-
The Mother of All NLE Demos
-
Dave you king!
very late to this –
are you basically the first person ever in history to slap down on the spacebar for a marker for timing? I think you are you know.
Spatial organisation FTW.
how many potential stakeholders at the time saw this? did their brains explode? Was someone from future avid sit in the same place jobs sat at xerox parc going –
OMG OMG OMG OMG.Also aren’t you basically the Methuselah of editors? Did you just have to sit around for half a decade going – someone will start advertising for NLE editors pretty soon… did the wait get tedious? Did you take up carpentry?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “I get it, completely, but I would challenge the “not as good”. I’m not saying you would like Roles or a data sort based approached any better then color coding and strict track assignments, or even that, on an existential level, the data based model is better, but I could make a strong argument. “
I’m not talking in general though, just about this one particular project I worked on. I know there are many scenarios where roles can provide a better experience, but for what I wanted on this specific gig I don’t think current implementation of roles would’ve been as good as what I did in Avid. I’ve attached a screen grab of a portion of my timeline from that project for reference.
On V1, tan is for sourced archival screener footage, blue is unsourced archival screener footage, pink is company owned archival footage and orange is master archival footage. V6 is lower thirds and V7 is missing shots or footage that needs to be swapped out (v8 is just a TC filter so ignore that). At a glance I know exactly what is what and giving the clip a color or putting it on v7 just takes a moment. I didn’t go into the project planning on doing this, but once we started getting into the thick of it I need an easy way to keep an eye on the ‘types’ of footage int the timeline and just adding colors did the trick. Putting things on V7 was just an easy and obvious way to signal “Hey, *this* really needs attention.
-
[Andrew Kimery] “but for what I wanted on this specific gig I don’t think current implementation of roles would’ve been as good as what I did in Avid. “
I’ll take your word for it, but I would still challenge it! 🙂
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “are you basically the first person ever in history to slap down on the spacebar for a marker for timing? I think you are you know.”
As a matter of fact, I specifically requested that particular feature and the engineering team built it for me! 😀
GTV had segments that were like music videos and I wanted to be able to cut on a beat by banging the spacebar. It worked great! (side note, I’m a drummer and before joining LFL was playing in bands, so I wanted tools that would make rhythmic editing as easy as playing a beat).
[Aindreas Gallagher] “how many potential stakeholders at the time saw this? did their brains explode? Was someone from future avid sit in the same place jobs sat at xerox parc going – OMG OMG OMG OMG.”
At first it was strictly in-house. And I got to demo to some very special people, like Ted Nelson (who saw it as the perfect tool he’d been wanting for years to finish a hypermedia film project); and Doug Engelbart. One of my fondest memories is of the afternoon I got to hang out with him, demo the system and chat about his work and ideas for the future.
Those were real high points.
As the project was winding down in 1990, I was convinced we had a billion dollar industry in our hands. But for whatever reason, George didn’t want to pursue it and the moment and momentum slipped away from us. Apple began showing it to third-parties. I know for sure the BBC got a look and it’s likely Avid did as well. The rest as they say, is history.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “Also aren’t you basically the Methuselah of editors? Did you just have to sit around for half a decade going – someone will start advertising for NLE editors pretty soon… did the wait get tedious? Did you take up carpentry?”
LOL, well needless to say, I was very disappointed we weren’t going to make a business of our invention. Keep in mind this was the early 90’s, a time when the concept of software patents didn’t exist. Once it went out into the wild, it was gone. As I’ve previously written, I do believe an object-oriented, open timeline and basic NLE UI functionality like ours was inevitable. There was a lot of parallel development at the time. But I think we did make something genuinely new and special.
As for me, after LFL, I went from project to project in a pretty eclectic path. Project-based partnerships and collaborations, many with LFL/Apple colleagues. Startups that went boom and bust, usually trying to invent something for the future. I’ve learned it’s great to be ahead of your time… the trick is to not be too far ahead.
I co-owned an Avid 3/4″ offline system in the mid 90’s and hated it. Had a Media 100 for a project it was pretty good at the time. But it wasn’t until Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD that I felt like I was home again.
This thread has become pretty noisy so if you missed it, you might enjoy this reply to Charlie and Michael regarding UI inspiration:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/80539
I’ll also answer Mark Suszko’s question about laserdisc when I get a moment.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums -
[David Lawrence]”Re: influences and why a horizontal layout – I’m pretty sure we were influenced by the typical digital audio software we were using, with waveforms drawn horizontally. But there were other important considerations. We (Westerners at least) read from left to right, and monitors are typically landscape shape. A horizontal layout gives us the most efficient use of screen real estate. For all these reasons, horizontal made sense to us.”
Thanks for that David. Of course a lot of monitors were portrait or square. These days that is less usual than back then. I do think music notation was a factor in DAWs so in a way it was following that convention. In spite of what some think, conventions help especially with learning curves.
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “are you basically the first person ever in history to slap down on the spacebar for a marker for timing? I think you are you know.”
[David Lawrence]As a matter of fact, I specifically requested that particular feature and the engineering team built it for me! 😀
dSP DAWs took that space bar concept one step further. During record, hitting the space bar split the clip and added sequential numbering. Fantastic when recording VO to create new clips per sentence or paragraph as required during a continuous record.
Fairlight have a great concept with markers of being able to grab video thumbnails in real time. On the right of screen is an area for storing thumb as locators. Right mouse click in a box at any time, even when video is rolling, grabs a thumb marker. Left mouse click takes you to that thumb in the timeline. Great way to steal a group of FX and paste it into a scene.Having viual thumbnails as marker/locators makes it really easy to jump around in a timeline.
-
[Michael Gissing] “Thanks for that David. Of course a lot of monitors were portrait or square. These days that is less usual than back then. I do think music notation was a factor in DAWs so in a way it was following that convention. In spite of what some think, conventions help especially with learning curves.”
True. In fact, I remember the Radius Pivot which was considered pretty innovative at the time, so portrait monitors were by no means rare. But we just had 640×480 Mac II color displays. I was happy we had two of them.
Agree music notation would be a factor in DAWs. It’s all about the convention of reading, which is a pretty strong convention.
Also, interestingly, SoundDroid displayed its waveforms vertically in the form of a cue sheet:
https://www.typewritten.org/Articles/DroidWorks/sd-485.pdf
[Michael Gissing] “What was the music? Sounded a bit like Jan Garbarek.”
No idea who did it. Next time I run into Burt Arnowitz (the video’s producer) I’ll ask and see if he remembers.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I’ll take your word for it, but I would still challenge it! :)”
Challenge away! With your persistence I feel like Waldo is right under my nose but I just don’t see him. 🙂
If I want to know what ‘type’ of footage is in the timeline (ex. temp, master, company owned or ‘unknown source’) what’s easier than color coding? You’ve certainly illustrated situations where roles would be better, but those examples don’t seem to correspond to the the situation where I used color coding.
I know I could add keywords or roles, but it seems like there are two downsides to that. First, I would have to use the index each time to ‘select’ the type of footage I was looking for in the timeline, as opposed to the colored clips which are always visible in the timeline. The second downside I see is that since all the highlighted clips in the timeline look the same there is no way for me to differentiate between type so I would have to call each type up one at a time.
Is this a fair assumption or did I miss my left turn at Albuquerque?
-
class.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
-
[Mark Suszko] “I’d like more insight into the laser disk portion of MPS and the later laser Edit systems. Instead of hard drives, you had the footage transferred to a laser disk and the NLE generated an EDL based on the codes from the laser disks. Fine. But then what was the *output* stage process, to get that final video mastered out to one-inch or whatever? And how long did it take to make the laser disks for the sources?”
Great questions, thank you.
A bit of background – computer-controlled optical storage media (laser videodisc and CD-ROM) was at the center of the collaboration between Lucasfilm, Apple, and The National Geographic Society. Our design research focused on exploring how the synergy of personal computers and high-capacity optical storage would enable new interactive experiences for education, entertainment, and beyond. GTV, the eventual laserdisc classroom product produced for NGS began as one of several laserdisc-based multimedia design examples during the research and bridge phases of the collaboration. You can check out one of the first press reports (written by John Markoff while he was at the SF Examiner) here:
https://propaganda.com/exam_060386.jpg
This article (and other press from that day) focused on CD-ROM and didn’t mention the importance of laserdisc in the experiences and systems we were designing.
Of course, we weren’t the first to use laserdisc as a video editing source, EditDroid pioneered that several years earlier. But our project was designed around specific benefits of laserdisc technology.
Your description of the how we used laserdiscs as video source is correct. Instead of storing video on hard drives, we created one-inch tape pre-masters which were burned to three identical laserdisc check discs for use in the MPS.
Sound was stored on two 650MB Jasmine hard drives. We chose those particular drives because they could hold the exact same amount of data as a stereo audio CD. This was a big deal back then – IIRC, those drives costed around $20,000 each.
I would edit video segments on the MPS and after client revision/approval the system generated a CMX-compatible EDL. This EDL was taken to an online suite where it was used to auto-assemble the program master using the one-inch MPS laserdisc pre-masters as source. Transitions and color correction and were performed online as well.
Re: how long it took to make the MPS pre-masters – an interesting question. GTV had a unique interactive design that made the pre-mastering process unusual. I could write a separate article on this topic but here’s an overview:
A CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) laserdisc stores 54,000 frames of video. This video can be played back in real time at 30FPS giving 30 minutes of running video. Each individual frame on a CAV disc can also be accessed directly and played back as a still.
By connecting a computer with a database to the videodisc player, it becomes possible to use the laserdisc as a giant frame store. The computer database keeps track of the images on the disc and the computer controls what image is displayed and how long it displays before switching to another image.
The GTV prototype design imagined an educational media experience driven by music, story and great sound design, driving carefully selected, visually compelling still images from National Geographic. These would be short, bite-sized segments, ranging in length from 15-seconds to a couple minutes. They’d have attitude, style, humor, and pizzaz. And they’ed each focus on a single topic or idea.
The computer would create the experience of these segments on-the-fly, playing audio from a CD-ROM and simultaneously syncing still playback from the laserdisc. Because the laserdisc has 54,000 individual frames, we imagined a single disc would store a ton of material. Way more than 30-minutes of running video. And we imagined building teachers an authoring tool so they could string these segments together like beads on a chain to create whatever lesson plans they wanted from the library on disc.
It was an ambitious design that attempted to get maximum leverage from the technologies on the table. By the time we went into production, budget and time constraints meant we had to let go of many of the original ideas for delivery. But the segment experience remained sound and still-image based and we did build an authoring tool for teachers which ran on the Apple //c.
The video pre-mastering process involved requesting, selecting, and transferring thousands of slides and photographs from National Geographic to one-inch video as single frames. We would use the IMC, a programmable, servo-controlled camera for animatics – pans, zooms and various moves – on photographs and slides that were pre-planned and shot as running stills. We were’t the first to use this technique and btw, neither was Ken Burns. 😉 Of course, today we set a few keyframes and we’re done, but back then you literally needed a robot.
After the pre-master was done, it was sent to Crawford Communications in Atlanta. A few days later, we’d get back three of these:
I’d then load up the MPS and get to work cutting.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up