Category: General

Categories
Apple Apple Pro Apps General

What I’ve been saying about Final Cut Pro, AV Foundation and QuickTime

The anticipation might soon be over. At next Tuesday night’s Supermeet in Las Vegas we may get a sneak peek at what Apple has been working on. For those who aren’t regular readers of my blog, here’s links to my evolving thoughts on why Apple needs to rewrite both Final Cut Pro and QuickTime into a modern codebase, and why they may take this opportunity to not just rewrite, but to rethink how modern NLE software works.

The posts in bold are the key ones.

No doubt there’s some things I’ve written that are just plain wrong. But I’m expecting that on Tuesday night we’ll see the 64 bit Cocoa Final Cut Pro (using AV Foundation) that I wasn’t initially expecting until 2012, with a complete rethink of the NLE interface for the future.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Item of Interest

On 9/27/10 I said “Apple, have the right tools to really rethink the interface…”

On 9/27/10 I said “Apple, have the right tools to really rethink the interface and leapfrog the competition with a whole new application.“

Come Wednesday I think I’m going to be quite happy with my predictive track record.

Categories
Item of Interest The Technology of Production Video Technology

Doesn’t anyone shoot video on video cameras any more?

The project is not mine, but that of a client where I was called in to see if the “crew” (mostly just one guy) was going to be able to shoot content that will integrate with the existing project.

The thing is that  the rest of the project is HDV, XDCAM, DVCPRO HD, AVC-I, AVCCAM, some SD – so today we add DSLR!

This is not an art project so there’s no big advantage of a “shallow depth of field”. Most of the b-roll is coming from achieve SD video of varying quality, but because it was shot over a long period, without anyone keeping track of formats we end up with this sort of mess. A young and reasonably competent “editor” was on the job but totally unaware of the complications of having every known frame rate and format in the project (except DSLR until today).

Every different format complicates the project and adds additional processing time to bring everything to a common format before starting the edit, including mixing 23.98 and 29.97 frame rates.

And while Premiere Pro and Media Composer (and probably Final Cut Pro X) can deal with all these formats natively, I hope no-one would recommend that as a workflow for a large documentary project. Certainly AMA for Media Composer is a great way to choose selects from the native format and then transcode to DNxHD for the edit.

This is simply madness. Every one of us needs to educate producers and directors that mixing frame rates and formats is going to cost them a lot of money in post production. And then make sure the message communicates by charging what it costs.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Why Brands Are The New Labels (And Publishers, And Producers)

Why Brands Are The New Labels (And Publishers, And Producers…) http://tinyurl.com/3knt8xf

I have been a long time proponent of branded media because I find branded content to be much less intrusive than advertising. Branded media integrates with the program, hopefully in a relevant way, while advertising intrudes on a program with something likely to be irrelevant to me and my interests.

So I think this is yet another step along the way toward replacing intrusive advertising to models that are less viewer antagonistic.

Gone are the days of artists hoping and praying for that major studio deal  — which later they learn isn’t really that major. Instead they can take a paycheck from a brand and get pretty much the same thing as what they would get from your typical 360 deal offering.

But it’s not only music that is benefiting from having a brand as its studio.

Brands are positioning themselves as the new labels, no doubt, but they are also evolving into the content creators. There is, naturally, criticism of branded entertainment – it is necessarily the opposite of arms-length, unbiased reporting – but as the digital landscape has changed media integration, it has also increased consumer tolerance for brands looking for new ways to market. And if you want high quality content — whether that is music or print or video — someone needs to pay.  So, brands are stepping up as the new content publishers.

More changes coming of course…

At the March 2011 Shorty Awards, Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley pointed out that he saw an ad on TV encouraging people to discover the song in the Old Navy ad using Shazam. The call-to-action is then obvious: Purchase on iTunes.  Old Navy, Apple, a digital startup and an emerging artist all working together as one? That’s some epic progress – over some pretty blurry lines.  Expect more of this going forward.

Add in the extra news that Capital One is producing content and it’s a whole new world.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 24: The Netflix Advantage

Episode 24: The Netflix Advantage http://tinyurl.com/3urdxts

Terence and Philip consider the changes to the financial dynamics caused by Netflix’s funding ofHouse of Cards. Is Netflix a new studio model?  Where’s the opportunity for innovation in programming if everything is data driven?

Philip’ NAB session on “Growing and Monetizing an Audience” is mentioned. If you want to go and haven’t yet registered register at http://bit.ly/NABSM08 to get the discount automatically, or at http://www.nabshow/register using the code SM08.

Categories
Business & Marketing Random Thought

What is creativity, art, Art and design?

Recent conversations – in person and on Twitter – have had me thinking about creativity and art: what are they and how do they apply to film, television and other production?

Most people associate “art” with the fine arts, but I think the term gets used without much real content. Most often “art” is conflated with “creativity”. With the additional complication that most people don’t understand what they mean by “creativity”, once again conflating it with fine art.

Continue reading “What is creativity, art, Art and design?”

Categories
Business & Marketing General Random Thought

How disaster proof are you?

After perhaps one tsunami video too many, we got to talking seriously about backup and how “secure we were”. It was a disturbing revelation, particularly for people who live in an earthquake zone where the next “big one” is expected before I die!

Of course we both have dedicated drives for our Time Machine backups (being all OS X based here) but they’re in the same physical space as our computers, so if for some reason that was destroyed, we’d be no better off than having no backup.  Ditto the demonstration media and archives of projects. Locally they’re stored on a RAID 1 drive for redundancy.

Having started raising the question, what are the answers? And that leads to the examination of what it is that you would need to get your “life back”, at least close to where it is now. I thought I’d share our thinking to stimulate your thinking, not only about a total disaster, but an immediate smaller one.

Continue reading “How disaster proof are you?”

Categories
Item of Interest

7 Things “Dexter” Taught Me About the Future of TV

7 Things “Dexter” Taught Me About the Future of TV http://tinyurl.com/4pmhfds

I think the seven trends Will Richmond identified  through his experience with catching Dexter seasons 1 & 2 on iPad, are truly indicative. He explains each in detail, but here they are:

  1. The term “reruns” is obsolete – as is thinking Netflix is just for reruns;
  2. Data is king (real data about consumption way beyond Nielsen)
  3. The bar for advertisers is getting higher. More alternatives that are not advertising supported. (Again, see Netflix!)
  4. TV is personal and portable. Perhaps the biggest change of all along with:
  5. The concept of “scheduling” is upside down – count me as one of the “binge consumers”.
  6. Packaged media is dead.
  7. TV Everywhere is absolutely essential for pat-TV operator’s success, but they’ll manage to find a way to make it not work, and get beaten by, yes again, Netflix!

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

Death to the Shiny Disc

Death to the Shiny Disc http://tinyurl.com/686q9gl

Ethan Kaplan was recently heading up Warner Music’s technology efforts, particularly their digital side. His insider take is hard to set aside, despite its bottom line that the highly profitable monopolies have gone away, and that’s a good thing. Ethan puts it exceptionally well, so I’m only going to make one quote. Read the whole article if you care about the future of media.

Continue reading “Death to the Shiny Disc”

Categories
Item of Interest

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 23

The Terence & Philip Show Episode 23: The tape shortage crisis and what it means http://tinyurl.com/6ebmgad Are we facing a non-tape future

Terence and Philip start discussing the tape shortage crisis – particularly HDCAM SR – caused by the situation in Japan: is tape dead, or will it merely lead to a resurgence of D5! Who’s accepting file-based delivery, is that even practical, and who gets to drive the need for tape delivery.

Considerations of tape shortage leads to discussion on archiving non-tape sources, and the issues surrounding that. What do we do in a world with tape shortage and ever increasing costs of hard drives.