Apple Skipping NAB, Too

Posted February 8, 2008 by Steve
Categories: Avid vs. Final Cut

Following Avid’s announcement in November that it wouldn’t have a booth at NAB ’08, Apple, in a surprise move yesterday, made much the same decision, saying that “there are better ways to reach our customers.” (TV Technology.)

That makes NAB a watershed for what it won’t have — support from either of the major editing vendors. Avid says they’ll have a presence at the show — just no booth. For Apple, this might mean that we won’t see a major upgrade to the Final Cut suite this year.

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Priesthood Still Needed

Posted February 5, 2008 by Steve
Categories: Avid

On Friday, we received our first dailies on a show I’m starting, and my assistant began digitizing them. And he rapidly discovered that whatever he did, they came in with a noticeable stutter, reminiscent of what you see if the “A” frame is identified incorrectly in film material.

In this case, we were seeing something subtly different — but the video was certainly stuttering, making it impossible to cut without getting a quick headache. My assistant spent most of the day working with the tech guys from our rental house, trying to suss it out. Sometime after 10 pm the answer finally appeared. It wasn’t the Mac, or the deck (or anything in the semi-incomprehensible deck menus). It wasn’t the Media Composer software (with its many settings) or the Adrenaline boxes, or Unity. It wasn’t the genlock or the cables. It was the little Keyspan USB to Serial adaptor. This allows the MC (or FCP, for that matter) to control a deck. The serial adaptors were brand new. The model our guys are familiar with is the 28X, but that’s now been replaced with the 28XG. There’s a new driver for the XG, but that didn’t solve the problem. The only thing that worked was going back to 28X.

The point here is that much as we wish the technology to be so simple that we can roll our own Avid or FCP systems with no help from dedicated tech support, the reality is that in high-end production, we just ain’t there yet. The “heavy iron” of the first phase of the digital video revolution has gotten considerably lighter. But bullet-proof it isn’t.

Sure, if you’re working at home, with all-digital media, and a software-only system, things might be simpler. But if you’ve got shared storage, tape-based ingest, and a workflow that involves multiple Avids, and you’re sharing work with sound, music and visual effects, things are still a wee bit too complicated to go without a guru near at hand. And even the tech guys often end up scratching their heads.

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You Take That From Him?!

Posted February 4, 2008 by Steve
Categories: Media and Society

When I was in junior high school, fist fights in the yard we’re a popular entertainment. Two kids would start a “rank out contest” (also called “playing the dozens”), and a crowd would gather. Calling people names (“your mother wears army boots” was a popular starter) was fun, but the crowd wanted more. So they’d egg the contestants on, and often, a fight would ensue.

That’s exactly what seems to be happening in our presidential debates, as a revealing article in today’s NY Times makes clear (Even as the Candidates Make Nice, the TV Crew Hopes for a Fight). There wasn’t much antagonism in last Thursday’s Democratic debate, and that didn’t please the guys in the control room, who, like my friends in junior high, wanted to see blood. Wolf Blitzer’s question about Hillary’s naivete was apparently instigated by CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman, prodding Blitzer over his earwig. But even as they push for more aggression, the guys in charge seem to know that this isn’t really what the audience wants. The best ratings in the South Carolina debate occurred when the candidates were talking policy.

In general, I’ve been pretty disgusted by cable news’ coverage of the campaigns. We get most of our news from just a few sources and they have tremendous power to decide who is really in this contest. One tool they use is something we know a little bit about — editing. For example, Edwards was doomed not so much by a lack of traction with the American people but by a lack of coverage by media corporations that didn’t like his anti-corporate message.

After the South Carolina debate, the wrap up I saw gave Hilary thirty seconds of uninterrupted coverage in closeup. Edwards got the same amount of time — but the camera was aimed at the crowd the whole time and only picked him up in a monitor in the back of the room. At least I think he was on that monitor — it was so small that I couldn’t be sure. And when Edwards dropped out of the race, CNN later reported on his speech — MOS. We saw his face, but the announcer talked through the whole thing. His actual words were never heard.

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Avid Training

Posted January 22, 2008 by Steve
Categories: Avid vs. Final Cut, Laptop Editing

First, a plug — Avid now has a podcast, consisting mainly of interviews with editors and created by Senior Product Specialist Matt Feury. Matt is an incisive and engaging host for these things (who knew he was so multi-talented?) and many have been quite interesting. Check them out on Avid’s podcast page, or via their iTunes page.

Avid should be doing a lot more of this. Norm Hollyn quotes one of his USC students talking about how expensive Avid’s online ALEX courses are. These things were clearly designed to make money — and there’s the rub. I don’t know of anybody who’s ever paid for one. I’ve run through a couple of the free episodes and they’ve been pretty helpful, but I sure didn’t have any use for all that nonsense that ALEX introduces, breaking up the flow with silly chapter breaks and reviews. Just give me the video, thank you very much. I can press the pause key any time I want.

Apple has done a much better job with its recent video demos. These things look deceptively easy, but it takes plenty of work to make something so substantive seem effortless and off-the-cuff.

And, just as I write this, a friend has called to say that Apple is offering free training for Hollywood editors. He received a fancy printed invitation, via his agent, offering a three-day class in Final Cut Studio, with a copy of the software given away to every participant on the last day. With the writers’ strike, the timing is perfect — lots of people are out of work and looking for something to do.

Apple is working a very good playbook here — written by Avid in the early ’90s. They’re actively seeking out opinion leaders and offering them free training. And in the world of software-only systems, they’ve got an advantage that wasn’t available a decade ago — you can now easily host a big class where everybody has their own machine.

Avid has to take the initiative with training. Far too many young people see the Media Composer as quirky and hard to learn. I got an earful of this over the weekend from a young friend. I don’t completely understand it — the MC seems plenty intuitive to me. It’s fast, and the way I use it, very refined. But it doesn’t feel like a desktop publishing application. That makes it a much better editing program, but it today’s world, I guess it makes it harder to learn.

I don’t think that’s the whole story, though. Some of the difference isn’t really substantive — both systems are intuitive once learned. Marketing, branding and pricing also play a key role. Apple has created a sense of excitement and accessibility around their products while Avid has plodded along, stuck in a didactic, schoolroom style that is anathema to a young person today.

Bottom line — ALEX needs a total overhaul. It needs to be colloquial, fun and, yes, free. And Avid needs to expand its podcast offerings with technical information and tips, in addition to interviews.

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Leopard Envy

Posted January 3, 2008 by Steve
Categories: Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Laptop Editing

I played with two machines running Leopard over the holiday (machines owned by distinctly non-technical friends, by the way) and I have to admit that I want it bad. But I can’t have it, and you probably know why — because I’ve got Media Composer installed. Yes, I could run two machines, or I could partition a drive, but I don’t want to do that. I want and expect to use my laptop for editing and I want to do it transparently and without a restart.

Meanwhile, Final Cut Pro has been Leopard-compatible since mid-November. That’s not so long ago, of course, and I’m sure that Avid isn’t given first dibs on info about Leopard and for that reason it will always be at a disadvantage with respect to OS X compatibility. So I’m willing to wait a while. But I sure hope Avid is working hard on this issue. So far, all I’ve heard is “Mac OSX Leopard and Microsoft Vista support is planned for a future release.” I sure hope that means “very soon.”

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MultiRez — How Not to Add a New Feature

Posted December 22, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Avid, Avid Wish List & Bugs, Workflow

I recently stumbled on a whole new set of features in Adrenaline, and now, having spent a couple of hours with the help files, I’m confused. Avid has obviously spent a lot of effort on this, but the new capabilities are explained so awkwardly that I’m not surprised nobody I know is aware of them. It seems that the features could work in a typical feature or TV environment, but not until more functionality is added.

MultiRez and Dynamic Relink allow you to create two sets of media files, one, say at 14:1 and the other at 1:1 — that apply to the same master clips. You can edit with the 14:1 media and just use the 1:1 material for output. The system will automatically switch from one to the other depending on what you’re trying to do. Sounds pretty good huh? Why didn’t anybody tell us about this?

The answer begs the question of how existing editors learn (or don’t learn) about new features in Media Composer. This applies to all kinds of new capabilities, many of which are underutilized in Hollywood. Examples include sophisticated effects like SpectraMatte (way better than the old Avid Chroma Key Effect) or the new motion tracker, or timewarp motion effects, as well as much more mundane stuff like volume graphing or clip colorizing (described here).

Avid’s help files are broken up into little chunks of information, with the result that you often have to wade through a lot of pages before you get an overview of a new feature and how you might actually use it. MultiRez is no exception.

MultiRez allows you to associate multiple media files with the same master clip, and, even better, allows you to have sections of a master clip available at various resolutions. That’s revolutionary and could be the foundation for a slick DI conforming engine. But one key feature appears to be missing — the ability to re-digitize a sequence without decomposing.

The docs imply that MultiRez is aimed at news environments and “is available only on Avid editing systems that have the Avid Interplay Media Indexer installed.” I guess that means that it requires Interplay, and that’s probably why nobody I know has heard of it.

I’m hoping that Avid makes this facility available to the rest of us. It sure would make the conforming process simpler. Meanwhile, the help files need some redesign. Most important, it’s time that we take a thorough look at how existing editors learn about Media Composer improvements. New features don’t help if nobody knows they’re there.

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