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Mac Mini with eGPU
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[Oliver Peters] “The VFX guys have been doing variations of this for some time now.”
Where it makes absolute sense. The speed advantages that the article Bill linked will certainly help. I don’t see how it applies to basic editing though.
Also interesting to see how in six years the biggest change in your article would probably not shooting film if it were done today. Other than improvements to cloud rendering speed, the rest is largely the same
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[Michael Gissing] “I don’t see how it applies to basic editing though.”
Agreed. Not to mention, crappy internet speeds in a lot of the world, coupled with the push for ever-increasing higher resolutions. I think it’s one of those things that will always be “in 5 years” – at least during the rest of most of our lifetimes.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Michael Gissing] “Where it makes absolute sense. The speed advantages that the article Bill linked will certainly help. I don’t see how it applies to basic editing though.
“I think that analysts missed the point.
The key process is removing FRICTION from a needed workflow.
When iTunes made its debut, it really did nothing that Napster and other digital song distribution models couldn’t already do – but it removed all sorts of friction from the processSuddenly l, instead of finding the site, downloading a file, translating it into your computer or early pocket player, and having to dig into folders and launch programs to listen to tunes – there was a SIMPLE all in one solution that put the hardware, software and a content access service together.
It feels to me that this could be the same type of thing.
Indexing a 2-hour pool of footage to identify all the frames containing each character is one thing if it takes 30 minutes and costs $50 bucks.
If it takes 1 minute and it costs $2 – that’s an entirely different kettle of fish.
It moves from considered purchase to no-brainer “impulse buy.”
And if that massive parallel engine that’s already crunching your frames adds maybe transcription and who knows, intelligent audio and video noise reduction, normalization, and a base grade — suddenly a huge amount of “fix and prep” drudgery falls away.
I’m all for that.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “And if that massive parallel engine that’s already crunching your frames adds maybe transcription and who knows, intelligent audio and video noise reduction, normalization, and a base grade — suddenly a huge amount of “fix and prep” drudgery falls away.”
And some people believe in the Easter Bunny, too. ☺
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Neil Goodman] “at that point for a little more money you could have an imac, with a nice screen. “
Certainly true. But there are a lot of people who don’t want an iMac. Maybe they don’t want an all-in-one. Or maybe they already own a nice display, keyboard, and mouse.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis]”I think that analysts missed the point. The key process is removing FRICTION from a needed workflow.”
Actually I think that was the point. To participate in the cloud system requires additional friction at the beginning for which a pay off is elusive when it comes to editing. Everything this article touts is already available but only used by VFX and collaborative workflows. For most editors it doesn’t have practical application and reducing the speed to reduce the cost might open up the field to broader applications. But the initial friction has to be reduced as well. Getting your hi res assets into the cloud is still full of serious friction. This doesn’t address that especially as 8k + assets will be the new normal.
I’m with Oliver, it’s more promise than delivery for many film making applications. Cloud storage and processing has been touted for a while now and I do agree that it will be a thing long before viable nuclear fusion but I don’t share your enthusiasm or analysis of what this improvement to parallel processing means for editing.
EDIT: I should add that clearly companies like Blackmagic agree with my view otherwise making outboard grunt for under powered Apple gear would not be worth their while. They are very canny in choosing what hardware developments to pursue and they will sell a lot of these boxes.
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[Michael Gissing] “Cloud storage and processing has been touted for a while now”
The biggest roadblock, if we are talking about eliminating friction, is how to get the footage to the cloud in the first place. Maybe at some point in the future you can directly record the equivalent of ProResHQ or 4444 4K, 8K or better directly, live to the cloud from camera. We are quite a bit away from that right now.
Practical, real-world example. The crew comes back from a week’s production in Scotland and Ireland with 20TB of raw footage. How do I practically get that into the cloud at least as fast as I can copy it drive-to-drive (which is still slower than we would like), in order to start editing? And EVERYTHING is for potential use, so no, you can’t pull selects in the field ahead of time.
EDIT: Oh, and significant portions of the industry are not allowed to have their machines connected to the internet.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Oliver Peters] “EDIT: Oh, and significant portions of the industry are not allowed to have their machines connected to the internet.”
This will be a major hurdle – can you get a guarantee that your footage is secure when it hits the cloud? Security is easy for onsite storage – unplug your computer from the internet and limit who has access to the machine. But once it hits the cloud?
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Michael Hancock] “This will be a major hurdle – can you get a guarantee that your footage is secure when it hits the cloud?”
Exactly, at least half of my clients wouldn’t want ANY of their rushes uploaded to the cloud due to security issues.
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[Bill Davis] “Read this and tell me that the way we edit right might not be changing in the not too distant future.”
The key phrase here being “not to distant future”. What exactly does that mean … 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years ???
The Human Genome Project published the full sequence of the human genome in April 2003. At the time it was widely understood that the treatment of disease would be radically altered “in the not too distant future.” Fifteen years later there have been some miraculous results based on this knowledge, but no one would characterize these changes as the revolution in medicine that was predicted. This future is still to be realized, and “not too distant” is still the term being used. I would suggest that a lot more money, interest, and importance is being invested in these medical breakthroughs than in the ability of AI to utilize cloud computing to speed up the editing of marketing videos.
For me, I’m still waiting for Apple to deliver on the new, new, ultra new, Mac Pro so I can finally put my 8 year old Cheese Grater to bed, let alone worry about some visionary future that exists in somebody’s alternate universe.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf
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