A Bit of History and The “New” MacBook Air This week saw the release of Apple’s new MacBook Air. Spec-wise, it’s not really all that advanced compared to the Apple laptops that preceded it. It has a 1.4GHz or 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor for the 11 inch model (1.86GHz and 2.13GHz for the […]
Read MoreApple, SANs and Post Production
Difference Between Different ProResseseseseses, Offline/Online Tip

This post is not technical. This is very simple. What really is the difference in quality between all the different flavors of ProRes? Currently there’s Proxy, LT, SQ, HQ and 4444. Proxy, LT, SQ and HQ are all 4:2:2 at 10bit, but at very different bitrates. I saw a comment by Shane Ross on his blog […]
Read MoreReader Question: 12v for Editing System

Hi Eric, I came across your blog post on technomadia. I am soon to hit the road in a 12 volt RV. You had mentioned you were looking at putting in an Editing system. Did you do it, and what tricks did you learn? I have a full FCP setup that I want to have […]
Read MoreError: Out of Memory – WTF? I have 8GB of RAM!
I just finished a commercial project that had a lot of high res still images. Anyone who’s used FCP for even a short period of time knows how terrible it is with images and .psd files. We started getting Out of Memory errors and due to the extremely long hours and tight turnaround, the editors […]
Read MoreFinal Cut Rendering Glitch
I noticed an interesting (read: incredibly annoying) glitch in Final Cut’s rendering today. I’m color correcting some commercials for Quiksilver. There’s a part where one portion of a shot cross dissolves into another. They are the same shot, but the first clip was rendered out of After Effects, and it’s cross dissolving into a clip […]
Read MoreBackup Early and Backup Often
The 5 week old hard drive in my laptop gave up the ghost the other day. Since I’m working on about 4 projects concurrently, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Anyone that knows me, knows how paranoid I am about backup and archive. So of course I had a recent backup ready to […]
Read MoreGotta Keep Those RAIDs Clean
I spent the weekend over at TGR to give their Xsan system its semi-annual cleaning. Us IT guys gotta work weekends while you office people are out playing. A little disc defragging here, a little blast of air there. The biggest step is removing all the components from the Xserve RAIDs and rolling the […]
Read More12″ Powerbook G4 Optical Drive = PITA!
Well, this turned out to be the most ridiculous take-apart I’ve done yet. To replace a broken optical drive in a 12″ Powerbook G4, you have to remove EVERYTHING. Unlike Apple’s other Aluminum notebooks which are very compartmentalized, the 12″ Powerbook is layered like a sandwich and the optical drive is on the bottom. The picture is from right before […]
Read MoreBlu-Ray? Sure, why not?
I got a copy of “That’s It, That’s All” on blu-ray a few weeks back. I thought it would probably be a good idea to get a player so I could actually watch it. I was also reading about how Toast 10 could burn up to 30min of blu-ray video to DVD-R, and that places […]
Read MoreDestination Extreme – National Geographic
I’ve been color correcting episodes of Destination Extreme for Wink Inc Productions, which will air on National Geographic in a few weeks. I just heard that the first 4 shows passed QC, which is awesome and takes a bit of the pressure off on the remaining episodes. For this series, I’m using Apple Color almost […]
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