Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Oliver Peters] “Remember, this requires a full Nexis set-up and separate software.”
For bin locking yes, but not for just moving bins/folders around using Finder/Explorer (even with the bin locking other storage providers have reversed engineered it). I’ve worked on multi-editor projects where were were in different locations and we’d just trade bins/folders and via Dropbox. Unless I’m misunderstanding something specific you are referencing.
It’s much easier/cleaner than passing around XMLs or one-off ‘transport’ projects.
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[Oliver Peters] “There is a 2-level timeline view. The top (small) timeline is the full-length view, whereas the bottom, detailed view can stay zoomed in. This makes navigation throughout the timeline faster, because you don’t have to zoom in and out all the time.”
The two level view looked cool. It reminded me of the timeline view in the Touch Bar of the MBPs.
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[Mark Suszko] “Andrew, do you go back far enough to remember the feel of real machine controlled, tape-based edit bays?”
Barely (mainly basic deck to deck editing w/a Sony edit controller that I can’t remember the name of).
[Mark Suszko] “But I’m partial to custom interfaces with some haptics. I’m like those purists that love the IBM keyboards or a nice Yamaha weighted keyboard piano.”
I am as well which is why I prefer using a control surface while grading and a Logitech G-13 gamepad while editing (my actual keyboard gets very little use outside of text entry).
[Mark Suszko] “Also, the high end Cherry or whatever brand keyboard switches come at a premium, as they are harder to buy in bulk. “
Gaming keyboards using Cherry MX Brown or Red switches can be had for $60 or $70. Even keyboards used by pro players will only be $100-200 (and most of that extra cost is in the custom RGB lighting, not the switches). A gaming keyboard and this JLCooper Transport control would get you more programable buttons *and* be cheaper than the BM keyboard.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/725423-REG/JLCooper_ECLIPSE_TX_MIDNIGTHT_Eclipse_TX_Midnight_Compact.html/pageID/accessoryBM is selling a keyboard with some extra buttons and a jug/shuttle for over $1000. It feels like an expensive piece of nostalgia for former linear editors. It doesn’t seem to grant nearly the amount of additional functionality as, say, their Micro panel which is also $1025. Does the keyboard help when I’m doing color? Mixing Audio? Doing GFX/FX? Titles? Even if I only work in the Cuts Tab I’ll probably have to do a bit of all of those things before the edit is ready to send out the door.
I agree using keyboard shortcuts is faster than mousing around the GUI, but to that end why would I move my hand to the far left of the ESC key to do an Insert Edit instead of keeping my hands on the home row and just hitting the default Insert Edit keyboard shortcut? Why Would I move my hand left of the Caps Lock to mark I/O instead of just using I/O? And since the KB short cuts are printed on the keycaps you can’t even reprogram the keyboard to make it more functional w/o turning it into a confusing mess.
A keyboard with a bunch of soft-keys that are OLED screens (so you don’t have to manually label them) would be much more useful and much closer to being worth $1025. For a few hundred bucks it might be a good deal, but for over a grand I’d expect much greater functionality. I know the housing is made of metal, is the entire keyboard of a ‘hardened’ design (i.e. it’s designed to take a pounding in the field and not miss a beat)? If that’s the case then I can understand a higher price (but even then $1025 still seems excessive).
EDIT:
I also think there is a big difference between the feeling of a jog/shuttle hooked up to tape decks (where you are directly controlling the variable speed playback of the transport controls) and a jog/shuttle hooked up to an NLE (where the NLE software is doing it’s best to interrupt your mechanical input and create playback that corresponds to it). As an aside, this is one of the differences Murch talks about in “In the Blink of an Eye”; when you shuttle though video/film you are literally seeing every frame at high speed, when you shuttle though an NLE you are only seeing a small subset of frames because the NLE doesn’t playback every frame.A deck’s playback is always going to be consistent, where as NLE playback will change depending on the software version, the hardware used and the codec of the source footage. And since this keyboard seems aimed at the Cut Page I imagine you will be dealing with a lot of camera codecs and it’s going to take fast machine to allow you to quickly shuttle back and fourth through inter-frame codecs like that and get silky smooth responsiveness. I think this is part of the reason why jog/shuttles never really made the leap from linear editing to non-linear editing. Another reason is that since we are using a non-linear editor we can literally skip to any point in time instantly so having a dedicated controller tied solely to linear access was less important (JKL seemed to fit the bill).
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[Mark Suszko] ” but, I can definitely see work situations where speed and accuracy are key could benefit from the keyboard.”
More so than spending a few hundred dollars on keyboard w/extra programmable keys and a USB jog/shuttle? From what I can tell all the extra buttons on the BM keyboard are repeats of default keys (like I/O) or things than can be mapped to a custom short cut. And I assume it’s a forgone conclusion that this keyboard (aside from the standard keys) won’t work outside of Blackmagic.
Hardware controls for coloring I get. Hardware controls for audio mixing I get. But this? At first blush I don’t get why it costs $1000.
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Wow, hard pass on the $1000 keyboard.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/keyboard
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[Tim Wilson] “And yeah, many of them are the assistant editors who are doing the heaviest lifting with things like multi-application interoperation, media management, and creation of deliverables. Workspaces that accomodate those operations, which may not involve whatever you’re calling timelines these days, are no less integral to the ecosystem of what we call editing than the editing itself, make a HUGE difference in the pleasantness of using those applications.
Which is to say, what’s firmly attaching these youngsters to Media Composer is the opposite of inertia. It’s that Avid is the only application that’s extensible enough to not only do what they need it to do, but to also get the rest of the interface out of the way AND allow them to work on teams that in practice are scaling into hundreds and even thousands, combining local and remote infrastructures, etc etc etc.”
Speaking of getting the interface out of the way… the fact that you can modify Avid MC projects (add/remove bins, add media, copy/move parts of a project, etc.,) via Finder/Windows Explorer is one of the best and most unheralded features of MC from an AE point of view.
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Another NAB where everyone talks about Resolve… and then no one currently using PPro, X or Avid actually switches to Resolve as their full time NLE. 😉
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[Bill Davis] “Nothing I would like more, but as is typical, all the content is client branded stuff, so getting permission to publish all their proprietary brand design property would be a nightmare even if it turned out to be possible at all.
“I figured that would be the case, but I felt compelled to ask anyway. It sounds like a very cool project. Thank you for the timeline teaser/snippet. 🙂
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If I was attending NAB I’d totally be there. Alas, I’ll be in LA sitting this one out.
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[Bill Davis] “I spent the last two weeks designing and building out one of the most complex storylines of my past few years. It’s the video equivalent of a “brand book” for a large financial client with many divisions, all of which their many agencies need to keep the “look and feel” of all their public facing communications consistent.”
I’d be interested in a write up of that project if you had the time.
[Oliver Peters] “Aside from the issue of monetizing your data – Facebook is a horrible format to try and follow any sort of threaded discussion.”
Add to that the ‘minor’ issue of Facebook owning and controlling access to your audience. ???? FB is a very risky place to build a community, IMO, because you are 100% beholden on FB to not screw you over for their monetary gain.