A series of topics starting with large sensor cameras in production, the November 3 announcements from Canon Professional video, RED and Avid. Then on to the death of film, the cinema experience, and the problems of 3D.
We’ve been predicting the demise of the Mac Pro in the current form fact for some time, and during this early October recording, we discuss what has this week become rumor: the demise of the heavy iron workstation. (And the value of SSD.)
Terry reports from the Monitor shootout day sponsored by the Hollywood Post Alliance, and HPA sponsored workflows.
We also get onto the future of Apple after the loss of Steve Jobs (just like everyone else!), leading to a discussion of who invented what?
The implications of Siri for postproduction: specialist tools vs generalists tools.
Many thanks to Curtis Fritsch for editing and making us sound smarter.
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SSD drives are still way to expensive and way too small for the majority of the market to be realistic.
What specific graphics cards will not run or run well enough in Thuderbolt?
SSD drives are to small and expensive *right now* but the trend is that we’ll be replacing hard drives with SSD or Flahs in the future. That’s what we do on the show- prepare you for the future
No graphic card will run well enough in Thunderbolt in my opinion – not GPUs that are used in post production environments. They tend to be 16 lane cards and the current version of Thunderbolt is just short of 4 lanes capacity. So, only 1.4 of the needed bandwidth can be delivered via this generation of Thunderbolt. (16 lanes equates to 48 Gbits/sec bandwidth). The next iteration of Thunderbolt with 100 Gbit/sec throughput will do the job for GPU power but that’s 2-3 years out realistically.
There are very basic graphics cards designed for nothing more than enabling a display, that could be put in the monitor via TB – Sony have suggested but not delivered on that.
No one ever claimed Steve Jobs “invented” anything. He did change society with the Mac GUI, iPod, Podcasts, iPhone, iPad, OS X, he’s taken technology and made it usable by everyday folks, and no one has ever come close to that. So to say Steve Jobs isn’t all that, you’re really taking all the technology you use every day for granted, and ignoring he made it accessible. You really super missed the boat there. Very short sighted.
You guys really need to read up on brain function research and processing modalities. Humans are not universally overwhelmingly visual. That’s a myth.
I was making the point that humans are not universally visual when recounting my experience in Japan.
The Japan anecdote was fascinating. Thanks again for a great podcast.
Steve Jobs was a legend in his own time. If you asked the average person in the 30s or 40s or 50s who Philo Farnsworth (or Vladimir Zworykin) is, would they have any more idea than folks today? Jobs will be much closer to Edison than Farnsworth when it comes to longevity of notoriety. Jobs was much more impressario than inventor, and impresarios get remembered.
@Andrew. Everyone uses lightbulbs every day. Apple products don’t have anything like that kind of usage, and probably never will. Comparing Jobs to Edison is belittling Edison’s numerous achievements.
I was only comparing notoriety there. But since you brought it up, one could argue that the personal computer’s broad usage is in large part thanks to Jobs. Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb, he developed a commercially viable one. Kind of like how Apple took Xerox’s idea for a point’n’click GUI and packaged it for the masses. It is also noteworthy that a NeXT computer at CERN was used by Tim Berners-Lee to invent the World Wide Web and HTML. Just saying.
And EVERY invention in the last 100 or so years was done under a light bulb. What’s the point? There is a degree of fandom attached to Steve Jobs and the Mac platform. I understand that, I have been a Mac user since my first purchase of a Mac Plus. But I keep things in perspective in the big picture.
Edison gave us the motion picture camera, the phonograph, and the light bulb. It doesn’t matter who was working on various parts of those inventions, he delivered and made them available to the masses.If you are comparing the refinement of a smartphone to the cultural impact of motion pictures, you are arguing a point I just don’t get.
Edison had a much more significant impact on technology and culture, yes. Electric lights, AC power, audio recording and motion pictures are each massive achievements. That they all came from one man is amazing. I never argued otherwise. But to dismiss Jobs’ impact on technology and culture as nothing more than “refinement of a smartphone” is selling a legacy short. I’m not a Jobs worshiper, but I can recognize historically significant contributions to technology. I’d say the personal computer and the World Wide Web are the most important techno-cultural developments of the late 20th century, and Steve Jobs had a significant role in the bringing both into being.
I don’t get the laying of flowers at retail stores, in fact I find it disturbing. But I’m not going to toss Steve Jobs into the dustbin of history because other people have elevated him to something more than an important industrialist.
Remember where this discussion started. You argued on the show that Jobs would not be widely remembered in a few decades, and I think he will be. It doesn’t take an Edison-sized legacy to be remembered.
Thanks guys for the emotional support, at my facility we are being pushed away from tape (to early) to delivery in file form. I never even considered spot fixes for supers etc!
We are moving to a new facility and it looks like the digibetas won’t make the move with us. Currently we produce plenty of Masters for Air/backup/audio-superless x 2 (8 tracks) and OMFI on disk. All in real time with confidence on. Pretty straightforward post.
In the future I guess we will be rendering loots and playing back files to check muxing and file integrity. Who knows about archiving! We still have afilm library and some 1 inch as well as mountains of beta sp.
Thank goodness for the future it looks so bright from far away, but the lustre dulls the closer we get to it…
🙁
“but the lustre dulls the closer we get to it”
Certainly does in some cases. And this is one. 🙁
I’m afraid I had to post this in resopnse to the comments after Philip’s statement Re: Steve Jobs and his affect on society.
@Ben Balser:
Steve Jobs “changed society” with the things you listed? The GUI was invented at Xerox PARC, Jobs just licensed it. OS X, yes, was a good improvement – it finally made Mac computers useful (yes, I’m a little biased in this – every Mac OS before OS X was, in my mind, a pain in the ass).
The iPod, the iPad, even the iPhone – cool products, yes, but changing society? At best, the iPad, but it was an inevitable development; indeed, Apple had tried a tablet before; the success of the iPad had much to do with waiting for tech to advance to the point that a tablet was viable, not to mention the advantage of the iOS ecosystem.
As for podcasts, Steve Jobs had pretty much nothing to do with them, other than the marketing monster behind the “iPod” leading to the term “podcast.”
@Andrew Richards:
First, the wrongs.
The Personal Computer’s broad usage is thanks to Steve Jobs? Really? Please back up this claim with some data, because actual history would credit the boom of home PCs to Microsoft and Bill Gates. We may not like Gates’ tactics, but the effect can’t be denied.
As for the Internet/World Wide Web, I really hope you have more to your argument, because it reads like “Tim Berners-Lee used a computer built by Steve Jobs to invent the WWW – therefore Steve Jobs was partly responsible for inventing the WWW.”
I hope that’s not your argument, because…. really? If Steve hadn’t created NeXT, Tim Berners-Lee would have said “screw it, I’m not inventing the Web”?
Andrew actually hit it right on the head earlier: Steve Jobs was like Edison in that, while he may not have had an inventor’s mind, he could tinker with ideas to pursue an idea of what a product should ultimately be, and he developed a cult of personality to associate all inventions and developments from his company with himself.
And, just for fun, some people whose actions had an affect on society:
– Philo Farnsworth (Yes, I know he was mentioned)
– Hedy Lamarr
– Henry Ford
– Tim Berners-Lee
– Bill Gates (as mentioned above)
– Franklin Roosevelt
– Lyndon Johnson
– Richard Nixon
– Osama bin Laden
– Alexander Fleming
– George Pincus
and I’ve tapered out now…
@JamesW, totally agree.
SSD drives are to small and expensive *right now* but the trend is that we’ll be replacing hard drives with SSD or Flahs in the future. That’s what we do on the show- prepare you for the future
No graphic card will run well enough in Thunderbolt in my opinion – not GPUs that are used in post production environments. They tend to be 16 lane cards and the current version of Thunderbolt is just short of 4 lanes capacity. So, only 1.4 of the needed bandwidth can be delivered via this generation of Thunderbolt. (16 lanes equates to 48 Gbits/sec bandwidth). The next iteration of Thunderbolt with 100 Gbit/sec throughput will do the job for GPU power but that’s 2-3 years out realistically.
+1