Cinescopophilia on DEFY G2X 3 Axis Gimbal for under $2000
It is amazing how fast this technology is evolving and how quickly the price is going down! Let’s hope that shaky cam makes it’s way out in the near future.
It is amazing how fast this technology is evolving and how quickly the price is going down! Let’s hope that shaky cam makes it’s way out in the near future.
The terrifying part, is that it has only 2 ports on it. A headphone jack and a USB Type C port. The USB 3 Port is more advanced than USB 3 with a reversible connector, that can drive a monitor and also power a computer.
I can’t even articulate what an awful idea this is. One connector means you need a hub to attach anything else to the laptop. My mom for example has her fitbit sync in the usb port, which would have to be left in the hub. And even worse is the removal of Thunderbolt.
Apple is really pushing Thunderbolt as it’s next generation connectivity, even giving up the much faster (and far superior) PCI Slots in it’s MacPro in favor of of Thunderbolt. And having Thunderbolt in the Air made it expandable to an amazing degree that would never have been possible with a machine like this, and you could use the same devices across the mac lineup. Even with it being USB 3.1, which can do 10 Gbps, or the same as Thunderbolt 1 (not 2 though, which can 20 Gbps), they should have the same ports across the whole range, so accessories are interchangeable. Unless Apple is getting rid of Thunderbolt all together in favor of USB 3.1, which to me should mean they need to go back to PCI Card expansion in later MacPro’s (and who the hell wanted the trashcan MacPro anyway), which I highly doubt, they should not do this.
I know Apple does not read this blog, nor care what I have to say, but PLEASE APPLE DON’T DO THIS!!!!
Shawn Lam at Streaming Media Producer has released 2 out of parts of an awesome article on gearing up for 4K Production. This is a must read for anyone thinking about shooting 4K now or in the near future. Well worth reading. I am looking forward to part 3.
You can read Part 1 Here and Part 2 Here.
This is really exciting news. Everything has been moving to digital delivery of late, with higher compression, less quality and less features, but it is good to know that there will be a 4K disc based format which will deliver the best quality.
The only bad news is that it does not seem to include a 3D spec, which is likely a bandwidth issue, though it will be able to do 60P (hello Avatar in 60P). The spec has not been finalized but will use H.265, and will have a 66GB dual layer and 100GB 3 layer formats, and can even do 10 bit color and a wider color gamut as well as high dynamic range! It also will have a digital copy process to make local copies to a hard drive, likely in a specifically designed player.
Now I won’t be moving to this anytime soon, as I just got a 65″ 1080 display, and didn’t even consider 4K for lack of content and not knowing how 1080 will look blown up to 4K (I am assuming not good).
Well I for one was very excited about Alsoft Diskwarrior 5, and it’s new USB Stick to run off and repair Macs, but unfortunately it has not worked out so well for me.
Now admittedly I am likely a strange case on this one. I have been trying to use it on 2 slightly out of the norm cases, and haven’t been able to to boot to the USB stick in either case. And though I have gotten it to run, it was via other means, and was not too impressed by the new 64 Bit Speeds.
The first case is my own computer, which is a MacPro 4,1, but the exception here is that I run a PC NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4 GB of RAM, so I am unable to hold down option and select a startup disc on boot, nor able to get into the recovery partition because I don’t get a screen booted until the desktop starts up. And these are the two methods to run diskwarrior from the USB Stick. The USB Stick does show up as a startup disc and I have tried starting up off of it, but the computer never boots this way for some reason.
To get it to work on my MacPro I used a competitor product in fact. Micromat’s Tech Tool Pro 7 has a way to create a recovery partition. And I was able to create it on one of my additional hard drives so as not to mess with the OS X recovery partition, and it allows you to install software there, so I installed Diskwarrior 5 and ran it.
Once running the new Diskwarrior worked fine, just like the old one, and in fact did not seem any faster. I do have a very full 3 TB main hard drive though, so it has a lot of files to check, but still it did not seem exceptionally faster than version 4.
A second place I run diskwarrior is at one of the offices that I work at (being freelance it isn’t always the same place, but I work here allot). And I got them to purchase a DVD of Diskwarrior 4.
Now I wanted to test Diskwarrior 5 here, to see if we could use it. Now while they do have one MacPro with a NVIDIA GTX 680 Mac Edition which I will be testing on later, they also have a QUO computing Hackintosh that I have been using mostly. Already to run Diskwarrior on it, I can’t boot from the DVD, but have to run from a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of the system SSD that has Diskwarrior 4 installed. Still I thought I would try the USB Stick.
And once again no, with the QUO it seems that I can’t hold down option to see the bootable hard drives, so I can’t boot from the USB stick to repair this system. I could install Diskwarrior on my backup, but would not do that with my serial number. I will test it later on the regular MacPro, just because I want to see if I can get Diskwarrior 5 to boot from the USB stick in any situation!
Now the one thing I have not tried is is the new Diskwarrior 5 Diskwarrior Recovery Maker, which updates the USB Flash to the latest OS that your system is, since new Macs have new boot requirements, but I know my MacPro can boot from 10.6.4, and I believe that is the starting system for any Hackintosh, so I though that would work for for the QUO.
I will updater his after I see if it works on the other more standard MacPro, but so far I have not been too impressed with Diskwarrior 5
Well I tested the Diskwarrior USB in the MacPro 4,1 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition, and it froze on the startup screen. I started it by holding down option and selecting the Diskwarrior Recovery partition, and starting up. I left it there for an hour, and the Machine was just stopped.
I am a devoted iPad user, but the Cintiq companion is the one thing that could make me carry a different touch based computer. And Wacom has finally announced that it’s version 2 is coming out.
There are two versions, the Windows 8 Companion and the Android Hybrid, both of which work as a Cintiq Wacom table when attached to a Mac or PC.
There are 4 Windows 8 Models from $1299 to $2499, and 2 Android models from $1049 to $1199.
Of course the Windows Versions let you run full Photoshop or run as a Cintiq, while the Hybrid is an Android tablet that is also a Cintiq. So you can do much more on the go full work on the Windows model, but the Hybrid would certainly give an iPad a run for it’s money.
I love the touch computing on an iPad, but for artwork a Pen is always superior, and a Wacom pen has always been the best for tablet computing.
I have always wanted a Cintiq, but this would really be even better as you could take it with you as a tablet (though you would need some spare cables to carry with you and one set to leave at home for your home computer!).
AWESOME, I SO WANT ONE!!
Wacom has added 2 new Cloud Services. Dropzone which allows copy & paste between devices on Mac, Windows and iOS after installing the Dropxone app (which works with Bamboo Paper on iOS). And Control Room which allows you to sync your Wacom settings with the Cloud, and have your settings wherever you are (given you have the same Wacom devices in each place).
Pretty cool, and smart, but you still need to install the software one each computer to get your settings. Hopefully this will be built in with the Wacom drivers in the future (with the ability to turn it off or on).
Tivo has released a new blog post talking about Cable Cards.
This is because congress has repealed it’s legislation that required cable companies to use cable cards in their own devices, and allowed 3rd party devices like TIVO to use them.
TIVO is saying they will still exist for a while, and they are working with Comcast to create a new non-cable card solution, but it still is worrisome as a longtime TIVO user. I mean of course I would like something that also works with all the VOD from Verizon, but I hate their DVRs and have loved the simplicity of TIVO for a long time, so I hope they manage to stick around!