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Cupertino, CA – Apple enters the live video streaming market with professional lives streaming device. Today apple announced a new set of 17″ Macbooks it has dubbed the “Macbook live”. These notebook computers look essentially the same as the latest Retina Display Macbooks but have 4 Thunderbolt ports capable of driving a “StreamDock” attachment that ships with the unit. The StreamDock requires both thunderbolt connectors from the MacBook Live on one side and sports 4 3G/HD-SDI inputs on other other side along with 2 3G/HD-SDI outputs. Apple is expected to display the notebook/dock combination at the BlackMagic Design (BMD) booth at the coming National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. This cooperative product launch substantiates rumors that the StreamDock apparatus was conceived and designed by BMD. The Telestream booth is also expected to show off MacBook Live’s interface, likely because it authored the encoding and switching software guts of the device. Unlike Telestream’s Wirecast, however, the gorgeous interface of the MacBook Live screams pure Apple. Those used to the vision mixer metaphor will be quite at home with Live’s interface. Preview and program virtua l monitors are exactly where they should be and are fully configurable, there are 4 digital disk recorders, or “DDRS”, which allow playback and record (any combination of playback OR record among the 4 virtual devices). A cleverly laid-out audio control section takes a nod from longstanding audio workstation design and provides an interface family to protools and logic users. The system can take 4 channels of embedded digital audio per SDI connection one of the SDI outputs can be switched through software to be an inbound AES/EBU 32 channel digital audio input. Apple says a future firmware update will allow MADI compatibility.
On the downside, having only two outputs limits the video to either program and preview out or program and an auxiliary output. More output options would be a Godsend. That would, of course require the now svelte StreamDock to be much bigger. The StreamDock perfectly complements the MacBook Live and its undulating all aluminum design allows the dock to forgo fans. Caution though, after soon use while writng this review, the unit got very hot and uncomfortable to the touch, though it probably wouldn’t burn you. The MacBook Live is silent as well, due to its use of dual 2TB SSDs and a fanless GPU. GPU power is a tad on the week side and is evident by the limitation to only to mix/effect (M/E) layers and 3 down stream keys (DSKs) per channel. The MacBook Live also tends to heat up quite a bit as the aluminum unibody design has an undulating texture that essentially turns the enclosure into a giant heat sync for the CPU, GPU, and I/O processors.
Also of concern is the lack of storage space. While the StreamDock has a Thunderbolt out connector in addition to the two used from connection to the MacBook Live, lengthier productions would require outboard storage.
Even with the negative aspects of this first foray into live video streaming by Apple, this product shines. Weighing in at only 9 pounds it is pound-for-pound the most portable powerful and definitely the most portable fully integrated streaming solution being offered. This is just a first look, but we look forward to seeing pictures and the prototype and the NAB product launch next week in Las Vegas.
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