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[Marcus Moore] “my general impression is that most iPhone users are on a 2-3 year upgrade cycle anyways”
Given the standard turnover every two years under contract it could take 3 years at least depending on where people are in their contract cycle. Keep in mind many people are still signing up with iPhone 5c and 5s so they’d have to turnover as well. Tablets might be even longer. They’ve still been selling iPad 2 up ’till this point.
[Marcus Moore] “Moving iTunes content to h.265 will undeniably be a process that takes years”
Yes it will for sure.
Apple’s iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus use H.265 codec for FaceTime over cellular
https://appleinsider.com/articles/14/09/12/apples-iphone-6-iphone-6-plus-use-h265-codec-for-facetime-over-cellularH.265 technology, also known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), for encoding and decoding FaceTime video calls over cellular.
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Exactly how Apple is implementing H.265 is unknown at this time, but considering the feature is restricted to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, some speculate the new A8 SoC incorporates a specialized encoder/decoder module not present in older handsets. Further, Fleming points out that while Macs have the processing power to run software-based H.265 encoder/decoder solutions, portables usually require hardware integration.Currently that would only iPhone 6 to iPhone 6 series. Phone companies would be supporting because it’s lower data demands than H.264.
BTW although Macs have the processing power to do this, I don’t doubt it will eventually get hardware assets as well and that will be a big impetus for people to upgrade Macs if you need to deliver H.265 professionally. Two years from now we may be doing a lot more H.265 encoding and that may well make the current MacPros very long in the tooth.
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BMPCC has great value especially if you need to shoot in places where you can’t look like you’re handling a professional camera.
BMPCC support Panasonic Lumix lenses with Image Stabilization. Otherwise you’d need to get Metabones Canon EF to BMPCC mount which also supports Image Stabilization and tears through batteries though.
Consider that the BMPCC with a Panasonic Image Stabilized Zoom lens could push you over budget. If you go Metabones and Canon EF that might push even further… unless you already own lenses.
If you’re doing in door shooting and indoor interviews you may want a very fast lens, especially if you want a shallow Depth of Field. In that scenario you might want Metabones EF to BMPCC and maybe a Sigma f1.8 18-35 (not a stabilized lens). That combo would also put you over budget I think.
With your budget you could get BMPCC and inexpensive (but not very fast) Panasonic Image Stabilized Zoom lens. Zacuto Pocket Z-Finder, 6-8 Blackmagic batteries. Consider tripod and/or monopod as well. If you need really light for travel, Benro has some light and inexpensive travel tripods and monopods.
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It’ll help a bit but not as quickly as you might think.
For the sake of backwards and Android compatibility H.264 will be dominant for some time. Any distribution venturing into H.265 will have to encode both codecs and H.265 encoding is a huge resource hog at the moment… resources which would be only for iPhone 6 owners at the moment.
If Apple wants to push H.265 they’d have to hasten the upgrade process for all preexisting iPhones and iPads. That would either be a well instituted Apple trade in program or some way to make it an incentive for the carriers to do.
Some carriers are moving to a model in which one buys the phone and payments are spread out directly rather than the now traditional subsidized model. These programs allow for annual upgrades rather than every two years. The related question is how the carriers feel about data use vs data rate billing as H.265 is more efficient. If their data networks are saturated they’d like it. If they’d rather hope that people have overages so they run up their monthly bill, they may not.
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24fps to 25fps speed changes are common and usually “acceptable.” Granted some can certainly notice that.
You might want to use the an NLE during a free trial period to re-conform the frames if need be.
For example, FCPX, which has a 30 day free trial, has a conform feature that would change the speed, keeping the frames to confirm to the timeline frame rate.
I’m wondering if the free GoPro Studio could do it.
Perhaps someone can suggest other solutions that will re-conform.
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[Bret Williams] “I also see in his article he’s sticking with 2 pass VBR.”
I didn’t see that in the article. Someone else mentions VBR in the comments.
Generally (with some exceptions I believe) Apple’s H.264 encoder does best when using High Profile CABAC Single Pass. There is no 2/Multipass option when using those settings. I believe Jan Ozer mentioned that those settings come very close to matching x264.
Adobe BTW is using MainConcept’s encoder unless that’s changed.
Apple’s H.264 encoding had been pretty bad up until recently. That they can get close to x264 quality denotes a significant improvement.
This article is worth reading
https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/First-Look-Apple-Compressor-4.1-94026.aspxJan Ozer notes the following on page 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 is also an option in desktop tools like Sorenson Squeeze and Telestream Episode.
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There’s key information not in there.
Profile Main or High?
Entropy CAVLC or CABAC?
One, Two or Multi Pass?
CBR or VBR?
Key Frame rate?
Processor (can make a difference if the encoder can use Intel QuickSync on i7)The content itself can have impact as some types of material do better with some settings vs others.
He seems to only focus on data rate. -
[Jeremy Garchow] “It seems that no one really knows what happened.”
We may have to follow the Apple Job Openings to get a better picture 😉There’s some pretty entertaining press about the stream today.
From the Higher Ed niche
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/apples-live-stream-debacle-and-edtechNY Times
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/apples-live-streaming-is-terrible/TUAW references the Streaming Media blog
https://www.tuaw.com/2014/09/10/why-apples-live-video-stream-was-a-complete-bust/Huff Post
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/09/apple-livestream-fail_n_5792090.htmlNews.com Australia
https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/apple-live-stream-and-u2-fail-leaves-fans-frustrated/story-fn6vihic-1227054007978Business Insider also refs Streaming Media blog
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-apple-live-stream-failed-during-iphone-6-launch-2014-9The Guardian covers the response on Twitter
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/09/applelive-how-twitter-reacted-when-apples-live-stream-didnt-go-to-plan?TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/09/apple-livestream-translation/International Business Times and Twitter
https://www.ibtimes.com/apple-iphone-announcement-marred-live-stream-issues-chinese-interpreter-1683128ZDnet
If Apple can’t stream an iPhone 6 event, is there really an enterprise story?
https://www.zdnet.com/if-apple-cant-stream-an-iphone-6-event-is-there-really-an-enterprise-story-7000033499/Forbes attacks from a few perspectives
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2014/09/10/apple-iphone-6-launch-event-technical-issues-and-a-huge-missed-opportunity/Wall Street Journal
https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/09/apples-iphone-6-live-stream-fail/Thus ends a great moment in Apple’s “don’t hold it that way” reliability 😉
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I’m not quite sure Dany Rayburn and Streaming Media post link bait articles. It’s purely speculative but their business is covering the Streaming and Encoding industry and this blog (it’s his blog post and not a researched article) falls into that category.
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Streaming Media’s Dan Rayburn on the mess
https://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/09/why-apples-livestream-failed.htmlActually the comments at the bottom are very illuminating.
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No mention of what source files are or version of Compressor being used so it’s hard for people to know what’s happening.