Final Cut Updates in March or April? Xserve Controversy and Jobs on Blu-ray

[SynapticLight]

hate Jobs' position on Blu-ray
show me an iTunes movie that can beat Blu-ray 1080p that is under a Gb
Resolutions are getting bigger and LED/LCD also
Compression Algorithms can only optimized so much

the only thing that Jobs has to go on is Internet Improvements - when everyone has 4mb lines and greater then he is right, but it will be years before people like me can do that - I am on a 384 line and downloading SD videos is slow like a snail

 

[Nuvi]

Even limiting the discussion to just digital cinematography I still think saying that 4k, let alone 8k, is common capture res is being very, very generous. RED One is the only camera that shoots over 2k, the SI-2k and Arri Alexa are the only 2k cameras (IIRC), and everyone else is 1080p (Genesis, Viper, F23, F35, etc.,). I doubt RED One is used on more productions than everyone else combined.

I'm not definitely saying that 8K is a common (far from it). However, since cinema space has been pushing towards 4K strongly in 2009- there is lot more incentive to capture in higher res. Currently there are two cameras in mainstream digital cinematography over 2K. You have the current Red One (4.5K) and then you have Dalsa Origin (I and II / first one was really a custom and not a real production model but still it was the first 4K cam)(4K). The production model, Origin II was released in 2007 or 2008. Regarding use of Origin II its really aimed for VFX use. In 2K you have the ones you mentioned plus Phantom HD (goes to 1000 fps in HD and max res 2048x2048 in 30 fps and under if I remember correctly), GS Vitec noX 2K and Kinor. In high end (and I truly mean high end...) you have the pre-production and custom solutions. In 2011 there is strong possibility that Epic will be released and the "low cost" Scarlet. Then you have the 4K Canon cam and 4K from Sony waiting in the pipe line and probably lot more that I know nothing about. Regarding quantity in production; Red has really gaining space and others are pushing hard to answer the demand.

3D is more bark than bite IMO and while I know the TV makers will always try and find new ways to get people to buy sets I don't think they can outrun the technological hurdles of the broadcast industry (bandwidth limitations, old satellites designed to handle only MPEG-2, etc.,). I honestly don't think we'll see another major viewing quality 'upgrade' until IPTV becomes the norm and everyone's TV is basically a screen w/a built in HTPC. Of course trying to do things over the internet has it's own set of problems as well.

Its not only the manufacturers. Its also the broadcasters that looking to gain edge on competition with "advanced tech solutions". I do somewhat understand their point of view. You can't really create quality content with brute force but you can sugar coat your average content with resolution and 3d and sell it as a premium product. Regarding my personal view on res or 3D; content is the king and that says it all. For "high compression fanboys"; I have problem when grain and artifacts are distracting the audience from the content -> many online distribution solutions.

 

[Mal67]

Same here. I have zero interest in BR on a laptop, desktop, et-al. I cringe when my wife says she wants to buy a movie. If I've seen it once, I'm done. I never found the fascination with owning movies really. Music is different, but it's all downloadable and on my iPhone, and/or iPod/iMac/MBP...

Music is far easier to purchase online and download. However I know lots of people who enjoy watching visual material - films tv programs - in the same way that others enjoy listening to music. However downloading films and tv progs from itunes is time consuming and quite expensive when compared to purchasing from the shop. Which is why I am always in favour of keeping the optical drive in notebooks and desktops as well as keeping it as up to date as possible even if that means adding BR.

 

[Nuvi]

hate Jobs' position on Blu-ray
show me an iTunes movie that can beat Blu-ray 1080p that is under a Gb
Resolutions are getting bigger and LED/LCD also
Compression Algorithms can only optimized so much

the only thing that Jobs has to go on is Internet Improvements - when everyone has 4mb lines and greater then he is right, but it will be years before people like me can do that - I am on a 384 line and downloading SD videos is slow like a snail

Sorry mate but 4Mbits is nothing to cheer about. With regular SD and mpeg2 stream from broadcaster (no double or re-compressions) you need at least stable 8Mbps pipe. To deal with quality HD you are looking at 50Mbits. Some call this "Ultimate HD" I call it HD. In reality you need pipes of 100Mbits if you want to be free from preset content providers. Naturally you can stream it with less bandwidth but then again who wants to see pixels, grain and artifacts making the whole experience more like a tech exercise then anything else. Its true you can push "HD like res" stream in 5Mbits pipe but it really has nothing to do with quality that is commonly associated with HD.

One thing people tend to forget with online distribution is the local storage needs. Do you want to store all those GB's on your HD or would you prefer a optical media to store the files? Cloud storage is a viable solution but then again you need the fat pipes and high reliability and even then you would really want to have the option to store the files locally and preferably onto some robust and inexpensive media (such as optical). Hence, Apple really isn't looking at the picture from consumers or from content providers perspective. Its all about locking in the consumer and content provider into iTunes model which in matter of fact only servers small portion of total market and even then is very limited in what you can and how you can offer it.

 

[MACRUS]

1000% with you

Steve Jobs is so full of ****, it's unbelievable. BluRay is a "bag of hurt" because of its DRM restrictions? Then what are Apple's iGadgets and the DRM-infested iTunes (movie) content that he is selling? Mountains of hurt?

I've never experienced more hurtful DRM crap than the stuff that Apple is selling. At the moment, there are only two companies on the market that sell DRMed product that don't make me feel abused and cheated: Amazon with their Kindle store and Valve with their Steam store.

In my experience, Apple is the most abusive company when it comes to DRM, so maybe His Steveness should just shut the **** up. The only reason why he does not want to sell Macs with BluRay players is that he is afraid that this would cut into their iTunes sales. Who needs expensive, DRM-infested and inferior quality movie downloads when you can have better quality on a physical medium for the same price? Right: Nobody. That's why you won't ever see a Mac with a BluRay drive.

Stevo is so full of crap... if Adobe can do it so can apple. I am Actually mastering Adobe's Master Suite. and let me tell you I am Impressed. so if adobe keeps its current pase I will not look back and maybe even build a super PC and ditch the macs I have.
Stevo's agenda is iTunes. but until he pays for my bandwidth to watch 5-9 HD Movies a Month oh and they must be 1080P ones. then I would buy/rent from iTunes.... but see we come back around. I would also like to record them to physical media (BD) because I am sure if something would happen to the drives they are stored in. and to the backup Stevo/Apple would not even say sorry.

 

[MACRUS]

we need them to show our content.

I don't think anyone wants BD on their Mac as their main method of viewing BDs. I want it so I can bring a few BDs with me when traveling and watch them on my laptop. I have an HDTV and surround system to watch BDs at home.

the main reason we Content creators need blu-ray in macs is as a medium to deliver/showcase the beautiful images our Broadcast HD cameras produce. plus. it is not like blu-ray won last years and we are pushing and pushing to get blu-ray support in the mac so we can author and playback blu-rays, make customers happy and make money...

 

[MACRUS]

So.. How is Adobe doing it???

Ding Ding Ding.

The amount of changes to the core system of OSX would not only be a giant engineering challenge, but also break an immense amount of media-related software and bring far more restrictions to the platform about how you can use and manipulate media.

This isn't a stand against Blu-Ray the physical format, this is a stand against over-reaching DRM.

And before anyone says anything, Fairplay != BR DRM. Fairplay is confined to quicktime, and BR DRM covers the overall system.

Apple does not want to compromise internal architecture to meet the desires of a single external organization.

I would love BR, but I agree with Apple's stance on this matter.

Steve Jobs would love to give you BluRay, but not with these costs. It would also be a PR nightmare to have a data-only BluRay drive and have to explain it to people. Much better PR to just keep it off the system completely.

What we should do is Lobby for the BR consortium to allow for BR to be played back with a 3rd party only solution, thereby allowing apple to make a BluRay app (Similar to DVD). But as anyone familiar with the matter will tell you, it will not / can not happen.


Karl P

would you care to explain how is adobe doing it? I have authored a few blu-rays with Encore and they look pretty dam good.

 

[BrotherBeagle]

Yeah for the people who did buy Xserve, its not just they buy the servers and thats it, they invested double, triple, or more of that into server software licenses, proprietary programming, and employee training for the OS X Server platform. Apple essentially discontinuing the OS X Server platform for them is terrible because they can no longer expand and replace their hardware. Their investment becomes a total loss.

This.

The investment isn't only a net loss, it's worse; it has become a deficit.

Now there are man hours tied up planning, prototyping and finalizing a migration path away from the Xserve. You can either retrain those same employees to handle Mac directory services via OpenLDAP, extend AD's schema to cover OD's workload or sink large amounts of money into a third party product to remap AD for you. And that's just the mixed (AD/OD) environments. Imagine those utilizing OD for password management and kerberos. Or what about large Xsan environments for Final Cut Server or Podcast Producer? I could really bore everyone with going on and on here...

The greatest irony to me is the apathetic "So what?" many have toward this issue. It's clear that enterprise infrastructure is a hazy subject. I don't recall who here stated in behind every Xserve sits a large number of Macs, but that point is spot on. Each Xserve represents the purchase of a large number of Macs -- as well as representing as an enterprise relationship with Apple that extends back for seven years. This is a huge breach of trust.

Meanwhile, who decided to submit a combined article about Xserves and Bluray? It's nearly impossible to follow the Xserve discussion...

 

[Nuvi]

This.

The investment isn't only a net loss, it's worse; it has become a deficit.

[...] Or what about large Xsan environments for Final Cut Server or Podcast Producer? I could really bore everyone with going on and on here...

The greatest irony to me is the apathetic "So what?" many have toward this issue. It's clear that enterprise infrastructure is a hazy subject. I don't recall who here stated in behind every Xserve sits a large number of Macs, but that point is spot on. Each Xserve represents the purchase of a large number of Macs -- as well as representing as an enterprise relationship with Apple that extends back for seven years. This is a huge breach of trust.

Meanwhile, who decided to submit a combined article about Xserves and Bluray? It's nearly impossible to follow the Xserve discussion...

To those who use Xserve, Xsan and FCS this has been a sign to steer clear from Apple professional products (us included). We are still waiting to see what happens but if we are not seeing solid development on FC product range, servers, OS X server and in Xsan we are forced to choose alternative solutions meaning go to Windows, Avid etc. That will mean company wide change in platforms. In reality consumers can live with the thought of Apple being difficult and pulling out products when they feel like it but for business users even a thought of taking a risk where a perfectly usable platform is pulled from underneath you is one you just can't take. I think everyone who work in moving image remember what happened to Shake. Xserve might have been a loss leader but it truly was a gateway for many Mac workstations too. If you had those two then it was easy to bring in iPhones etc. to the company. With Xserve out of the picture you really end up closing a very clear gateway. Regrading Mac Pro/Mini Server -> a server? NO! Hell, Apple should see Xserve and Mac OS X Server as marketing tools for business users.

 

[KnightWRX]

Meanwhile, who decided to submit a combined article about Xserves and Bluray? It's nearly impossible to follow the Xserve discussion...

Look at the past threads on the Xserve disconstinuation, you wouldn't want to follow the discussion anyway. Us IT folks see the problem in how the situation was handled and we get told by consumers who's work doesn't even remotely involve managing computers that Apple is right and has done nothing wrong.

You don't want to discuss IT on MacRumors, most of the populace here doesn't even begin to grasp how the IT world works and why it works the way it does.

 

[LAndersen]

I'm confused; they discontinue the product because very few people are buying it, so who's creating the "turmoil" over the issue?

Our larger corporate clients felt blind-sided by the sudden announcement of the Xserve's discontinuation. If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the corporate world, they need to offer a 1 to 2U rack-mountable server class device. While you and I know that a Mini is probably adequate for many installations, I've been told point blank by corporate IT that they would never allow such a device to host their data.

 

[loungecorps]

Hopefully we don't get Final Cut Prosumer come the Spring.

Furthermore..."ashamed" to be associated with Blu-Ray? Jobs is committing a sin by going against it. The medium, I think, is great. No doubt, it's tricky to produce but worth the effort. Am I wrong?

makes sense to me especially since apple has been selling the macbook prosumer for sometime now

 

[budafied]

While I would love to see a Bluray player in the next 13" MBP(which I'll be getting), I already have a PS3 that plays them on the HDTV, and the resolution on the MBP would not be big enoguh anyways. Also, almost all my Blurays come with a Digital Copy, which I load into iTunes and then can play on any iDevice anytime I want. So a BD player (PS3) and MBP combo has the best of both worlds for me.

 

[macsmurf]

The greatest irony to me is the apathetic "So what?" many have toward this issue. It's clear that enterprise infrastructure is a hazy subject. I don't recall who here stated in behind every Xserve sits a large number of Macs, but that point is spot on. Each Xserve represents the purchase of a large number of Macs -- as well as representing as an enterprise relationship with Apple that extends back for seven years. This is a huge breach of trust.

What I don't understand is that anybody in the enterprise trusts Apple to provide legacy users with an upgrade path. The handling of the carbon discontinuation was a very large hint.

I've always considered Microsoft a company that take great pains in supporting existing users for years, whereas Apple is a very nimble company that can change on a dime. I don't think that is a particularly astute observation.

Why take the risk? I don't get it. I'm not trying to defend Apple here. After all, they did screw people over in a major way. I just find it strange that anyone would trust them in the first place.

 

[KnightWRX]

I've always considered Microsoft a company that take great pains in supporting existing users for years, whereas Apple is a very nimble company that can change on a dime. I don't think that is a particurlarly astute observation.

The thing is you don't need to be one or the other. In fact, Apple could have done everything the same way in the Xserve debacle, except for one minor difference : Offer an upgrade path. They only cut the hardware out, all that the people that are now left to dry need is hardware to run OS X Server on (since it still exists). Apple thought the Mac Pro was it, which shows how disconnected they are when it comes to datacenter design (I hope the guy who took this decision isn't also in charge of their own data center).

Apple already have a link to VMWare, where they allow virtualization of OS X server on Apple hardware. It would have been easy to simply extend that to all hardware vendors. The upgrade path would then have simply been to install OS X Server into existing ESXi environnements most of us have already.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

The writing is on the wall, folks. Unless Apple pulls a rabbit out of the hat with FCS, write off Apple's pro content creation tools.

Anyone ever see the iAd Producer? Now how much does the producer cost?


I just saw realtime particle fluid behavior using Open CL in Blender. I have yet to see Apple programs take advantage of it.

http://www.blendernation.com/2011/01/03/fluids-in-real-time-with-opencl/

 

[yoak]

What I really hope from FCS is a stable way to send to compressor from final cut, so you can use a cluster without having to export a Quicktime file first.
Oh, and a way to create a proper Blu-Ray to hand to clients.

 

[chirpie]

Why is Blu Ray *still* a topic of discussion? (well, in obscure tech circles. Consumers don't really care. They keep buying more Apple gear.)

Macs will never have it.

Macs have sold in record numbers without it.

Blue Ray doesn't matter. It has never mattered when it comes to Apple products, nor will it matter in the future. Same as Flash.

This is the thread about Final Cut Pro and XServe.

Where do those devices fit in with the iOS devices that have sold in record numbers?

Answer: They don't.

This is all about the pros. The pros want Blu-ray because their clients have these nifty stand alone players that also sell by the millions.

Why is this so hard to understand?

If Apple wants to crap on the Pro market (and they haven't really just yet, they still have time to make good) so be it. But don't tell us it doesn't matter now or in the future, because it does.

 

[Val-kyrie]

Have any of you actually used a Blu-Ray player? They are universally terrible. The 1080p video looks lovely but the players are buggy and slow with ridiculous load times. The "extra" features are a joke too. There is no consistency as the interface is different for each disc. It's like having to learn a new operating system over and over again. The discs that have online content almost never work and when they do it's virtually unusable anyway.

Image quality: 10/10
Hardware/Interface: 0/10

Netflix HD streaming is amazing on the AppleTV. It's the best implementation of Netflix ever. The software interface is perfect and it's zippy. As long as you have a decent internet connection (7-10 Mbps or better) I defy anyone to notice any significant audio or image degradation.

As for Blu Ray players, I have a Samsung BD-C7900 which loads as fast as my previous DVD player, in fact it is one of the fastest on the market, and it includes wireless connectivity. Online content has been fine.

Compared to the cost of high(er) speed internet plus a Netflix or other type of subscription, I save money by paying for a slower internet speed, renting movies I am interested in, and purchasing only those I will re-watch (I rewatch my favorite movies many times). Plus the instant access to a Blu Ray disc (or my many DVDs) is faster and more convenient than the unreliable internet in my area.

 

[chaseerry]

I'm still curious whether or not there will be a Lion Server edition. Apple's Server products were only getting better until they decided to axe the rack-mountable server.

 

[Val-kyrie]

My First wish of is to support the avi and OGG media format. My second is to remove the Super-Drive and replace it with a HDD easily ejectable bay similar to adding more HDD storage in the MacPro case.

Solution for new iMac:

x1 Primary SDD or HDD option for OS and Apps storage, launch.

x1 Secondary SDD or HDD Bay for additional storage for media storage.

x1 SDXC slot..

Remove the Super-Drive, its pointless. People who want an Optical Drive, get an external one. I do not want to pay for something I do not use.

When options such as removable HDD, SD and USB Thumb Drive exist why are we still embracing the Optical drive.

Some of us still use the optical drive. Just yesterday I ripped a CD into iTunes and then transferred the files to an SD card so my daughter could listen to her CD on her Nintendo DS. BTW, this CD is not available for download as it came as an exclusive bonus with a movie she received for Christmas.

 

[leroypants]

Why is Blu Ray *still* a topic of discussion? (well, in obscure tech circles. Consumers don't really care. They keep buying more Apple gear.)

Obscure tech circles like the film, television, animation circles . We just bought 5 Sony laptops that can burn blu ray for our clients, cost half and do more than macs. I can shoot a wedding and have a high def blu ray ready to show during the reception, please try that with an apple.

Macs will never have it.

Macs have sold in record numbers without it.

No kidding, they are up to what 6% of the market in personal computers?

Blue Ray doesn't matter. It has never mattered when it comes to Apple products, nor will it matter in the future. Same as Flash.

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is jealous of your ability to twists facts in order to fit a position. It does matter, many people are moving from macs for blu ray support, however they way you interpret things is so biased towards apple you are blind to this fact.

 

[MACRUS]

Some of us would like the best quality right now and for years to come, rather than live with some delusions idea that someday far in the future streaming quality might be slightly better than upconverted sd video. Others would rather kiss the boot and watch lower quality just because it has an apple logo on it.

Those are called Apple fanboyIdiots. or brainwashed zombies.

 

[michaelflynn]

What I really hope from FCS is a stable way to send to compressor from final cut, so you can use a cluster without having to export a Quicktime file first.

Agreed, it would be really nice to utilize my 8 cores on a Compressor encode.

 

[BrotherBeagle]

I'm still curious whether or not there will be a Lion Server edition. Apple's Server products were only getting better until they decided to axe the rack-mountable server.

I really don't see it happening.

My guess? Apple rolls more under the hood changes for better integration with Active Directory and offers the rest of their services as plugins for OS X client.

What I'm most curious about is SUS and Netboot -- for what it's worth, both of those services can be migrated to other platforms (I'm testing both on OpenBSD); but the setup is far from Apple's dummy gauge approach (which really is a pleasure to work with). I'd imagine that if Apple doesn't decide to completely kill off the ability to image and manage their systems via network, you'll wind up plugins for those as well (that simply point to SMB or NFS shares).

I really think we've seen the last OS X Server with SL...

Here's another question, what's going on with ARD?