[Joseph Owens]

[Gabriele Turchi] “apple will be releasing new macros [sic] in 2013 (official yesterday statement )”

If its that Tim Cook email, I wouldn’t exactly take that as “official”, its as ambiguous a statement as it can get. I would not hold my breath.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

Is this a question?

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[Marcus Herrick] “My question is, will the 6 core be enough CPU power for HD grading?”

The CPU cores are primarily accessed for the User Interface and codec processing. The image values for correction are computed on the GPU/CUDA cores provided by your GPU array. In that respect, unless you are trying to deBayer RAW media, the number of cores starts to become irrelevant.

In your case, multiple GPUs will help only in the instance where you start building complex node trees with other processes over-layered, such as noise reduction, blurring, and alpha channel compositing. I have seen YouTube tutorials that feature power-supply splitting to run multiple GPUs, but whether something that is technically possible is advisable depends on how long you want your equipment to last. Also, if you intend to house all your GPUs in the chassis, eventually you will run into a) cooling issues, and b) the reality that the #3 and #4 PCIe slots are not x16-lane.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[Laco Gaal] “We just have to wait some more to get the refreshed ones with Thunderbolt, usb3, etc.etc.”

Don’t think so.

Thunderbolt is not a stick-on technology, its a motherboard thing, and there would have to be some serious re-thinks on the part of the Apple establishment to make the changes in the MacPro chassis that would make it worthwhile — and what we would wind up with is the same path that lead to FCX.

Thunderbolt is not an advantage when there is Fibre and SAS — even eSATA, especially if you are only working with ProRes bitrate densities. I cannot see Apple opening up or expanding the PCIe slot architecture, and that is what users like us really need.

MacPro is dead to me, Final Cut is frozen, until X becomes FCP8, which appears to be where it’s headed, finally, after it re-evolves through the five steps of grief.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[Bobby Mosca] “I’m sure Apple must do extensive market research, so I must be wrong.”

No, you are mistaken. In thinking that you are wrong.

Apple does —> ZERO <— marketing research.

Everybody knows that. How would the public be any use if they don’t know what they want? Didn’t somebody famous say that?

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Robert Houllahan] “Basically the Test pattern has colors and patches of black and white so you can set color balance and contrast.”

“Blue-Only” is hardly scientific, at least IMHO, but for a down and dirty, why not?

Contrast is set with PLUGE (adjust so you can’t see the darker black flag, but you can just barely see the brighter one).

Hue and saturation can be set with blue-only and a SMPTE-split/reverse test signal, so the white/blue bars match (saturation) and so that the cyan/magenta bars match (hue). So then you will be generally set up to grade in composite CCIR601. Hope that your output interface is doing the 709 conversion properly. No reason to really doubt it, since it is a fairly straightforward transform. However, generally the on-monitor controls don’t work with component inputs — only composite, where there is an actual phase decode going on.

And there is no way you can set the overall brightness of the monitor by eye — and that will affect everything else. Most of these old CRTs came with a probe option for a reason.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[James Malamatinas] “but not exactly how it applies to monitors (is it the colour temperaure of the light being emitted), or what it means to be consistent? “

Try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

The consistency that Peter appears to be talking about (as applied to grey scale) is the uniformity of correlated color temperature at varying intensity (emitted brightness level), whether the spectral content veers away from a color temperature of “white” constent with the “cool/blue” character of D65 across the grey scale. In other words, you sort of have to wrap your head around the idea that “white” is not just a pure mix of R/G/B, but what your brain is interpreting to be “neutral” and untinted inside the calibrated emissivity standard. Think about what “white” is under tungsten, and again what it is under D65 and fluorescent, for that matter. They are very different. Think what happens to shades when the illuminant is not flat-spectrum.

[James Malamatinas] “suggests that the best broadcast monitors necessitate a perfect gamma curve but I have seen else where that some monitors utilise a s-curve”

Contrast over the grey scale needs to be compensated for varying viewing conditions. Gamma itself is mathematically a power transfer function (the gamma number is an exponent). An S-curve is a non-linear ease-in/ease-out transfer that affects gamma for local viewing conditions and is not strictly speaking part of the 601 recommendation. In this case, its would be more like a compensation for deficient emissivity at the extremes of a brightness range. Gamma transfer of 2.2-2.4 is recommended for a specified brightness (the ones cited in the presentation) under a specific viewing condition, to yield a predictable volts/brightness characteristic that is consistent with emission technology displays. ie not print.

[James Malamatinas] “However I cannot find much information on whether extended colour spaces such as the P3 digital cinema colour space above are practically used in a film workflow. What sort of colour spaces are used in professional film production”

The Digital Cinema Initiative uses the X’Y’Z’ coordinate system for wider-gamut performance to emulate carbon-arc film-transmission presentations, so that theater audiences feel they are still getting a movie for their price of admission. This is actually the original reason for instituting the use of “LUTs”– to simulate the predicted outcome of generating production values in one medium that is destined for presentation in another. You should be able to find plenty of reading under DCI searches.

I thought the discussion about how turning a monitor up to “11” (for the suckers at home) was fair. The practice is rampart in consumer appliances. Do you really need a 600 horsepower family sedan? How about a vacuum cleaner that can support 10 feet of water in a standing column? Its a sales pitch.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Jeremy Edney] “when we try and output using ETT, the tape cues, begins rolling, then rolls right past the IN point without starting to record.”

I’ve been editing to tape for 37 years, the last 6 with a combination of AJA and Blackmagic with FCP5,6,7, MC6, and I have never seen this behaviour, with or without external sync.

Your methodology?

I record a minute of black at the beginning of each tape (minimum) or stripe black for the entire length of the tape, with either 01HR or 10HR time code. Enter ETT module and choose appropriate “IN”/”OUT” points on both the ETT module and the sequence that is to be exported. Assemble or Insert as required, with the appropriate “Regen” status on the target VTR.

I am on record in various fora as not being at all fond of FCP’s ETT, but it can be made to work.

Recently, a client of mine had an issue where they eventually discovered a hidden radio button that ETT contains, that will prevent video from being output from the Decklink when performing Assemble edits. Seems unbelievable to me (“Inconceivable!”, in Sicilian), but that’s Apple for you.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Jeff Coleman] “Is there a setting or codec in FCP that is delaying what I see on my computer screen (Viewer, Canvas) by 2 frames or perhaps better, why don’t I see my audio and video in sync within FCP when working with a 24p clip?”

A difference in sync in the timeline means that the double system sound is being mis-interpreted at a different frame rate. Since external sound is typically simply “48kHz” (or whatever), FCP looks at your default project settings and assigns arbitrary time code, based on that setting, to the file. It looks like you are seeing the difference between 24 and 23.98 being mapped onto the viewer. that is why the visual waveform is in the wrong place. This becomes extremely obvious if you are working with a project with a much larger frame rate difference, like trying to add a .wav originally intended for 2997 to a 25fps timeline without changing the FCP project settings.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

“Better” Compressor conversion from 2997 to 2398 is going to be almost as good as “best” in more than 90% of all cases. You already know that choosing “Best” adds a zero to whatever render time you were quoted in “Better”. So do it all, then re-submit the stuff that doesn’t turn out so well, (the 10% originals) back through at “Best”. It will be worth the effort to work at a unified 2398 frame base.

But don’t trust FCP to do the 2:3 cadence to create 2997 correctly. It doesn’t.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?