Thanks.

Forgot my BBCode. Don't use it much.

That is what they use here isn't it?

No. They have their own proprietary codes. Click on Sticky #4 on the topic list page.

Blu-print was on sale a few months ago for $55,000 + accessories.

Coursedesign, since your the Apple pro here, does FCP complete with Z Depth? or 3D? ;-)

I find this somewhat disheartening, actually. Why? Because I wish they had spent the time, effort, and money on perfecting Vegas, instead of developing a 3D Blu-ray tools.

Jay, maybe they have or resolved some issues...... we can hope! ;-)

I find this somewhat disheartening, actually. Why? Because I wish they had spent the time, effort, and money on perfecting Vegas, instead of developing a 3D Blu-ray tools.

This is what happens when to many people complain about a lack of official plugins/etc. for the software. They actually do what you said you wanted, but in truth it isn't what people wanted, they just wanted to complain about something. :D

...does FCP complete with Z Depth? or 3D?

I thought I saw 3D subtitle tools for FCP at a recent Hollywood meeting, but it is not my field.

For efficient post production of Stereoscopic 3D, there is the $389.00 Stereo3DToolbox for FCP, which looks competent.

Blu-print appears to be the eminent BD authoring product available, and that would be my first choice if I needed to author BD in-house. Heavy learning curve though, just like for Hollywood-level DVD authoring.

The majority of Hollywood DVDs are authored using a program called DVDSP. It has about 20 times the feature set of Vegas DVDA, and those features are a hard requirement for that level of authoring.

Apit, why does it have to be "The sports team from my area is better than the sports team from your area" all the time? Can't we just use whatever tools we have, maybe Snap-On one day and Craftsman the next?

I can't even get excited about which of the 4 OSes I use regularly to get different things done, I just want the end result.

For the moment I am more concerned about the hardware I use (different video interfaces for input and calibrated output to a monitor, best audio recording in a complex setup, etc.)

This is what happens when to many people complain about a lack of official plugins/etc. for the software. They actually do what you said you wanted, but in truth it isn't what people wanted, they just wanted to complain about something. :D

I don't understand what you mean here.

Vegas plug-ins are limited by Vegas' APIs.

SCS can't release a new API until they have written a new code base that doesn't use ye olde Video for Windows that Microsoft told developers to bail on 10 years ago (which SF probably couldn't afford at the time).

Rewriting Vegas is a substantial job, and FCP is in the same position of having to do that to go 64-bit and use the modern Cocoa framework. In the FCP case, it's a massive effort and a bigger task than for Vegas, because it has so much more functionality (some of it for high-end work including for sprocketed celluloid strips, a.k.a. "film," and the rest for the massive support of high end formats up to 4:4:4:4).

Coursedesign, it was question if Apple itself had a product similar to SCS offerings.

You are usually the first individual to bring up Apple products directly or indirectly; so I asked you if you knew anything similar in the Apple line, secondary issues like 3nd party apps was not my main interest. This inquiry was meant "not" to be critical of you or Apple, simply, is there a trend starting before NAB. ;-) (we can always tar and feather you later if it will make to you feel wanted) ;-)

I don't understand what you mean here.

What I meant was that for years users of Vegas have said Vegas needs more app/plugin support like FCP & Premiere. For years Sony/SF worked on the software & did minimal plugin work. The best integration we've had is Cinescore. There's Boris support, New blue & others. Now they're starting to integrate BD stuff in to Vegas but Vegas is starting to have issues. I highly doubt the team who's doing all this non-Vegas stuff is the same team, but people have wanted all these things in the past & now that we're getting them people would rather have Vegas be better as it is vs all the extra software they're trying to tie with it. So in reality, people got their work done w/o all the bells & whistles with a solid app, but now the app's getting soft & we're getting the bells & whistles.

As for the plugin API, I know what they have released, but there obviously is something they're NOT releasing. Look @ Protype. It's definitely not a "stock" Vegas plugin/app, it's something completely different, so they have some type of SDK they use to write things like that. However, from what I've seen with some PC games, I'm sure a really creative person could design some very very nice plugins within the limit of the Vegas API. But the issue is that the people who do plugins aren't the ones who would happily waste three years on something that could very well not work @ all. :)

Apple doesn't think BD has a significant future.

They just see it as the last gasp of the "go to the video store" VHS&DVD era, and think that video will just be consumed online.

I don't have any stake in this, but I suspect that they are right.

Sony could have extended it by making it as easy and inexpensive as possible to create and view BD, and I think that would have made them some good profits.

But they were afraid of piracy, so they made it impossible to author DVD-level functionality in BDs without spending a lot of money, on the presumption that would keep it within the big studios, and customers would spend any amount of money on a BD player that would be obsolete a few months later as new features were added, just to watch Date Night and Waterworld in slightly higher quality than what most people are able to get from an upscaling DVD player.

(I expect the geeks here to say the picture is waaay better, and that is true for those few with higher end systems and some discrimination of what constitutes PQ. Most people don't have that, and then it isn't a big market.)

Protype probably uses private APIs inside Vegas.

That is easier for them to support than a public ditto.

Boris support suffers from only having access to one frame, and that is not easily fixable.

You are certainly right that most Vegas users would prefer less "softness," and the prestige accessories for $55,000 authoring tools are probably not going to bought by too many customers on this forum.

It could have been pushed on them by corporate edict from above, but I think it is more likely that they are doing this to make themselves indispensable through a deepened involvement in Sony's flagship products such as BD.

So doing could ensure their survival.

i live 'rurally', and from the pretty extensive research i've done it seems bd isn't even on most peoples radar.

a. most have 16:9 flat panels of one sort of another

b. all have dvd players, and a large proportion either recordable / hd ones

c. local video shops do have bd onthe shelves, but the demand for them isn't as great as they'd thought or hoped for

d. internet speed is still pretty abysmal out here, but watching youtube and the like is now practical, and the younger gen download movies at the flick of a whatever

e. the kids i teach think bd is 'old technology' and not worth bothering with (!?)

from my perspective i've asked my clients re bd and not a single one of them is in the least bit interested. however, they nearly all want hd version for net and pc delivery (.mp4)

i think sony's missed the boat with bd - too expensive to create, and even with players dropping in price, now seen as a 'gimmick' rather than a fully fledged delivery format.

btw. hardly anyone knew what advantages hdmi offered, though many connect their dvd player with component cables.

ushure

I agree with you. I'm still producing SD for 95% of what I do. I have no need or call for HD never mind BD. The only HD I do is for internet delivery only. I looked at some BD recorders last week but only as a curiosity not as a need.


John

"Sony could have extended it by making it as easy and inexpensive as possible to create and view BD, and I think that would have made them some good profits." Just remember, the majority of the studios control the direction of the BD end product

"Apple doesn't think BD has a significant future." Apple seen more on simpler video products for itunes for easy of delivery, BD size files would have been a major drain on their server networks once PC/MAC users started to download. It seems that Apple was spinning a "story" to buy time for a bigger network/bandwidth. Once the FCP crowd started to produce BD size files to upload to itunes/podcast... the demand for Apple HD mobile devices would have been too noisy, probably slowly sales. Google network could be Apple;s solution for cost control but ....... Keep your eyes open on the mini-cell networks

"Apple doesn't think BD has a significant future."

Is this something Steve told you.... or are you just taking wild guesses and turning them into fact?

1. Steve Jobs has been quite public about his lack of faith in Blu-Ray.

Steve is a visionary, so sometimes it takes a while for the rest of us before we know if his vision comes to match reality.

His track record in this respect has been remarkable, and the envy of many other CEOs (specially since he transformed the music industry from jewel-box sales to downloads). The funniest part is that the iPod concept was first brought to Realnetworks, but their CEO, Rob Glaser, didn't think there was a future for this sort of thing... so it was shopped to Apple where Steve Jobs immediately saw what this could do. And the rest is history...

2. Ushere's comment above: the kids i teach think bd is 'old technology' and not worth bothering with.

But BD is new, right?

Yes, but it is still a disc that you go to the record store to buy, and then you have it take up space in bookcases etc.

I can't even remember when I last saw someone take a CD out of a jewelbox and put it in a player to listen to it.

It was probably 10-15 years ago.

DVDs have lasted longer, but you can ask the #1 purveyor of DVDs, Netflix, where they see the future lies.

They'll tell you it is watching movies online, with high quality Silverlight streaming, not downloading.

Today, they have only something like 15,000 movies available for streaming, but they are working on providing it for all the more than 100,000 movies they have on DVD (and a few on BD).

You can watch their streaming movies on a PC or Mac, or any of these many TVs and other devices (including 7 Blu-Ray players).

The Roku won't even cost you a Benjamin, and it can sit discreetly behind your regular TV.

You get OK quality with 1 Mbps streaming, very good quality at 3 Mbps, and maximum quality at 5 Mbps.

As the U.S. slowly passes Romania in the internet-to-home speed rankings, 5 Mbps connections will become much more common than they are today, where few people have DSL connections faster than 3 Mbps (7 Mbps is the top speed I've seen). Cable has much higher speeds though, at least until the neighbor's kids come home from school (lines are shared by up to 500 households). Sadly, Verizon has put a lid on FiOS expansion for now, as "they can't afford it," they say.

My Blu Ray player is connected to the internet, auto updates it's firmware and plays Netflix and Pandora. it also uprezes DVDs extremely well. New stuff I buy Blu Ray only, but I've been purchasing used DVDs for 2 to 3 bucks apiece and adding them to my collection. Blu Ray sales are slowly but surely increasing. Just not as fast as DVD did.
Last time I checked, basing the future on the opinions or rural america was not a good idea. They are always a few years behind, and have learned to do without because of being ignored by the telco's and cable companies. Hopefully that will change over the next decade.

The higher definition of BluRay over DVD (even with the latter uprezed) is quite obvious even on a 40" screen, let alone a 3 metre one. So I suggest that anyone who doesn't recognise that either needs glasses or doesn't care about image quality. Now there are many, maybe the majority, who don't care about image quality. They're quite content with pirated download quality, viewing on iPods, etc. It is probably true that most of our clients fall into that category, but such clients of mine do comment on the image quality of my work (not essential, but nice when they see it). And maybe that has something to do with what people want. They are familiar with SD and for years have thought that fine. They're familiar with camcorder quality, and that has been fine (even if much worse than SD broadcast). Show people a better standard and they begin to upgrade their ideas of what is desirable. Worked for the auto industry; a car will last for 25 years (without salt on the roads) if you don't hanker after up-to-date features and their status.
There is no point in high quality for viewing on a hand-held device, which is Apple's forte. Now many homes have cinema-rooms there is demand for high quality image and sound, but the relatively high cost of BluRay is a negative while the cost of quality DVDs is so low. But for the iPod users, internet download/streaming is quite acceptable. "Film is Dead!" has been a catch cry since the 80s, and only now has technology advanced to the threshhold of making that true. In this discussion we can see the future, but I doubt that future is now.

"Steve is a visionary, so sometimes it takes a while for the rest of us before we know if his vision comes to match reality."

yeah..... oooookay... what ever you say.

One problem though....your "Steve is a visionary" rubbish.... it sounds a little open ended here.

All technology changes. And these days it changes pretty fast. So if Blu Ray lasts 3 or 5 years... would that make your God (Steve) correct or incorrect? If Blu Ray lasts 7 years would he be right or wrong?

The way I see it is that your Mr. Jobs is just plain incorrect and missing out. If Blu Ray lasts 2 years then that 2 years worth of profit (of one kind or another) that Steve has lost in the Blu Ray industry. If it lasts 7 years then that's 7 years worth of Blu Ray profit he has lost out on.

I will say though... LOTS of Mac users out there talking up a storm about TOAST.... I wonder why that is? Could it by chance be because Toast does Blu Ray? I wonder if Your Mr. Jobs foresaw this ;)

He isn't "my Mr. Jobs."

I respect his opinions, which he shares about once every five years, but I don't necessarily agree with them.

I've been using Toast for many years, simply because it is the best burning program (and it can do much more than that). Very popular for reasons that have nothing to do with BD.

I know a couple of people who put BD burners in the second optical drive slot of their Mac Pro workstations, and some who use external enclosures with MacBook Pro notebooks. If you need to make BDs on a Mac, you get either Adobe Encore or Toast or any of a few other programs. No problem.

If Blu Ray lasts 2 years then that 2 years worth of profit

I highly doubt that. If you change "profits" to "revenues" I'll agree. BD wasn't cheap for Sony.

Will Sony make a profit overall on their investment in BD? If they can get the players down in cost to make them mass market ($99 or less just for starters), and they get the disc prices down to where B-movies don't sell for $39.95, then probably.

Serena's points about quality are well taken. I've had an 11 ft./3.3m screen at home since 1991, so I can relate to what she is talking about, but let's not kid ourselves that we're in majority.

Most people also consider how badly they want to get the maximum experience out of a movie. If it is a halfbaked movie that is bought out of desperation on a Friday night, then a $7.95 DVD in an uprezzing DVD player competes very well with a $29.95-$39.95 BD.

Sony also hasn't exercised much influence on the quality of BD transfers. There are only a few good transfers that truly take advantage of the quality that BD is capable of, and a lot of terrible junk.