Author: Philip

Categories
HTML5 Item of Interest

Boxee Embraces HTML5, Switches to Webkit.

Boxee Embraces HTML5, Switches to Webkit http://bit.ly/bVtAsX

Not, as you might think another Flash refugee, but a switch from the Mozilla Gecko HTML rendering engine to the more popular Webkit HTML rendering engine. Webkit is fully open sourced and used in almost all mobile browsers, Safari and Chrome, but heavily subsidized by Apple with its development.

The switch to Webkit was:

The switch is an attempt to make full use of HTML5 within Boxee, but it should also help with accessing a wider array of video content that’s not yet available through dedicated Boxee apps.

Categories
Item of Interest

Interpreting Criticism of your ideas

Interpreting Criticism http://bit.ly/afHmK4

A good read from one of my favorite marketing-oriented writers.

Heartfelt criticism of your idea or your art is usually right (except when it isn’t…)

When people criticize a new approach, new product or new service, it’s from within the context of their existing assumptions. I’ve been dramatically wrong about technology trends, taking a little time to “get” the benefits of pay-at-pump in gas stations, or even ATMs, because my assumptions about what I wanted were wrong.

The useful element of this sort of criticism isn’t that the fact that people in the status quo don’t like your idea. Of course they don’t. The interesting question is:what about the world as it is would have to change for your idea to be important?

Categories
Assisted Editing

Breaking up clips to subclips using prEdit

Breaking up clups to subclips and adding log notes in prEdit for the first time on a real job. http://bit.ly/9nQv07

This week I started (belatedly after feeling off-color late last week) breaking up my interviews into subclips and adding log notes. One thing about working with a piece of software in production compared with in development, is that you usually find bugs or irritations that didn’t come up in development. Such it has been with prEdit. I’ve found, and Greg has fixed a number of bugs. He’s also made some changes to make the auto-complete items a little more logical. Of course, I have “privileged access” to the developer, but I think we’re as responsive to any of our customers who find issues.

prEdit, in case you don’t know, is designed to speed up the process of paper cuts in documentaries. We use the Adobe suite to get time-stamped text (more in a moment) locked to the media file. Adobe places that metadata in the file using their XMP metadata structures and we read the transcript directly from that file.

We found the Premiere Pro/Soundbooth speech analysis to be very variable – more so than Adobe would expect so we’re providing them some examples. What has worked exceptionally well is a “Transcription > Adobe Story > OnLocation > PPro for analysis. This keeps most punctuation (paragraph returns are ignored) and names and provides a great result. A half hour interview takes about 5 minutes to tag in Adobe Story, and less than a minute in OnLocation to associate the script and the media file to embed it.

Once we determined that was the most optimized workflow retained speaker names, I asked Greg for prEdit to automatically subclip those speaker paragraphs, since it seems obvious that we’d eliminate the Interviewer sections and having a long interview already subclipped makes life easier and results faster. That led to a feature request (now in prEdit) to be able to add metadata (log notes) to multiple subclips together.

Having used it on a real job for a full day, I have to say, it is everything I hoped and more. It’s so easy to enter log notes: probably 5x or more faster than entering them in Final Cut Pro.

I’m working on creating subclips: the real action happens when I get to building the story, but even making subclips based on text (and optional video playback in prEdit) from the blocks of text is so much easier than any other method I’ve used.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

Iron Maiden Connects With Fans and the Fans Buy.

Iron Maiden Connects With Fans And The Fans Buy http://bit.ly/dbtEup

I believe that the secret formula for monetizing media is based on Techdirt’s CwF+RtB=profit. Connecting with Fans and giving them a Reason to Buy. Iron Maiden have known this for years as they had to connect with their fans instead of relying on radio promotion to get the word out.

Now that the traditional revenue channels are drying up because they don’t serve the market well, that fan connection seems to be working for Iron Maiden, where there latest CD is selling very well on CD and has limited unauthorized download.

Then again, when you consider the advice from the band’s manager on why they’re successful…

“Invest in the long term. Apply an image. Give the fans what they want. Tour and keep touring. Play the festival circuit. Embrace new technology. Be innovative. Be honest. Be original. Write good songs.”

…you realize that maybe the product from the MPAA studios and RIAA labels just isn’t that great any more.

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest

Why Waiting Until A New Business Model is Proven Doesn’t Work.

Why Waiting Until A New Business Model Is Proven Doesn’t Work http://bit.ly/bcybin

Technology changes business models. That’s a given. The problem is, the business models that are being disrupted are often very big businesses, with good profits and the company doesn’t want to disrupt those nice, regular, current revenue streams in order to accommodate a new one. The new revenue is (at least during these phases of disruption) very much below what they are now. No doubt you recall NBC CEO Jeff Zucker’s fear that that the Web will turn “analog dollars” into “digital pennies”.

The examples quoted include Netflix (who innovated and disrupted because they had no stores to protect) and Blockbuster (who had stores to protect; and Kodak who saw digital coming, new it was important but failed to act in time leading to massive layoff and factory closures.

The problem with waiting until you see a clear path forward to the sorts of profits that will be available in a disrupted industry, it’s almost always way too late for the disrupted to catch up. This is why disruption does not come from the major players in an industry, but rather from the small innovator who has no legacy to protect.

There are a few reasons for this:

  1. Companies always misjudge the speed of trends, especially the rate of change. Things like digital revolutions start out slowly, and the quality seems bad. So companies in legacy businesses figure they have a long time to make the change. But the rate of change increases rapidly, especially once it “tips” and reaches a critical threshold. At that point, if you’re not fully invested in the new business, you’re, way, way, way behind.
  2. It’s difficult to really understand the new technology/market unless you’re playing deeply in the space. This is the same thing we noted with people who claim that patents are necessary because once a good idea comes along others will just copy it. In many cases, that’s not possible. That’s because the truly innovative ideas require some real hands-on experience. Watching others do it is not the same thing.
  3. It’s very difficult, culturally, to build up businesses that cannibalize your existing cash cows. The skill sets may be different, and people begin to recognize that these “new” people may be working on projects that replace the “old” people. That leads to a lot of resentment and makes it really difficult to actually hire the good new people — since they recognize they’re going to face those kinds of institutional restrictions. For them, it’s just easier to go to a “native” company that has bet entirely on the new offering.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

How Many Times Will Content Industries claim the sky is falling…

How Many Times Will Content Industries Claim The Sky Is Falling Before People Stop Believing Them? http://bit.ly/bUNPOi

I think we’re ready to stop believing them now. From Jack Valenti’s infamous comparison of Betamax/VHS to the Boston Strangler to today’s complaining about unauthorized distribution, the content production industries have fought every technological change. And every time that technological change has opened new markets for them. Instead of VHS/Betamax and DVD being the death of the MPAA studios it’s been the salvation.

It may, in fact, be the case that the sky is falling. But, if you claim that the sky is falling whenever a new technology threatens an existing business model, the rest of the world can be forgiven for not believing you when you claim that this time around it’s going to be different than all of the other times. Now, let’s be clear, each one of these technologies changed the business model of the industry. They caused certain revenue streams to decline. But they also opened up new ones.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps

Final Cut Studio 4: The Inside Scoop (from MacSoda)

Final Cut Studio 4: The Inside Scoop http://bit.ly/bb8vVB

While MacSoda implies they have a solid inside source – it certainly reads that way – there are some points that just don’t fit.

It’s highly unlikely that the next studio release will happen in early 2011, or even 2011. As I noted in the comments on the article, it seems very, very clear that the QuickTime we know will get a complete foundation change. Final Cut Studio would need many of those changes to be able to replicate Adobe’s Mercury Engine performance (along with the need to be 64 bit Cocoa and use Open CL and Grand Central Dispatch). It will need those changes for native support of anything other than QuickTime, which is why everything in FCP needs to be wrapped to QT, if not transcoded.

Every indication is that the move of AV Foundation from iOS to regular OS X will happen with OS X 10.7. No announcement has been made of 10.7 and past behavior would suggest that it won’t be announced until WWDC next year, with a most optimistic shipping date of September 2011. Allow at least six months for any applications to be finished on that platform and for a typically 2-3 month beta testing period and it’s virtually impossible to have a release in 2011.

According to job advertisements, Apple were hiring interface designers for ProApps just a few months ago. Presumably by now the jobs have been filled but that would be the beginning of a large amount of work that cannot be done in just a couple of months. To rework the ProApps (Interface) Kit will go across all applications and, again, that’s not trivial. MacSoda seems to think there won’t be major interface changes, but there are already reports of iMovie ’09 elements being included in Final Cut Pro’s current builds. (AppleInsider, and my article, Why Apple Insider Couldn’t be more wrong.)

Randy Ubilos has never been one to shirk from making major changes to interfaces, viz. iMovie ’09 which completely dropped the iMovie ’08 interface. Randy does know that editors don’t like change, but he also knows that you can’t make major improvements if you can’t make changes. Lots of people at LAFCPUG wanted features from iMovie ’09 in FCP when it was demonstrated in LA.

The comments about code rewriting, architectural changes sound plausible enough, although through the lens of someone who has never written code nor understands the procedure. (My day job is mostly a Product Manager for OS X applications in professional video mostly around Final Cut Pro, so I do have some insight into the code-writing process.)

Then there’s much that’s conjecture but I think is reasonable although the comments about Motion and Shake aren’t part of them. Apple is not embarrassed about Motion. What Motion is designed to be: a motion graphics tool for editors, not professional motion graphics designers who will use the more-powefull (and much harder to learn) Adobe After Effects. And so they should, After Effects is a powerful tool. Those folk use Motion as a “plug-in” to After Effects because Motion does some stuff that After Effects doesn’t. Shake, on the other hand, was a specialist compositing (not motion graphics) tool for special effects compositors. While it’s sad that Apple appears to have killed Shake and it’s kind, the purposes of the two programs – as anyone who really knew what they were talking about would know – is so dissimilar that it would be counter-productive to have both functions in the one tool. Shake was node-based; Motion (like After Effects) is layer based. Fundamental differences. I’d like a Shake replacement because the VFX industry needs it. But that’s not who Apple, mostly, make tools for.

Most tools are Perato apps. My word. The Pareto Principle is also known as the 80/20 rule. In my opinion, other than Final Cut Pro (and maybe true of Final Cut Pro too) Apple make the tools that 80% of people need, 80% of the time. Pages is not Word (but I prefer it because it’s less antagonistic than Word); Numbers is not a competitor to Excel in the professional market, but it’s a dmaned fine spreadsheet that meets my needs perfectly. Keynote is simply superior to PowerPoint in every respect – they got a hit! Motion is not After Effects, but it’s much more accessible than unlocking all the power that’s in  After Effects; Soundtrack Pro is not ProTools nor does it pretend to be (although I’m told that Logic Pro competes strongly with ProTools). Apple make the Perato apps, and they make them very accessible through thoughtfully designed interfaces so that more people get productive. And in business, productivity equals dollars.

Fun Fact: Shake was not really a full-functioning application in the normal way we think of it. The GUI essentiallly built a script that the compiler (the part that did the work) put together. A Shake project was essentially the scrip that would run to produce the result. And a lot of the power came from third party plug-ins bundled.

I think he’s right that the next release will be re-architected to take advantage of the new foundations of QuickTime; 64 bit Cocoa, Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL and be performance competitive with any other NLE, including Premiere Pro CS 5 (and CS6 no doubt).

His DVD/iDVD comments are interesting but appear to be lacking in anything other than conjecture. I expect DVD Studio Pro to either go away (most likely) or stay in the package as it is. There will never be Blu-ray authoring for OS X. My friend and conspirator in The Terence and Philip Show thinks DVD Studio Pro will be replaced with a “Publish to iTunes” button, but I’m skeptical, simply because of the legal issues around copyright that won’t be checked with an auto-publish button (although in fairness, an iApp-like review process would address that). There’s also the need to distribution material in other places than via iTunes – for Event videography for example.

As for Compressor. We’ve had, what, four releases, with three interface overhauls over the life of the product. If they’re not happy with it yet, hire some folk from Telestream, who do seem to be able to do an encoding engine right. (The new version of Episode coming is a very nice redesign btw).

Then we come to the comment  that:

Native RED support hasn’t come yet due to bickering between both Apple and RED… neither will compromise the licensing negotiations, so native RED support is a technical go, but a legal stalemate. Whether or not the legal issues will be resolved by the next major release is uncertain.

Native RED support requires a media foundation other than QuickTime. Period. There is no way native RED support – i.e. use of R3D native in Final Cut Pro as it is in Premeire Pro CS5 and Media Composer via AMA, simply cannot be done with the current version of QuickTime. We already have what can be done and that is a quick rewrap of the native R3D codec into a QuickTime container. As for the rest of the comment: Apple have had the closest relationship with RED of any NLE.

And really, the only quibble I have with his final paragraph –

That’s all I’ve got for now. I know I haven’t posted in a while, but hopefully this information will tie everyone over until the release hits. Just know that Apple has not abandoned their pro apps in the slightest… there’s a team at Apple working on them just as hard as the iPhone team works on the iPhone. Apple wouldn’t be employing dozens of people with large salaries if they didn’t think there was a future for the product. The fact is this… Final Cut Studio 4 is coming soon, it’s a major, functional, flashy upgrade, and should make the long wait for a “real” upgrade more than worth it.

– is that it’s unlikely to be “soon”.

Categories
3D Interesting Technology Random Thought

What do Cinerama and 3D have in common?

 

If you look very closely at the restoration credits box at the bottom, you can see my credit as "Post Production Restoration Consultant".

 

Was at the Cinerama Dome to view the restored print of Windjammer and it occurred to me that there’s a lot of commonality between Cinerama (the three camera/three projector widescreen of the late 50’s and early 60’s) and 3D.

But first, a little back story. I have been consulting on the restoration of Windjammer as a technical consultant: making sure that the maximum amount of quality we could get from the print was available for the restoration.

I also advised on tools for the job. The Foundry’s Furnace Core featured prominently as did Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro. I also helped set workflow and kept everything running smoothly.

Unfortunately the complete negatives for the three panels of Windjammer are not complete. In fact the only place the entire movie is available was in a badly faded composite 35mm Anamorphic print.

You can see the trailer, remastering process and how we telecined (Oh look, it’s me in the telecine bay) online, but today was the only time it’s likely to be shown in a Cinerama Theater.

David Strohmaier and Greg Kimble did a great job on the restoration – all on Macs with Final Cut Pro and After Effects.

Now this wasn’t a full reconstruction so we worked in HD – 1080p24 – but used the full height during telecine and correction so we didn’t waste any signal area with black. For the DVD, due in early 2011, the aspect ratio is corrected and a “smile box” (TM) treatment to simulate the surround nature of Cinerama.

Because we were working in HD, I was pleasantly impressed by how great it looked at Cinerama size on the Arclight Theater’s Dome Cinema in Hollywood. (Trivia point: the Dome was built for Cinerama it never showed Cinerama until this decade.)

Another point of interest was that the whole show ran off an AJA KiPro as it did in Bradford earlier in the year, and Europe last month. Each Act of the 140+ minute show was contained on one drive pack. Can’t recommend the KiPro highly enough.

So, there we were enjoying the story (and restoration work) and it occurred to me that there were strong similarities in cinematic style between “made for 3D” 3D and Cinerama.

 

Before restoration, this composite image was washed out, lacking in saturation and very shifted toward red/magenta.
Before restoration, this shot was desaturated, shifted to red and blown out. (From the screening Sep 05, 2010.)

 

Cinerama seams together three projectors into a very wide screen view that was the precursor of modern widescreen. The very wide lens angles favor the big, panoramic shots and shots that are held rather than rapid cutting. Within this frame the viewer’s eyes are free to wander across multiple areas of interest within the frame.

Similarly, my experience of “made for 3D” 3D movies is that it is most successful when shots are held a little bit longer because each time a 3D movie makes a cut, it takes the audience out of the action for a moment while we re-orient ourselves in space. (Unfortunately there’s nothing analogous to that in the Human Visual System, unlike traditional 2D cutting, which mimics the Human Visual System – eyes and brain together .)

Both Cinerama and 3D work best (in my humble opinion) when the action is allowed to unfold within the frame, rather than the more fluid camera of less grand 2D formats or 3D.

Since 3D had its last heyday around the same time as Cinerama, maybe everything old is new again? Digital Cinerama anyone? (How will we sync three KiPros?)

And one little vanity shot since today was the first (and likely last) time I’ve had my credit up on the big screen in a real cinema:

 

My first (and likely last) big screen credit moment. 9/5/10
My first, and likely last, big screen projected credit.

 

 

Categories
Item of Interest

Is Flash on Android “Shockingly Bad” OR

Is Flash on Android “Shockingly Bad” or “Shockingly Great?” http://bit.ly/cXleXP Better results surface with more testing.

Michael Panzer, a reader from Germany, for instance, posted a video of his experience with Flash video on his Galaxy S. Unlike Kevin’s experience, movie trailers from Metacafe — including the HD trailer of Alpha and Omega — loaded just fine, despite a few stutters along the way, as did the trailer for the latest Resident Evil film, also in HD. However, Panzer didn’t record his attempt to watch videos on ABC.com or Fox.com, which were the sites that gave Kevin the most trouble.

It may be certain sites that cause it more problems than others.

Categories
Item of Interest

Episode 7 of The Terence and Philip Show

Episode 7 of The Terence and Philip Show is now available for comment and discussion. http://bit.ly/9DIcN1

In this week’s show, Terence and Philip discuss the politics of Industry Award Shows. Why should we care? Is there an alternative or does there even need to be one? If not awards, how do we judge skills, with a divergence down memory lane to the “Gunsmoke” footage and similar exercises. How do we judge the work of an editor? And only one reference to the “NLE from Apple”