No Blu-Ray for Macs coming soon.....

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Kurth Bousman

tape me thinks

Dude, I know the answer. And I know what those tapes cost. Go price an hour of HDCamSR and get back to me. In fact, I'll help you.

64 minutes of HDCamSR is running about $102.

BluRay archiving only looks expensive to people coming from miniDV. Those who've been running DigiBeta, HDCam, HDCamSR, etc., know what a bargain the Sony discs are. Not to mention you don't need a capture deck at the end of the day to get your footage off.

By the way the Sony SRW-5000 HDCamSR deck has a MSRP of $88k. That's a lot of BluRay discs...

[Michael Wisniewski]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

At no time, did laserdisc EVER have the Hollywood support that BluRay is currently enjoying in it's infancy.

Heck I could be totally wrong as well, but I agree that's a very good point in favor of Blu-Ray. I don't know enough to say how significant it is. But as someone who likes watching Blu-Ray movies, it's a very good thing. Let's agree to meet at this same post next year to see what happened. By then I hope to own a Macbook Pro that supports Blu-Ray.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Don't know about yours, but my Apple TV does output 1080i60. If you use HDMI, it will do 1080P as well. So there must be some scaling going on somewhere.

It's been said for awhile now that Jobs' vision of HD distribution is not in Blu-Ray, but online as in iTunes store.

-gb-

You missed my saying "super chip." Every graphics card can scale. But there are a whole range of sophistication in doing it WELL. For example, scaling can kill diagonals. Scaling can increase noise.

You also missed my point is that for content sent over your own network -- ATV should natively support anything you send it. ATV is now "useless" for anyone shooting FulHD 60i since not only must you downscale it, you need to convert the frame-rate.

Apple, as usual, is using their whole corporate structure to support selling media. This wouldn't be so bad if Apple's idea of what to sell wasn't totally biased toward USA teenagers. (Something BD is currently doing as well. But, we know from DVDs that eventually a huge world-wide film library will be available.) That's one reason I bought my VAIO. Apple users need to keep an open mind.

PS 1: Given the new thin design there may be no BD drive available for laptops. If there are no drives, Apple has no option.

PS 2: Since the "bag of dirt" is the need to extensively modify OS X to support DRM. I can imagine an application that is launched by OS X but runs without using the kernal. It would simply play a BD to the computer screen. Totally self contained. No external output.

PS 3: MacPro's don't support SATA BE burners. But, Apple could fix this and install BD burners in the MacPro. One doesn't need to play a BD to burn one.

[Perrone Ford]

Fair enough!

You sir, are a formidable opponent! :) (I hope you get that joke)

[Michael Wisniewski]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

You sir, are a formidable opponent! :)

And you sir are a quick study! (I love that segment)

[William Hohauser]

I agree that Blu-Ray is not revolution that DVD was. Blu-Ray looks great but people are very happy with DVDs on their big flat screens even with the up-converting. If the government didn't force the television transmission change-over for next year, we would not see the switch over to HD screens. Professional equipment will always change but the consumer market is slow to improve. Remember, people were happy with SLP VHS! People are happy watching YouTube! Quality isn't the issue, content delivery is. Many kids never buy a CD, they get their music as files and are perfectly happy.

I know a super audiophile with a system in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He only plays LPs because of their "superior" audio quality. His system sounds really, really, really good and some records almost sound like the musician is right there. I never have heard a system like that before but I can hear the surface of the LP and whatever imperfections are there. This drives me crazy and I prefer CDs or downloaded audio files because of that. The super audiophile will not play CDs or downloaded files on his system because they sound compressed to him.

Apple maybe missing the ball on this but right now it's a small ball and Apple will have the chance to pick it up in the future.

[Greg Penetrante]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Name me any other medium that can store one hour of 1920x1080p video in a playable format for less.

ANY...

And if you can't, tell me the gap between 1 hour on BluRay, and 1 hour on the next closest format.

HDV Tape.

Because you can't seriously compare the cost of Blu-Ray media to HCamSR tape stock or even HDCAM because of all the BDs I own none look as good as an HDCam/SR master ;-). Plus we are talking about a DISTRIBUTION format and not a production format.

The best looking BD I have so far is Iron Man and during many scenes you can clearly see macroblocking and compression artifacts (akin to HDV recording). I have a 90-inch front projector (Sim2 1080) and can see everything. I also have at my access an SRW1800 with many hours of HDCam masters and they look better than the resultant BD (from Encore or CinemaCraft encodes).

All that aside.... I did over 20 HD productions so far this year and only one client has asked for blu-ray discs. Go figure.

In my area of the woods nobody really cares about BD yet.

But....
I agree with you as far as how expensive Apple products are compared to everyone else. But let's be real: Microsoft died on the cross for all the Windows users to enjoy blue ray on their desktops. HP and the rest are basically along for the ride because they didn't spend millions of dollars to write hundreds-of-thousands of lines of code of DRM to satisfy the blu-ray licensing consortium's requirements of end-to-end encryption. But HP and the rest do have to pay about $30/computer for BD playback licenses.

Apple, on the other hand, writes the OS as well as designs most of the hardware so they ought to spend their $19 billion of cash in implementing BD DRM on the OS X side.

best regards,
-GReg

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Greg Penetrante

HDV Tape.

HDV tape does not store 1920x1080p, which is what I asked. Yes, it will store 1440x1080i. I was asking for another alternative format that could store what BluRay could store. HDV tape isn't it.

Originally Posted by Greg Penetrante

Because you can't seriously compare the cost of Blu-Ray media to HCamSR tape stock or even HDCAM because of all the BDs I own none look as good as an HDCam/SR master ;-). Plus we are talking about a DISTRIBUTION format and not a production format.

There is no reason at all that BD can't look exactly the same as HDCamSR. I can store uncompressed 10 bit 4:4:4 video on a BD just like you can on HDCamSR tape. Granted, I can't store an hour of it. Please note that my comment was not about BluRay as a medium for playback in a BluRay player, but as a mechanism to store playable or editable video. If we are talking about AVCHD/MPEG2 BluRay spec video, then you're right, it won't touch HDCam or HDCamSR.

Originally Posted by Greg Penetrante

The best looking BD I have so far is Iron Man and during many scenes you can clearly see macroblocking and compression artifacts (akin to HDV recording). I have a 90-inch front projector (Sim2 1080) and can see everything. I also have at my access an SRW1800 with many hours of HDCam masters and they look better than the resultant BD (from Encore or CinemaCraft encodes).

As anyone would expect.

Originally Posted by Greg Penetrante

All that aside.... I did over 20 HD productions so far this year and only one client has asked for blu-ray discs. Go figure.

For me, it's not so much the client side that I am worried about. And at this point that's not where I see Apple dropping the ball. It's the mastering side. For SD, I am now mastering to BluRay because frankly it's a better solution than laying off to full sized DV tape which is what I've been doing. My hour long Cineform 1080p master from 2 weeks ago is about 20GB. That's a $14 BluRay disk. How do I lay that off to tape? And what is it going to cost me?

Originally Posted by Greg Penetrante

In my area of the woods nobody really cares about BD yet.

Ok, but in my area, they do.


I completely understand and agree with people not seeing the big deal about finishing on BluRay for clients. I get it. But what about US? What about the content producers? The ability to lay off finished hour-long, 1080p masters isn't worth $14 a disk? Or to lay off 2 hour long shows for $35 a disk in full HD?

Am I crazy here?

[Andrew Dean]

i'm a big rabid apple fanboy. Wont even consider anything else. I also do video production for a living.

From my perspective, the lack of blueray is annoying. I dont care so much about HD distribution (though that would be nice), but would really really like a way to burn more than 4gig discs while on location.

It wont move me to pc, but until apple puts blueray on a laptop, i probably wont be lured into upgrading.

What i really want is for apple to return to the video producers friend status. A 12" macbook with a 1920x1080 transflective sunlight viewable screen that can transform into a tablet with 1/4-20 mount points all over it, and a "video display input port" that lets you hook up pro video gear and monitor realtime with no lag for hours and hours. mmm. Oh, and a wireless broadcast to other macvideobooks so the director can watch from the shade. mmm.

Ok, while we are at it, let it record uncompressed while viewing the lag free input. mmm..

[Brian David Melnyk]

it makes me sad that i have invested so much $ in equipment (and time researching/learning how to best use it!) so i can produce the best quality video possible, only to be unable to output it. i work in a HDV world but produce an lesser quality product for my clients. even if BD is not widespread, i want to provide my clients with BD in addition to the SD DVD, so that in the future they can use it, and all my efforts at achieving the best quality can actually be SEEN. i know there are 'workarounds' (more $$$...) but i have invested in a 'professional' suite of programs/computers that i would expect should cover something as crucial as outputting to the highest quality format-ASAP!
on another note, i am happy that i didn't wait to buy my macbook pro...

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Harrison Murchison

At 26 bucks a Blu-ray movie in stores compared to 10 bucks for a DVD I doubt that Blu-ray makes a splash.

I have been making that argument for some time myself, but a few weeks ago I got a BD player and have gradually been buying disks. I've gotta say... it's great. Once you start watching Blu-ray movies then regular DVD's look kind of "out of focus".

Clearly it's going to take awhile to become mainstream, but the BD section at Best Buy keeps getting larger. And you can find disks on sale sometime - $20 isn't unusual. Last week I was at Target and they had an end cap display of $15 disks which were all major movies.

[Dick Campbell]

For those of you too young to remember the Beta/VHS war, the reason the consumer was deeply involved was that home recording was new. Never before had you been able to timeslip TV and watch movies in your home (conveniently). That motivation is no longer there. For most of the consumers, DVD is "good enough".

I think the reason for the move toward flat screen TVs is all the hype about the digital TV transition in Feb 09.

And I agree a BR storage medium beats tape all to dickens. I just don't think a handful of video professionals is going to affect the market. Unless BR becomes a big consumer item, it will remain at "pro" prices.

[Brian Boyko]

The big reason why I haven't bought a Blu-Ray player: there's nothing to watch. All the movies I like to watch are made by smaller studios who don't and can't put out blu-ray.

It is a licencing mess, and Sony knows it. Sony's ideal situation has always been Sony cameras shooting onto Sony tape, exported to Sony computers, burned on Sony Burners, sent to Sony Pictures, distributed by Sony Distribution, sold in Sony Stores for use in Sony Players connected to Sony TVs and Sony speakers via Sony cables. Sony is the -king- of vendor lock-down and I think Blu-Ray is dead because of these reasons. Consumers will just skip this generation of the technology until someone else comes up with something better or Sony gets it's licensing head out of it's butt and starts letting others play fair.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Originally Posted by Dick Campbell

And I agree a BR storage medium beats tape all to dickens. I just don't think a handful of video professionals is going to affect the market. Unless BR becomes a big consumer item, it will remain at "pro" prices.

I'm personally not interested in Blu-Ray at this moment, but a Macbook PRO... has a PRO pricetag. It still doesn't have a Blu-Ray or an option for it.

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Robert Sanders

So, how would a Mac user create an HD MP4 with AC3 audio that will playback properly in a PS3?

I use MPEG Streamclip. 2-pass h.264 as low as 12mbps for 1080p looks decent for most material and lets you fit 90+ minutes on an 8Gb thumb drive. Not sure how best to get AC3 though, I just use AAC.