MacBook Pro Retina vs. MacBook Pro non Retina

I was just at the Corte Madera Apple store in California and placed a new 15 inch MacBook Pro Retina alongside a plain MacBook Pro and ran a commercial we just produced at 720 HD res from YouTube. As they ran simultaneously. I was not impressed by the retina image, it looked murky and crushed. I did an "unofficial" survey of customers in the store and asked their opinion and everyone picked the older MBP as having the better looking image. It was a spot that was very saturated with vibrant colors. (see below)







Since video is the most important component of what we do, I don't get this technological "benefit" if it does not look good. I use Mac Pros, so this does not directly effect me, but in the future, I'm not sure.

Yes, I'm curious about this as well. Regardless of people's personal opinions regarding apples pixel doubling technology in the retina display, it has proven to have excellent black levels as well as whites [both ends of the spectrum are among the best of any laptop ever [. It will be interesting to measure this more in the future.

good questions Brooks. I am also wondering...also why all the Motion content was updated (As well as other apps) for the new display? What's that all about... perhaps you have to use updated content to get the most outta the new display... huh?

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jeremy Garchow] "Small little GUI elements "
whoa, wait. my Fcpx is at 10.0.4 which came out before the retina, and the only thing MAS wants to update is Motion content (1gb worth). That sounds like a lot more than GUI elements. Trying to download now, but MAS is super slow in this part of the world...but thx for helping me understand what this is all about...

EDIT: My MAS is broke... not seeing updates there, but on the store I see they exist...FCPX at .05... arg. But I get how small GUI elements would get messed up at 200+ppi vs. the old resolution.

yes, thx, my mas is broke... i miss the old way of updating...

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

sorry, Mac App Store :) hanging out too much with apple wonks...

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

I just don't get it... batteries glued to the case and memory soldered to the board... what are they thinking? I guess they expect folks to just buy a new computer now every 2 years. But thanks for your review on the display... I have no problem with the current generation of displays... they look pretty darn good to me as is. especially when you connect a thunderbolt 27"er to it :)

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

I ran the YouTube setting @ 720 and went full screen on the MacBooks through YouTube.

Tapio, I've been holding my breath for two days waiting for someone who has used Quicktime on the new MacBook Pro with Retina display. You're the first I've seen mention it. Would you be so kind to review this thread and respond to my last comment there near the bottom of the thread re QuickTime? Thank you so much fir your help.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

Thanks for the note re Quicktime on the Macbook Pro Retina display, Dave. (I miss visiting Santa Barbara!)

So it looks like QT doesn’t pixel-double the contents when you want it to play actual size. That’s good news. If you have the time, it would be interesting to pause a playback while in actual size and then capture the window contents to see the pixel dimensions. Want to try that with a HD video? I’m hoping then the capture from QT’s frame would indicate a 1920x1080 image and not 3840x2160 pixels!

In my earlier post to Tapio to which you were responding, I just saw i neglected to copy the thread that I asked Tapio to review! The joys of using the iPhone to work in a forum where everything is so awkward to view. Here’s the missing thread:
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/37157

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

Dave:
"If I capture the desktop the size is 2880 x 1800
If I open a video in QT 1920 x 1080 it show up edge to edge of the screen as 1440 x 810
If I record the screen in QT the size is 1440 x 900
If I do a screen grab it captures a 1920 x 1080 image at 1920 x 1080

This is with the Display set to Best for Retina display"

Thank you so much, Dave. So it is possible via the screen grab to get the pixel-for-pixel capture of the defined size of the video! Interesting that you did this with Best for Retina too. So no need to use the optional virtual screen with the virtual 1829x1080. It's certainly good news and I imagine if people chose to use the virtual screen of 1829x1080, the result will be the same for the screen capture. Actually once people understand when pixel doubling applies and when it does not, it will be useful to have these options. Your grab of the desktop showing 2880x1800 is correct of course because all the virtual screens really use the same physical dimensions of the actual display 2880x1800. It's important that defining a HD-sized video window in QuickTime for example can give one HD screen captures.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

Dave, another question, have you tried smoke for mac 2013?

thanks

Brooks Tomlinson

Thanks Dave, let me know.

If you have some problems here are what the dev said at autodesk,

"Here’s something that you could try. Not saying it will work, but it might:
Go in System Preferences > Energy Saver and disable “Automatic Graphics Switching” at the top.
Please note that MAC OS Lion 10.7.4 and the MacBook Pro Retina line has not been certified by our team yet so it is not currently in in the “supported configuration’ list. There’s still a possibility thatthe trial will launch anyway, but the configuration is not certified yet."

if that doesn't work, if you have a external monitor, try launching smoke in "lid closed" mode. (where you have the lid closed on the macbook pro, and are just using the external monitor)

I want to buy one bad, but I want to learn the new smoke more.

Thanks again Dave,
Brooks
"I dream in 32bit float, don't you?"

Brooks Tomlinson

Dave,
Thanks for trying man you are a rock star! Hopefully we will see some support for it soon.

Brooks

Brooks Tomlinson