The latest release of 7toX for Final Cut Pro available today in the Mac App Store includes:

This free update is now available in the Mac App Store with support for the new version 1.2 XML (see my review of Final Cut Pro 10.0.6 for the full details). Which means that this versions requires 10.0.6 and won’t work with earlier versions of Final Cut Pro. Here’s the list of bug fixes:

• Bug fix for error reporting in PSD and nested sequences
• Bug fix for detecting empty logging fields
• Bug fix for missing or offline media

The latest release of 7toX for Final Cut Pro includes:
• Bug fix for mono audio clips appearing black (no media) in the timeline
• Bug fix for xml files ending with .XML
• Bug fix for clips with no media file
• Bug fix for clip naming in the Event

The latest release of 7toX for Final Cut Pro includes:

Seamless Video Editing – A Look Toward the Future http://t.co/ILZFqHDd

A provocative first paragraph:

A new application being developed by researchers at UC Berkely and Adobe Systems aims to do just that…helping editors identify the best spot to make a cut based off of audio and visual features of raw footage.  The program can auto generate seamless transitions to make the cuts visually smooth and undetectable.

Which sounds exciting, until you read later:

This tech seems useful for working with on-camera interviews (with only one subject), but in it’s current state it doesn’t seem like it would be effective at tackling more complex shooting situations.

So, which is it? Both and neither. Understanding how and why we make edits is complex, but it is/will be doable. Finding the base information on which to apply that algorithm is even harder. But it is inevitable. Certainly not for every type of edit, and not for every project. Given that an enormous amount of editing is not highly “creative” but somewhat routine.

I have long advocated that this type of technology will be developed and applied. When we were developing First Cuts, the algorithm would product a result and it would be “off” in some way – simply not what I would have done as an editor. That forced an examination of how I would have made the edit. That then lead to needing to quantify why I made the edit there.

That part was not easy, although I am fortunate to have a brain almost equally balanced between left and right – creative and analytic.

In layman’s terms: Spots of the video where there is little audio or on-screen movement are given priority as ideal spots to cut, and are plotted on a “cut suitability” timeline.  If necessary the application will insert natural looking pauses to bridge two cuts together.   From the product demo (embedded below) it appears that editors can simply delete text from the transcript view and the application will go to work creating a seamless transition.  An additional features allows for one-click removal of “ums” and repeated words.

They can go back one step. In an interview situation you generally have two voices: breaking an interview up on voice changes, and then paragraph breaks (which is what this research seems to be doing, but adding in the analysis of motion in video) is “trivial” once we get reliable speech transcription.

Reliable speech transcription is the key to unlocking an enormous amount of metadata-driven tagging/keywording and driving these sorts of automatic assembles. At this stage I see this more as an editor’s tool than for finished projects, although there are some applications in exploring large amounts of video material. (Something I hope to demonstrate by the end of the year using some of the Solar Odyssey footage.)

Should we go down this path? That’s an irrelevant question because, with downward budget pressures dominant in the industry, it’s inevitable. Those that can work smarter – using all the tools at their disposal – will continue to be needed.

And I firmly believe that the emotionally compelling, heart-tugging edit is going to remain beyond the ability of a computer for the balance of my lifetime.

There are many kinds of metadata, and previously I’ve noted six that are important to production. There’s a whole second category of metadata that’s more related to asset management, but they share the common goal of being able to find a specific shot, as quickly as possible. In this post I’m talking about what would be Added Metadata of the six.

For scripted material, this is relatively easy, particularly with tools like QR Slate, Movie Slate, and the like now available. For scripted material you have known assets: Scene, shot, take, character, etc., as well as one or two free form fields like Comment. It is with un-scripted material that we run into problems not solvable with those solutions (at least in their current forms). (more…)

Version 1.0.10 has just been released – thanks to the folks at the Mac App Store for granting an expedited review process! The main feature is that it fixes the offline media bug from version 1.0.9, but here’s the full list (including the fixes from 1.0.9):

• Bug fix for incorrectly seeing media files as offline
• Bug fix for multiple keyword collections created for keywords containing a comma (bin names containing a comma are replaced with a semicolon)
• Bug fixes for XML exported from Premiere Pro
• Bug fix for multiclips containing Motion projects
• Bug fixes for certain multiclip structures
• Bug fix for XML exported from REDCINE-X PRO
• Bug fix for media file paths with “illegal” characters

So, as I think I’ve mentioned, one thing we’re doing for Solar Odyssey is to find a way of entering metadata at the time of shooting, and then use time of day to match metadata and media. Metadata logging doesn’t require the accuracy that synchronizing cameras or double system audio does – for that you need Timecode.

June 14th’s shoot day was the first day I started to use it, once I got a better understanding of how it works. So during the day I logged (knowing I’d made mistakes along the way) the day’s shoot, using a web browser interface to the online web application that does the logging. (more…)

While we released this yesterday, I’m getting a bunch of reports that online media is reporting as offline in FCP X. Please do not upgrade until we can examine the cause and (likely) put out a bug fix as 10.0.10.

The latest release of 7toX for Final Cut Pro includes:

• Bug fixes for XML exported from Premiere Pro
• Bug fix for media file paths with “illegal” characters
• Bug fix for multiclips containing Motion projects
• Bug fixes for certain multiclip structures
• Bug fix for XML exported from REDCINE-X PRO

At this time I should be well underway with Solar Odyssey but as the boat is not yet ready, I find myself shooting “the road to Ra” or how it all came together after the deadline! (more…)