readbeard

For those of you who don't know, RED has for years been using these patents, which include claims on techniques that would have been obvious to a domain expert at the time of filing, to stifle competition from other camera manufacturers.

v. Sony in 2013: https://www.engadget.com/2013/02/14/red-sues-sony-over-paten...

Blackmagic also recently removed CinemaDNG from their camera lineup to avoid the considerable expense of litigation.

Thank you, Tim Cook!

But $300 is not the entry cost to kick the tires. Resolve is free! There is this idea out there that Resolve Studio is the only pro version of Resolve, but that is just not true.

I used (non-Studio) Resolve for months coming from Premiere before purchasing the Studio version largely to take advantage of the real-time lens distortion removal effect.

In my view, the non-Studio version of DaVinci Resolve is a fully capable pro NLE and a formidable competitor to Premiere Pro and FCPX. There are some amazing features added in the Studio version (such as the face refinement tool and real-time spatial and temporal noise reduction) but they appear to me to be non-essential unless you are doing certain very specialized types of work.

There are limits on resolution and frame rate, but they are well in excess of the resolutions and frame rates used by most big-budget Hollywood films.

Is there a specific feature exclusive to DR Studio that is preventing you from kicking the tires with Resolve?

Edit: I’m not affiliated with BMD by the way, apart from being an enthusiastic customer.

Absolutely. In my view, it's not that Resolve is a $300 professional app with a free dumbed-down version—Resolve is a free professional app with a $300 amped-up version.

Many of the features added by Resolve Studio are super awesome things that most people don't need and that other NLEs don't have. I bought the Studio version for the realtime lens distortion removal filter, which saved me a lot of time on a project.

The thing is, most people don't actually need 4K.

In fact, I believe most modern films—including big-budget blockbusters—are still being mastered in 2K (with UHD Blu-Ray discs being upscaled from the 2K masters). My question to anyone for whom spending $300 on an NLE is a big deal: does your project really need more image resolution than titles like Jurassic World and The Hunger Games? Keep in mind that, in addition to spending the $300 on software, your image processing and storage requirements have now quadrupled.

For a close look at the impact of image resolution on cinema viewing, I highly recommend Steve Yedlin's excellent Resolution Demo [0].

[0] http://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html

While it would be possible to edit a film using the original camera reel, this is generally not a good idea because (1) most motion pictures are captured on negative film and (2) the repeated cuts, splices, and general handling of the film that happens during edit will inevitably damage it.

The solution to both problems is to produce a workprint from the camera negative and edit with that. This inverts the negative image and gives you a copy that you can play with freely.

Watching someone editing on a Steenbeck [0], you will quickly see the importance of not editing the camera negative directly.

Once the edit decisions are finalized, the original camera negative is carefully cut and spliced to match the workprint, and a pristine "answer print" is struck from the edited camera negative. Traditionally, this is also where color timing is done—the printer lights can be configured to balance different shots and scenes as the answer print is being made.

The final release prints are usually third-generation copies (if you don't count the camera negative as a copy)—(1) a handful of interpositives are made from the original camera negative following the exact procedure used to make the answer print, then (2) internegatives are struck from the interpositives, and (3) a large number of release prints can be struck from the internegatives.

A notable exception to this was the release of Dunkirk (2017). The 37 IMAX screens in the world [1] that were exhibiting a 15-perf 70mm film print were actually showing a first-generation copy struck directly from the original camera negative.

(All that said, it is possible to shoot on reversal film, which is positive out of the camera, and can be edited and projected directly. Also, I've never edited a film like this myself and likely got a few things wrong—so take this with a grain of salt.)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUxbfiZ_-9Y [1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/imax-melbourne-is-the-onl...

Yes, it is unfortunate that Cycles no longer supports OpenCL on macOS. There has been talk in some of the Blender groups about porting it to Metal (Cycles was designed from the ground up to support multiple platforms like OpenCL and CUDA), and they were speculating that it could be done by a skilled developer in 3–6 months [0]. Hopefully there are enough Blender users on Mac to justify this effort. Anyone here have ideas about organizing / funding this?

In the meantime, check out AMD ProRender [1]. It appears to be a viable alternative to Cycles for most things and can run on Metal on macOS.

At any rate, for more substantial renders, I strongly recommend cloud farms. You can make your own using spot instances to save money, and fire up more servers to get your render done more quickly. Getting an overnight render done in less than an hour (without tying up your workstations) is super helpful since it gives you more freedom to iterate. This kind of task (where you need a huge amount of processing power periodically for specific jobs) is where cloud computing really shines.

And there is also Eevee, which is not a Cycles replacement, but I believe it is fully supported on macOS.

[0] https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2018-Decem... [1] https://community.amd.com/docs/DOC-2183

Not just e-commerce sites—change.org shows "### have signed," where the number is programmed to tick upwards at a somewhat randomized rate. This is simply dishonest—a lie designed to make you feel like you'll be missing out unless you sign.

Example: https://www.change.org/p/target-stop-filling-the-world-with-...

You might also check out Pollen [0], a publishing system written in Racket. The creator of Pollen, Matthew Butterick, uses it to produce his own digital books—including the outstanding Practical Typography [1].

[0] https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/ [1] https://practicaltypography.com

Edit: I see after a quick search that Pollen has already been featured on HN multiple times [2] [3], but I still think it might be helpful to reference it again here.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20027116 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335010

But merely performing a song doesn't give you any kind of monopoly whatsoever on the lyrics. Even arranging a song wouldn't give you copyright on the lyrics unless you substantially changed them. It is simply false that Concord Music Publishing LLC has copyright on the lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner," even if these public domain lyrics were used in an arrangement controlled by that company.

Edit: Getting into the weeds a bit here, but I don't think performances themselves can be copyrighted (in the US, that is). Recordings can be copyrighted, as can musical compositions, lyrics, and subsequent arrangements. It is my understanding that, in order for something to be eligible for copyright, it must be fixed in a "tangible medium of expression."

It's also worth mentioning that music publishing companies generally control compositions, not recordings. But even supposing Concord Music Publishing has copyright on the arrangement used on that particular occasion, that does not imply they have copyright on the lyrics.

Indeed! Consider a simple brochure-style marketing page, which is often a good use case for static HTML. Such a page should be centered around content, and that content (photography, illustration, copy, animation, etc.) may need to be specially built for the page and may be expensive to produce. Everything has to fit together flawlessly, telling a compelling story while staying on-brand. Performance needs to be great. And if the page is generating much revenue, it is easy to justify spending even more money in optimizations if they are likely to improve conversion rates.

I realize this has nothing to do with the ridiculous situation described in the article, but I do think it's worth pointing out that $18k is not at all an inherently ridiculous amount of money to charge for a static HTML page. In some cases, it may not be nearly enough.

> The fight now should go the other way - reverting current insane copyright term to its previous lengths. Copyright lobby might not be able to extend it more, but it doesn't mean that the current one is acceptable.

This proposal is not only just, but feasible.

The left should get on-board, since the retroactive copyright extensions effectively took away property that was promised to the public and reassigned it to media companies for a certain amount of time.

Constitutional conservatives should get on-board, since Congress's authority to establish a copyright office is rooted in the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," and excessively long copyright terms stifle progress rather than promoting it.

I posted a while back advocating for a coordinated reform effort [0], and I still think we can get this done. Who’s in?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016752

Is this the paper to which you are referring? https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf

If copyright were shortened to 20 years as suggested, it would be legal to freely distribute copies of Windows 98 and Photoshop 5.0. I doubt that would make a dent in sales of Windows 10 or Creative Cloud. Newer versions of both would still be copyrighted, and there would be no obligation to release any unpublished source code.

You’re right—the use of the term “intellectual property” has muddled public discourse on this important issue.

Society as a whole benefits from a robust system of copyright, trademarks and patents to incentivize art and innovation. But just as too weak a system will slow innovation by making it less financially viable, too strong a system will slow innovation by making it harder and more expensive to build new things out of old ones. We need to strike a balance, but the popular notion that ideas and expressions are strongly analogous to real property will likely lead to policies that are, on balance, harmful.


That IP law in the U.S. was conceived of as an economic incentive issue—and not an ethical one—is strongly suggested in the “copyright clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” [0]

Thomas Jefferson elaborated on his own views on IP in a letter to Isaac McPherson in 1813 [1]:

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.”

To reiterate a bit of what you said, if “intellectual property” is not property at all, it cannot be stolen—only infringed upon. And the difference is important because whereas theft is a violation of natural law, infringement is a violation of the rules of a specific society.

China is a different society and it has different rules. If we want to make respecting our country’s copyrights, trademarks and patents a precondition of trade, that seems like a good idea—but we should just say that. The drama of calling it “theft” is unnecessary and wrong.

By the way, I recently read and recommend “Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction” [2] by Siva Vaidhyanathan for an all-around introduction to intellectual property.

[0] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/law/us-constitution/

[1] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....

[2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intellectual-propert...

Steve Yedlin (cinematographer of The Last Jedi) posted an excellent analysis of image resolution in cinema on his website. It utterly convinced me that resolution beyond 2K/1080p is superfluous on most normal-sized cinema screens at normal viewing distances. IMAX will, however, benefit noticeably from higher resolutions.

http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html

While you may be right, 14 and 28 years (with extension) are currently unrealistic goals due to international obligations [0]. However, I believe returning to the terms of the 1976 act (75 years or life plus 50 years) would be imminently achievable with good political maneuvering.

Thinking this was a hot-button issue on HN, I submitted a post advocating for a coordinated political effort a few weeks ago [1], but it didn't get any traction. However, seeing comments like this gives me hope.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016752