Larry Jordan on editing with the new iMac
Larry Jordan has an article on just how impressed he is with the new iMac for editing. He tricked out a system and it does sound pretty impressive.
Larry Jordan has an article on just how impressed he is with the new iMac for editing. He tricked out a system and it does sound pretty impressive.
So I am having problems with Amazon Cloud Player. I had wanted iTunes Match, but am way over the 25,000 song limit (the Big Finish Doctor who stories I listen to add so many tracks), but also wanted streaming.
Now there are a couple of problems with it for me, the first and foremost being it’s inability to do anything but try and match songs ripped in Apple’s Lossless format, as that is most of my library that I have ripped from CD (and the reason I have an 120GB iPod Classic so I can carry a lot of music, though not even close to all) and it doesn’t seem to match all that well. The addition of Auto Rip has been a big help with this as I have gotten most of my music since 1998 from Amazon, so I hope they keep ripping and keep filling in albums.
Also the music uploader crashes ALLOT! Now maybe that has to do with my library size, but if it is going to crash that much it needs to be smarter, as it has now duplicated all of my playlists 9 times, and I have a hell of a lot of playlists! And I can barely manage my playlists via the web interface. I can maybe delete one playlist before either it stalls out (allot in Chrome, though I have tried it in Safari and Mozilla as well both on my Mac at home running 10.8.1 and on my work computer running 10.6.8) or gives an error message about not being able to do that now.
At least I could do most of the deleting with the keyboard if I could get it to work in the web interface, but it stalls out or gives me this message all the time. I can delete the tracks via the iOS interface, but it slow and a pain using the slide. I need a batch edit or delete feature, or a duplicate finder. Heck I would even like a way to reset the playlists and re-upload them from iTunes.
I tried e-mailing Amazon about that, and they said to contact them, so I did an online text chat. Now they are putting in a technical note, especially since I am having all the crashes in uploader, but basically it sounds like they can’t access your personal cloud player, so you have to deal with the playlists, so I have to go through my thousands of playlists times 9 and delete them myself!!!! And I pay for this service? YOUCH! Not like I added the multiple playlists, Amazon Uploader managed that little doozy for me. Now they say they will contact me via e-mail in 2-3 business days, so I will upload again.
UPDATE: Well so far Amazon has been less than helpful. I was trying to contact via e-mail, but first had to switch to chat, and then phone call, and then they tried to get me to call in again, but it was because they could not get the logs I sent them repeatedly. And these are simple text files being sent to an e-mail address they gave me. I eventually had to put them on DropBox to get them to be able to download them. And since they got the files I haven’t heard anything.
As for the horrible responsiveness of Amazon Cloud Player, I moved to Chrome beta to see if it would help, and it seems to let me delete 2 playlists before it crashes!
Honestly if they don’t fix this soon I am going to have to give up on Amazon Cloud Player and figure out another solution!
I have been interested in the new top of the line Graphics Card for the new 2012 iMac, which is an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 680mx, and was wondering how it faired against my Desktop GTX 670. Everyone has been claiming it makes the iMac the most powerful Mac Editing machine out there, but I doubted it, as I have not seen any speed test against equivalent graphics cards. The 680m is actually a 680 slowed down.
I found a EuroGamer review of the GTX 680m, which tells me what I wanted to know about a 680M, but not a 680MX, but I found a review of that at Notebook Check.
Here is some of what they have to say:
Compared to the GeForce GTX 680M, the GTX 680MX features 1536 instead of 1344 CUDA cores and higher memory clocks (720/2500MHz vs 720/1800 MHz)
the graphics performance of the GeForce GTX 680MX should be 15 – 25 percent above the GTX 680M and similar to the Desktop GTX 580.
And specs on the GTX 680mx from NVIDIA’s site.
CUDA Cores – 1536
Core Speed – 720 Mhz
Memory Speed – 2500 Mhz
Texture Fill Rate (Billions per second) – 92.2
Max RAM – 2GB
And as for the GTX 670 from NVIDIA’s site.
CUDA Cores – 1344
Core Speed – 915 Mhz
Memory Speed – 2500 Mhz
Texture Fill Rate (Billions per second) – 102.5
Max RAM – 4GB
So the iMac has more CUDA cores, but it’s speed is not as fast, and it’s memory speed is less than half the speed.
So basically the 680MX it is a really powerful mobile graphics chip, but not as powerful as it’s equivalent Desktop GPU the GTX 670, and is more in line to a last generation GTX 580.
And yes it is not the easiest thing in the world getting a new generation NVIDIA card running in your MacPro, but it is not that hard, but should put your speed above that of the top of the line iMac GPU, and have more processing power, making it still champion, even though it is such dated technology at this point. Have to love expandability though as an old machine can still hold a performance edge, which is something the iMac will never have.
Lets just hope Apple makes a really good new MacPro this year.
Bare Feats has run the tests, and the 2012 iMac 27″ 3.4GHz Core iMac with 32GB of RAM and the GeForce GTX 680MX GPU actually does beat the MacPro in Resolve and Premiere Pro, but that is a MacPro with the Radeon HD 5870 GPU. Not really a fair test unless you have an NVIDIA CUDA card in the MacPro. As the MacPro still beats the iMac in 2 out of 3 CPU tests.
I have a feeling my non Mobile NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 4096 MB would slaughter the iMac in anything CUDA aware, which would be Premiere Pro, After Effects or DaVinci Resolve.
OK all, time to all take a collective breath, Google has released Google Maps for the iPhone and iPad. Download it and stop complaining about Apple Maps!
Yes I don’t like Maps too well either. Sure the 3D thing on new devices is cool, though useless. And I don’t see why older devices can’t do turn by turn. And I do hate the colors, and the traffic has been totally useless, but I just moved to alternatives. And have been really enjoying VUZE for traffic, but now Google Maps is back, so…
EDIT: ArsTechnica has a great article on it, including it’s shortcomings. The biggest that it doesn’t access your contacts from anywhere, not iOS or from Google itself, so you can’t just type someone’s name to get their address (THIS SERIOUSLY NEEDS TO BE FIXED).
And they tell you how to activate privacy, though it looks like it will then also turn off your helping with traffic.
MacOSRumors has the news on this Docking Station for a Thunbderbolt equipped Macbook Pro.
It has a Gigabit Ethernet Port, Two USB 2 ports, AUdio in and out jacks, and either HDMI or DVI port (depending on the model).
A very cool idea for around $250.
CNET has an article on the 7 features Apple dropped from iTunes 11. These are Cover Flow (which I don’t miss), de-duper (now you need to use 3rd party applications, the excellent iTunes DJ for creating easy continuous mixes, Gapless Playback Editor (works for old Gapless albums, but not new ones, so all my new live stuff will have gaps), Multiple Windows (as you can tell from my previous post my other biggest piss off), the other Sidebar (which was just a link to the store and I will not miss) and quick volume control in the mini player.
I hate when Apple upgrades and removes features! It is the dumbing of the Mac and I don’t like it!
And honestly so far I haven’t been so impressed by the much vaunted speed of iTunes 11. Maybe my library is too big, but scrolling still does not seem that fast to me.
Well Apple has released it’s huge update to iTunes, iTunes 11. And honestly I find it harder to use, especially playlists. Instead of all on one window, you have to use separate windows, so it actually takes more steps to do things I used to easily be able to do.
Here is the album view.
And the Playlist view
And you can no longer break playlists off, so you can copy between playlists or use it to organize. Now you can only see one playlist at a time. I hate the move to more iOS like single window viewing, instead of being able to view as many windows as I want!
Yes the iTunes store is now even prettier, and you can now play songs from the iCloud (if you have a small enough library to do iTunes Match, which I don’t), but overall I find it actually harder to use. It is much more focused on Album covers instead of lists, and I have always found lists to be much easier to use (faster and more efficient), and while there are still lists here, they are more hidden. And I have to hit a button to edit a playlist, and then go to where the song is and drag it in, instead of being able to see my playlists and my songs at the same time. The extra step is not easier, it is harder!
And I don’t think syncing has been much improved. Instead of your connected devices showing up in the playlists they show up on the right, but the menus inside seem mostly the same except the addition of an “On this iPad” which I like since the movies have never been as well organized as playlists, especially when you have a huge list. I hate the thumbnail there view, which has not changed (a list would be much more efficient), but at least you can look “On Your iPad” and more easily see what you have already synced.
Here is the On This iPad button.
Here is where your iOS devices show up.
And what happens when you click on the button. And then you can go into the standard sync section, which hasn’t changed much.
And another loss of efficiency is that you have to hover over areas on the iOS device to see how much actual space each section is taking up.
Adding another step which slows things down.
Overall it stills works and I can still make playlists, play music and sync, and there is a better mini player with a search function, but I actually think it downgraded in many ways. I don’t think you will have a choice before long, so this is where iTunes is going and if you need to sync and iOS device you need to use the latest and greatest, so here it is, but overall it is not much of an improvement and even might be a downgrade to what we used to have, even if it always has been bloated and slow.
EDIT:
Well I was wrong on one thing, as I can at least bring back the sidebar and have my playlists back, and iOS devices on the left again.
It is easy to do, just got to the view menu.
And the Sidebar is back.
Nice. Still defaults to Album view, but you can view by songs and that solves the problem. Still can’t open up multiple playlists anymore though, which is a pain. At least with a full 64 bit app it should be faster. Still would like more options in the sync, like viewing by list, but at least we have some more speed.
I also recommend turning on the status bar,
So you can see the length and size of playlists as you used to be able to!
I have now been in Apple stores twice and checked out the iPad mini and must say it is just about perfect. The perfect size and weight. My iPad 3 gets heavy to hold, and I think the iPad mini would be just right to hold for extended periods of time. it is so light and feels pretty well constructed.
I still think the price is way too high though. $250 would be a perfect starting place, and even $299 would just deel better than the extra $30.
Adobe has released new presets for Adobe Media Encoder CS6. These include ProRES codes for Mac, Kindle Fire and Nook presets as well as MXF encoding Presets.
Nice, I always make my own ProRes Presets, but this could be helpful.