DV Rack not for Mac?

[shaun_au]

Jan, the US product manager for 100A said in a thread that there will be a production bundle 100a package. It has a soft case, DV Rack, some other stuff. I went to Serious Magic's site, DV Rack only runs on PCs, but not Macs. I use a G4 PB for dv stuff, and would like to bring it along for the shoot. So if DV Rack is PC only, there's just no point to buy the production bundle(I'm in market for a 100a). So the $300 rebate with Magic Bullet is the way to go then.

But still it's kinda stupid that DV Rack is not for Macs.

[David Jimerson]

:D

[KarlSoule]

Hi Shaun,

Just wanted to chime in here - I'm part of the Serious Magic tech support division, and I get the "Mac question" asked at least once a week. I posted this answer before over at DV Info Net, and I wanted to share it here as well.

We developed our software around a technology that lets us communicate on a very low level with the video card in the PC. This gives us a number of advantages in speed and performance, and lets us do things that are not normally available with CPU horsepower alone.

Unfortunately, this ability to communicate with the video card is not available on the Mac platform. We did the research on what it would take to build this technology from scratch, and it would take literally years to recreate it for the Mac. The underlying infrastructure just isn't there.

We do track the number of requests and calls we get for Mac support, and with some of the upcoming changes in the Mac OS it may be feasible in the future. But, we are still talking about months and months of development time, if the company does decide it's financially viable.

I used to work for Apple (Employee 28774) and I understand the loyalty that Mac customers have. However, when it comes down to it, a Mac and a PC are just tools. I don't berate my crescent wrench because I have a set of sockets. Each has their place in an editing environment. With the Mac, there are great tools like Final Cut, and Shake is really coming into its own.
PC's have a plethora of editing programs - Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas, plus tons of small cheap programs for doing compositing/finishing.

We did design DV Rack to provide clips for Final Cut as well - it will save to an external drive in QuickTime format.

__________________
Karl Soule'
Serious Magician, ULTRA and DV Rack Support
ksoule@seriousmagic.com

[pptphoto]

Don't worry, I'm sure someone, probably Apple themselves, will come up with something better than DV Rack in the not too distant future, for Macs. They do with everything else.

[Isaac_Brody]

ouch. :-X

how about a little tact?

[MattC]

LOL. Don't sugar coat it pptphoto, tell us what you really think!

I will be very suprised if this capability doesn't find its way into a future release of FCP.

Hey Dave, you every use a Mac?

[David Jimerson]

Who, me? Sure. I used them all the way through college and law school. (Those labs were usually empty.)

[pptphoto]

That WAS tactful. I just get tired of seeing the same response to all the people that would like to see a Mac version. I guess I understand how some software companies would be reluctant to make software for a platform that has only 5% of the market, and if it were a specialized business application, I'd understand even more. However, I'm sure that Mac has a much higher percentage of users in this field, as they do in most creative fields, not neccessarily saying one platform is better than another. I just think their pat response is kind of lame and arrogant. Most other applications have been created for both platforms, PhotoShop, MicroSoft Office Suite, After Effects, etc. I'm sure its not impossible to make a DV Rack type of application for Mac. AND, like others have said, I'm sure if DV Rack is not interested in providing a version for potential customers, someone else will. Probably, as stated by others, Apple themselves. So, I stand by my opinion, and don't feel it was tactless.

[Isaac_Brody]

Don't worry, I'm sure someone, probably Apple themselves, will come up with something better than DV Rack in the not too distant future, for Macs. They do with everything else.

Your response was honest, but you basically said suck it the DVrack. Especially after getting an honest response about why it's not supported on Mac.

It's cool that DVrack, Jan, and other product reps take the time to answer questions and gauge what we want. It's not cool to say, hey, I'm sure something better than your product will come out. Is it cool if I tell Jan, hey, the DVX doesn't have 16X9, but I'm sure Sony or Canon will come up with a much better camera, they always do.

[pptphoto]

I'm sure that if the DVX could only be captured onto a Mac, yeh, there might be a few people on here with PCs who might not be thrilled. Sorry for expressing my opinion, I thought that was allowed on here. I DO appreciate Jan, Rush, the Barrys, Walter, John, Pookie, Isaac, and most of the people that are regularly on here. I've learned alot, and enjoyed it, but its hard to have much allegiance to a company that really has no intention of supporting a platform that 30-40 percent of the DVX users on here use. But hey, whatever, from now on, I'll refrain from any comments or opinions on DV Rack, since they have nothing to offer to me, or other Mac users. To be honest, this is the first time I've had any jealousy of the PC platform. DV Rack looks very cool, and I would own it in a second, if I could use it. I shouldn't have said better, I suppose that WAS rude. Hopefully, equivalent. Peace?

[Isaac_Brody]

No worries dude.

[Wesley_Wong]

I think its pretty dumb to assume that no software company doesn't want to cpature both the dominant PC market and Mac market. If it is indeed hard to do a Mac versoin, it might end up costing a lot more than the PC version and MAC users will be rioting, no ?

Seems hard to please everyone nowadays.

[Barry_Green]

Redrock Micro mentioned something about a DV Rack-style program, and maybe they'll make a Mac version.


If it is indeed hard to do a Mac versoin, it might end up costing a lot more than the PC version and MAC users will be rioting, no ?

It's not just that it's hard, it's that the mac market is *incredibly tiny*. And therefore, it's a lot more work for a lot less reward. I was in software development for 15 years, and back then the Mac had a lot more market share than it does now and we still got out of the Mac games business. Nowadays the Mac accounts for approximately 2% of the computer market. It's very, very difficult to make a viable business model off of such a tiny market share, and (other than for MacFanatics) it's tough to justify the R&D dollars to go after such a smaller potential market. Even Adobe abandoned the Mac platform for Premiere -- not that they didn't have a lot of followers, but with FCP taking such a dominant market position on the Mac, there just wasn't enough room to go around. On the PC you can have small fringe players like Canopus and Liquid and even our beloved Vegas, and there's plenty of market share for everyone. On the Mac, if you don't get something like 50% market penetration, it just doesn't make business sense to develop for it.

Now, as far as video apps go, it's probably true to say that a higher percentage of Mac users are involved in video apps than PC users are. Even so, it's a tiny market. I think Jarred said that 82% of DVXUser members are on the PC, 18% on the Mac. That's huge for the Mac -- that's 10x as many as would be otherwise expected based on simple market share (98% PC, 2% mac, but as far as DVXUser membership it's 82% PC and 18% mac, so is it fair to say that mac users are 10x as likely to be using their computer for video than PC users are?)

Even so, then you have to look at it from Serious Magic's perspective: should they devote their development dollars towards the 18% of the overall DVXUser market that are Mac users or should they instead focus their energies on the 82% of the market that are on the PC platform?

So to offer it for the Mac they'd have to spend equivalent development dollars, they'd have to establish a new customer support and tech support section, they'd have to establish a distribution channel that focuses on Macs, they'd have to spend equivalent ad dollars in different places (Mac-centric magazines and websites and etc), and the very very very best they could hope to accomplish would be to sell 1/5 as many units. Very low bang-for-the-buck.

Maybe they'll choose to do it. But I can certainly understand why they haven't, and if they choose not to, I can certainly understand why they don't. Especially with the Mac moving to Intel platforms soon, there's really very little incentive to make a mac-specific application. Someone could just as easily buy a copy of WinXP and install it, make a dual-boot computer and run both OS's on the same hardware. What does WinXP cost - $100?