AVID update Available

Go to AVID’s download’s page for 6.5.0.1 of Media Composer, Symphony and 10.5.0.1 of Newscutter.

New features include:

  • XDCAM and XCAM EX Support
  • FrameChase Editing with Sony XDCam Station (XDS Series)
  • No longer have to uninstall the P2 or XDCAM before performing a legacy P2 or XDCAM import

HD Magazine on the MacPro

HD Magazine has an excellent article on the lack of a new MacPro.

It basically is how I feel. Many in the industry love Macs, but the MacPro is just not as fast as PC’s right now and there are great options from HP and Dell that just have the Speed advantage. Companies are waiting to see what Tim Cook was talking about, but we are not holding our breath, and if Apple does not release a new MacPro that really can compete with high end PC’s, people will start moving to PC’s for their computers, possibly with a Mac laptop for personal stuff.

It really is so sad, but the MacPro’s just don’t make enough as compared to Apple’s consumer products (even though they do make money), so Apple is abandoning the people who kept the company afloat all those years when Apple was doing so badly with everyone else.

The consumerizing of Final Cut Pro is further proof of their changing focus, and I don’t think that they realize the damage they will be doing to themselves in the long run as all professionals move away from Macs.

And that doesn’t even delve into the fact that Windows 8 is such a dud, after Windows 7 being such a good OS.

RED has significant Price Cuts

Photo Rumors has this news (as well as others). After the Sony announcement of the new Sony F5 and F55 4K CineAlta cameras, RED is not sitting on it’s heals and has announced steep Price drops across their line.

  • RED EPIC-M: $24,000 (old price: $39,500)
  • RED EPIC-X: $19,000 (old price: $34,500)
  • RED SCARLET-X: $7,950 (old price: $9,700)
  • RED ONE MX: $4,000 (old price: $25,000)

Jim Jannard has a lot to say about it over at RedUser.net.

Pretty awesome news which forces it’s competitors to stay competitive on pricing! Nice! Wish I could afford a RED, but alas no. Still very exciting news!

Sony announced 4K CineAlta cameras, F5 and F55 with Super 35mm Sensor

SonyPro_F5-F55_group

This is all over the web, at Cinescopophilia, Vincent Laforet’s blog and Cinema 5D among others. And Cinescopophilia has more on the F55 and F5. They have identical bodies and 4K senrors, but the F5 is going up against the Canon C500 with 1080p/2k recording up to 120FPS (as a free upgrade, it ships at 60FPS) or 120FPS to an outboard recorder for the F5 and internally for the F55, and even do 1080p or 2K at 240 FPS internally. Wow!

These use XAVC, which is 4:2:2 10 Bit at 100Mbps to 300Mbps for 4K. Exciting, though they haven’t priced the cameras as of yet.

BlackMagic updates Davinci Resolve to 9.0.3

StudioDaily has the news. Check it out at BlackMagic, it is for Resolve and the free Resolve Lite. It now works with footage without timecode (like if I use my Canon 60D in Premiere Pro without transcoding) by recording timecode onto the audio track.

The free update for full Resovle and Resolve Lite customers also includes an improved CinemaDNG control palette (you can now display color temperature and tint related to camera metadata for more precise control), AAF and XML clip management, improved ARRI and Canon C500 RAW support, and a few more tweaks to the stereoscopic 3D grading interface. Following Apple’s Final Cut Pro X update to 10.0.6 last week, Blackmagic has also added support for XML round tripping in Final Cut’s latest version. A few other nice updates include the ability to play back and grade grayscale DPX files and Phantom Cine grayscale images; support for Adobe CS6 Premiere Pro XML speed changes; a much-improved audio waveform GUI update speed; support for single-frame sequences without numbers in the frame; and a bunch of handy new keyboard shortcuts.

Over 500 posts as of today

Wow, hit over 500 posts today (can’t believe my 500th post was about Windows). Pretty surprising.

I hope people are enjoying my blog. I know I have gotten hits about my heart surgery, but not so sure on other hits, though I am slowly getting more followers on twitter, where all of my blog posts are linked to.

If you are out there, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy my posts.

ArsTechnica reviews Windows 8

ArsTechnica has an excellent review of Windows 8.  Anyone who is thinking of updating, should read this review, as it sounds like a weird mishmash of a touch interface and the old desktop that is not entirely successful on either.

I tried out the first developers preview and wasn’t a huge fan of the Metro interface, but at least it still had a start menu, the lack of start menu just seems odd, especially for desktop users.

There is also a seperate article on doing an upgrade install to Windows 8 from Windows 7. This is interesting as it is cheaper to do a download install than to get the DVD to install (at least it is still an option unlike for Mac).