What filmmaker is going to put in all this effort and spend $30K to shoot videos for a single platform that no one uses? At the very least they need to ditch the proprietary format and support Quest and other headsets.
Filmmakers have already been using it to produce the existing immersive video content, so that's kind of a silly question. But it works for VR180, too, if that's your cup o tea.
Moreover, it's not really a proprietary format and you can already play them officially on Quest.
Vision Pro has been released for near a year now. I don't think it got traction that's anywhere close to the hype when it was first announced. Not even among VR enthusiasts, let alone the mass consumer market.
There is an Apple Store near where I live. When I walk by it, 9 out if 10 times there is nobody around the Vision Pro booth, when many people are playing with iPhones and iPads.
The Vision Pro also doesn't exist in a vacuum, Meta have spent much longer trying to make this work, with hardware that's literally an order of magnitude more affordable, and are still struggling to find any mainstream adoption.
It's obviously going to get cheaper, but rumor is the second generation will only get the price down to about $2000 which is still well above the "lol nope" threshold for most people. Third times the charm?
I research live-action anime[0] and this looks really cool, especially if there's fine-grained control over each sensor and especially if you can change the lenses (in a supported or unsupported manner).
Anime has the advantage of being drawn frame-by-frame, thus able to "change" lenses, cameras, etc mid action-packed shots. Using this may allow for shooting two different setups at once, achieving a similar effect.
In the late 90's I think, there was a movie where a neural device was created that allowed anyone to "record" their brain activity so that it could be replayed later by anyone with a device for that. But it became like a drug as people got addicted to it and couldn't stop living the virtual experiences of others (this was a long time ago so I hope I remember the story correctly)! Some people wanted to experience murdering someone, or having sex with a famous person... cool stuff :D Anyone knows which movie was that?
Which, amusingly, required development of a customized camera to film:
> The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot, required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation.[5] A full year was spent building a specialized camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through someone else's eyes.[5] Bigelow revealed that it was essentially "a stripped-down Arri that weighed much less than the smallest EYMO and yet it would take all the prime lenses.
It's an unfairly forgotten film. Much like Blade Runner, it suffers from a clunky plot but has quite smart world building.
Strange Days. Tom Sizemoore's best. "The issue's not whether you're paranoid, Lenny, I mean look at this shit, the issue is whether you're paranoid enough."
The coolest part about AVP is being able to look around in an immersive environment; this seems like it’s only going to give you 3D but not immersive correct?
You’ll turn your head and the image will just stay fixed in 3D in front of you?
Is anyone making movies specifically for the Vision Pro? Apple could certainly afford to sponsor a few films to bolster their catalogue. Although for a creative the tiny potential audience makes it seem very unappealing.
Then again... Maybe if AVP owners represent an audience that you'd like to target it wouldn't be a bad decision. Everyone that owns one will probably be starved for special content and I'd imagine they'd be willing to buy something specifically made for their niche platform.
Apple looks to be getting out of the feature movie business in general and focusing on TV where it is seeing a lot more success.
But based on the Vision Pro demo I would expect to see them prioritise non-fiction content e.g. Planet Earth style movies, concerts, athlete profiles etc.
I'd argue that (similarly to 3D captured footage) you can just record both formats in the same time so you can still target the big audience. Wouldn't wonder if we're going to see few Apple TV exclusives which are in "normal" 4K and also offer Immersive View for Vision Pro owners.
Unfortunately the Immersive Video seems to be a proprietary format. Also if I understood correctly you can't even edit this format right now cause DaVinci Resolve is missing an update for that...
Given Blackmagic is a brand well-known for using their own proprietary format, for actually selling cameras boasting CinemaDNG support that they after the fact quietly disable in favour of BRAW, they are hardly a good choice for someone who cares about interoperability and open standards.
What I see from the PR [0] is that it's using a new BRAW version ('The new Blackmagic RAW Immersive file format...)'. So it's as open as BRAW, that is, not much. But at least (I guess/hope...) you should be able to export each "eye" separately in a different format.
Converting to the "Apple Vision Pro" format is the last step on the pipeline, after editing.
8TB for 2hrs of footage is crazy even compared to other high end cinema camera, going to be an interesting work flow for anyone editing this as thats not a a trivial amount of data even by today's standards
> is crazy even compared to other high end cinema camera
Is it really? I haven't touched "high end cinema cameras" but if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB/hour and it's a "normal" consumer camera, I'd easily expect 4x that in high end cinema gear for 3D video (multiple videos stitched into one essentially)
But again, haven't used any of those or looked it up, so what do I know. It doesn't sound outlandish to me though.
Raw 8K video at 60 fps out of something like a Nikon Z8 is around 1.5 TB/hour, 400-500 MB/s.
Of course most people wouldn't shoot at 60 fps for historical reasons, and raw video codecs are intra-only so data rate scales linearly with fps. They're just relatively heavily lossily compressed raw images in a box, basically.
To prevent causing issues upstream you would want to write to a fast NVME SSD first before backing up to a HDD array. Unfortunately, it doesn't support this use case as the NAS is designed for movie streaming, offices, security cameras etc.
Thank you for your insightful comment. You’ve clearly thought about this more than the business who decided to make the camera, and your logic is impeccable.
Website announcement, https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursacine..., doesn't even mention the Vision Pro and refers to Apple once.
But they refer to it in a tweet that is linked from the article
https://x.com/Blackmagic_News/status/1868723512455970999
On the preorder page they're talking about the "URSA Cine Immersive":
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursacine...
which seems to be more in line what the article talks about
What filmmaker is going to put in all this effort and spend $30K to shoot videos for a single platform that no one uses? At the very least they need to ditch the proprietary format and support Quest and other headsets.
MKBHD will probably race over to buy or cover that piece of equipment. Hopefully no tickets for speeding in a school zone will occur.
Filmmakers have already been using it to produce the existing immersive video content, so that's kind of a silly question. But it works for VR180, too, if that's your cup o tea.
Moreover, it's not really a proprietary format and you can already play them officially on Quest.
So title is misleading. It shoots videos for other platforms as well.
$30k is not particularly expensive for a cinema camera
Don’t filmmakers rent cameras for a few days/weeks?
Almost always.
Yes.
Filmmakers funded by apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studios
> What filmmaker is going to put in all this effort and spend $30K to shoot videos
Pornographers
Are you implying the Vison Pro ecosystem is dead and Apple will abandon it? Sometimes the supporting hardware takes time to manifest itself.
takes time -- how long are we talking about here?
Vision Pro has been released for near a year now. I don't think it got traction that's anywhere close to the hype when it was first announced. Not even among VR enthusiasts, let alone the mass consumer market.
There is an Apple Store near where I live. When I walk by it, 9 out if 10 times there is nobody around the Vision Pro booth, when many people are playing with iPhones and iPads.
The Vision Pro also doesn't exist in a vacuum, Meta have spent much longer trying to make this work, with hardware that's literally an order of magnitude more affordable, and are still struggling to find any mainstream adoption.
At the current price point, the AVP is destined to achieve a market position similar to LaserDisc.
It's obviously going to get cheaper, but rumor is the second generation will only get the price down to about $2000 which is still well above the "lol nope" threshold for most people. Third times the charm?
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/13/apple-might-release-a-2000...
I research live-action anime[0] and this looks really cool, especially if there's fine-grained control over each sensor and especially if you can change the lenses (in a supported or unsupported manner).
Anime has the advantage of being drawn frame-by-frame, thus able to "change" lenses, cameras, etc mid action-packed shots. Using this may allow for shooting two different setups at once, achieving a similar effect.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/@weedonandscott
Not only anime, but other types of animation as well. :)
In the late 90's I think, there was a movie where a neural device was created that allowed anyone to "record" their brain activity so that it could be replayed later by anyone with a device for that. But it became like a drug as people got addicted to it and couldn't stop living the virtual experiences of others (this was a long time ago so I hope I remember the story correctly)! Some people wanted to experience murdering someone, or having sex with a famous person... cool stuff :D Anyone knows which movie was that?
Anyway, this feels like the beginning of that.
> Anyone knows which movie was that?
Strange Days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film)
Which, amusingly, required development of a customized camera to film:
> The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot, required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation.[5] A full year was spent building a specialized camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through someone else's eyes.[5] Bigelow revealed that it was essentially "a stripped-down Arri that weighed much less than the smallest EYMO and yet it would take all the prime lenses.
It's an unfairly forgotten film. Much like Blade Runner, it suffers from a clunky plot but has quite smart world building.
It's either STRANGE DAYS or EXISTENZ - maybe BRAINSTORM but that was early 80s
In Neuromancer(1984) it's called Simstim. I think Strange Days got it from there.
Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977) also by Gibson already had this.
Does anybody know even earlier instances?
You mean every other plot involving brain computer interfaces since the 1950's?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
I think that it’s a Black Mirror episode: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
We will probably go through:
Thoughts -> (electric signal) -> LLM decoding and calling a generative model -> (electric signal) -> Brain
Strange Days. Tom Sizemoore's best. "The issue's not whether you're paranoid, Lenny, I mean look at this shit, the issue is whether you're paranoid enough."
Could be Brainstorm (1983) perhaps?
Also, see the last episode of season one of Black Mirror.
And "brain dances" in Cyberpunk 2077.
Strange Days.
Brainstorm (1983)?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0085271/
No, you are all wrong. I had this idea first!! When I was 8.
The coolest part about AVP is being able to look around in an immersive environment; this seems like it’s only going to give you 3D but not immersive correct?
You’ll turn your head and the image will just stay fixed in 3D in front of you?
How many vision pros did they sell and how many people are still using them?
Is anyone making movies specifically for the Vision Pro? Apple could certainly afford to sponsor a few films to bolster their catalogue. Although for a creative the tiny potential audience makes it seem very unappealing.
Then again... Maybe if AVP owners represent an audience that you'd like to target it wouldn't be a bad decision. Everyone that owns one will probably be starved for special content and I'd imagine they'd be willing to buy something specifically made for their niche platform.
Apple has commissioned Submerged, the first scripted short film captured in Apple Immersive Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJcUtVIB_g
Apple looks to be getting out of the feature movie business in general and focusing on TV where it is seeing a lot more success.
But based on the Vision Pro demo I would expect to see them prioritise non-fiction content e.g. Planet Earth style movies, concerts, athlete profiles etc.
I'd argue that (similarly to 3D captured footage) you can just record both formats in the same time so you can still target the big audience. Wouldn't wonder if we're going to see few Apple TV exclusives which are in "normal" 4K and also offer Immersive View for Vision Pro owners.
I think the answer it's in the Blackmagic website:
>the world’s first advanced cinema camera designed to shoot for Apple Immersive Video
I think they are tapping early into an emerging "new" video format.
3D TV back at it again.
Cool! Though I sincerely hope it's not using some Apple proprietary format that won't work with non-Apple devices.
Unfortunately the Immersive Video seems to be a proprietary format. Also if I understood correctly you can't even edit this format right now cause DaVinci Resolve is missing an update for that...
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/media/release/20241217-0...
Which open format can handle this kind of video? The Cineform video codec can store stereo video, but I don't know if it would be suitable for this.
Given Blackmagic is a brand well-known for using their own proprietary format, for actually selling cameras boasting CinemaDNG support that they after the fact quietly disable in favour of BRAW, they are hardly a good choice for someone who cares about interoperability and open standards.
What I see from the PR [0] is that it's using a new BRAW version ('The new Blackmagic RAW Immersive file format...)'. So it's as open as BRAW, that is, not much. But at least (I guess/hope...) you should be able to export each "eye" separately in a different format.
Converting to the "Apple Vision Pro" format is the last step on the pipeline, after editing.
Wasn’t that due to RED patents?
8TB for 2hrs of footage is crazy even compared to other high end cinema camera, going to be an interesting work flow for anyone editing this as thats not a a trivial amount of data even by today's standards
> is crazy even compared to other high end cinema camera
Is it really? I haven't touched "high end cinema cameras" but if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB/hour and it's a "normal" consumer camera, I'd easily expect 4x that in high end cinema gear for 3D video (multiple videos stitched into one essentially)
But again, haven't used any of those or looked it up, so what do I know. It doesn't sound outlandish to me though.
> if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB/hour and it's a "normal" consumer camera
If your consumer camera generates 1TB/hour then you're generating data as fast as a Red Komodo [1] recording at 6K "VFX, Extreme Detail Scenes"
Consumer quality? A high-end iphone can record 4K 60FPS video and an hour's footage takes up 24 gigabytes.
And you're watching 4K 60fps video on Netflix? Youtube? Maybe 12 gigabytes an hour.
[1] https://www.red.com/komodo
Fair, maybe "prosumer" is more fitting, was thinking of the Pocket Cinema 6K (also from Blackmagic)
Raw 8K video at 60 fps out of something like a Nikon Z8 is around 1.5 TB/hour, 400-500 MB/s.
Of course most people wouldn't shoot at 60 fps for historical reasons, and raw video codecs are intra-only so data rate scales linearly with fps. They're just relatively heavily lossily compressed raw images in a box, basically.
Seems like Synology NAS with 10Gbit Ethernet is the way to go, based on the research I’ve done so far.
Does anyone have better ideas?
Thunderbolt external raid is better, for a solo video editor.
There are options from caldigit on the low end: https://www.caldigit.com/t4/
or qnap on the mid end: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tvs-h874t
OCuLink or CameraLink also come to mind.
Synology wouldn't work well here.
To prevent causing issues upstream you would want to write to a fast NVME SSD first before backing up to a HDD array. Unfortunately, it doesn't support this use case as the NAS is designed for movie streaming, offices, security cameras etc.
Well, the bottleneck is probably getting that off the camera somehow, rather than how to get it elsewhere once off the camera.
10Gbit would be the bare minimum, 8TB at 10Gbit would take 1h46mins. Assuming the disks aren't bottlenecked, which means SSDs.
HAHAHA talk about a niche for a niche for a niche. What's the expected sales for this one? In the double digits? Single?
Thank you for your insightful comment. You’ve clearly thought about this more than the business who decided to make the camera, and your logic is impeccable.
It's just a camera. Nothing stops filmmakers to publish the results for any VR platforms they want.