The new products look very nice, I see quite a few posts bashing Win 10 but have they really used it or just bashing on hearsay? I have worked remotely for over 28 years and buy my own tech for my sales-engineer job. After the Windows ’95 release I immediately purchased my first Mac running System 7 and have been in the camp ever since. Due to having a perpetual AutoCAD license I have kept a Windows machine in the stable since 2012. At present I have a 2018 Mac Mini, 2017 MacBook Air and a 2013 iMac I use to stream Apple Music in my home office. The device I use that grants me the most productivity though is a HP Prodesk Win 10 machine and it has been nothing but an enjoyable experience. I would personally not buy any of the Surface devices but to slam them for the O.S. seems a little harsh. YMMV……Ed
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Microsoft Debuts New Dual-Screen Devices, Updated Surface Laptops and More
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This is hilarious and sad all at once - Apple has become the old Microsoft, and Microsoft has become the old Apple. Man I miss "Jobs" Apple, his keynotes, and the products back then. Now the bean-counters run Apple, with Cook having no interest in actual products, while at Microsoft there is genuine excitement and product focus. While Satya Nadella is no Steve Jobs, you can tell he actually enjoys being there. Cook has about as much charisma and passion as a plant in the corner of my office.
The galaxy fold is a prototype that have a ridiculous notch just like the iPhone 11 lineup.
I shot on a Red Epic-W with Helium sensor in 8K raw but resolution wasn’t exactly by choice. This was the camera package available to the production and is more camera than I would have ordinarily opted for. The issue with this sensor is that shooting anything less than 8K is simply cropping in-camera. I come from a full frame photography background and am known for shooting ultra-wide, so I didn’t want to lose any of the (slightly larger than super-35) frame. Shooting 4K in-camera was essentially a 2x crop and I couldn’t bring myself to throw away so much of such a wonderful sensor’s image. Especially when I could do that in post if I wanted to.
I shot with a slightly higher amount of compression on the raw than you would if shooting 4 or 6K, so that helped a bit with data. I’d lighten up on the compression if I felt there was the possibility of punching into a shot in post.
There is a single 14 minute shot in the movie that I knew we couldn’t do without 8K and had always planned to bring in an 8K camera for that day, so it helped that that was our camera from the start. It’s a simple, static dialogue scene that punches in from 8K to 4K over the full 14 minutes... it makes the scene more intimate as it goes on, but is pushing in so slow that you can’t even see it happening unless you watch in fast forward.
Data-wise, the footage is on 18TB of storage with an identical 18TB backup. Post production was done on an additional 8TB with 8TB backup. That’s 52TB all-told, not including the score composer’s data or sound designer’s data, which are the only things that weren’t done on my Windows desktop. Score was recorded and mixed on a Windows gaming laptop that the composers also use to play live gigs. Sound design was done in 5.1 in a studio with a Hackintosh tower. When they recorded any ADR they’d switch to a trash can Mac Pro for less fan noise.
My Windows setup is nothing special. I believe it’s just an i7 6700k with 32gb DDR4. GPU was upgraded to only a 1070 8GB with the GPU ram being the key factor.
I attached camera-recorded proxies to the footage in Premiere for editing as you mentioned, absolutely, but the key for me was retaining the full 8K RAW in Resolve for the color grade. That’s where systems will buckle. The final movie is mastered in 4K and the 1070 8GB was the least expensive card that Resolve would use to render the heavily colored 8K footage down to 4K at the highest quality debayering. I was lucky to get 3fps on the render speed and would often get half that.
The monitor was just a calibrated photo monitor at 1080p. I’d have to zoom in to check for noise/sharpness. Using a photo monitor for film is pretty much heresy, but I’m very adjusted to this screen and have seen content from it in several theaters and it is always dead-on what I see at home. While the final movie is 4K, I kept to rec709 color as we are simply too small to ensure proper color through every single pipeline.
In fact, even after painstakingly ensuring that the master was 4K, the movie premiered in only 2K at the Tribeca Film Festival. Most small indies will play in theaters at 2K as the cinema format (DCP) isn’t ideal at downscaling a 4K source and having two theater prints is an unnecessary expense when the festival circuit still has a ton of 2K projectors. Some festivals even play off 1080p blu-rays (which is why my desktop’s Blu-ray burner still gets a ton of use).
Many distributors overseas don’t even want the 4K master. My distributor in the US will thankfully be providing it to iTunes and other 4K platforms eventually.
The title of the movie was changed from SOMETHING ELSE to “AFTER MIDNIGHT” after our premiere, which required a new master and cinema file. I was able to convince the team to go 4K on the new cinema file and I finally saw my movie in 4K for the very first time at Fantastic Fest in Austin last week. I’ll be honest, it looked maybe 15% better than the times I saw it in theaters at 2K. The optics on cinema projectors just don’t show pixels like backlit screens.
I wouldn’t recommend mastering anything in 8K anytime soon. Not even Hollywood is doing that yet (the FX budget would be astronomical). The real benefit of 8K cameras is simply the flexibility you have in post.
I’ll probably shoot my next movie in 4 or 6K and master to a crisp 2K unless we have a sizable post budget/larger team.
That wasn't true even in Win 7 days, and certainly isn't true these days. Of course bashing for the sake of bashing is a popular activity around here, but at some point it just become silly as the roles have reversed so much.
There's nothing wrong with Win10, in fact in has surpassed MacOS in a lot of ways as Apple core development effort has been geared towards iOS integration and not actual modern improvements. Now with Catalina doing a lazy cut of 32-bit applications (vs Win10 elegant WoW 32-bit emulator) more and more indy developers are abandoning the platform. It's sad to see MacOS going down that road as it was once THE OS to beat.
At least Apple's effort on iOS is paying off with quality, bug-free software. Oh wait....
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This has been my experience as well. My Mom has a Surface laptop (1st gen). Very nice hardware, but it has issues of the keyboard and trackpad suddenly not working. I constantly have to install/re-install drivers to fix it. Recently, even this didn't work and I had to take it to a Microsoft Store and have them look at it. They basically had to re-install the OS and work with the drivers to get it fixed. To their credit, they didn't charge me for this, but it's a pain nonetheless.
I expect a more seamless experience between Windows and Microsoft hardware, so this is very disappointing.
I really needed a writing tablet and was considering the surface lineup of tablets, but ended up going with an iPad just because it was the ecosystem I was already in, and I know Windows is good, but I'm not a fan of it.
But I do like the direction Microsoft is heading with their hardware and software, they've changed a lot in the past 10 years!
But I do like the direction Microsoft is heading with their hardware and software, they've changed a lot in the past 10 years!
You all realize they just stuck two screens together attached them with a hinge, right? I get there's some work around the OS, but hardware wise this is just two iPad mini's with a piano hinge in the middle.
Sure, like the Apple bashing on literally every article. So one Microsoft bashing once in a while is not a big deal, no?
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There’s even not much to be done on the software side. Windows has support for multi monitors and multi touch inputs for ages, this is just in a more compact form. The only one that needs more work is Android, but that’s on Google. Microsoft is doing practically nothing here once you think about it.
Their are tons of videos on You Tube and hands on stories by the media.
I would attach the videos here but between iOS 13 and this new websites bugs it’s difficult to do so.. like when you tap in your comment to post a link and instead it highlights lines....
but they are out there..
I believe Microsoft only managed to fix some of the bugs on the Surface Pro line starting with the 5th iteration or something. I have the Surface Pro 3, and the screen dimming/flickering and the sudden loss of the touchpad still exist, even with the latest drivers and firmwares.
Disappointing, yes. For anyone looking into a windows machine, just help yourself buying a regular ultra book instead. At the price point the Surface Pro is asking (including the keyboard), plenty of nice ultrabooks alternatives.
The whole non-replaceable storage on current mac lineup is a disaster and makes no sense from the customer's point of view. The new process of repairing becomes more costly and hassle for Apple product.
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What is most impressive is not the hardware, but the way MSFT has refactored Windows to make it better suited to handle such devices. This is where I think Apple's apparent (to date) lack of investment in Mac is going to hurt them the most long term. MSFT also just released a very solid version of Widows running virtually backed by Azure. They have also invested heavily porting major apps (Office, Visual Studio) towards html/js/css. Building Chromium into Windows, optimizing WSL are also brilliant moves. If the Internet of Things (the opposite of a "walled garden" aka catalyst) delivers on current promises, these MSFT investments are going to prove very valuable. Hopefully Tim & Apple are also preparing their underlying OS architecture for this, and simply have not yet revealed their cards -- and also have started to invest to make iCloud less of a storage/sync platform and more of a fully capable infrastructure platform like Azure. If not, then shareholders will likely not be happy long term. Tim will likely be running for political office at this time, though, so he has well-optimized Apple for his portfolio (along with Eddie's, Phil's and the other older C-level folks). That there is such incredible wealth available for C-level execs via short-term strategic optimizations is certainly an issue with the current corporate economic model.
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This feels like it was NEXT year's event... since the two key announcements won't turn up until then. Perhaps frighten people away from a Galaxy Fold purchase (as if the reviews aren't already doing a good enough job of that). Two screens + hinge = more robust solution. Get someone to make a curved edge screen along the join and it could look almost seamless. Anyone else think what was shown today may not be the final release product? Concept cars at trade shows have morphed into concept PC/tablet/phones??? 
The Pro X looks good. Evolution of a proven idea. See how the new AMD processor goes once people get one.
Least the Surface 7 finally got USB C - even if a lame version of it. Why do they keep the stupid power connector instead of charging over USB C?
The Pro X looks good. Evolution of a proven idea. See how the new AMD processor goes once people get one.
Least the Surface 7 finally got USB C - even if a lame version of it. Why do they keep the stupid power connector instead of charging over USB C?
Still, that is a new Windows built from scratch to work on that custom made chip. We don't know anything about the performance and we won't find out for 1-2 more months. It could turn out to be great.
If that's all you're taking away from what the Duo and Neo are then "these are not the devices you're looking for".
"new Windows built from scratch" is simply Microsoft's hyperbole. There is no reason to believe that this isn't anything more than the existing Windows on ARM efforts modified to work on this new hardware.
Here's my prediction: it's not going to turn out to be great.
When Apple's Airpods came out three years ago at a price of $159, there was outrage and endless comments about how overpriced they were.
Now, Microsoft comes out with their version at $249 and there's barely a peep about the price.
There's a reality distortion field around Apple for sure, but it doesn't work how most people think it does.
Now, Microsoft comes out with their version at $249 and there's barely a peep about the price.
There's a reality distortion field around Apple for sure, but it doesn't work how most people think it does.