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The Cloud
Behold! The Cloud is upon us, and if thee do not prepare thyself, and the rushing cloud beats against thee, thine flesh shall be ripped from thine bones, and yea, thee shall die the horrible, horrible death of one who just does not get it.
We’re getting a lot of talk about “the cloud” and FCP X, as if FCP X is somehow the Prophet of the Cloud. So, I want to say a few things about “the cloud.”
First, imho, “the Cloud”=sales buzzword on steroids. If you have ever taken IP or Networking classes, you will know that when flow charting or diagraming network processes, the symbol used for either the Internet or a larger irrelevant part of your own network is a cute little line drawing of a cloud. That cloud symbolizes that there are a lot of twists and turns–some of them possibly arbitrary–between steps D and E that exist but are unnecessary to understand the processes you are charting. This has been standard nomenclature for two decades. Pick up an IP text book and you will find it. So, that’s where “the Cloud” comes from.
Second, “the Cloud” isn’t anything in particular. It just sounds more exciting/scary than saying “a bunch of VERY unrelated processes and procedures, ranging from thin client computing to offsite storage and backup, that take place over the Internet. Frankly, most of the time someone uses “Cloud” as a descriptor, the word “Internet” would be a better choice, offering more clarity to the listener.
Thin Client Computing is what many people mean when they say “cloud.” It is an idea that has been around for more than two decades, and was championed by Oracle back in the 90’s. With Thin Client you either A) remotely run a program from a server, or B) temporarily borrow or rent the program from a server to use on your client. These are old ideas that have been around for decades, but have been given a huge new life due to smart phones and other mobile device.
The other mainstays of the “Cloud”are file transfer, storage, and backup. There is nothing new about any of this other than it is being done over a much larger network. This network will not magically poof into a cloud. It will never be more fast or trustworthy than the weakest, slowest link between you and your material. After last year’s Amazon debacle, ask anyone who lost data/dailies/prints how super comfy they are about the puffiness of the cloud. None of what I’m saying means that I think we aren’t making great advances. I do. I just don’t think there is anything magic or new about them.
As to FCP X and the cloud, I don’t see anything particularly special or innovative about it that makes it more suitable for a networked world than any of its competitors. In fact, I would say that from what I have seen, it is well behind Avid in developing “cloud” tools. Last year at SMPTE, Avid was the only NLE player there showing “cloud” tools. It was a cool demo, which I guess they repeated again at NAB
https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/NABrealtime/story/avids_web_based_editing_demo/
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33 Replies
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The Cloud is a bunch of hot air (as far as video storage for editing goes).
Nothing to see here…. move along….
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For the last several years, I’ve been using the MobileMe iDisk on all my Apple products. Among other things, it allowed me to upload completed client videos, which I could later share from my iPhone via the iDisk app from any place in the world. Or, I could put things on the iDisk such as my custom FCP settings etc., so I could have them available instantly at any client’s facility anywhere in the world. It is very handy, and I have figured a zillion ways to make it useful in my business, but now it’s going away, and Apple’s iCloud is replacing it sometime within a matter of months.
As a precursor to the Cloud, I loved iDisk, in spite of its slow servers, and I’m really hoping the Cloud does all the things I like and lots more. However, it seems to me, to be truly useful, there is going to have to be either much great bandwidth on the Internet, or some type of very fast and automated down-rezing of video before it’s sent on its way to the Cloud.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Producing Episodic TV with “24” Producer Michael Klick:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-1_Michael-Klick/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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Thanks for that Chris. I never understood where that damn term came from. It all of a sudden just started being used in all kinds of computer commercials. I put it in the same category as Hemi. To this day, I still don’t know what a hemi is and why I should knock down old ladies to get one in my truck.
The more I learned about “cloud” computing, to more I kept wondering whether or not I was missing something. Surely there had to be more to it than what I was already doing with my computer? I guess not.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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A recent email from Tim Cook has stated that Apple might not be averse to putting back some of the missing MobileMe features in iCloud, hopefully iDisk will be one of them as I have been using it as well
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Steve Connor] “A recent email from Tim Cook has stated that Apple might not be averse to putting back some of the missing MobileMe features in iCloud, hopefully iDisk will be one of them as I have been using it as well”
That would be terrific.
[Steve Connor] “”My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user””
My name is David and I’m a FCP 7 junkie – I shot up FCP X and didn’t feel a thing.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Producing Episodic TV with “24” Producer Michael Klick:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-1_Michael-Klick/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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[Chris Harlan] “FCP X is somehow the Prophet of the Cloud”
Maybe FCPX Profit from the Cloud.
[Chris Harlan] “As to FCP X and the cloud, I don’t see anything particularly special or innovative about it that makes it more suitable for a networked world than any of its competitors.”
I think Apple has server/san support as a means to connect to a metadata project media control brain but that’s all speculation. The speculation is fueled in me precisely because of what FCPX lacks. The whole metadata database seems to be missing a “controller.” It doesn’t make any sense to me that FCPX would be designed that way unless there’s intent to add it later. Of course some one say it’s just plain missing and that’s that. I just don’t think Apple is that stupid.
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[David Roth Weiss] “[Steve Connor] “A recent email from Tim Cook has stated that Apple might not be averse to putting back some of the missing MobileMe features in iCloud, hopefully iDisk will be one of them as I have been using it as well”
That would be terrific.”
In fact one of gripes about Apple is that they keep the mantra of “optical disk is dying” yet seem to have made no effort to create an alternate delivery method for professionals (business to business).
[David Roth Weiss] “[Steve Connor] “”My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user””
My name is David and I’m a FCP 7 junkie – I shot up FCP X and didn’t feel a thing.”
It must be too dilute for you. Apple must increase the dosage concentration for those inured.
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[Craig Seeman] “Apple must increase the dosage concentration for those inured.”
And, it had best come very quickly, as many like me are suffering withdrawal symptoms and we need a fix of the good stuff ASAP.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Producing Episodic TV with “24” Producer Michael Klick:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-1_Michael-Klick/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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That’s quite different from a storage cloud. There’ve been render clouds for years in 3D.
The problem is the poor bandwidth we have in the US for Internet.
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