HD For Indies

Apple - Support - Discussions - After QT7.4, AE error-you do not have ...

Breaks AE, the DRM prevents you from viewing movies that you made.

Yep, you don't have the right to view a QuickTime you are the author of.

Best DRM of the year.

Most definitely NOT.

-mike

UPDATE - one of the commenters said that it is fixed by clicking on Support Legacy Codecs, and there's another thread about Sorenson 3 dissapearing:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Sorenson 3 missing after update ... - again, perhaps it is an update legacy codecs thing? I can't check it myself.

Right from Adobe guy's blog:

Keyframes: Don't update to QuickTime 7.4

Thanks VERY much to all the commenters keeping me up to date on all this...

Labels: Mac, QuickTime

So I'm off email for a bit whilst backing up my laptop drive - I am writing a bunch of stuff about storage for another publication (more on that soon), and I knew was short on drive space, but didn't realize HOW short - I went and looked, and had about ONE gigabyte free.

When you have more RAM than free disc space, it is time to free up some disc space. I did the usual digging to find Pfhat Media loitering about - did I have any full DVD rips sitting around, or collosal uncompressed video, or video projects sitting on the drive?

Nope.

Then I went looking to see if I'd done a Full Install with Final Cut Studio 2 (if you install All In, it is 55 (!) GB).

Nope - I'd already cleaned house there.

Then I went into my Projects folder (I always have a folder at the root level of the data drive (which has to be boot drive on laptop) to see if I had any fat folders I could trash or archive of a client project that was gone. Nope - Projects was all of 1.83GB - just a lot of little bitty stuff.

Then I went looking in my User folder, and found the culprits - Pictures (which encompasses years of tradeshow pictures and videos) was 35GB, Music (which of course includes my cutdown/favorite/most recently purchased iTunes Library) was 16GB. So that's over 50GB of personal files right there. When you factor in the size of the OS and Applications and Libraries folders...that makes for a very full 120GB drive (formats to about 112GB).

So I'm now installing my 3rd (or is it fourth?) hard drive in the same laptop - I started with an 80, I can't recall whether it died and was replaced with same or I immediately upgraded to this 120GB, and now I'm bumping up to a 200GB. THAT should hold me for a bit.

And yeah, I AM getting one of those Time Capsule doohickeys, it was time to upgrade my router anyway.

I was also on the cusp of getting a LARGE capacity tape backup system, I need to take a hard look at all that uncompressed HD footage and decide whether it really needs to be kept or not at this point.

This is all to say...we keep accumulating more and more stuff. In the big philosophical sense, our memories are increasingly digital these days, and a hard drive failure can be catastrophic in terms of vacation photos, organized/ripped music (legal and otherwise), etc. Back Up Your Stuff!

With big tape backup systems getting small studio price feasible, and Time Machine/Time Capsule out there, there's no excuse not to have one of these systems.

On a more micro scale, keep in mind that your digital memories are ever growing, and managing them can become more complex. I have 2 G4s, 3 G5s, an Octo Mac (1st gen, not the newbies), and a MacBook in the house...and they all have, or have had, an iPhoto Library on them. Figuring out how to get all that in one place, with all the metadata intact, is something I haven't figured out quite yet. How to get the original and modified pictures, with ratings, notes, keywords, etc., all in one place, from 6 or 7 different Macs, seems pretty non-trivial and I haven't found good tools to do so yet. Burning to a DVD and importing seems to lose a lot of stuff I want - anybody got any good experiences to share on that front? Since they called it iLife '08 when it came out last summer, I'll take that as a pretty good indication we're not seeing a new iLife until MWSF next year - so no joy/help/clue forthcoming from Apple as far as I can tell.

They've done a good job at helping folks organize data up to this point. Maybe Back To My Mac can be of some help, once I finally move my laptop to Leopard (the full drive one reason I hadn't made the switch yet).

OK, enough rambling for now...there's a broader thing to be discussed about long term digital archives, bit rot, graceful organic vs non-graceful binary failure, etc...but you just hink on that and I'll come back to it later.

I gotsta go get on a plane....

Labels: hardware, Mac, NLE

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

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

Reader Robert Ashe sent this in:



- The AJA IO HD is NOT an accelerator of any kind nor will they ever claim to be (cough cough Avid)
- Can be used as a converter as long as it is hooked up to a computer (a future version will allow it to be flashed into a setting, and then disconnected, keeping the setting intact)
- You cannot (as it stands now) have both a AJA IO HD and a kona card running simultaneously on the same system. They suggest doing a dual boot partition (Leopard may change this)
- If you add Virtual VTR to the mix you "probably" could use your system as a slave (they haven't tested it)
- It is designed for pro res PERIOD.
- If your machine is fast enough however it will support play out of anything from dvcpro hd to uncompressed
- There is a solid one frame video delay for digitizing (not surprising)
- Just like the adrenaline the IO HD dominates the firewire box, you MUST install a pci-e or pci-x firewire card for other devices.
- AC Power supply (this is nice, in case you lose the supply)
- Supports video output in the usual applications, however in color, it CURRENTLY only supports SD...for now.
- No Look up table support. Kona 3 will remain the "film" card
- Purely designed for broadcast television
- Has same chip set for the FS-1 as far as up-conversions and cross conversions which look really great.
- Does NOT convert frame rates, it works in hertz so that will be very tricky for 720p 60 (wasn't clear about this part) Seems like it may have the same problems with 59.94 and 60p shows that the adrenaline has
- Will not overheat, they've done all the testing, the thing is gold
- Does have LTC input but some changes will have to be made in quicktime to accommodate
- Ready to ship, just waiting for green light from apple
- 1/2 Rack size, same size as HVR-1500. They WILL sell a rack for it later, other wise the sony rack for half rack decks "should" work
- Any speculation with redcode compatibility is currently only speculation

So I pretty much think that this one is almost completely on par with the adrenaline (only missing a 35mbit pro res) and it's about 1/6.5 the price. Pretty much a no brainer for any small shop or film.



Thanks Robert!

Mike's Comments: For field usage and broadcast work, this is a very useful and capable box, FOR CERTAIN APPLICATIONS. For those looking to have a portable converter, a field capture device, a field ingest device to work with a laptop, etc, this thing is GOLDEN.

For those looking to work with Color as well as possible, or get maximum performance, or do LUTs, or 4:4:4 work, or uncompressed HD, this is not the ideal tool.

But it is a GREAT tool to have in the arsenal from what I've heard so far.

As Robert alluded, Apple (with the ProRes codec) and AJA (with the IO HD) have taken solid aim at Avid's DNxHD codec and Adrenaline hardware - and come up with a winner in terms of bang for the buck.

Avid still has some well liked options in terms of software features, but in terms of high quality ingest and export and realtime mixing of formats and codecs, the price performance winner is looking strongly like Apple on this one.

Further emails - Rob suggested that Apple needs an equivalent to DNxHD 36 - a low bandwidth, full raster codec for offline HD editing. I agree! But that's a relatively easy addition that can be done at pretty much anytime they want. They COULD include it in a .0x update, or wait for marketing reasons to roll it into next NAB's version, whatever that may be.

On my wishlist: GPU acceleration for format mixing, better frame rate conversion done in GPU (3:2 pulldown not repeating 4th frame please!), cleaner Compressor functionality, bug fixes, better EDL/XML interaction & integration with Color, DVD SP Blu-ray support (and the drives to go with it!), etc. Personally, I don't care as much whether they support HD DVD or Blu-ray or both, as long as it is soon. Well yeah, I do care - Blu-ray seems to be taking the lead, although slowed by the recent Paramount buy-out/buy-off. Hate to see Apple back the wrong horse exclusively. Although they seem well set to handle both. The hat trick would be to offer a combo burner - burns CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray. Pricey, but would RAWK.

-mike

Labels: AJA, FCP, Final Cut, hardware, Mac, NLE, software

If you look quickly at Macworld's front page, the iMovie '08 review may still be top and center. Why do I care? Because I wrote it!

Here's a direct link to the article:

Macworld: Review: iMovie '08

In it, I go over the controversial changes in Apple's consumer video application, which for our purposes, boils down to this:

1.) They have firmly pulled iMovie OUT of the prosumer space and pushed it firmly INTO the consumer space. Existing iMovie users using it for prosumer purposes? Perhaps it is time to step up to Final Cut Express - your nearly free proxy for a "real" editor isn't being updated, Apple apparently decided the best use of their resources was to try to make consumer editing applicable to a much wider audience rather than refine the current software used by a minority (but voracious) population of iLife users.

2.) It is way, way different from the way other traditional NLE's work. I perceive it as MUCH more akin to iPhoto for video than a traditional NLE.

3.) However marginal the old version was for pro work, this one is thoroughly NOT appropriate for professional work, for a variety of reasons.

4.) LOTS of features from prior versions are now gone.

5.) BUT....it has some excellent new features, most notably skimming (a killer sweet way to preview what's in a clip), and ultra simple Sharing options to get movies onto the dramatically improved .Mac Web Galleries, with .Mac's new vastly increased storage and bandwidth limitations. So MAKING your movie in the old version (which stays installed if you "install over"), exporting a freestanding movie, then using the new version to publish to .Mac, Youtube (3 clicks!). MacWorld doesn't speculate, but I do - look for skimming in some future version of Final Cut Pro (maybe next year at NAB? No clue.)

6.) They also support a BUNCH of new formats: aside from DV and HDV that were previously supported (only at standard broadcast NOT 24p modes), now they include support for MPEG-2 (SD only), MPEG-4 (SD & HD), and AVCHD. For Moms, this is great.

If that's not enough, I'm also featured in a MacWorld podcast also out today:

Macworld: Podcasts: Macworld Podcast: iMovie '08 and iPhone hacking

I talk about why I think this makes sense is was a good call for Apple from a broader market perspective, and prattle on about the new, the cool, and the annoying in this version.

I also possibly created a new term - "Mommable technology", as in "This technology is something my Mom could use - it's Mommable."

Read and listen, for today's news.

-mike

PS - working on a Red update since they are scheduled to ship first cameras this week.

UPDATE - forgot to mention in the podcast - you can mix SD & HD & different video formats, in REAL TIME, in iMovie 08, which is awesome - skips all the complexity, just lets you work with it and NOT HAVE TO CARE.

Also, for those who remember my Happy Hilltop - day off in analog land off topic post from a couple of years ago, the sample pics & vids in the article are from that trip. : ) Always fun to get an Easter Egg in there somewhere.

-m

Labels: consumer, iLife, iMovie, Mac, 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

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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

Big Announcement #2:

Short version:

Did you see that DV Magazine article * I wrote (cover story April '07) about uncompressed HD workstations?

Did you wish there was a simple way to get exactly that gear in one place, from one vendor, customizable, who could sell & support it all?

DONE.

Meet the HD for Indies configurations over at Silverado Systems!

I've been buying my own gear for a couple of years from Torrey Loomis over at Silverado, and we've partnered up to offer the configs I wrote about in the article. They are:

System 1: for the truly starving indie type - the bare minimum to capture, edit, & monitor uncompressed HD.

System 2: for the moderately budgeted indie who wants a proper setup but doesn't have tons of cash.

System 3: for the well heeled solo operator that needs bulletproof reliability, or perhaps for a small single room facility.

System 4: Probably (I hope) of most interest to a lot of readers - my Best Bang For The Buck recommendation on a system to do feature length uncompressed HD editing & finishing (up to 1080p RGB 4:4:4) on a budget.

They are all accessible from this page on Silverado Systems' website.

The configs are a little different than what I wrote about in the article, I've tweaked & improved since I originally wrote it.

LONGER VERSION:

I've been formally & informally recommending systems to clients, employers and friends for about 15 years or so. For a brief time during the desktop publishing revolution, I was a VAR (value added reseller) myself, but I don't do that any more as that isn't where my interests and passions are.

But in the meantime, I've been recommending system configurations for HD editing for a few years now, and it usually boils down to me recommending a list of gear. Then the client asks where should they get it, and I say say try this that or the other vendor, and inevitably the client comes back to say that they can't get all my recommended gear in one place from one vendor. All too often it seems there's always a substitution or two, or a vendor recommended substitution or upgrade is of dubious value, or more likely a component or three that simply isn't available from that vendor. Which means if there's trouble, it is all the more likely that there will be finger pointing between Vendor A & Vendor B and much gnashing of teeth will ensue. And nobody wants that.

So I decided that the only way to get simple, turnkey, one click, gimme-that-one-right-there simplicity was going to be to partner with a VAR and give them the mandate that they'd need to provide exactly the spec I recommend without substitutions, and ALSO offer the upgrades that I wanted to provide, in the order that I recommended them. And after a LOT of work from both sides, that's what Silverado and I have worked out.

If you go to, for instance, the Indie Bang for Buck system, you'll see a list of gear and options. All of the upgrade options are ONLY those that I recommend - I've deleted a lot of what I consider bogus upgrades. The upgrades that ARE offered are also in the order that I recommend them - so while a 17" JVC HD CRT is the recommended monitoring choice, there's also a 24" professional LCD listed, as well as both, or a "step down" option of the JVC CRT and an HDLink/Apple 23" LCD option listed as well. I recommend a 2nd internal drive, but if you want to remove that you can. Or if you want to step down from the default 8GB config to 4GB of RAM, that's possible as well if it makes sense for your setup.

If any of this doesn't make sense, just scroll down the Silverado page for the config you're considering and each of the optional categories is explained in depth, with recommended options for different usage scenarios, when it is worth getting those, etc.

So you're getting the benefit of my latest and best advice, as well as turnkey solution from a known & trusted vendor. I was buying my own gear from Torrey at Silverado for two years before we set this up, hopefully that carries some weight with you folks.

What do I get out of this? Yes, I do get a cut out of the deal, which is why I've spent many days and late nights getting all this set up, but it comes out of Silverado's end - you're not paying any more than if you approached them with this parts list on your own.

Over time, I'll be putting up other configurations for other usage scenarios, and I'll be announcing them here. The options listed here will work for most folks for most scenarios, but as always, if you'd like a fully customized solution to your particular project's unique challenges, I'm available for consulting.

Personally, I'm really excited to offer this service, I think it makes for a good marriage of good advice, a trustworthy single source vendor, and solid gear that can get the job done - at an entirely reasonable price - that should make everybody happy.

And yes, this is that bigger deal I was mentioning several days ago about buying a new Mac editing setup. But I also still have at least one more announcement to go...

* For the record, DV Magazine is not involved in this deal, nor do they officially endorse, recommend, or have any role in this in any way shape or form. I'd just received a lot of requests about where to buy such a config, and folks were having difficulty getting all those exact parts in one place, so this just seemed like a good idea.

Labels: hardware, Mac, Mac Pro, NLE, online store, original, post, software, workflow

Early Performance Testing of the 8 Core Mac Pro Some apps (CineBench) can really take advantage of all cores, others (like QuickTime) cannot.

So - if you're doing 3D, it looks like early adoption of 8 core Macs is a good call. If you're doing video stuff, the jury is still out until we see new FCP, and probably until we see it under Leopard as well.

A key indicator of how well it works (or doesn't):
A bit depressing when the Activity Monitor registers 796% CPU usage on the 8 core versus 395% usage on the 4 core, yet the total time to complete the task is only 3% faster in the case of Photoshop CS3 and 7% faster in the case of Aperture.

Then another test:
... we opened six copies of the same HD sample 2 minute movie in QuickTime Player 7.1.5. Then we simultaneously exported all six copies to iPod movie format. The 8 core completed the task 56% faster than the 4 core Mac Pro

...so if you're needing to run multiple apps at the same time, it scales well that way. But if you ARE, the disk I/O can be a bottleneck from all the seeks involved.

-mike

Labels: Mac, Mac Pro, OS X

UPDATE: ANNOUNCEMENT DOES NOT EQUAL LAUNCH: "We are announcing Creative Suite 3 on March 27th," Cara Cassidy, a member of Adobe's Creative Solutions PR team, wrote in a blog posting this week. "However, the software will not ship until later in Spring 2007."

Oops, no joy - so probably a May/June ship date?

End update.

AppleInsider | Adobe Creative Suite 3.0 launch confirmed for March 27

-half a dozen bundle configs
-native Intel Mac support
-Macromedia apps supplanting some Adobe apps
-Dreamweaver replacing GoLive (long may it rot in its grave)
-FireWorks replacing ImageReady
-March 27 launch
-this is before NAB (which is in early April)

Does this milestone encourage Apple to release their long anticipated 8 core Mac Pro towers?

We'll have to wait and see. In those new OctoMacs, I'd love to see HD-DVD and/or Blu-ray burner options. With two media bays in Mac Pros, wouldn't be that hard to do...maybe the next DVD Studio Pro will include Blu-ray capabilities? I'm especially curious to see if the ability to have live menu items enter over the constantly playing movie will occur - and what will that authoring UI look like?

-mike

Labels: Adobe, Mac, post