Apple lays off 40 from FCP team, before NAB?

Apple laying off 40 people from the Final Cut Pro software team has been noted on Twitter, but not corroborated anywhere else as I can find.

But if the layoffs are actually true, it begs us to wonder what Apple’s long term dedication is to high-end computers, and professional apps— especially considering that the vast majority of profits come from: iPods, iPhones, iApps, iMacs, iBookstore, iTunes music & TV shows, laptops and soon- iPad.

Apple, Video Pros & the future.

It’s pretty clear that Apple dropping “computer” from their name was not just to use less ink. They’ve been behind the curve with the hardware for many years. Case in point: after PCs have had a SD card slot for many years, Apple finally decides to integrate this functionality into their laptops (but not desktops.)

But, in so doing, they ditch the ExpressCard slot from the 15″ MacBook “Pro” and specifically make the SD card slot not compatible with I/O devices so it can’t be used to expand the computer. wtf?

So now, the 17″ MacBook Pro is the only expandable laptop from Apple- for a starting price of $2500.
If I’m going to spend that much, I’ll buy a Lenovo 17″ (starting at $1,900) that offers me the capability of a quad-core chip, dual internal LCD displays, integrated Wacom tablet, Pantone color calibration of the displays, fingerprint reader for mobile security, internal Blu-ray, integrated cellular broadband, and more.

There were times, back when Apple didn’t have today’s market share, that they produced computers that were affordable, and wildly expandable. They strong to be what the other guys weren’t. They thought differently. That gave us the G3, the G4 towers. It gave us the G3 series PowerBooks with dual media bays, in addition to the PC card slot. That emphasis on providing users with innovative solutions ahead of the pack is gone.

Super Hi-Vision makes HDTV look like…

For reasons that really are difficult to fathom, Japanese Broadcaster NHK has announced breakthroughs in what used to be called Ultra High Definition Video. Now Super Hi-Vision is expected to be the “broadcast” standard in Japan by 2015.

Never mind that the human eye actually has a hard time seeing the difference between 1080p and 720p at the normal home viewing distances from today’s screens. Never mind that 4k from camera to screen isn’t yet a reality, even in theatres.  Somehow, they see the need to replace our 2 megapixel images with 33 megapixel images.

Sony PMW-EX1 CMOS FAILS Strobe Test.

FreshDV shot some interesting footage with the Sony PMW-EX1 and video of a police car with numerous strobes firing clearly demonstrated that Sony’s new flagship SxS camcorder, despite being knighted with the CineAlta badge, clearly has problems with capturing partial-second instances of time.

There is going to be trouble in Teaneck…

Red Rolling CMOS Shutter Redux, again.

One of the easiest ways to f— with video is to use flashes and strobes while shooting.

With CCDs, you’ll likely end up with one field of interlaced video completely blown out and the other “half” of the image is normally exposed. Apparently, with CMOS imagers, including the soon to be replaced first 100 RED cameras, strobes and flashes can look like this, where only part of the frame is illuminated. Odd, isn’t it.

The video on the Fini Films Site has lots of strobes popping, and most are captured properly, but a good portion- more than you would expect- aren’t.

Via FreshDV

Specs lie. (Actually they just mislead us.)

In a wonderful commentary article (rant) at High Def Digest, Joshua Zarber takes a moment to put down the hardware and the manuals and speak directly to the “number purists” among us and basically tells us to grow up.

Red rolling shutter redux

There’s been a bit of discussion about the image distortion caused by the scanning (rolling) shutter used by CMOS chips which are starting to proliferate in the prosumer and professional video camera world. The key problem, as I have mentioned previously, is that the scanning imaging device is no longer sending the image solely to scanning displays- i.e. tube televisions. Today’s displays include plasma, LCD, DLP, OLED, etc. Most are progressive, but some include circuitry to display the image as if it were a scanning device.

Confused yet?

Mike Curtis, of HD For Indies, is very heavy into RED usage and promotion on his web site. RED is the video camera that I will agree is changing, or will change, the hardware business in the video industry. I checked in with Mike about the “rolling shutter” issue…

Panny’s new AJ-HPX3000 P2 versus RED-1.

Panasonic announced the nearly $50,000 AJ-HPX3000 to a fanfare of applause from P2 fans who laud the new camcorder’s 2/3 image sensors, 10-bit processing, full 1080i recording capability and two improvements to the basic P2 workflow- lots of slots and AVC-Intra recording for higher quality and longer record time on the cramped P2 cards.

The question is, why?