Digital Production BuZZ

The little show that I co-created nearly five years after a successful five years with DV Guys (although I was only managing editor for the last 3 years of that show) has now been the official NAB Podcast for 2009 and 2010. Big props to Larry Jordan, Cirina Catania, Debbie Price and the amazing team they put together for NAB 2010. I filed some special reports, which you can hear among the more than 70 shows the team pulled together in the six days of NAB.

3D Everywhere

Whether it’s Panasonic’s “Lens to Lounge” or Sony’s “Camera to Couch” 3D was everywhere. Everywhere except actually being able to do something with all the 3D content we’re being pushed to produce. I’m aware that the top grossing movies last year were 3D and 3D movies perform better than 2D. I just don’t see that as being relevant to my universe where I don’t distribute my work through a major studio to 2000 cinemas.

So short of that, where’s the outlet for all the 3D? YouTube plays 3D (but is incredibly hard to monetize). The Blu-ray 3D spec is finalized but no shipping players, burners or encoders are available.

While I have no real quibble with the cinema experience – although films need to be designed for 3D, and shot with 3D in mind, to be successful 3D experiences (and few are) – I am very skeptical about 3D in the home, at least for the next couple of years. The problems of the glasses – I multitask a lot of the time while watching TV, what about visitors, or preparing dinner? – and the very different nature seems to limit the future of 3D in the home to those who have dedicated home theaters and dedicated, monotasking viewing time.

The missing Apple

Of course, if you’re a regular reader you’ll know it came as no surprise that Apple wasn’t at NAB. They don’t do trade shows any more so it was highly unrealistic to expect anything at NAB this year, next year, or any year. When they have something to announce, they’ll announce it.

You’ll also be aware that I believe Apple is doing a lot of what they need to do with Final Cut Pro to make it the “awesome” release that Steve Jobs tells us it will be. Maybe 2011 some time, but more likely early 2012 for the next awesome Final Cut Studio release. Or whenever Apple is ready!

Avid Media Composer 5 and editing in the cloud

The new management (current management) at Avid certainly appear to be spot on track. Media Composer 3.5, 4 and now 5 have all been great releases. As more of the work this management team are pushing comes to the public, the more I see the company back on track.

In fact hearing “interoperable” and “openness” sprinkled regularly into the press event and marketing materials seems slightly out of character from the old Avid, but is very welcome. Direct editing of QuickTime media, HDSLR or RED media via AMA for quick turn-around content is a huge advancement. Improvements to audio filters (and eventual round-tripping to a future version of ProTools) are long-standing requests from Avid’s customers. Even the “expensive” monitoring (output only) requirement has gone thanks to support for an MXO Mini for monitoring. (I wish that was an option back in January – it would have saved a client of mine about $18K!)

While only a “technology demonstration” at this point, Avid’s “edit in the cloud” (i.e. over the Internet or from a Local Server) looks like the real deal. Scott Simmons has a review of the demo over at Pro Video Coalition. Avid is back and we like it.

Adobe CS5

I doubt there’s much to add to Adobe’s CS5 announcements. The Mercury Engine is a major step forward in performance and it will take the others a while to catch up. To be competitive Apple would have to rewrite FCP to 64 bit and then implement Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL to deliver that level of performance (and that’s what I expect they’re doing). Adobe’s platform-agnostic code (at the core) has made it easier for them to move to 64 bit, and tight integration with Nvidia’s CUDA engine, on top of some mighty software optimizations, gives the performance boost.

The whole Master Collection is a must-have for post production for After Effects, Encore, Photoshop and Illustrator alone. Premiere Pro is a bonus and could well become the Swiss Army Knife of editing tools as it supports pretty much any format natively.

Pick of the show

The pick of the show for me is, without a doubt, Get: phonetic search for Final Cut Pro. Search your clips for specific words wherever they occur. The exact opposite of Adobe’s Transcription (although that can be boosted by feeding it a script in CS5) Get does not attempt to derive meaning from the waveforms that make up the audio. Instead it predicts what the waveform for your search terms should look like, then goes and tries to match it in your media.

It has certainly set my thinking cap buzzing. What we could do at Assisted Editing with this technology would be amazing – almost delivering my “magic future” for metadata I spoke of at my two presentations. But for now, Get is an amazingly powerful tool that every documentary filmmaker will want to be using.

Hardware trends you might have missed

Not many of the main news streams picked up on the trend to multiple cards, or multi-channel cards, this NAB. Obviously 3D capable cards were announced (by AJA and Blackmagic Design) but AJA also announced that multiple Kona cards can co-exist in the one host computer; while Blackmagic Design announced a dual channel card, and Matrox promised a four channel I/O card.

What we’ll be using this multi-channel capability for, I’m not quite sure, as no software supports it, yet. Except, Blackmagic Design used to have a two channel software switcher in their product range (although it seems to be missing from their website right now). A dual channel Decklink card, with software switcher, makes a very powerful and inexpensive studio or location tool with a Mac Pro. Seriously undercuts dedicated switchers from Focus Enhancements or Pansonic.

$999 daVinci

Blackmagic Design almost deserve a post of their own on the NAB announcement (that you no doubt followed here) of the $999 software-only daVinci. Scott Simmons reminded me in a Tweet that I had accurately predicted a dramatic price drop for the daVinci system. What I didn’t predict was how far, and how fast, Grant Petty would drop the price. What I expected to come in at $60K was announced as a turnkey system for $30,000! I didn’t expect the software only version, although in reality, with hardware, monitors, scopes and storage, that’s still likely a $20,000 investment, for what used to be a minimum of $300,000 or more.

This is, of course, consistent with everything that Grant Petty has done with Blackmagic Design. I remember the first Decklink announcement (on the DV Guys show) at under $1,000 and everyone wondered how the industry would cope. Those cards are now much more powerful, and even cheaper, and now we’re going down the same path with daVinci.

Friends, fun and the Future

For me, NAB is as much about friends as it is about the technology. It’s a time when my virtual communities intrude into real space. Once again, NAB proved to be two days too long and four nights too short. With about 20 parties happening Monday night and a similar number Tuesday, we need more nights to spread them over, and fewer days. I was done with the show floor by Tuesday afternoon and there were two days to run.

This year’s MediaMotion Ball was a great social event, as it always is; running into the Adobe party following. Tuesday’s Supermeet broke new ground with the “Three A’s” on stage together for the first time.

I made my contribution to the show via my Supermeet Magazine article, The Mundane and Magic Future of Metadata, which I also delivered as a presentation at the ProMax event and in the Post Pit on the show floor. The Supermeet Magazine should be available soon from Supermeet.com.

The future of post production automation is metadata. Check out the article and tell me what you think.

And that’s my NAB wrap for 2010. Other than to say, worst WiFi experience ever at the Sahara. Expensive and slow. It’s time for broadband to be included in the price of a room, like air conditioning (didn’t use); the Television (only to get the sign up details for the Internet connection); etc.

Here’s my interview with Larry Jordan where we announced it and the press release is below.

“Announcing Transcriptize on the Digital Production BuZZ”

Transcriptize expands the usefulness of Adobe Speech Transcription

Take transcriptions from Adobe Production Bundle to Media Composer, Excel and Final Cut Pro.

Burbank, CA (February 12, 2010) – Intelligent Assistance, Inc has introduced a new software tool that takes Transcription XML from Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 or Soundbooth CS4 and converts it text, Excel Spreadsheet or Final Cut Pro clip markers.

“Late last year, Larry Jordan asked if we could create something to make the Adobe Speech Transcription more available”, says Intelligent Assistance’ CEO Philip Hodgetts. “We thought that was a great idea and Transcriptize is the result, less than two months later.”

Transcriptize imports the transcription XML from the Adobe Production Bundle and allows editors and producers to name the speakers – something not possible in the Production Bundle. From there users have the option to:

Export a plain text file, suitable for the needs of a producer or to import into Media Composer’s Script Sync engine.

Export an Excel spreadsheet with a variable number of words per row – Perfect for a producer.

Open the XML from a Final Cut Pro clip and add the transcription to Markers where:

There are a variable number of words per Marker (including one Marker per speaker)

The speaker name is placed in the Marker name

Transcription appears in the clip Marker comment

Marker colors are used to identify each speaker (FCP 7 onward).

The transcription can be searched within Final Cut Pro.

Markers can be easily subclipped based on transcription content.

Transcriptize is available now from www.assistedediting.com/Transcriptize/. MSRP is US$149 with an introductory offer of $99 until the end of February 2010. NFR versions for review are available, contact Philip Hodgetts, details below.

RED Digital Cinema’s latest announcements and more on how we’re going to fund entertainment

http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com/BuZZ_Audio/Hodgetts_BuZZ_091105.mp3

More of my thoughts on the Democratization of production

http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com/BuZZ_Audio/Hodgetts_BuZZ_091126.mp3

My Look Back on 2009

http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com/BuZZ_Audio/Hodgetts_091224.mp3

My thoughts on what to expect in 2010

http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com/BuZZ_Audio/Hodgetts_091231.mp3

For the first time since I moved to the US in 2001, I wasn’t speaking in any part of the official conferences. That was a change for me. In fact, I was heading to Las Vegas and NAB 2009 with no official role(s) at all, apart from an offer to “help” Larry Jordan, Cerina and Debbie, and their amazing crew, with the NAB Show BuZZ. This year the Digital Production BuZZ was the official podcast of NAB and I couldn’t have been more proud. How the show has grown under Larry’s guidance!

Greg, my long term partner, had a much more clearly defined role as streaming engineer – basically fixing anything podcasting, internet or web page that needed fixing. He was pretty busy all week. Ultimately I did some special reports and contributed to the regular news feed while everyone’s attention was focused on putting out 37 shows in six days.

My first impression of NAB was that it was quieter. That was on Saturday before the show opened, but the show floor was cleverly hiding a distinct drop in floor space – more aisles, three carpet aisles and lots of comfortable seating areas each one representing a no-show to the show.

Attendance was officially down – about 17-18% in pre-registrations for a start. Tuesday turned out to be the busiest day of the show floor as many people planned their trip to avoid the Monday crush! So many that Monday felt like a regular Thursday it was so quiet.

As well as registrations being down, I got the feeling that people came for fewer days. I heard of a number of people who caught early flights into the show and a late flight out that same day, and people staying two days, instead of three or four. But the quality of attendee was very good.

It seems that the economic conditions weeded out students and tire kickers. Exhibitors report good sales leads and quality attendees, which is good.

Socially (well, that’s the main reason I go to NAB now) the week went well. The highlight had to be the AJA party at JET in the Mirage. They booked out the nightclub and invited a couple of hundred of their dearest friends. A great night was had by all and the AJA guys should be very proud of the Ki Pro, Io Express and Kona LHi announcements. I hear they had a good year last year and this year’s shaping up to be even better.

Monday night’s MediaMotion Cafe was a less formal version of the regular MediaMotion Ball, set in what felt like deep suburban Las Vegas, even though it was really only a couple of blocks past The Palms. A lot of great friends, although the night was a little dampened by the loss of Mik Vitti but brightened by Blackmagic Design’s sponsorship. A good time was had by all because by the end of the night the sponsors had more free drink tickets than takers!.

Monday was also both the formal and informal Avid Events, which I had planned to attend as well as the MediaMotion Cafe but logistics – the Cafe was further from the Strip than I expected) made that a little difficult. I hear it was a good night as well.

Tuesday night’s Supermeet was the other highlight of the week for me, since I’ve been part of that community since it’s inception and worked with Mike Horton on the BuZZ and count Dan Berube among my friends. (Real friends, not just Facebook.) 

It was also the formal, if that could be said, launch of my new book The New Now: how to grow your production or post-production business in changed and changing circumstances. A little bit of a departure for me, this being more a business than technical book, but I think the content is great. More of that in a subsequent post but the digital download is live now, with paperback coming shortly.

The only presentation I did all week was on the subject of Growing your business in a recession at the ProMax Digital Lounge. It seems to have been well received – both the talk and the new format from the new ProMax. Over three nights, instead of the one big event, they packed the program with informative talks and presentations, great food (best of the show from our experience) and good quality surroundings.

Then it was off to the RED User party to get the only mind boggling information of the week. Graham Nattress has managed to develop a distribution codec for RED that puts full 4K of pixels down a 10 Mbit/sec pipe. That’s pretty amazing, well incredible.  I could see no difference in quality between this year’s show reel, played out uncompressed, and last year’s show reel at 10 Mbits/sec. That’s within the bandwidth I get from my cable service here in Burbank, so they could be streaming me 4K! 

Well, not soon as it needs hardware assisted playback afaik, but I think it’s an amazing piece of technology.

Our own technology face-off caught me off guard. First, the dates got all confused and they were busy reshuffling the Superbooth schedule to get us back into it. I had a nasty piece of bad health all morning (Unfortunately NOT caused by over-indulgence) and was delighted when Jim Mathers from the Digital Cinema Society had already selected two booth pieces and had them on the show floor. Saved the day because I was running very late thanks to the health problem. 

Then it turns out my editor didn’t turn up. Again due to the confusion and that he was setting up over at the Supermeet, so I had to step in and used a borrowed laptop and play the editor role, and try and MC. I can’t do both, so I fear the presentation was a little dull for the audience, for which I apologize. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.

As it turns out Finisher had a useful result faster. More on that later.

We also had some nice business leads. Not from anything planned, which pretty much takes me full circle to my post on why I was still going to NAB. The serendipity. The person who introduces you to someone else; the casual meeting in a line; or visiting a booth you didn’t know about. That’s NAB and that’s why I’ll probably be back for the 13th year in 2010.

More on the Finisher/Editor Faceoff shortly.

One common problem, as discussed in the BuZZ show of Jan 25, is the levels coming from Adobe After Effects. Video levels could be full range 0-255 in each channel (or 16 bit equivalent) instead of the 601/video range of 16 -235.
May be some useful information at
http://www.dv.com/features/features_item.php?articleId=196601411 (might have to set up a free log-in)
and for super technical background
http://www.poynton.com/notes/colour_and_gamma/ColorFAQ.html

720 50P Capturing and Editing in Final Cut Pro

720 25 or 50P, workflow with Final Cut Pro

Fortunately this piece of lunacy is unlikely to go beyond grandstanding by Rep. Fitzpatrick, but if it did the “Deleting Online Predators Act” would be devestating for the Internet because it’s badly drafted and way too broad. If Wikipedia were commercial it would not be available in schools or libraries. And, just btw, MySpace and equivalent social networking sites now cover half the Internet’s users.

I say every legislator in every assembly should show a working knowledge or the subject before they’re allowed to vote on, let alone draft, legislation.