Am I the only one that sees that 12cm disks should be dead?

I know that we have just, finally after much gnashing of teeth and political finagling, decided on a new standard for the next generation, but there are too many disadvantages to these 12cm optically read disks or discs if you prefer.

Let me enumerate some of the problems:

1. They are slow to write.
2. They are too big.
3. They are round.
4. They are slow to access.
5. They can be easily scratched.
6. They will not scale to larger sizes easily without yet another change in optical frequency.
7. They are costly to create.
8. They are problematic to re-write or make eraseable. My experience is that CD-RWs eventually fail to write after a few hundred or less write operations.

There is a better media. Flash or ROM. Serially accessed mass storage if you like.

There is a better format: The smart credit card format.

The advantages for the Media are at least:

1. You can decide whether you want read-only or read-write at the time of manufacture.
2. The media size and speed will scale with Moore’s Law rather than at the speed of standards committees.
3. The cost of the media over time will scale with Moore’s law, so that the cost to produce the media will go down quickly over time. The cost of 12cm disks goes up over time as it is more complex to build the more complex media types, and only goes down slowly after that because it is based on a physical manufacturing process rather than an electronic one.
4. We are free to use all the old formats as well as new ones to encode media for the format. A Blu-Ray disk image is just as easily processed while reading it from a ROM or FLASH as it is from an optical disk; in fact, several complex stages of encoding are skipped in the case of reading the data from memory media. File systems – FAT32 or ISO – with MP3, WMV, MPG or any other media.

The advantages for the Credit Card size format are at least:

1. It is a standard size.
2. There is a standard pin out. The use of the pins is likely to be different, but I’m sure we can come up with a serial protocol for the pins to read and write memory without too much trouble, if there is not one already.
3. It is already designed to be robust over 1000′s of insertion, removal cycles.
4. It is already used for static as well as dynamic uses: Security cards for Satellite Receivers, as well as credit cards.
5. It is large enough to hold a picture of the content and small enough to reduce waste in landfills.
6. It is designed to be robust against bending, scratching and other abuse. After all, a credit card in and out of your wallet 1000′s of times is bound to encounter bending and scratching.
7. It is rectangular rather than round. So it racks and stacks with ease.

What this does to Players

And players shrink too. The player becomes a slot in the side of your new AV receiver, rather than a box by itself. AV receivers need to be large enough for the many connections, and for the front panel displays. But adding the video function with a credit card slot reader adds neither to the connections on the back or the front panel space required. The receiver will soon display it’s interface on the TV anyway, so it’s size will soon be limited only by the connections to other components. And this video format removes one of the media components, and reduces the receiver connections rather than maintaining them.

The Epiphany

I had this idea when I purchased a new USB thumb drive with 4GB capacity. And of course this is not the largest one available. The size of a standard single layer DVD, and no bigger – inside at least – than a postage stamp. And with a USB storage interface, this chip is more complex than it need be I’m sure.

Right now, the cost of writable Blu-Ray media is high enough that it makes little sense to purchase a Blu-Ray writer. If DVD dual-layer experience is a guide, by the time the media falls to US$2, which is about the level at which I will be willing to invest in a Blu-Ray burner and purchase media in 50′s, I would guess the cost of 32GB flash memory could be US$2 as well if shipped in the same quantity. And ROM – or write once memory for media purchase – will be even cheaper. While 32GB is not exactly the size of the maximum size of a Blu-Ray disk, but it is pretty close.

Blu-Ray players already read all previous 12cm optical formats. During the transition it makes sense that they contain a slot and an optical drive. And over time, slot-only interfaces will appear for computers and for home theater systems.

There are no compelling advantages for the 12cm format in the long term. In five years it could be the “Compatibility” format for ages past, ordered as an optional addition to your new computer system. Won’t laptops be a lot nicer without the space and complexity of the optical drive?

- windy

I’ve just upgraded my hot new Alienware Area-51 7500 system to Win Vista Ultimate 64bit to take advantage of all the memory and processor features, but alas, Adobe is still stuck in the weeds. According to the Premier Software Specifications page, Premier does not support 64bit Vista. That seems odd, since there is nothing on the platform that cannot easily be supported, even if they only support it in 32bit compatibility mode.

After all, Windows Movie Maker runs in native 64bit mode. And Nero Ultimate 7 contains Nero Vision which works fine on 64 bit – in compatibility mode no doubt.

Well I guess there is no compelling reason to upgrade my Premier license to Pro CS3, since it won’t run on my system. And Win MM and Nero Vision work fine for capture of DV, editing of mpg and creating DVDs in both DVD5 and DVD9 format. I’ve tried them all.

Recent experience with Windows Vista and products with others indicates some very nice video editing possibilities.

While many manufacturers supply software, hardware and tools to capture and edit video, it has long been a challenge to put together a set of tools to accomplish the complete process. In the past I have used products by Pinnacle, ULead, Adobe and Microsoft.

Let’s ignore all the trials and failures in my attempt to find a video tool-suite and review my success on Windows XP. With the following tools in Win XP, I was able to:

• Capture DV from DV camcorders. – Premier 6.5
• Capture TV programs from DirecTV or Dish DVRs. – Pinnacle MovieBox USB.
• Edit the DV captured clips to reorder, remove offensive material – such as possibly commercials – and produce mpg files. – Premier
• Combine mpg files and produce DVDs of both DVD5 and DVD9 format. – ULEAD DVD Workshop 2
• Burn DVDs in both DVD5 and DVD9 format using Nero 7.

At one point a year or so ago, ULEAD DWS worked fine, even burning videos on dual layer burners from Pioneer and Sony. But for some unknown reason, this program stopped working to burn the DVDs and Roxio CD Creator V6 also stopped working reliably on the same machine. The switch to Nero 7 produced a much more reliable result. After 10 coasters with Roxio, I have had no coasters with Nero 7.

While Pinnacle provides a “Studio” product with MovieBox USB, my experiences with Version 7 and 8 are that it was not reliable and I was never able to make use of it to edit mpg files and burn DVDs. Studio must be used to capture videos from the MovieBox. Studio is now up to version 11 and may be more reliable.

The following hardware is involved using Windows XP:

• DELL WS 530 – dual processor 1.7GHz XEON, 1GB memory with 70GB system disk and 250GB 7200rpm SATA video disk. Firewire interface built-in.
• DELL Inspiron 8500 Laptop with 40GB, 7200rpm HD

The 8500 Laptop serves as a Moviebox capture device for mpg movies from DVR. The video content is assembled on the WS 530 and all other software is run there.

Now that I have moved to Windows Vista with my new Alienware system (search for Alienware on this site) a new set of tools is required. Not all the tools above are Vista-Ready. Briefly the Alienware system is as follows:

• Area-51 7500 SLI with Core2 Quad QX6700 at 2.66GHz, 4GB memory running Win Vista Ultimate 32bit
• Nvidia GForce 8800 with 768MB of graphics memory.
• System Striped RAID array of two 250GB 7200 rpm SATA disks.
• Video Striped RAID array of two 250GB 7200 rpm SATA disks. I had to add this myself. The NForce 680i SLI motherboard supports multiple arrays, but Alienware does not provide this option at purchase. The MediaSecure BIOS in the system made it easy to configure the additional array.

For Vista the video tools are as follows:

• Windows Movie Maker captures DV and allows simple editing. Output can be to DV and WMV. Cutting offensive material out of videos is easy and reliable using the Split operation.
• Movie Maker can also edit the mpg files created by Pinnacle MovieBox USB. Splits are also easily done and performance – on this very high end system – is very good. Movie Maker actually uses all the processors when converting movies.
• While Vista contains a DVD Maker program, I found it to be too simple to suit my needs.
• Adobe Premiere 6.5 works quite well on Vista 32bit. It has all the same capabilities as on Win XP including capturing DV video, editing to remove offensive material, and creating MPG files which can be imported into Nero Vision. (read on)
• ULEAD has not had any significant updates to DWS 2 for some time now and it does not function on Vista. It is very nice with template menus, motion thumbnails and chapter points. But with no Vista support, I was forced to look elsewhere for a DVD editor.
• Nero 7 contains Nero Vision, which works quite well on Vista, consumes DV, mpg and WMV files, has menu templates and chapter points. It does not support motion thumbnails in the menus however. It is quite reliable and works well in conjunction with Nero 7 Burn to produce both DVD5 and DVD9 format DVDs.

So I have a tool suite now on Vista 32bit for my video creation and editing. I wonder how much will survive as I move to Vista 64bit.

Don’t throw away that old Win XP system quite yet.

- windy