It’s port talk time again.

As I suspected, Apple’s 17” MacBook Pro does get one additional port. You get 3 USB ports and one FireWire 800 port – though this means that, even though there’s almost no hardware that supports FW800, you’ll need an adapter for FW400 devices like HDV/DV cameras. At least unlike the non-Pro current-gen MacBook, you can use your video camera with that adapter, though, and three USB ports I think is more sensible.

The MBP does lose the dedicated FW400 port on the previous model, but because this shared the same bus, you didn’t get a performance gain out of it. What I have heard from some concerned users is that Apple changed the FireWire chipset on the new MacBook Pro. That hasn’t yielded any specific problems yet that I’ve seen, but keep an eye out.

Apple being Apple has to go over the top talking about “Ports with possibilities” and “If it has a cable, there’s a place for it” as if this is different from any commodity PC (or even their previous models). They also puzzlingly say “MacBook Pro even recognizes what you plug in, so you don’t have to install new drivers.” I’m assuming they’re talking about class-compliant devices there, but that’s not all devices. If they’re talking about Windows’ annoying habit of reinstalling drivers when you switch ports, well, that’s a bandwagon I’ll get aboard.

Visualists, this MBP, like the other new MacBooks, has no analog video out. The Mini DisplayPort allows hookup to VGA, DVI, and HDMI, but not S-Video. And I’m still unhappy that Apple uses a different connector than everyone else when DisplayPort is trying desperately to get off the ground.

I still can’t help but notice that the Asus laptop I just picked up in an emergency when a computer died is only 15.4”, has FW400, DVI, VGA, S-Video, and four USB ports, plus a standard NVIDIA 9500M GT, for $950. Even saying that, though, S-Video doesn’t look long for this world anywhere.

Full specs:

MacBook Pro

Lest I see like a perpetual grinch, I think the 17” MacBook Pro is an incredible machine. The case is gorgeous, the screen is fantastic. And the big news is that they’ve gotten a superior LED backlight onto a 17” screen. On top of that, you can get 7-8 hours of battery life. It supports the dual NVIDIA 9400M + 9600M graphics card combination, which while not the fastest GPU out there is nothing to sneeze at. The US$2799 price is likely to put it out of range for some people, but I can’t help but admire it as a machine. In the meantime, my dirty-cheap Asus, older MacBook, and I will get along fine for now.

For graphics cards, drivers are everything: it’s just not possible to be on top of stability, performance, and functionality without access to new, stable drivers. But for Windows notebooks, unlike desktops, traditionally you had to turn to OEM PC vendors to get your NVIDIA graphics drivers. That would be fine, if PC vendors kept pace, but my near-universal experience has been that vendors are awful about drivers. Just finding drivers on many sites is a Herculean task, let alone getting something up-to-date.

That had meant that, for GPU gurus, the only alternative was a site like laptopvideo2go.com. That site is an awesome resource, with in-depth detailed descriptions of every new build (stable and experimental) from NVIDIA. To get the latest and greatest, you can use mods that allow these drivers to be installed on notebooks without having to go through your notebook vendor.

But nice as that is, it’s still terrific news that NVIDIA has finally made the switch to offering their drivers directly on their site. Now, when you go to NVIDIA.com, you get a prominent, front-page option for downloading notebook drivers:

NVIDIA Notebook Drivers

This covers just about everything, thanks to NVIDIA’s unified driver model. (NVS and GeForce are both there.) Notably missing: workstation-quality Quadro FX drivers. But this is still major progress. Both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista and XP are covered.

This is a non-issue for Apple users, of course, and NVIDIA has long offered direct downloads for Linux (in addition to open source, community-supported drivers), but it’s great news for Windows users.

It specifically allows NVIDIA to push the beta of release 179 before the certified drivers become available. I hope this also means that, with added feedback, we’ll get more reliable NVIDIA mobile drivers.

NVIDIA also now prominently links to their Graphics Plus campaign, which promotes the use of your GPU for tasks like GPGPU and PhysX. There are tons of downloads there, though in the past those haven’t been officially supported on notebooks; with the beta, they are. I’m giving them a try later today on my NVIDIA 9500M GT to how they run with this new beta driver release. One big bonus for visualists: a chance to get faster video encoding. Being a fan of open standards, I’m still rooting for OpenCL in place of NVIDIA’s proprietary CUDA technology for processing on the GPU, but there’s no question NVIDIA does a lot to promote the science of GPU use. (And, for the record, NVIDIA has also pledged to support and promote OpenCL alongside CUDA.)

In fact, NVIDIA is specifically pushing these new notebook drivers for these features:

• Video applications
• Distributed computing (GPUGRID, Folding@home, and the like)
• PhysX in games like EA’s upcoming PC release of Mirror’s Edge (get the Dramamine handy!)

What about ATI? They helpfully let you select your notebook graphics card on the driver download page, then respond with:

Currently AMD does not provide any driver support for Mobility Radeon™ products. All driver and technical support for Mobility Radeon™ products is provided by the original laptop or notebook manufacturer. The drivers that are available for download at ati.amd.com are for desktop products only.

To download Windows Vista Mobility Radeon™ drivers or driver updates for your laptop or notebook product, please visit your laptop or notebook manufacturer’s website.

Ah, yes, because really, there’s nothing computer users enjoy more than dealing with notebook manufacturers. So, ATI, I hope you follow NVIDIA’s lead on this. If they can do it, so can you. We love your stuff, so help us run the latest drivers, okay? (By the way, does anyone know if there’s an ATI equivalent of laptopvideo2go?)

Thanks to Josh Ott (of superDraw fame) for the tip!

Keep Your Resolutions Dance Party NYE 2009 from Robotkid on Vimeo.

How did you spend your New Year’s Eve, visualists? And how much do you love live visuals and dancing?

Our friend Robotkid (aka Josh Randall) just showed me this video of the frigid dance party in Boston, complete with –10-degree (Fahrenheit) wind chills and only 10-degree weather. (That’s 12 C, –23 C wind chill.)

Despite the finger frostbite risk, that is a Lemur multi-touch controller you see briefly. This does reveal a certain challenge with capacitive touch as an input method: because it requires bare skin, you may freeze your fingers off. Correction/update: Matt Boch who was handling the Lemur notes that because it is resistive, not capacitive, it can be used with gloves. The real problem: the organic technology of you, freezing to death.

Apple even went as far as patenting winter-friendly iPhone gloves, as reported this week by AppleInsider. Gizmodo calls that embarassing, but for all we know, the blogger lives in California.

Who else out there did live visuals (in person or via a warm, cozy streamed event) New Year’s Eve?

Adobe has quietly added some features to Premiere CS4 I would consider really huge. Adobe Updater is normally the little app that delivers Acrobat Reader updates what seems like every other weekday, but imagine my surprise when I opened it today: a little New Year’s present.

• AAF support (Advanced Authoring Format, an attempt to create a more intelligent interchange format that’s open to developers, backed by Adobe)
• OMF export (Open Media Framework, as used by various apps including Cubase, SONAR, Pro Tools, and notably as an alternative in Final Cut … not to be confused with the fantastic early 90s One Must Fall PC game … heheh)
• Final Cut Pro import (yes, that’s native, not via OMF)

And this isn’t just about wooing current Final Cut users: fully supporting OMF and AAF is an essential prerequisite to making media production more open and standards-based. Apple, of course, already helped create a world that isn’t strictly Avid-based, which is why they’ve also been backers of some of these initiatives.

Nothing against Final Cut, necessarily, but having alternatives is good – particularly when Apple’s flagship doesn’t even run on all Macs (sorry, non-Pro MacBook). Now, I had largely looked to Sony Vegas in the past, but Adobe has been busily updating Premiere and so far, CS4 looks far, far snappier performance-wise. Dealing with these file types is tricky, but if Adobe actually has nailed some of the import/export options, it’ll be very good news. And, anyway, if it works for you in your editing workflow, that’s really the main test, isn’t it?

Happy 2009! from postspectacular on Vimeo.

I can’t say it any better than this. A big Happy New Year to the planet. 2009 looks to be a breakout year for Create Digital Motion, with all we’ve got planned – starting with helping you get on top of your New Years’ Resolutions tomorrow as we start our new tutorial series.

For more great work from Karsten, see:

http://toxi.co.uk/

http://postspectacular.com/

And I’ll see you in 2009. For all the gloom on the Earth, I couldn’t be more bullish for what’s happening with expression and the opportunities that lie ahead.

Peter KIRN, editor-in-chief, createdigitalmusic | createdigitalmotion

Doing live visuals and other projects means sometimes endless conversion and editing tasks, but many of the dedicated tools for the job are just too much. I’ve been playing around with Video Converter from Extensoft, which is about perfect I think in terms of what you most often need to do. It’s an ideal companion to a full-blown video editor like Premiere, and now it’s also been made free. Windows-only.

Features:

• Import AVI, FLV, MOV, MP4, MPG, QT, WMV, more
• Export to AVI, MP4, MPEG1 and MPEG2, QT, WMV, H.264
• Export directly to FLV with the Flash player ready to go
• Merge, split, scale, deinterlace, change frames per second
• Basic editing and selection timeline
• Batch conversion
• Predefined settings for YouTube, iPod, iPhone, etc.
• Save projects and presets

The combination of the slicing and dicing tools with batch conversion and deinterlacing to me is just brilliant, and replaces QuickTime Pro for me on some of these tasks.

Free Video Converter @ Extensoft

I actually like the premium suite this is part of, so I may wind up buying the whole thing.

Any preferred tools you’ve got on Windows, Mac, or Linux?

You’ve likely seen impressive sequenced Christmas lights in videos before. Very often, though, these setups use proprietary systems. Here, Processing makes it quick and easy to code lighting effects in a friendly, open-source environment. And, naturally, if you think you might want to do something like this and don’t want to wait for Christmas 2009, I can imagine quite a few other interesting lighting applications.Creator Jack Kern describes the project:

This is my first attempt at a computer controlled light show for our Christmas lights. Everything was DIY including the software which I wrote in Processing (processing.org). Simple wiring using parallel port output to switch some 120v relays. Only 8 channels, 1500w per channel max. Next year I’ll be trying for many more, dimmable, LED’s and DMX control of our RGY lasers!

It’s worth checking out Jack Kern’s projects page for other goodness. Think Java-based games (2D mobile and 3D desktop), a ray tracer, and source C/C++ code. And yet the man still has hobbies.

Big thanks to TJ Pallas on Facebook for the tip. And please, I do actually enjoy keeping in touch with readers on Facebook. (See my page / profile / CDM’s fan page.)

We are truly entering a glorious era of visual effects, one in which you won’t have to wait for epic, budget-blowing fantasy box office train wrecks (ah, Willow) just to see eye candy onscreen. Now you just need to wait for someone to blow a massive budget on a music video.

Want proof? How about this music video from LA’s Chris Dane Owens. Sure, some people in the blogosphere get cranky about the post-a-palooza going on here. I think they’re just jealous of Owens, who works with director effects god Robert Short (E.T., Beetle Juice, and even a black rhino on MacGyver).

I was saddened to learn this wasn’t quite parody – I suppose in LA people actually get serious about this stuff. But what does artist intent matter, anyway? If you imagined somehow combining every 1980s fantasy effects piece into five musical minutes, I think you couldn’t come up with half of this. Even that random crocodile fits in, somehow. And explosions. So many explosions.

Be sure to watch the better-quality Flash version. Direct link:

Shine on Me [Flash]

There’s an interview with Chris Dane Owens on the LA Times’ entertainment blog, though it’s really Robert Short I want to hear from. Intentionally or not, it’s as though the talented Mr. Short has made a massive in joke between him and other 80s effects artists.

An Internet star is born: Chris Dane Owens to singlehandedly slay bad economy via new music video [Pop & Hiss blog]