The Best Editor on the Planet?

Posted March 26, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Avid, Avid Wish List & Bugs, Quality of Life

Is it me, or does this business of calling the machine the “editor” seem inappropriate to you? Last time I looked, editing was my job. The machine is a tool — a better tool, sure, but something that only works in the hands of a skilled and creative human being. Calling the machine the editor is like calling a hammer a carpenter or a pipe wrench a plumber.

Last year Avid added to the confusion by using the advertising tagline “the best editor on the planet.” I tend to agree with the sentiment — for me, the Media Composer remains the best piece of software for the work I do. But it’s a tool. We never called a Moviola or a KEM an editor. And we don’t call Photoshop a designer.

Maybe this use of the word has its origin at big facilities. If you’re dealing with 25 or 100 systems, buying them, upgrading them, making sure they work, then maybe you start calling them editors. You don’t really think about the people — as far as your balance sheet is concerned, the room and whatever is in it is indeed the editor.

In the early years of the digital revolution, the mantra of the entire industry was that the software was just a tool, a much better tool, sure, but something that only worked in the hands of a skilled and creative human being. Avid advanced that perspective very consistently. The Media Composer will allow you to be more creative. It can’t edit for you, you don’t want it to do that and we don’t claim that it can. It won’t put you out of a job.

Today, Avid marketing seems to have forgotten that fundamental point. To me, and I’ll wager, to a lot of people like me, calling the machine the editor is at best tone deaf and at worst, downright disrespectful. As we ramp up to this year’s NAB, I hope that Avid retires that tagline as soon as possible.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Comments: 6 Comments

Best News of the Week

Posted March 24, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Media and Society, Quality of Life

Old TelephoneThe FCC decided Thursday that, for now, it won’t permit cellphones to be used on airplanes (NY Times, CNET). Hallelujah! Let’s declare a national holiday! I’ve been seriously wondering whether I’d be able to keep flying with everybody around me shouting into their phones. Apparently 8,300 people weighed in with letters to the FCC begging them to forbid this practice, but the decision, naturally, was made on technical grounds.

We humans are very skilled at directing our voices to the listener. We modulate volume with great precision and we unconsciously aim our voices at the person we’re addressing. But all that skill is lost when we talk into a cell phone. Even thought the listener’s ear is effectively just a inch or two away from our mouths, we generally speak quite loudly. Every time I see somebody doing this I think of people in the early part of this century cranking the little dynamo on their old phones and projecting into the mouthpiece. “Hello?! Hello?!”

In part, this phenomenon has to do with how your voice is played back into your own earpiece — something that early telephone engineers realized was essential to keep people from yelling and which they dubbed sidetone. Some cellphones apparently still don’t produce sidetone. The FCC ought to ban them immediately as a public health hazard.

Call me crazy, but In the meantime, I tend to walk up to the nearest shouter and, very politely, let them know that they are talking too loud. If you’re nice about it, this can work. Shouting is an involuntary reflex and, when made aware of it, some people will respond with embarrassment and make an adjustment.

Technorati Tags:

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Fear

Posted March 23, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Editors Guild, Media and Society, Quality of Life

I’ve been working as an editor for a long time now and I’ve always felt that the film business was more or less recession-proof. When the economy got bad people generally watched more movies and television. No matter what was happening to other businesses, Hollywood always did okay.

But today things don’t look so great. Below-the-line wages are down. In post production, this is partly because so many new people are entering the field. Editing has come out of the closet and has become, dare I say it, glamorous, to many people. This is a wonderful thing, but it brings with it increased competition, which inevitably puts downward pressure on wages. Even worse, there seems to be an across the board attempt on the part of many producers to lower below-the-line wages. And that’s hurting everybody.

But the real issue, the real monster in the closet, is the growth of the Internet as a video distribution medium. Nobody knows how this is going to shake out. The result is a pervasive sense of unease on the part of everybody in established media, from the lowliest messenger to the most powerful mogul, from newspapers to radio to television to film. What’s coming? What part of my business model is about to crumble? How do I prepare for it? And will I have a job when the dust settles? Nobody is immune.

This week we saw the release of the Apple TV, (reviewed in the NY Times by David Pogue), and yesterday NBC & News Corp. announced a big advertising-sponsored deal to distribute their content on the web.

We’re heading toward a world where you’ll be able to watch just about any video that was ever made and do so literally anywhere and any time you like. And that’s rocking our world in a way that’s never been felt before. It’s empowering a whole new group of filmmakers and entrepreneurs, and it’s scaring the bejesus out of everybody else.

Technorati Tags: ,

Comments: 7 Comments

Keyframe Madness

Posted March 22, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Avid, Avid Technical Tips, Avid Wish List & Bugs

Can it really still be true that when you trim a shot that carries a segment effect, all of its keyframes move? Presumably, the original idea was that if you have an effect on a shot and you change the shot length, then you must want the effect to change proportionately. This was probably harder to implement than the alternative — chopping off keyframes. But for me and for everybody I know, it creates hidden effects that are almost never desireable.

Keyframes are generally aligned with action and need to stay attached to the frames I put them on. Or the distance between keyframes — ie. the speed of an effect — was deliberately chosen and I don’t want it to change. So every time I trim or extend a shot with a segment effect I have to laboriously write down the positions of all its keyframes, make the trim, and then move them back where they were. A minor adjustment can cause dozens of keyframes to move.

The workaround is to use lift or extract rather than trim. This leaves keyframes where they were. But you can’t lengthen something that way.

(Transition effects are immune to this kind of thing, by the way. If you trim a shot that carries a fade, the fade length is preserved. Ditto with a dissolve.)

This “feature” can’t be that hard to fix. If lifting/extracting does the right thing, then some of the needed code is already written. If people at Avid are worried that customers won’t be happy with such a change then make it a preference. But I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t welcome it.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 7 Comments

Is Automatic Script Mimic a Killer Feature?

Posted March 21, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut, Workflow

A friend of mine is working on a well-known series that’s being shot on HD video. He gets four to five hours of dailies — every day. The show employs several Meridien systems for off-line editorial.

He’s very eager to get his hands on Avid’s upcoming “automatic script mimic” software, which listens to your tracks and quickly lines up your dailies with an on-screen script. He thinks that’ll make it a lot easier to sort through all the material he receives.

And that got me thinking. He’s certainly not alone. Many shows, particularly those originated on video, are shooting more now. Is automatic script mimic the killer feature that will finally push editors, especially TV editors, to upgrade their old Meridien systems?

Also, keep in mind that script integration, which was originally created by Ediflex, is patented. It’s not likely to be seen on a Final Cut system any time soon. So is script integration destined to become an important differentiator between FCP and Media Composer — a reason that editors will stick with their Avids?

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 3 Comments

Avid From Wall Street

Posted March 19, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Avid

Here’s an interesting sidelight. Browsing through the annual report from the Columbia Acorn family of mutual funds, I came across the following. It turns out that their fund, Acorn Select (ACTWX), which I don’t own, holds a lot of Avid stock. This is what they had to say about the company at the end of 2006:

On the downside, Avid Technology, which lagged all year, fell 32% (or reduced the fund’s return by 1.28%) as the company guided sales and earnings down for 2006 due to delayed products and an acquisition that needed resuscitation. While obviously disappointed, we believe the long-term outlook remains sound and we added to the Fund’s position in the stock. Avid is a leader in digital editing software and systems used by the film and news industries. Additionally, we believe that Avid has the potential to become a leader in consumer video and audio editing in the next few years. Over the last decade, consumer competition has dwindled while product demand has increased. We believe that this nascent market should give Avid an opportunity for solid revenue growth.

And here’s what David Krall had to say about the Pinnacle division in Avid’s press release accompanying the release of their 4th quarter results.

In consumer, we had lower than expected results for the year as the business was slow to recover from the product quality problems with the Studio 10 software. We took an impairment charge in the fourth quarter to reflect the decline in the fair value of the consumer business unit. Nevertheless, we believe that the product quality problems are now behind us, and are pleased that we achieved higher-than expected consumer revenues in Q4 based on strong demand in Europe.

Frankly, I’ve never used Pinnacle’s products and don’t know much about them. But I’m not happy hearing that Avid is taking such a beating in the stock market, particularly when it’s because of a product that I’ll probably never use.

Here’s a chart of Avid’s stock price over the last year. It took a couple of big nose dives, one right after those fourth quarter results were reported.

Technorati Tags: ,

Comments: 3 Comments

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »