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Intelligent Assistance Software Interesting Technology Lumberjack

Using Technology to Solve Problems

Thanks to an introduction by a mutual friend, I had the opportunity to chat with Alex LoVerde of SyncOnSet, and it stuck me that the best technology is one driven by a direct, and often personal need. It also struck me how different two ostensibly similar “metadata companies” can be.

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Intelligent Assistance Software Lumberjack

Where we’ll be at IBC 2018

Greg and I will be at IBC 2018 and we’re looking forward to seeing you there.

If you’d like to pick our brains for up to an hour, then schedule a meeting with us. We’ll run through your workflow and offer suggestions on where there might be efficiencies, or we’re happy to demonstrate the innovative Lumberjack Builder. If you’re a Lumberjack customer, we’d love to hear how you’ve been using it and how it could be better for you. We’ll even buy you a beer!

Other than those meetings we’ll be mostly hanging around the Atomos ProRes RAW Theater as that seems to be the center of FCP X action this year.

As there’s no Supermeet this year, those of us who’d see each other there, are celebrating the Not Very Supermeet so come join us there.

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Lumberjack Machine Learning Metadata

Speech-to-Text: Recent Example

For a book project I recorded a 46 minute interview and had it transcribed by Speechmatics.com (as part of our testing for Lumberjack Builder). The interview was about 8600 words raw.

The good news is that it was over 99.98% accurate. I corrected 15 words out of a final 8100. The interview had good audio. I’m sure an audio perfectionist would have made it better, as would recording in a perfect environment, but this was pretty typical of most interview setups. It was recorded to a Zoom H1N as a WAV file. No compression.

Naturally, my off-mic questions and commentary was not transcribed accurately but it was never expected or intended to be. Although, to be fair, it was clear enough that a human transcriber would probably have got closer.

The less good news: my one female speaker was identified as about 15 different people! If I wanted a perfect transcript I probably would have cleaned up the punctuations as it wasn’t completely clean. But reality is that people do not speak in nice, neat sentences.

But neither the speaker identification nor the punctuation matter for the uses I’m going to make. I recognize that accurate punctuation would be needed for Closed (or open) Captioning for an output, but for production purposes perfect reproduction of the words is enough.

Multiple speakers will be handled in Builder’s Keyword Manager and reduced to one there. SpeedScriber has a feature to eliminate the speaker ID totally, which I would have used if a perfect output was my goal. For this project I simply eliminated any speaker ID.

The punctuation would also not be an issue in Builder, where we break on periods, but you can combine and break paragraphs with simple keystrokes. It’s not a problem for the book project as it will mostly be rewritten from spoken form to a more formal written style.

Most importantly for our needs, near perfect text is the perfect input for keyword, concept and emotion extraction.

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Lumberjack

Logging Real Time? Don’t Panic, Back-time!

At Lumberjack System, we frequently get push back that it’s “too hard” to log during the shoot. If you’re manipulating a camera (reframing etc) then sure you can’t log. And if you’re holding a boom, ditto. But if you’re monitoring audio during recording, or running the interview, then it is totally possible to log during the shoot with no added stress.

I do it all the time. For my family history project I set up cameras, mics and audio records and run the interview and log. Lunch with Philip and Greg is much the same, with the added complication of eating.

The best approach is to work in back-time mode and relax. Back-time eliminates the stress of anticipating when an answer starts because you’re logging “in the past”

I typically work with the 5 second back time on by default. This means I can be fully engaged with the subject while asking the question, and continue to be engaged with them as they start their answer. I can glance down after a few seconds (fewer than five!) and tap on the keyword start.

This takes the stress and tension out of having to “get it right on the moment.”

Back time also allows us to add a new keyword and log it from up to 90 seconds in the past. Keyword range end is always the current time.

Categories
Artificial Intelligence Lumberjack Metadata The Business of Production

Modern Logging and Pre-Editing Approaches: “House Hunters” Style Reality TV

This is the first time I’ve taken a deep look at a TV show and worked out what I think would be the perfect metadata workflow from shoot to edit bay. I chose to look at Pie Town’s House Hunters franchise because it is so built on a (obviously winning) formulae, and I thought that might make it easier for automation or Artificial Intelligence approaches.

But first a disclaimer. I am in no way associated with Pie Town Productions. I know for certain they are not a Lumberjack System customer and am also pretty sure they – like the rest of Hollywood – build their post on Avid Media Composer (and apparently Media Central as well). This is purely a thought exercise built around a readily available example and our Lumberjack System’s capabilities.

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General Lumberjack

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 80: Should Apple (or anyone) go to Trade Shows

In a new Terence and Philip Show we start with the question “Should Apple be present at Trade Shows like NAB?” and then extend discussion to question whether there is still a role for big trade shows like NAB and IBC.

http://www.theterenceandphilipshow.com/episode-80-shoul…o-to-trade-shows/

Categories
Adobe Apple Augmented Reality Business Interesting Technology Lumberjack Machine Learning Metadata The Business of Production The Technology of Production

2017 – 2018 Introspection

If I was to summarize 2017 it would be: AI, HDR, VR, AR and Resolve. If you missed any trend they would be Artificial Intelligence (really Machine Learning); High Dynamic Range; Virtual Reality (i.e. 360 or 180 degree video); Augmented Reality; and Blackmagic Design’s Resolve 14.

As Augmented Reality is composited in at the viewer’s device, I doubt there will be any direct affect on production and post production.

Virtual Reality has had a good year with direct support appearing in Premiere Pro CC and Final Cut Pro X. In both cases the NLE’s parent purchased third party technology and integrated it. Combined with the ready availability of 360 cameras, there’s no barrier to VR production.

Except the lack of demand. I expect VR will become a valuable tool for a range of projects like installations, telepresence and travel, and particularly in gaming, although that’s outside my purview.

What I don’t expect is a large scale uptake for narrative or general entertainment functions. Nor in most of the vast range of video production. It’s not a fad, like 3D, but will likely remain a niche in the production world. I should point out it’s very possible to make good money in niches!

Conversely I would not buy a new screen without it being HDR compatible – at least with one or two of the major HDR formats. High Dynamic Range video is as big a step forward as color. I believe it provides a fundamentally better viewing experience than simply upping the pixel count.

High Dynamic Range is supported across the most important editing software but suffers from two challenges: the proliferation of competing standards and studio monitoring.

The industry needs to consolidate to one standard, or sets will have to be programmed for all standards. None currently are. Ultimately this will change because it has to, but some earlier set purchasers will probably be screwed over!

HDR studio monitors remain extremely expensive, and hard to find. There’s also the problem of grading for both regular and high dynamic range screens.

I have no doubt that HDR is fundamental to the future of the “television” screen. It will further erode attendance in movie theaters as the home experience is a better image than the movie theater, and you get to control who arrives in your media room!

In 2017 Resolve fulfilled it’s long growing promise of integrating a fully feature NLE into an excellent grading and DIT tool. One with a decent Digital Audio Workstation also integrated. Blackmagic Design are definitely fulfilling their vision of providing professional tools for lens-to-viewer workflows, while continuing to reduce the cost of entry.

When you hear that editors in major reality TV production companies don’t balk at Resolve, despite being Media Composer traditionalists, I do worry that Avid may be challenged in its core market. Not that any big ProdCo has switched yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see significant uptake of Resolve as an editing too in 2018.

My only disappointment with Resolve is that, as of 14.1, there is now way to bridged timed metadata into Resolve. Not only does that mean we cannot provide Lumberjack support, but no transcript (or AI derived metadata) import either. It’s frustrating because version 14 included Smart Collections that could function like Keyword Collections.

In another direct attack on Avid’s core markets, both Resolve and Premiere Pro CC added support for bin locking and shared projects. Implemented slightly differently by each app, they both mimic the way Media Composer collaborates. Resolve adds a nice refinement: in app team messaging.

The technology that will have the greatest affect on the future of production has only just begun to appear. While generally referred to as Artificial Intelligence, what most people mean, and experience, are some variation on Machine Learning. These types of systems can learn (by example or challenge) to expertly do one, or two tasks. They have been applied to a wide range of tasks as I’ve written about previously.

The “low hanging fruit” for AI integration into production apps are Cognitive Services, which are programming interfaces that help interpret the world. Speech-to-Text, Facial recognition, image content recognition, emotion detection, et. al. are going to appear in more and more software.

In 2017 we saw several apps that use these speech-to-text technologies to get transcripts into Premiere Pro CC, Media Composer and Final Cut Pro X. Naturally that’s an area that Greg and I are very interested in: after all we were first to bring transcripts into FCP X (via Lumberjack Lumberyard). What our experience with that taught us is that getting transcripts into an NLE that doesn’t have Script Sync wasn’t a great experience. Useful but not great.

Which is why we spent the year creating a better solution: Lumberjack Builder. Builder is still a work in progress, but it’s a new NLE. An NLE that edits video by editing text. While Builder is definitely an improvement on purely transcription apps, it won’t be the only application of Cognitive Services.

I expect we at Lumberjack System will have more to show later in the year, once Builder is complete. I also expect this is the year we’ll see visual search integrated into Premiere Pro CC. Imagine being able to search b-roll by having computer vision recognize the content. No keywording or indexing.

Beyond Cognitive Services we will see Machine Learning driving marketing – and even production – decisions. In 2018, the terms Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks will start appearing in the most unexpected places. (While they describe slightly different things, all those terms fall under the Artificial Intelligence umbrella.)

I’m excited about 2018, particularly as we do more with our new intelligent assistants.

Categories
Interesting Technology Lumberjack Machine Learning Metadata

Lumberjack, IBC and FCPX World

If you’re not going to be at IBC then move on, but if you’re going you’ll probably want to be at the FCP X World Event, particularly on Saturday at 12:15 and Sunday at 2:15 when Lumberjack System will be previewing the latest addition to the Lumberjack family.

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Lumberjack

Lumberjack iOS Logger 3

Today we released a new version of the Lumberjack iOS Logger – version 3.

iOS Logger for iPhone and iPad has been completely rewritten for increased speed and stability. New features include a warning for logs not uploaded, the ability to add a note to a keyword range upon completion, the ability to review logged (but not uploaded) keywords and the ability to add or edit a note to logged keyword ranges.

Thanks to Robert Desauger.

Categories
Intelligent Assistance Software Lumberjack

Software Product Updates

We’ve recently added new features to SendtoX – named Favorite ranges from Clips in a Sequence – and Lumberjack System where we developed a workflow for backLogger to support RED R3D media.