MacRumors reports on Anandtech’s Deep Dive into the M1 Pro and M1 Max.

MacRumors posted on Anandtech’s Deep Dive in to the M1 Pro and M1 Max. And here is the AndanTech Deep dive.

The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.

Wow, this sounds amazing, as I have said, can’t wait for the Apple Silicon iMac Pro and Mac Pro to see what they can do!

9to5Mac reports that the M1 Max GPU beats an AMD Radeo Pro W6900x in Affinity Benchmark

Filipe Esposito at 9 to 5 first reported on this, from a test by Andy Somerfield at Affinity Photohttps://9to5mac.com/2021/10/25/apple-m1-max-gpu-beats-6000-amd-radeon-pro-w6900x-in-affinity-benchmark/

This is pretty amazing, beating a $6000 GPU from the 2019 MacPro! Wow. So the Apple Silicon iMac Pro and Mac Pro will certainly be impressive machines.

Blackmagic Design raised the price on the Speed Editor, but drops price on keyboard and some of it’s color panels

Blackmagic Design has announced reductions on the DaVinci Resolve Editor Keyboard and some panels, but a price raise on the Speed Editor.

  • DaVinci Resolve $Free.
  • DaVinci Resolve Studio $295.
  • DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor $395, an increase of $100.
  • DaVinci Resolve Editor Keyboard $595, a saving of $400.
  • DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel $795, a saving of $200.
  • DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel $1995, a saving of $1000.

Now the Speed Editor was $295 and included Resolve Studio, so that is going the wrong way, but $595 is getting better for the Editor Keyboard (down $400_ and $1000 off the mini panel is great, though I will stick with my Tangent.

The thing is I know that Blackmagic Panels are better built than Tangent, but they also only work with DaVinci, and even with the price drop are still so expensive. And I only work with ergonomic keyboards so the editing Keyboard is useless to me, so I was interested in the Speed Editor, but it’s focus on the Cut Panel turns me off. Honestly I know you aren’t reading this Blackmagic, but I would love a smaller panel with basically the dial and a few other buttons, but I know it wouldn’t have customizable buttons or work with other software, so…

And the customability is the weird thing, since DaVinci doesn’t let you customize the buttons nor let them work with anything else. And the buttons on the Speed Editor are too focused on the Cut Page, which I do not like and do not use, I would much rather have it based on the edit page, but would also want it to work with Premiere Pro, so…

Scott Simmons at Pro Video Coalition review the 16 inch Apple MacBook Pro M1 Max for Video Editors Part 1

Scott Simons has released the first part of a must read review of using the Apple MAcBook Pro M1 Max for Video Editors.

Things sounds great so far, and it really gives me hope for the Apple Silicon iMac Pro and Mac Pro.

Still hope that plug in makers start speeding up the process of re-writing their software for M1. It disturbs me that even companies like Maxon with Red Giant hasn’t upgraded everything to M1 yet, even though it is a subscription, which means they really should be upgrading their applications quickly, because I am paying for them constantly. At least Adobe has the Beta of After Effects working on M1, but it is going to be limited on plug ins for sure.

Some more adverse effects of California law AB5, not only can I not right off employee expenses, but I have lost the ability to use Individual 401K or SEP IRA plans!

Since the damned California AB5 has taken effect, which basically banned 1099 employment forcing you to work as an employee at companies, I have already lost the ability to write off employee expenses, which I previously was able to do with a schedule C (I know it is the worst for getting audited, but it let me write off expenses at least), but what I hadn’t realize is how much it screws up retirement plans.

Yes I knew about ROTH and regular IRA contributions, which max out at $6000, but as a 1099 employee in addition you can do either a Individual 401(k) with contributions up to $19500, or $26000 if over 50 or a SEP IRA which lets you d0 25% of eligible compensation or 20% of Net earnings or $58,000! And that is in addition to the IRA.

The only other solution is do an S Corp if the companies will even hire me that way and incur the $800 fee, but all the additional tax filing fees and accountant fees to have a corporation that has to pay me, and my accountant says it isn’t worth it unless I am making over 100,000 a year.

And with COVID-19 I now literally work full time on my home machine and equipment, and have to keep all software and hardware up to do, but not being able to file a schedule C means that I can’t write any of that off, and I can’t do additional retirement plans being a traditional IRA or ROTH IRA? Seriously?

Does AB5 actually help anyone?

Why is Cinematic Mode on the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro only 30 FPS and not 23.976?

So with the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, Apple added a cinemtatic mode to video that is basically Portrait Mode for video, which does a post processed Depth of field using the different lenses to create a depth map. It is not going to be perfect, but certainly will look more cinematic than the deep depth of field you normally get with an iPhone lens, and you can re-focus after the fact in Final Cut Pro, iMovie and in the Photos app. It even has HDR color depth, but then why is it only at 30 Frames Per second?

I just don’t get what Apple was thinking here, especially since it should be easier to process 23.976 than 30 frames a second. And films in movie theaters are in 23.976, and our eyes are used to that amount of motion blur to be cinematic, and not 30 frames, which is much more TV looking, as everything is sharper.

I think eventually will add 23.976 to cinematic mode, but likely not till IOS 16 or the next iPhone with better Cinematic mode.

Honestly I have an iPhone 11 Pro and Cinematic Mode would possibly tip me to getting a new iPhone, but it is the 30 FPS thing that really screws it up for me.

Now I do have a weird relationship with 23.976 vs 29.97, as when I am cutting commercials I would prefer 29.97 because Motion graphics looks less stuttery at 29.97, but we are talking “CINEMATIC” here and for “CINEMATIC” that is 23.976!

I think Apple made a mistep here, and hope they will fix it sooner rather than later.

Of course I also think that they should have figured out a way to use the LIDAR on the Pro model which is used for low light photos to make a better depth map. I know it would split cinematic mode for the 12 and the 13 pro models, but a better depth map would be welcome.

ProVideoCoalition on using OpenEXR format in After Effects

Chris Zwar has an article at ProVideoCoalition on using OpenEXR format for rendering in After Effects.

OpenEXR support has recently been updated to include compression, and it is a stll format in case of crashes, you save your renders (though have to also render out audio if necessary). EXR is a format developed by VFX Proffesionals for the purpose.

Sony has announced the forthcoming Alpha 7 IV for $2500 arriving in December

Sony has announced it’s new Alpha 7 IV camera with 33 Megapixel Full Frame Image Sensor and 4K Video at 60 FPS in 10 Bit 4:2:2 vs 4K 30 in 8 bit for the mark III.

The 4K at up to 30 FPS uses the entire 7K Width of the Sensor, which 4K 60 FPS uses a 1.5x crop, which uses 4.6K and can use SD UHS II cards except one setting which needs a CFExpress Type A card. And it can record for more than hour without overheating!

The one big video issue is that unlike the III you can’t do 16 Bit RAW Video to an external recorder, in fact their is now RAW video, which is very unfortunate.

Still I would love this camera, but the video capabilities of the BlackMagic 6K Pro are superior, but it doesn’t have the still capabilities of this camera. My current still camera is non full frame DSLR the Canon 60 D, so I have lenses that would work for the Blackmagic, but this would be an amazing replacement.