The present and future of post production business and technology

Apple’s new Apple TV and 99c TV show rentals are definitely a step in the right direction but the cost is ridiculous.

Peak, premium, the best there is, content on major networks gets between 25 and 65c per viewer per show in revenue. That’s the top, highest end. So yes, the top of the top could conceivable rent for 99c, but the lesser shows? No way I’m spending 99c to watch a Daily Show (10 to 25c tops).

Last October I did a detailed tracking of what we watched and priced it out in the Apple store of the day. We watched that month an average of an hour and a half a day and the “best price” (taking advantage of Season Pass discounts) was $112.55. With rentals that would drop to $85.14.

Now, Dish (or Cable or whatever) 100 channel plan is around $65 a month, but I can watch up to 640 hours in that month (or record it for time shifted viewing. That’s about 10c an hour, not $1 per show. Of course, no-one can watch or record 640 hours in a month. The American Average is 135 hours a month of viewing (depending on who you ask, this is the conservative, lower end) or around 43c per hour, not per show.

An HBO subscription, with 32 hours of original programming a month equates to about 31c per hour, not show.

Part of what I find egregious about Apple’s new pricing is that it’s 99c for a 22 minute show, 99c for a 44 minute show or 99c for an extended episode. No allowance for the fact that some shows are worth more than others.

I’d cheerfully pay 10c per Daily Show. If I did and Apple too their 35%, that’s roughly 6.5c per show per viewer by 2 million viewers or $130,000 revenue per episode against approximately $35,000 per episode in cost. That’s an improved deal for the Daily Show producers and a fair deal for viewers.  The absolute maximum I’d pay for a Daily Show is 25c and at that I think it’s a rip off.

Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, Burn Notice et al I’d be happy to pay 50-65c but not 99c. Even at that these shows would be better off with this revenue model.

So, nice try Apple but until watching 4-5 hours a day, every day for a month has to be under $60 a month in total for it to be considered a cable replacement. Of course, this may not be Apple’s doing at all. It’s much more likely that the content owners have some ridiculously outsize estimate of the “value” of their content.

Video: Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad http://bit.ly/bHaKkM

And yet, people think it can be done on an iDevice and even want it!

While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset, all of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.

So, to be clear. There is no working version of Flash running on any smartphone, but somehow Apple should magically make it work on their devices with no access to the source code? In what reality is that reasonable?

Connecting the Dots (AV Foundation and QuickTime) http://bit.ly/9CEpCo

It seems increasingly likely that the reason that QTkit hasn’t had much work, is because the focus has gone into recreating what QuickTime does, in iOS, with a plan to move it back to OS X with 10.7.

Remember, Final Cut Pro can’t be “Pure Cocoa” and 64 bit before “QuickTime” is.

Introduction to AV Foundation http://slidesha.re/aYEJfR To be honest I don’t know why this isn’t hidden behind an NDA, but it’s not and until someone has it taken down, and asks me to do the same, I’ll consider it public knowledge.

Now, AV Foundation is the iOS media system, so we’re not talking about QuickTime per se but I have to wonder.

QuickTime – the real OS-centric media framework, not the little sub applications that function as players – is transitioning from C APIs (Carbon) to Cocoa via QT Kit. Trouble is, QT Kit got a lot of work around QuickTime 7’s release, but not so much in recent years. And yet Final Cut Pro needs a lot of what’s not written, before it can release a Cocoa version of Final Cut Pro.

Actually, Apple could do what Adobe have done for Premiere Pro CS5. In rewriting their core media handling engine, Adobe retained QuickTime support by spinning it off into a 32 bit thread, but that’s a complex workaround that does nothing for performance, nothing positive anyway.

When you consider slide 9… Even though it was only introduced in iOS 2.2, extended in iOS 3 and “completed” in iOS 4 (consider the reference framework growth in slides 6, 7 and 8), AV Foundation has 56 Classes and 460 Methods (the more you have of these, the more you can do with it). QT Kit has 24 Classes (less than half) and 360 Methods. Compare that with the (very mature) QuickTime for Java with 576 Classes and more than 10,000 Methods. Something tells me that QT Kit is not in favor at Apple.

Not that I think QuickTime is going away, at least not as a brand for their media players and the overall technology. I say that because, although the code that’s in iPhone OS shows a simplified player, that was all that was originally released and it shared no “QT Classes or Frameworks”. So, the QuickTime brand is likely to be retained.

If I was extrapolating from this presentation, and I am extrapolating wildly from a small amount of data, I’d guess that the direction within Apple was toward the more modern Classes and Methods of AV Foundation, and that, eventually, AV Foundation, Core Audio, Core Animation and Core Media will replace what we currently have under QuickTime on OS X: Core Audio, Core Video (well, just a subclass of Core Image) and a lot of deprecated (do not use) C APIs.

If you consider slide 14, and the similarity of Classes between QT Kit and AV Foundation it makes no sense to build two technologies in the company that were essentially doing the same thing.  Slide 29 shows how similar an AVAsset is to a QTMovie. The other Classes all seem to duplicate functionality that’s in QuickTime now, but in efficient, new, modern code. Capture, editing, playback, media formats… they all seem to be in AV Foundation duplicating work done (or not yet done) in QuickTime’s QT Kit.

Importantly Core Media Time is in “n’ths of a second” not “ticks” or “events”. Media based on time will be better for video frame rate uses than one based on ticks or events, which caused the “Long Frames” problems of earlier versions of Final Cut Pro.

In support of my hypothesis I offer slide 42: specific references to AVAssetExportSession.h being available in OS X with 10.7 and likewise CMTime.h has a reference to becoming available in 10.7.

So, I’ll go on a limb and suggest that QuickTime as we’ve known it is somewhat dead; long live a new QuickTime. QuickTime will continue being the branding, but everything “below that” will transition to new architectures essentially ported from iOS to OS X.

This would be a very good thing. A completely new, modern, efficient (you see what it does on the iPhone) underpinning for QuickTime down below that QT Kit layer.

Who wouldn’t want to use that in an modern NLE, even if it means waiting for OS X 10.7, which hasn’t been announced yet? It would make it much easier for the Final Cut Pro team to create a much more powerful media engine than it has now; one that really understands time and not events and one that mimics the power of Adobe’s Mercury Engine. Let’s face it, media performance on a 1 GHz A4 chip is in some ways better than the performance on 8 core processors. iMovie for iOS, built on these frameworks (if slide 24 is to be believed) can edit Long GOP H.264, which Final Cut Pro can’t! (And in both cases the H.264 playback is accelerated by hardware: dedicated chips in the iPhone, on the graphics card in OS X.)

As always, conjecture on my part, and this time based solely on what I’ve learnt from the quoted slide show. Chris Adamson does not work for Apple but he does claim expertise in iOS and QuickTime. Other posts on his blog indicate some differences between AV Foundation and QuickTime; and Classes still missing from AV Foundation that are in the current version of QuickTime. That shakes my confidence in the hypothesis a little, but given how little work has been done on QT Kit in the last two years, and the need to have the foundations for QuickTime modernized, it still seems like the most likely path Apple will take.

Another data point is that the QuickTime X player was promoted thusly:

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone™, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari® with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.*

Pioneering the technology under iOS, and then porting it to Mac OS X has happened already.

UPDATE: Chris Adamson, who did the presentation I referred to, clarified many of the points I get wrong or wrongish, including the fact that AV Foundation is not under NDA. His Connecting the Dots post is essential reading if you’ve got this far!

iTunes at 99c per series per month??? http://bit.ly/cINIzR

Right now it’s a single-source rumor so it can hardly be taken seriously, but the price point is “right”: about the same net revenue to the network as from advertising. We watch about 10 shows in any typical month, and $10 would feel very right to me.

I guess we’ll know next week.

Steve Jobs, Circa 1997, Reintroducing Apple http://nyti.ms/ctAEHP

Steve Jobs, uncharacteristically in shorts, presenting to what seems like a mostly in-house audience in the Campus Town Hall space discussing what Apple stands for.

It’s very, very valuable to understanding the mind of the man who runs Apple and turned it around from near-death to “bigger than Microsoft”. A focus on people rather than MHz and the like, right back then.

He’s leading into the launch of the “Think Different” campaign, which moved me even at this distance.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

An In-Depth Look at the Google TV Interface http://bit.ly/chYF7B

I still think it ’s a mistake to try and put interface on the same screen as the display.  Put the controls on a second touch device! Works great with an iPhone.

UPDATE: Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, agrees with me. Check out his last point.

During a recent thread here where I “infamously” suggested Apple should drop Log and Capture for the next version of FCP, one of the topics that came up was the use of metadata. Most commenters (all?) appeared – to my interpretation – to feel that reel name and TC were the “essence” of metadata.

And yet, if we look at the most recent work of the Chief Video Architect (apparently for both pro and consumer applications) Randy Ubilos we see that Location metadata is a requirement for the application. According to Apple’s FAQ for iMovie for IPhone if you don’t allow iMovie for iPhone to access your location metadata:

Because photos and videos recorded on iPhone 4 include location information, you must tap OK to enable iMovie to access photos and videos in the Media Library.

If you do not allow iMovie to use your location data, then the app is unable to access photos and videos in the Media Browser.

You can still record media directly from the camera to the timeline but, without the Location metadata, you’re pretty much locked out of iMovie for iPhone for all practical purposes.

There is no location metadata from tape capture! There’s not much from non-tape media right now, although some high end Panasonic cameras have an optional GPS board. However P2 media (both DVCPRO HD and AVC-I) as well as AVCCAM all have metadata slots for latitude and longitude.

Now, I’m NOT saying that Apple should force people to use metadata – particularly if it’s non existent – and this type of restriction in a Pro app would be unconscionable. I merely point out that this shows the type of thinking within Apple. In iMovie for iPhone they can create a better user (consumer) experience because they use Location metadata for automatic lower third locations in the themes.

Where I think it’s a little relevant is in counterpoint to some of my commentors: building an app that’s reliant on metadata is a different app than one relying on simple reel name and TC numbers.

My friend Terry Curren and I get together for lunch periodically. Last time he was trying to convince me, among other things, that Apple will drop Log and Capture from the next version of Final Cut Pro. I resisted the idea until I realized that not only was he right, but that Apple should drop Log and Capture. Here’s why.

Tape is deadish now, will be more so in 2012.

After revising the HD Survival Handbook last year I realized that HDV and tape in general was dead. HDV was the last tape format for acquisition and that too is now (according to me) officially “dead”. (Not that it’s out of use, but that it’s unwise to invest further in that format.)

So, given that I have considered tape to be “dead” for a year, how dead will it be in another 18-24 months? Very dead.

Sure, there will be people who need to capture from tape and output to tape. Output is already handled by Blackmagic Design and AJA with utilities that ship with their hardware. Blackmagic Design’s version includes capture.

Rewriting Log and Capture will waste engineering resources that should go into an improved Log and Transfer.

If tape capture and output is a third party opportunity (and both Blackmagic Design and AJA utilities are better at accurate insert editing than FCP is itself) then the engineering resources could go into improving Log and Transfer: speed and metadata support could be beefed up.

Dropping old technology and moving to new is in Apple’s DNA

We’ve dropped the floppy disk, ADB, and a host of other technologies. In the iDevices, Apple have frequently used the latest and greatest technology, so it’s much less likely they’d invest the resources that would be necessary to rebuild Log and capture.

So, I’m convinced: Log and Capture must go. Even though they have Cocoa code in the HDV version of Log and Capture I can’t see the benefit when the vast majority of FCP users in 2012 so it has to go. Leave an opportunity for third parties and move FCP into a newer, modern future.

Updated: Matt has a point in the comments that I should have addressed: tape will be with us for quite a while and I made almost all the same arguments to Terry before becoming convinced I was wrong.

Beside, tape is dead according to this image from Chris Roberts of a Copenhagen shop window:

It seems like an odd idea at first: could you fund a production – film or ongoing series – using iAds? After all, Apple have lined up $60 million in ad spend for the second half of 2010 and that would fund a lot of independent production! But how would it work?

First off iAds go in Apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad – or they will from early next month – and are an integral part of iOS 4. Any developer can add ads to their App simply and 60% of the revenue from ads goes to the App developer (or owner). That’s $36 million that’s going to be paid out to someone, why not your independent project?

I’ve long thought that the future of programming was Apps. An App, like a website, gives a single place for everything about your project: blog, previews, special content, upcoming events, merchandising etc. The advantage of not only having a website, but wrapping it an App is that the App will be a better fan experience, and it’s easy to add in-App purchasing of digital goods.

So, create an App for your project. This App will have:

• An area where you can read the production blog;
• Forums and chat around your project;
• The Twitter feed from your project;
• Connection into your Facebook presence;
• Previews of scenes or trailers of movies;
• The full project, with a little in-App purchasing (or not).
• Calendar for screenings, parties and other events around your project, including signup (filtered for just the geography of the fan if they want, thanks to GPS on most of the devices)

Having everything to do with your project in a mobile app on iPhone or iPad makes it much easier for your fans, friends and followers to stay involved and participate. Involvement will improve. (Connecting with Fans and giving them a reason to buy is a basic tenet of independent production in the digital era.) Plus fans will likely be clicking on some of those ads if they’re well targeted, bringing revenue to the project.

Plus, there a minor security advantage. There’s no download function in Mobile Safari and Apps can’t download very much. Plus there’s no way to actually get anything downloaded within an App out of the App to a computer. That means your finished, high quality version could be viewed in the iDevices without much risk of it being distributed without authorization. (Recognizing though, that it will get distributed unless you project just plain sucks!)

Who’s going to be the first to give it a try?