Several websites have been reporting that Apple's 13.3" widescreen MacBook (not Pro) is to be released today. Not so, says AppleInsider; we won't be seeing the consumer notebook until later this month, at which time a new iPod will also be introduced (I'm guessing this will be a new Nano, not the "real" iPod video... although I'm betting it won't be called that, either. iPod Movie, anyone?). Still, the MacBook's specs seem surprisingly close to those of the Pro; Intel Core Duo Processors, MagSafe power cord, built-in iSight. Combined with the relative lack of DV features on the 15" MacBook Pro--no firewire 800, no dual-layer DVD burning--the MacBook may be a pretty good budget DV editing machine, as it will be a good $700+ cheaper than the Pro (my own speculation; pricing has not been announced). In other news, the 17" version of the MacBook Pro has started arriving in customer's hands; it seems to me that Apple purposefully held back the FW800 and dual-layer DVD from the 15" merely to differentiate their offerings, since the specs on all of their Intel notebooks are very similar. Still, I'm writing this on a 15" MacBook Pro, and... it's pretty damn nice.MacBook on the way, just not today
Several websites have been reporting that Apple's 13.3" widescreen MacBook (not Pro) is to be released today. Not so, says AppleInsider; we won't be seeing the consumer notebook until later this month, at which time a new iPod will also be introduced (I'm guessing this will be a new Nano, not the "real" iPod video... although I'm betting it won't be called that, either. iPod Movie, anyone?). Still, the MacBook's specs seem surprisingly close to those of the Pro; Intel Core Duo Processors, MagSafe power cord, built-in iSight. Combined with the relative lack of DV features on the 15" MacBook Pro--no firewire 800, no dual-layer DVD burning--the MacBook may be a pretty good budget DV editing machine, as it will be a good $700+ cheaper than the Pro (my own speculation; pricing has not been announced). In other news, the 17" version of the MacBook Pro has started arriving in customer's hands; it seems to me that Apple purposefully held back the FW800 and dual-layer DVD from the 15" merely to differentiate their offerings, since the specs on all of their Intel notebooks are very similar. Still, I'm writing this on a 15" MacBook Pro, and... it's pretty damn nice.Impending beta launch: Tape It Off The Internet
Even if you're like me and you don't own a TV, chances are you still have a couple of shows you want to watch regularly. Using the magic power of the internet, you'd think that there'd be an easy way to do this. But there's not. While one could combine RSS syndication and BitTorrent to essentially "subscribe" to a pseudo-vodcast of their favorite show, it's not easy. Most TV-watchers are probably better off just footing a monthly cable bill.
But what if there was an easy way to "subscribe" to your favorite TV shows online, and watch them on your desktop (or laptop)? iTunes offers this for certain programs at $1.99 an episode, and ABC has already instituted an ad-supported, streaming implementation for watching their most popular shows on the web. But we also reported back in November of a promising site, fittingly titled Tape It Off The Internet, which promises to move TV-watching online. Besides its questionable legality, there are a number of other aspects of TIOTI that are noteworthy, including community features like tagging, chatting, and sharing. Finally, the just-updated preview site is currently displaying a "coming soon" moniker emblazoned on an interestingly-titled icon: "create." Perhaps TIOTI will list user-generated episodic video content right next to shows from the big boys? Head on over and sign up for the beta if you're interested.
A Wired article and a DV Guru poll: did you go to the theater more last year?
Wired News has posted a nice item about the "Downloading at a Theater Near You" panel at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Featuring director Steven Soderbergh, distribution mogul Todd Wagner, BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin, and MPAA exec Dean Garfield, the panel discussed Hollywood's current shortcomings and the feature of film distribution. Soderbergh has some nice quotes related to the ridiculousness of Hollywood's current expense model, but Wagner's quote takes the cake: "Movie tickets represent only 13 percent of a Hollywood studio's revenue... that 13 percent tail is wagging the rest of the dog."
I've noticed that within the span of the past year I've been going to the theater a lot less myself, preferring to queue up most films in Netflix instead. While most panels and discussions on this topic have been about the frequency with which the customer is going to the theater these days, I'm interested in the content producer. I'm willing to bet that most directors and producers themselves are watching more films on DVD, cable, on-demand, and on-the-go than they are in the theater; can they really expect their customers to behave any differently? DV Guru's readership is mostly video content producers, have you found your own outings to the theater dropping considerably? If so, why? What could theater owners add to the experience that would bring you back (Mark Cuban has some good suggestions)? Let's get a discussion going.
RED black
Following RED's announcement at NAB, I was left wondering, does is really make any sense to be running around with a
shiny, silver, slippery HD camera? Existing cameras are built the way they are for a reason--humans interact with
them, not robots. Jim Jannard, RED founder and Oakley CEO, is in charge of RED's physical design and form-factor,
and presumably makes the big decisions when it comes to the overall appearance of RED. In my opinion, the design
of Oakley's headquarters, as well as RED's website, is very, very ugly. The neo-goth, overbuilt-industrial look is not what you'd
call easy on the eyes, and the slickness of an all-metal body would result in more than a few dropped cameras (my
all-metal MacBook Pro suffered a similar fate, as I dropped it the day after I got it--but it's supposed to be on your
lap, not in your hands).Well, according to RED central (a.k.a HD for Indies), RED is actually going to be black. I'm still not sold on its design, and if I were a betting man, I'd wager that the appearance of the camera is going to change significantly before it sees the light of day. Nevertheless, even though his company's name is RED, Jannard seems to have subscribed to the Passenger 57 mantra, "always bet on black."
Next-gen Sony CineAlta shown at NAB
Sony
displayed a working prototype of their next CineAlta HD camera at NAB this year, showing off an entirely new form-factor
and a number of new features. Film & Video has the
lowdown on Sony's introduction of a new feature to the CineAlta lineup (a direct, and obvious, attempt to bite into the
success of Panasonic's Varicam):
variable-framerate shooting, from 1 to 60fps at a full resolution of 1920X1080p.Considering that both Panasonic and Sony's offerings start between $60k and $80k (and can run well into six digits), you have to wonder what the future of the variable-framerate HD camera is now that multiple companies are planning on lowering the cost-of-entry bar to under $20k. Before RED and Silicon Imaging there were plenty of other grand schemers, but if one of them does pull off the HD miracle everyone's hoping for, I'd have to think that Sony and Panasonic's broadcast business will require some considerable revamping. A more realistic situation has Sony and Panasonic largely retaining the broadcast market, with indie filmmakers springing for the lower cost option and dealing with the ensuing image quirks and workflow idiosyncracies. Either way, if you're hoping to get into HD filmmaking, there's a bevy of options coming your way.
JVC shows two new HDV cameras at NAB
FresHDV has some fresh specs on JVC's just-announced GY-HD200U
and GY-HD250U. The new models add better MPEG-2 encoding, uncompressed HD-SDI-out, an optional cine-style adapter
for 16/35mm PL-mount lenses, and an in-camera image flipping setting designed for lens adapters like the Redrock Micro,
Movietube, Mini35, etc., as well as a host of other new features. The GY-HD100U is only a year old, with
(positive) reviews still trickling in on its true 24p, interchangeable lens HDV goodness, yet JVC has already upped the
ante. Both cameras ship in October, for retail prices of $8 and $9k, and look to be serious players in the
white-hot sub-$10k HDV market.
RED ONE camera announced at NAB
RED
has finally announced their digital cinema camera at NAB, and their site has gone live with all the details. Specs
of the ultra-hyped camera are as follows: the magnesium body is $17.5k, weighs 7lbs, has a 12-megapixel Mysterium sensor
(4520X2540 resolution), and offers a number of mounting/cage options (one is shown at right). Two lenses are
available: a 300mm zoom lens, and a 17-90mm option. The camera also accepts Super 35mm and Super 16mm PL mount
lenses. Storage options are RED-FLASH, RED-RAM, RED-DRIVE, and RED-RAID, which are self-explanatory storage
devices (some details are here). RED is
accepting reservations for the camera for a refundable-at-any-time fee of $1000, and the camera is tentatively
scheduled to ship late 2006. The revolution will be televised... at 4k.
[via FresHDV]
UPDATE: No working prototypes are being shown at NAB, merely mock-ups and specs. So far, nobody (to my knowledge) has seen any footage. One very cool feature of the camera: it downconverts from its higher available resolutions to whatever size you're shooting in, so even its 1080p output will look smoother and better (in theory) than a straight-up 1080p HD camera (similar to how SD that's been downconverted from HD looks better than native SD). For further information and analysis, head over to HD For Indies: Mike has more details on shooting modes, pricing and availability, and is devoting the whole day to RED.
REDwatch: DV.com interview
DV.com has posted a thorough interview with Ted Schilowitz, who heads up RED's development team (the same guy Mike interviewed at HD for Indies, formerly of AJA). Why so many posts about RED all over this site, and every other video destination? Because if Jim Jannard's company manages to pull this off, you're looking at nothing short of the most significant technical revolution for independent filmmakers since the original introduction of DV. Imagine every single camera over $20k being made obsolete with the release of a single product, and you understand the level of hype the RED folks have generated. Regardless of whether they do pull it off, it's always more interesting to read about the people that are really going for it, as opposed to the companies that are merely introducing another upgrade to an existing product. NAB is here now, so you can expect a lot more coverage of RED from everyone in the days to come.
[via HD for Indies]
Matrox announces RT.X2, MXO
Matrox has announced a pair of new products, one each for PC and Mac users.RT.X2 is a PCIe hardware accelerator for Premiere Pro 2.0. It accelerates real-time effects and rendering, offers additional features and inputs, and natively edits both DV and HDV. At $2k, the RT.X2 is essentially a lesser Axio.
MXO is a new external breakout box that converts any quicktime signal running through your Mac DVI-out into broadcast-quality HD or SD signals via SDI, component, S-video, or composite outputs. Matrox claims the MXO, running under "mastering mode," allows genlockable mastering-to-tape and downconversions--all in all, a product that may take care of all your output needs, for the price of $1k.
Here's a related question: I'm new to many things Apple, as my MacBook Pro is my first non-PC (I've worked on plenty of Macs, but never owned one before). The MXO seems like a nicely targeted product, considering the MBP only has a single DVI output. As my MacBook is my primary editing machine, are there other hardware options I should be looking at? Anyone heard of any upcoming ExpressCard solutions? Let me know in the comments!
[via Videoguys]
RT.X2
MXO
Silicon Imaging announces sub-$20k HD camera
There's a revolution underway in the digital cinematography field. While RED made their splash 4 months ago with their announcement that they'd
been developing a 4k HD camera, Silicon Imaging was also working in stealth mode on their own low-cost HD
solution. Today they announced their SI-1920HDVR, a 1920X1080p 10-bit camera that natively records to the
CineForm RAW wavelet codec. The single 2/3" CMOS chip records to a dual-core Windows XP machine with a
7" touch-screen interface (seen at right), using a hot-swappable 160GB USB 2.0 hard drive (thanks to the wavelet
codec, the drive can store over 4 hours of footage). The camera shoots in 24p, 25p, and 30p, and can be
overcranked to 72fps, as well as undercranked. There are more particulars in the press release, and a lot of interesting information
can be found in their FAQ, which notes that a
separate, lower cost package will be available: bring your own computer, display, and storage system, and you can get
the HD camera head, a tripod mount, a copy of Premiere Pro 2.0 with Prospect HD, and two lenses--all for $12.5k.
Otherwise, the complete camera package--which I'm guessing integrates a complete windows XP computer system,
given the dual-core chip specification--retails for under $20 grand. There are sample images and footage posted
on Silicon Imaging's website; the camera is scheduled to ship in Q3, and they will be presenting at NAB. It's
going to be a very interesting year for independent HD filmmaking.Boris Blue ships
Blue
is apparently a better color than red, as Boris FX has shipped their new flagship effects program, Blue--a program
based on their previous top-of-the-line FX package, Red. The new standalone application offers 3D text, particle
generators, bump mapping and material surfaces, and retails for $2k--or half that, if you already own Red. Think
of it as a really expensive upgrade. Give the trial version a test-drive if you're interested (and you skipped
the free beta they ran last
month). Windows XP only.[Thanks, Douglas]
Lots of plugins for 25% less
Pluginz.com is running a NAB promotion which knocks 25% off from a selection of over 100 digital imaging
plugins. Use coupon code NAB2006 at checkout for the discount; if you're in the market for a particular plugin
for After Effects, Avid, Discreet, etc. it may be worth checking to see if this discount gets you a better price than
what you can find elsewhere.Adam Wilt reviews the JVC HD-100
Immediately after delivering a 4.5 out of 5
verdict on the XL H1, Adam Wilt reviews the JVC HD-100 and gives it... a 4.5 out of 5. Great--two new HDV
cameras with detachable lenses hit the market around the same time, and neither one is "better" than the
other? Which should you buy/rent? Depends on your needs. The JVC offers true progressive capture in
24, 25, and 30p, whereas the XL H1 offers 1080i. JVC's offering also has a number of quirks that may or may not
be dealbreakers. As usual, Wilt's review is more thorough than any other.Cinelook 2 vs. Magic Bullet 2.1
Tim Johnson at CreativeCow fires up After Effects 7 and pits Red Giant's Magic Bullet Suite 2.1 against DigiDesign's
Cinelook 2. Cinelook 1 was one of the earliest examples of a film-look software package, but when Magic Bullet
came out, it was made obsolete. I was using Cinelook 1 when Magic Bullet came out, and while the new kid on the
block required longer render times, the resulting footage simply looked much richer (one thing Cinelook had going for
it over MB was its "damaged film" simulations, which MB has since added in the form of
"MisFire"). So how does version 2 of each software compare? Despite Johnson's 4.5-star rating of
each, it seems that not much has changed--Magic Bullet looks better, and CineLook renders faster. I think most
indie filmmakers would rather trade in short render times for a nicer finished product--but those in other
environments, especially those more corporate by nature, may not share that same sentiment.Video compression in Quicktime podcast
MacBreak has posted an informative podcast on video compression techniques using Quicktime Pro. They briefly
cover formats, datarates, compressing for iPod, and more. This isn't anything new--Rocketboom's page, Apple's own tutorial, and Wikia's Quicktime wiki all cover this
material well--but if you'd rather watch a video about compression instead of going through the trouble of reading about
it on your own, head on over to MacBreak's TWiT.tv page.[Thanks, Russell]
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