RED CES news - 4K delivery and Scarlet

I know I'm late to the party but there were some important announcements at CES (Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) by the creators of the RED camera.

Jim Jannard (head honcho) yesterday announced a 4K delivery system in response to the 4K displays announced at the show by Panasonic and Sony. He was not specific about what this delivery system would be comprised of but he has stated in the past a desire to create 4K projectors and it was interesting to note that he said "in the home as well as on the big screen".

I'm wondering what sized screen (and what sized house!) you would need to get the full benefit of 4K in your home (Panasonic's one is 150"), but I guess all will be revealed at NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters conference) in April.

Earlier in the week, Jim also revealed that there is a "pocket professional camera" in development called Scarlet. Further details will be given at NAB, but Jim did imply that it was intended to compliment, not replace the RED One.

That Jim loves to tempt us. It's a great way of getting people to talk and speculate about his products though. Apple adopts a similar strategy.

High Def DVD News

I've been a bit busy over the past few days and haven't had much time to post unfortunately, but there have been some very interesting developments in the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Late last week, Warner Brothers announced that it would be dropping support for the HD DVD format in May and supporting Blu-ray exclusively.

This had a knock-on effect, causing the HD DVD Promo Group to cancel their press conference at CES, citing the "timing of Warner Brothers' announcement" as the reason. This in turn prompted Paramount to clarify its position that "Paramount's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format", but they have canceled any HD DVD title announcements at CES. This doesn't sound to me like Paramount is 100% confident in the success of the HD DVD format.

There was some initial confusion as to whether Warner's subsidiaries would follow suit. New Line clarified its position but said that unlike its parent which was waiting until May 2008 to shelve HD DVD, its switch to Blu-ray would take place immediately. This would make Pan's Labyrinth the only New Line movie to have been released on HD DVD.

It would appear that the studios are getting tired of the confusion caused by the format war and the fact that most people are waiting for it to end before making a purchasing decision. In my opinion, Blu-ray is a superior format so I am glad it is achieving market penetration. HD DVDs have the advantage of being cheaper to produce but if Blu-ray becomes a standard, this issue will diminish with time.

Tool update: Aspect Ratio Calc

We've just updated our online Aspect Ratio Calc tool based on your feedback. The tool now features a list of preset formats to choose from such as DV NTSC, HD 1080, 2K Academy, etc. Clicking on one of these will populate the text boxes with common image sizes for these formats.

Other additions include the ability to specify custom aspect ratios rather than just those contained in the list, plus several bug fixes.

We have a standard and an iPhone version available.

Keep up the feedback. We're always interested to hear how our products are helping you and, conversely, what isn't quite working. To leave feedback about a page, use the link at the very bottom.

Interesting Apple patents

Apple was recently granted several interesting patents.

The first one offers a method of analyzing video frames and working out their attributes such as if the footage is interlaced or progressive, and if pulldown has been applied or not. This would allow software such as Final Cut Pro to change project settings to match these attributes automatically without any user intervention. It would also allow software like Compressor to work out which fields in interlaced footage are duplicates and only rendering them once, thereby speeding up rendering times and reducing file sizes. I would imagine this is geared at ProRes, Apple's professional codec.

The second patent is for a DVD web system that provides a method of controlling - and being controlled by - internet content. Web content is currently available via next generation HD DVD and Blu-ray players but this patent specifically caters for two-way communication and control.

Their final patent covers color correction using an accelerated graphics card rather than the processor. My first thought was that it was a patent for the technology in Apple Color but further reading revealed that Apple proposes a playback system (such as QuickTime) where the original color space of the video (such as NTSC) could be converted to the current color space of the monitor to ensure accurate color reproduction.

It must be noted that Apple ultimately may not choose to implement these technologies into their products.

[via AppleInsider]

Matrox MXO now runs on Leopard

Matrox has just released a patch for its MXO HD monitoring system. The patch offers "Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) support, Apple Color v1.0.2 support, Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 v3.1.1 support and genlock timing offset controls."

The Matrox MXO is a box that you connect between your graphics card and an Apple Cinema Display that allows you to perform accurate high definition monitoring for under $2000. This is a great product for indies, as monitoring solutions normally start at about $8000-9000, and the Matrox MXO is definitely comparable with these higher-priced solutions. The best experience will always be on a CRT monitor but this is a close second for a fraction of the price.

Visit Matrox's MXO support page to download the patch. Note that you will need to be a registered user on their site in order to do so.

[via Broadcast Engineering]

How to trash preferences

If an application in Mac OS X fails to load or exhibits strange behavior, a common way of fixing the problem is to trash preferences. But what does this mean?

Application preferences such as window layouts and sizes, user-selected options, etc, are all stored in a preferences file ending in .plist. There is a different file for each application. When you delete this file ("trash" it) and fire up the relevant application, the app will notice that the file is missing and create a new one with default preferences. This can solve many issues.

Below is a table of common professional applications and where their preference files are located (note that ~ refers to the current user's Home folder):

Application	Folder	Filename
Final Cut Pro	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist
Compressor	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.compressor.Compressor.plist com.apple.Compressor.CompressorSharedService.plist
DVD Studio Pro	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.dvdstudiopro.plist
LiveType	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.LiveType.plist
Motion	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.motion.plist
Shake	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.shake.plist
Soundtrack Pro	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.soundtrackpro.plist
Apple Color	~/Library/Preferences	com.apple.color.plist
Adobe Photoshop	~/Library/Preferences	com.adobe.Photoshop.plist
Maya 7	~/Library/Preferences	com.alias.Maya.7.0.plist
Maya 8	~/Library/Preferences	com.alias.Maya.8.0.plist
Vue 5 Infinite	~/Library/Preferences	com.e-onsoftware.vue5infinite.plist
Vue 6 Infinite	~/Library/Preferences	com.e-onsoftware.vue6infinite.plist
Boujou	/Library/Preferences	com.boujou.plist

Additional Final Cut Pro settings are stored in the ~/Library/Preferences/Final Cut Pro User Data directory. You need to trash "Final Cut Pro 6.0 Preferences" (and any previous versions), "Final Cut Pro Obj Cache" and "Final Cut Pro Prof Cache".

After deleting the files, empty the trash and fire up the application again.

Update 4/4/08:
We now have an application called Preference Manager for trashing, backing up and restoring preferences.

Capture HDV to ProRes via Firewire in Final Cut Pro 6.0.2

Chris Poisson over at Creative COW has discovered that the recently released 6.0.2 update to Final Cut now allows you to capture from HDV directly to Apple's ProRes codec via Firewire.

This provides a means of getting rid of the awful HDV codec in one step, resulting in dramatically decreased render times, improved rendering quality of footage, and more latitude in color correction due to the 4:2:2 color space (as opposed to 4:2:0). Capturing to ProRes used to require a fast Intel Mac with an accelerated capture card, or AJA's Io HD. With the new update, you can now capture on a G5 Power Mac without any additional hardware, which very much levels the playing field.

As Chris explains, however, it is not quite a perfect solution just yet. It would appear that Apple has made some compromises (half raster import for example) in order to improve capture speed on slower machines. The preview window will also be considerably behind the actual footage being captured, making it difficult to monitor on-screen (an external broadcast monitor is always recommended, if you can afford it). But if you can live with these minor setbacks, you can capture to ProRes for a fraction of the previous hardware cost.

Before you rush to upgrade though, be aware that some people have been experiencing issues with the latest patch. As always, I would recommend not installing it in the middle of a production, and have a clone or backup of your working system before you upgrade.

Essential Tools: OnyX

Mac OS X has a lot of maintenance features built into the operating system. Unfortunately, some of these features only run in the early hours of the morning (if the machine is on, of course) and some can only be run manually.

OnyX has the capability to run all of these manually or you can schedule more convenient times for these to run. It has a lot of features including checking your hard disk for impending failures, checking the structure of system files, extra options for customizing your system that are not present in System Preferences, repairing permissions, and optimizing your system's performance. These are essential tools to ensure the smooth running of your system. When you make a living from your computer, you want it to always perform at the peak of its capabilities.

OnyX is freeware and is available for Mac OS X versions 10.2 - 10.5.

Final Cut Pro and Quicktime 7.3 issues

A lot of people have been experiencing issues with the latest QuickTime version. The most common issue seems to be captures stopping after 10 minutes or so, leaving behind a ridiculously large file. Other people are finding incompatibilities in third party applications that use QuickTime.

The issue seems to stem from the fact that Software Update recommends the update because it is compatible with your operating system BUT it is not compatible with less-than-current versions of Final Cut Pro. So if you have version 4 or 5, you're out of luck, and it appears to be these users that are experiencing the issues.

What a lot of people don't realize is that Final Cut Pro depends heavily on QuickTime and so any QT updates will directly affect FCP. QuickTime is not just a "feature" of the operating system. It is also worth noting that the latest version of Final Cut, 6.0.2, requires QuickTime 7.3 and will not run well without it.

This is why you should never update a machine in the middle of a production. If you are not in the middle of a production, you should wait to see if other users have issues before installing the update. It is also best to have a cloned version of your hard disk so that you can get up and running again as quickly as possible. For the latter, I would recommend Carbon Copy Cloner.

I made a post the other day about downgrading from FCP 6.0.2 to 6.0.1.

Essential Tools: Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is a utility for performing an exact clone of your hard disk. The idea is that you install your operating system and software and then immediately run Carbon Copy Cloner. The program will create a bootable disk image on a separate disk or machine. If you run into problems in the future, you can then immediately boot from this image and instantly have a working system again.

The problems people have been running into lately make this an essential utility for video editors, or indeed anyone who cannot afford any system downtime.

The software is donationware, which means you can download a fully working version for free but a donation is appreciated.