Apple to adopt Intel's mobile platform

This has not been confirmed by Apple but AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has taken a liking to Silverthorne, Intel's new 45-nm mobile platform chip. The chip is slated for release in early 2008 and uses between half a watt and two watts of power.

Intel describes it as a "landmark" release. The chip is fast for a mobile chip, consumes very little power and is less than the size of a US penny. It is also incredibly cheap. Intel described an "average price" of a device with the chip as only $100.

The most obvious choice for the processor would be the iPhone. Currently it uses an ARM processor. This new chip would offer a smaller form factor, better battery life and more powerful capabilities. However, the best feature of the new chip in my eyes would be the fact that the iPhone would now be running on x86 hardware. This means that software such as Adobe Flash Player can be ported very easily, and is the reason why Flash support does not exist on the current iPhone model.

There are two reasons why I haven't purchased one yet. The first is the lack of Flash support (need it for web development) and the second is the fact that I want to completely replace my iPod and unfortunately my music collection is about 33 GB. 32 GB flash drives are available now so my hopes are high for an iPhone that fits the above criteria in late 2008 / early 2009.

Downgrading from Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 to 6.0.1

I like to keep an eye on my server logs and I get a list of what people searched for in order to reach the site. A significant number of people have been searching for a way to somehow downgrade from Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 back to 6.0.1. I didn't realize so many people were having problems.

There is no easy "rollback" method of downgrading. You'd have to uninstall FCP completely and reinstall it again. You would, however, be stuck at version 6.0.0 because Apple only offers 6.0.2 on its site, unless you can find a mirror somewhere (I couldn't).

The best way of preventing this issue in the future is to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your hard disk onto another disk. You can generate an exact carbon copy of your working installation and instantly restore to it if you run into problems in the future. An essential editor's tool.

Also be aware that if you happened to save one of your projects under 6.0.2, you will be unable to open it in a previous version. I am not aware of a way of converting them back again. The best way to prevent this in the future is to save a backup before you upgrade.

The moral of this story is: don't install on a machine in the middle of a production unless you are having serious problems that the patch claims to fix, and always prepare a way of getting everything back to normal before you upgrade.

P.S. If you're installing Final Cut Pro 6 on top of Final Cut Pro 5, it is best to uninstall version 5 first. In most cases, it won't do anything untoward, but for a lot of people a working machine is their livelihood and you don't really want to take unnecessary risks when you can avoid them.

Update: We now offer a tool for removing Final Cut Studio from your system.

OS X Leopard security update 2007-009

Apple just released a security update for OS X Leopard 10.5.1. It is recommended for all users and fixes the following:

Core Foundation
CUPS
Flash Player Plug-in
Launch Services
perl
python
Quick Look
ruby
Safari
Samba
Shockwave Plug-in
Spin Tracer

With regards to installing on a production machine, it's kind of a fine line. On the one hand, you don't want to break anything but on the other, hackers often reverse-engineer a patch in order to find out what the original security issues were. They then target unpatched machines.

Obviously this is significantly less of an issue with OS X than it is with Windows but I would say that generally speaking, there is no harm in installing security updates on a production machine, but it's probably best to give it a day or two first and keep an eye on Apple's Leopard support forum to see if anyone else had any issues.

Update:
Didn't realize Apple posted one for Tiger at the same time too. It fixes:

Address Book
ColorSync
Core Foundation
CUPS
Desktop Services
Flash Player Plug-in
gnutar
iChat
IO Storage Family
Launch Services
Mail
perl
python
ruby
Safari
Safari RSS
Samba
Shockwave Plug-in
SMB
Spotlight
tcpdump
XQuery

New Firewire standard on its way

The 1394 Trade Association, the body responsible for managing the Firewire standard, has announced Firewire S3200, the successor to Firewire 1394b (Firewire 800).

This new specification quadruples the speed to 3.2Gbps. Crucially, the specification uses existing Firewire 800 cables and connectors to make the upgrade process as painless as possible for existing Firewire 800 users. The standard is expected to be ratified in February, so expect to see Firewire S3200 devices 6-12 months or so after that. Apple has traditionally been a big supporter of Firewire so I would imagine they would adopt it pretty quickly.

It has stiff competition from USB 3.0 though, due to be released in the first half of 2008. It offers a 10-fold speed increase from USB 2.0, to 4.8Gbps. It also uses existing USB connectors for full backwards compatibility. CNet has an article about it here.

Each offers its own advantages and disadvantages. I tend to prefer Firewire over USB because it is rock solid whereas USB can sometimes be a bit flakey. Firewire also offers gives more power to devices such as hard drives, often making an external power supply unnecessary. But it doesn't really matter, as I'm sure the majority of machines will ship with both.

Importing MXFs into Final Cut Pro

I think filmmaking is the only profession where the word "cheat" is used to mean a positive thing. Shane Ross has figured out a way of importing MXF files from Panasonic P2 cards. This is a way of importing P2 footage without having to go through Final Cut's "Log and Transfer" dialog. You just drag it directly into Final Cut and there it is, ready to be used.

In order to enable this functionality, you must install Panasonic's free P2CMS utility. The P2CMS utility allows you to view MXF files natively in QuickTime. Because Final Cut is built upon QuickTime, it also inherits this functionality. Presumably it should be backwards compatible with FCP 5 as well.

One caveat is that when you import, you will get a dialog saying that the media is not optimized for Final Cut Pro, so depending on the speed of your machine, you might have to constantly render everything. But this is good if you want to cut out the Log and Transfer step.

New tool: Aspect Ratio Calc

We've just added a new online tool to the site. Aspect Ratio Calc allows you to calculate the aspect ratio of various film and video formats. It also offers you the ability to work out the pixel width or height of the footage based on the aspect ratio.

This tool is very useful in ensuring that you are meeting the standards specified by your broadcaster or distributor, and also to make sure that you are delivering at the correct resolution and aspect ratio when creating CG footage from scratch.

It is available in standard and iPhone versions. We also have tools for calculating the disk space taken up by video footage and calculating the number of film reels needed to shoot a certain number of hours of footage. See our Resources section for more details.

Blogwad 12/13/07

Here are some of the headlines that caught my eye recently:

Oscars go long with songs - 59 songs are in the running for an Oscar nomination this year.

ProTools LE controlled with an iPhone - Someone has managed to create a hack that allows you to control ProTools LE in real-time from an iPhone. Looks pretty cool. Complete with video.

YouTube a conduit for "D-Boys" auditions - A Japanese talent agency is using YouTube as a means of auditioning actors.

Sony sets sights on new camera - Sony is to release the F35 next year as part of its high-end CineAlta line. It's got a Super 35mm sensor and will record a 10 megapixel image. It is planned to retail for $250k for the camera body (no lens or accessories). Sony also says it has a 4K camera in the works but it will take a while. "We don't want to do a low-end 4K camera system" - which is clearly a dig at the Red camera. It will be interesting to see what Sony brings to the table.

New trailers for Youth Without Youth - Two new trailers up for Francis Ford Coppola's new movie. I can't wait to see it.

AJA releases new Leopard drivers

Just a quick note to say that AJA has released new drivers for its popular KONA 3 and Io HD lines. These primarily add Leopard support but also add a couple of small new features, so they're recommended for Tiger users as well.

KONA 3
This release updates the KONA 3/3X to have OSX "Leopard" compatibility. The release also adds support for 720p50 and provides other improvements and fixes.

AJA Driver Compatibility as of KONA Version 5.0 is as follows:
FCP 6.0.x - Kona Driver version 5.0 (Leopard and Tiger OS compatible version)
FCP 6.0.x - Kona Driver version 4.0 (Tiger OS compatible version)
FCP 5.1.x - Kona Driver versions 3.1 through 3.4 (Tiger OS compatible versions)
FCP 5.0.x - Kona Driver version 3 (first Universal Binary version)

Io HD
This release updates the Io HD to have OSX "Leopard" compatibility. The release also adds support for 720p50 and provides other improvements and fixes. The archive includes software, release notes, user manual, and utilities. Please read documentation before installing software on your Io HD system. This software should not be used with any other AJA product (KONA, Io, Io LA, Io LD).

[via HDForIndies]

Sahara budget revealed

The LA Times has managed to obtain details of the budget for the movie Sahara. If you don't remember, Sahara was an action-adventure movie that came out in 2005, starring Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. It lost $105 million at the box office and is regarded as one of the biggest flops in Hollywood's history.

The production costs came to $160 million but the producers managed to save a lot of money by shooting abroad. Some of their Moroccan crew were paid the same amount for a week's work as their US counterparts would be paid for a day. They were also given tax breaks and financial incentives by foreign governments.

But some of the other costs were shocking. They spent $105,556 on bottled water in Morocco alone. How many bottles does it take to spend that amount of money? I did a Google product search and found a site offering 24 bottles for $7.13, equaling about $0.30 per bottle. So, at that price you would need at least 355,307 bottles of water! The actual amount would probably be much higher because they would most likely buy wholesale in bulk, which would cost even less per bottle. Remember that this is only in Morocco and doesn't include any water costs in any of the other locations. Crazy.

Even this was a small cost compared to some of the other things in the budget. The strangest thing is that the "usual suspects" - special effects, post production, actors' wages - were the smallest items on the balance sheet. The main problem was that they would shoot complex sequences costing millions of dollars that ended up being cut from the final movie. The film also suffered because the high production costs meant that creative control became a secondary consideration in scenes with product placement.

A very interesting read. I'd recommend checking it out sooner rather than later, as Paramount are very angry that the budget was leaked and it may end up being taken down.

New site design

We just launched our new site design. The old design was variable-width which meant that sometimes it looked a little strange when viewed on very large monitors. Our new design maintains the same width, solving the issue and looking more attractive at the same time.

We also have a brand new home page which is designed to give you quick access to the most popular pages on the site. In addition, we have split our service section into individual pages, allowing us to fill them with a lot more information than before. The purpose of the new design was to make the site more professional and increase its usefulness and we think this was achieved. Help us improve it even further by telling us what you think of it, either in the comments section of this post or on the feedback link at the bottom of every page.

Please note that there may be some issues over the next few days as a result of the upgrade and we appreciate your patience as we attempt to fix them, but overall the transition has been very smooth.