[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “Heavily compressed H-264 via web transfer for starting the work – then footage that catches up when the originals can be locally attached to the net file pointers sounds like something that could work to me.”

This is very much what’s going on with Quantel’s QTube, which is tied directly into their broadcast news workflows. Avid has demonstrated something like this as well. I could just as easily see this working in some film workflows.

[Bill Davis] “Why not make that the core of a new workflow?”

In some ways a very old workflow: offline and online. There has been this idea that because you CAN carry massive amounts of mastering quality video that you SHOULD…and maybe you should, but it’s at the sacrifice of enormous flexibility.

Offline/online workflows work, and work fast. Edit on local ingest with proxies that backfill full res works, and has been working for a very long time. The only thing that has changed is that it’s over the network.

For now, this is going to work best when you can tunnel into a fat pipe via VPN, but poke around the web for “HD over mobile,” and you’ll be amazed at what people are pulling off with the nastiest, flimsiest networks available.

Of course, I’m not talking about iPhone on AT&T. That’s not a network. That’s a NOTwork.

That aside, this isn’t some future thing. It’s going to get better, like everything else, but it’s happening now, and it’s working.

[Tim Wilson]

[Dave LaRonde] “[Gerald Baria] “Is there really an NLE on windows which can use 12 cores of CPU?? Can adobe CS5.5 do it?”

It sure can. “

Premiere supports 12 cores of CPU, AND 448 CUDA cores on the NVIDIA Quadro 6000, which also has 6GB of memory in the frame buffer.

The beefiest Mac card (Quadro 4000) has 256 CUDA cores and 2GB frame buffers.

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Harlan] “Hey, Bob, at least Adobe’s people are willing to talk about their product. Wouldn’t it just be WILD if Apple were to do something similar. I mean, just for kicks.”

For the record, we at the COW take a very dim view of one vendor talking smack in another vendor’s forum. Where needed, we react strongly and quickly.

That’s definitely not been the case with Dennis. He responds when something about Adobe comes up, as he has done hundreds of times in many COW forums over the years.

Avid folks have been posting in these threads too. In every case, we’ve seen their responses to be professional and on topic.

Indeed, Adobe and Avid have always had folks posting in the COW quite regularly, in some cases with thousands of posts under their belts. They’re welcome…as of course people from Apple have been.

And indeed, Apple folks have posted here now and again. In at least one case that I remember, the Apple guy even included his apple.com email address, and invited a poster to contact him directly for help.

So anyway, we’re doing our best to monitor everything that’s happening here, and I’m certainly not meaning to kick up a fuss by saying this, but from our perspective, it’s working out about like it should: somebody brings up something about a company, and somebody from that company steps in to answer.

Tim, for ONCE speaking on behalf of the COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Tom Wolsky] “Why do you think many switchers would move to the PC versions?”

I wouldn’t say “many,” but perhaps you haven’t seen the threads all over the COW where people have already added PCs their facilities.

The story is largely the same: it has been clear for a while that Apple’s pro focus is becoming, let’s say, less focused. These folks had been putting off new purchases for a while, and aren’t willing to wait around and watch the whole thing circle down the drain in hopes that Apple’s next release of hardware or software will make it all better again.

With Premiere Pro in particular, the Mercury Engine can make it absolutely scream on Windows — not because Adobe or NVIDIA love Windows better, but because Apple has never been willing to commit to the fastest video cards. So if you want a combination of extensive native media support and performance you wouldn’t have thought possible, take a look at Premiere Pro on Windows, running with a higher-end video card than Apple supports.

(For the record, the max Mercury Engine NVIDIA card that Apple supports has 1.5 GB RAM and 256 cores. The max PC is 6 GB RAM and 448 cores. It’s easy to see the difference in practice.)

Now, that’s just my opinion. Feel free to disagree and I won’t argue back. The numbers are the numbers, and they either matter to you or they don’t. You’re the only one who has a vote.

But some of the very highest-profile Mac enthusiasts like Richard Harrington (in addition to hosting the COW’s FCP podcast, has written several FCP books) and the folks at Digital Film Tree (who developed workflows for the first FCP feature and first FCP prime time network show) have already added PC rooms to their previously Mac-only facilities. In DFT’s case, they’re going much further than that, and it started in a big way with Xserve, before FCP. There are many more who have posted along these lines all over the COW.

I by no means think that this is going to represent the majority of people looking for their post-FCP landing pad. Not even close. I also don’t see a lot of people throwing their Macs away. But moving in the direction of Windows is already appearing as a viable option in mainstream discussions, and an increasingly mainstream choice.

[Tim Wilson]

The numbers also wouldn’t take into account the number of Mac customers who already own the Creative Suite, and have started using Premiere for the first time.

[Tim Wilson]

That article includes a link to AppleInsider’s story from May 2010 with the provocative headline, Apple scaling Final Cut Studio apps to fit prosumers.

Apple’s Final Cut Studio suite of video post production apps is getting a significant makeover to better target the software to the mainstream of Apple’s customer base rather than high end professionals.

According to a person with knowledge of Apple’s internal Pro Apps plans, the company has shuffled around management within the Final Cut team in order to retarget its efforts to more closely match the needs of the majority of its customers. Apple’s Mac customer base has steadily shifted from desktop models to notebooks, while also broadening out from a high end creative niche to a wider installed base that includes more prosumer and advanced home users.

You can argue whether they got the story substantially right…oh wait, maybe not…but 13 months ahead of the game? Color me impressed.

[Tim Wilson]

I’ll stick with Media Composer being introduced at NAB in 88, even if it didn’t ship until a couple of weeks after EMC. 🙂

That said, we’re splitting hairs here, and I admit that I should have been more careful with my language. Still, the gist is true. Not only did Henry Ford NOT invent the car — I don’t know if he was one of the first ten at the party. Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb, and Peter Frampton didn’t invent that thing where you put a tube in your mouth while you play the electric guitar. But they stuck the landing in a meaningful-enough way that the people before them are seen as precursors, and their peers as variants.

THAT said, while I’m sticking to my guns that the landing for desktop video was stuck longest and loudest on Mac, and by no means exclusively, I really don’t want to be seen as a Mac pimp. While I built my own video production company around Macs, my opinion is that Apple lost its pro-focus a long time before FCP 7 shipped, for deeper reasons than typically come up…but have on this thread, and this one too.

Thanks for all the fish, indeed.

Anyone else wants to have the last word on this sub-thread is welcome to it. 🙂 The main part of the thread is the one that deserves the spotlight.

[Tim Wilson]

[Richard Cardonna] “If I am not mistaken the first video pc was “The Amiga””

Maybe a little. 🙂

You’re right that the Toaster was revolutionary, but less for editing imo than switching, keying and CG than editing.

It was introduced in 1990. Avid Media Composer was built around the Mac II, shown in 1988, shipped in 1989.

(The EditDroid in 1984 was earlier, but there were only 24 built, and not running on an off-the-shelf personal computer – more a precursor than the actual revolution.)

Since I see Toaster as a sidestep more into production than post, I’m going to stick with a family line that goes through Macromind Mediamaker (1991, before the company changed its name to Macromedia 92) and Adobe Premiere, through to Media 100 (arguably the first true desktop video system to deliver finished-quality broadcast video) and Final Cut Pro — all originally Mac-only, and proudly so.

In the meantime, no Windows developer reasonably expected to win over a Mac customer. I can’t imagine that the dual platform developers at Adobe and Avid expected a single platform migration. Adding Windows into a mostly-Mac mix, sure. Dropping Mac, never. There was nothing that any of them could do to make a Mac fan leave the platform.

So which is the company that has, for the first time in NLE history, made a meaningful percentage of the highest-end, most passionate Apple loyalists seriously consider leaving Macs to adopt Windows?

Apple, that’s who.

Nobody, least of all me, is suggesting that migrators will ever be the majority. But it’s now squarely one of the mainstream options to consider as Mac people contemplate their future relationship to Apple….or more precisely, Apple’s future relationship to them.

[Tim Wilson]

[Dominic Deacon] “Since the release of FCPX I’ve played with a bunch of the others and found that they’re not just competitive with Final Cut 7 but they make it look archaic in many ways. That video is a great example of the advantages on some of the other platforms. On top of which they are just so much faster.”

I could have quoted any number of folks above for a similar reply.

I’ve owned Macs since February of 1984, but when I was working for a developer who was using only Macs but starting to move into GPU acceleration, we were all blown away by the performance of a 5-year old PC that had been gathering dust in the corner. It was anywhere from 4 to 10 times faster than a top-of-the-line Mac.

Not for processing with the CPU of course. A new Mac beat a 5-year old PC running away. But as processing power increasingly moves to the graphics card, Mac users like me and many of you will find ourselves falling further and further behind. Apple has never yet been interested in supporting the very fastest graphics cards on the market.

Anyone taking bets on whether the next Macs will be the first in history to commit to supporting the fastest graphics cards on the market?

I’m typing this on a MacBook Pro, but well aware of what HP and others are doing with balls out GPU speed. Hey, and have you seen those HP laptops with the DreamColor monitors built in?

Apologies for making similar observations on other threads, but I think that this is the biggest sea change in our industry’s history. Desktop video started on Macs, and Macs will always be part of it, but this is the first time that video production pros — traditionally some Mac’s hardest-core fans — are looking at moving to PCs for exactly the same reasons they have used Macs: heavy-duty, bang for buck, committed to pros.

(Disclosure I shouldn’t need to make, but will anyway: yes, HP is a COW advertiser. Apple has been too…although it has been years since they’ve advertised in any pro-oriented publications or sites. I’m speaking strictly here as a money=mouth kinda guy, on my own behalf, and not for the COW.)

[Tim Wilson]

First, yes, the software-only performance of Premiere Pro on your laptop will still exceed anything you’ve ever experienced with FCP.

[Gates Bradley] ” I was initially under the impression that this sort of hardware accelerated playback was inherent to Premiere CS5 (Adobe fail to mention that half the video card market is excluded in their press releases).”

Gates, having owned every model line of portable Macs since 1989 (see below for a picture of the first one – not exactly a laptop), I say respectfully that you can’t expect the typically (but not always) lowest-powered Macs, with typically (more often than not) the least powerful graphics cards, to provide top-of-the-line hardware acceleration.

(I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro.)

Which is to say, if your software vendor hosed you now, your hardware vendor set you up for a fall long ago.

In addition to the Tech Specs page linked from the very top of the Premiere Pro home page, you might find this link from NVIDIA regarding graphics acceleration in Premiere Pro helpful, if also a little exasperating. As a Mac owner since February 1984, who started using the then Mac-only Premiere in 1994 as the NLE center of my Mac-only production company, I’m reminded once again that Apple has never been interested in providing the hairiest beasts of graphics support for its machines.

In a world where graphics card acceleration is increasingly the name of the game, Apple users like me and you will find ourselves being pushed further and further back into the world of second-class citzenry — not because Adobe and NVIDIA love Windows best, but because there are limits to Apple’s interest in maximum graphics performance.

I even remember being annoyed that Mac was the dead last personal computer to get any color support whatsoever. Even the Apple II had color before Macs.

Which is why you’ll find people all over the FCP forums who are looking at making their next computer purchase one running Windows.

Having used Macs for longer than many people in the COW have been alive, I’ll say, again, with all the respect and compassion in the world, that you’ll be blown away by the performance of even very low-cost Windows laptops — quite a few of which feature NVIDIA cards specifically tuned for Mercury Engine support — compared to top of the line MacBook Pros…which again, I’m writing on right now.

So, not to start a platform war, I’m just making a friendly observation to you in the context of workflow advice, and once again a really peeved one to Apple for continuing the slower graphics cards monkeyshines, that no Mac has yet been designed for maximum graphics performance. Ready to take bets whether the next ones will be?

And to conclude where I began, Premiere’s software-only performance on a Mac laptop is light years ahead of FCP…which I started using when it was still at Macromedia…and ran on both Windows and Mac…

Feeling your pain,
Tim

Hey, and here’s my first “Mac Portable,” which at 16 pounds was, uhm, not very portable, and at $6500 then, nearly $12,000 in 2010 dollars. But hey, it came with one MEGAbyte of RAM, so no wonder it cost so much. 🙂