Yesterday, word got out of Apple’s new iFrame standard, which purports to expedite video editing by keeping the video in “the same format used on a computer.” Really, it’s nothing but a resolution and wrapper. So why am I losing my mind over it? Because the way iFrame is being positioned and propagated is misleading and harmful to consumers. Oh I know, what an alarmist, right? It’s just a video format! But with personal video becoming more and more ubiquitous and invading class after class of gadgets, these former trivialities are becoming more important by the day.
And for once, we are actually gravitating towards a couple unified standards in both encoding and resolution — and then Apple butts in with this ugly stepchild of a format.
Let me drop a few background truth bombs here first, and please do read this part, because it’s important, and math is fun.
Every new TV out there supports 720p. This is because it is an evolution from related to the VGA standard 640×480, recently employed by Apple for its Nano and iPhone video. VGA is perfectly good. But it’s also 4:3, which is something we’ve been moving away from for a while. It’s getting hard to find 4:3 screens; the new standard is 16:9. So to make a VGA-related HD standard, just double the horizontal pixels (you get 1280) and extend it downwards until you have a 16:9 aspect ratio — 720p, or 1280×720, appears as if by magic. It’s a good size, a good standard, and perfectly easy to work with. Cheap camcorders can record to it, and until recently it was even used (with better equipment of course) by Hollywood. Then you’ve got 1080p, which is 720p extended by 640 pixels horizontally and 360 pixels vertically (640×360 is VGA reduced to 16:9). These formats were chosen for a reason.
So between VGA, 720p, and 1080p, you have provided for mobile/medium-quality, high-quality consumer, and prosumer video needs. Dueling legacy codecs and wrappers notwithstanding (video editor compatibility still isn’t there), it’s actually a pretty picture, so to speak. There are a few weird resolutions out there for sure, but they are for things like 8-inch netbook screens or professional digital cinema footage like that from a RED. For 99% of consumers, the three standards I’ve just mentioned are everything they’ll need for years (we’re sort of plateauing as Blu-ray and digital distribution duke it out). You can buy a computer for the price of the camcorder that will edit 720p handily.
Now perhaps you understand my consternation some time ago when I found that iMovie ‘09 didn’t like to support the HD formats used all over the world. Sure, if you’re an expert you can get around the barrier’s they’ve put in your way, but the world isn’t full of experts and the result is that the average Joe’s footage gets re-encoded and he isn’t getting the HD quality he paid for. Fortunately, they fixed that and you can now export in true HD. So imagine my shock yesterday when Apple decided to pull an about-face and institutionalize this ridiculous limitation.
iFrame, and we can talk about the name in another post, sets in stone a size of video which has no place in this world. The idea is that it keeps the format homogenous from camera to editor. Really? Because that’s what all regular video editors do already. The only reason iMovie needs a special format is because of the limitations Apple placed on it. The size and workflow differences between iFrame and 720p are really not very significant. What’s my objection, then? I’ll tell you. Apple is ignoring the galaxy of products out there that already support a perfectly good format. Can you think of a single device, display, web page, or anything that has a 960×540 resolution?
Your TV is 720p or 1080p. You’ll have to stretch the video to make up the difference, and despite what you’ve heard about upscaling (it’s nice), more resolution is always better for definition. The first cameras to support iFrame, from Sanyo, look great. They shoot to 1080p, will do 12FPS stills, super-slow-motion video, and are all-around decent camcorders. And yet they default to iFrame. Let me say that again. Thousands will buy cameras capable of (and designed for) shooting 1080p, and Apple will have them defaulting to shooting at a quarter of that resolution. Joe Consumer won’t question it, and he’s not getting his money’s worth. Besides, with all the choice currently available, and the devices already far too complicated for the average user to utilize fully, adding yet another option (and suggesting it’s better when it’s not) is just irresponsible.
And before your mouth starts frothing in anticipation of a 960×540 resolution iTablet, rest assured that’s not the case. They’d be foolish not to support 720p since they’re going to capitalize on renting out HD TV shows, which are broadcast in 720p or 1080p.
In the end, I’m forced to accuse Apple of pure egotism. While simply having a 960×540 resolution option is in no way an issue — it’s just a resolution, after all — it’s attempting to make it a standard that’s a problem. There is nothing better, or indeed much different at all, about iFrame, save that it is slightly lower in quality than 720p and takes up somewhat less space (even that is questionable, as cameras differ widely in bitrates). By emphasizing its own format, which is inferior to the existing and popular standards, Apple only solving a problem of their own creation. Instead of fixing iMovie to work with the world, they’re trying to change the world to work with iMovie. I guess that’s kind of how Apple does things, but still.
Oh, I realize this is a bit of a mountain/molehill situation here, but I couldn’t let this ridiculous move pass without comment, and video format lunacy is a pet peeve of mine (hence the disproportionate rant you just skipped over). As much as I love Apple, this is indefensible, silly even. Even if it’s only a sort of technical quibble, it indicates a serious lack of reality checking on Apple’s part.
Update: Charles points out that that 720p and 1080p are not, in fact, descended from 640×480, but were arrived at independently. Seems like a mighty big coincidence that they’re 2x and 3x 640-wide, but he has the math to back it up (literally wrote the book on this topic). Whether they are descendants or not does not figure into the rest of the rant, but I appreciate the fact checking nonetheless.
Three Words: Final Cut Pro
Three Words: Torrent That Shit
FOUR MORE YEARS
Yes we can?
No new taxes?
thats 5
they can’t trademark iFrame because of the iframe
I think actually Apple is sneakily crippling iMovie bit-by-bit because too many people are using it to produce near-professional quality videos, and they want that market to move to Final Cut Pro.
Remember when iMovie used to be able to do straight cuts? They took it out of the new version. Now you can ONLY do crossfades between clips. That would have been fine if you could just set the crossfade time to 0, giving you a straight cut. However, Apple of course thought ahead and to foil any clever users out there, they imposed a minimum cut time! The slider LOOKS like it can go to 0, but it stops just short at 0.5! Damn you Apple!
This format is just another excuse to make iMovie unusable and then drive people to use something else.
960 x 540 is the “near HD” format that can be read natively by the APPLE TV product. I suspect that’s the big picture behind this format.
As an editor who is frequently asked by non editors how to use imovie and other apple programs that are not FCP, it makes me sad that i’ll have to understand another format, and thus deal with compressing and everything else that goes with the trade.
Doesn’t iMovie have a strait to YouTube button? Will this format work strait to YouTube? And if so will it be one of those silly looking rectangles inside a black rectangle?
Understand another format? Are you serious?
And “silly looking rectangles inside a black rectangle”? Wow … the terms you were looking for were letterboxing, pillarboxing and windowboxing.
Maybe you should reconsider your job as an editor, cause there are lots of those formats and words out there.
Oh believe me, I don’t want to be editing all my life, although editing would be a lot better then having to deal with what you’re calling pillar boxing, letterboxing, and window boxing, all of which I consider to be things you do during the exporting process not automatically by Youtube after the fact.
apple making a proprietary format that sucks? *gasp* whats new?
Translation…I have no idea what I’m talking about but I’ll post a stupid comment anyway.
+1
Not really, Apple has made some pretty shit hardware proprietary standards (their display adapters are a good example.) They do this so people have to buy another $30 adapter to hook up their computer to an external display device or just buy a mac monitor and “it just works”.
In this case, they are trying to build a video ecosystem consisting of people only using macs. It’s the vertical model that they completely believe in for better or worse.
I, for one, think it’s worse.
+1
And the NAME! I mean, NO chance of confusion there, right?
Mini-DVI and Mini-Displayport are in fact supported by other vendors. Samsung had Displayport monitors well before Mac’s did.
Unless Intel lets you forget, Apple was the first to switch to the USB standard and look where we are now.
BS – mini displayport is an open standard without any license fees attached to it. One of the only requirements to use it is that you won’t sue Apple for patent violations…
Apple is misleading in advertising many of the other products they sell / push forward.
On a VERY DISTANT SIDE NOTE:
I recently bought an AirPort Extreme, and the box, documentation and even fine print said it works with ANY USB external hard drive, on a PC or mac.
The truth is that it doesn’t work with NTFS, only FAT32 in Vista. And as you know, Vista doesn’t let you downgrade from NTFS to FAT32.
Why hasn’t any litigious bastard sued yet? Although I hate lawsuits, I would enjoy seeing someone sue over this one.
They aren’t lying, it does work with any hard drive. You just can’t get your act together and format your drive correctly.
It wasn’t advertised that it does not work with NTFS, the most popular format in years for Windows machines.
I have 800GB of data on that drive, formatting it means buying a new one to move the data temporarily.
Are you really this ignorant?
What’s your point? Your NTFS drive wouldn’t work in a 3rd party enclosure either (or as an internal drive). OSX won’t accommodate NTFS.
Sorry it will work with an NTFS drive. You either buy software that can do it for you, or Google “Enable NTFS read/write in OS X Snow Leopard” if you have Snow Leopard, and you’ll find it is supported. You can make Snow Leopard read/write NTFS with a simple shell (Terminal) command. I don’t remember it, or I’d post it here. Try OSXhints.com
yeah, i agree that apple didnt lie about that one, saying something works with any drive doenst mean any software configuration of the drive, you also have to consider Vista put a limitation on what you are trying to do as well.
And if this data is so important, than why dont you have a drive of equal or greater size to back it up on? then you could, copy to that drive, format, copy back. NTFS blows too
NTFS certainly isn’t the holy grail of file systems, but it’s far and away better than FAT32.
While Apple didn’t “technically” lie about supporting any external USB hard drive, it should CLEARLY spell out what file systems it supports ahead of time.
Also, assuming everyone has 3 or 4 hard drives for backups and such is ridiculous. Not everyone has piles of money to spend on technology.
Actually, they’re assuming you’re going to buy a new drive that works with it. While Apple will cater to the entire market, their primary customers are MAC users.
It’s hardly their fault you use an archaic OS know as windows lol.
Don’t use windows for looking at your bank account… and in fact, don’t use windows for anything. Its really as simple as that.
zomg the new 8 gb ipod touch! only its the same shit as before
The graphic above sporting the 23 or so video resolutions is the fucking problem. No ordinary consumer has a prayer at figuring that out. I applaud Apple for trying to standardize here, but a consensus must be reached across platforms.
That’s why I’m so happy that things have sort of coalesced to 640×480, 720p, and 1080p, as I noted in the article. The world is standardizing…. Apple’s issue is that it won’t standardize itself.
Those aren’t video formats. Those are screen resolutions. Big difference.
Dude, iFrame is NOT a format either. iFrame is a wrapper that contains the MP4 video format and AAC audio format WITH the DUMB ASS LIMITATION that the video HAS to be some non-standard video resolution.
The issue here is that you have a wrapper that iMovie is probably the only video software capable of reading it (for now) AND that wrapper does NOTHING new. It used standard formats in a non-standard manner. It was unnecessary to create in the first place.
I am really just confused as to why you would ever even want anything below 720p anyway. People should make their device work with that. I know that can bump the hardware reqs, but if EVERYTHING used the same resolution it would make everything SO much easier. I would say 1080p but that is probably too demanding for a lot of shitty handheld devices and could significantly raise costs on things that were supposed to be cheap (but I try not to buy things like that anyway).
Jim
Actually, it’s Sanyo’s new standard and SANYO makes the best cheap camcorders out there.
As you can read on the article, there are already good standards in place. 480p (both VGA and NTSC are 4×3; NTSC has more horizontal pixels but with a compressed aspect ration, which compensates), 720p and 1080p are the only standards on that graph that relate to video formats, the other are to show the different display sizes you can find on the plethora of devices, from cell phones to computers and TVs.
Creating a fourth “standard” does nothing more than add to the confusion, specially when it’s a new format that doesn’t related to any type of device or need, other than the ones created by Apple itself.
In other words, it’s nothing more than Apple being Apple, with their “it’s not a limitation, it’s a feature” mantra.
No idea. Maybe they want this format to work on *everything* without transcoding.
Make it an iPod standard with immediate syncing. Less battery kill than 720p.
Assuming the file size will be smaller than 720p, it will faster to edit/upload to YouTube.
“Easier to share with friends.”
Consumer “convenience” is the only thing I can think of, but I agree that 720p/1080p is the best way to accomplish that.
Should anyone be surprised by this? Apple makes tons of money with unique formats. Just look at the iTunes. Or QuickTime. Only seems natural for them to do this. Let’s face it, Apple does not follow and adopt. It has to create its own stay different. Why people continually think Apple is so great is beyond me.
I hate to break it to you, but QuickTime is cross-platform and standards-based.
Also, it’s not evil to create iTunes and make money off of it. Apple created the world of online music purchasing as we know it. One day, I bet something better will come along, but for now, most of the music-buying world embraces iTunes. Not because they are forced to, but because they think it’s great.
I’m struck by people that think advertising is why people buy iPods. A great ad might sell a product the first time, but it won’t create repeat buyers or 85%+ customer satisfaction. Only great products do that.
Fanboyism aside, people who think Apple sucks completely fail to understand how incredible they are, as a BUSINESS, at execution, or why so many executives and entrepreneurs try to understand and replicate what they do… again, and again, and again.
“I hate to break it to you, but QuickTime is cross-platform and standards-based.”
I hate to break it to you, but you are dead wrong. Quicktime is a proprietary wrapper put AROUND standards based CODECs, just like MS’s WMV. The only “cross-platform” support Quicktime has, is whatever Apple decides to provide, or reverse engineered players that may or may not support the newest Quicktime content.
MPEG, H.264, even MKV are standards-based, cross-platform video formats. WMV, Real Video, FLV and Quicktime are all proprietary formats, completely at the whim of the company that owns them.
You can cheer-lead about what an amazingly successful company Apple is all you want, that doesn’t make anything they choose to do automatically good for consumers or professionals. McDonalds is an amazingly successful company too, it doesn’t make their food gourmet.
QuickTime STARTED consumer digital video. It was the first proprietary format because it was the first format.
Whenever someone exports a video using the QuickTime frameworks (in OS X), they do not HAVE to use the .mov wrapper. The .mov wrapper is purely there for convenience – if it has a .mov wrapper, you know that it can be played as-is on OS X. It could contain a DV stream, or a H.264 stream with AAC audio, and you know that any app using the QuickTime frameworks to play files will play it.
When you use a QuickTime export dialog, you can choose to export to a ton of formats, using a ton of codecs. When you’re in a Mac environment, you’ll probably just export to a .mov file using the default settings that the application provides, because they work well.
QuickTime is cross-platform. The “latest” QuickTime format hasn’t changed the wrapper for yonks, it’s the codecs that change to more modern ones. QuickTime updates are about the framework and player. It’s the least restrictive proprietary format for video you’ll find.
Take that .MOV and rename it to .M4V. Guess what? It works!
The professional video world revolved around Quicktime. Apple developed h.264. Microsoft tried to wrest the video world from Quicktime with a proprietary WMV format – so that all video users had to pay a tax to Microsoft – while Apple has kept Quicktime open. It’s the basis of MPEG2 MPEG4 and will continue to dominate.
I’m not sure what Apple is getting at with this new format. It could be a complete failure once people realize the limitations as mentioned in this article. And I hope it happens soon if it does. But they are not evil. They are simply doing business and they happen to do it better than anyone else on occasion. Quicktime is exhibit A.
If you’re going to compare McDonald’s to any computer company, it should be Windows or Dell.
They sell you cheap, quick, low-grade, low-quality versions that ultimately leave you with gas, high-cholestrol + more health problems, feelings of bloatedness and a longing for the real thing (aka Emeril’s cooking & Macintosh).
Windows and Dell were successful, but just like with MacDonald’s, consumers have become aware of the residual and pro-longed effects of going cheap and easy. Sure, they’ve got supposedly healthy items and “select” items, like chicken selects and Windows 7, but its still not the real thing. So do yourself a favor and get a mac.
If you need high end rendering power or a 3D workstation, A PC is your Gourmet Burger.
For High end 3D Animation or rendering. Grab a PC, these machines are anything but “cheap, quick, low-grade, low-quality versions” Not many Macs in sight in this market place, maybe around 10%.
Ok, a few responses at once.
1: No there were several proprietary video formats before Quicktime. For example the Amiga ANIM format dates back to the late eighties, and the Video Toaster was handling broadcast-quality video on the desktop a year before Apple even gave the first demo of Quicktime. There was also Truevision (now a little company called Avid), who was doing video on the desktop back in the late ’80s as well.
2: No, Apple had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the development of h.264, that was developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
3: No, MPEG is not in any way “based on” Quicktime. The ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group started working on the initial spec for MPEG in ‘88, years before Apple showed Quicktime. In fact, Quicktime was Apple’s attempt to compete with MPEG, and it was many years later that MPEG would be incorporated into Quicktime.
It must be amazing to live in a world where you just get to make up complete bullshit with no basis in fact, and no research, just so you can continue believing one company invented the 20th century!
What is unique about “the iTunes”? The AAC format? Apple didn’t invent that and never claimed to. Quicktime is excellent and when Apple first provided it there was nothing else even close.
man! This reminds me of all the photo sizes that don’t follow the same ratio (4×6, 5×7, 8×10, 11×14). So unnecessary.
TELL me about it. I can’t wait for that to get sorted out. I compose and shoot in 3×2, and then…… I have to cut off a third of the picture?
Please. Crop it at what’s right for the composition, not some arbitrary dimensions.
Yeah, and then have the print shop fill the extra space with whatever they like so it fits your frames. Totally practical solution!
I suggest that this is clearly apple’s way of making their format proprietary while claiming that it isn’t. Similar to their ACC.
However Devin, I believe you may be assuming to much when you say that Apple would be foolish not to have 720p on a tablet or any other device. If they use their new iFrame (isn’t that name already used you say) format on the device, that further enforces their format on an unsuspecting audience. I’m sure translating the 720p to iFrame for their store is trivial.
I personally guarantee the Apple tablet will be at least 1280×720. Anything else would be suicide.
I might take you up on that!
I should clarify the reasoning behind it. If the tablet is a netbook style device rather than a high-end computer, it could very possibly run a 1024×600 or similar resolution.
ACC is a college conference. I think you’re referring to AAC, which is an international audio standard that was not developed by Apple. It is the audio layer of the MP4 standard. They use it because it outperforms MP3, providing better compression for the same fidelity.
“Similar to their ACC”
Do you actually know anything about AAC?
Wikipedia’s your friend.
Enjoyed the rant, Devin.
You always have something worth reading, even when it’s something not worth reading.
You need a raise.
So more choice is suddenly bad? Surely the Market will take care of it?
Yes, more choice is bad in a lot of situations. Take, for example, groceries: IMO, it’s a lot more convinient and faster to shop at Trader Joe’s where you don’t have to compare 100 different jars of peanut butters, but just take the one crunchy one or the smooth one. You know the taste will be great because the brand.
The same thing is true with this video format nonsense. It’s called having standards.
What… “Standards are good, we should have more of them” ?
Looks to me like another entry into Apples special sandbox, full of special sand, that can only be used with their special sand toys, and has a big a$$ wall around it to keep out the inferior toys and sand (and cats).
They like to go their own way, regardless of standards, and it still seems to work for them. Look (again) at the iphone: no battery or memory swapping, no mms (till now) and yet it’s one of the best sellers out there. Go figure.
I guess they assume that if they create this new format, the rest of the electronics world will just have to adapt. Sadly, it just might happen.
so does it let me embed one website inside another?
Thats what iframe means to me. the i-assholes could choose a les used term I think.
Ok I just wanted to comment on TC.
Devin doesn’t like something Apple is doing. News at 11.
If it was Google is would be the coolest thing ever. Anyone who hasn’t picked up on this isn’t paying attention. I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with the Google Android based Crunchpad coming out soon. Nope, not at all.
It wil be fun to watch the iTablet come out and destroy it though.
In this grain, a rip on Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) format is deserved. :)
The format not mentioned here is 1080i. That was the original HD format, which uses two 540 height interlaced frames. (Which, not coincidentally I am sure, is the resolution of iFrame.)
Interlacing sucks for video editing programs and for digital delivery. (Interlacing is a relic of CRT monitors.) I suspect lots of video cameras support interlacing (they have to to support NTSC.) So I think what is happening is simply that Apple is providing a path for 1080i CCDs to not suck in the world of purely digital workflows and delivery.
At least that is the only rational reason I can come up with and the 540/1080i height is too much of a coincidence.
And while the name is so bad the flames are deserved, I think other than that, this is much ado about nothing. (Like most of Techcrunch … Zing!)
Well I mention it’s a quarter-res of 1080p. I thought I had something in there on 1080i, but I’d rather just avoid talking about interlaced formats all together, you know?
Originally (way back when) APPLE were a pretty smart group when it came to video.
.mov rocked against .wmv (pre-Flash for those who missed it)…
They got lost somewhere around the first video iPOD (remember: you couldn’t put your .mov videos on them!)…
Now, they tinker with some resolution that makes no sense at all.
Their video group should be ALL be sacked. Start new.
Really. Some top mgt too — they are losing their way in their own ocean of cool.
Great post. I agree with you that it a silly idea, but I’d like to point out that the 960×540 is not completely and totally arbitrary.
A number of sites recommend that resolution for embedding hi-def-like content in web pages.
Here is Viddler’s recommendation, for example:
http://developers.viddler.com/documentation/articles/howto-encode/
I don’t think Apple is pushing for a new standard to cover up the short comings of iMovie. They seem to genuinely think that 960×540 is a good compromise between quality and usability for consumers, which is why they based new iMovie on this particular spec in the first place, and I happen to agree with them.
It is good for quickly getting rid of interlace mess from 1080i source, and it looks pretty good on 1080p playback while much smaller and lighter for editing apps to handle. I was hoping that 960×540 would replace VGA on the low end cameras and I’m glad to see Apple’s attempt for it.
It is clearly not intended for professionals but for consumer application it makes perfect sense and a great stepping stone until the interlacing is gone for good and everything would be fast enough for 1080p.
I am not too optimistic of iFrame really taking off, however, but as with any standards the market will decide its fate eventually for the better or worse. And it’s a relief that even Apple’s ego cannot set a new standard that easily.
I think that was the point of the article, 960×540 is NOT a standard.
Ok just replace the word ’standard’ with format. But I think 960×540 deserves a spot among standards more than old SD resolution going forward.
Not everyone has the money to spend on Final Cut Pro.
If you look at it, Apple can’t control the market share, so it controls the standards.
They took out the floppy drive to replace it with a CD.
They made USB popular when nobody else wanted to use it.
They have their own video codec and their own audio codecs.
They’re trying to add some more CSS animations to the standard.
Now they’re trying to make the new video standard WORSE than the already established ones? WTF? Bad move, Apple. Bad move.
Whoa. So much wrong here.
First, consumers, judging by the success of the original iMac, voted with their dollars democratically that Apple was right in dropping the floppy – and the rest of the industry quickly followed.
Second, consumers, democratically, voted with their dollars and said yes to USB — and the rest of the industry quickly followed.
Third, they do have their own codecs, and there is nothing inherently evil about this. Their codecs serve what they need to get out of them, in terms of iTunes. They also have a standards-based media technology that is used by an entire industry.
Fourth, animation is coming to CSS whether you like it or not, and thank goodness. Apple is pushing for standards-based animation, so we’re not relying so heavily on Flash plugin. I find it strange you would argue against making something like that an open standard.
As for the article in question here, if Apple indeed is trying to do something evil, they sure aren’t succeeding. iFrame is only supported by two cameras right now.
Chris
Kevin, everything you said is wrong.
First, Apple popularized the 3.5 inch floppy invented by Sony. It had gone nowhere until Apple put it in the first Mac. They replaced it with CD around the same time as everyone else, maybe a little earlier. But they owned neither format.
USB is open so once again you have no point. They used Firewire way before USB which was in fact designed by Apple. But of course you didn’t know that either.
Apple uses AAC for audio. That is not a proprietary format. Quicktime is cross platform and available for free. It was also far ahead of anything else when it was released.
Everyone and their brother is influencing Browser standards. That is in fact how standards are decided but you don’t know that either.
You don’t know a thing about this video codec but you agree that it is bad anyway.
Darwin, you’ve got some facts wrong:
“First, Apple popularized the 3.5 inch floppy invented by Sony. It had gone nowhere until Apple put it in the first Mac. They replaced it with CD around the same time as everyone else, maybe a little earlier.”
No, Apple dropped the 3.5 inch floppy waaay before anyone else. Apple dropped it in 1998. It’s debatable as to whether or not they replaced it with the CD. Initially it was ZIP drives that Apple marketed as writable media to replace floppies, but then they added CD burners as an option. Of course these weren’t Apple technologies, but that wasn’t the point of the OP.
“USB is open so once again you have no point. They used Firewire way before USB which was in fact designed by Apple. But of course you didn’t know that either.”
USB is not “open”. It’s licensed and fees go to the USB-IF (which Apple is a member). If by “they”, you mean “Apple”, you’re wrong again. Apple introduced the original iMac with USB before they included FireWire on any Mac. The iMac itself wouldn’t get FireWire for over a year. FireWire was created by Apple, but USB was created by Intel, Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, Microsoft, IBM, Northern Telecom.
–A different Kevin from the original poster
I forgot to correct you here as well:
“Apple uses AAC for audio. That is not a proprietary format. Quicktime is cross platform and available for free.”
AAC is one codec that Apple uses for audio, but Apple also developed and uses Apple Lossless (ALE/ALAC). This may be cross platform, but it’s definitely proprietary and Apple doesn’t license it at all…it has been reversed engineered and that work has been open sourced (libavcodec), but the OP is correct here in that Apple developed a proprietary lossless audio codec, where there were already open formats available which Apple chooses not to implement. I understand and accept the reasons why Apple chose to develop ALE instead of going with FLAC for example, but the point of the OP still remains.
For video, Apple has developed several proprietary codecs: Pixlet, Intermediate, ProRes 422, etc…Some of the Apple proprietary video codecs are Mac platform specific even though QuickTime itself is available for Windows. Again, I understand and accept the reasons for this, but the point of the OP still remains.
I can’t wait until Apple sues everyone that uses iFrames in their HTML for trademark infringement. That’ll be fun. :)
Because we can!! haha
Apple’s actually been pushing 960×540 as a downsized capture and editing resolution for HD for a while now, and with good reason – it’s about half the pixel count (thus half the file size, etc.) of 720p HD. 720p and 1080p are still pretty intensive to capture and edit on consumer-grade computers, and they eat up massive amounts of space unless you take a lot of time to compress them, which most consumers don’t want to sit around and wait for.
Given that most consumers still can’t tell the difference between HD and SD (see the European study from earlier this week), I think it makes perfect sense to have an intermediary format between true HD and VGA (or, really, 720×480, which is probably still the most popular 16:9 resolutions in the world, due to DVD). 960×540 looks great on most HD sets and is a hell of a lot easier to process and store.
Apple knows quite a bit about video; I wouldn’t dismiss this format out of hand.
If most consumers can’t tell the difference between HD and SD, then just use the SD standard that already exists. Why would you need an intermediate format if your user won’t see the difference between that and the NTSC (which is not actually 16:9, but distorted to 16:9 or 4:3 according to what is defined for that particular DVD; both standard and widescreen DVDs fature 720×480 resolution) that your SD TV will really display?
Both formats will look like a crappy attempt at HD when upscaled, and you end up with a format that isn’t *standard* for any display device, and will require post processing to scale it on all devices. That’s just bad technique.
Well, let’s be clear – SD *is* the standard for capturing and editing from SD camcorders, which still have a huge installed base. That’s already there and supported. For everyone that buys an HD camcorder, though, 720/1080 is a pretty big strain on computing resources.
There’s another issue here, which is output. There still really isn’t an easy way for most consumers to output HD to their HD televisions, other than via the camcorder itself. Blu-Ray burners aren’t ubiquitous. So, where do most consumers view edited footage? On their computers, or they burn good old 480p DVDs. If true 720/1080 output of home video is going to be rare, how do you give a consumer the perception that their HD footage is an upgrade without forcing them to capture and edit everything in that format? A “compromise” format.
I edit most stuff in 720 or 1080 because I have the horsepower. But if I need to do something quickly, the 960×540 format can do most operations (including the dreaded export) in half the time. And it looks pretty good on an HDTV and great on a computer screen (substantially better than 480p), and scales down to other (web/iphone) resolutions quickly on export.
Will most consumers notice the difference between 480p and 960×540? Probably not. You’re right about that.
But that’s the thing: HD camcoders can record on SD. If you are going to output the video on SD, if you cannot edit HD because of processing/disk space restraints, and if your user cannot distinguish between SD and iFrame… why on Earth would you even bother with that? Record on SD, edit on SD, output on SD, it will take less space, will process faster on edit, and will give you EXACTLY the same quality as doing it with this iFrame format.
And if one consumer decide that one particular day he really would want better quality, he edits the video on HD quality to show on his 55″, and then gets surprised that it actually doesn’t look as crisp as those BluRay discs he bought, or even as those amazing but amateur HD YouTube videos he saw online. Which is no surprise since the resolution is too low for that, and no upscaling looks as good as filming on native resolution.
You (well, not you, Apple) are creating a new format that is too much for SD usage, and not enough for HD, and with what purpose? To trick the consumer into thinking they have something with better quality when in the end will look the same as if he did the normal route when they show it to their friends, or worse than it could be if he did it properly? And that helps the user how? It’s just another option to confuse consumers who don’t know better.
What exactly is wrong?
The resolution is between VGA, currently used by most point and shoots, the iPhone, low end camcorders, etc, and 720p, an HD format. The iFrame resolution provides an adequate compromise that is not yet HD, but boasts a higher resolution than VGA and the same aspect ratio as HD formats (16:9).
The files will be smaller than 720p files, and 960×540 looks excellent still on 1280×720 displays like the ~13″ notebooks that are popular. Keep in mind, the browser chrome and operating system GUI do not allow the actual video to be 1280×720 unless it’s fullscreen. So by default when you’re on YouTube, you can see this 960px wide video instead of a 1280. Obviously, it’s also much smaller file size.
So, it’s not 720p or 1080p. So What? Why would one downgrade resolution to 640×360 in order to gain the HD aspect ratio of 16:9?? Increasing the resolution to 1/4 of 1080 makes sense. 1080i is 540 interlaced. 960×540 is bigger than 640×480 but smaller than 1280×720.
By creating this proprietary format, Apple has the leverage to catalyze the adoption of 960×540 format. Think about it. All iPods/iPhones will play iFrame. All Macs make iFrame movies in iMovie. These new camcorders will shoot in iFrame. YouTube will accept iFrame uploads. Is this not a better world rather than having to convert an iPod video format, iPhone video format, YouTube format, having full HD original file format (for the average person, obviously a real filmmaker will not shoot in iFrame).
So according with this reasoning, when Apple tries to make everybody swallow a new format for their own benefit, that’s a good thing because it works on all (their) hardware, so it will also be okay if other companies do the same right? Like when Microsoft tries to push new plugins or “standards” to the Internet by making sure it works on all (their) browsers?
One company should not try to force new standards that make competitors incompatible by including it on their own solutions. Simple as that. There are already standards in place, there is no need for new ones.
The existing standards suck. That is widely agreed on. Your Microsoft example is a very different thing. If you don’t know anything about a subject then you probably shouldn’t post about it just because you have Apple envy.
“Oh oh, and my daddy can kick you daddy’s butt! And you’re just jealous that you don’t have a super daddy like mine!”
The existing standards suck… that one was a great, very interesting point. Care to enlighten us with *why* they suck, since you are so full of clever insights on the video editing and post-production industry?
But in all that time it would take to make iFrame a widely used standard, low-end consumer hardware will progress enough to capably handle 720p video. Apple’s hardware especially (even now any of their hardware can capably handle it.)
That’s my main gripe about new mid-level size standards anyhow.
One thing that you neglect to mention is that a bunch of cameras (even at the pro level) record to a format that it’s true 1080 or 720 – they’re actual anamorphic images that are squeezed horizontally (HDV is 1440×1080). Almost all of the cameras in the consumer and even pro-sumer markets are not FULL HD – the sensors on the cameras are not actually 1080 native.
So what’s the big deal that apple is trying to unify everything in to one codec? They’re doing this on the pro side too – FCP is being pushed towards ProRes being the best viable solution for everything. The bottom line is that iMovie is targeted at a very specific audience and moving to a unified codec makes the majority of the people in that audience’s life a lot easier. If you have a problem with it then you have graduated past the target audience. Congratulations.
Its true this anamorphic res is found most pro-sumer gear (also for SD scaling to 16:9), the point is that it is used, and is HD.
As consumer cameras already support 1440×1080 and 720, why give them yet another option which is lower quality, and not commonly supported for editing.
As long as the final output from the camera is square pixels, I’m okay with it. Pixel aspect ratios can burn in hell.
Whoa…who’s got their panties in a knot? If you don’t like or need this standard – (important newsflash), –don’t use it–
Obviously Apple has forseen a need for this. Their evil ways, is that they’ve decided it to release it without many details…so various nimrods will squawk about it…end up using it, liking it and eventually spending thousands on high end mac gear.
Once again Apple has pwned you all.
Dude can you please move on? I am growing tired of your ranting. We get it. You don’t like iFrame.
you idiot Coldeway. if you thought before you ranted, you would figure out this format is clearly intended for PMP video cameras on the iPhone and (soon) iPod touch in particular. the smaller file sizes – 1/4 the size of 1080p or less – are obviously an advantage for PMP’s limited storage SSD capacities (you can record many more/much longer videos) that have to be shared with many other things, like apps. and the much simpler editing via iMovie will make it possible for lower power PMP processors to handle video editing on the PMP itself instead of having to transfer to a Mac/PC first (right now you can only trim iPhone video clips, not edit or add transitions). expect that better camera and editing ability to be added to the June 2010 iPhone, if not sooner. and of course the touch did not get its intended camera last month. probably waiting for this.
a 960×540 16:9 resolution would be a major upgrade for the iPhone 640×480 VGA video camera. so it could then export a real 16:9 file for viewing on your home TV (downscaled and letterboxed to 480×272 on the iPhone screen).
that is what’s going on here, dolt.
why Sanyo or anyone adds iFrame to a camcorder i’ve no idea, except for the same goals of minimizing storage needs and on-device editing. but why Apple is doing it is crystal clear if you just think a minute.
So your theory is that as SSDs get cheaper and cheaper, and competing phones and cameras will be shooting at higher resolutions, Apple will be relying on a low-quality video format to save space, thus encouraging people to buy the cheaper iPods (or other products that DO support HD)? I really don’t see that being the case.
sure SSD will get smaller/more capacity (in a PMP it’s about size not price) and PMP processors much more powerful – in a couple of years. then using iFrame even a Nano will be able to store and edit a lot of video! but until that happens, in 2010 iFrame video capture and editing on an iPhone will be state of the art. info released so far has not talked about power draw (battery use), but i bet iMovie needs a lot less working with iFrame than standard file formats.
do you shoot video with your iPhone? i do. would be very nice to do simple editing – especially stabilizing the shakiness – without having to get to a computer first. you don’t use an iPhone for serious video. i have a nice 1080p camcorder for that too. you use it for casual spur of the moment fun video. or amazing unexpected events.
iFrame is part of the Apple ecosystem, where bringing video capture to all portable products is plainly a major strategic direction for Apple. why Sanyo bothered with it i have no idea. just to get a little press probably.
very good points here. Apple’s standardizing it’s market and lets face it, Apple’s always been a leader in video.
Wow — you really have your panties in a bunch over something it sounds like you don’t really understand very well.
First of all, Apple developed iFrame to be a more editing-friendly codec. If you’ve ever worked with AVCHD, you know that while it has pretty good picture quality for the bit rates, editing it sucks, since as a long-GOP format it needs to be transcoded to a different, editable codec upon import. Not only is this a time-consuming process, but the footage will take up much more space on your hard drive than it did on the camera.
While it doesn’t look like Apple’s released any technical info on iFrame yet, the name itself along with its stated purpose (as well as the few technical tidbits they have released) give a pretty good idea of what’s going on. They claim its based on H.264, the same codec used in AVCHD. They further claim that it’s meant to be natively editable. And it’s called iFrame. Putting these three facts together leads to the conclusion that this codec is an I-Frame only (no B or P frames, in other words intra-frame compression only, no long-GOP) version of H.264. This is not a proprietary Apple codec — Panasonic uses something similar in their high-end professional P2 cameras. They’ve reduced the frame size to keep the bit-rate down (since I Frames are bigger than B and P frames), but no transcoding will be necessary.
For consumer use this seems like a straight-up win to me. Would it be nice to have more resolution? Sure, and I’m sure we’ll see it in a future revision. But most people won’t see a big difference, especially from a $600 consumer palm-corder.
iFrame is just 960×540 mp4 using H264. They’re not putting i-frame-only video on consumer camcorders. They don’t claim it’s ‘natively editable,’ only that using it reduces the time need to edit in in iMovie. Of course that would be the case, it would minimize transcoding…. because iMovie has a boner for that resolution already.
Consumer cameras will continue using distribution codecs because it lets them fit more footage on a card, period.
Agreed. But why not adapt iMovie to 1280×720 and join the rest of the world, rather than make everything else adapt to iFrame?
Because a lot of consumer computers still choke on HD video. The CPUs are too slow, buses too narrow, and hard drives too small.
@pixel circus: exactly.
@james: really not true. Besides, this new format isn’t that much different than 720p. The real issue anyway is that H264 is processor intensive and intended as a distribution codec. But its quality is good and it takes up little space so people use it. That’s why it’s hard to edit. A hardware H264 transcoder (now becoming standard on video cards) will fix a lot of that.
For someone who excoriates others for not understanding what they are talking about, you sure don’t get it yourself. iFrame is NOT a CODEC. h.264 is the CODEC. Iframe is merely a collection of settings. Also, if you only did intra-frame compression, with no B or P frames, then what you would have is MPEG-1, or Motion-JPEG, not h.264. It would also, indecently, be a very large file with a very low compression ratio.
But hey, I’m not gushing all over Apple’s new proprietary standard, so I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about.
Don’t see the problem actually. Isn’t it we advocate diversity? If a new format is bad, few people will use it. If there are people adopting it, it has its value. The market will tell.
Crunch looks very every opportunity to post something negative about Appl, even things they don’t understand very well such as this. Their teenaged pimple faced acolytes with their Best Buy laptop daddy bought them cheer them on. But they know even less. Prime example is Arrington’s fake outrage about Google Voice and the iPhone. But people are on to you now Mikey and they know you have personal financial interests in saying these things.
I think a simple search would enlighten you as to the general tone of Apple coverage around here.
Just to help you out, here’s subject matter for 152 more pointless rants:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_formats
Who cares about pixel sizes? Content from different sources will always have varying pixel count and bitrates. So be it. Luckily, even low powered mobile videoplayers now have hardware that do a decent job of (up)scaling to the naive resolution of your display of choice …in realtime.
What we _really_ need is a wide adoption of open source codec standards like openAVS and Ogg, so content can be moved freely between all recorders and players without costly and time consuming transcoding.
Comments links these are the reason why I sometimes really, really hate my work. Because pixel sizes do matter, a lot, and when you send source material in different sizes it means that someone will have to fix things so that everything works together. And the someone is me, the idiot working at post production.
“Hey, that key is looking so bad, send to post to make all that hair transparency perfect.”
“Why is this grid behind the leading actor flickering so much? Can the post guy fix it?”
“Did you notice how those 3D objects look so blurred? Send them to post too.”
Thanks to all that don’t get that things can still look good if you scale them down, but not as much if you scale them up; and they would look great AND render faster if everything was just at the correct size. Really, thanks!
If you’re “the idiot in post production” then why the hell do you care what happens with iMovie and apples CONSUMER video strategy?
If you had any idea how many times I had clients send me clips made with consumer cameras to insert on videos for internal corporate events, you wouldn’t ask me that.
Not all post-production work is done for feature film or TV, there’s always those done directly for the companies for training or other types of internal use that have near-zero budget, but the client still expect Hollywood quality. And that’s why I care when Apple decides to create another new format that will complicate my life for no particular reason.
Think of it as job security. :-)
I’ve been exporting at this resolution for a while as it sits well in our site. Note, exporting, not importing. Anyone in the industry is pleased to finally be settling on HD resolutions and above, and its great consumers have access to these same standards.
When something with good reason for new standards is introduced (such as with RED), nobody complains, but this is clearly totally useless.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they added a few variations with some funky new pixel aspects too just for fun :-) Nice one apple.
But see… that’s the bigger problem – a corporate client expecting Hollywood quality for no budget and working from materials that were shot on a consumer camera… You have to either suck it up and deal with the fact that consumer formats will always suck in some way because they are CONSUMER formats, educate your client as to what Hollywood quality costs, or drop clients that have near-zero budget for ones that have cash.
Seems like your logic is flawed either way.
‘CONSUMERS’ like things simple. This won’t help.
When CONSUMERS or businesses with low budgets want assistance, they turn to editing / post companies, and people like DivinoAG and myself have to deal with “can I send it on a microSD card, I shot it on my phone, but what to use it full screen with titles in powerpoint”.
Basically, nobody using the format outside of apple software will benefit, and there is no obvious advantage even where this is supported.
Sorry to tell you, but it seems to me you have set your expectations a little too high. I do the jobs that are required of me so I can pay my bills. If I could really afford to choose my clients, or educate them on how to achieve the best results, do you honestly think I would be here complaining about them?
In a perfect world, sure, I would tell my clients how to best shoot all locations to get the best result. Hell, I would go there with my own camera crew and shoot it myself (we do that as well when necessary, with proper cameras and tripods).
But there are those times when we just need to do the job for financial reasons, and among all those nice After Effects animations we did, the client asks to include “that amazing video he shot on the last corporate vacation event” with the shaky camera and half the resolution we are working. So we suck it up, and try to improve it so that when the company’s president look at it, he doesn’t say that it looks awful because WE didn’t do it right.
We do try to educate our clients to shoot HD whenever’s possible, but if it’s already hard to make the executive secretary understand what that means with 2 picture sizes (we work at 720p mostly), what happens when the new shiny camera now have 3 sizes, one that’s said to be “just as good but records more time”? I don’t sleep at night trying to produce a better upscaled video, that’s what happens.
Let me rephrase: Consumers dont care specifically about pixel sizes, for most consumers its just one of several parameters that contribute to the perceived quality.
And get down from that ivory tower, Divino. This isnt about making your life easier. It’s about supporting a convergence of technologies that hold the promise of setting video free as a medium.
Every other clip on youtube has probably been recompressed half a dozen times, scaled up, down or sideways before it was transcoded to a proprietary container and locked down. And because of that, every person on earth now has to play by Adobe’s rules or rip the stream if they want to repurpose, comment or simply play back popular memes on their favorite portable device.
This debate shouldnt be about pixel sizes (even if your job upscaling and retouching) but about portability, ease of use, remixing, and open standards.
WFIW, the iFrame pixel size can probably be as good as anything else that has a comparable bitrate. What really matters is who controls the software licenses to the codecs required to play back and remix our culture!
i think it is comical how all you techies are so hostile on comments..
is it just where you have to make yourself look good because in real life.. you have no life?
I think it’s comical how non-techies (?) are so willing to swallow the crap that apple serves them.
“What’s the harm?”
“Isn’t choice good?”
“They must have had a reason.”
etc.
Here’s the argument for non-techies:
1) Apple is preying on your submissive attitude to swallow what they force on you.
2) They’re forcing something that isn’t good and has no real advantages.
3) On the contrary, it will cause many headaches, in the industry, and not serve consumers as well as standards.
4) Apple is making a choice here that is bad for you and bad for others…just for the sake of a retarded name.
I used to have a real life. There was a girl there and she would sometimes talk to me. It was pretty cool, but who has time for that, what with all the system upgrades and everything
I think what should be done is display both iFrame and 720p on a 1080p screen, and compare how it looks. I bet few people could tell the difference.
iFrame could actually allow people who use 13-inch MacBooks to do some near-HD quality video editing on their small screen that actually looks goody on their 1080p TV. That might sound stupid, but I trust Apple. iFrame didn’t come out of the blue. It was created for a reason, and I bet you that when this reason becomes obvious to everyone, you’re all gonna say “oooh, that’s why they did it”.
Besides, I don’t think that consumer confusion is relevant here. People who can’t compare two video formats (iFrame and 720, because that’s the issue obviously) won’t care much about the difference in quality. I think what the average joe seeks is convenience, not necessarily kick-ass quality for their home movies (which will be badly recorded anyway because it takes some skill to hold a video camera). In my opinion they are putting an end to the megapixel race at the consumer level. Consumer-level camcorders with 1080p support are a bit like cellphones with 8MP sensors. Photos are just as ugly as if it had only 3.2MP (because of the cheap and tiny optics or for whatever other reason), and a lot bigger on the memory card.
iFrame is aimed at the consumer market, like most of the iProducts, and as a consumer I’d rather have the convenience of a format that I can import, work on, and save without the hassle of conversion on my small and rather slow MacBook. Now as a geek, I’d rather have full-blown 1080p to work on because I don’t care about screen real-estate or conversion time on my top-of-the-line kick-ass Mac Pro with the 30-inch display (which I don’t have, by the way, but let’s pretend, OK ?).
My point is : don’t say it’s bad before you’ve actually used it and seen how it performs. I bet when you do you still won’t like it, but I’m sure you’ll admit that what it does it does well.
And as I said, Apple came up with iFrame for a reason, and generally what they do tends to work well …
“as a consumer I’d rather have the convenience of a format that I can import, work on, and save without the hassle of conversion on my small and rather slow MacBook.”
Exactly! Thats why this is a bad idea, conversion hassle. The format isn’t just for apple hardware, so consumers will head to their PC with their new Sanyo camera, open their non apple video editing software and get an error, or big black border as they edit iFrame footage in an HD project.
wrong. this Apple-developed format really is specifically optimized for Apple portable hardware and iMovie processing. consumers not using that will set their Sanyo et al camcorders to another HD setting of their choice. you already have to choose anyway. if they pick iFrame by mistake – not likely – they’ll only make that mistake once. there is no “hassle” here, just one more option. jeeze.
I know, why not have an extra dial on the Sanyo to make things really clear. Apple, Microsoft, Linux, Other. Then everyone can do their own thing.
“if they pick iFrame by mistake – not likely – they’ll only make that mistake once. ”
If you read the original point, you will see that iFrame is the default, so its quite likely to happen. Consumers probably won’t understand the ‘choice’ anyway.
Now imagine that the first mistake is someone’s wedding. Wouldn’t that be great.
Given all the problems with viewing HD video after editing and the fact that most people can’t easily see the difference between iFrame and 720p and given some of the convenience it provides I don’t see this as a big problem.
It would have been nice if they could have standardized on 720p. I’m not privy to their internal discussions, I’m guessing there must have been a reason.
Good point. iFrame is silly.
@AlfieJr
I think you made some very good points that explain Apple’s strategy
- PMP processors to handle video editing on the PMP itself
-960×540 16:9 resolution would be a major upgrade for the iPhone 640×480 VGA video camera
You write
“so it could then export a real 16:9 file for viewing on your home TV (downscaled and letterboxed to 480×272 on the iPhone screen)”
But cold it now be that 960×540 WILL be the new resolution for the new 2010 iPhone/(iPod)? Then this whole iFrame thing would make even more sense.
dd
that would be a huge upgrade to the iPhone’s display resolution – but on a screen that small why bother? graphics already look really good. you’d have to hold it a few inches from your face to see a difference. the advantage of OLED’s, which Apple may switch to pretty soon, isn’t the resolution, it’s the contrast etc. which does make a visible difference on such a small screen.
but once you output to a TV (or YouTube etc), then suddenly 640×360 (what the iPhone’s VGA camera captures now in a 16:9 aspect) looks poor, whereas 960×540 will look even better than a standard DVD (720×480 stretched horizontally to 16:9), great for casual video.
and expect Apple to enable AppleTV to wirelessly bridge video display from your iPhone to TV without needing patch cables.
Most every comment fails to take into account that all the previous resolutions came into being before the new world of:
– small-screened mobile devices, not larger screens, and
– content via the internet, not discs or tapes
Different world, different needs, different solutions.
Devin makes some great points here. As a provider of a new “format” myself, I will give a take on this.
I can support Apple on this for their iMovie and associated businesses and here is why:
1) We have tested 856X480 video encoded with the VC-1 Advanced Profile codec, which is slightly above DVD 720X480 (NTSC) and found amazing quality that passes as HD with most average users.
2) Users of iMovie are consumer editors buying the latest low cost HD camcorders. Allowing a consumer to flood their iMac, Mac Mini, or Macbook with space consuming full 1080P (or even 720P) video dumps is not in the best interest of providing a great user experience for this level of user.
3) This format is likely using the H.264 codec (hey it could be Dirac) with a fixed aspect ratio specification. Most likely, the iFrame format will be comprised of dithered aspect ratios of 720P and 1080P. It is possible to deliver 960×540 with the proper display ratio of the source material with simple scaling.
I have witnessed awesome results with a specification slightly below iFrame and above DVD. DVD resolution is the consumer delivery standard at the moment and most average people don’t care enough about the technical visual improvements of 720P and 1080P if they are provided with a 960×540 content encoded and scaled well.
iFrame is designed to offer average hockey moms the best quality when editing family footage from a new HD camcorder. Or a professional that want to put together a fast montage of clips. Anyone needing to do pro work above the iMovie level should be using FCP or Sony Vegas (had to through that in there as it is my favorite).
-Will
I don’t mean to single you out, because what you say is echoed a million times all over the internet. However, you said it, so I will ask you. If this is “designed to offer average hockey moms the best quality” and is supposed to be used by “consumer editors buying the latest low cost HD camcorder” who “people don’t care enough about the technical visual improvements,” then why complicate matters by creating a new format? If they are so undiscerning, and completely ignorant of even the most basic video production techniques, and so utterly oblivious to quality, why would they need anything but the VGA their phone probably already records?
I can 100% guarantee you that if someone can’t tell the difference between 1080p and quarter-1080p, then they sure as hell don’t care what aspect ratio it is, or whether it is letter-boxed or not. By the same token, I don’t think those “hockey moms” who rushed out and bought a 52″ 1080p TV and 1080p camera, were really counting on getting a quarter that resolution, just so Apple could make a licensing fee off the camera manufacturer, and try to lock them into their walled iMove garden.
No, in fact those “average consumers” you are talking about, are actually far more discerning than you give them credit for, in their own weird consumer way. Half of them are showing up to their kids games with a $1,000 SLR, and a $1,500 camcorder! They may not have the first clue what format is best, and may not even be able to tell the difference between the formats, but they sure as hell know that their TV has that little 1080p on it that is supposed to make it “full HD” and they went out of their way to get a camera with that same 1080p on it, because they wanted to shoot “full HD.” If Apple’s real goal was to simplify their lives, then they would just give them a 1080p Full HD setting, and be done with it, and everyone would walk away happy. No, I suspect the real target for this format is not the Costco/Wal-Mart hockey mom crowd, but the Starbucks/Ikea hipster crowd, which is already so deep in Apple lock-in, that if Apple told them iFrame was better than 5K RED footage, they would argue to their death that it was true, because no one needs all those extra pixels anyway.
This is the solution to a problem entirely of iMovie’s making. Everyone else just uses whatever format the camera outputs by default, and then takes it into Premier Elements, or Vegas Movie Studio, or whatever cheap editing program they have, and then outputs it to one of the template settings, without ever worrying or thinking about whether it is transcoded, or upsampled, or downsampled, or whatever.
It’s absolutely true that some “average consumers” don’t care about video quality, per se. (Hopefully these people have different, redeeming qualities to compensate.)
But some of these same people do care (along with many others that do care about video quality) why the video editing process is slow, or takes so much disk space. Or why they can’t fit as much video on their portable device, or why it takes so long to download the video to watch, or upload it to share. People are funny that way.
All of these problems can be addressed, for now and in the near future, by using a standard codec in an edit-friendly way with non-arbitrary compromise pixel dimensions: I-frame-only H.264 at quarter-1080p resolution.
While I agree with some of the arguments against Apple “pushing” limitations as a defacto “standard,” 960 x 540 is not an “arbitrary size” under HD resolution. It is, in fact, exactly half the vertical and horizontal resolution of 1080p. (1920 x 1080) This means a quarter of the bandwidth and exactly 50% scale for the highest res standard in HD. Blowing up 960 x 540 video 200% fits perfectly on the best HD TVs out there. Those that do 1080i already line double 540 lines anyway.
It scales 1.5x to become 720p video. So they’re line-doubling every other line to achieve the other HD standard. Of course this is a “standard” meant for slower (i.e. cheaper) processors, but anyone who doesn’t have an Intel chip with a graphics co-processor knows that slower Macs have a hard enough time pushing 720p HD and even the big boys can often drop frames on 1080p.
The math is not meaningless at all, nor the chosen frame size. (It would make even less sense to go back to 640 x anything, or some vestige of a 4:3 format, even if it “already existed.”)
I deliver 1080p video to clients all the time and always render “half-res” previews at exactly this resolution. It is a good compromise for viewing in a browser, yet hi-def enough to see details well. Sure, it’d be better if they just went ahead and went 720p… but 720p is also an inferior product if the best HD is 1080p. So this is actually a technically decent compromise for slow processors.
Get over it.
> 960 x 540 is not an “arbitrary size”
Amen.
This “iFrame” is nothing new in iMovie. When ingesting HD, you already have a choice of full resolution 1920×1080 or 960×540.
We have been using it for months as we don’t need full HD, and that’s all most new cameras record to now. Those pesky full HD AIC files use up a lot of storage.
You have also been able to export to “iFrame” using QT Player Pro, FCE, FCP, etc. for years.
Apple just made it easier to select the second iMovie ingest setting by giving it a name. I hope this dribbles down to FCE and FCP. We now ingest in iMovie at 960×540 and then edit in FCP.
This is not a new wrapper, format or codec, just a preset with a name.
I hear that many consumer camcorders that claim to do 1080p aren’t really 1080p native at the sensor level. Instead they have, wait for it, 540 lines.
Another crappy standard-protocol-format from the Jobsnuts camp. Thanks so much guys, I love it when you rollout such moronic tech! The more you piss off the consumer, the easier it is to keep you out on the fringe! WTG!!
A 960 pixel width would fit nicely in a web page designed for a 1040 pixel screen which most webpages are still designed for.
+1
Our site is 960px wide and there is loads of 960px video.
( although this comes from a real HD source, no crappy iFrame in sight :-p )
i rarely see columns wider than 700 or so. maybe the entire webpage is around a thousand px wide but not a column where you’d place a video. there are sidebars and stuff to think of. I mean obviously I could be wrong but I really don’t see a lot of that.
Though obviously that res would be fine for that! just as 900×500 would be good for a slightly smaller thing, it just depends on what you need. But trying to establish it as a consumer and editing standard is wrong wrong wrong.
Lots of websites have space for video wider than 700.
Youtube has changed to allow for bigger video, Lots of places on Apples website, and our website among millions of others.
“But trying to establish it as a consumer and editing standard is wrong wrong wrong.”
However, I agree on this.
wrong wrong wrong is right right right.
I’m not quite sure why this is garnering so much debate. 960×540 is a standard resolution and isn’t arbitrary in anyway. Anyone who has worked in video will have probably dealt with it at some point and it has always been considered a nice compromise between true HD and SD.
So with that out of the way, is the bigger beef with Apple’s approach of choosing to brand this specification with a name? This fits in with the ethos of removing (particularly on the consumer side) the tech from the branding and giving it a more friendly name. Not what I’d do probably, but at the same time, it’s not keeping me up at nights that they are.
My actual only problem with their choice in branding is that the name leads folks like me to believe its i-frame only H.264 content, but nothing i’ve read backs that (and several people in the threads have said it isn’t). Other than that confusion, I’ve no problems with them giving a name to a spec. If anything, this might help clear up for some users just what they are delivering – I can’t tell you how many times i’ve had the conversation about someone stating they were sending me a “QuickTime Movie” to encode for them and on asking what kind it was their reply is, “Oh, you know, just a regular one.”
As if such a thing exists…
I will slap the ish out of this format.