[Craig Seeman]

[Steve Connor] “What do you define as traditional?”

You know, like CMX 3400 controlling 1″ machines to a hardware encoder for web of course.

[Craig Seeman]

What “gets me” is that B&H seemed to be getting the stock models in constantly until the beginning of February. Then as days progressed the delivery timed continued (continues) to lengthen.
I can’t help but think something is up given B&H went from “In Stock” for some time to lengthening delivery. Either demand is escalating or they have a supply chain issue (or both).

[Craig Seeman]

And B&H in the USA is now showing 4 to 6 weeks including the two stock models. Six weeks would certainly be April.

Does Apple have a very serious supply chain issue? This ranges from ongoing to worsening.

[Craig Seeman]

Wirecast 5.0.1 and use x264 .mp4 to record to disk. Best to use external fast disk (7200rpm USB3 or Thunderbolt for example).

I’m not sure what you mean by audio drift. Audio tends to remain synced with my input sources.
Or do you mean recording?
Wirecast records a slightly variable frame rate to avoid dropping frames. The audio doesn’t drift in a player but might if an NLE tries to lock it to a standard frame rate. FCPX, for example, seems to handle it well, For other NLEs you may want to transcode the recording to a locked frame rate.

[Craig Seeman]

Far be it for me to defend Jan Ozer’s resume but he is a prominent presenter at Streaming Media who has also authored several books and scores of articles on the subject. He certainly knows what he’s doing and why.

[Craig Seeman]

B&H in NYC, was regularly getting in the two stock models, rarely out of stock for more than a couple of days. Suddenly that stopped and now everything is showing March.

It is a bit disappointing that Apple can’t seem to come close to meeting demand.

I was considering the stock 6 core D500 but wanted 512GB SSD instead of 256GB. A simple change like that sets things back weeks. That’s a serious parts shortage.

Given what happened with last year’s iMac release, there seems to be a need for a serious reexamination of Apple’s supply chain management.

[Craig Seeman]

[Travis Roesler] “Workflow was to export the highest quality h264 file possble and send it to compressor.

I was forced to export the files as quicktime… basically converting the file to ProRes before putting it into compressor.”

You should export ProRes for Compressor. It’s generally not a good idea to use a heavily compressed h.264 file as a source. Not sure why you’d even consider it. Fundamentally to b avoided IMHO short uploading to YouTube or Vimeo and the like.

Quicktime? That’s the .mov container. ProRes and H.264 can both be Quicktime.

[Travis Roesler] “but also significantly smaller than the file resulting from compressor exports. “

File size is pretty much a function of duration and data rate. There’s some variance with over/under shoot depending on content and app but there really isn’t much a difference as the math involving duration and data is a given.

A 1 hour long video encoded at 800kbps is going to be about the same size regardless of the encoder. There’s a small variance, that’s all.

You might want to read this
https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=94026&PageNum=2

Overall, at its best, the Apple codec produces better quality than the MainConcept codec, which is the only H.264 codec used in the Adobe Media Encoder

and

While there were some outliers, like the exceptionally high motion clip shown in Figure 7, for the most part the Apple codec was only slightly behind x264.

[Craig Seeman]

Have you upgraded to 4.1.1?
Is this issue specific to a source codec or file?
What is your workflow, send to Compressor from FCPX, direct import?

[Craig Seeman]

If you have Compressor 4.1.1 I’ve heard (but haven’t tested personally yet) that Apple’s new H.264 High Profile CABAC single pass (no multipass) setting is reasonably close (but not quite as good as) x264 quality.

Just thought I’d let you know if that’s the option you feel most comfortable with. As Eric states, Handbrake would be one of the best current choices given its x264 implementation.

[Craig Seeman]

[Walter Soyka] “Avid’s project sharing is a core strength that stems from the fundamental architecture of their system as a whole, spanning both the NLE client and the storage. They’re built for each other, and I don’t think Avid would be able to offer much to anybody with only half a system that they couldn’t get elsewhere.”

And if Avid focuses on providing the tools so Adobe and Apple users can hook in, they can expand their Isis sales.

I personally have to wonder why Avid tried to cut MC prices to sale to user base that has no interest in Isis. I don’t think Avid can make MC a money maker. It’s the wrong direction for them. Given they have limited R&D resources in their current financial state, using that R&D to support other NLEs.

If Adobe starts to creep further into collaborative Broadcast and Cinema markets, Avid would benefit by supporting them (and FCPX if it get there eventually).