3rd September '07

Here's a complete rip-off from Phil's Blog about the last meeting

http://wefcpug.blogspot.com/

Quite a lot has happened over the last couple of months, some of which I noticed and tried to sum up in the slide-show at last week's wefcpug meeting. It's now available as episode 5½ in the "Out of Vision" podcast series, with a 'presenter's commentary' courtesy of the feature in Keynote. No time for me to polish or even edit - the real podcast series resumes later on this month!

The links I mentioned in the talk are as follows:

Video on the iPhone is on the Apple Developer site developer.apple.com where there's a link called 'ADC on iTunes' - I showed clips from videos in the WWDC 2007 Leopard series, and the 'Developing video for iPhone' link below. You may need to register (free)with the site to download, although these may be free access.

the news about Flash 9 player in beta is at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/
where you should also find a download link (remember it's BETA).
 

1st October '07

Thanks to our John and Stuart at Finalize media in Bristol, both for hosting the meeting and for giving us the Platinum tour of their facility

The new arrival cameras I skirted around in the 'Just what I really wanted, yet more cameras and codecs' are

• Sony PMW-EX1. Chunky hand-held format, 1/2" detectors, 'effectively' 1920x1080 pixel count, records onto SxSPRO- a memory card that plugs into the PCI/Express socket. Records in XDCAM 35Mbps and SD HDV modes. Sony site is here.

• Panasonic AGHPX500. Shoulder mounted 2/3" chips, DVCProHD record onto P2 cards. More variants formats than I could shake a stick at. Panny site here.

And the info on the AVC-Intra Codec is to be found here.

Also at wefcpug

Richard continued his exploration of features in Motion with the live demo he said he wouldn't do, using audio tracks to animate (and even colourise) elements within Motion. He's probably going to ask us questions about this next month.

We welcomed our new sponsor Noise Industries who provided this month's major lottery prize - and we'll be reporting on FxFactory next meeting.

And finally

Here's the YouTube clip that impressed so many. Strictly speaking, it's not editing, but it's prompted some of the best discussions about editing that I've had this month! My thanks to Quentin at DisplayLink for the link to Richard Wiseman

6th November '07

Leaping into Leopard

Without much qualification, a 'thumbs-up' from me for Leopard on the MBPro I run. Due to operator inattention (I've got the builders in - see below) this turned into an 'update' rather then the intended 'Archive & Install', but went pretty well, with the job done in 1hr30 or so.

Good points: inter-Mac networking much improved over Tiger. Finder remembers login details for remote machines, presents them automatically on discovery (as Paul reminded me last night, just as Apple networking used to work in OS 9 days!). Wi-fi seems stabler than previous: especially with the problematic router (a Wanadoo/Inventel box) that I use. Quicklook surprisingly useful from the Finder.

Problem Areas: 'APE' (application program extender) if not updated will cause Leopard Update to crash. Commonly this program is installed by Audio Hijack Pro (for 'Instant Hijack'). Clean install or Archive/Install would not be affected.

X11 is now a default installation with Leopard, not an optional (although it can be de-selected). There seem to be several issues with the current Leopard X11 implementation: especially running X11 from the Dock, which is 'deprecated' by Apple. Their instructions are t0 allow any programs requiring X11 to cause it to run automatically. Note in passing that the Gimp is reported to be non-functional. There is advice on the web to remove the Leopard X11 and replace it with the previous (Tiger) version. More reports needed....

PPMulator problems - the app doesn't work anymore, because there's currently no way of routing system audio out to it. Previously this was done by Soundflower - we await a new version. Note the plug-in PPMulator still works fine inside Soundtrack Pro.

Updated versions were needed of: Epson software for my scanner (free download); Parallels (paid upgrade for v3.0 - problems here in running previous win98 virtual machines. Research is ongoing); Freeway Express (free download I believe -TBC); Snapz Pro (free download).

Very Good Point: Time Machine works very well, and especially during the intended test to 'Reinstall System' that I conducted when an electricity failure (plus some fiddling at the time with Parallels/Win98 virtual drives) broke an ongoing connection to the Firewire Drive, which in turn led to a non-bootable MBPro.

Note in Passing: Spotlight and Time Machine need plenty of time and processor cycles to establish indexes and system backup - I suggest not trying to do much else with your Mac after the first boot - and ideally not enabling TM until Spotlight has done its stuff.

Disappointments: There is a lower limit of proc speed and Mac model, below which Leopard won't install. The G4/400 falls below this. Workrounds are being investigated around the web.
The preview of Leopard's iChat showed some of the fancy effects in iChat video. It's shipped with most of the chroma-key effects they showed but without the Star Wars 'hologram' effect.