Darren Roark
Forum Replies Created
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This article in Variety today made me laugh with the timing. “3D TV: Not Dead Yet, and Getting Better” comparing it to ‘the ailing old man in the “Bring out your dead” scene in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” who protests to the corpse collector, “I’m not dead. … I’m getting better.”
variety.com/2014/digital/columns/3d-tv-not-dead-yet-and-getting-better-1201055163/
The autostereo tvs are improving, but it’s going to create a whole new set of problems with he fact that standard left right stereo pairs will need to be post converted for the new screens. It will be interesting to see what the process will be to convert content in the next two years before the first sets come out.
The 3DTV parrot isn’t dead, it’s just resting.
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This goes back to when you could get a 64GB SSD for the amazing price of $300. It’s remarkable what you can make due with when you have SSD speeds.
That should be plenty for OS X and a handful of CC apps. (And FCP X too.)
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Are you opposed to making a dual boot partition? That’s what I’ve had to do in the past.
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[Shane Ross] “All I’m pointing out is that 3D distribution is dwindling. TV sets are do longer made, computer displays aren’t either. No 3D YouTube, 3D Vimeo…3D DVD.”
I completely agree with all of that here in the US. Watching 3D on a 50″ TV with the glasses doesn’t make the slight 3D effect you get worth the hassle is part of why it’s going away in the home.
3D is even slowing a bit in Asia, but only a little. In 2012, of their approximately 23,000 digital theater screens, over 14,000 of them were 3D, the rest in 2D. The newest studies are showing that 3D is becoming less important to moviegoers over there, but only slightly. They are still making a ton of 3D films and one of the main incentives for post converting Hollywood films is that they are much more profitable than the 2D version. Especially in countries where piracy is an out of control problem, (Russia, China, India) 3D does better there as the experience cannot be replicated in the home with a bad quality bootleg.
The main reason I think it’s going away is that most 3D produced in the past six years is terrible. It’s either hastily post converted or poorly shot. I would prefer decent 2D over bad 3D any day and most people are getting wise to it.
I believe with this latest version Apple is going after the feature market again as they will want to sell as many Mac Tubes™ as they can. Adding 3D shouldn’t be too tough for them considering a $99 plugin can do it already.
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[Shane Ross] “what’s the point of 3D in FCX now? If features is the ONLY market for it?”
I have been occasionally cutting 3D since FCP 6 using Dashwood’s plugins. Lately it’s been with a 23″ HP 3D computer monitor I bought for $150 on clearance from Newegg. (You are right, they even are clearing out the cheap TVs.)
There are more indie features being cut in FCP X, along with some 3D shorts so far. This infographic on the projected budgets on the four thousand features submitted to Sundance this year alone totals over three BILLION dollars. So that’s four thousand indies being made fighting for one hundred and nineteen slots in the festival. That’s a lot of potential future customers who may not care what they cut with.
https://www.culturalweekly.com/sundance-infographic-2014/
Sadly I think that post converted 3D is going to be the way forward knowing how much work goes into fixing natively shot stereo pairs. Sometimes (tragically) the editors don’t even know they are cutting a film that would be post converted to 3D. (World War Z as an example) Fixing 3D pairs in the NLE is going to be less of a thing.
Premiere and Avid having native 3D capabilities have that advantage. There are many low budget indies shooting in native 3D so I’m sure it’s worth Apple’s time to add that feature if it can sway any future 3D films away from Adobe and Avid.
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[Shane Ross] “…just in time as 3D TVs are going the way of the dodo. “
80% of Gravity’s domestic box office was from 3D. When it’s done that well people will still go to the theater and put on the stupid glasses. 3D isn’t going away.
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A strategy suggestion is to wait a couple weeks till more of the new photon torpedoes ship and check craigslist. (or whatever your country has) A lot of the time people just want it out of their hair with minimal hassle.
That way you know it works, can check it for dust rhinos and don’t have to pay for shipping.
I agree with Bob about ebay about the insanely low dollar to muscle price ratio right now. I bet once the dust settles, the more recent ‘older’ mac pros will go back up in price.
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Apple didn’t write it a 64 bit kernel for whatever reason. It’s possible that at the time they EOLd it there were no supported GPUs for it that had 64 bit drivers and openCL. I guess “It just works” no longer fit.
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Bob makes a great point. If you want to go the fully supported route that’s a great way to go. The 2008s with a good GPU can still be a decent setup. The prices have never been better and those are so easy to work on yourself. Not that I’ve ever had one of mine ever break down. If you don’t care about thunderbolt, it’s still a good machine.
That said, an eight core original mp booting from a third party 64 bit kernel and upgraded GPU can run mavericks with a geekbench score of 10500 and decent fcp x performance. Not bad for a nearly eight year old machine. Is it worth the time? Not for me, but it is possible.
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[Andre van Berlo] “Thanks Bob! I do a clean install every now and then but never thought of doing it this way. I would just format the drive and then use Time Machine…
my Tube will arrive in February (sigh) and your suggestion is exactly what i’ll be doing!”
Time Machine can bring back all of the slowness causing gremlins back.
C.C.Cloner or any of the other options can clone a 256GB SSD in under a half hour if you have a decent USB 3.0 drive. I set mine to update a sparseimage nightly in case of emergency. I’ve RMA’d two SSD boot drives so far so I also keep a semi current fresh install bootable USB drive.
This has saved my bacon several times when having to deauthorize apps and plugins after a drive failure since doing a fresh install counts as an additional computer. Time Machine is great for set it and forget it backups, but it doesn’t always carry over strict licensing activations over.