Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Tom Sefton] “I can’t see another Mac Pro being built with a non swappable gpu, but if it can handle 8K media and the system has thunderbolt 3 so can use an egpu, I can’t see the issue.
Just observing the gpu wars at the moment, if Apple chooses one over another and it works fine with the highest quality footage available, does it really matter if you can upgrade or replace them with another from the same manufacturer in the future?”
Not all programs work best with AMD GPUs though. Some work much better with Nvidia GPUs. If Apple only wants to ship products with AMD GPUs I can see that from a parts management perspective. But blocking Nvidia GPUs from working at all (especially with the flexibility that eGPU opens up) is just like… really Apple?
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[Bill Davis] “These young producers are creating content nearly exclusively for a relatively newly viable non-broadcast market. The gold standard for them is clearly NOT AC Neilson ratings, but “likes” and subscribes — and so that’s where they concentrate. They know the new game. And it’s NOT the same as the old game.”
I beneath the surface I think the new game is very much like the old game. For example, ad revenue pays the bills for YouTubers with channel subscriptions, likes, and views being peddled as no-middle-man-needed Neilsen replacement. But channel subscriptions, likes and views are easily (and commonly) artificially inflated by click farms, and there’s not any objective, agreed upon guidelines for what constitutes a ‘view’ so online video platforms are all free to cook their numbers however they want. For example, if you scroll past a video in your social media feed or on a website and it auto-plays for a quarter second that could count as a view.
I feel like once a year in tech media there is a ‘bombshell’ article about how the self-reported numbers from video platforms are wildly inflated (shocker). Advertisers certainly don’t want to buy ad time based on fake and/or unverifiable traffic, which is one reason why ad rates for the web are so low. So what’s the solution? Maybe an independent third party that can apply a standardized set of metrics across all video platforms and make those numbers publicly available? Basically Neilsen TV ratings but for the Internet.
This, of course, doesn’t even get into things like sponsorships, merch sales, affiliate links, Patreon, etc., As much as things can feel new and crazy and wild in the beginning, once the dust starts to settle the new boss starts to look an awful lot like the old boss.
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Happy New Year as well! Let’s all make it a great one!
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The Internet is abuzz! On Twitter I’m seeing everything from Apple did this so it can showoff how much faster it’s upcoming MacPro will be at encoding ProRes than any Windows machine to Apple is doing this to keep ProRes alive because it’s about to start EOLing all creative apps.
The best part about the Internet is that everyone has a voice. The worst part about the Internet is that everyone has a voice. lol
-Andrew
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Zombie Thread warning. ????
[Mark Suszko] “If you’re telling them their project only rates a bronze-level service, though, does that provoke them into going off to DIY it without you?”
It’s not that the internal client’s project is only worthy of bronze-level service, it’s that the internal client’s budget only goes so far. All other things being equal, if the budget covers 40 man hours you’ll get something better than a budget of only 20 man hours which, in turn, will get you something better than a budget of only 10 man hours. It’s like trim levels in a car. The important parts never change (same chassis, same build quality, same warranty, etc.,) but the base-level model won’t have the navigation system the mid-level model gets and the mid-level model won’t have the fancy rims the top model gets.
The quality of the work doesn’t change. The ‘worthiness’ of the project doesn’t change. In my experience having some pre-made tiers as starting points just helps set realistic expectations of how much work can be done by X amount of people in Y amount of time.
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Here’s a look at the Mini vs the iMac form Barefeats.
https://barefeats.com/mac-mini-versus-pro-macs.html
No surprise that anything remotely GPU related is s-l-o-w o the Mini unless it has an eGPU attached. Also interesting that a tricked-out Mini (including 5k display and eGPU) is only a little bit less than a similarly spec’d iMac Pro ($5600 vs $5800).
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[Brett Sherman] “I find the Mac Mini puzzling for it’s lack of graphic card. They could have thrown at least something in there, if not the top of the line.”
Probably too much potential competition with the iMac if the Mini has a decent GPU, plus I think this is Apple continuing to get people used to external upgrades.
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[Tony West] “They shouldn’t be OK with that narrative and they should actively be working to change it. “
The narrative is Apple hardware was used to create some cool commercials and Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. They will happily sell you a Mac (which comes with Bootcamp) so you can run Windows on it and never touch MacOS. Sometimes Apple pushes a very product specific narrative (like an iPhone being used to shot a high-end commercial or FCPX being used to cut a big film) and sometimes they don’t.
Demanding that venders only use Apple solutions creates artificial barriers. Either people that don’t typically use X or Motion will get forced into using software they aren’t familiar with or you pass on people you’d like to work with since you are only looking for X users. Even job postings for post/production positions at Apple include knowing PPro and AE along with X (I don’t remember ever seeing ones asking for Motion knowledge).
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To be honest the ads on the COW have never bugged me.
With regards to FB… that’s a whole different beast that’s popular in large part because it’s a one-stop-shop for social (friends, family, co-workers, user groups, etc.,), but FB is an ever-present, all powerful middle man between content creators (in this case Ron/the COW) and their audience. No thank you.
Oldie but a goodie from The Oatmeal.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people -
[Oliver Peters] “But… It’s certainly plenty fine for most jobs, especially corporate videos and commercials. Heck – it’s pretty much on par with FCP “legacy” and probably FCPX. I mean come on – people were doing challenging stuff in the original FCPX layout and that left a LOT to be desired.”
It’s not that you *can’t* do it in Resolve, its why choose Resolve today over X, PPro or MC? Especially if you are already an X, PPro or MC user? People gravitated to FCP Legend because it was good enough and waaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than an MC license. People gravitated to X, PPro and Avid because Apple canned Legend and created a hole in the market. If Resolve 15.2 was released in 2011 I think it would’ve gained a lot of traction, but that landscape is long gone. Heck, even if it was released in 2008 (when it was mainly a two way race between FCP and MC) I think Resolve could’ve become a legit third option. But now we already have three entrenched NLEs and being just as good as them isn’t going to be good enough.
Going the ‘super-app’ route sets Resolve apart, but in reality how viable is a super app? More on that below.
[Michael Gissing] “Sure work in progress but when we talk about catchup in audio, compositing, titles & VFX almost everyone else is now playing catchup.”
Are you sure that’s a race very many people really care about though? Do rerecording mixers care about Fusion? Do colorists care about Fairlight? How many generalists are willing to learn Resolve-the-NLE, Fairlight, Fusion and Resolve-the-Grader just so they can edit a video and do some basic sound mixing, basic GFX/text and basic color grading?
As a package Resolve looks impressive AF, but outside of a full service post house that decides to become a Resolve-only shop I’m having trouble seeing where it can gain significant traction in the marketplace because it’s greatest assets, collaboration and being four-apps-in-one, depends on specialists across four disciplines all deciding to make Resolve their weapon of choice. So, yeah, as an editor I’m mainly looking at Resolve as an NLE because everything else is secondary. If, for whatever reason, I don’t think Resolve is up to snuff as an NLE having Fairlight and Fusion isn’t going to change my mind.
There is also the trend with NLEs to put what I call ‘good enough for editors’ tools into the NLE while also providing ways to send the edit to other speciality apps if need be. Adobe adding the Lumetri, Essential Sound, and Essential GFX panels is a recent, and very obvious, example of this. As odd as it may sound, I think Resolve needs to add an ‘easy mode’ for audio, grading and GFX capabilities to Resolve to lower the barrier to entry a bit.