-
Michael Cioni of Lightiron talking about Metadata, Hollywood, FCP X, and Premier.
-
[Robin S. Kurz] “Which I guess explains why you don’t appear to know how completely different (i.e. far more extensive) X’s metadata support is compared to others.”
I do use X and I’m not sure I agree with that. X has a unique way of handling metadata and some would argue a superior way. But that’s only in how the database results are manipulated and displayed.
X certainly has deep support for metadata from cameras, but it doesn’t track or support any greater amount of metadata than many other NLEs, notably Media Composer. Both NLEs (and others, too) run a very large database “under the hood” and that’s probably true of Premiere Pro and Lightworks, too, among others.
Most of this is dependent on how deep the camera manufacturer cares to expose their info to the NLE (X or otherwise) via an SDK. If Avid wanted to expand the capabilities of the Find function, they could certainly do so. Just more engineering time, but the foundation is there.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Robin S. Kurz] “Are you misinterpreting/misconstruing on purpose as part of “the joke”? Who said what about film/TV relevance, other than you? What sentence “gives a thumbs up”?”
I’m not misrepresenting anything. Both Oliver (who said I beat him to the punch with the joke) and Bill know what I’m talking about. And the sentence about FCP X I’m talking about is just after the 15min mark in the video (it’s the only reason the video got posted here to begin with).
[Robin S. Kurz] “. But metadata itself certainly plays the biggest part when it comes to ONLINE, not film/TV (yet). Most film and TV facilities don’t even have the most basic framework for working with actual metadata outside of maybe timecode in place, seeing how so many of them are by far the most lethargic at adapting anything new that comes up. “
Seriously? Just in the quick Live Play demo Michael mentioned date, location, scene, shot, take, circle take, roll, camera, lens, first unit, second unit, script, actors/characters in scene, etc., and that’s just some of the basic metadata collected during a scripted shoot. Once you get into post you get even more layers added on especially if you are doing a lot of VFX work or something like a historical documentary with a ton of licensed footage/audio that has to be tracked. And this is just live action stuff. Animation, judging by the panels I’ve seen with editors and AEs from Pixar, is a totally different beast in and of itself.
What solutions like Live Play and LumberJack are doing is trying to automate, digitize and centralize all this pre-existing metadata, which typically comes from multiple sources in multiple formats, and turn it into something more manageable and useful. Adobe’s Prelude is also a pre-post organizer though it’s not designed to be an on location logging took like Live Play and LumberJack are. Companies making DAM software like CatDV, Primesense and Pilotware all predate the rise of online video distribution by many, many years because the need to track all sorts of metadata predates online video distribution by many, many years.
-
First, thanks for posting this Bill, that was an awesome demo from Michael Cioni.
[Oliver Peters] ” But that’s only in how the database results are manipulated and displayed.
“But isn’t that pretty much the entirety of the argument?
If it’s not easy to use, if it’s displayed poorly, if you can’t manipulate it very easily, why even bother with it? It was why making selects reels in FCP7 worked so well, because that is how the software worked well. It wasn’t because it was a superior or inferior way to do things.
X has a search function, but it’s strength lies in sort, just like the Live Play demo. It’s not about adding more capability to the “find” command, it’s about how to display the data in a sorted manner that makes sense, and multiple pieces can fit in to multiple data sets and can be displayed or not displayed easily. The FCPX timeline does this pretty well, too, although it seems to be the most controversial of topics.
[Andrew Kimery] “I’m not misrepresenting anything. Both Oliver (who said I beat him to the punch with the joke) and Bill know what I’m talking about. And the sentence about FCP X I’m talking about is just after the 15min mark in the video (it’s the only reason the video got posted here to begin with).”
I got the joke, and I thought it was hilarious, actually. I Zing!OLed (ZOL). Live Play is certainly a professional app with professional pricing (subscription FTW!). But to Bill’s point, I don’t think that metadata needs to be reserved for feature films. Live streaming dailies maybe, but not metadata on the whole. FCPX does a good job of simple things like sorting and displaying liked or disliked clips very easily.
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “I got the joke, and I thought it was hilarious, actually. I Zing!OLed (ZOL)”
It was a good zinger! I smiled wryly.
-
[Andrew Kimery] “Just in the quick Live Play demo Michael mentioned date, location, scene, shot, take, circle take, roll, camera, lens, first unit, second unit, script, actors/characters in scene, etc., and that’s just some of the basic metadata collected during a scripted shoot.”
(This is just me speaking for me.)
A large part of what’s excited me about X has never been about how will it integrates in any particular level of the existing editing industry. It’s how it’s worked for ME as an individual editor sitting in ONE seat.
By introducing me to the concept of range based keywording that sits INSIDE my editing environment – it’s allowed me to develop my own personal strategies for footage manipulation in a way that’s much more flexible than before i switched to X.
I’ve posted here before about how much it’s changed even my simple Voiceover recording – allowing me to keyword judge and rank something as simple as sentence takes and then auto assemble a “best of takes” stringent – that to my great surprise, often IS the final spot that I was hired to create – has transformed the way I do that simple, basic part of my everyday work.
The point is that the way Apple designed this is first and foremost new tools and concepts for the person sitting in the editing suite to deploy as they see fit. How the editor uses those tools is up to him or her.
Metadata and keywords in X aren’t just there to allow Cioni to design better systems. They’re there to help all of us to design what WE need as well. Even if what you need is a smarter way to edit events like Bar Mitzvas or Corporate info videos, or HD Web ads or scientific video reports – and YES, we now know, Major Hollywood Feature movies. X can do them all really well. Because it’s not ONE workflow. The database nature makes it suitable for zillions of workflows. Each customized for the editors unique needs.
Like metadata itself, it’s not ONE thing. It’s everything. And moving it INSIDE the NLE and making it a fundamental part of the editing process IS a very big deal. On every editing level. IMO.
FWIW.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
-
[Bill Davis] “I’ve posted here before about how much it’s changed even my simple Voiceover recording – allowing me to keyword judge and rank something as simple as sentence takes and then auto assemble a “best of takes” stringent – that to my great surprise, often IS the final spot that I was hired to create – has transformed the way I do that simple, basic part of my everyday work.”
Absolutely true, but I do find a few things with X’s metadata/database structure that I struggle with as an editor.
The first is that X works from a concept of exclusion. This was very much the core concept of Michael’s demo. You are getting rid of stuff. While that’s what we often do as editors, the nature of X makes it very easy to NOT go back and search through the throw-away takes for some gems. That’s because if you run with “hide rejected” or “show favorites” filtered, you often have to remind yourself to go back and look at these – simply because they are out of sight. Sometimes the best pieces are in otherwise “busted” takes.
The second thing I miss is a true rating system like I might use in Lightroom. It’s either Favorite or Rejected, not 1-5 or similar. I realize you could do that manually or with a Smart Collection, but it seems like it would be a valuable addition.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “It’s either Favorite or Rejected, not 1-5 or similar. I realize you could do that manually or with a Smart Collection”
Kind of picking up on what Bill was saying about X fitting how different editors want to use it.
I personally almost never use rejected for two reasons. One, I may want access to that section later, and two, because I don’t really see a need to after I make my range favorites, I switch to list view and I’m only looking at what I want anyway.
As I’m logging an interview I make my range favorite and type in a note of the subject. Depending on how much I like the take is how many exclamation points I put behind the note.
That way when I’m looking in list view those E points jump out.
That’s my own rating system.
He did a nice job with that demo btw
-
[Oliver Peters] “That’s because if you run with “hide rejected” or “show favorites” filtered, you often have to remind yourself to go back and look at these – simply because they are out of sight. Sometimes the best pieces are in otherwise “busted” takes.”
Control-c allows you to sort by all clips, and if you have the options turned on, you see what ranges are good, no good, or rejected. If this is a problem, it is certainly easily fixable by control-c. And if you want to view only busted takes, you can do that with control-delete.
As Michael showed, you can drill down very easily to the takes you need. All you’d have to do is remove “circled” and you’d see all the takes for the particular, scene, location, or however else you need it to be sorted.
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “As Michael showed, you can drill down very easily to the takes you need. All you’d have to do is remove “circled” and you’d see all the takes for the particular, scene, location, or however else you need it to be sorted.”
You do understand that Michael was not demoing FCP X, but rather filtering in LivePlay. Right?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “You do understand that Michael was not demoing FCP X, but rather filtering in LivePlay. Right?”
What? I thought that was the as yet unreleased iPad version of fcpx???
Of course I understand it was LivePlay. You mentioned both X and LivePlay being based on an exclusionary system, so I referenced both.
Why would I not want that? Even if I’m looking for busted takes, why should I look through 1435 of all of the takes, when I need to look at 10 or so from the one scene I am working on?
And if you do need it, a really simple keyboard command shows all of the clips.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up