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Very specific question re: Retina Macbook Pro
This forum seems to be the best place for this kind of question, I apologize if it is in th wrong place:
To explain my question, in my video practice I utilize various hacking strategies to create “glitch effects” with 1080p video. Normally this is accomplished by having my custom made program glitch the video within a 1920×1080 frame (much like a 1080p QT not in fullscreen mode) and then I record using Screenflick or some other screen capture software. The reason this is not output to an external device (or internal recording) is due to the fact that the glitching is not permanent and often slows everything to a crawl if I am running more than the recording and the glitch hack, so I have to capture it the moment it happens.
Now, with the new Retina display, it would seem that I could potentially keep working in the same fashion. However my concern is with the pixel doubling: if I capture the image in a 1920×1080 window is it capturing the pixels I am actually viewing or will there be issues when I output the screen recording to a 1080p tv? It seems like it should be fine, but due to the way that the retina display scales your graphics, I am worried that what I record doesn’t match what I output for delivery.
I already asked Apple reps, but they weren’t much help, so I figured i’d ask here. If there is an issue, I can imagine that this display won’t be terribly useful for people who do video tutorials
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22 Replies
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[Jason Bernagozzi] “in my video practice I utilize various hacking strategies to create “glitch effects” with 1080p video. Normally this is accomplished by having my custom made program glitch the video within a 1920×1080 frame (much like a 1080p QT not in fullscreen mode) and then I record using Screenflick or some other screen capture software.”
Jason,
I have no answer to your question, but I just wanted to say this is fantastic and if you can package it in a real-time box that looks and acts like a guitar pedal, I’ll buy one.
Franz.
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That effect sounds cool; can we see it on YouTube or Vimeo in a sample?
You indeed have a real concern. Pixel doubling and scaling always calls into question the WYSIWYG workflow.
Frankly, I have unintentional artifacts constantly, due to playback limits when editing HDV footage in FCP7 on MBP 17″ i7 from mid-2011.
And then when I compress and post to Vimeo, I have more artifacts due to bandwidth problems at my house.
Are you doing a good output to broadcast monitor to make sure your video and glitch effects are perfect — e.g. so the Retina will be the only kink in your workflow?
Doug D
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[Douglas K. Dempsey] “Are you doing a good output to broadcast monitor to make sure your video and glitch effects are perfect — e.g. so the Retina will be the only kink in your workflow?”
My current setup has worked pretty well so far, but I was having some issues keeping my fps up to 30 when I switched over to the 1080p glitching. I knew that if I was going to record the 1920×1080 window, I would make sure my resolution on my monitor was 1920×1200. Everything looks good in the monitor and it matches the output.
Where I get nervous is the issue of not actually setting your choice of pixel dimensions in the display settings, rather it is a sliding scale with the new retina display of “performance” or “readability”. not very helpful for a “pro” machine. Essentially, will it give me the pixels I need or is the software scaling for my eyes but not for the actual pixels being recorded?
If I knew what the actual pixels were going to be, I could bank on the new retina since I need the speed boost and I really don’t want to pay for old machines at this point. I was holding out for an iMac or a Mac Pro…but we all know how that went.
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Yes, this is in fact part of the reason for this forum, the Apple use of the term “pro” as a consumer attractor, not necessarily an indicator of flexible, adjustable and manually controllable professional products. Some on the forum feel that by turning everyone into a high-quality-output user, we are democratically making everyone a little bit “pro.”
The opposite opinion is this is a form of erosion that will make the term “pro” meaningless.
In any case, we will have to wait for bench-testers to hand-count the pixels and tell us what the selectable settings are for scaling on the Retina “pro.”
Doug D
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[Douglas K. Dempsey] “the Apple use of the term “pro” as a consumer attractor,”
I’m not sure I undertand exactly what any OTHER use of the word “pro” would be, exactly…
Isn’t that, essentially, the ONLY reason anyone ever uses that word?
To differentiate themselves in order to attract more “consumers” of ones services?
If your issue perhaps is that there are no practical, objective standard that makes one person a “pro” and another not – surely that’s not Apple’s fault, is it?
In our industry and in many others, Pro is essentially the province of perception and self-labeling – and as unsatisfying as that might be, I’m not sure it can be seen as Apple’s fault that they choose to separate X from iMovie by using that perfectly useful general marketing term.
That it doesn’t meet your, mine, or anyone else’s “personal standard” here is meaningless, since we probably all have largely different definitions of what Pro means. After all, is the first year newbie editor occupying a seat at Disney more “pro” than someone who’s responsible for making $150,000 wedding videos for the royal family of Lower Slobovia?
I think it’s kinda a slippery slope to assume that there is any definition of Pro that goes beyond having a persona history of having relentlessly planting ones butt in the seat in front of glowing screens to make our primary livings.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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“Pro” has to do with the exchange value of one’s labor.
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It would be nice if the thread could not get derailed by an arbitrary debate about how one chooses to use the term “Pro”.
If someone has an idea about the aforementioned issue, I would appreciate it greatly! Thanks!
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Jason, the MacBook Pro Retina screen is 2880×1800 pixels. When you play a HD video without magnification, it’s only going to play in an area that uses 1920×1080 pixels. Same when you display a graphic image. You should be fine. I admit the new System Preferences/Display panel, the dumbing down of the selections presented to the user on the right is quite confusing, but on the left I believe it indicates the pixel dimensions. You want to set your display to its native resolution of 2880×1800 and capture your HD image in an HD window within that larger screen using a program that just captures the image, not the screen. Is this what you need?
Sorry I can’t demonstrate this today!
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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Rick,
Thanks for the helpful reply. That is what I was hoping for, but AnandTech stated that there technically is no way for the user to turn off the scaling. In other words, the best “virtual” size you can get is 1920×1200 via their display settings. So, if this is the case, and I get a screen record that fills most of the screen space @ 1920×1200 (1080 window grab), will the recorded image on an output source be “off” due to the scaling?reference: https://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-display-macbook-pro-handles-scaling
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Sorry I don’t know for sure if it will work as I thought it would as I don’t have the machine. I recall seeing the dumbed down Display preferences screen and seeing the pixel counts on the left side. But I think those were all custom options. I haven’t seen the pixel count when the native screen is selected. It would be amazing to me not to have access to the actual 2880×1800 pixels in some way. If anyone can capture an active HD window as a TIFF, it would be so easy to calculate the actual dimension from the file size. Can someone else chime in?
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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