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The ones that produce acceptable image quality use FW. Take a look at Pana P2's, Sony XDCAM's, Red Cinema etc. etc. Hell, you can use FW to connect a DigitalBeta deck to your Mac and capture if necessary. Stop writing about something you know nothing about.
Are any of those consumer cameras?

Looks like the Pana P2 is in the $5000 range.
Sony XDCAM $6000+.
Red One = $17,500 just for the body.

Who is going to edit video shot on professional rigs like that on a 13" MacBook????
 
DSC_5562.jpg

Bit off-topic, but I cringe at the sight of those electronics on a carpet.

And yeah, there doesn't look like a lot of room. I'm sure they could've squeezed it in if they'd wanted to, but well, they didn't! Move on.
 
Bit off-topic, but I cringe at the sight of those electronics on a carpet.

And yeah, there doesn't look like a lot of room. I'm sure they could've squeezed it in if they'd wanted to, but well, they didn't! Move on.

Probably didn't use a ground strap anyway. Heck, probably a cat just out of the picture frame.
 
A little old history, which claims Jobs was responsible for charging royalties for FW:

What are the license fees?
US$ 0.25 per end user system. That means if a hub has 1394 functionality, then the manufacturer owes 25 cents per hub. On the other hand, if an automobile uses 1394 (and it will if it uses IDB-1394 for entertainment networking), then the automobile manufacturer owes 25 cents per automobile. The fees are paid to the 1394 Licensing Authority, which then distributes shares of the fees to the various patent holders (which include Apple, Sony, Canon, ST Microelectronics, Matsushita, etc, etc).

Apple allows anyone to use the name "FireWire" for free providing that they sign a trademark agreement. Using the phrase "FireWire compliant" requires a different process.

So how did all these other stories (like the $1/port fee to Apple) get going?

When Apple was participating with the IEEE p1394 working group (I was chair *and* Firewire technical lead), we proposed licensing all of Apple's blocking patents for $3k, one time fee, and only for "the point of first use" ... the IC's that implement the protocols. Under that agreement, the IEEE agreed to include the appropriate patents in the standard.

Apple never intended to charge for the use of the name "Firewire" ... you could get it for free if you just signed an agreement to use it *only* for a product that was compliant with IEEE 1394-1995 (the original version of the standard).

After Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he was somehow convinced that Apple should change the game midstream and ask for $1 per port for the Apple patents (his argument was that it was consistent with the MPEG patent fees). I left Apple before Steve came back, so I have no idea how this really happened.

This annoyed everyone (including yours truly) immensely ... particularly Intel which had sunk a lot of effort into 1394 (the improved 1394a-2000 and 1394b-2002 standards are partly based on Intel work). The faction of Intel that doesn't like open standards like 1394 used this as an excuse to drop 1394 support and bring out USB 2 instead. (There are lots of other stories about this whole process, but this is my favorite).

Simultaneously, Sony and the other 1394 backers pushed hard back at Apple noting that they all had patents too .... and if Apple wanted $1 port, so did they ... which meant that Apple would have to pay about $15 to every else to do Firewire ... not a pleasant picture. The result was the "1394 Licensing Authority".
http://www.teener.com/firewire_FAQ/#Stories

I believe the royalty was removed a while back, but arguably, too little too late.

Who told you the aluminum Macbooks can't boot from USB? It doesn't sound right.

You're quite right - nothing to stop you from booting with USB on Intel machines. But you weren't able to with Power PC machines - some blurb for back-up software (e.g. SuperDuper) hasn't always made this crystal clear (in fact, some I've seen has been downright misleading) - and from various posts I've read, would say there can be a bit of confusion about this.
 
Are any of those consumer cameras?

Looks like the Pana P2 is in the $5000 range.
Sony XDCAM $6000+.
Red One = $17,500 just for the body.

Who is going to edit video shot on professional rigs like that on a 13" MacBook????

I'm not talking about any editing! For example with Red you have rolling shutter which can create issues when over cranking or when panning with lots of vertical features. You just want to check the footage and transfer the footage from cine mags to RAID 1 drive. You want small laptop on location shoots. Regarding Sony XDCAM's, HDV's and Pana P2 they are cheapest cams that produce acceptable results. With flash media using cams you need to empty the cards very frequently and small MacBook would be perfect for that one. I'm not making this stuff up. I'm shooting 80% of my stuff with Red. And yes... I have MacBookPro's on top of rest of the Mac's I own. Still, MacBook is smallest Mac available that could've been used on location.
 
I'm not talking about any editing! For example with Red you have rolling shutter which can create issues when over cranking or when panning with lots of vertical features. You just want to check the footage and transfer the footage from cine mags to RAID 1 drive. You want small laptop on location shoots. Regarding Sony XDCAM's, HDV's and Pana P2 they are cheapest cams that produce acceptable results. With flash media using cams you need to empty the cards very frequently and small MacBook would be perfect for that one. I'm not making this stuff up. I'm shooting 80% of my stuff with Red. And yes... I have MacBookPro's on top of rest of the Mac's I own. Still, MacBook is smallest Mac available that could've been used on location.
I'm not saying that you're making this stuff up.

What I am saying is that your specific use case is so NOT even close to being typical for a MacBook owner that most of the points that you're trying to make seem utterly ridiculous.

Is it really hard to believe that when Steve Jobs said 'Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2', he was referring to CONSUMER cameras, and NOT the $5,000+ rigs that you professionals use?
 
But when Steve said that most camcorders use USB 2.0, I would like to know which camcorders he was talking about.
On camcorderinfo.com, of the last 7 camcorders they reviewed, only one supported firewire (and it also supported USB2).

They list four "MOST POPULAR" camcorders (which aren't included in the last 7 that they reviewed) and none of them support fireware. :confused:

I know this means nothing to people who do have camcorders that dont' support USB for video transfers, but everything I've seen does make it look like USB is the direction in which camcorders are going.
 
Maybe this could be solved with a USB to Firewire cable?

http://www.usbfirewire.com/ looks promising.

But when Steve said that most camcorders use USB 2.0, I would like to know which camcorders he was talking about. Even the digital camcorders at the Apple store use Firewire. :rolleyes:

Technically, you might be able to tunnel USB through Firewire. Very few USB devices do more than 400 Mbit/s and Firewire does 400 Mbit/s constantly. So this would only allow you to plug in a USB device to a Firewire port. But it probably requires special Firewire chips, I don't think you can do that via software.
 
On camcorderinfo.com, of the last 7 camcorders they reviewed, only one supported firewire (and it also supported USB2).

They list four "MOST POPULAR" camcorders (which aren't included in the last 7 that they reviewed) and none of them support fireware. :confused:

I know this means nothing to people who do have camcorders that dont' support USB for video transfers, but everything I've seen does make it look like USB is the direction in which camcorders are going.

Consumer grade camcorder indeed seem to move to flash or hard disc based storage and the compression is done while recording. This has quite some advantages, devices get smaller and lighter (especially with SDHC cards), no more tape noise on the recording and longer record times (Hard Drive). Flash based camcorders are also much less prone to give you bad footage when you bump or shake the camera while recording. Oh and with tapes, you have to forward, rewind and transfer to a computer takes almost as long as the capturing itself. Don't "diss" non-DV camcorders, the late 2008 Sonys, Canons and even Samsungs aren't that bad, even though pretty compressed.

I would love a hybrid camera, that captured uncompressed on SDHC cards and a press of a button dumps the recording on the built-in (or a USB attached) hard drive. The flash memory is fast enough for uncompressed capture. For HD, you might want to have 2 SDHC cards in RAID 0 for double the bandwidth and storage. Now you might argue that this would only allow for short bursts of recording. But when you do handhel, you usually don't do over 15 minutes, and when you're filming a long shot, you'll probably use a tripod anyway so you can safely capture on the hard drive (buffered by the flash cards).

Does anyone know of a 720p camera that has both flash and a HD inside and doesn't do terrible compression when recording? Oh, and USB please :eek:
 
What I am saying is that your specific use case is so NOT even close to being typical for a MacBook owner that most of the points that you're trying to make seem utterly ridiculous.

When it comes down to recoding on HDD's, flash cards or basically any other media except the good old film or tape you need to off load the files to HD (you would want to have RAID 1 for security. This is kind of two edge sword. You have direct access to files but on the other had you need laptop and HD on your shoots. When you do 10+ hours of run and gun you need the lightest and smallest possible portable. Guys doing run and gun shoots are doing they stuff with very low budget (most of times) so they don't want to spend any extra for bigger notebook. Anyway, cams like Red are relatively cheap and are used a lot in independent documentaries and low budget features on top of the major features (Red is kind of continuing the change in the industry that FCP started).

Anyway, I personally have no problem of living without the new MB. However think about the low end guys shooting with HDV cameras or Pana's. They have very little money to spend on productions and they could've done all their stuff with MB. Then there are students who shoot with HDV's or use P2 media. Now they need MBP's... However, my biggest fear is that Apple is thinking about dropping FW totally. From media pro standpoint that sounds totally absurd.
 
On camcorderinfo.com, of the last 7 camcorders they reviewed, only one supported firewire (and it also supported USB2).

They list four "MOST POPULAR" camcorders (which aren't included in the last 7 that they reviewed) and none of them support fireware. :confused:

I know this means nothing to people who do have camcorders that dont' support USB for video transfers, but everything I've seen does make it look like USB is the direction in which camcorders are going.

The problem with USB connection on consumer cams is that many of them don't mount on Mac. I have no idea why. Some of them come with Windows capture and editing software so I guess that might be it. Guess they use their own communications format or something...
 
Maybe this could be solved with a USB to Firewire cable?

http://www.usbfirewire.com/ looks promising.

But when Steve said that most camcorders use USB 2.0, I would like to know which camcorders he was talking about. Even the digital camcorders at the Apple store use Firewire. :rolleyes:

Even if that worked with a Mac, you would still have the craptacular speeds and data rate inconsistencies of USB—most FireWire devices could not function that way.
 
The problem with USB connection on consumer cams is that many of them don't mount on Mac. I have no idea why. Some of them come with Windows capture and editing software so I guess that might be it. Guess they use their own communications format or something...
From what I understand, several have their own proprietary software encoding
 
The problem with USB connection on consumer cams is that many of them don't mount on Mac. I have no idea why. Some of them come with Windows capture and editing software so I guess that might be it. Guess they use their own communications format or something...
But how is adding Firewire back to the MacBook going to help with the
"USB not mounting issue" you mention above when 6 out of 7 of the most recent consumer camcorders reviewed (and all of the most popular ones) on camcorderinfo.com don't even have Firewire?
 
Its an old technology, its like a floppy drive, zip disk drive, etc.. Believe me, I did not like to see floppy drives go, but its the same type of thing, whether you like it or not, firewire is dying, and USB is a growing technology...
 
But how is adding Firewire back to the MacBook going to help with the
"USB not mounting issue" you mention above when 6 out of 7 of the most recent consumer camcorders reviewed (and all of the most popular ones) on camcorderinfo.com don't even have Firewire?
That is kind of a different argument. But the fact that USB cameras suck for Mac is one of the reasons so many people have invested in FireWire. Apple should have waited to euthanize it until there was a suitable alternative.
 
Its an old technology, its like a floppy drive, zip disk drive, etc.. Believe me, I did not like to see floppy drives go, but its the same type of thing, whether you like it or not, firewire is dying, and USB is a growing technology...

Firewire is dying? I suppose FW 3200 is old?
Don't buy into the marketing hype.
 
Its an old technology, its like a floppy drive, zip disk drive, etc.. Believe me, I did not like to see floppy drives go, but its the same type of thing, whether you like it or not, firewire is dying, and USB is a growing technology...
Respectfully, even though FireWire 400 is older than USB 2, it is still superior. And when Apple ditched floppy drives, there were better alternatives. There is no suitable alternative for FireWire.
 
(time to throw out your 8 year old mini-DV camera that's worth $25 in a garage sale) are worth it.

So, I'm supposed to throw out my prosumer camcorders that are still available for sale for $3000? You obviously know nothing about the video world, so the wise thing for you to do is not make comments about things you know nothing about. It just makes you look silly.
Also, even if it was a camera that is worth $25, if it's still usable there is no valid reason to throw it out. I thought apple touted itself as an environmentally friendly company? Throwing out functioning electronics is certainly not.
 
Are any of those consumer cameras?

Looks like the Pana P2 is in the $5000 range.
Sony XDCAM $6000+.
Red One = $17,500 just for the body.

Who is going to edit video shot on professional rigs like that on a 13" MacBook????

It doesn't have to be a consumer camera to edit on a MB. The Sony PD170, VX2100, Panasonic DVX100, etc. are prosumer cameras that I could easily edit on an MB. I use small laptops to make rough edits in the field. It doesn't require a workhorse to edit DV.
 
So, I'm supposed to throw out my prosumer camcorders that are still available for sale for $3000? You obviously know nothing about the video world, so the wise thing for you to do is not make comments about things you know nothing about. It just makes you look silly.
Also, even if it was a camera that is worth $25, if it's still usable there is no valid reason to throw it out. I thought apple touted itself as an environmentally friendly company? Throwing out functioning electronics is certainly not.

I get the same feeling. In my country, my audio recorder retails for the equivalent of 4000 dollars with todays exchange rate and the Cantar X I sold recently "retails" for the equivalent of 17,800 dollar.

Yes, it's certainly time to throw out equipment like that because of the whims of Apple. :p
 
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