One thing that fascinates me are numbers: not for their own sake, but for what they reveal. While re-reading John Buck’s excellent Timelines2 (recommended reading for anyone who is interested in the history of the NLE, volume 2 takes us just past the release of Final Cut Pro 1) I came across some interesting numbers, particularly juxtaposed with a Beat.tv post titled Adobe Claims “Industry Leadership” in Video Editing with 2.5 Million Users. Remembering that Apple have claimed 2 million “seats” of Final Cut Pro (1-7). And I’m pretty sure Avid have sold a few copies of Media Composer, Sony copies of Vegas, and Grass Valley aren’t in the Edius business for giggles. So, somewhat more than 2 million NLE users in our modern world. (more…)

Australian news website ITwire, has an article up about the MPEG’s announcement of the draft standard of their next generation of video codec, due to replace H.264 over time. Hopefully now that we’ve mostly settled on H.264 as the “one codec to rule them all” it will be a comfortable transition to the next generation. (more…)

Episode 45: The Post NAB Show http://t.co/j0vkytfp A new episode of The Terence and Philip Show

We went way, way over time so it’s a long show. If there was more time it would be edited down for content, so hit that fast forward button. We cover everything we can remember from NAB 2012.

In no particular order, the three technology advances that make the Solar Odyssey production even feasible are: Large sensors, Syncing double system production by audio waveforms, and the recognition of the importance of metadata. Alternate camera and lighting mounts, along with LED lighting and laptop computers powerful enough for primary production also play an important role. (more…)

Well that’s interesting. We noticed that in Final Cut Pro X’s Import from Camera window that, not only was the built-in camera always visible (it’s a MacBook Pro) even with external devices mounted, so Greg hypothesized that it would ingest from multiple sources at the same time. This, of course, would be highly desirable on The Solar Odyssey, so I decided to test it. (more…)

We’re very pleased to announce Sync-N-Link X, a completely rethought version of our popular and powerful batch synchronizing application for dual system (separate audio and video) workflows.

When we considered what was needed for this workflow we realized we weren’t facing a simple rewrite, but like Final Cut Pro X itself, a complete rethink. Even better we’ve been able to make it much more affordable, reducing the price from $495 down to $199.99.  Here’s the press release: (more…)

Impossible Software Is About To Do Impossible Things With Your Video http://t.co/jpkhy2PQ

The technology Impossible Software are using to insert products into existing video is incredibly clever, particularly as a web service, but if it were my production – one I’d carefully composed and cared about – I think I’d be appalled at what was being done to the “finished” product.

There’s not much more to say beyond that: you’ll hate it or it will solve “everything” for marketers.  I don’t think I like it, other than for the pure tech.

Highlight Hunter Finds Your Best Clips, Cuts Video Editing By 80% http://t.co/EruxPNpE

That’s the headline from Techcrunch but it’s really misleading. Highlight Hunter doesn’t actually “find” your best clips, you tail slate a good bit by covering the lens (black), and then it finds all the black bits, trims them and trims a certain (user specified) time before that.

As one records adventures, whatever they may be, a user bookmarks highlights by momentarily obscuring the camera lens after the highlight is over. Upon returning home, users open Highlight Hunter on a Mac or PC, load the highlight-rich videos, and, after a few minutes, the app has turned the footage into highlight clips.

The nifty thing about Highlight Hunter is that it is compatible with most outdoor video cameras (list here) or media files, and users have the ability to choose the length of their highlights, though the average is about 30 seconds. The app then spits that highlight real out, and the resulting file is compatible with other video editing apps so it can be uploaded to iMovie or the editing software of your choice for more advanced post-production. And, hey, you can also share it directly from within the app to Facebook or YouTube.

Can’t see it has much use in the sort of production I’m interested in!

OK, it’s a provocative headline, and while I don’t for a minute think Avid are deliberately setting out to sell out editors, it may be an inevitable result of inevitable technological innovation. (more…)

The war on H.264 is over: “We lost,” says Mozilla at Apple Insider

Thank Goodness, sanity finally prevails! In fact Mozilla’s previous approach – holding out for Ogg or WebM codecs – had the unfortunate side effect of driving even more people to the very closed Flash for distribution of H.264 in FireFox. Exactly the opposite of what the Mozilla folk wanted.

I’ve long said that H.264 is “one codec to rule them all” (because it scales so well) and it’s about time Mozilla realized that the world really only wants one codec. Well, really users just don’t want to care about codecs at all!