Apple

Well Samsung has released the supposed "iPhone killer" and I've wondered how it stacks up to the newly released iPhone 2.0.   Fortunately for all of us, MSNBC has done a really nice head to head comparison of the two.  In the end, they both work well, but the one thing I was surprised about is that the "live Sprint TV" they advertise in the ads is not entire shows, just snippets of shows.   And the comparison of the screen brightness and clarity is pretty impressive.

Anyway, really good reading for anyone thinking about one or the other.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25675823/ 

Here's something interesting. An app that gives you native MXF in all QuickTime applications including FCP. Calibrated Software's unique solution successfully joins the separate video and audio P2 MXF files so that Final Cut Pro sees them all as ONE file - complete with TimeCode and Reel Name. PullDown can also be removed or added for select frame rates. And you're not just limited to Final Cut Pro, you can also natively import files in Compressor, Motion and Sound Track Pro.

Not only that but they have also unveiled a DVCPROHD decoder for Windows. This is something our friends across the aisle have been requesting for a long time. Calibrated{Q} DVCProHD Decode is a multi-threaded DVCProHD QuickTime Codec(Decode Only) that enables you to view QuickTime DVCProHD Movies in QuickTime Player and other 3rd party applications that support QuickTime. Check out both at Calibrated:

http://www.calibratedsoftware.com/welcome.html

For those of you who are purchasing a new Mac Pro Octo Core and planning to upgrade your RAM after the purchase, be aware that Apple's instructions on upgrading are actually wrong.  

In my case, I purchased an Octo Core 3.2 with the minimum 2GB RAM and ordered an 8GB Upgrade Kit from Crucial.   This consists of 2 sticks of 4GB each.   According to Apple's instructions, if you have the standard 2GB RAM configuration (1GB on each Riser) you should install the next pair of RAM equally on each Riser.  

So I placed a 4GB stick on Riser A and a 4GB Stick on Riser B.  That didn't work.  The machine still showed 2GB RAM and all the other memory slots empty.   So I contacted Crucial using their handy dandy "live chat" service to speak directly with a support agent.

He told me to move the Apple installed RAM to Riser A and the Crucial RAM to Riser B.  Did that, and voila!  I have 10GB RAM now showing up in the machine.  Just a note for you folks out there and kudos to Crucial for such a handy dandy live chat service.  Got me up and running again in less than a minute.  Yay!

Once we have the actual shot, we can then control the downloading of footage from the camera using Vision Research’s software. Thus far they’ve only released a version that runs on Windows. In order to preserve the Mac-loving image of Simplemente, we decided to run it on a MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. We can then select the ins and outs of any particular shot. Typically the exact moment you want to save is a tiny fraction of that 6 minute take and the rest is a lot of frames with no activity you can delete. The selected portions are then saved out to a hard drive using Vision Research’s proprietary Cine file format.

So a while back I wrote about our new DiscMakers Medley and how it was a so-so DVD Printer / Replicator.

http://blogs.creativecow.net/node/402

Well, I have to tell you, this thing is a piece of garbage and if you're considering one of these "all in one" DVD copier / printers, stay away from anything with the DiscMakers name.

To date, we've been able to duplicate and print about 250 DVD's. Then the printer stopped working. We've called tech support for approx. 6 straight days. Oh and tech support is not DiscMakers, it's a company called XLNTIDEA INC . They actually make the duplicators, and in fact if you look on various websites of companies that sell duplicators, you'll see the exact same machine with differnet names.

There, I said it. I hate Adobe's Activation procedure. Yes, I understand you have to protect your software from all the complete morons and low-lifes who can't pony up the money to purchase software legitimately, but geez, do you have to make this procedure so asinine that it affects legitimate purchases?

Three weeks ago I installed Apple OS 10.5 on a fresh hard drive on my editing workstation. A day later I installed my copy of the Production Premium Package CS3 to do some After Effects work. The Activation screen obviously pops up, I tell it to go ahead, but it fails. Fine, I'll Activate it later.

Two weeks ago I use After Effects and the Activation warning pops up again, again it fails to automatically activate on the internet. So I go ahead and do the Phone Activation. No problem, it gives me the activation code and I get the "Thank you for Activating the software" and I move on.

We're experiencing a sudden Memory Error issue with Final Cut Pro that has led to bad renders. The issue has been happening on my Mac Pro for about three weeks now and it started happening on our PowerMac G5 Quad 2.5 yesterday. I also checked with a client in New York who is experiencing the same issue.

When working on a project and attempting a render, we sometimes get the following error.

Most often this error pops up if the system has been running a while, four hours or more, or I'm rendering out a full episode of 22 minutes or longer. Generally the error appears about 75% in to the render.

What then happens is the render actually keeps going, but the renders are all screwed up. Partial lower thirds, graphics in the middle of dissolves, graphics from somewhere else in the project.

Call for Entries - 2nd Annual SFMUG Short Movie Festival

Deadline Physical- Postmarked by 4/16/08
Digital- Uploaded by 4/21/08

Any movie 5 minutes and under, any genre, any topic, but no commercials, industrials, or explicit adult content. Movies do NOT need to be made on Apple Macintosh computers or any specific software.

Guidelines http://www.santafemug.org/film_fest/2008_film_festival.html

Prizes:
Best of the Festival Award - Apple Final Cut Studio 2, Toon Boom Studio 4 & Toon Boom Storyboard 2

Gold Award - Apple Final Cut Express 4, & Aquafadas iDive

Silver Award - Aquafadas PulpMotion, Aquafadas BannerZest Pro, Aquafadas VideoPier & $50.00 Apple iTunes Gift Card

Audience Choice Award - Apple iPod Touch

The best of SFMUG SMF08 movies will be shown at a future Film Industry Night in Albuquerque, NM and subsequent screenings.
totaling over $2800

"Best of the Festival" is going to win a moviemaker’s dream software bundle!

A selection of the best movies submitted will also be screened at "New Mexico Film Industry Party" in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Just a note that I'll be bypassing NAB after all this year. Our production schedule is very fluid right now and I just can't justify the cost and time away from the office right now. I was hoping to meet many of you at the Artbeats booth this year, but it'll have to be another day. I will be creating a pretty cool demo for Artbeats that'll be online in April though.

Enjoy the show everybody!

Ok, to start, I've been reading about Shane's exploits for a long time on lafcpug here and now on his blog and he's had some interesting rigs involving rubberbands (i seem to remember that was you in a g5 with a rubberbanded set of drives) and now his latest macbeast.

Well i've had my mac pro since about a month or so before the octos came out. And Since then I've added a HDD a few times, which started first as a place to put media, than it was a third drive to put music and project files on. then it was another drive which i raided with the other 500 inside to create a 1tb raid 0 setup. I repartitioned 1 drive to install leopard on 1 part and keep music and projects on another.

So at this point I'm up to 4 drives, and 1 optical drive and the stock 2 gigs of ram (i know...i know)

Here is the Kona KBox mounted on the back of my IKEA "rack." I had to add an extra piece of wood to the side, but the 2U rack brackets fit nicely.

Now...onto TIME MACHINE. In my MacPro I have 5 drives. The system drive is in Bay 1, I have three Seagate 500GB drives in the other 3 bays. One stands alone as a work drive, where I store show exports, imported footage and other odd and ends that I transfer to the server. The final two are RAIDED as RAID 0 and I use them to capture media too before I transfer it to the XSAN.

I have a fifth drive installed in this MacPro. The fifth drive resides in the normally empty second optical bay. It is connected to the computer via one of the two spare SATA connections on the logicboard (accessed by removing the fans) and a 3.5" to 5.25" adapter kit. I use this drive as my TIME MACHINE drive, since I am using Leopard. Already this has saved my behind.

Here it is. It took me a while to get this post up because...well, I am beat. I spent last weekend finishing the desk...and taking the remaining wood and unused scraps to make THREE bird houses...well, help my daughters make them. Kids demanding their dad's time...how can I refuse? So that was Saturday.

But I am jumping ahead a little. The computer arrived on Thursday, Feb 28...a day ahead of schedule. I jumped for joy at work when my wife called. And when I got home from work...and after a quick meal...I put my full attention onto this machine. Installing three 500 GB Seagates into the spare drives, yanking out the fan to access one of the SATA ports on the logicboard and installing a small drive into the empty optical bay (this I am using as my Time Machine backup). I replaced the stock ATI 2600 card with the x1900 XT card. You heard about that mess last time. OK, bouncing ahead again.

this is in response to shane ross, who if you don't know, is a leader for FCP users here and several other major websites. he posted in my previous blog

I agree that FCP can work very very well but let me ask you the following questions:

Do your computer run on more than a gig of ram, a lot of the ones I work on at the computer labs I work at do not which is a problem.

Are your computers built and run to just do that kind of work, or do you have people doing flash, photo editing, scanning, script writing, fcp editing, dvd creation, etc on them?

I also wrote this a bit bitter about a lot of my day so it's pretty negative. And i'd be lieing if i said I didn't love it many times. but there are so many odd quirks and things that it's just hard to deal with some times.

I was reminded about our MacBook Air conversations (including the comments on a recent post from Walter) by seeing it as one of the minor stories on the cover of Laptop magazine. So I did some poking around the web to see what platform neutral and PC-oriented pubs had to say about Air.

...or so some observers believed in 2006! This was upon the news of the second laptop to include Blu-ray drives, this one from Dell. And why not? When Apple joined the Blu-ray Disc Association in 2005, they said they were committed to promoting the format. Seen anything to back that up since then? Anything?

I think Dell makes better computers than a lot of people think, and you certainly have them to thank for the idea of truly custom configurations and computer sales over the internet, both of which they practiced years before many others did. But their stuff is nothing next to Sony's. The VAIO line is pretty elegant, and introduced thin form factors, wide screens and 1920x1080 res back before the turn of the century.