[Graeme Nattress]

I keep hearing that Apple won’t do the drivers, and that the card manufacturer won’t do the drivers. I don’t know which is true though….

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Actually, it’s utterly irrelevent. Processors are currently more than fast enough for most uses. Assembly language is not used any more for anything, and I’m speaking as someone who used to hand code Z80 and 68000 assembly. Abstraction is the current state of programming, not hitting the hardware. Properly abstracted code is hardware agnostic.

If code is vectorisable, then it’s not to bad to convert between vector processors. But if you use the abstractions that Apple already have in place, then no work is needed at all, really.

At least, that’s my take on it. Have a read of the Apple pdf on converting over and see what you think. Remember GCC produces better intel code than it does ppc code.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

I spent a fair bit of time this weekend thinking this through….

Are PowerPC processors rubbish? – No, it’s just that IBM promised what they couldn’t deliver, and show no signs of delivering, just like Motorola. PowerPC will continue to improve, and there will be more PowerPC macs to come.

Are Intel processors better? – No, not inherently, but will Intel deliver on their promises? Don’t know, but by that time, all new mac software will run on PPC and Intel because of the FAT binary. All old software will run on the PPC anyway. If IBM do deliver and Intel don’t, it’ll be an easy switch back. If XYZ company makes a new chip that’s even better still, it will be a quick job to port across, keeping backwards compatibility going.

For 99% of users, it won’t matter, and they won’t care what processor their mac is running on as long as it works. For a developer, as long as the tools are their and the APIs are good, it’ll be easy enough to port or to program for multiple architectures.

For video graphics users, it probably means PCI-express is coming, which is exactly what we need to fully leverage GPU power for graphics work. Don’t underestimate how important this is. It’s due to the lack of PCI-Express that we don’t have Motion like effects in real time in FCP.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

A G5 is a good machine for FCP today, and it will be tomorrow too. It’s the lower end macs that need the immediate speed boost, so they’re getting it first, but it still sounds like G5s will improve because there’s no way that Apple can make us wait 2 years for a new high end mac. And I think the transition might move faster than anticipated for the majority of users. I think the next couple of months are going to be wait and see until we see new mac announcements with the new chips, and we get the developer models and figure out what they’re like in practise.

Interesting times, but it looks like if OS X can move chips like this, we’re not going to get left in the dirt no matter what happens to the personal computer chips in the future. Future-proofing has got to be a good thing. OS X is the best OS out there for 95% of users of personal computers.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

If I can get Vegas to run on the Apple Intel Dev mac I would 🙂 But seriously, I don’t think that this is going to harm mac users other than by making them more popular. Apple will be better poised than anyone to make OS X run on practically any architecture, and that’s got to be good for the long term. I don’t think user friendly Unix (which is what OS X is) is going to dissapear overnight.

My only real concern is that it will now b very fast to emulate windows apps on a mac, and this might mean that some software developers will just develop windows versions, and not true OS X versions, and they’ll use the architecture shift as an excuse for this.

However, Apple can’t just stop at moving to Intel processors – we need PCI Express, better graphics cards with better GPUs etc. etc.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

As far as I understand, Apple are going to be rather careful with this transition so that all apps will run on all macs. All new apps will be dual PPC/Intel, and all old apps will run due to their magic translation wizardry, so old macs won’t get left out in the cold. It might make for slightly larger downloads of applications, but that will be about it.

99.9% of mac users won’t notice a difference between running a PPC mac and an Intel mac. They’ll just run like they’ve always run their software, and it will “just work”.

However, as Apple use this to become more popular and take on the Dragon that is Microsoft, they’ll have to be increasingly careful about spyware and viruses, but at least they’re starting from a better position on that.

I really think that for most users, they won’t notice the transition.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Yes, doing slowmo in camera looks 100 times better than doing it in post, and doesn’t require ridiculous render times either.

All DV formats have the same resolution – 720×480, but how that resolution is made is different in each case. The XL2 uses over-detailed chips so that you don’t loose resolution when making a 16:9 image – the DVX100 does not, and hence it’s 16:9 mode will have lower detail, although the resolution is the same in each case. The 16:9 from the HVX200 will be better still in terms of detail due to the higher resolution CCDs, even though they are downsampling to DV resolution.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

That’s Y’PbPr right? Nice link BTW! Do D4 is up to and including 1080i, the D5 connector for 1080p would be for 1080p60 and the 1080i of the D4 would be more than capable of 1080i60 in which 1080p24 and 1080p30 embeds quite nicely.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

It allows you to make a 24p DVD, which is better quality than a normal NTSC one, and for going to tape, you can add normal 3:2 pulldown to everything at the end, ensuring a constant cadence which can be a broadcaster’s requirement. You can also then do a very easy PAL conversion for international markets by speeding up everything to 25p.

However, if the above advantages don’t give you, personally, any benefits as you have a different market or requirements, then just edit everything 29.97fps and make life easy.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

I think you can find people who’ve had good experiences with both products. I for one are extremely happy with the Decklink HD Pro, it’s drivers, and how it works within FCP. As for tech support – I had to call on BMD when the PSU for the HDLink decided to die on me (the PSU is an off-the-shelf part not made by BMD themselves). They couldn’t have been more helpful in locating not just a new PSU, but just-in-case it was the link itself, a whole new HDLink as well from the local dealer here in Canada for me which they couriered over to me. In a day or two I was up and running again. AFAIK BMD have never charged a customer for an out of warranty repair either.

There’s obviously an intense rivalry between BMD and AJA, But BMD have been instrumental in driving the cost of very high quality capture cards down to a very affordable price. The picture quality on both products is identically good. It’s almost like religion over which company you go with.

Now, if there’s any real complaint it’s marketing. “Qrez” – where is it?? Every banner add on this site mentions it, but where is it? It’s well over a year since it was announced at NAB2004, but it still doesn’t exist. The AJA site doesn’t seem to mention it anymore, but it’s in the very banner add above me as I type.

“DVCproHD Accelleration” and “HDV Accelleration” – what do those phrases mean to you? Does it make you think that the hardware does the decompression to speed things up, faster rendering of video?? Sound fabulous, doesn’t it? Want to know what it really means though – it means that the hardware does the scaling from 960×720 up to 1280×720 or from 1440×1080 up to 1920×1080. Sure that’s nice, but it’s hardly “accelleration”, more of “a little helping hand on playout”.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP