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For those who are still Fishing…..
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I don’t know. I read Gibson’s statement, and then watched the relevant portion of video, and felt that what he was saying was inconsistent gobbledygook.
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What also routinely gets left out of the argument is heat distribution and noise. After years of corner cutting, I will gladly pay extra for a machine that deals with heat as efficiently and as quietly as possible.
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[John Joyce] “I don’t wish to lower the tone, but my worry is that Adobe will leave the Mac market.”
Nothing is forever, but I can’t see that happening when the news on Adobe has been 45% growth on the Mac market.
[John Joyce] “First, Premiere would not run (as I remember on OS X)”
Let me make an attempt at an analogy: Like Steve Jobs did with OS9 to OS X, we did with Premiere to Premiere Pro. Back in the day Steve said that OS9 was getting old and that OS X was the future. He admitted there would be some transition problems, but overall it went smoothly. For Adobe, Premiere came to version 6.5 and we needed a new architecture. We knew it would have some transition problems. At that time, with limited resources and more of our market on the PC, we made the choice to do Windows only initially to get the massive re-write and new architecture done. We added more features in Premiere Pro 1.5 and 2.0 and then beginning in CS3, we went back to the Mac which is about 5 years ago (or more).
I can’t comment on Framemaker as I simply know nothing about it.
Everyone who is considering a switch to something other than FCP will have to weigh the pros and cons of their choices. I wish I could say I have everything that ANYONE could need, but I don’t. Adobe and others have good products – one should definitely work for you.
Dennis – Adobe guy
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How about you send me the $3500, and I’ll send you back a kick ass system, and pocket the other $1700.
What I built is more than enough for today’s CS5.5, and way better than FCP7 or FCPX
DBK
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That makes no sense, Darren. The whole point is to have a ridiculously overblown system that makes it difficult to get the red render bar in Premiere. The system I have now is pretty close to what you just built.
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David,
If you’re wedded to the idea of local storage of full-rez HD master files, I agree. But I got totally schooled last year on a series of HD uploads for network spots. Via modern H264 encoding I was able to achieve more than a 10 to 1 data reduction with no visible degradation of the signal for HD broadcast uploads.
What’s wrong with ingesting field tapes via laptop into proxy files that can be uploaded to the cloud for use by distributed teams – those should be good enough to do most of the edit process directly to and from the cloud. Then when you get back to the base with your field cards, files, HDs or whatever, you could just plug them in and the background rendering starts (just like now) automatically replacing your comp files with full rez versions.
In FCP-X, the big change is the ability to work instantly with lower rez files, even making complex layering and titling decisions and getting a very workable look at what the results look like – the files do the “catch up” processing in the background at a later time.
Why not make that the core of a new workflow?
Heavily compressed H-264 via web transfer for starting the work – then footage that catches up when the originals can be locally attached to the net file pointers sounds like something that could work to me.
We’ll see.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis] “Heavily compressed H-264 via web transfer for starting the work – then footage that catches up when the originals can be locally attached to the net file pointers sounds like something that could work to me.”
This is very much what’s going on with Quantel’s QTube, which is tied directly into their broadcast news workflows. Avid has demonstrated something like this as well. I could just as easily see this working in some film workflows.
[Bill Davis] “Why not make that the core of a new workflow?”
In some ways a very old workflow: offline and online. There has been this idea that because you CAN carry massive amounts of mastering quality video that you SHOULD…and maybe you should, but it’s at the sacrifice of enormous flexibility.
Offline/online workflows work, and work fast. Edit on local ingest with proxies that backfill full res works, and has been working for a very long time. The only thing that has changed is that it’s over the network.
For now, this is going to work best when you can tunnel into a fat pipe via VPN, but poke around the web for “HD over mobile,” and you’ll be amazed at what people are pulling off with the nastiest, flimsiest networks available.
Of course, I’m not talking about iPhone on AT&T. That’s not a network. That’s a NOTwork.
That aside, this isn’t some future thing. It’s going to get better, like everything else, but it’s happening now, and it’s working.
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[Bill Davis] “Heavily compressed H-264 via web transfer for starting the work – then footage that catches up when the originals can be locally attached to the net file pointers sounds like something that could work to me.”
I have a story to add to this.
My bosses kid started his latest football season in the 12 year old division.
The coach signed up the whole team for something called hudl.com.
The dad’s video tape the games/scrimmages and then upload all the footage hudl’s central server (it transcodes at the local computer on the way up). Once up there, anyone can annotate and edit the footage, complete with telestrator, text, some preset graphic nodes which allow highlighting and football type illustrations. It works from any computer/OS on the internet and is driven by Silverlight.
You may laugh, but you could easily extract this out to a pro setting. As has been mentioned, FCPX does this already, just only on a local level. It’s not a pipe dream and I laugh because the capability is pretty crazy, not the impossibility.
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[Bill Davis] “If you’re wedded to the idea of local storage of full-rez HD master files, I agree. But I got totally schooled last year on a series of HD uploads for network spots. Via modern H264 encoding I was able to achieve more than a 10 to 1 data reduction with no visible degradation of the signal for HD broadcast uploads.”
Bill,
H264 is an outstanding delivery codec. I use it for client deliverables all the time and have learned to get encodes that are virtually indistinguishable from the ProRes masters. One of the tools I use is the x246 codec. If you’re not using x264, stop reading this post, download the codec and make some compressor settings. Not only is it faster than regular h264, the quality is amazing.
[Bill Davis] “What’s wrong with ingesting field tapes via laptop into proxy files that can be uploaded to the cloud for use by distributed teams – those should be good enough to do most of the edit process directly to and from the cloud. Then when you get back to the base with your field cards, files, HDs or whatever, you could just plug them in and the background rendering starts (just like now) automatically replacing your comp files with full rez versions.”
Nothing. If you’re talking about a networked, proxy-based workflow, as @Tim Wilson points out, that’s already here. I was responding to this:
[Bill Davis] “What if the box no longer even matters. What if everything does eventually end up stored in the cloud?
What if “editing” is something you do merely by manipulating the metadata via the cloud?
Shoot wherever. Upload everything. “
At some point, you’ll need to re-link your proxies to your masters for finishing. Where will the masters live? On the cloud? I don’t think so. For high quality footage, this scenario is not gonna happen for a very very very long time, if ever. Local storage is simply faster, cheaper, more reliable and more accessible. And if anything, masters are only getting bigger. Wait till 2K and 4K gets more affordable.
On the other hand, bandwidth trends – especially in the US – are bleak. Take a look at this 2009 study on US data caps. Forget about media production, if you care about the viability of the cloud as a media consumption platform, you might want to keep net neutrality and data caps on your radar and let your elected officials know how you feel. This is a huge and defining battle and things are not getting better.
I can imagine field scenarios where FCPX – even in its current state – would be a fantastic organizing and assembly tool. But the benefits will come from being able to work quickly on a laptop in the field. The need for the cloud scenario seems like an edge case that for the most part is better solved in other ways.
Actually, one of the best distributed production collaboration tools I’ve ever used is unique to both Apple and FCP7 — iChat Theater Preview. I use it with clients and they are blown away at seeing their changes in real time. My LA partners and I collaborate with it on a regular basis. It’s relatively light on bandwidth and makes a lot of sense for field collaboration. Shoot in the field, edit in the hotel room, get feedback on the cut via iChat preview, iterate, rinse and repeat. iChat preview is probably one of the things I’ll miss the most when I finally leave FCP7. Now that Apple seems obsessed with full-screen layouts, I wonder when we’ll see something like this again.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
David –
Thanks for the tip on X264. Beyond that I couldn’t agree with you more on all counts.
As for Ichat, I use it all the time. I have editors working on my shows from NY to CA and we collaborate and review with Ichat. I have also used Skype for this purpose and while not as good, can get the job done. I figure that will be my method when I migrate.
AS for the Cloud – bandwidth is outside the realm of Moore’s law. I expect local storage for HD will last for at least another 5 years, if not more; long enough to plan on increasing my raid capacity for my next business cycle. Beyond that B. Davis can speculate all he wants.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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