The present and future of post production business and technology

As I transition into a role I never thought I’d have – software product manager/developer – I’ve come to love “pushy clients”! Although I don’t write the code for our products, I’m usually involved in the design and particularly user interface. Greg writes the code rather brilliantly.

Our first piece of software – driven by a strong idea of mine – is First Cuts - the assisted editing tool for long form documentary filmmakers. Finisher was the suggestion of Loren Miller during the beta period, and the use of Sequence Markers to force b-roll was the suggestion of Digital Production BuZZ producer, Cirina Catania.

The work we did there gave us a leg-up with FCP XML so when Ted Schilowitz of RED Digital Cinema asked if we knew someone who could, basically, create something functionally similar to Avid’s Autosync (part of Media Composer) for Final Cut Pro users, leading to Sync-N-Link a few months later.

Later than intended because we were about ready to release it and ran the concept past Jim Mathers of the Digital Cinema Society and he said that in the independent markets that he works in, editors tend to sync multi-track (dual system) audio after the edit. Dang a delay but Greg made it happen. That’s something you can’t do with Media Composer.

If, however, you compare Sync-N-Link then with the current version – set for a substantial update shortly – there have been so many new features added, and bugs fixed, that we could not have found without our early customers. We did try beta testing but found that few beta testers have time to put into testing, despite their best intentions. (Which reminds me, “sorry Boris for not much feedback the last two times I tested for you”.)

Likewise, the whole Sequence Clip Reporter application came about because I had demonstrated miniME and exceLogger at LAFCPUG. A friend said “what you really should do…” and we did. Then we had some great feedback from (yes) a beta tester and fabulous feedback from an early customer, who was “I love it but could it also….” and now it does.

Sequence Clip Reporter was only released about seven weeks ago, and yet it’s now at version 1.5, with an interface overhaul (more feedback) and a raft of new, customer-driven features.

So, if you use a piece of software and have a feature request, let people know. Everyone who develops software loves to know how people use it and how they can make it better – yes, even Apple, although they’ll never tell you. (Someone reads, categorizes and files every feature request and bug report.) In fact, FCP XML v5 has a bug fix for a problem Greg reported (from a customer) and a new feature that also came about because we couldn’t accommodate a feature request from a customer. (Sound reel was not being exported in the XML until V5.) So we know Apple do respond.

What I particularly enjoy is that we’re not a big company, where it takes time to iterate a new version, QA it and get it out. And thankfully none of our applications are (yet) anywhere near as complex as the simplest Pro App or NLE. It’s just so great to get a feature request from a (potential) customer and have the first (very rough) draft of the app by the next day. (There’s a huge gap between that working prototype and a full application, not all of which is to do with the function of the app.)

Or get a feature request from a customer – or a problem they have – and being able to push out an update for everyone within a day or two days. Or even solve a problem that isn’t caused by out software, but where Greg’s XML expertise is able to “save the day”.

So, provide that feedback. Tell people how you use their software (tell us for sure). It’s likely to gain you a feature, or even a whole application.

When Larry Jordan sent me out on the Exhibit Floor to find out what Panasonic, JVC, Sony and hard drive manufacturers recommended for long-term storage for non-tape media, and the answer surprised us both: Blu-ray.

Here’s the interview from the Digital Production BuZZ where I explain my findings.

Just lately I’ve been dealing with a content aggregation site (or two) that had articles from this blog listed in their articles directory. Worse still is that the site is designed to distribute articles to other sites. I don’t mind the idea: if a writer wants wider distribution, then it probably makes sense to syndicate the article there, than have it sit in obscurity.

I had to fight fairly hard to get my articles out of their system because I had not put them in that system and didn’t want the articles syndicated wildly. Now I do have some syndication organized (if you’re reading this on Toolfarm, thanks) but I don’t want this content distributed anywhere I haven’t directly authorized.

The articles were removed but only after I re-served the DMCA takedown notice on the owner of the domain name, as the normal site admins were not acting in according with the provisions of a DMCA Takedown notice. (I actually thought I’d have trouble when I realized, from the domain registration, that the company was actually in Israel, which isn’t actually covered by US Copyright law! Fortunately they did the right thing.)

We were talking about this over dinner and I realized I had a double standard going on. Not necessarily a bad thing but any internal inconsistency is alway s worth examining.

I was remarking that I am fairly certain there’s at least one school or college that’s using my HD Survival Handbook as a class text, which is not exactly being used in accordance with a single-user license that is the normal purchase. (BTW, we’re always happy to do very attractive bulk pricing for anyone that wants to reuse in a school or commercial organization, as we did recently.) But the thing is I wasn’t particularly upset by it. Sure, I would prefer that they made an arrangement with us for official distribution, but the thing is, I didn’t have any proof that they were doing something wrong. There may be a way that just the teach uses the work as a reference.

If I had actual proof put in my face – such as a student saying that the HD Survival Handbook was actually on a student-accessible server at her college – I would have to act. (In that case I sent a nice email to the original purchaser at that college stating what the student had said and he immediately made it right.) When I say “have to act” I actually mean it. Should an author not act on flagrant breach of the licensing conditions, there are circumstances where the author can lose the copyright exclusivity.

So I was struck with my apparent double standard. I am less worried about meticulously keeping the commercial writings only to those who purchased, than I am about these thoughts being widespread.  Partly that was because the instance with the aggregation site did not have link-backs to this site – the uploader had substituted links to their site, and the content was misused – wrong tags and confusing descriptions. My name even appeared on an article I didn’t write! But it’s also because a lot of what I write here are the beginnings of my thinking about something, or they’re going to be (or have come from) commercial writings.

Mostly, I think, it’s because the commercial products were written to be distributed widely. Plus, if there is a whole class or two that are using my work as their textbook, I’m still being compensated with reputation building. I’m not unhappy with the thought that a whole generation of student will grow up thinking that I provide accurate, understandable and useful information. I figure that will lead to some compensation some day. The portion that does pay for the downloads, and I like to think that’s the majority, make the project well and truly worthwhile, and frankly, I don’t think those students would have paid anyway! Whatever money a student has should be kept for the truly important things…

Here though, I’m writing as much to clear my thinking or have a record of something I’m fired-up about as anything. I don’t have advertising on the site and don’t expect it will be a commercial return. I do hope that it’s reputation building, and when you reproduce this work without authorization, you’re taking my reputation and using it for your own purposes. And I don’t like that.

PS

What I consider highly appropriate is to make reference to a post, summarize the main points – perhaps quote a paragraph or two – and then link to the permalink for the article here. (Click on the article headline and the URL will be the permanent link.) That type of use is a compliment.

During the discussion with Larry Jordan and Michael Horton, I posit that QuickTime X, like OS X before it, is a complex transition that necessarily takes many iterations to complete.

OS X 10.1 was missing even the most basic OS 9 features, but progressively we got all that was missing, and much, much more. QuickTime X is like that: we’ve got the basics of linear playback now and more will come over time as they rebuild/rewrite and refactor media creation and playback on OS X.

The interview’s only six minutes.

Philip Hodgetts on QuickTime X.

Of course, I don’t have any direct link into the mind of Grant Petty, founder of Blackmagic Design and don’t know more about the purchase of daVinci other than what Grant posted, but it’s such an interesting purchase that I can’t help but comment and guess.

Like so many of the industry’s giants of old, daVinci was losing money in the face of lower priced competition (Apple Color) and a reliance on mostly-obsolete 2K-limited hardware. On the other hand, Resolve is software only and resolution independent running on a cluster of Linux machines connected with Infiniband high speed data interconnect. daVinci also have Revival, although I don’t know anything about what advantages it brings.

Clearly, Grant thinks that the company has not been making the most of its opportunities and more focus on marketing and product development will once-again bring the daVinci brand to prominance. (Assuming it ever lost it.)

However, I don’t expect we’ll see Blackmagic Design suddenly want to start competing with Apple Color. I don’t think that’s the market and Grant himself seems to rule out that direction:

DaVinci Resolve is unique because it uses multiple linux computers linked together with InfiniBand connections and multiple GPU cards so you get the real time performance advantage it has. I donʼt think that can be lowered in price much, however over the next few years as technology advances this might happen a little. However, DaVinci is different to a DeckLink card because itʼs a high performance computing based tool. Our focus will really be on adding more features. Thatʼs what we want, and I guess others would too.

Possibly, some time in the future, a network of multiple Linux machines might be replaced by optimized code on some future 8+core Mac with awesome graphics card and an application written with Grand Central Dispatch and  OpenCL in mind. But don’t hold your breath! Combined CPU+GPU power has to increase a lot to replace multiple machines and the market is not that big.

I think the move will allow daVinci to continue developing their modern products and repositioning the company (to be operated independently of BMD) for the mid-size post house: those that have become dissatisfied with Apple Color but who would not have purchased a full daVinci hardware/software package. If the price could be, say $60K instead of $300K (or more) then that has a really good chance of reviving the brand and – in that inevitable trend – make higher quality available at lower price. That has always been Grant Petty’s goal, so it seems this is consistent.

My friend James Gardiner wrote an interesting post “Are large Post Houses a sunset industry?” and it set me thinking. Now James is writing from an Australian perspective and “large post house” and “boutique” post house have quite different expectations of size than the Australian context. (For example, Alpha Dogs in Burbank bill themselves as a “boutique” post house but in Sydney or Melbourne they’d be one of the larger post houses.)

In general principle he’s right. The economics of the large post facilities (really factories) of the size of IVC, FotoKem, Ascent Media’s various facilities are changing. They probably always have been. And certainly there are signs that the very large post-focused facility in New York and Los Angeles are threatened. Long-term post Burbank post factory Matchframe sold a majority stake for just $300,000 (mostly because of long term debt it is presumed). The costs of maintaining the “heavy iron” of a big post facility can be millions a year.

In general principle I agree with James: these large facilities are probably a sunset industry. But he identified one point that I wanted to expand on.

What a big post house bring to the table is more then just services, they bring know how and knowledge.  You KNOW it is going to work.

That alone is the reason that there will (almost certainly) be facilities like these big post factories: at least in LA and NY. These facilities are large enough to be able to experiment and invest in discovering the best workflows (as, indeed, do the people at Alpha Dogs et. al.) and technologies.

But knowledge gets shared. This is one of the absolutely best things about the current Internet Era: knowledge is freely shared in ways it never could be before.

Look at RED workflows. The RED Digital Cinema camera is a big step forward in performance-for-price and a new class of digital cinema camera. When it was first released the tools and workflow where completely unexplored. None of the major NLE companies had native support for the new wavelet codec and working between NLE and color correction caused nightmares.

Two years on and there are established “best practice” workflows across Final Cut Pro, Media Composer and Premiere Pro. Pretty much anyone who does a little research can find a workflow that’s tested. Where did the posts you find when you do that Internet search come from? People who have solved a problem, sharing the solution with other who have the same problem.

Frankly, this information sharing is what made my reputation. As a very early adopter of NLE (specifically a very early adopter of Media 100) I ran into problems earlier than those who purchased later. I also discovered email groups in early 1997 and benefited from the shared experience of the Media 100 Email List of fellow travelers dealing with NLE in the mid 1990’s. (All digital for more than a decade now.)

I don’t know what form the future post-house/factory will be, but what will survive are the “centers of knowledge” because ultimately that’s more important than expensive, but infrequent access to high-priced technology.  The latter will continually get cheaper and people will find smarter, faster ways to do things, that ultimately become best practice and the “norm” again.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out two of our own tools that can give a FCP facility and edge: Sync-N-Link synchronizes dual system video and audio in minutes rather than hours, or if you’re working with an edited Sequence replacing camera audio with multi-track in hours instead of weeks. Sync-N-Link is already being used across a lot of Network and Cable series.

Producers have been printing out EDLs and trying to match them to a spreadsheet to report clip usage or music usage: a tedious task for sure, but one that can be automated with Sequence Clip Reporter, which just takes the pain out of creating a video, audio or combined report, including a reel-by-reel report if that’s what you need.