OneRiver Media on NVIDIA GTX 1080 being death nell of high end Mac Graphics

NVIDIA recently announced the GTX 1080, which is half the price ($699) of it’s Titan, twice as fast and draws less power.

Marco Solorio of OneRiver Media talks about the NVIDIA GTX 1080 being the end of the MacPro as a high end graphics and editing system, since there is no longer a PCI based Mac! I do agree. The old PCI based MacPro will only last so much more, and it is already so far behind on modern technology.

So while I would prefer to run a Mac and OS X, I don’t want the ridiculous Trashcan MacPro, and I want 2 GTX 1080’s for a video card (or theoir version of a Titan), and hell I want the Microosft Surface Book as a laptop. Apple is pushing me away from the computer I love!

Hitfilm 4 Express a simple editor and full 3D compositor has been released for Free

Hitfilm has released Hitfilm 4 Express for free. It is a simple editing program in the style of Premiere Pro, AVID and Final Cut Pro 7 (though not as full featured), with a full 3D compositing program built in. You can also buy individual expansion packs, or a full pro version for $399, which includes a Boris titling tool, and Mocha Camera Tracking as well almost 140 FX as plug ins for use in other programs!

I can’t believe I didn’t even know about this program, and am looking forward to giving it a try. Would love the Pro version to try some gunshot fx, that are rendered on the fly, so every one can be different. And for a fast full 3D compositor to be this cheap is impressive.

Micromat releases free MacCheck

Micromat the creator of the excellent TechTool Pro utility for Mac has released the free utility MacCheck. It can do a Power On Self-Test, I/O check, Battery Test, Memory Test, Smart Test, RAID Status, Volume Structures and Partition Map. It won’t fix anything, but it will show you if anything is wrong. And is a perfect addition if you have TechTool Protogo.

Apple has killed Quicktime for Windows, and this could be a big problem for ProRes!

So this is a scary thing, Apple has killed Quicktime for Windows, and it currently has major security flaws in it, so if your computer is attached to the internet you should uninstall it.

The problem is that there are many video formats that require Quicktime to run. This includes all forms of ProRes, which has even become a major camera format, as well as Animation (a major format for After Effects) and DNxHD/HR.

Now Adobe says they are working on it, but will likely have to license components to get these to work, so if it ever does it will take a while.

Overall while this seems like a very Apple thing to do, it makes me once again worry about Apple and it’s future in Video. The thing is even if you are not going to release your software for Windows, you want the video to be able to run for cross compatibility, like AVID always released versions of it’s drivers for people who didn’t own AVID. And ProRES is such a great format that it has become a defacto standard across a lot of the Post Production industry, but with this action ProRES will slowly be relegated to a sidestory, In the future cameras are going to be less likely to support it, and eventually it will be a FCP only format (that is if Apple even keeps developing FCP X in the future). Other than the short term why would Adobe support it, if it is literally only able to work on a Mac, that is less than half it’s market, so why bother.

This just shows me how out of touch Apple really is.

Yet again it looks like no SpeedGrade Upgrade in the next version of Creative Cloud

RedShark has a post on the Roadmap for the next version of Creative Cloud for Video to be shown at NAB this year. And the rumors look like once again, no more upgrades for SpeedGrade.

At a press briefing a few weeks ago where we first learned of these upgrades, but of course were not allowed to speak until the official announcement, a journalist questioned Adobe about Speedgrade future development and received a response to the effect of “we’re concentrating on Premiere Pro in this iteration.”

Actually what Adobe is doing with SpeedGrade seems to mirror what Apple did with Shake. Buy it, make it cheaper without changing it much, and integrate some part of it’s tech into it’s other apps, then stop updating it, until they just eventually kill it.

And the unfortunate thing is that SpeedGrade is a really great program, and the fact that a full grade comes back into Premiere Pro as a plug in is so much greater than having to render out each shot in DaVinci. And really the only thing it needs to get better is to let you move windows to a seperate monitor so you can have scopes be as big as you want.

And while it is great to have more SpeedGrade tech in Premiere (and even better to have it carry into After Effects), the simplified Lumetri color panel is so much less powetful than a full grade from SpeedGrade that it is almost useless. And really should have a more advanced version that allows for more powerful grades instead of lightroom like simplified controlls!

Lytro gets out of consumer cameras and creates it’s Cinema Camera

  • Post category:Lytro
  • Post comments:0 Comments

So Lytro is breaking the internet today with it’s announcement of it dropping it’s unsuccessful consumer division and instead making an incredible Cinema Camera.

Lytro Cinema from Lytro on Vimeo.

This camera sounds amazing. Sure it is only the start for this, as with a foot and a half wide sensor and a 755 megapixel sensor recording at up to 300 frames per second, the recording and post on this camera is going to be literally insane! And it is all connected to a giant rack of computers and storage. The thing is the ability to refocus and change the depth of field, create a stereo 3D image, and record a 3d Image of the scene to add in CG, or to create a perfect matte with any background, and add 3D without needing to motion track is amazing, it is a game changer for high end productions. Especially once this technology matures, and shrinks a bit in size and in price, this will change everything.

PCWorld on the aging MacPro, which is too positive

PCWorld has an article on the aging 2013 MacPro update, which hasn’t seen a single update since it’s release. Honestly though the article is too psitive on what Apple can do if they a new update with new technology.

The Problem is they made an unupgradeable pro Macintosh, and to make a better machine, you have to but a new one. Many people including me, have an old style MacPro that we have continued to upgrade to make it relevant. And the New MacPro can’t do that. You have on hard drive and two custom video cards and that is it. No upgrade other than RAM and external devices. And they have huge issues with external thunderbolt, like drives being disconected for no reason (See this article on MacPerformanceGuide).
Sure a non upgradeable machine means more money for Apple, but not upgrading the machine in 3 years, and making it much less than most desktop pc’s, means PC’s are much more powerful for less money with much better technology! It means pro users are going to consider leaving Mac altogether!
Seriously, does Apple want to lose Pro users? I have been an Apple user since the Apple IIC, but the non-upgradeable MacPro makes me consider moving to PC! At least if they consistently upgrading the unupgradable MacPro with the latest tech, it would make me consider the MacPro, but a 3 year or longer upgrade cycle is not acceptable! I mean Thunderbolt 3 is out on PC, and the latest NVIDIA graphics cards blow anything out of the water made in 2013, not even considering only having AMD video cards as an option, why are these not available on a Mac! Shit I would be OK with a non Xeon i7 Mac Pro with upgradeability, as it would blow my my MacPro 4,1 out of the water!
Apple is obviously not caring about Pro users, and not minding if they leave, which is scary since they are the people that kept Apple alive when it was the worst in the market. Honestly just admit it and give up on Pro users or actually make upgraded pro machines!

Adobe Media Encoder won’t put chapter markers in H264 Video

So this is something that has annoyed me for some time, and has really been annoying me of late, so I have been trying workaround.

So basically the issue is that you can create Chapter Markers in Adobe Premiere Pro in your sequence, which are ostensibly for use in Adobe Encore, but that program stopped with CS6, and after my last hard drive bailed after the El Capitan Update I don’t even have it installed on my current hard drive.

Anyway, back in the day with Final Cut Pro 7 I could export a video with chapter markers and compress an H264 video with chapter markers using compressor. It would make Apple Compatible m4v files instead of a normal mp4 files, but chapter markers would work in most programs and show up on the web in most cases.

Unfortunately Adobe Media Encorder won’t do this, as it only makes straight mp4 files, and since Encore is a dead program, the Chapter Markers in Premiere Pro are pretty much useless.

After much searching, and seeing all the ways people were making chapter markers (most of which are really a pain the ass, and don’t use standard formatting for either the text file, or the timcode), I went back to basically my old way of doing this.

This is to export my video as a ProRES video which includes chapter markers, and then use HandBrake to encode it with Chapter Markers. Now not only this take longer, but also take up more hard drive space, but at least the chapter markers work!

And while m4v is a subset of mp4, it does play in most players including directly in Firefox, though doesn’t show the chapters markers, but at least it plays fine. And I am OK with my chapters only working on Macs, because at least they will show for most people looking at my reel.