Nope, I'm convinced: You have no idea what you are talking about.
You have aparently no concept of any HD systems beyond Final Cut. Yes, FCP (or FCHD) work with both SD or HD material. You can also work with either compressed or uncompressed data.
SMPTE 259M is serial digital standard def. it runs at 270Mb/s and is uncompressed. You can plug a card into a Mac or PC and capture this stuff directly.
SMPTE 292 IIRC runs over 1Gb/s. Again, there are PCI cards that you can plug into your Mac and work directly with it.
Apple and Panasonic teamed up a couple of years ago and provided direct Firewire support of DVCPRO-50. That means you can capture the compressed data directly from the tape without any conversions. You also keep a data rate of 50Mb, Same quality as going SDI but less than a quarter of the data rate.
At this NAB Apple and Panasonic did the same thing, only with the 100Mb DVCPRO-HD (The format was called DVCPRO-100 at one time)
Yes this is all within the scope of even 400Mb Firewire.
When we say "In Production" we mean at the production level. Not at the distribution level. ATSC (the HD stuff that reaches your house is 19Mb) It would be a rather bad idea to try and do editing or effects work at that high a level of compression.
When you say you "work with them all the time", what exactly do you mean? You're a news photog in market 150? DVCPRO-25 is the same data rate of a consumer Mini-DV camera. No big whoop. Tons of TV stations use the stuff all over the world. Just don't try to do any green screen work with it.
I had the same problem with RoadRunner. I started calling every number I could find for them and finally got through to a support call center. I told them I was trying to reach the NOC. They happily transfered my call to the NOC where the techs were saying things like... "Why did Canada transfer you down here?". They were actually very nice, I quickly explained my story and they then gave me a number for RoadRunner Abuse.
Quote: "Oh, for Christ's sake, you pretentious little twat: You just had to try and be cute, instead of simply writing like a normal person. "I can't say the name of the company, because it's such a big, mysterious secret." Fuck you, douchebag."
You see, if Slashdot used the speech analysis system described in this topic. You would instantly be modded up +5 Insigitful!
You have probably seen many film composites done in 8bit per channel, and never were the wiser. If you're trying to extract a green screen, then yes, Cineon will probably allow you to extract a cleaner matte. Quantel swore by 8 bit for many years and their hardware did (does) the best video compositing. It's all in how you treat those bits. FilmGimp in 48 bits? Yawn. Try better algorithms before throwing more bits at a problem. i.e. look at what quantel does in 24.
No, the video output of the Toaster was top notch RS170A grade NTSC. As long as you stayed away from the KIKI wipes or DVE transforms, no one would ever know the video went through a Toaster.
My brother still has a BetaSP dub from NewTek of the "Revolution" demo. That demo was cleaner then what we could produce in our edit suite with a GVG-200 switcher and Abekas A53D.
At a later job, I single-framed many animations from the Toaster out to Betacam-SP that always looked great. I even used the "Falling Snow" wipe on some holiday IDs. I processed the "snow" through a GVG Kaleidoscope (Best DVE ever made) to soften it up a bit. It was great having the Toaster as a utility machine for an edit suite.
When B5 first started, I remember seeing pictures of the render farm of Amiga 2000s with `040 cards and toasters in them. Something like 50 or 80 Amigas sitting on shelves. I think back then, Screamernet wasn't yet built. Soon after B5 started, someone (Aspen Computers?) started building outboard rendering engines... The name Raptor comes to mind.
I was still running Lightwave on a Toaster up until 1996.
We've had this television system here in the US for over 50 years. Even with all of it's problems, it still works pretty well. Our main production switcher is an Ampex AVC Century who's innards date back to the mid `80's, when dot-matrix printers were all the rage. We still have U-Matic tape decks to play back archive tapes. That format came about in 1971. (Also Betacam 1981 and 1-inch Type-C 1977) You want to see vintage technology? Just walk into an average TV station.:)
I find this fascinating... I was never exposed to a Disney film until I was 11 or 12-yo when I saw "The Fox and the Hound" twice in the theaters when it came out. I thought it was wonderful! That movie isn't typical of Disney fare though. I was taken to Disney World when I was 4, but I don't think it made that much of an impression on me. I always shunned the syrupy sweet, even as a young child. (I still hate "It's a Small World") PIXAR stuff, on the other hand, can bring tears to my 34 year old eyes. Perhaps I've just changed.;)
I'm not sure where the stories are online, but the development of Dinosaur is a huge story. My brother follows this stuff much closer than I, so I can only give you that side. Disney built a huge CGI facility to do Dinosaur and early on, it was shaping up to be a fantastic movie. Somewhere along the line, the higher-up got a hold of the project and ruined it. My understanding was that the dinosaurs weren't supposed to talk. (I could be wrong) Disney eventually closed that state-of-the-art facility after a few projects. A major waste of some brilliant talent. I really don't think Disney can recover from this latest event. First on the block will be the ABC television network. Perhaps Apple or PIXAR will eventually buy Disney. ???
At a TV station I used to work at, we used to send people on searches for "Liquid Video". Pretty much the same results! It's amazing the people that get hired at TV stations. Mr. Blinker-Fluid would be a genius compared to some in my industry of choice.
At the station I'm at now, they send PA's to ask the engineers for the "ChromaKey for the Genlock".:)
Oh yes, 2.04 was a great improvement. I have WB 3 on my A2000.
I was a serious Amiga-Head until 1996 when I bought a Mac clone. I had been using Macs since 1994 and initially didn't like using it. After about a year I realized that I getting more work done because I was doing less maintenance and tweeking. I had about $15,000 in Amiga hardware and software, so it was not easy to let go.
Photoshop 2.5 was also so much faster than the TV-Paint that I had on the Amiga with a GVP Spectrum card. A Zorro slot VGA card that cost me over $600 in 1994 dollars!!!!! Ack!!!!
Odd, I thought it was Congress that approved funding.
Are you really comfortable with putting the lives of the astronauts at risk to repair the HST. There is already a lot of risk involved in space travel. Apparently they are trying to lessen some of them.
And of course, all of that money is just for Bush's cronies right? No thought of a "trickle-down" into the economies of the towns where the contractors are located. Lets see... in the `60's, a lot of space program was moved to Texas during LBJ's tenure in office. Methinks he was a Dem.
Pointing out others intolerance and inability to provide an intellectual discussion is doubletalk? I'm on Slashdot where some of the brightest minds in the world hang out. Don't you all have a better argument than "Bush is dumb".
Someone dares to dream, and the community that should be happy is the one grousing.
Yes, in many ways the Amiga was better. I just pulled out my A2000 and turned it on over the Christmas holiday. What a blast. Where the Amiga fell behind was in the interface. Even back then, the Mac interface was much more elegant and consistent. Also, as a former Commodore employee once said; 'Commodore is not a computer company, they are a company that makes widgets.'
I remember a time when there was actually intelligent discussions on Slashdot. A president proposes a plan to improve the Space program, and all the liberals get in a tizzy.
1) If there is a mandate, we will find a way to fund it.
2) If long term goals mean losing the Hubble, then so be it. Look long term.
3) Increased NASA activity stimulates the economy. This can only help us if you people will just stop bitching, and stop with the childish statements on Bush. Making silly, inane comments about him only makes you appear small. An I saying that criticism of the president is bad? No, just make it on the facts, and do it in an intelligent manner. Reading this drivel makes me feel like I'm at a MOVEON.ORG meeting.
Please note that in my reading, some florescent tubes give off a "notched" spectrum. Some wavelengths of light just aren't there. I do follow what you are saying though. There are also some tricks and optical illusions that take advantage of human color perception. *sigh* I guess I'll always be a slave to my yellow sun.
I used to use a Z-80 Based Cromemco that was used for television weather graphics. The turn-key system was sold by a company called ColorGraphics. I later used a MC68020 based Cromemco that ColorGraphics called the "ArtStar 3D Plus" Dual 32bit color frame buffers, 3D and 2D animation and paint. Oh, and it could also do weather graphics as a LiveLine-V. All this from 1987-88. ColorGraphics now exists as WeatherCentral. www.wxc.com
Ask any TV engineer about the ArtStar and you will hear the horror stories. I can't complain though, I learned a lot about 3D animation from it... I spent hours trying to smooth out motion paths with TBC controls, and you could never get it quite right.
Slashdot Mirror
Quote: "You are completely brainwashed by Apple's marketing -- amazing."
Why do you feel so threatened?
Nope, I'm convinced: You have no idea what you are talking about.
You have aparently no concept of any HD systems beyond Final Cut. Yes, FCP (or FCHD) work with both SD or HD material. You can also work with either compressed or uncompressed data.
SMPTE 259M is serial digital standard def. it runs at 270Mb/s and is uncompressed. You can plug a card into a Mac or PC and capture this stuff directly.
SMPTE 292 IIRC runs over 1Gb/s. Again, there are PCI cards that you can plug into your Mac and work directly with it.
Apple and Panasonic teamed up a couple of years ago and provided direct Firewire support of DVCPRO-50. That means you can capture the compressed data directly from the tape without any conversions. You also keep a data rate of 50Mb, Same quality as going SDI but less than a quarter of the data rate.
At this NAB Apple and Panasonic did the same thing, only with the 100Mb DVCPRO-HD (The format was called DVCPRO-100 at one time)
Yes this is all within the scope of even 400Mb Firewire.
When we say "In Production" we mean at the production level. Not at the distribution level. ATSC (the HD stuff that reaches your house is 19Mb) It would be a rather bad idea to try and do editing or effects work at that high a level of compression.
When you say you "work with them all the time", what exactly do you mean? You're a news photog in market 150? DVCPRO-25 is the same data rate of a consumer Mini-DV camera. No big whoop. Tons of TV stations use the stuff all over the world. Just don't try to do any green screen work with it.
Scott (tips hat to Twirlip of the Mists)
Quote: "Arrogant fucking yanks."
:)
Cool, I like that. I think that may be my new sig! I do think "Yanks" should be capitalized though.
I had the same problem with RoadRunner. I started calling every number I could find for them and finally got through to a support call center. I told them I was trying to reach the NOC. They happily transfered my call to the NOC where the techs were saying things like... "Why did Canada transfer you down here?". They were actually very nice, I quickly explained my story and they then gave me a number for RoadRunner Abuse.
Past that point, it still took months!
I just read "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs". A great read... It's like high school all over again!
Found a fan website for the Raptor workstation.
http://z80.org/raptor3/raptor3.html
Quote: "Oh, for Christ's sake, you pretentious little twat: You just had to try and be cute, instead of simply writing like a normal person. "I can't say the name of the company, because it's such a big, mysterious secret." Fuck you, douchebag."
You see, if Slashdot used the speech analysis system described in this topic. You would instantly be modded up +5 Insigitful!
Fuck you very much!
You have probably seen many film composites done in 8bit per channel, and never were the wiser. If you're trying to extract a green screen, then yes, Cineon will probably allow you to extract a cleaner matte. Quantel swore by 8 bit for many years and their hardware did (does) the best video compositing. It's all in how you treat those bits. FilmGimp in 48 bits? Yawn. Try better algorithms before throwing more bits at a problem. i.e. look at what quantel does in 24.
No, the video output of the Toaster was top notch RS170A grade NTSC. As long as you stayed away from the KIKI wipes or DVE transforms, no one would ever know the video went through a Toaster.
My brother still has a BetaSP dub from NewTek of the "Revolution" demo. That demo was cleaner then what we could produce in our edit suite with a GVG-200 switcher and Abekas A53D.
At a later job, I single-framed many animations from the Toaster out to Betacam-SP that always looked great. I even used the "Falling Snow" wipe on some holiday IDs. I processed the "snow" through a GVG Kaleidoscope (Best DVE ever made) to soften it up a bit. It was great having the Toaster as a utility machine for an edit suite.
When B5 first started, I remember seeing pictures of the render farm of Amiga 2000s with `040 cards and toasters in them. Something like 50 or 80 Amigas sitting on shelves. I think back then, Screamernet wasn't yet built. Soon after B5 started, someone (Aspen Computers?) started building outboard rendering engines... The name Raptor comes to mind.
I was still running Lightwave on a Toaster up until 1996.
We've had this television system here in the US for over 50 years. Even with all of it's problems, it still works pretty well. Our main production switcher is an Ampex AVC Century who's innards date back to the mid `80's, when dot-matrix printers were all the rage. We still have U-Matic tape decks to play back archive tapes. That format came about in 1971. (Also Betacam 1981 and 1-inch Type-C 1977) You want to see vintage technology? Just walk into an average TV station. :)
I find this fascinating... I was never exposed to a Disney film until I was 11 or 12-yo when I saw "The Fox and the Hound" twice in the theaters when it came out. I thought it was wonderful! That movie isn't typical of Disney fare though. I was taken to Disney World when I was 4, but I don't think it made that much of an impression on me. I always shunned the syrupy sweet, even as a young child. (I still hate "It's a Small World") PIXAR stuff, on the other hand, can bring tears to my 34 year old eyes. Perhaps I've just changed. ;)
I'm not sure where the stories are online, but the development of Dinosaur is a huge story. My brother follows this stuff much closer than I, so I can only give you that side. Disney built a huge CGI facility to do Dinosaur and early on, it was shaping up to be a fantastic movie. Somewhere along the line, the higher-up got a hold of the project and ruined it. My understanding was that the dinosaurs weren't supposed to talk. (I could be wrong) Disney eventually closed that state-of-the-art facility after a few projects. A major waste of some brilliant talent. I really don't think Disney can recover from this latest event. First on the block will be the ABC television network. Perhaps Apple or PIXAR will eventually buy Disney. ???
Go PIXAR!!!!!!
At a TV station I used to work at, we used to send people on searches for "Liquid Video". Pretty much the same results! It's amazing the people that get hired at TV stations. Mr. Blinker-Fluid would be a genius compared to some in my industry of choice.
:)
At the station I'm at now, they send PA's to ask the engineers for the "ChromaKey for the Genlock".
Quote: "then Northwood."
:)
Perhaps a NEW Northwood comes out AFTER we're done laughing at Prescott.
I don't have a sig you insensitive cod!
The Mac, sadly, has not improved my grammar though. :(
Oh yes, 2.04 was a great improvement. I have WB 3 on my A2000.
I was a serious Amiga-Head until 1996 when I bought a Mac clone. I had been using Macs since 1994 and initially didn't like using it. After about a year I realized that I getting more work done because I was doing less maintenance and tweeking. I had about $15,000 in Amiga hardware and software, so it was not easy to let go.
Photoshop 2.5 was also so much faster than the TV-Paint that I had on the Amiga with a GVP Spectrum card. A Zorro slot VGA card that cost me over $600 in 1994 dollars!!!!! Ack!!!!
Odd, I thought it was Congress that approved funding.
Are you really comfortable with putting the lives of the astronauts at risk to repair the HST. There is already a lot of risk involved in space travel. Apparently they are trying to lessen some of them.
And of course, all of that money is just for Bush's cronies right? No thought of a "trickle-down" into the economies of the towns where the contractors are located. Lets see... in the `60's, a lot of space program was moved to Texas during LBJ's tenure in office. Methinks he was a Dem.
Pointing out others intolerance and inability to provide an intellectual discussion is doubletalk? I'm on Slashdot where some of the brightest minds in the world hang out. Don't you all have a better argument than "Bush is dumb".
Someone dares to dream, and the community that should be happy is the one grousing.
Yes, in many ways the Amiga was better. I just pulled out my A2000 and turned it on over the Christmas holiday. What a blast. Where the Amiga fell behind was in the interface. Even back then, the Mac interface was much more elegant and consistent. Also, as a former Commodore employee once said; 'Commodore is not a computer company, they are a company that makes widgets.'
I remember a time when there was actually intelligent discussions on Slashdot. A president proposes a plan to improve the Space program, and all the liberals get in a tizzy.
1) If there is a mandate, we will find a way to fund it.
2) If long term goals mean losing the Hubble, then so be it. Look long term.
3) Increased NASA activity stimulates the economy. This can only help us if you people will just stop bitching, and stop with the childish statements on Bush. Making silly, inane comments about him only makes you appear small. An I saying that criticism of the president is bad? No, just make it on the facts, and do it in an intelligent manner. Reading this drivel makes me feel like I'm at a MOVEON.ORG meeting.
Please note that in my reading, some florescent tubes give off a "notched" spectrum. Some wavelengths of light just aren't there. I do follow what you are saying though. There are also some tricks and optical illusions that take advantage of human color perception. *sigh* I guess I'll always be a slave to my yellow sun.
With the iPod, you could put an install on that and boot your machine from it. Well, some people can anyway.
I used to use a Z-80 Based Cromemco that was used for television weather graphics. The turn-key system was sold by a company called ColorGraphics. I later used a MC68020 based Cromemco that ColorGraphics called the "ArtStar 3D Plus" Dual 32bit color frame buffers, 3D and 2D animation and paint. Oh, and it could also do weather graphics as a LiveLine-V. All this from 1987-88. ColorGraphics now exists as WeatherCentral. www.wxc.com
Ask any TV engineer about the ArtStar and you will hear the horror stories. I can't complain though, I learned a lot about 3D animation from it... I spent hours trying to smooth out motion paths with TBC controls, and you could never get it quite right.
I'm suddenly reminded of Steve Martin's "Cruel Shoes" :)