Apple has added a 128GB iPad 4 to it's lineup (at least within a week), but it is $799 for WIFI and $929 for 4G, so they are charging a premium for more memory instead of staying the same price as they get bigger.Starting to get to be the right size, especially for video and audio, though I could still use bigger. I keep most of my music in Apple Uncompressed AAC, and it is huge, and I am constantly fighting it being full.
VideoCopilot has announced the releases of 10 City Templates for Metropolitan for Element 3D. They are a free download for those who have purchased the plug in for Element 3D. And they have released a tutorial video on them as well.
You can see it at filmmaker IQ. Of course this has been covered before in the excellent DV Rebel's Guide by the great Stu Maschitz.
The Cinematographer Philip Bloom has an in depth review of the Canon EOS 1D-C. The video is 35 minutes long and worth checking out.
Larry Jordan has an article on my Final Cut Pro X is ready and in fact being used for Professional work.Now I did try and use FCP X right from the start with lessons, and I don't think it is a professional program at all. Yes it might be faster to teach to someone with no previous editing knowledge as Larry says, but that is because it forces you to edit in a very specific way, and for me not a way that I find faster or better at all. And yes I am biased by all the horridness of Apple's launch of FCP X and killing of the Final Cut Pro 7 suite, and that may bias me, but I also think that Larry making his living doing Final Cut Pro lessons may bias him.And I hate how no one ever talks about the things that Final Cut Pro 7 is not setup to do, like working in a multi-user environment on an X-Serve or Edit Share. He does mention it is not that good at going to Pro Tools, which is a deal breaker, but also the inability to organize tracks makes for a mess of a timeline when I often use 15-20 tracks on a commercial, all for different elements or graphics to keep it organized, and to have that all haphazardly put randomly into the timeline is insane and a mess, and not at all professional!Now I do love the ability to mark clips by keywords and make it all easily searchable, but that could have easily been ported into a Final Cut Pro 8 and made it a really powerful 64 bit editing system instead of a mixture of 64 bit tech with iMovie conventions.Even with all the additions I still see Final Cut Pro X as a mess and not-professional. It has too much wrong with it, and has so many weird bugs (see previous posts on Red Giant software and FCP X), and I just don't see the magnetic timeline as being professional in a commercial environment or any graphics heavy environment where timeline organization is more important that clip organization, which I am perfectly capable of organizing myself.
Maximum PC is reporting that H.265 has been given the ITU approval. This codec will cut bandwidth requirements in half for video streaming,t hough will also require much more power to uncompress. This will be great for portable devices as well as 4K, as you can have the same quality as H.264 in half the size.
StudioDaily has an article on editors picking Dell Computers over MacPro's for editing, which may in fact be true (though the article is written by someone working for Dell), as the MacPro has basically stagnated for years now, but I also hate how they never bother upgrading a MacPro with more modern technology for speed tests. Like putting in a PC NVIDIA Geforce 675 GTX with 4GB of RAM. That will make a huge difference in speed, especially with CUDA compliant software like Premiere Pro or Black Magic's DaVinci Resolve! It may not be a TESLA, but it also doesn't come with the price, which could set you back well over $6000 for a QUADRO and a TESLA, vs under $500 for a GTX 675 which works with the Mac's current power supply and can really upgrade your existing MacPro.Now of course their is still the question of what Apple's next MacPro will be like and if it will be a worthy and powerful successor to the current MacPro, but we won't know till it comes out, hopefully at this years WWDC.
And it does sound impressive as Creative Planet points out. Too expensive for indie (the $19000 F5 sounds much more in line) and still having some ease of use issues, it still sounds like a very impressive addition to the CineAlta lineup.
Electronic House is reporting on this disturbing news. I personally use a Harmony One and love it, though it could use more programability and functionality that it will likely never get now.My biggest complaint is it is set up to control multiple devices at one, but since it doesn't get feedback it doesn't know the states of each device unless you only use those simple button controls to do everything. Well personally I like to control individual components (and can never figure out why they randomly move on the touch screen) and do things differently at different times. Sometimes through the stereo, sometimes through the TV, plus I have a TIVO, an Apple TV, a ROKU, a PS3 an XBOX 360 and more HDMI devices than HDMI ports on my receiver.It would be awesome to have a universal remote that I have full control over, instead of being forced to do it how a company forces me to, and I hate how things are moving to touchscreen only as you can't do that easily in the dark. I like to be able to control everything with buttons that my hands can always find, and have a fully programable touchscreen as well for the functions that I want and use, but don't need in the dark, and it looks like that may be a thing of the past soon.Lets hope someone steps up.
Walter Biscardi has a good article on getting post involved first, so it doesn't need to be fixed in post. A great idea, though I still don't see it happening anytime soon unfortunately, even though it ends up costing more later. Even just having your post guy consult before shooting would be helpful, but it never happens, even though it should.