd bet (haven't verified yet), curious if the 128 vs 256 MB of VRAM makes any critical difference for running, say, Color on a laptop - but I haven't checked yet (anybody feel free to Comment below if you know, I gots no time right now).

OK, now I literally need to run out the door (to meet someone for a run) - I'll see if there's anything else relevant to update once I'm back.

UPDATE - a sharp eyed anonymous reader noticed something I'd missed in my rush to get out the door - there's a $100 option on the 17" model to get a 1920x1200 res screen, and if you're getting the 17" for editing, I'd say this is a must have, no brainer. Which also means you're getting it build to order, not picking one up in the retail stores most likely since it is a BTO option at this time, not an offered default config (Apple usually adds a high end config available in their retail stores eventually, so you might be able to at some point).

Double checking the specs on Color, a 17" Macbook Pro WILL run Color, and 1920x1080 only helps to show more of what is going on.

Here's the full Apple press release:

Latest Intel Core 2 Duo Processors, Memory Up to 4GB and Higher Performance Graphics Across the Line


CUPERTINO, California—June 5, 2007—Apple® today updated its MacBook® Pro line of notebooks with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, memory up to 4GB, and high-speed graphics in a stunning, lightweight, aluminum enclosure that is just one-inch thin. The new MacBook Pro is available in 15-inch models with a new mercury-free, power-efficient LED-backlit display and a 17-inch model with an optional high-resolution display. All models include a built-in iSight® video camera for video conferencing on-the-go, Apple’s MagSafe® Power Adapter that safely disconnects when under strain, and built-in 802.11n wireless networking for up to five times the performance and twice the range of 802.11g.*

“With Intel Core 2 Duo performance, more memory and state-of-the-art graphics, this MacBook Pro is a portable powerhouse for creative and professional users,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Apple’s notebooks have always led the industry in innovation with features like built-in 802.11 and the MagSafe Power Adapter, and now the industry’s first 15-inch LED-backlit display is another step toward completely eliminating mercury from our displays.”

Every MacBook Pro model includes an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB of shared L2 cache, an 800 MHz frontside bus and 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory, running professional applications like Final Cut Pro® 6 and Logic® Pro 7 more than 50 percent faster than the original MacBook Pro with Core Duo. Delivering more realistic graphics for animation and gaming, every MacBook Pro now includes the state-of-the art NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT and is more than 50 percent faster than the original MacBook Pro with Core Duo.**

The MacBook Pro’s lightweight, aluminum enclosure is just one-inch thin and is available in three models: 2.2 GHz and 2.4 GHz 15-inch MacBook Pro models, and a 2.4 GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro model. The new 15-inch MacBook Pro models feature a brand-new, power-efficient LED-backlit display and are the first of Apple’s notebooks to transition to LED backlighting as part of the company’s effort to eliminate the use of mercury in its products. The 17-inch model now offers a new optional 1920-by-1200 high-resolution display, providing over 30 percent more screen real estate than the standard 1680-by-1050 display.

Designed for mobile professionals, the MacBook Pro includes a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing on-the-go, Apple’s MagSafe Power Adapter that magnetically connects the power cord to the MacBook Pro and safely disconnects when under strain, and the latest generation of 802.11n wireless networking for up to five times the performance and twice the range of 802.11g. Every new MacBook Pro also includes built-in 10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet for high-speed networking, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), a FireWire® 800 and a FireWire 400 port, a backlit illuminated keyboard, an ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot for expansion solutions such as 3G wireless networking, and a DVI video output to connect up to a 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display.

The MacBook Pro comes with iLife® ‘06, the next generation of Apple’s award-winning suite of digital lifestyle applications featuring iPhoto®, iMovie® HD, iDVD®, GarageBand™ and iWeb™. The MacBook Pro also comes with the latest release of the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS® X version 10.4.9 Tiger, including Safari™, Mail, iCal®, iChat AV, Front Row and Photo Booth.

Pricing & Availability
The new MacBook Pro models are now shipping and will be available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

The 2.2 GHz, 15-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of $1,999 (US), includes:

• 15.4-inch widescreen LED-backlit 1440-by-900 LCD display;
• 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor;
• 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4GB;
• 120GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive® with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive;
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 128MB GDDR3 memory;
• DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
• built-in Dual Link support for driving Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Display;
• built-in iSight video camera;
• Gigabit Ethernet port;
• built-in AirPort Extreme® 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
• ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
• two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, and one FireWire 400 port;
• one audio line in and one headphone out port, each supporting optical digital audio;
• Scrolling TrackPad and illuminated keyboard;
• the infrared Apple Remote; and
• 85 Watt Apple MagSafe Power Adapter.

The 2.4 GHz, 15-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of $2,499 (US), includes:

• 15.4-inch widescreen LED-backlit 1440-by-900 LCD display;
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor;
• 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4GB;
• 160GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive;
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB GDDR3 memory;
• DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
• built-in Dual Link support for driving Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Display;
• built-in iSight video camera;
• Gigabit Ethernet port;
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
• ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
• two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, and one FireWire 400 port;
• one audio line in and one headphone out port, each supporting optical digital audio;
• Scrolling TrackPad and illuminated keyboard;
• the infrared Apple Remote; and
• 85 Watt Apple MagSafe Power Adapter.

The 2.4 GHz, 17-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of $2,799 (US), includes:

• 17-inch widescreen 1680-by-1050 LCD display;
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor;
• 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4GB;
• 160GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive;
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB GDDR3 memory;
• DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
• built-in Dual Link support for driving Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Display;
• built-in iSight video camera;
• Gigabit Ethernet port;
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
• ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
• three USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, and one FireWire 400 port;
• one audio line in and one headphone out port, each supporting optical digital audio;
• Scrolling TrackPad and illuminated keyboard;
• the infrared Apple Remote; and
• 85 Watt Apple MagSafe Power Adapter.

Additional build-to-order options for the MacBook Pro include the ability to upgrade to a 160GB (5400 rpm), 160GB (7200 rpm), 200GB (4200 rpm) or a 250GB (4200 rpm) hard drive, up to 4GB DDR2 SDRAM, Apple MagSafe Airline Adapter, Apple USB Modem, glossy widescreen display, 17-inch 1920-by-1200 high-resolution display and the AppleCare Protection Plan. Additional build-to-order options also include pre-installed copies of iWork™ ‘06, Logic Express 7, Final Cut® Express HD 3.5 and Aperture™ 1.5.

*AirPort Extreme is based on an IEEE 802.11n draft specification. Actual performance will vary based on range, connection rate, site conditions, size of network and other factors. iChat AV and video-conferencing require broadband internet connection; fees may apply.

**Based on estimated results comparing a pre-production 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with a 2.16 GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro.


-mike

Labels: Apple, hardware

The Fedex guy came up to my door to make sure I was home first - because he had 4 boxes that all had "Apple" written on the side for me. My sloooooowly built connections have paid off enough that I have a loaner/eval unit from Apple to test for a bit - a Quad Core (couldn't pull off an 8 core) Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM, 4x500 GB drives (3 in a RAID 0), X1900GT, Final Cut Studio 2, and two 23" monitors. Schaaaaaaaa-WEET!

My two new interns, referred to as A&G until I get their permission to go public, were thrown into trial by fire - "See them boxes? Set'em up."

Curious to see what the OOBE experience was like for somewhat experienced Mac users (they are both circa 20ish), but not folks necessarily used to tearing in and out of Mac towers as I am. All went smoothly, with one little glitch - I asked them to install the Kona 3 card with no instructions, and it got installed in slot 2 (a perfectly logical seeming choice), but that isn't the optimal slot location. It has been covered in depth elsewhere, but the Mac Pro towers have the very interesting ability to shift around what slots are what speeds for the PCIe expansion slots - anywhere from PCIe x1 up to x16. The Kona3 card wants to be in an x4 slot, so we reconfigured the software, reconfigured the install (moved the card to slot 4), and got it all figured out the way we wanted.

So I now have a very nice testbed for Final Cut Studio 2, etc. I also now have enough Final Cut Studio serial numbers to do some pretty serious cluster testing, and some pretty serious range-of-performance testing - I need to double check the minimum install specs, but I have a single processor G4/733 (I doubt it'll even install on that), a dual 2.0 G5, a dual 2.5 G5, a Quad G5, the 4 core Mac Pro, and a MacBook (which isn't even officially supported, but hey it installs and FCP 6 seems to run, somewhat, based on a very brief testing).

OK, I'm off to dinner -

"It's my birfday, I R 39!!!"...dammit....

-mike, "I'm OK with being 39...no I'm not...yes I am...who'm I kidding..."

PS - so yeah, Apple gave me (OK loaned me) a helluva birfday present!

UPDATE MONDAY NIGHT - GigE network transfers are FAST going RAID to RAID between the Mac Pro (3x500 internal drives) to Quad G5 (10x400 GB on Sonnet card) - I'm getting almost exactly 100 MB/sec sustained network transfers. Sha-BAM!

Now that I'm old and stuff (picture hiking up pants to approximately nipple height), I remember back-in-ta-day when I was pleased to see 1.5 MB/sec transfers off my SCSI drive to my Mac IIci....doin' big Photoshop 1.0.7 work, waitin' 20 minutes for a paste to finish....the times they's a changin'...

Labels: Apple, hardware

iPhone release date confirmed: yours on June 29th - Engadget

Official from Apple, the commercial's on the air.

-mike

UPDATE - Apple - iPhone - TV Ads (Thanks Mike from B-Scene!)

Labels: Apple, iPhone

Apple CEO Steve Jobs | D5 | AllThingsD: "Apple will be offering a free software upgrade come June that will allow Apple TV users to view YouTube videos on their televisions."

Headline says it all. From the D5 conference.

More details:

Macworld: News: Steve Jobs at D: All Things Digital, Live Coverage: "%u201CWe%u2019re not selling HD yet, because of the tradeoffs between download time and quality. But that might change in the future,%u201D said Jobs.
Jobs acknowledged the popularity of the Google-owned Internet video site, YouTube. %u201CWouldn%u2019t it be great if you could see YouTube in your living room? So we%u2019ve had a great opportunity to work with the YouTube folks, and we%u2019re putting YouTube in the main menu,%u201D he said."

Labels: Apple, AppleTV

I updated my original article from the other day, scroll to the end to see my new notes there.

Another handy tidbit - on the tutorial DVD, there's a ROM folder with all of that content as H.264 files, compatible with AppleTV as well - handy! They are just little QuickTime movies, so you can copy them onto your local drive if you want as well. They are lower resolution (640x360 or so) than the DVD (720x480), so the DVD is a little sharper for seeing the UI details demostrated. No biggie - it is handy to have the option, and you wouldn't know it was there if you didn't look.

It would have been nice if Apple had treated it as a TV series or something so it would self-organize a little better - they just fall into place in alphabetical order, which isn't necessarily the order you'd want them to play in. And there's no playlist organizing them, either. Points for putting AppleTV QT's on the DVD, but it would have been nice if they were organized a little better.

As a related question, how tough would it be to make a QT movie that has embedded navigation that works in AppleTV? It is totally doable (and it'd also be nice if a DVD Studio Pro project could be exported this way as well - Adobe's CS3 can one button export a DVD to Flash...response Apple?)

QuickTime has all the hooks to do this - referring to other movies in the same directory, etc. And since AppleTV seems to be a fairly full featured QT client, shouldn't this be possible? Somebody test! The chapter markers in a movie work in iTunes - can we get a little screen with navigable links to do the same in a self-contained QT file? That works on AppleTV? Chapter nav is awkward on iTunes movies on AppleTV as is.

Anyway, moving on - I don't leave until Tuesday instead of this Saturday, so more time to test & doodle, and try to get some other stuff done in the meantime.

Other tidbits - MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR INSTALLERS - last year at one point I dropped an installer disc I was carrying and stepped on it, scratching the media side - uh oh - it didn't install any more. I had to borrow a friend's and make a copy. I've heard you can send in a damaged installer and get it replaced, but I'll bet that takes weeks - if you're on deadline, that=bad Bad BAD.

I also put the installer serial # in the notes field of an Address Book entry named Serial Numbers - that way it is on my iPod, my .Mac, my phone (anybody else starting to get that junkie arm-itch to get an iPhone? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?), all my computers, etc. - I'll always have a copy somewhere. I also print'em out (and the SN from the prior version needed to install it) and tuck it in my one big CD wallet thingy I use. And that's where the copies of the installer goes, the originals stay in a place that NEVER LEAVES THE HOUSE. I have friends wanting to borrow old OS installers, for instance, all the time, and it is always hell getting them back. It is just human nature, like loaning out DVDs - they tend to get sticky at the destination and not leave. Anyway, never let an original installer out of the house - otherwise odds are better than 50/50 you won't get it back without having to ask for it.

This may seem like overkill, but with all the installers I have - Adobe stuff, Avid stuff, Final Cut, Shake, iLife, iWork, and the 8 bazillion plugins I've bought, been given, or am reviewing, it is necessary to keep up with the library. Nothing worse than setting up (or reconfiguring or reinstalling) a box, and you can't find the right installer for what you need. And since I'm constantly tearing up and down box and reconfiguring, I need all that stuff on tap consistently.

-mike

PS - On a related note, B-Scene Films has a nice report from last night's LA Final Cut Pro User Group meeting where Soundtrack Pro 2.0 was demonstrated.

I've been so busy I missed reporting that this was coming up - sorry LA folks, sorry Michael for not plugging this event.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE

I'm continuing to get the studio set up for some serious Final Cut Studio 2 analysis - but it is taking time. I now have 10.4.8 or 10.4.9 on two internal drives on each of two machines - My dual 2.5 GHz G5 has 10.4.9 on two different drives, one has Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 and the rest of Final Cut Studio (1), on it, the other has Final Cut Studio 2 full install on it.

My main box, a Quad 2.5 GHz G5, has 10.4.8 with FCP 5.1.4 and Media Composer 2.6 on it (they SEEM to coexist so far OK), and 10.4.9 with FCS 2 on the other internal drive. I've got the Blackmagic Design Multibridge Extreme card in it at the moment, but I plan to test it and my Kona3 to see how they compare with FCS 2.

Some preliminary tidbits: Media Manager SEEMS to be improved in its handling of some issues - Recompress To does NOT clip IRE values over 100 IRE at the moment. Sending clips with >100 IRE to Color works (no clipping) presuming you turn off the default Broadcast Safe filter (I need to study its behavior a bit - I'm guessing that with the filter on, you can dial back and the highlights are still there, just being clipped by the app @ 100 IRE - but I need to verify that myself).

The included DVD (16:9, natch) gives a nice overview of how to get your feet wet in Color. It is DEFINITELY a non-typical Mac app, and has MUCH more in common with the feel & vibe of Shake and other traditional "heavy iron" looking apps that have migrated downmarket. Which this one certainly qualifies as - keep in mind that Color 1.0 that comes with Final Cut Studio 2 @ $1300 includes ALL the functionality they used to include in the $25,000 Final Touch 2K - yes you CAN do 2K 10 bit log DPX film scans in this thing - WOWZA.

Yeah, I gotta start figuring out a way to get a Octo Mac, gonna need it...the Nvidia 7800GT card I have in the Quad G5 is not the optimal for this kind of stuff...

The timing is also unfortunate - I'm leaving town for several days on Tuesday as well (family vacation, the neice/nephew are only going to be 5 & 9 on a beach trip once...)

THURSDAY UPDATE - As I get Final Cut Studio 2 installed on various boxes around the office, I'm realizing...55 GB is an awfully large install! If you install everything from Final Cut Studio 2, with all of the LiveType, DVD Studio, and Soundtrack Pro extras, it takes up a HUGE amount of space - about as much space as laptop boot drives were just a couple of years ago. You can custom install to cut it down for stuff you don't plan on using (for instance, there are THREE discs of audio content), but if you want to comfortably have everything at your disposal, a bigger hard drive may well be needed - I found on a couple of machines I was having to push data off the boot drives to data drives...if there was space there. This update coincided with me "getting pretty full" in the studio in terms of stuff on drives, prompting to think about what I need to do for storage and backup - do I get more SATA RAID 0's? Do I buy an LTO-3 or LTO-4 drive for data backup for the inevitable RAID failure? Is it time to plunk down some serious change for a big fibre channel RAID? Man, it'd be nice to have consolidated storage so I could work with media from any box - a SAN would be great, but that'd be a, let's see:

-4 seats of xSan - $4000
-fibre channel switch - dunno, $4K?
-fully populated Xserve RAID, 10.5TB - about $14K, it'd format to 8.3TB in RAID 50, and only just under 7TB in RAID 50 with hot spare. Eww. I already have about 9TB of RAID 0 in the house...that's not so great. If I'm needing more space, I'd really need two of them, so $28K
-4 fibre channel cards - $500 a pop minimum, so $2K there

Total cost of SAN upgrade (list price): approximately $26K to have less space than I already do, or $40K to increase the space I've got. Considering the fact that I've recently vetoed the $9K Mac Pro that I want based on current financial situation, not gonna happen.

What are my other choices? I could stick with my RAID 0's, but I'd need a solid backup plan. Tape backup? New formats offer 800 GB @ over 400GB/hr backup speeds around $4K+.

Hmm...in the meantime, installation of Final Cut Studio 2 on the Dual 2.0 G5 is taking much longer than on the Quad G5 - slower optical drive to blame I would imagine - checking now, read speeds are about 8 MB/sec on that box as it installs off the DVD. So keep in mind, your install times can vary wildly, depending on:

1.) whether you do a full or custom cut-down install, as well as

2.) how fast your optical drive is (hard drive speed probably won't make a meaningful difference, optical drive speed will be the gating/limiting factor)

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut Studio 2, original

OK, so you may have seen my rant last week about not getting FCS 2 upgrade.

Today, I called the Apple Store to see if they'd received any of the $499 upgrades instead of the $699 upgrades - she said yes. I said is that the $499 upgrade or the $699 upgrade? She didn't know had to go check (trepidation!). She came back and said yes, they had the $499 and plenty of them.

So I drove up there, walked up to the counter, and within 2 minutes someone was fetching it out of the back. I got rung up, tax exempt was no big deal (Texas has a sales tax exemption for products directly used in production, software/hardware counts).

All in all a good experience, with the one tiny quibble that the woman I originally spoke to had to double check that she had the right one when I asked.

I got some flack from folks when I originally said:
Lesson to Learn - nice enough people, but they do not know what the frickazoid razzle frazzle mumfaluff they are talking about. Remember, they are making Mall Wages.

Was I angry and irritated after spending nearly an hour of driving time for a fruitless quest? Yes I was. But I think part of what I do on this blog, legitimately, is express how an experience was for me - and from that perspective, I think that was a fair thing to express at the time. Do they ALL not know what's going on? NO. I've known some very knowledgeable and cool people up at my local Apple Store (Barton Creek Square Mall). After recognizing Naka in a movie line at Alamo Drafthouse once and geeking on moviemaking with him, I always sought him out when I went up to the Apple Store thereafter (he's since moved on I think). The biz sales guy went out of his way for me a number of times and I very much appreciated that, he was thoroughly knowledgeable and helpful and nice. That said....the Apple Store is, in fact, in a mall. And I've heard tell online and elsewhere folks that work there talking about how the pay is not stellar for those who know what they are doing. It was unfair of me to paint with that broad of a brush, but it is ENTIRELY possible to run into folks there who talk well beyond their knowledge.

And it isn't entirely their fault, either - it is, in fact, in mall, and they are, in fact, getting paid retail employee wages from what I can tell and have heard. Which is why many of them move on after a time there. If someone isn't an audio or video afficionado, to expect them to sell iPods and laptops and also know Final Cut Pro upgrade options is expecting a lot for what these folks are getting paid - Apple has a LOT of products, and they change fairly often. And that's a dig at Apple corporate, not Apple retail employees. An Apple retail store is a GREAT thing to have, I love it, but there are times as a professional working with high end Apple gear that it can be frustrating dealing with them - and this was one of them. The timing belt is off on my S2000, can Bubba Joe stop working on the Accord station wagon and see what's up when I take it over 8500 rpms under load....

An Apple Store makes great sense if you want an iPod, want a MacBook, want to buy & learn about iLife, etc. But if you want Final Cut Pro, or need to know about hardware intricacies for Logic, etc., it is a bit like having a Corvette and getting it serviced at the local Chevy dealer (or an S2000 at the local Honda shop) - if you've got a high end gadget, do you really want the folks who work on the soccer Mom vehicles working or recommending stuff for you? Maybe they know their stuff, maybe they don't, but the high end stuff is a fringe part of their job, not the day to day things they HAVE to know about(another reason to get a consultant or go with a VAR, IMHO...or just have someone to ask who KNOWS). Sometimes you get someone knowledgeable, sometimes you don't.

OK, back to installing Final Cut Studio 2:

-notes on installing FCS 2 on a MacBook (yes, a lowly Macbook, not a Macbook Pro)

it asks right up front about installing distributed Compressor & Qmaster - nice!

-lets you customize what to install, which is good, because full install is 55 GB (!!!!)

I tweaked mine down to a 6.7 GB install, and that is LIGHT - no PAL presets, no Motion Library content, no PAL DVD Studio Pro presets....LIGHT install

These days, a 250 is dead minimum for a "full install box" - what if you want all of FCS 2, all of CS3, all of our pics, movies, and music all on your boot drive?

For me these days, that'd require a 500 GB drive right there probably.

I clicked INSTALL at 10:01 pm...took to 10:35, but I missed a disc swap or two...

It installs!

FCP 6 launches!

720p24 SF Bay project opens!

Digital Cinema Desktop seems to be working OK as well, and a cross dissolve played back in realtime with no rendering required.

Color launches, but doesn't really work right - screen is too small

======

On to installing Final Cut Studio 2 on the Quad G5:

started the install (double clicked installer) at 11:09pm, by 11:10:30 it was installing after entering serial #, distributed rendering preferences, and what I wanted to install (everything!)

Some other notes - sounds like, from emailing somebody who already has installed it, that Media Manager no longer clips over 100 IRE values when Recompress To is used....but I wanna test that myself..

I was hoping to see some presets for things like live transcoding of HDV to ProRes on capture, or similar for P2 import of P2 media - I haven't found it...yet. I also noticed that while there are AIC presets for HDV at 720p30, 1080i60, 1080i50, but NOT 1080p24. Can we capture 1080p24 as HDV then transcode to AIC or ProRes? And do so WITHOUT clipping over 100 IRE values? (Hint: FCP 5.1.4 can NOT).

I'll update as this progresses.

Took until 12.17 to get installed (started 11:09, and I stayed right on top of the disc swaps - comes with 9 discs!)

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

-mike

Labels: Apple, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE, original

my local apple store has 2 copies of FCS2 upgrade in stock, and they won't hold one, even for me.

(edit - no, I didn't really try to play the "But-but-but....I'm SPECIAL...[sniff]" card)

Insert driving video game.

3, 2, 1....GO!!!!!!!

and I'm off....

-m

UPDATE

The Fun Part:

Music To Exceed The Posted Speed Limit By, By More Than A Little Bit, from the playlist labelled doitdoitgogogo (aka Finish Da Race for the last few miles of a footrace):

Track 15: Underworld - Cowgirl ("Everything everything everything....I'm invisible...")

Track 16: Snatch Soundtrack - Hernando's Hideaway - good castanet action - I can't believe iTunes doesn't have this!

Track 17: Moulin Rouge Soundtrack - Lady Marmalade - it's nice when life times out such that the engine is hitting the high note at the same time as Christina Aguillera. My baby hit a high note around 8000 rpm's, I dunno what the Khz was for Christina. I did like the symmetry of those two pure, high, clean notes in perfect, crisp synchronicity.

....aaaaaaand shift. :D

Track 18: Fight Club Soundtrack - Stealing Fat This one lives on another playlist, truly and literally entitled "Music to Conspire To Take Over The World By"

....and that was enough to get me to the mall in rush hour traffic.

Result?

....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand denied.

Drat.

The Not So Fun Part

YES they have Final Cut Studio 2.

YES they have an upgrade box.

YES I called ahead and specifically asked if it was the one for Final Cut Studio, NOT Final Cut Pro.

YES they said they had that.

Upon arrival and inspection, GEE, it is the $699 one that upgrades BOTH Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio.

NO, I do NOT want to pay an extra $200 more than I need to.

They called the one other store (WAaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy on the other side of town in Friday rush hour traffic) and they had the same thing, so no need to spend 2 hours driving.

Lesson to Learn - nice enough people, but they do not know what the frickazoid razzle frazzle mumfaluff they are talking about. Remember, they are making Mall Wages.

NOW I remember that this is exactly what I went through a year or two ago with a prior upgrade, a false start run up to the mall for...the wrong version.

IF you face a similar predicament, THE WAY to fix it - when you call ahead, tell them to tell you the price on the box - the Final Cut STUDIO upgrade is $499, the Final Cut Pro upgrade is $699.

I want it, but not $200 for 4 days want it bad.

Harrumph.

I Am Jack's Impotent Rage.

I bought a book on iLife '06 so my parents maybe won't call me with, shall we say, BASIC questions quite so often just to make the trip not QUITE such a loss. I then realized it was 5:30pm (I left the house around 5) on a Friday and I'd be fighting all the other salmon upstream, so decided to check out what movies they had in the mall. The thought of Shrek 3 ("On Four Screens!) makes my skin peel, so I went to see The Invisible. Ehh - wait to rent it, or even for Cinemax to carry it.

Back in the car, the perfect denouement music was queued up for me - Fight Club Soundtrack - What Is Fight Club?" - truly music to brood and mull and conspire to take over the world by.

And When I Am King, false answers on software in stock shall be dealt with....harshly....where'd I put that lye?

Only kidding when thinking about telling mall employees, in a calm,perfectly perfunctory chipper tone: "This is a chemical burn. This will hurt more than anything in your life."

...aaaaaaaand pour....

....or maybe I just need a hug to deal with my disappointment...





I'm Tyler behind the wheel (or at least _I_ think so), but I Am Jack's Bitter Disappointment sitting at home in front of machine NOT running the new toyz I know are out there...

-Cornelius

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, OT

Amazon has four different configurations of the new MacBooks for sale, I've got them all on my online store:

HD For Indies Amazon Store - Apple MacBook MB061LL/A 13.3" Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, 6x Combo Drive) White - this is the bottom end new laptop, presently $1094.99 on the online store. It has a smallish drive and can't burn DVDs. Not recommended.

HD For Indies Amazon Store - Apple MacBook MA700LL/A 13.3" Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) - White - this model CAN burn DVDs, but the hard drive is still on the small side. It'll be enough to get you started, but by the time you get all your heavy apps on it, and some pictures, audio, movies, and video files on it, you'll find it fills up pretty quick. Replacing the drive is a hassle, I recommend just getting one of the better ones with a bigger drive. Current Amazon price: $1149.99

HD For Indies Amazon Store - Apple MacBook MB062LL/A 13.3" Notebook PC (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 1 GB RAM, 120 Hard Drive, 8x SuperDrive) White - now we're talkin'. Burns DVDs, 120 GB drive...but white. Current Amazon price: $1294.99

Some like it, I prefer a darker, more professional look, therefore...

HD For Indies Amazon Store - Apple MacBook MB063LL/A 13.3" Notebook PC (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 8x SuperDrive) Black- aaaahhh.....this is more like it. Burns DVDs (single layer only unfortunately), 2.16 GHz processor is a twee bit faster, a honkin' big 160 GB drive, and that nice professional black color. I have two versions ago of this laptop, and even though I had some trouble with it early on (classic 1.0 issues addressed in this newer model), if I were buying a laptop NOT for Final Cut Studio, this is what I'd get. Current Amazon price: $1494.99.

-mike

Labels: Apple, Macbook, online store

Software isn't here yet, but we can start getting some questions answered.

Final Cut Studio Manuals

LiveType 2 manual (appears unchanged since FCS 1)

Motion 3 manuals

Qmaster 3 manuals (distributed processing/compressing stuff)

DVD Studio Pro Manuals - includes DVD SP 4.2 new features

Compressor's page doesn't list the latest manuals, but they are listed on the main Apple - Support - Manuals page. Direct links: Compressor 3 New Features and Compressor 3 User Manual - Note some manuals not found elsewhere can be found in the "Recent Manuals" list on the lower portion of this page!

Cinema Tools 4 User Manual

Cinema Tools 4 New Features (manual)

Apple Qmaster 3 and Compressor 3 Distributed Processing Setup

A few goodies: finalcutpronews: More nuggets on FCP 6.

A bunch of new Apple support docs have been posted over at Accelerate Your Macintosh! News Page - 5/17/07, including FCS 2 issues, color issues, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro, etc.

UPDATE - reader Michael Ryden found the Color Manual online, so download and learn...

...and here's the Color 1.0 Release Notes - just read'em, and WOW there are a lot of caveats to be cautious of - when sailing those waters, there are lots of rocks and reefs just below the surface, and the occassional sandbar as well. Consult this map to safely navigate!

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, NLE

Hey all - it would appear that Final Cut Studio 2 is shipping - I got an email from a reader claiming they received a "has shipped" confirmation from Apple, and Apple's online estimates have shifted (see pic). New versions are shipping first - as a business decision that makes SOME sense - serve new clients, with highest profit margin, first.

In the meantime, it would appear that existing loyal upgrading/updating clients are getting served...after that. Maybe it is just that the new/standalone versions were ready or ordered first, and the upgrade versions were ready or ordered second, but it does stick in my craw a little bit - couldn't they have both been ready at the same time?

In any case, update versions are stated to ship in 2-3 weeks, new versions ordered now will ship in 3-5 days according to Apple Online Store as of Wednesday afternoon (May 16, 2007).

If you haven't ordered yours yet, now that it IS shipping it might be a good time to do so. You can order your new copy, or an upgrade from Final Cut Studio, or an upgrade from any prior version of Final Cut Pro from the HD for Indies Online Store. It is an Amazon Affiliate store, so you're dealing with Amazon and paying the same Amazon price, but HD for Indies gets a cut to help support the site.

OH! And kudos to Apple for shipping EXACTLY when they said they would! That is SUCH a rarity for an NAB announced product - they said it'd ship in about a month, and they actually beat that estimate! Congrats, FCS team....go sleep!


-mike

UPDATE - and Michael Horton of the LA FCP UG pointed out the manuals can be downloaded here.

Rockin', thanks Michael!

Time to go scratch 'n sniff around in those....as if I didn't have enough to do already tonight...and for the record, as expected, the word "Redcode" does not appear once in the FCP 6 manual, the Working with High Definition
and Broadcast Formats manual, nor the New Features in Final Cut Pro 6.

A future version is expected to support Redcode RAW 4K, we don't have specifics on that as yet.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut

Apple - MacBook - Technical Specifications

Apple rolled out new MacBooks today, but it is no big deal - just minor tweaks:

-processors bumped up to 2.0 & 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo
-hard drives upgraded to 80/120/160/200 GB (hooray! BADLY needed)
-24x Combo drive (no DVD burn) or 8x SuperDrive (yes DVD burn)
-1GB RAM standard

Against the rumor mill, these units still have the same GMA 950 graphics unfortunately - no update there. Apple still has this one clearly in the consumer camp, as per original intent, and this one feature keeps it firmly in that realm.

For folks like us - these make a great day-to-day text/web/surf box (I do 90+% of my non-video work on my trusty Blackbook), but are NOT officially supported by Final Cut Studio (some things work w/Studio 5.1, some things do NOT) - and these machines aren't officially supported for Final Cut Studio 2 either.

If you want to buy one, might I humbly suggest buying one through my Amazon Affiliate Store, which will help support HD for Indies. Amazon isn't listing the new models yet, but I'll update the store as soon as they are.

The new configs are:

2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/1GB memory/80GB hard drive/Combo drive - $1099

2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/1GB memory/120GB hard drive/Double-layer SuperDrive - $1299 (this and above are white)

2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/1GB memory/160GB hard drive/Double-layer SuperDrive - $1499 (this one's black)

Optional upgrades include $175 upgrade to 2GB RAM and upgrades to up to a 200 GB hard drive. Bluetooth and Airport Extreme standard on all models.

Rumor has it MacBook Pro updates are in the works for the next month or so as well - and those WILL be viable editing machines.

-mike

Labels: Apple, hardware, Macbook

Hey all -

Check out Red.com for a buncha new stuff on their site, including a TENTATIVE estimated schedule of ship dates:

RED Digital Cinema - TENTATIVE shipping schedule for RED ONE

April - May - Serial #1-12
June - Serial #13-100. (Partially enabled feature set)
July - Serial #101-300. (Partially enabled feature set)
August - Serial #301-550 (90% enabled feature set)
September - Serial #551-1000 (98% enabled feature set)
October - Serial #1001-1700 (Fully enabled feature set)
November - Serial #1701- 2500
December - Serial #2501- 3500


Also has details about how feature complete the cameras will be when, refund policies, etc.

---
Red / Workflow - screenshots of Redcine, which is quite cool but a very different kind of app than I've used before - pieces of a lot of things we've used/seen, but never in one place like this.
---
Also, the Peter Jackson movie should be downloadable off the website they've said, just didn't say when.

==========

Steve Gibby's Part 2 on Red has been posted:Studio Daily | RED at NAB, Part 2

As for my pre-NAB predictions (23 of them), so far it seems I got 14 right, 3 wrong, and 5 are still unknown (wait, I missed one in there somewhere, but whatevs). Just fun to keep score.

Also, Endgadget has an article up I won't bother linking to, since they got a ton of stuff completely wrong. Boingheads said 4K wouldn't work at first on the cameras - totally backwards - the first X# of cameras will ship only shooting 4K Redcode RAW and won't have the lesser RGB modes enabled. Other details incorrect as well. Feh.

That said, oopsie, a few things I've gotten wrong the last few days:

1.) Final Cut Studio 2 will NOT ship at first with Redcode RAW support - so Final Cut Pro 6.0.0 won't have it, but a future release will. Perhaps a 6.0.x or 6.x version. There is no official timetable for when, for now consider it like the "technology previews" of past when format support was shown at NAB in a demonstration and then shown some months later. New tidbits - there's also a transcode straight to ProResHD422 (regular or high quality) import module (DAMN handy), and a FX plugin that lets you color correct in Final Cut Pro with all the controls you have in Redcine - so you can directly manipulate the 12 bit RAW data in a 32 bit space, and delivers it back to timeline in...whatever timeline stuff is. Kewl.

2.) I got the Red Prime Lenses wrong in a previous post - they are actually 15mm f2.8, 25mm f1.9, 35mm f1.9, 50mm f1.9, 85mm f1.9

More to come, Day Two in the booth starts in a few hours. I'm working on my presentation stuff for my panel on Wednesday:
WED
2:00 - 3:15pm
Digital Delivery from Cinema to the Web

The DCI has finally set standards for transmission and delivery of digital content to theaters. But with podcasting, YouTube© and other venues now available, what is involved with encoding, encryption and the various aspects of the digital delivery of HD video content? Together we will explore this whole process.

Labels: Apple, NAB, Red

Further thougths on today's announcements

1.) I'm glad I'm not a Final Touch HD based shop right now - it's for free to all the owners of next Final Cut Studio, most of whom will consider it good enough to do themselves

2.) So therefore I should be putting out some training materials toot sweet, right?

3.) ProRes 422 - hard to get a clear story on it - is it wavelet based? An optimized PhotoJPEG? I don't know, but I want to know more.

4.) ProRes 422 will be a big, Big, BIG deal for us FCP folk - consider it DNxHD at a fraction of the price

5.) I had been wondering about ProRes support in Color for output to a "real" monitor - one of the MAJOR shortcomings of Final Touch was that it was fine realtime on your computer display, but not the case out HD-SDI due to bus speed issues - but AJA's new I/O HD has HDMI in and out - perhaps we'll be able to connect HDMI to the DVI port on computer that is GPU accelerated and it'll handle conversion to component or HD-SDI for professional monitoring....but it'll only be 8 bit.

6.) I'd love to see AJA I/O with a PCIe interface on it so I could shoot baseband uncompressed video around - think of Kona3 and I/O HD mashed into one product. It'd solve some other issues. I/O HD only talks to computer via FW800, which has a very definite bandwidth limitation. What about apps trying to feed it? Rather than providing baseband uncompressed to a display, with this new box you have to compress to ProRes before sending out - thus stealing cycles from CPU if you were generating new footage, such as anything that renders on the fly - be in realtime FCP timeline stuff, or Motion, or After Effects, etc. - there's a CPU load "tax" on compressing this stuff.

7.) Just how long does it take to compress to/from ProRes 422 if you don't have the hardware available? If you have to transcode? How slow is it?

8.) Color really is a major, major thing. I'd used Final Touch, the basis of Color, extensively for about 7 months from fall 2005 to spring 2006. While the coloring tools were excellent, it had MAJOR workflow issues (getting in and out of Final Cut). The analogy I used today - "That bird soars beautifully in the air, but just don't ask it to (or watch) it take off or land." Since they were a niche 3rd party app, Apple wasn't too motivated to solve all their problems. Now that they've bought it, that makes them MUCH more interested in solving the to/from Final Cut issues. The other issue was realtime performance out the HD-SDI ports - again, gotta learn more. I had problems over a year ago with the Geometry stuff as well - Final Touch was really a FRAME coloring tool, there were problems when working with interlaced footage, such as for rotations and scaling. Presumably they've fixed all that.

9.) I got into a debate with a buddy about ProRes and cross platform issues - I was arguing that unless that was what they were using for small proxies in Final Cut Server, there was no way ProPres was going to be a cross platform codec - it'd be like the DVCPRO HD codec, only delivered on Macs running Final Cut Studio.

10.) No mention was made of Leopard or PPC during the preso today concerning Final Cut - my guess is that all that nifty realtime goodness will require an Intel box. How much runs on PPC will be a very interesting question.

11.) No mention of the RAID! Rumor has it that product is in trouble for internal reasons, so it may be QUITE some time before we see it.

12.) DVD Studio Pro is still alive, but literally only mentioned, no demo, no improvements. Will there be a sizeable upgrade once Blu-ray spec is finalized and Apple an code to that target? Or what is the holdup? I was surprised that NOTHING was mentioned other than "It's in there."

13.) Compressor launching instances is clearly a hack to solve the poor threading control in Tiger until Leopard ships. Hey, if it works to launch 2/4/8 instances, that is fine, but I'd like to see it run right on ONE instance. In time - Leopard and then a 3.1 rev or somesuch.

14.) As I'd guessed, this version of Final Cut Studio not officially supported on integrated Intel graphics stuff - aka Minis & my MacBook that I'm typing on. Final Cut runs on those machines (I captured the Ted interview in FCP 5.1.4 from HVX200 footage in the booth, thanks to Bart & Brian for shooting and assistance!). So will it install, what will/won't work? Gotta wait until it ships. In the meantime, FCS wasn't officially supported on this box, but I can still do useful work even though some things (like full screen playback) don't work.

15.) I'm curious how far the support for all the new stuff goes all at the same time - I noticed that Open Format Timeline was one timeline, and they said "switching to a ProRes timeline" - so it SEEMS THAT Open Format timelines are "special" and not the standard deal. I could see how Open Format timelines would have less realtime performance than others, since they are doing extra work to scale and 3:2 pulldown and all that stuff. But, for instance, can you use Redcode 4K RAW in Color? Can you use ProRes in there? Can you ProRes and output to I/O HD in Color for realtime HD-SDI playback? Or will this be like when they said it does 8 bit, it does 10 bit, it does realtime, but only 8 bit realtime not 10 bit?

16.) As someone pointed out in Comments, whither Spotlight searching in Browser? That would have been super-nifty-keen. Maybe is there, but I didn't see...

17.) Drat - no new GPU or optical drive options. We were all caught up in the other stuff. As I suspected, what we got last week was the "hide in shame" release that underwhelmed. Unless they are going to spring it on us in the AM, which I doubt, since I was walking through the Apple booth today, which is Red Drive throwing distance from Red's booth (AJA is inbetween).

18.) ProRes - support for alpha? Somebody asked in comments, good point.

19.) Final Cut Server IS Proximity that Apple bought last year. Minimal visible differences, akin to what was done with Final Touch/Color.

20.) No mention of Media Manager or other fixes, but they did say they listen and fixed a bunch of stuff, those aren't the kinds of details they give us in teh big overview - gotta get an engineer in a corner and drill, drill, drill...

21.) Whither 4:4:4 in the new version? Final Cut Pro 5.1.x only halfway supports 4:4:4 - you can use an AJA or BMD 4:4:4 10 bit codec, but all RGB processing delivers 8 bit back to timeline. 10 bits is 4:2:2 only. Has that changed? Unknown.

-mike

Labels: Apple, NAB

Apple Sunday Press Event Notes:

Not exactly sure how it happened, but I ended up in the VIP section and got a good seat, also got to hobnob a bit beforehand and talked to the crews from CreativeCow & Silicon Color, makers of Final Touch (bought by Apple and been busy bees I'd bet since). I bet Apple will shut down the WiFi shortly before they get going, so keep checking back on this page, I'll update as I can.

I'm sitting next to Graeme Nattress of Red, I'll see what thinks he smirks at to read the tea leaves.

: )

BEGINNING:

ROB, VP of something

-2 yrs ago, 250K FCP editors worldwide
-doubled to 500K last year
-over 800K paid FCP users,
-over 100 training centers around the world
-Amazon search on FCS, find 100s of books
-dozens of 3rd party plugins
-high end extensions to FCP - Automatic Duck, Pixel Farm, Omneon, Digital Heaven, etc.
-"It's a Final Cut World"
-sampler of FCP cut stuff video shown
-watching video....commericals, movies, TV, etc.

feedback from the world -
-"massive amounts of digital content"
-non-linear collaboration required (this bodes well)
-srhinking production schedules

NEW PRODUCT

FINAL CUT SERVER

=media asset management and collaboration
-works for 2 person collaboration up to multi-national news org
-cross platform client
-producer on a PC has a client as well "stuck on a PC"
-over 100 file types recognized
-auto proxy generation
-keyword searching
-sophisticated access control
-
Worlfkow automation:
-customizable templates
-watch and respond system
-review and approve tools
-automated encod and publish
-is an event based system, triggering as things happen
-if producer needs to be alerted to review, email gets sent out
-baked Compressor into it - can control delivery from Final Cut Server

FINAL CUT INTEGRATION;
-time saving shot selection tool
-proxy rough cut editing
-save as FCP project
-offline/online workflow

when you check out a low res proxy of a project, can connect and conform back to high res project, automated system

-KCAL in LA been testing for a couple of months
-they've bet big on Final Cut Server as a foundation for their system
-WATCHING VIDEO FROM KCAL - HD news
-up to 16 individual units, 300-400 promos/week
-promo world, assets come from all over
-can search by date, person who created, etc., can play back PC or Mac (implies codec stuff)
-can mark notes & communicate to editor/graphics person
=screening tool - can kick out a small QT file,
-being able to play realtime HD in quantity was necessary (more hints of codecs)
-everybody is able to be in/out of projects without waiting on next domino to fall, can work faster
-decided they wanted to be aggrressive - $999 w/10 concurrent licenses
-$1999 UNLIMITED concurrent users
-available this summer



FINAL CUT STUDIO:


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

-wanted it to be the biggest upgrade ever
-FINAL CUT STUDIO 2
-Final Cut Pro 6
-
PRO RES 4:2:2 codec
-10 bit 4:2:2
-full raster
-uncompressed project was 1TB, converting to highest quality was 170GB
-bandwidth efficiency, gotta work across a SAN OK
-color space headroom - 4:2:0 converted to 4:2:2
-support for next gen devices
-edit friendly
-translates whatever may come
-SONY - introducing new HDCAM SR system, 1080p60 w/ProRes 4:2:2 will be a good solution according to Sony
-to use that 1080p60 stuff, want it in an edit friendly format - can capture as ProRes 422
-PANASONIC - betting big on AVC Intra, ProRes 422 is an "outstanding post-production format for Panasonic's new genration of AVC-Intra based camcorders"
-RED (FIRST TIME THERE'S APPLAUSE) - VIDEO
Red Video
-edit 4K w/ease & elegance
-2 ways to work w/4K files in FCP
-native Redcode for DI finishes
-ProRes for broadcast work
-can plug 4K footage, plug into laptop, convert to ProRes 422 (!!!!)
-CineAlta cameras - MacBook Pro running Final Cut, how to get F900 into
-NEW HARDWARE - AJA device to get HD-SDI into FW800
-looks like a little G5 w/a handle on it, crapload of ports on the backside
-"I/O HD" hardware
-has ProResHD codec IN THE HARDWARE can move 10b422 ProRes - SD/HD up/down/cross conversion all in hardware
-10"x12"x15" or so guesstimated size based on seeing it
-PRICE? introduced at $3495, available in July
-exciting to work with upstarts like Red, AJA

OPEN FORMAT TIMELINE:
-mis formats
-mis resolutions
-mix framerates
-5 minutes after using it, you stop worry, IT JUST WORKS
-Smoothcam - remove unwanted camera motion right in FCP
-background optical flow analysis
-adjust parameters

EDITABLE MOTION TEMPLATES:
-access Motion templates directly w/in FCP
-can access templates in timeline in fCP
-can change instances to edit the master - IS LIKE STYLE SHEETS
-Motion is more integrated, and is a part of, Final Cut Pro

DEMO:
-Open format timeline, Paul demoing
-drag a file to timeline, FCP can set timeline to match
-22 MB/sec for 1080p24 4:2:2 ProRes
-if you drag a DVCPRO HD to timeline that is 1920x1080, it'll scale and aspect ratio correct on the fly to make it right
-mixing uncompressed w/ProRes to DVCPRO with a realtime effect, UNCOMPRESSED 10 BIT with realtime effects
-have interlaced DV footage, drop on timeline that is progressive, it just figures it all out
-could always send video to Motion, now can bring graphics to you - add templates from Motion are in FCP, can Superimpose, Overwrite, or Insert
-opens in Viewer to edit the text in FCP
-(has an orange render bar)
-unrendered Motion Template over 10b uncompressed video, plays...but w/low frame rate
-when change a template, ripples through EVERYWHERE you used that template - style sheets!
-FXPlug stuff - drop a plugin onto timeline, GPU realtime stuff
-plays back in pretty damn real time
-ProRes vs. Uncompressed video (using DCI StEM footage) - has split screen, plas it fullscreen
-the sample they are showing us, that I don't see a difference in, is TENTH generation - they've encoded and reincoded
-
back to Paul Saccone

MOTION -
-=======

embracing 3D
-multiple cameras and light sources
-intuitive navigation
-adding paint
vector based paint- particles, pics, etc.
-pressuure pen, speed sensitive
-edit strokes in 3D space
-apply behaviors to strokes
-
MATCH MOVING
-simple now
-autmatically follows the path of any animated object
-suggests points and inltelligently creates motion paths for video
-associate a path to an object, it handles it
-track, match, move on

RETIMING:
==========
-retiming w/out keyframing
-hold frame, set speed and other creative timing effects
-slip and slide retiming effects
-isn't tied to the piece you started with, can apply behavior elsewhere

AUDIO BEHAVIORS;
-aimations respond to the soundtrack
-control animations based on volume and frequency (After Effects already did some of this years ago, but was work)
-assign to any parameter on any object

DEMO OF THE NEW MOTION:
=======================
content library in Motion - tons of new stuff
-animated lines & widgets and stuf
-can animate the details of those library things to find the track you want it to effect, set scale to amplify it
-no copying of keyframing, is just a behavior
-tracking - new behaviors for tracking behaviors
-tracking points gives a 4x zoom, just shows the zoom
-hold down option and it shows you good tracking points WOWOWWOWOWOWOOWW
-Motion analyzes and figures out color space and subsampling etc. FOR YOU
-can also track in 3D space, does cool 3D parallax thing
-true 3D stuff in Motion:
-can move "observer" camera of scene w/out altering the shooting cameras
-while working in perspective view, get a live feedback of the camera's view
-there's sweep and dolly behaviors for cameras that do those move for you
-all behaviors have a little text description as well
-cameras can have targets to watch "scenes" that you set up
-as a former 3D guy, this is SOOOOOOOO much easier - isolate the movements by type not just axis
-Motion's new paint tool to add a "swoosh" around the text
-can create a paint stroke from anything, as well as their existing large library
-a lighting effect can be a brush
-can alter every attribute
-can edit the path of the stroke to move the stroke through 3D space
-can click a "make particles" based on a glowy bit
-have full controls of particle system
-but can click the "3D" button for particles to make them 3D (coooool, and applause)
-can alter the size of the emitter - be a point or even a box
-IMPRESSIVE realtime performance!

AUDIO:

SOUNDTRACK PRO - marriange between picture and audio
-3-up video HUD for placing clips (of audio)
-precisely align
-
Advanced Take Management for dialog replacement
-bring in multiple tracks and composite multiple track out of portions that work for you, take the composite down the road, and be able to dive back in and change the settings of that comosite
-surround sound embraced at core
-surround mixing
-single project for 5.1 an dstereo
-intuitive panner w/automation
surround sound plugins
-library of over 1000 music tracks and sound effects in 5.1
-good panning tools for speaker to speaker controlled by mouse in realtime as you do it
CONFORM:
-sync changes between picture and sound
-see diffferences highlighted in the grpahical view
audition, then accept or override changes
-if the edit changes for picture, can go through changes to accept or reject, or just let it work to move all the stuff where it is supposed to go

Soundtrack Pro 2 Demo

common to make fades in audio
-just drag corners
-drag clips over each other to do cross fade
-to detail crossfades, double click and you have a fade selectior HUD
-linear/log/s-curves/etc.
-location dialog - lots of potential problems
-showing a base thump in a clip (bumped microphone)
-waveform editor for any clip
-hit tilde key and get tool you need under mouse cursor (nice!)
-can scrub and find the problem
-have a frequency spectrum view
-can see brights for amplitude and frequencies
-can draw a box around an area in frequency spectrum view to edit just that part
-and it fixes the thump REALLY well
-and it is all non-destructive, so is all editable
-if there's a bad clip from set, they have 3 ADR options to try to fix it
-they can do a multi-clip take
-can take the 3 editors into multi-take editor to find which one works better
-can create a composition that will fix it
-with the take editor, can cut into the phrases and drag around and do fades to find which portion of which take you want to use....and all the bits and pieces will remain with the clip - at any time can go back and fix, if goes into a different comp, that all comes along for the ride

after dialog, want sound effects
-ships w/over 2000 royalty free sound effects
-does a search for "door" to get a door slam sound
-traditionally is tough to sync, gotta add a marker on picture to target where I want it to go, there is a multi-point video HUD
-get a 3up view for before, after, and where the mouse is
-didn't catch how all that works, but looks very cool, quickie drag and do
-drag & drop it in, drag around, hold donw V-key, and it is done to sync an effect to the shot - yeah is FAST
-
(LIVE COMMENT FEEDBACK - THE I/O HD BOX IS $3495, WE DON'T HAVE PRICING ON FINAL CUT STUDIO 2 YET...dunno if you need other stuff for converting to ProRes - I/O HD does it in realtime, but how long does it take without? Dunno yet)

-he's doing audio stuff - the updated revised picture edit comes in, and get to see an overview w/changes
-conform audio to adapt to picture changes is quick and easy, w/overview view that makes it simple to see what's up and where things have changed, can review it to make sure it all correct before committing and finding out might be incorrect
-has many dish panners, double click and get a new HUD that is NICE - get a circle that oyu can drag source around in the circle, and it shows you what speakers those are getting mapped to
-can do it live in realtime too - so play it back, and move the audio source sound around
-cranks the LFE knob to make the fireworks hit be heavier
-can have surround and stereo mix in same project - can optionally use surround panners for the full project
-stereo mix lives separately from 5.1 mix, but stays all in sync (nice!)
-over 150 royalty free sourround mix music beds for temp tracks or final delivery
-over 1000 new surround sound effects
-when you pull in surround clips, all 6 channels come along for the ride with all channels along for the ride - is just ONE thing to drag around and control
-professional multi-track editing,

COMPRESSOR 3:
=============

-is a major item now
-they use it inhouse to do all content for iTunes Store
-MPEG-2 broadcast streams
-iPod/AppleTV presets
-Telestream Episode Pro for VC-1, WMV, FLV, GXF, & MXF as a third party plugin to drop into place (big deal)
-timecoe overlays (!!!)
-audio and video fade in/out
-animated Motion watermorks (even unrendered Motion stuff)
-w/an 8 core station
-10 min HDV video to H.264 for iPod, takes 16:45 to do w/version 2
-compressor 3 talks to each thread on SAME BOX to 6:08 - 2.8X
-faster than realtime encoding

RICHARD TANNER talking about compressor 3

import a project as was done in FCP
-in compressor, can see markers from timeline
-new looking UI
-presets are better organized, defined by targets/presets for devices
-for the stuff you use over and over
-can create a custom folder with all your custom presets
-can drag it onto a clip to start the batch and applies all the presets
-can inspect settings as applied to a clip
-new features - can see source and change the settings for that clip
-16:9 content for iPod, for instance - can over-ride to make 4:3 if wished (stretched or cropped?)
-filters in Compressor are new
-Watermark & timecode generator
-timecode generator - can be either to start at zero or can pick up from original source clip (or from timeline for first option I take it)
-watermark - can "choose" a Motion project or a QT file
-doesn't even have to be pre-rendered
-a renderless pipeline between motion and compressor
-for the chapter markers in FCP timeline, can select one and open the edit window for it. HAve a # of devices on my list - can be relevant to all of them
-can give the chatper marker a name and URL or even an image - can be picked up from a file, or from a frame (for podcasts to pick the poster frame you want)
-iTunes will show the URL and the poster frame
-in System Prefs, can select # of instances (aka cores) to run 8 instances of Compressor to run one per core (this is in Qmaster settings)
-there's a badass core gauge that looks like %age utilization, and they swing up till all 8 processors get up to 95-100%
-in iTunes- chapter points all work with a pop-up, links that you typed in will take you out of iTunes to the web to the URL you set if you click in iTunes
-can publish to any device on the planet now
-

PRICING - IS STILL $1299 for Final Cut Studio 2
$499 upgrade from Final Cut Studio
$699 to upgrade from ANY version of Final Cut Pro
AVAILABLE NEXT MONTH


Back in 1999 in Final Cut Pro 1.0
-pro editing was $100K back then

Pro solution for color grading

-pro coloring is upwards of $100K
"SO not OK!"
-want to do for color grading what they've done for editing

simply called
COLOR
(this is where Final Touch went)

-realtime pro color grading for the FCP editor
-inherent all the goodies of FCP for color
-Coen Brothers have been FCP since 2003
-video of Coen Brothers talking aobut color
-color is an element you use in a film
-in Oh Brother, was first DI process
-only way to target what they wanted
-have done DI since then
-looks just like Final Touch - seeing footage
-the UI looks exactly like what I've seen before in Final Touch HD
-3D color viewer is new (some kind of 3D graph of color)
-(and that 3D think plays in realtime!)
-Send To Color is an option in FCP
-
logical task based workflow
-starts w/primaries, on to secondaries, then color FX, then geometry
-all same as final touch HD was
-3 way color corrector
-rgb & luma curves
-lfit/gamma gain
-3D scopes
-pull mattes based on crhoma, luma, and saturation
-custom chaped vignettes
-custom hue & sat
-up to 8 secondaries/shot
-ColorFX - over 40 effects to start
-exposure, film grain, vignette, alpha blend, noise reduciton
chain nodes together in any order
geometry - pan and scan, apsect ration conversions, zoom/pan/rotate
-can create looks that are saved & emailed

DAVID GROSS DEMOING:
-music video working on
-got an edit in FCP
-go to file and use Send To Color
-shots drop in
-preview up in top corner, works on one screen (this is new from FTHD)
-working custom 1920x717 2.35 aspect
-have our 3 wheels as always, but now has curves below on same screen
-can make chnages to curves and get realtime feedback on screen
-secondaries room, have 8 tabs for 8 secondaries - have 9 ways to fiddle w/image
-he wants to drop a grad in, but didn't shoot it (as was wise)
-so grabs vignette tool, defaults to circle, switches it to square, can drag around in UI to get it the way he wants it
-secondaries have inside and outside control for masks, so can give secondary #1 look A inside and look B outside the selection
-so really 17 total adjustable color things - if you can't do it there, you've kinda blown it
-MY BIG QUESTION - REALTIME OUT HD-SDI?
-another shot - has grainy shot
-has an auto-balance tool (think Photoshop)
-can do sat curves - saturation control on a curve, add markers to a curve
-can do secondary color corrections - to suck the blue out
-can drag and drop grades between shots
-to play with color on his shirt, can go to preview tab and key the shot, got a 3D scope - all the pixels in 3D space, like an MRI for the picture
-can zoom in on it
-like a lamp-post - whites at the top, shadows at the bottom, and colors in a ring around
-a good way to learn how to read color
-can see the blues of his shirt in the scope
-can "paint" your key (like FTHD did), but dragging the eyedropper along, see the matte appear - drag it over different colors to add'em to key
-then have a "cage" around the pixels in the 3D scope, can edit in the 3D scope to isolate
-but it changed his hair, so added a vignette to isolate and soften, so only does shirt not hair
-another shot - geometry room - can pan & scan and rotate
-drag & dropped a look from another shot, made a secondary, made a vignette, so adds a b-spline custom shape
-can light more flatly as you shoot, can then tweak more in post - can soften the shape differently inside than out
-can even edit the b-splines of the sottness inside and out - drew one spline for the shape, added softness, THEN that made new splines for inside out, and THOSE can be edited on a point by point basis (and perhaps keyframed?)
-ColorFX room - bleach bypass, etc.
-(Graeme's plugins from before for FTHD - should work here too?)
-saved looks that are node trees in Final Touch
-can drag those looks of node chains to other shots in bulk or onesy twosey
-showing before/after - major differences
-they aren't demoing exactly how it gets back, but I assume it is MUCH easier than it used to be - still have to render all your shots
-questions in my mind - realtime preview runs where? Where do we see it? Can run through BMD or AJA card in realtime for 1080p24? Can we run it through the AJA I/O box?
-SD, HD & 2K grading
-primary & secondaries, custom curves, scopes, 8 secondaries, saveable looks, naturla extension of Final Cut
-PRICE - gotta make it accessible to everyone
-IS INCLUDED IN FINAL CUT STUDIO 2
-huge applause from audience
-

AND THAT'S IT - NO MENTION OF DVD STUDIO PRO - so probably no new killer features there - are they waiting for a winner to emerge?

Tune in later today, I'll report from the Avid event if I can, and there's lots more news coming this week!

-mike

Labels: Apple, Final Cut, NAB

Hey all -

I'm in Vegas now for NAB. Had dinner at Burger Bar and I'm beat, it has been a long day. So, straight to it:

Predictions for Apple's event in the morning:

I don't have any hard evidence on any of this, just my gut vibe. This doesn't really mean anything at this point, just fun to see how accurate I'll be.

1.) Final Cut Studio announced (we all expect this).

2.) It'll ship after the show (notice I'm fudging on how much after the show).

3.) It won't require Leopard. Since Leopard got delayed till October anyway, and possibly thereafter.

4.) LOTS of realtime performance taking advantage of Intel Macs, but moreso of GPU horsepower.

5.) It'll be able to mix codecs on the same timeline.

6.) It'll be able to mix frame SIZES on the same timeline - 720p/1080i/480i all on whichever timeline you want (if this feature is limited, downconversion seems easier to do than upconversion).

7.) Better rendering options to mix frame rates on same timeline (that's a bigger maybe).

8.) Speaking of rendering, hopefully they'll fix a bunch of the bugs/difficult features of QuickTime - things like >100 IRE clipping, bad rendering of HDV on 10bit422 timelines, etc.

9.) More on rendering - since it'll be GPU accelerated, it'll be able to do good, REAL RGB (more than the current 8 bits) without decimating it - so true 10 bit RGB 4:4:4 cross dissolves that are still, you know, 10 bit RGB 4:4:4.

10.) Bigtime render pipeline with higher bit depth internal processing, all able to be GPU accelerated. Floating point an option. Hey, if motion can do it....

11.) Dare I say it? Maybe Redcode support? Nah, that's too big of a stretch. Next year. (and no, I have zero inside scoopage on that - I don't guess when under NDA).

12.) Final Touch will live on (at least for now) as a standalone product, but some of its goodies will make their way into FCP's color correction tools - maybe windows and secondaries, stuff like that, for RT GPU accelerated goodness.

13.) Bug fixes - Cinema Tools database issues hopefully improved if not fixed, Media Manger bugs quashed once and for all, etc.

14.) No Phenomenon (aka next Shake) - too soon. MAYBE a "technology demonstration/preview" at best. But expect all that realtime Motion GPU goodness to be in Phenomenon.

15.) Speaking of GPUs, I'm hoping for new GPU options, but it'd be a funny rollout schedule since they dropped new Macs last week - why not have waited for them here? So probably not.

15.) In the hoping for but not expected category, a high def optical disc burner option. Maybe HD-DVD, since they've already got authoring working in DVD Studio Pro now, or maybe Blu-ray, since that's what Steve said we'd be able to do way back in MWSF 2005 with then head of Sony up on stage with him.

16.) A new RAID - 16+ discs, SATA, 4Gbit fibre channel - this seems obvious, since Apple's been selling a 4Gbit fibre card for months.

17.) Improved DVD Studio Pro - better HD-DVD authoring capabilities, maybe some fledgling Blu-ray authoring capabilities (but since the deeper interactivity layer specs still aren't done yet, don't expect those!).

18.) It'll be FAST, but not as fast as we'd hope, on OctoMacs, due to inefficient processor utilitization (stick a thread on a processor and LEAVE it there, please!) as well as memory bandwidth bottlenecking issues. But it'll still be impressively fast, and the GPU will have a lot to do with it.

19.) I've heard rumor of some new codecs to be used - an RGB codec seems logical, MAYBE Redcode but hey, isn't it still piping hot fresh out of Graeme's oven? I wouldn't think Apple could have tested and integrated it and had it ready to put on the shelf yet. So probably not.

20.) Something else really cool and unexpected. That makes it a nice round 20 items, and I can then claim like the rumor sites do that I got it right.

: )

I'll be taking notes through it tomorrow and posting them ASAP - if possible, during. So check back in the AM, and keep checking. Event starts 11am Nevada time.

-mike

more thoughts next morning before show:

21.) If Apple is going to fix QuickTime the way I'd want, they'd need to do some prety major re-writes. How many of my complaints are truly QuickTime's fault vs. Final Cut's behavior? It can be tough to tell sometimes.

In any case, if there were to be a new QT required to do this, they'd have to do dev work on it for some time, and I've only heard recent rumblings of heavy QT work going on, and no testing of it outside of Apple - so probably not....or FCS comes later this year if it did require it...


22.) And yeah, that asset management software too - the one they bought last year.

23.) I don't believe the Final Cut Extreme rumors, it just doesn't add up to make sense. But if they offered a bundle that included the media management stuff and Final Touch, I'd think that could be what those rumors were about. But Apple didn't buy those things until late last year, long after the rumors had started.

Labels: Apple, NAB

This is a crazy busy week for me - all the press releases for NAB are rolling in at the same time I have a lot of other stuff to finish up. So when in doubt, punt! Thus what I call a blogwad - a buncha news all piled into one article, in no particular order or significance. Here's my pre-NAB blogwad on software. This isn't a comprehensive list by any means, just some stuff I haven't talked about before:

SOFTWARE:
---------

The big news, of course, will be from Apple and their press event Sunday - YES I'll be reporting what happens there.

I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Adobe CS3 stuff - Premiere Pro & After Effects in particular, but also what's up with Encore, their DVD authoring software.

Avid as some new goodies as well, I have an appointment with them next week at the show to get all the latest scoopage.

As far as stuff you haven't heard me talk about before, read on:

Cineform offers new cross platform NEO family - cross platform codecs for video work aren't quite there for HD work, so Cineform is introducing NEO. NEO is cross platform, Mac or PC. It has three products for different levels of production: NEO HDV, NEO HD, and NEO 2K, guess what those are for. You'll be able to work cross platform with the same files, moving between apps like After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, Motion, Combustion, Vegas, etc.

NEO HDV is for HDV & DVCPRO HD folks, and handles 3:2 pulldown and 24p cadence issues, over/under cranking, spatial resampling, etc. as needed for JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Canon, etc. cameras. I'm guessing 8 bit.

NEO HD is 10 bit, full raster for higher end production.

NEO 2K offers up to 12 bit 444 with their RGB codec.

ALL versions can re-wrap AVI to QT and vice versa - that's a BIG deal - means it is fast and doesn't change/convert the files/footage - re-wrap, NOT re-encode.

Supports AJA Xena & BlackMagic cards (on Windows presumably), can capture as AVI or QT.

More goodies:

Pricing and Availability

NEO HDV, NEO HD, and NEO 2K will be priced at $249, $599, and $799 respectively

NEO for Windows will be available for purchase in early May.  Availability of NEO for Mac OS X will be announced later. 

Prospect HD v3 will be priced at $999, and will now include both the “Edit” and the “Ingest/Edit” capabilities that were previously provided in separate versions of Prospect HD. 

Prospect 2K-Edit, which now includes single-link HD-SDI ingest, will be priced at $1999.  Both will be available for purchase in early May.

As part of its new product rollout, CineForm is offering special pricing on most of its products through the month of April, details of which are available on CineForm’s website: www.cineform.com.  Upgrade policies for existing CineForm customers are also available on its website.


----------


Studio Daily | Sonic and Digital Vision Team Up To Deliver HD Mastering

Dense PR piece with minimum of hard data. Blu-ray and HD DVD authoring, but at what price point?

------


Studio Daily | Converting AVCHD Files to MPEG: "The Windows-only application has two new modes that open files either as multi-source or single files, and has predefined HD-DVD and Blu-Ray modes with AVC presets. For audio, it can support .WAV, MPEG-1 Layer II, MPEG-1 Layer III, AAC, and AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) format files.

Elecard Converter Studio is available as a suite that includes Converter Studio, Converter Studio Pro and Converter Studio ProHD. Elecard Converter Studio Pro is designed for conversion of video with resolution up to standard definition (720x576).

Elecard Converter Studio and Elecard Converter Studio ProHD enable high-resolution encoding (HD 1920x1080). Pro and ProHD versions also support transport streams. Prices begin at $239.70."

Now, why you'd want to convert to MPEG-2....feh.

---------

POMFORT - SilverStack
From the site:

With Pomfort SilverStack you can open and inspect image sequences such as scanned 35mm film or rendered sequences as you would expect it from professional tools:

Browse sequence-based and timecode-oriented with a unique info-timeline that shows SMPTE timecode, frame numbers or a timecode calculated from file names
Open movie-typical file types such as DPX, Cineon, TIF in practically any resolution (PAL, HD, 2k, 4k, 6k)
View color-channels, inspect color with a selective RGB histogram, inspect pixels with a high dynamic range color picker and use a genuine pixel ruler for complete access to your image data
Visualize clipping pixels in blacks and whites
Zoom and pan to see every single pixel even on smaller screens
Apply Gamma- or LUT-based color linearization with custom presets
Apply primary grading (basic RGB-grading capabilities for both linear and logarithmic color spaces)
Playback-preview of image sequences on any machine using built-in QuickTime™ player


I'm getting a copy to doodle with after NAB.

-------

LITTLE FROG IN HIGH DEF: Matrox MXO v2.0 drivers available

: "* DVI monitor calibration - hue, chroma, contrast, brightness, and blue-only adjustments * Super black and super white monitoring on the DVI display * Pixel-to-pixel mapping on the DVI display * 'Virtual bezel' on the DVI display * New HD editing resolutions - 1080p at 23.98, 25, and 29.97 fps; and 720p at 25 and 50 fps * New DVI output resolution - 1024x768 at 59.94 fps * Region of interest output selection in Presentation Mode * Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 support * Max OS X 10.5 Leopard support"

Read on, Shane has a good write up on what all this means.

More info here too.

-----------

HD Monitor Pro - FireWire based software to do live monitoring including 1:1 pixel viewing (helps for pulling fine focus), record, sort, review, etc. footage from HVX. Can take notes and hand off to FCP. No mention of 24p - can it handle 24p and 24PN modes? "24p" isn't found in the release.


--------

If you hear of other new editing, VFX, or post related software, let me know. My time on the floor will be limited, so I'll need to prioritize and just see the Big Stuff, or little stuff that is particularly significant to the HD for Indies audience. Feel free to comment away with suggestions, and preferably booth #s, and why you think it relevant for me to check out.

-mike

Labels: Adobe, Apple, Avid, blogwad, NAB, software

Hey all - with NAB fast approaching and the press releases flying in at a mad rate the same week taxes are due, sometimes ya gotsta punt - thus the entity I call a blogwad - a buncha news all piled into one post. I've at least broken it down by category for you this time - here's the one on AppleTV related news:

APPLETV NEWS
==============

In case you missed it, I've been doing most of my AppleTV related commentary and blogging over on my new other site, AppleTVhacker.com - all the below and MUCH much more over there.

HungryFlix - Download Movies for your iPod, PSP, Apple TV and More! - these folks are selling content specifically formatted to fit your AppleTV, starting with a $2 movie (24 hour sale) called Wages of Sin which...doesn't look all that impressive even from just the cover art. But it is a start...

-------

AppleInsider | Surprise ad for Apple TV begins airing on networks: "Launching almost without fanfare, a spot for Apple's new media hub has begun making the rounds of TV networks. - Apple, Inc. on Monday launched a surprise new commercial for its Apple TV device, emphasizing the simplicity and echoing Steve Jobs' observations that the company was entering the living room after coming into cars, dens, and pockets."

---------

Apple - Apple TV - Ads Here's the ad in high res.

---------

How-To: play DivX and Xvid on your Apple TV - Engadget

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Apple TV hacked for RSS and emulation, plus bounty for USB drive support - Engadget

---------

Audio and Video Podcasts from washingtonpost.com

HD podcasts that are AppleTV compatible via iTunes! Schweet.

-----------


MacNN | Sling to stream Apple TV to cellphones?: "Sling Media is developing support for its Slingbox streaming hubs that would let them support the Apple TV, the company said late on Monday. A future update should give cellphones with SlingPlayer Mobile the ability not only to view an Apple TV's content streamed over the Internet but to control it as well by sending IR codes."

---------

Apple - iTunes - iTunes Store - Podcasts - Technical Specification Formatting specs for iPod & AppleTV in terms of sizes, bitrates, etc. - HANDY!

-----

More homebrew plugins, but where are those from Apple? |
Apple TV Hacks: "Erica Sadun over O%u2019Reily had written a plugin for the Apple TV that allows you to execute any Perl scripts you have uploaded. Given that Perl can run also call shell scripts and any Unix command, this will allow a whole host of cool scripts to be written.
It also opens the doors for programmers and scripters with no knowledge of Cocoa programming to develop their own additions to BackRow."

Read on for more info, analysis, and conjecture on the subject of plugins for AppleTV.

-------

AppleInsider | MGM flicks arrive on Apple's iTunes Store (still no HD)

-------

Motionbox offers personal video downloads for Apple TV | MacMinute News

-------

Apple TV and HD quality: It's not the hardware - Engadget HD: "We quickly realized that the Apple TV wasn't going to be a HD powerhouse and our tests have indicated as much -- we have also discovered that the problem is not the hardware."

--------

Macworld: Secrets: Convert video for Apple TV

Nice list of conversion options, although the DVD ripping tutorial seems eerily familiar, as I got a call from someone over there asking about what works well....

: )

Also covers converting files on drives, etc.

------


........and that ought to hold you for a bit while I'm off to NAB. I'd been too busy to post any of that recently, so this is all really just catching up.

-mike

Labels: Apple, AppleTV, AppleTVHacker

MacNN | Apple's iPhone delays Leopard until October:

From Apple: "we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.'

The company said that while it plans to have all Leopard features completed by early June, quality control would add a few more months to the development cycle.

'We cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October,'"


I can understand how that could delay things, but they CLEARLY must have known this for months.

What vision pops to mind? Dana Carvey as the Church Lady saying "Isn't that conveeeEEEeenient?"

I'd been hearing that Leopard had LOTS of bugs as of a month or two ago and was behind schedule, and blaming it on the Popular New Thing About To Ship is a great bit of deferral - we're more willing to accept getting a better iPhone, sooner, than accept that Leopard is a huge complicated undertaking that was just buggy and late Just Because.

Interesting that Apple would choose to pull resources away from a $130 product with virtually zero manufacturing costs (R&D is expensive, but pressing discs is CHEAP!) that would be maximally distributable to their user base (everybody that has bought a capble-of-running-it Mac in the last few years) in order to finish a brand new product - Apple CLEARLY thinks there's more growth, and profit potential, in the consumer electronics space than there is in the software/computer space. And I can't say I can fault their logic.

Some were saying, when iPhone was announced, that it might steal resources (staff or dollars or both) from the Pro Apps group, where you have to hire expensive, specialty programmer teams to develop large, complex software for a relatively small group of potential users. What if you put such resources into building something less complicated but more widely applicable to the consuming public? It only makes sense for them to optimize resource allocation for optimal ROI.

So while my BS detector starts to tingle (think Spidey Sense of technology), using iPhone as a conveninent excuse to cover why it was already running late (regardless of how much staff was reallocated), it is a daunting concept to think of our professional tools (the OS in this case) languishing because Apple reallocated for consumer stuff.

As for Final Cut - two schools of thought on this one:

1.) They were already going to show now/ship later, so this isn't affecting them that much. The announcement of new OctoMacs with no new GPUs or high def optical drives the week before NAB reinforces that supposition, and hints that maybe we are in for a wait as I posited last week If Apple wants to seriously take on Avid for performance, they need to cut free of all that legacy code that has held them back or so long and optimize for the hardware platform of the present and future - the Intel platform. Apple hasn't sold a PowerPC professional Mac in quite some time now, so having software that does an extra bit of performance on the new hardware platform and requires the latest OS to do it is a gutsy move that, uh, would, um, require everybody to upgrade to new hardware/OS. While Apple has gotta love that idea, I just don't think it viable, and I'm pretty sure they don't either.

2.) It won't matter, because the new Final Cut Studio is about ready to roll - they've been working on this for a long time, the last major code effort was the port to Intel that happened last February or so, they've had LOTS of uninterrupted time to work on this. Apple won't be so radical so as to divorce a large segment of the OS and hardware Mac market in order to get a bit more performance out of the software by relying on a brand new OS. They've never done that before, and why change now. It has ALWAYS worked on the current OS, and maybe back a major version (sometimes, depending on OS release cycles), and works on current and one generation back machines. After writing that thing the other week, I don't THINK Apple would go that radical to get performance trophies at the expense of supporting the majority of the user base. While it'll probably run best on Intel Macs with latest OS, I'll betcha I get pretty good performance on my Quad Core G5 running 10.4.9 (I hope Hope HOPE so anyway). I'd get more, but not hugely, crushingly, real-world usefully more RT perfomrance an a 4 core Intel Mac Pro. And I have sneaking feeling that maybe they won't be ready to really make those 8 core Macs sing since the OS isn't truly optimized for it.

I've flipped some emails with Bruce Allen this afternoon, and editor web buddy who originally pointed out the announcement to me.

I'd said:

My bullshit detector is pinging a bit - if you steal folks for
iPhone, that shouldn't bump the release FIVE MONTHS!

Software ALWAYS lags hardware. Until you see benchmarks for shipping software/hardware you can personally lay your mitts on and afford, it can be a dicey proposiiton. Of course, I'm going to need to get into a beefy Intel Mac sooner rather than later with Redcine right around the corner...dammit. My only Intel Mac is my MacBook I'm typing on right now.

And Bruce responded:

Agreed, Mike, agreed!

It makes the 8-cores very scary to buy now - you can buy now, expecting performance to improve with Leopard... but by the time Leopard comes out, Apple might very well have released the NEXT 8-core models. This must be driving you nuts, my friend, since I think you are in the market to buy your next Mac, right?

The problem for everyone is, if you don't get an 8-core and independently benchmark RedCine on it,, who will?


...we'd have to wait on, and trust the results of, Rob & Graeme I'd bet. Fortunately, they are both honorable guys and share my utter loathing for what I consider "specsmanship." It has been said "...there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." The height of such endeavors I dub specsmanship, and with maximum pejorative emphasis.

Anyway, in summary:
-bummer that Leopard is delayed
-but I don't think/I hope that it won't affect next Final Cut's release
-if I haven't said it yet, the rumor of a high end, Avid tackling, 4K capable Final Cut Extreme never quite sat right with me, since Apple isn't in the ultra-niche high end business. Realtime codec/frame size mixing on a timeline? Yeah, LOTS of folks could use that daily. 4K finish? That is an ultra tiny minority of the market and doesn't make sense right now. But if they want to go nuts collaborating with Red (no idea what the working relationship really is between those two), I'm all for it, even it if isn't best use of their resources in the big picture (but GREAT for my needs!). Anyway, to announce a forthcoming package that would include the capabilities that Final Touch had, with the new asset management tools they acquired, and the next Shake, and say it'll ship "later this year" meaning next year, is the most plausible idea I've come across to scratch that Final Cut Extreme itch
-Oh, back on track - I'm kinda hoping new GPU & optical drive options would be announced on Sunday, but I'm not holding my breath - the timing would be so wacky.

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, iPhone, Leopard, OS X

ProLost: New Look

Stu Maschwitz, the brains behind the original Magic Bullet and more recently Colorista, couldn't help himself but to talk a little bit about the next version of Magic Bullet that is due to be demo'd at NAB.

Some tidbits of interest from his blog post with commentary, his in italics, mine in plain

Rather than a regular plug-in with a ton of sliders, Magic Bullet Looks features a standalone application with its own UI.


Hmm....I'm not sure about that, I'll have to see it in action. So much of what needs to be done gets done on THAT shot rather than applying a look. Stu gets workflow, so I'll have to trust him on this one until I can see it.

Interjection: I'd emailed Stu to talk about this, and he replied back:
Stu said:
I totally hear you -- the standalone UI is a double edged sword, but we're working to make it as non-modal as possible, and when you see the UI you'll understand why there was no other way.

Like the previous Look Suite, this tool isn't meant to be a color corrector in and of itself. The classic use would be Colorista followed by Magic Bullet Looks. You'd use MBL as a kind of LUT over your corrections. That way all the shots in a sequence have the consistent look but their own shot-by-shot corrections underneath. So there will be at least one mode of working where MBL will be somewhat fire-and-forget.

-Stu

That is certainly an interesting concept - Colorista for the tweaky tweaky color balancing, then MBL for applying a look. One key detail will be how the architecture in your app works - does it do Colorista in 32 bit floating point, then return results as what? Hopefully at LEAST a 10 bit space, not 8 bit RGB before THAT result gets sent to the next plugin (MBL). I don't know all the details on how exactly that works in each app, but it can make a substantial difference in the final quality results.

Back to quoting his blog entry...

Called Looks Builder, this application is launched when you apply the Look Suite 3 plug-in in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, or Motion.

I like that modularity, and the ability to use same looks in all those apps (don't forget Premiere Pro is coming to Macs this year)

Within Looks Builder, you build and edit looks using Look Tools; modular mini-effects for things like bleach bypass, gradient filters, and film stock simulation. All of these tools work in realtime and can be tweaked and edited in context. All processing is done in floating-point color.

Floating point GOOD, preservation of >100 IRE better - Stu tipped me to this in my own workflow issues, so I'm guessing he'll handle it right, or as rightly as the software & APIs allow him to do so.

With over 30 Look Tools to assemble however you like, you can create an infinite variety of Looks.Or choose a preset. Pop open the Looks Theater to see 100 different preset looks applied to your image (not a canned thumbnail) in realtime.

This bodes well for him "getting it" the way I want it to work.

Magic Bullet Looks was designed to be easy and fun to use, but it's powerful enough for pros too. Filters and exposure adjustments work in real-world units. Color corrections obey industry standards. Cineon film scans and digital cinema images, such as those from the Panavision Genesis camera, are interpreted correctly and can be converted to video or left in their native color spaces. The same look that you develop on an Avid rough cut in video color space can later be applied to a 35mm scan.

BINGO. If he's supporting Panalog, that bodes very, VERY well that he'll be handling a lot of other high end things I want to be able to do (Viper balanced LUT?). And all this with hardware acceleration on an 8 core Mac Pro with a good GPU? Bwahahahahhahaaa.....the POWER! Now, if he could just get secondaries in Colorista...

-mike

Labels: Adobe, After Effects, Apple, Avid, DIY, FCP, Final Cut, Genesis, NAB, NLE, plugin, post, software

SO...we now can buy an 8 core Mac as of today. GOOD.

Let's do some tea leaf reading, starting with the most likely and getting speculative from there:

1.) No other Mac Pro computers to be announced at NAB. This is pretty much a foregone conclusion - why roll out hardware 10 days before a Big Announcement that would change said hardware? They'd either release it now, or WAIT. Since they did roll it out now, it makes sense that they realized this wasn't super impressive, so they wanted the bitter taste of dissapointment out of everyone's mouth that had hoped for more before NAB.

2.) Since the hardware has been announced, it is likely that the software announcements will be BIG. If Apple felt they didn't have anything too special to get folks psyched up about, they would have held onto this "new hardware" card to play that Sunday. Note last year - no new FCP, just a preview of stuff that didn't ship for months (24p HDV support & better P2 import), so they decided to roll out the new Macbook Pros at NAB to give us something to be excited about. Since they've played the hardware card, they're confident the software will rock.

3.) Final Cut Studio 6 *, if it is to include improved HD-DVD and/or Blu-ray authoring, is less likely to ship soon because of these hardware announcements. "Buh-whaaaaaa?" I hear you say? Let me explain - if Apple were going to be ready to ship an HD-DVD or Blu-ray burning version of Final Cut Studio, they'd need to have a hardware option to burn such discs. This announcement includes no mention of such hardware. If Apple WERE going to do so, they'd probably have held the announcement for NAB, as 8 cores and Blu-ray or HD-DVD burning would, in my mind, be "big enough" news.

Therefore, since the next hardware upgrade cycle is likely to be in the August/September timeframe at soonest, perhaps Final Cut Studio 6 will ship around that time if it has that feature? I know that sounds odd, but consider:

Apple has more than once previewed software at NAB that didn't ship until September or October of that year - witness Motion and Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 (that added 24p HDV and better P2 support). The rumors are this is a BIG update, with significant new features and maybe a ground-up rewrite. That kind of effort takes TIME, and even though they've had since last spring (when the Universal Binary PPC/Intel version 5.1 shipped) to work on it, depending on how big a bite they took of New Tech Pie, they could still be busy. The causality is getting a little thin, but one could interpret this hardware announcement to mean that not only will the next Final Cut Studio ship later this year, but it will be bigger/better than the routine update some have expected. That said, if Apple's offerings at NAB are just routine updates (new formats supported, more RT stuff), a LOT of folks will be dissapointed...me included.

* (or whatever it is called, internally I refer to it as "Final Cut xXx")

It IS possible they'll announce optional Blu-ray or HD-DVD burners as a BTO option at NAB, but that would be splitting fine hairs for Apple - to announce new machines 10 days before, then announce new OPTIONS for that machine later, is possible but odd and confusing to customers, and would piss off a lot of folks buying 8 core Macs for the next 10 days. Since you can order and receive one before NAB, that just doesn't quite make sense for Apple to do. Better to hold back the announcement if that were the case to avoid the backlash.

4.) Since there's no new GPU options, that makes the chances of the rumored Final Cut Extreme less likely to be true. Since no new GPU capabilities, nothing to run that big thing on.

Devil's Advocate/Off Chance - the rumors of a Final Cut Extreme that requires additional hardware fits into this model - if it is going to be some badass GPU with additional capabilities, then it makes sense that there's no improved GPU options...YET. Or that it'll replace the existing GPU with something much better, so it didn't make sense to offer something yet. The backlash argument applies here too, though.

5.) IF Final Cut Studio (next) isn't going to ship for some months, that also lends credence to the possibility that it would rely, or certain features only work under the next version of OS X, 10.5 aka Leopard. I had previously thought Apple might require Leopard for the next Final Cut, but it would be unlike Apple to require a new OS for a new version - more likely is that some features would be realtime under Leopard on sufficiently fast machines, but would require non-realtime rendering on non-Leopard machines. Again, just a theory, and inconsistent with Apple's past behavior. Too much splitting of hairs on performance leads to customer confusion, and Apple is averse to that. No version of FCP has ever had features that worked under one OS and not on another. Personally, I expect OS X 10.4.x (probably 10.4.9) or Leopard to be required for the next Final Cut Studio, however.

WRAP-UP:

Apple would get major points for "Surprise!" if they rolled out new, additional hardware at NAB, but then they would suffer from backlash of those that bought this week. Plus, Apple tends to follow a pretty predictable hardware release schedule, and this completely wouldn't fit their past behavior.

All this does tend to cement my belief that we'll SEE Final Cut Studio version xXx at NAB, but it won't SHIP for some time (months) after NAB. And I'm 100% certain it won't be a free download like version 4.5 was on Day Of. At this rate, the only reason for me to upgrade to a Mac Pro is for Redcine....until Apple and/or Adobe and/or Red show me otherwise.

That said, if at all possible...DON'T buy until after the press event two Sundays from now and we know what's coming and can make a fully informed purchasing decision.

-mike

Labels: analysis, Apple, Blu-ray, FCP, Final Cut, Mac Pro, NAB

While the headline today was the introduction of an 8 core processor Mac Pro option (2xQuad Core Woodcrest 3.0 GHz processors), other good things happened online as well:

Apple 20" LCD dropped $100 to $599
Apple 23" LCD dropped $100 to $899
Apple 30" LCD dropped $200 to $1799

Stats/specs appear to be unchanged otherwise.

I got a report from a VAR that states that RAM and hard drive prices on BTO options have dropped as well, I'm doing a little research to confirm, I'll update this article with those stats when I get'em.

In general, you can still get a better deal buying RAM and additional hard drives third party and installing yourself (easy enough), but you don't get the one-stop-shopping & warranty of buying it all from Apple.

-mike

Labels: Apple

Apple - Mac Pro - Performance

Quickie as I gotta get out the door:

These are pretty much exactly the same as the existing Mac Pros, but with up to a pair of 3.0 GHz Quad Core processors.

Same graphics card options, same hard drive options, same EVERYTHING from my quick skim so far, just swapped out processors.

PERFORMANCE

Speed improvements for FCP don't look stunning...YET. UPDATE: Well, that's what I get for blogging in 3 minutes heading out the door for a meeting. The Quad Core 3.0 GHz Macs are 1.4x faster for FCP rendering than my Quad G5....but that is Quad Core TOTAL, not Quad core PER PROCESSOR - so I misread the stats - these stats appear to be for the OLDER machines (that have been shipping), they haven't released stats for the newer machines it would appear - but their phrasing is ambiguous and confusing.

BUT....that said, they DO have stats up for Maya 8.5 (the chart at top of article), and it is 2.6 times faster than my Quad Core G5. THAT is the kind of improvement that makes it worth upgrading a system for!

Photoshop CS2 stats are actually SLOWER than Quad G5 for many tests, since Photoshop CS3 (first Intel native version) stats haven't been released yet. CS3 stats will be very interesting to see, along with After Effects & Premiere Pro and H.264/MPEG-2 Adobe encoding options when the time comes.

PRICE

Dual 2.66 (with dual core processors, same as has been available) starts at $2500, dropping to 2.0 GHz shaves $300, bumping up to 3.0 GHz dual core adds $800, and the new option, the Quad Core 3.0 GHz is $4K.

AVAILABILITY

A BTO Octo-Mac the Apple Store claims will ship by April 9-11, a stock Octo-Mac 3.0 GHz config claims it'll ship by the same date - it would appear 8 cores is a BTO no matter what, and doesn't affect shipping dates if you customize from there. But shipping promptly - that's just 5-7 days from now for orders placed today.

Built the way I'd want it, an Octo-Mac would be over $5K before I put more goodies in it.

If I were building a new station, it'd cost about $7700 plus more RAM, RAID & AJA or BMD gear. Toys do add up quickly...

TAKEAWAY

Hmmph, not entirely impressed (YET):

-expensive for Quad Core processor option ($1500 more over Dual Core 2.66 processor option)
-not demonstrably cost justifying (YET) at this price point for what I want to use it for - I'll need to see the next Final Cut Studio running on it to say for sure...and we don't know yet when that'll ship. Maya stat shows promise though.
-no Blu-ray nor HD-DVD reader let alone burner
-no new graphics
-no new chassis
-no new nuthin' but the processors

The box IS fast for 8-core optimized apps, of which there are few as yet, Maya 8.5 being an excellent example. But I'd been hoping for Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD burners, better graphics card options, etc. Since Apple released this product now, 10 days before the pre-NAB press event, implies that they won't be changing the hardware for NAB - otherwise they would have just waited. By pre-announcing it, they get over the hump of "Hooray! Wait....that isn't so great...", and can just roll with the new software features as the Big Deal.

I'm going to wait for NAB to see what new software (that I'd use) can do on these. I'd been waiting for 2nd gen Mac Pros, this doesn't quite count in my book.

Color me not quite sufficiently impressed as yet - while the Maya stat is compelling, for me THE apps are going to be Adobe's CS3 suite (the video stuff and Photoshop), and Final Cut XXX, whatever they call the next version. Beyond that, everything else is gravy for my needs. Oh! And throw Redcine (Red's footage processing app) on that list as well of things I'm VERY interested to know how 4 vs 8 processors do.

My attitude may well change when I see Adobe CS3 and Final Cut Studio 6 run on this box, and we see stats for all 8 cores on some software. Oh! And for software that I care about and use, not some app not used for video tasks. One CANNOT linearly extrapolate "Well Maya 8.5 now runs 2.6 times faster on Octo-Macs than on a Quad G5, so Final Cut Studio wil RULE on these!" - it is NOT guaranteed to work that way. Some types of tasks break down for faster rendering than others, some do not. Even given that, it is up to the developers to take maximum advantage of the hardware available to them - for instance, my Quad 2.5 GHz G5 when running Compressor tops out around 220% CPU utilization, while my Dual 2.5 GHz G5 tops out around 175%. That means the Quad is running about 25% faster with twice as many processor cores available - not a hugely compelling gain. I'm HOPING that Apple will have done substantial processor optimization for the Intel chipsets with the new version, but we'll have to wait and see.

This also makes me think it'll be late summer or fall before we see a truly new, 2nd gen Mac Pro enclosure/motherboard at the SOONEST. Apple has been shipping the current enclosure, with minor modifications, for several years now. My Dual 2.0 GHz G5 looks pretty much the same at a casual glance as compared to one of these new Mac Pros, even though there are substantial internal differences.

I expect/hope to be able to revise my estimation WAY up as of two Sundays from now after the Apple press event at NAB (yes I'll be there). But for now, I'm not putting my own money down until I know what's up.

-mike

PS - my earlier "not so impressed" comments were based on a misreading of Apple's stats - I saw "Quad Core" in the Final Cut section and thought they meant Quad Core per processor, not per machine total. My bad.

UPDATE - just posted some Analysis & Tea Leaf reading on what this all means

Labels: Apple, Mac Pro

...should have it by Friday.

Woo hoo!

I ordered mine Day Zero, so I'd imagine plenty of others are on the way as well.

If you didn't read yesterday's piece on my thougths on AppleTV, you might want to do so, I've amended some further stuff on to it (another article, more concise analysis).

Labels: Apple, AppleTV

UPDATED TUESDAY - SEE BOTTOM

Apple TV may 'transform video industry' - analyst - iPod/iTunes - Macworld UK
"Hoopes writes: 'We think the Apple TV/iTunes combination could become as disruptive to legacy video purchase-and-consumption behaviour as the iPod/iTunes combination has been to the traditional music business model.'"

Article further predicts 25-70% AppleTV penetration amongst Mac users, citing a 150% penetration achieved by iPod (amongst NEW Mac buyers, perhaps?).

I disagree - lots of Mac owners I know are pretty "feh" about AppleTV, with a "why would I use that again?" attitude. A VCR records TV shows if they plan ahead, TiVO plans for you, and AppleTV's available video/movie offerings are extremely slim as compared to DVD, quality of HD-DVD and Blu-ray exceeed what AppleTV is even capable of, and Apple isn't offering any high-def content anyway. Current movie download systems are overly complex, and offer limited libraries as well. That said, I think the "media extender" concept of AppleTV is genius and will be key to its success long term.

The device is, "an ideal conduit for multiple services including DVR, paid-for content (such as video-on-demand), gaming, or advertising," he writes, adding, "we identify and value these business opportunities at $5.3-$11.4 billion."

I disagree - Apple would be loathe to channel advertising to its customers - or more likely, Steve Jobs would be. I just don't see it in their character to do that. DVR options - well no, there's no video/cable inputs unless Apple added one via a USB device. And if they did, they'd be cannibalizing sales of TV shows, which is one of AppleTV's unique advantages - the ability to purchase a show you missed after the fact without waiting months for the DVDs (like I'm going to download last night's Battlestar Galactica since I missed it, and see if their shark jumping performance of late persists). Gaming - has been ruled not likely recently, since the presumed AppleTV gaming code was recently found to mirror iPod code - just some lazy copy/paste behavior on Apple programmer's part. VOD - is sorta possible, but not in traditional "I want to watch right NOW" model - you'd have to download first then watch, unless significant software upgrades were made - the ability to connect directly to the iTunes Store, the ability to surf content with AppleTV not a computer, the ability for AppleTV to directly connect to store via Internet, the ability to progressive download and start watching like a web QT download does,and a MAJORLY HUGE infrastructure upgrade to Akamai or whatever to support live streaming. Otherwise, it is just buying a show like it works now.

Movie rentals are noted as possible, but I don't see that as likely - Apple has ALWAYS sold content, not rented it to date, and unlike DVDs, Apple would HAVE to be involved (and get a cut) in a rental model, which the studios may not be in a hurry to pursue, esp. with all their security concerns.

AppleInsider | Apple TV said to be worthy of overtaking both TiVo and Netflix - more on Apple from ThinkEquit's Jonathan Hoopes, who I don't think has done his homework very well:

"Apple TV can, in our opinion, be easily turned into a DVR with little or no hardware modification and a software upgrade,"

Oh really, Jonathan? And exactly how would that video signal be getting into the AppleTV? It has video outputs but no inputs, it has Ethernet and wireless ports as the only known data input model. There's a USB port Apple has been coy about, but it WOULD require a hardware update/purchase to get TiVO/DVR functionality going there.

While I DO expect Apple to do fairly well with this, especially compared to the other downloadable movie services, the value proposition as it stands now is weak compared to other video acquisition devices. Apple's library of available video content is now measurable in the hundreds, whereas DVD is who knows how high. Your local blockbuster has many thousands of titles, Netflix via mail has something like 60 or 70 THOUSAND titles available - if Apple is to compete successfully, they'll need a bigger library. That said, Apple's advantages of super simple UI, a good DRM that works across computers, set top boxes and portable devices is the best in the business, and a popular/usable/easy online store is a HUGE advantage in the business column. But as a consumer, the value proposition is still thin in other key areas - content and quality and price. You pay as much or more for the download as you would for the DVD, but you get LESS content with lower quality and no permanent archive if your computer/AppleTV hard drive dies (as they do). A DVD player costs a tiny fraction of what AppleTV does and offers tons more content, just not as easily (significant point). HD-DVD and Blu-ray offer MUCH better looking content at 30-100% more cost (at a minimum), and that's even if Apple had HD content available now, which they don't.

I'm supposed to get my AppleTV by later in the week, so we'll see what the experience is like. I've already bought an HDMI/toslink/optical switcher, so there's a plug ready and waiting to be plugged in right now.

I like the idea of AppleTV, and am buying one - half as much to review for indie content creators as to actually use myself - one of the first things I'm going to do is see about putting a MUCH bigger drive in there, say a 160 or 200. I already have a ton of my own MP3s/AAC files (something like 700-1000 CDs I've ripped over the years), and I want room for video content as well. While AppleTV can stream from other systems in the house, they have to be on and running iTunes for this to work AFAIK (based on the Shared Music/Shared Video mode in recent iTunes). So my wants? Presently about 100GB of music (ripped high quality), probably 20-30 GB of pictures, 20GB of assorted video content - that's a full 160 GB right there...so for now, the trick will be picking playlists & albums & movies that get cached on the device.

Surfing a LOT of content with the little bitty 6 button remote may well prove to be quite a challenge.

But long term, Apple is positioned fairly well if they can get HD content at all, and more content in general lined up. I'd saythey are definitely well positioned to be the leader in movie downloads, and long term MAY have a similar affect on the video market as they have in the music market. Keep in mind, however, that CDs still vastly outsell iTunes sales. I'll betcha next year's MWSF offers a version with a bigger hard drive, too, as an aside - more video content, damn well better be HD as an option by then too.

But what they DO have in the meantime is the nicest way to access your iTunes library remotely, and that is what I think will be the biggest short term selling point. My video fanatic buddies are "feh" on the video quality (except for the benefit of downloadable TV shows), but the idea of surfing their entire iTunes music collection from the couch, with the bonus value of watching pictures and downloaded movies as well. But in the short term, music & missed TV shows is the biggest value proposition for the device.

-cynical mike, signing off

PS -SUMMARY what I MEANT to say rambling through all this - long term AppleTV will have a better value proposition than it does today. Key will be making more content available, and HD content in particular. For now, however, the value proposition is somewhat limited when compared to other means of getting video not off live TV onto your TV/HDTV. DVR, rental & advertising possibilties are I think incorrect/overrated/unlikely in the near future without substantial changes in hardware, software, and the deals that have been cut.

TUESDAY UPDATE
My expectations are more in line with this:

MacNN | Analyst: Apple TV to see slow start
"'As was the case in the early days of the iPod, Apple resellers in our checks expect Apple TV will need to be more fully understood by consumers before it turns into a major contributor,' said Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gene Munster."

He continues:

"...expect Apple TV will have a minor impact on business in the near term (the next 1-2 quarters), with Apple faithful buying in an initial surge and others spending some additional time figuring out what Apple TV is."

My analysis: AppleTV offers insufficient value proposition for most consumers as it presently stands. While the idea of using your EDTV or HDTV as a way to show your digital pictures to guests is nice, it isn't a reason to buy it. Being able to watch the missed episodes of Lost, Battlestar Galactica, or whatever your personal preferences are on your big TV is nice, but not $300 nice. A pleasant interface to your iTunes library is nice, but not $300 nice on its own. Except for the luxury crowd, I don't think it offers enough value....yet. Get us HD movies, get us MORE movies in general, and we're getting somewhere. For those who want to watch on computer, on TV, on portable (iPod video), it is a big step forward, but that is a MINORITY subset of the market right now.

Portability has its advantages though - I'm writing this sitting in line for Grindhouse tix for the Austin premiere, Tarantino & Rodriguez expected to be there next Wednesday. Yee-haw! Blow sh*t up. ;p

-mike

Yet-another-Tuesday-update:

Ars checks in - On the eve of the Apple TV

....and has a nice list of AppleTV's shortcomings, and Wired gets in on the action too:

WIRED Blogs: Gadget Lab: "5 Reasons Why Apple TV Rules, 5 Reasons Why it Sucks"

Tuesday night update:
Macworld: First Look: Picking an HDTV for your Apple TV covers some basics, but misses what I thought would be the point of the article - that since the max res of AppleTV is 1280x720, if AppleTV is your primary high res source (which would imply you were converting your own HD material, since Apple sells no HD content), 1368x768 is more preferable than 1024x768, and true 1080p is overkill.

MacNN | WSJ reviews AppleTV: "simple and elegant"

Apple updated their AppleTV tech specs page with more codec details:

Video formats supported
H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): Up to 5 Mbps, Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps)
iTunes Store purchased video: 320 by 240 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels
MPEG-4: Up to 3 Mbps, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps)
Audio formats supported
AAC (16 to 320 Kbps); protected AAC (from iTunes Store); MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps); MP3 VBR; Apple Lossless; AIFF; WAV
Photos formats supported
JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG

Labels: Apple, AppleTV

Apple came out with iTunes 7.1 and QuickTime 7.1.5 yesterday which I skipped blogging (trying to cut back on my Habit, ya know) since I didn't see anything particularly HD worthy in there.

BUT...iTunes 7.1 is the basis for support or AppleTV, and among other things includes support for full screen coverflow, which others have noted makes you wish you had more album art filled in. iTunes has a lookup & find & install cover art feature, but it isn't perfect, and requires that you have ripped with iTunes in the first place I think. There's also some third party apps that will look elsewhere, such as on Amazon.com for artwork. In any case, it is the version to work with AppleTV.

Apple also released QuickTime 7.1.5, which I'm already seeing some complaints about online, that overall system user interface response time is waaaaaay down - that their machines are getting super slow, so be careful. My Dual 2.0 G5 seems to have been thusly afflicted, but my Macbook seems to be doing OK - so maybe it is an Intel Mac thing? Dunno.

In any case, the big blog worthy news is this - QuickTime 7.1.5 includes presets to output to AppleTV!

Doing some quick tests, here's what I learned:

Feeding it a 720p24 DVCPRO HD clip (I used the bee and flower clip from the SF Bay Area sampler that comes with FCP), I got a 1280x720 @ 23.98 fps as I expected - this is the maximum file size and frame rate AppleTV can handle, according to Apple's own specs. The data rate is a hair over 5 megabits, so that ought to look prety nice, and it does on playback. I'll route it to my 60" 1080p HDTV (and YES I like writing that phrase) to play back from my Quad G5 and see how it looks.

So what of 1080i60 originated footage?

I opened up a shot from the Glacier Bay footage (also from the FCP Sampler stuff), and exported it to the AppleTV preset - I got a 960x540 30 fps movie - half res for 1080i. Datarate was about 4.1 megabits/sec. And obviously it is getting deinterlaced on the way. As with the movie studios, H.264 has proven to be tricky to handle interlaced footage, and does best with progressive images. So AppleTV appears to (internally, at least) handle only progressive frames, and in the case of 1080i originated footage, halves the resolution and deinterlaces it.

So that's interesting - if these presets are an indication of the hardware's capapbilities (and they damn well ought to be), then broadcast material that was shot interlaced (60i) or progressive (60p or 30p) will have to be cut in size down to 960x540. Filmed 24p material will have a max frame size of 1280x720 - that'll be as good as the hardware can handle. And for most HDTV sets with a native resolution of 1368x768, that'll be fine. For true 1080p sets, it is underresolved as compared to what the screen could display. This is in line with what Apple did with their AAC iTunes stuff - it is decent but not optimal specs.

I'll have a report later once I convert some more material, such as that intentionally tricky to compress well DCI StEM (Standard Evaluation Material) footage...

-mike

PS- thanks to Greg Boston for giving me the head's up on this one. If you find cool stuff like this, always feel free to let me know!

Labels: Apple, AppleTV

Cineform has finally released a public beta of their Cineform Intermediate codec for OS X and Final Cut Pro.

The big deal for Cineform was Mac's migration to the Intel platform, so that the software port was easier and they wouldn't have to ditch a ton of code optimization for the Intel platform.

So now they have a QuickTime codec for Macs, albeit only for Intel Macs. It works with Final Cut Pro, and will eventually work with Adobe's Premiere Pro when it comes back to Mac later this year (also Intel only).

Cineform Intermediate is a 10 bit, full raster (full 1920 wide, not like DVCPRO HD's 1280 or HDV's 1440 pixels wide for a 1080i or 1080p signal), and uses wavelet based encoding - much more efficient than the DCT used in DV, JPEG, DVCPRO HD, HDV, etc.

The codec is cross platform (write on PC read on Mac and vice versa), but Intel Mac only, and requires Tiger (OS X 10.4.x). It can read and write files up to 2K (2048x2048) and is 4:2:2 color sampling.

Over time, they plan on adding Cineform RAW (for RAW workflows like SI-2K and Red One), HD-SDI and HDMI interface support, etc. So I take it that with this build, it won't be possible to capture and transcode on the fly with an AJA or BMD card.

This public beta is unrestricted and will work for a couple of months (into May) or more as they work at the bugs and add features to it.

More info at Cineform.com.

This is good news - the existing crop of codec choices is rather limiting. This is a great first step, but only a first step. To really work in a production environment in FCP, they'll need support and help from Blackmagic and AJA so that you can capture directly to this format (otherwise a lengthy transcode is required after acquiring uncompressed, for instance), as well as playout support so that it'll show up through an AJA or BMD card on your video monitor (as oppposed to computer monitor). Ultimately it would be great if Apple would support it in their RT (realtime) architecture, but I could see barriers to that, starting with Apple's "not invented here" penchant when it comes to third party codecs. Cineform knows this and is actively pursuing those relationships to make all this happen.

I haven't downloaded/installed it yet, but I would expect that it would install and work in Final Cut Pro, and hopefully play in realtime on a decently fast machine. I'd expect a still (park on the timeline) to possibly play out through an AJA or BMD card, but I wouldn't expect full speed video to play out, and you definitely won't get real time anything other than playback - no dissolves, color correction, etc. - it'll all have to render. But that is all supposition, I haven't tested it yet myself.

Adobe, however, plays nice with these guys, and they already have deep tie-ins to the code for Premiere Pro, so that is where I expect this codec to blossom on the Mac platform.

Plus, it'll be a good choice for a compressed working or intermediate codec for those lacking the array speed and capacity to handle high res uncompressed source.

-mike

Labels: Apple, Cineform, FCP, post

Funny how some prayers go answered seemingly forever (list too long to mention), but others get prompt responses - not a week after I discovered button playback problems with my new Toshiba HD-DVD player when I tried to make high def red laser discs with DVD Studio Pro, there MAY be an answer - Apple just released DVD Studio Pro 4.1.2.

From Software Update:

DVD Studio Pro 4.1.2 provides important bug fixes and addresses compatibility issues with DVD Studio Pro 4.1 HD DVD projects and Toshiba HD DVD players.

DVD Studio Pro 4.1.2 also updates the Disc Description Protocol (DDP) 2.1 to DDP 3.0 and the Cutting Master Format (CMF) 1.0 to CMF 2.0, which is required for HD DVD replication.

This update is recommended for all DVD Studio Pro 4.1 users.


...which is nice but inconclusive. From the online PDF of updates, there's LOTS more info, including:

-fixes for still image processing (not broked any mo')
-Compressor compressed stuff will seamlessly play one clip to the next now, wouldn't before
-BAD NEWS:

DVD Studio Pro Does Not Support All HDV Formats
The following HDV formats are not supported by DVD Studio Pro:
720p24
720p25
1080p24
1080p25

You can convert these to supported HDV formats (720p30, 720p60, 720p50, 1080i60, and 1080i50) for your HD projects using Compressor.

...which is a damn shame, since I'd want to use those. Have to convert'em.

-DLT drives now work right on Intel Macs (WOW, it took them this long to fix that!?!?)
-use Build & Format to fix previously broken setups (like mine)
-HD Projects Burned to Red Laser Discs Now Work More Reliably - it doesn't say they work right, but at least that's an improvement!
-some HD-DVD players blow their lunch when jumping from interlaced to progressive footage, so beware
-uh oh - Some HD DVD players incorrectly position button highlights when they are placed over
720p or 1440i backgrounds. Button highlights placed over 480i, 480p, and 1080i backgrounds are correctly positioned.
-AC-3 issues improved, esp. with Intel Macs
-Still Menus from Intel Macs now better
-and more, read it yourself..

I'll update or link to this when I get a chance to test...

UPDATE - Woo hoo, H.264 works! It appears to be playing in real time, which it did NOT before. There's a brief blackout pause at first, then it works, and audio plays as well. I need to go make a new test disc that'll check for lipsync. Menus are acting funny but at least WORKING AT ALL which is an improvement over before. 15 megabit H.264 720p looks GOOD, but I'm testing from the DCI StEM footage - scanned film, so a VERY clean source to work from.

I'll make a new test disc and update perhaps over the weekend...but this is a BIG improvement!

FINALLY - I can make red laser DVDs that play in my HD-DVD player (and Apple's latest DVD Player application), and now I have an appropriate screen and playback device to test and evaluate...so HD For Indies will be able to do some very salient research...

-mike

Labels: Apple, Final Cut, HD-DVD, post

AppleInsider | Apple's iTunes may soon become favorite among indie studios

Just one, but it is a foot in the door, a crack in the facade, insert favorite metaphor here.

I'm busy today, actually doing non-blog work, imagine that...

From the Variety source article
Variety.com - ITunes is all 'That' to indie producers
ITunes has cracked open to independent video producers for the first time.Apple's digital content store on Tuesday started selling 'That,' a snowboarding action pic made for DVD by Forum Snowboards. Move reps the first time iTunes has sold video content that didn't come from an established network, studio or distributor.Though the Mac maker wouldn't comment on future plans, the deal with Forum indicates iTunes will selectively sell video outside of its high-profile deals with companies like Disney, NBC and Lionsgate. (Anyone can distribute video podcasts for free on iTunes.)Given iTunes' dominance in the nascent digital download market, that's sure to generate hordes of interest among independent film producers in all genres who don't have a distributor.


-mike

Labels: Apple, iTunes, online content service, online distribution, online video

DV - Features - Build Your Own HD Workstation

Frequent readers may recall I mentioned some weeks ago I was busy finishing up a magazine article - well, it's gone live (link above).

It's all kinds of goodness on how to build your own HD uncompressed workstation, whether you're starving artist or modestly budgeted facility, there's an option there for you (including a "best bang for the buck" moviemaker's config.

There are illustrations of the configs and everything, breaking it all down by category:
-the box (workstation)
-RAM
-graphics cards
-Computer monitors
-Storage
-HD-SDI cards
-video monitors

UPDATE - there's a set of typos on the storage section that can be misleading - it says Mbps (megabits per second) instead of MBps (megaBYTES per second, an eightfold difference). It's being fixed in the online and PDF versions...

More articles to follow in future months...

-mike

PS - surfing around the front page, there are also articles on:

-DV - Features - First Look: Photoshop CS3 Public Beta - hits some of the video-specific functionalities in the beta.

-DV - Features - RAID! - a deeper look at RAID levels, but I have one quibble - RAID 50 is RAID 5's striped together, not RAID 0's in a RAID 5.

-DV - Columns - Exploring The Panasonic HVX200 - hihgly respected uber-geek Adam Wilt gets nitty gritty wit the HVX200

-DV - Columns - The Big Picture for the Small Screen: Trends to Watch an interesting overview I generally agree with, but I take notable exception that Final Touch is ready for freelancers (without considerable investment/sacrifice)

-there's more, so surf around over there. They don't have an RSS feed (hint hint guys!) so you have to go dig around manually

Labels: Apple, post

AppleInsider is running this article that includes a video that some folks created that sniffs out a few more details on iPhone's capabilities - ringtone management, calendar event creation, etc.

Labels: Apple, iPhone

Leopard 9A343 Gallery | 19.jpg

They DO pay attention! This is a screen grab from an unreleased build of Leopard - note "HD 709" that is the native high defintion video colorspace - this bodes well that Apple is paying attention to our needs...

Labels: Apple, OS X, Production

Just got this email from Apple:

To Our Valued Apple Customer:


Thank you for ordering the new Apple TV, an easy to use and fun way to
wirelessly play all your favorite iTunes content from your Mac or PC on your
widescreen TV.

Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we
now expect to begin shipments in mid-March, not in February as originally
anticipated.

You may check the status of your order any time by visiting our online order
status website at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus.

A shipment notification, with tracking information, will be emailed to you as
soon as your order is shipped. There is no need to contact us unless you
choose to change or cancel your order.

We appreciate your business and thank you for shopping at the Apple Store!

Sincerely,
The Apple Store Team


...which fits into rumors and prior behavior - Apple announces Neat New Product at MWSF, says it'll ship in a month or two, then a delay occurs.

I've been out of pocket today - had a meeting this morning, went for a run, got the text message that SXSW Music wristbands were available and waited in line for 2 1/2 hours for my out of town friends to get their wristbands (see what a good friend I am? SEE???). The line wrapped around a city block, probably 700 or 800 people in front of me when I got there. Then walked back to where I'd parked my car blocks away and dropped in on my old boss and friend, Mark Rolston, creative director at frogdesign (my old employer). Turns out he's been busy working on his home theater setup too at the same time I had, putting in a 1080p projector and a drop down silver screen. Seems 1080p is on a lot of people's brains. He's always had a killer setup, buying a70+ inch HDTV set many many years ago when that was direly expensive. He now has a Xbox360 w/HD-DVD option and PS3 to play back all high def media. According to his research, the PS3 is both the cheapest and best Blu-ray player - interesting! I'd expected it to be hampered in some fashion, but apparently not.

As for my own home setup, I finally got almost everything hooked up, took 4 runs to the to-be-unnamed electronics shop to FINALLY get the right combo of crimper, stripper, cable and BNC ends to finish up some wiring to get the studio all talking to itself and to the living room at the same time, but it is 90% of the way there (one box can only do single not dual link until I make some more cables.)

All stories mentioned last week are still pending, have some interesting paying workflow consulting to do, and a review to finish as well for an upcoming magazine article.

-mike

Labels: Apple, AppleTV, HDTV

Daring Fireball: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso's Response to Steve Jobs's 'Thoughts on Music'

This one's fun - I love this guy...

Labels: Apple

Speed Comparison between 802.11g and 802.11n

Review and tests on speed of the new new Apple wireless. It IS much faster - a one gigabyte file copied about 4 1/2 times faster...IF you're using a 802.11n Mac (Core2Duo or newer Mac Pros).

Labels: Apple

Then there's this I, Cringely article which claims the hard drive will be used as part of an Apple-only P2P network for distributing content.

Nope - it says on Apple's Apple TV Sync page: " Pair Apple TV with your computer and your TV shows, movies, music, podcasts, and photos sync automatically." - that 40GB is for caching content. What if I have more than 40GB of content, as i do? Probably pick playlists and albums to sync and have to stream the rest.

He also claims Mac Mini, AppleTV, and new Airport Base Station are stackable.

Nope - not only are they different sizes, but Apple goes to pains to stress that Minis shouldn't be stacked, they breathe top to bottom to dissipate heat. Apple just likes consistent design is all.

I like Cringely, we had a great banter some time ago (well before the AppleTV was announced) predicting such a device - I called it the Airport Express A/V at the time in the summer of 2005.

But he's off base here - he needs to do his homework.

Will Apple do a P2P play? They'd only do it if proprietary and not let you share other file types. Would it make sense the way Cringely suggests? I dunno - P2P only works well as it scales up, and I personally don't like the idea of P2P running sucking up my bandwidth.

What we DID agree on is that Apple would have high def downloads at some point, and since the tech specs call for up to 720p24 playback, that's a high def movie:

Apple - Apple TV - Tech Specs: "Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile"

...it is just a matter of when.

At that point, AppleTV is still less expensive than HD-DVD and Blu-ray players, but with a tiny library, no DVD playback capabilities, and other hindrances. When AppleTV is about $150 then it gets more interesting, and if they came out with a 1080p24 or 1080i60 decoding capable unit next year with an HD-DVD or Blu-ray or other optical drive for under $500, that'd be even better.

-mike

Labels: Apple, online distribution, original

Apple - Support - Downloads - Final Cut Pro 5.1.3

from the PDF:

Render File Compatibility
Render files created on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macintosh computers now work properly on either type of computer.

Keyboard Layout Issues Resolved
Final Cut Pro 5.1.3 adds several commands to the default keyboard layout that were missing in the previous version.

Issues with Cross Dissolves in Nested Sequences Resolved
Final Cut Pro 5.1.3 resolves cases in which cross dissolves did not work as expected in nested sequences containing still images with adjusted motion parameters.


That's all they say...

UPDATE:

Colorista has a UI problem that makes it inoperable, Wes of Automatic Duck says there are problems -Duck Support Blog has details on that.

My advice - hold off a few days in general. If the above listed fixes a mission critical problem, update but be prepared to go back to earlier version (disk image using Super Duper of your boot drive). If you use Colorista or Automatic Duck, DEFINITELY do not upgrade until there are updated, proven to to work versions.

As always, careful jumping on the upgrade train!

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, NLE, post, software

We've been hearing rumors about Octo Mac Pros (twin quad core processors) for some time and many (myself included) hoped to see than at MWSF but it didn't happen.

Yesterday's introduction of dual and quad link 4Gbit fibre channel cards hints at upcoming 4Gbit RAIDs.

The next Radeon card is rumored to be the high end choice for the next Mac Pro:

AppleInsider | ATI Radeon X2800XT with CrossFire rumored for Apple's next Mac Pro

So: 8 processor Macs connected to 4Gbit RAIDs with CrossFire graphics cards...gonna be nice!

But WHEN?!

From the AppleInsider article, Apple has ...reportedly deferred on a release until a time closer to a roll-out of Adobe's Intel-native Creative Suite 3.0 software bundle.

I held off on first gen Mac Pros waiting for 8 processors. I'm ready, Apple, are you?

-mike

Labels: Apple, future, hardware, original, post

Apple updates Fibre Channel Utility - Mac - Macworld UK: "For Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.4.7, you will need Fibre Channel Utility 2.0, which will not configure the Apple Dual- and Quad-Channel 4Gb Fibre Channel Card" - since when did Apple have dual and quad channel 4Gb fibre channel cards?

The only Apple fibre channel card I'm aware of is the dual link 2Gbit model that Apple sells intended for use with the 2Gbit XServe RAID.

Checking Apple's online store, why yes, there are 4Gbit cards available! I think I must have missed when this happened - perhaps while I was at Sundance?

From the Apple Online Store you can configure a Mac Pro with 2 or 4 link 4GBit cards:

Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
This card runs at full bandwidth in a four-lane or eight-lane PCI Express slot.

Quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
This card runs at full bandwidth in an eight-lane PCI Express slot.

A quad-channel card is ideal if your computer is slot-constrained or if you want to connect two Xserve RAIDs to a single host computer without the expense or complexity of connecting through a Fibre Channel switch. Some hosts can utilize two quad-channel cards and support up to four Xserve RAIDs.

Each card ships with two or four 2.9-meter 4Gb Active Copper Fibre Channel SFP to SFP (small form factor pluggable) interconnect cables. The cables are used to connect to the SFP port on Xserve RAID with SFP connectors.

Dual channel card is $600, quad channel is $1000.

But the XServe RAID is still 2Gbit - this supports the LONG floating rumors of an improved RAID, with up to perhaps 16 SATA drives and 4GBit fibre connections.

When might we see it? With the Octo Mac Pro rollout? Or not until NAB?

This promises to be a bang-up year for Apple at NAB.

-mike

Labels: Apple, post, software, workflow

UPDATED: SEE BOTTOM - while I've updated the article through the day yesterday, I just added a whole new chunk to the bottom with some "day 2" thoughts

Apple - Thoughts on Music:

Steve Jobs made an unusual move today, defending the proprietary DRM used in iTunes, and in offering alternatives pretty much taking a slap (how hard the slap you decide) to the face of the Big Four music labels. Pardon me for running long on this, it includes the entirely of Steve's screed (his in italics, my commentary in plain text), but for journalistic analysis, and the fact that I can run as long as I want on the blog, Let Us Dissect, tweezers and scalpel in hand:

With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.

OK, a very interesting opening proposition. I like that Steve is directly addressing an issue....that has been floating around for years. Glad it is finally being addressed in this clear and public method.

To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.

YES. This is often overlooked, and I am oh-so-annoyed whenever iPod opponents say "you can't play other music on the iPod!" Yes. Yes you can. It is called an MP3 file, they play anywhere, you should look into it sometime (and AAC is good too). I believe they aren't too difficult to come by or convert to, those shiny plastic discs the cavepeople still buy seem to be able to automagically be converted. iTunes can even be set to automatically convert, in minutes, any CD inserted to one of those formats as well, without so much as a single keypress.

The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

Touché, Steve, I do so heartily agree with the validity of this statement - it is definitely the studios that are impinging upon you to slap a lock on the files so they can't be bandied about. However, this engenders one other tangential benefit we'll get back to...

Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.

Definitely a victory in dealing with the labels. However, another way of saying the first part is: "We have the least sucky deal out there." Also interesting to note the deadline/timeline to fix any leaks out there - the Hymn project breaks Apple's DRM every once in a while, and Apple makes changes to fix it again. The old measure, counter measure, counter counter measure struggle continues ever onward. I hadn't heard this detail before (had anyone else?), so it keeps Apple on their toes, honoring their obligation to keep FairPlay legitimately "tight" and leak free.

To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader’s computer or portable music device. To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation.

All standard stuff, plus I love how Steve is able to get away using words like "secrets" in otherwise technical discussions. "Automagically" regretably does not make an appearance in this conversation.

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Apple’s DRM system is called FairPlay. While we have had a few breaches in FairPlay, we have been able to successfully repair them through updating the iTunes store software, the iTunes jukebox software and software in the iPods themselves. So far we have met our commitments to the music companies to protect their music, and we have given users the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music.

Kudos to Steve for fessing up and being very straightforward about the history of all this.

With this background, let’s now explore three different alternatives for the future.

The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music. It is a very competitive market, with major global companies making large investments to develop new music players and online music stores. Apple, Microsoft and Sony all compete with proprietary systems. Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods. This is the current state of affairs in the industry, and customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.

"Well served" is a highly subjective statement. This is the first time I'd say we are straying from the clearly and demonstrably provable so far.

Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store. Is this true? Let’s look at the data for iPods and the iTunes store – they are the industry’s most popular products and we have accurate data for them. Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

...and thus Steve starts to clearly and demonstrably Stray From The Path of Clarity. The KEY issue here is not whether there are OPTIONS to acquire one's music, the point that we looked to see addressed was the fact that music purchased via Apple's iTunes Store is locked to playing on iPods. Thus, The Whinging Begins.

While it is possible to burn a CD from purchased iTunes content and then re-rip that to a non-DRMed format like AAC or MP3, there is a recompression loss. Want to play your purchased content on anything other than an iPod? You have to do some work and degrade the audio quality (and the quality of this purchased content is a whoooole other bag of gripes article).

I feel Steve is sidestepping the core issue here - music purchased from iTunes Store only plays on iPods, not Zunes or Creatives or anything else. Period. The fact that music is acquirable elsewhere is good, nice, and...extraneous to the point that led to this discussion in the first place.

However, this is a good and clear case as to what the reality of the iPod world is like - you buy some content, but you rip (or, ahem, "acquire") MP3s elsewhere for the majority of your content. This "97% from elsewhere" makes for an excellent defense against any accusations of attempted monopoly against Apple.

The unexplored question is this - of that 97%, how much of it was legally obtained, on average? Beyond that, I'd be curious to know, on average, what percentage of that iPod's 97% of remaining content:

1.) Was ripped from iPod owner's own CDs
2.) what percentage of those CDs are still in owner's possession
3.) what percentage came from ripping friends' CDs
4.) what percentage of MP3s/etc. came as digital files from Internet P2P setups, or from friends' hard drives, etc. - Ripping Parties, or "Distributed/Remote Backup Events" aren't exactly uncommon these days

Think about your own music collection - how much of it is either bought from iTunes or ripped from CDs you still presently own? More importantly, how much is NOT from one of those two categories?

The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. And Apple might benefit by charging a small licensing fee for its FairPlay DRM. However, when we look a bit deeper, problems begin to emerge. The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute. Such leaks can rapidly result in software programs available as free downloads on the Internet which will disable the DRM protection so that formerly protected songs can be played on unauthorized players.

An equally serious problem is how to quickly repair the damage caused by such a leak. A successful repair will likely involve enhancing the music store software, the music jukebox software, and the software in the players with new secrets, then transferring this updated software into the tens (or hundreds) of millions of Macs, Windows PCs and players already in use. This must all be done quickly and in a very coordinated way. Such an undertaking is very difficult when just one company controls all of the pieces. It is near impossible if multiple companies control separate pieces of the puzzle, and all of them must quickly act in concert to repair the damage from a leak.

Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies. Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players.

Steve definitely has a valid point that it'd be tough to force downstream sub-licensees to update quickly, and an even stronger point about keeping secrets * . Apple seems to keep secrets better than just about anybody in the high tech and entertainment industries, even though they are paid a vastly disproportionately high level of attention by those industries.

* (Witness the entire DeCSS scenario, all because a single DVD player manufacturer failed to properly encrypt The One Key - cat got out of the bag, never to return)

BUT...Steve does kind of forget to mention one other factor here - that by keeping it a closed economy, it guarantees that the songs you buy on iTunes ONLY work on iPods. And if you look at Apple's fiscal numbers, it is the iPods that are the source of profits, not the iTunes Store. It is a bit like a reverse razors and blades model - Apple wants you to buy pricey iPods (razors) so you can then buy fairly cheap, low margin songs (blades). The two drive each other synergistically, but the bottom line is, the iTunes Store was created to sell more iPods, because that's where the money is.

By omitting this factor, Steve diminishes the credibility of his point. A line about "Yes, I do have to admit this does steer folks towards buying iPods, but we do strongly feel, and the market stats back us up, that we have the most popular and successful music player out there." Something like that would keep him on the Straight and True. Skipping that statement makes my BS-O-Meter needle start to twitch.

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Hmm. Sounds interesting. And it makes sense - just use non-DRMed AAC, or even MP3s (which aren't as efficient, but open standards never are, sigh....)

Do go on...

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

While technically accurate, this argument isn't quite fair. To stop casual consumer piracy, you only need to make it obnoxious enough that most folks won't bother with it. To stop P2P piracy is...virtually impossible. CDs were invented at a time when 650 MB seemed an enormous amount of data, vastly beyond what any consumer would ever dream of working with. I recall working for a large international industrial design/interactive design shop, with 20+ people in our office, and only at ONE station was there a big enough hard drive to routinely burn CD images for client projects. My first hard drive was 600MB (smaller than a CD) and cost $1500. The labels had no idea how quickly storage would get big and cheap, and got burned, and HARD, by a cousin of Moore's Law. The studios saw that happen and decided to put DRM on their 5 inch plastic media discs, DVDs. And that didn't last long, as DeCSS hit the scene and it became cake to pick the DRM locks - because there was only one key in the universe, and once it was out, it was OUT. Prepping for the next round of discs, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, even more stringent DRM was applied...and it too was promptly broken.

So:

1.) DRM will always, Always, ALWAYS be broken.

2.) If no DRM, casual copying will be pretty rampant - witness CDs, either straight out duped, or ripped and the files shared.

3.) If stringent DRM, casual copying will be limited (with varying degrees of success), but P2P copying, it is safe to say, will never be curtailed - DRM is trying to keep you from getting at content you are going to, that they want you to, that you paid to, see - so it HAS to be decoded at some point, and therein lies the hole to be breached or exploited. It only takes one kid in Norway (or Kansas, or wherever) to get around DRM on ONE copy of the work in question, and if he has broadband and P2P, the world will have it within hours. Such Is Life.

In any case, the unfair part is this: labels HAVE to sell CDs - it is the ubiquitous, wide installed base, industry standard format for distribution. Consumers haven't taken to the proposed next generation audio formats for higher quality audio - DVD-A and whatsitcalled (see? If I can't think of it offhand, what are the chances it'll be successful?).

So the labels sell CDs because frankly, they have no other choice. They HOPE, they'd LOVE, to migrate to a more secure distribution format such as DRMed digital downloads, but it takes time to shift, and frankly, consumers need to see a benefit. The convenience of "gimme now" is working, with over 2B iTunes tracks sold, although there are the hassles of backups, incompatibilities, etc.

Another way of saying it? The studios are trapped selling CDs, which get copied rampantly, and they hate it, and want out of that game - so DRM it is for ANY new form of distribution.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

...backing up my point just made about no choice but to sell CDs...

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system?

It makes them feel better? A little bit less robbed? Knowing that stuff they sell has a lower chance of being ripped off, stolen, having benefit derived for which they receive no recompense?

There appear to be none.

Uhh..see above.

If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music.

Clearly, and this entire argument is even moreso the case in the downloadable video market right now (more on that shortly). Witness the failure, or limited success, of many of the other music download stores out there. Apple, to their credit, does an excellent job of understanding the importance of ease-of-use, good interfaces, and as the owner of the entire soup-to-nuts process, can craft an integrated, well functioning whole...which has largely NOT been the case for other online music stores as far as I can tell. If you don't buy your music from iTunes, you're buying it from, uh...the fact that I have to pause more than a second typing to think of viable alternatives kind of proves my own point (at least to me, Apple fan that I am).

If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

OK, I'd put that on the map as a possibility.

Note the equation of his sentence is conditional on this, emphasis mine: "the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies."

That is a bit like saying

"If A might be equal to B and we know B=C, then A could only be as good as C!"

If that doesn't make sense or make my point strongly enough, how about this:

"If a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass a-hoppin'."

Steve plants a big "might be", then if you assume that is true, THEN makes a huge "can only be" leap. Shady math.

The math probably doesn't work for non-DRMed content right now anyway since downloads are such a tiny fraction of current incomes, CDs still sell well (if not as well as they used to), and it would be a tremendous hit for the industry to try to swing the majority of purchasers to online, plus the chaos to their distribution partners and the political chaos that would engender. Blah blah blah, you (hopefully) see where I'm going with that. The labels want to shift to a more secure format - DVD-A and CD-whatsit didn't take with the buying public, so downloads are the next attempt to shift to a secure format.

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries.

YES. Diverging politically for a moment, the countries that don't tolerate invasions of privacy to the level that the US does (atrociously) have a low tolerance for this kind of bull. They see BS, they call it BS and tend to not say "That BS is industry standard, so step in it and don't complain." Kudos to my overseas brothas and sistahs. Keep the faith.

Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

Nice job of saying "Please aim your weapons at those guys not me, I only work with them." But he DOES have a point.

It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that the labels go non-DRM with their content. Apple, as I stated, makes their money off the iPods, not the music. Yeah, they do make some profit margin off the music, but it ain't much, and it certainly is not (presently) their primary source of income. Note you see iTunes+iPod commercials, not just iTunes commercials.

This is a bit like Ford asking Shell to give discounts gasoline, stating "It'd be good for the economy." * yeah, well, Ford makes out like a bandit from this, but Shell carries all the burden and risks. It is entirely valid to make this request, but it isn't as "Hey buddy buddy!" and "It's all good, brother!" as it might appear on the surface.

(* - Robogeek points out in the comments that this isn't a truly valid analogy, because unlike Apple, Ford doesn't sell cars AND gas. But imagine if Ford sold SOME gas, this'd be closer to the situation...maybe if they sold "for Ford only" gas debit cards....or something or other...mumble mumble...)

It IS good PR for Apple to make this request - it makes them look like they're on Our Side (and I think they are on this issue). However, note they've waited until now to go public with the issue - if Apple's market share for digital music players were not as strong, I don't think we'd have seen these statements made. Apple is now firmly entrenched enough as a market leader that it poses little risk for them to suggest getting rid of DRM. If they get it, they'll still sell plenty of iPods, it isn't as if there are major competitors to them. iTunes, even ignoring the whole Store end of it, is the best music organizer/player I'm aware of on the market. And it is free to boot - so Apple's position there is pretty safe. But I think the major labels are unlikely to do as Steve suggests, so even that risk is ameliorated - not much skin off their back in the unlikely event the labels do acquiesce, so a win/win to suggest this plan of action.

And if the Big Four DID sell un-DRM'd downloads, they'd be even easier to distribute and share - the already marginal barriers to entry (difficulty/effort) to file sharing, be it P2P or person to person, would be lifted - "Hey, I got this file, let me email it to you!" or even easier, imagine being on iChat/Yahoo/Messenger: "Hey man, got the new David Byrne music, here it comes, click on "Accept file" and its yours." If your friend asked, would you NOT hand it over?

So while I'm no fan of the Big Four, and they do utterly hoserate a lot of their clients, not to mention the buying public in myriad ways, I can't say I entirely defend Steve's memo here.

It isn't that Steve's comments are inaccurate, just incomplete.

In the end, if the Big Four did open wide and let it all go out unDRMed, I think the net result would be a slight increase in people's willingness to buy music if they could use it freely, but a LOT more sharing would go on. And in the end, Apple wouldn't care too much about that, becuase it would probably mean more iPods to be sold.

And in the end, that is what Apple really cares about.

-mike

OH - all that being said, proprietary, device limiting DRM needs to go away in our future digital world - witness the craziness of the Blu-ray/HD-DVD fiasco that (among other reasons) is holding back high def DVD's future. Proprietary solutions are always how things start in technologically difficult fields, but over time, either one proprietary solution is picked as a standard, or everyone gets fed up enough that the industry gets it together enough to come up with a standard (witness CDs, DVDs, and if they'd just stuck with ONE high def DVD solution!)

PS - OK, now Part 2: Movies

Now apply this whole bolus of thought to movies and it gets worse - since music is something you can appreciate on the go, it is a different animal that video - you can listen to music while you walk/talk/jog/work/ride the bus, but good luck doing any of those with video. Audio is an augmentative experience onto reality, video tends to be an immersive/dominating one - it is tough to do anything else while watching video. Plus audio is technically easier than video - portable audio is cake and cheap, portable video is not.

With audio content, getting it onto an iPod to tote around and plug into better presentation devices isn't difficult. While the video iPod is the first step in that direction, it has a long way to go in terms of storage, battery life, and most especially presentation quality.

DVDs are a half-inch away from being non-DRMed - how to strip the thin veneer of CSS was mastered and shared long ago, and anyone with 20 free minutes and Google can figure out how to rip a DVD - I have more a few acquaintances that use Netflix as a "Rent, Rip, & Return" service, ending up with a high quality H.264 file living on their hard drives (or iPods). This definitely impacts the number of DVDs they buy.

DVDs are defacto barely or non-DRMed - I'd be very curious to know the percentage of average consumers that know how to get around it. The good thing about DVDs is that playback is largely ubiquitous (sorry Linux guys) - the vast majority of us have access to a simple/low cost way to play them back.

How much does CSS keep people from copying/ripping DVDs? I'd guess not much - between the largish file size * and once-only viewing habits, I'd say the majority of folks wouldn't copy DVDs if it were one button easy - takes too long, too much effort, just rent it for $4 anyway.

* public perception of storage costs lags waaaaaaaay behind reality - saw 500GB drives for $140 online this week, that's at LEAST 55 ripped DVDs right there

There is definitely a crucial bit of economic math relating the value of a digital product, the price, the ease of copying it, and the likelihood of it getting copied. Anybody got an equation on that documented? I'd love to see it.

In that equation, music is clearly a likelier target for copying than video. But as video gets easier to copy, the likelihood increases.

OK, that's enough for now, time to go eat, I just wrote most of this in one long rambling screed * after getting back from a run.

Thanks to the half a dozen folks who emailed me the link today - I saw, I saw! Just took some time to read, digest, and get time to comment on it.

-mike, finally done

* - apparently, "screed" is my Word Of The Day

DISCLAIMER:

YES I like Apple toys, AND I have an AppleTV on order, AND I have bought 3 or 4 iPods for myself and family, AND I own some Apple stock, AND I have 6 Macs in my house, AND I could do more analysis/research on the music downloading scene, AND I want to see Apple come out on top because I like them and their toys, AND I've been in a cynical/curmudgeonly mood of late. All that said, I think this is a fair analysis/interpretation of the situation. But of course, as Dennis Miller says, I Could Be Wrong. Think so? Please Comment away using the link below.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY:

After some more thought, Option 2 (licensing FairPlay to others) actually makes more sense - SOME DRM is necessary to protect rampant illegal file sharing. But any industry wide DRM standard is going to require some DRM. And it WILL get broken - witness, hmm, let's see...oh! Every DRM ever implemented. If there is going to be interoperability, it will require some DRM. Maybe even supporting multiple DRMs under an umbrella - could be iTunes or Zune or whoever else joins the consortium. But that opens whole other cans of worms.

I wish the music guys would learn from lesson industries that have already been through this...like software. Software has varying levels of DRM depending on how badly they want to protect their content, usually the higher priced the software the tighter the DRM. Freeware? No restrictions, copy it around. Simple "keep honest folks honest" serial numbers work pretty well. For high value software, the industry tried hardware dongles - little pieces of hardware that you needed one of for each high end app (I still have a half a dozen rolling around in a drawer, unused) - the software wouldn't run without it attached. Well guess what? The software often wouldn't run, or would stop running, even with it attached. The bigger the company involved, the more rapidly they abandoned this approach, since it was more trouble than it was worth. Many legit software owners would run the illegal cracked versions...because they ran more stably (ElectricImage, anyone?). Adobe used to use hardware dongles on After Effects Pro, they gave up. Now the industry tends to use software that locks to a given user account or a given machine - and that has troubles, witness Microsoft's validation woes. And these for for individual applications or operating systems costing hundreds or thousands of dollars. Think of the hassle and difficulty involved in supporting that. Now apply that to a song you want to buy for a dollar or two. Youd better have a 99.99999% accurate and easy metholodogy for dealing with that. And there's no such thing.

CSS was a group consensus effort to use DRM for DVDs. It MOSTLY has worked - MOST consumers don't consider it worth the trouble to dupe or distribute DVDs. Some do. Blu-ray and HD-DVD have much more restrictive and advanced DRM, it has already been broken, but we'll still have to deal with all the hassles sure to follow from it.

Where does this leave us? If there is to be interoperability, either somebody licenses their industry leading standard to everyone else (and here's looking at you, Apple), or the industry comes up with a new standard they can all agree on (that'll take 3 years right there).

And if DRM is used, and the standards do go that way, then we'd likely still be stuck with some of the original snafus - can I sell my copy to someone else as I would a DVD? What if I want to play my movie I bought at my girlfriend's house? Or my buddy with the big badass home theater setup with our friends on a Saturday night? Etc.

DRM still sucks. Does and will suck.

Do I sound like I'm flip flopping? We need it, it sucks and we should get rid of it? Yes, I am. How does the industry get some/reasonable protection from rampant file sharing (sneakernet, friendnet, P2P, whatever), yet give consumers the kind of freedom they get with their physical media to move it around etc.?

A billion dollars to the company that solves (and manages to hold onto the rights) to that one...

More....

John Gruber chimes in with his as usual excellent observations:

Daring Fireball: Reading Between the Lines of Steve Jobs's 'Thoughts on Music', leading off with:

Is it a challenge to the major record labels? An answer to the increasingly hostile European governments (Norway, France, Germany) that are pressuring Apple to “open up” the iTunes Store? A message to the press to clarify Apple’s stance on DRM? A big fuck-you to Microsoft?

It is all of these things.

...and nails it more concisely than I do. Andrew Shebanow calls video "the elephant in the room"

He also has a titled called "Killing DRM would kill subscription services" and I didn't even think of that angle. He also has a great reaction to the industry wanting control over the DRM others use:

In other words, the music industry wants a magical DRM format that gives them — not Apple, not Microsoft — complete control over all digital music. And a unicorn and a rainbow.

AppleInsider's coverage gives me some numbers to use as ammo to defend my razors/blades statement: "'The reason for this is that iPods are significantly more profitable to Apple than iTunes; iPod (35 percent of sales) gross margins are in the 30 percent range while iTunes (5 percent of sales) gross margins are in the 5 percent-10 percent range,' he wrote." - so yeah, Apple cares MUCH more about iPod sales than iTunes Store sales.

NYTimes chimes in - Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection - New York Times

So sue me � Blog Archive
� Steve%u2019s misleading statistics: "if you%u2019ve bought 100 songs ($99), 10 TV-shows ($19.90) and 5 movies ($49.95), you%u2019ll think twice about upgrading to a non-Apple portable player or set-top box. In effect, it%u2019s the customers who would be the most valuable to an Apple competitor that get locked in. The kind of customers who would spend $300 on a set-top box."

....and if DRM goes away, no subscription models could survive...and Apple doesn't do a subscription model - a bit of a "Sucks to be you" to the subscription based services

-mike

Labels: Apple, DRM, iTunes, original, think