[Joseph Owens]

My understanding of US Government is faulty, as I am a foreigner to that organization, so I have some gaps in my knowledge about how their balance sheet is composed. I’m betting I’m not alone in this. It would appear (just looking at the raw numbers) that a large component of the Treasury’s cash comes from transfers from the Federal Reserve which is, for the most part, a private corporation with token governance by Congress and a tenuous link to the President. That is, it is free to make decisions unencumbered by Congress, even though its executive is appointed by the President and approved by Congress, and paid out of public revenue — but that’s about where the decision-making relationship ends.

In 2010, the Federal Reserve transferred $79 billion (of its $82 billion profit and I’d love to see how that’s calculated!) as per obligation. Now mid-year 2011, we see this report. Which might be a bit misleading, especially if someone wanted to make a point about governmental weakness. Its all quite bizarre to me — with one part of the American fabric intimating that their national executive is the quintessential 95-lb weakling, while another part is livid with rage at how they are being crushed to death by some kind of bullying juggernaut. Its hard to take seriously.

But as far as corporate decision-making goes in the nation’s policy…. don’t you think it is getting to be about time to start getting afraid? Like, “very” afraid?

Corporations have no responsibilites other than to their shareholders. Shareholders only care about >10% ROI per annum, and the quarterlies had better be there like clockwork. So… if this forum is really a discussion about some fringe element and their pesky little paradigms for self-entertainment… just where might that register on a corporate priority list that financially is at least on a discussion par with the last political Superpower?

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Jeff Coleman] “I’d never shoot 30p and try and take frames out.”

Agreed. The math doesn’t really work. Simply removing every fifth frame will cause an unacceptable strobing “hesitation” motion on any kind of action within the shot and on camera moves. The only acceptable strategy is to use optical flow and re-construct every single frame. It is not the same as “reverse telecine” where there was a 3:2 field cadence introduced to bring 23.98 into the 29.97 world. In 30P there are no redundant fields to take out without interrupting the motion flow.

Be aware that Final Cut does not do proper 3:2 field-interlaced 29.97 output from 23.98 timelines. It only does 2:2:2:4, which is totally pathetic, so you get the same unacceptable jerkiness as trying to go the other way from 30 to 24. Apple thinks its okay, though, just like a lot of things.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Open your hard drive. Look at the “Get Info” statistics, sort out how big the files are getting to be. Open up a .mov under Quicktime player and examine the movie’s characteristics using the Window… Show Movie Inspector… dialog. Lots of information.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Rob Tinworth] “Resolve manual specifies QuadCore macpro. Can Resolve run on my system?”

Generally speaking, they mean it when they say it, but sometimes things do run in spite of our best efforts.

Lite will probably run if you can find a card that they like — 5770 or better from ATI, and GT120, 285, FX4000, 4800 from nVidia — can’t go wrong with what’s recommended. This version is limited to two nodes, no Noise Reduction, and speed is completely subject to your system. Resolve has nothing to do with FCP performance, it is all about CUDA cores.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

It would appear you exceeded the allocated memory with the gigantic graphic. Been there.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

To be honest, there isn’t much difference between interlaced and PsF, other than the temporal displacement between fields. The reality is that FCP deals with segmented frame exactly the same way it does with interlaced. That is, poorly, but it doesn’t matter much since you can get away with dominance issues more easily in “progressive” when its segmented.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Andree Franks] “Isn’t a professional a person that can take anything and through at him and he will make something out of it”

Maybe. Buddy Ebsen (yes Jed Clampett, and Barnaby Jones) defined a “professional” as someone who did their job without making everyone else’s lives more difficult.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

I installed Lite on my MacBookPro 3.1 with the GeForce 8600M GT.

It does run. That’s all you can say about it. On bootup it will warn you that the system is not optimal, and the “performance”, if you could call it that, is confirmation of same.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Craig Seeman] “And some portion of those will be the next generation professionals.”

Somewhere between 1 and 10%, closer to 1 than 10, and by their own choice. The reason why is that it just doesn’t pay. Its just not worth putting in the effort anymore. Another forum that I belong to contained a comment that an A-Lister made at the FC rollout a couple of years ago with Apple claiming to have created 3Million new editors…. *No, his response was, There’s now about 2,990,000 hackers devaluing the sector for the rest of us.* [I’m just passing along the observation from somebody whose name rolls by in the credits fairly often, but not as often as it once did.]

With high-end post failing at a massive rate, the general trend that I observe close- and first-hand over the last 12 years or so is that post production in general has come to occupy a status-slot somewhere around cottage-industry sweatshop, and it is perceived to be for people who don’t have any real skills (sloughed-off to some random intern), not that any skill or special knowledge is apparently required, and frankly is sifting down to pariah-hood. Poor thing, can’t get a real job.

Try it… “I’m a video editor” at the next party, and the response will be… oh, my niece uses Final Cut at her agency, but she’s kind of sick of it because it takes a lot of time away from what she’s supposed to be doing. It will not be “oh, cool, what movies are you working on…?” oh, no… that hasn’t happened for years.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Everest Mokaeff] ““We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.”

Also keep in mind that in baseball, home run hitters also strike out a lot. But anyway, one business report this morning did show some figures indicating vulnerabilities in other Apple sectors.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/the-achilles-heel-of-apples-blowout-numbers/article2102680/
What attracted my eye:
I don’t know what they classify as desktops anymore… iMacs plus MacPros? But sales are “seasonal” for that category — lots of purchases made at rollout and then soften up right away for those items.

Of course, iPads and IPhones are selling faster than they can make’em. The fallout is that sales of iPods, obviously has (comparatively) tanked, and laptops/portables are in danger. If iPads get more cores… MacBooks … watch out!

And then, of course, FCX will be ported to the iPadX and the circle will be complete. Moore’s Law shows no sign of slowing down. Even though the application we all love to debate is at this point a thalidomide baby, the prosthetic industry appears to have an opportunity, and eventually it could become a productive member of society. Especially for those who are mostly entertaining themselves. It certainly won’t be appreciated by the other 99.9% of the planet’s population who either don’t even know what computers are, or won’t ever be able to afford one. Not like a privileged ultra-minority who can buy billions of dollars worth of doodads only to actually throw them out in about six months’ time.

I’m writing this on a 2005 iMac running Tiger. Maybe there’s a difference? Could you tell how backwards and unsophisticated this composition process is?

I also contest the idea that Thunderbolt is aimed solely at a “professional” market. Why do consumers now regularly buy Terabyte drives at Walmart? Why is it exactly that we now have more than 16K of RAM in our personal computing devices? Nature abhors a vacuum, and processing demands will always reach for more bitrate throughput.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?