Some notes on FCP X and 7toX. (more…)

As promised, the latest release of Final Cut Pro X is released in “early 2012″ – January 31 to be precise. This release comes almost exactly three months after the last major release (with a 10.0.2 bug fix between the two), which was three months from the original release. (Is this to be an ongoing pattern?) (more…)

So, the cat is out of the bag. Assisted Editing – Greg and I – have announced the immediate availability of our newest tool to translate Final Cut Pro 7 XML into Final Cut Pro X XML. (more…)

The Entertainment Industry Is Large & Growing… Not Shrinking http://t.co/mTpfHe2C

Actually this is no surprise. The traditional players – RIAA and MPAA – keep complaining about how their “industry” is shrinking, but in fact: (more…)

In this attempt to summarize the state of a technology and its application to production and postproduction my focus is on image recognition, including facial detection and recognition. We’re exposed to facial recognition/detection technology in some current apps: Premiere Pro CS5 onward; iPhoto, Final Cut Pro X, Picassa, Facebook, with mixed success.

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At the San Francisco Supermeet Friday 27th January, Adobe’s Al Mooney revealed a sneak peek at a new application for the Creative Suite called Prelude. (more…)

How Copyright Industries Con Congress http://t.co/5c9Ye2Yq

I’ve long said that there is no credible support for the ridiculous figures of “loss” to the US economy either in dollars or jobs. Even the US Government Accountability Office says there is no credible support for any of the ridiculous figures of loss promulgated by the MPAA and RIAA. And yet, the numbers are repeated by politicians and the mainstream media to “prove” that “piracy” is a problem “we can all agree on”.

No we do not “all agree”. (more…)

The President’s challenge http://t.co/g4LQL9Ss was to the tech community to “solve” the “piracy problem” in the White House’s rejection of the current form of SOPA.

But it misses the point and Nat Torkington nailed it brilliantly. I’d post the whole thing but that would not be right. It’s short, go read it. (more…)

Although I’ve shamelessly stolen the title from Joe B (@zbutcher on Twitter) I think it does represent a shift in the way we work with our source media.

Now, before I start let me be clear. I am NOT saying timecode is unimportant. I’m NOT saying that timecode is passé and suddenly irrelevant. Timecode remains incredibly important for any tape based access.

What I am saying is that text search – or phonetic search derived from text – is becoming a highly viable, and in many ways superior, way to search and find content. Timecode’s primary role was in being able to identify any given frame from a tape by tape and frame number. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, but as humans we don’t think in “reel and Timecode”, which is why text is a superior option.

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Changing Viewing Habits the Key to Winning the Streaming Video War http://t.co/IDLK7vDg

My first thought when reading that headline was “well, d’oh”, because it seemed like an oversimplification of the scale of the problem. Sure, if everyone switched over to streaming video for their media consumption, then we’d be in a different position. Trouble is, people generally are watching more television than ever, via more traditional channels than internet delivered streaming content. (more…)