Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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There’s also a nice little app called LoopyLoopy that will set any QT video into endless loop mode from an iPhone or iPad. If you have an iOS device and it’s attendant doc connector to VGA adapter, that’s another approach.
If you want to run from a laptop – PlaybackPro from DTV labs has got a pretty stellar rep. But it’s not as cheap. And of course you’ll need the proper Apple dongle to get video out of your particular version of the mac video out VGA/DisplayPort connection.
Depends very much on the hardware and output capabilities you need.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Stephan Walfridsson] “No Bill, 3840×2160 is 8.3 megapixels, so it’s actually a LARGER file.”
Yeah, you’re right. I still have trouble thinking in terms of 1920×1080 native rasters since for most of my career, all I had to deal with was a 640×480 (or 720×480 non square) pixel rasters.
When you have to think of everything in terms of filling a full “high def” TV raster the files get pretty big pretty fast.
The truth is that a huge chunk of the work I’m doing these days is destined for the web – and a “target raster” is more likely 800×600 progressive – which lets you work with smaller source files even if you want some “zoom room.”
Faced with 1920×1080, I’d probably avoid going 2x unless there was a compelling need – or better yet do the really smart thing and do a “pre-analysis” of the individual photos and decide which of them would actually benefit from being “zoomed into” and by how much – thus keeping the largest number of imported photos as small as I could.
But thanks, Stephan, for keeping the record straight. A lot of folks come here to learn and correcting mushy math like mine in this case is a useful and appreciated.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Pickin up the Peces?
Or maybe not, too many years ago to recall, tho I do distinctively recall that either the album cover or the liner notes made specific reference to it which is why I fiddled with it.
And I’m positive it was the banjo part that disappeared, because it was so clearly “on top” of the mix.
(update: my curiosity got the better of me: the web knows all and a search of poco album phase cancelation enearthed a reference… It was Crazy Eyes!)
Have a happy holiday.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Mark Morache] “Yes, I have difficulty trusting Apple. They can fix that any time they want to, by simply communicating with us openly about where they are going. Are they silent because they are hiding the truth from us or because it’s just their way of doing things and they aren’t about to change that now. I don’t know, but I’m going to stay on the ride, because I’m excited about the future. “
The “silence” thing is interesting to me.
What are the potential downsides of such silence? Pretty much limited to “insecurity” on the part of upper echelon editors.
On the other hand, what are the potential upsides?
Let’s see. Off the top of my head some might be…
Keep competitive secrets more secure.
Keep the market guessing – which for Apple, has a history of building excitement for product launches and updates.
Maybe suppress “forward looking statement” hassles in financial markets.
And keep the coding team on task without having to deal with constant “explain where you’re going” meetings and presentations.Sounds like a fair trade to me.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Chris Harlan] “Bill, I agree with many of your assessments, but to me they argue in favor of 7 and not X.”
As they will to anyone who’s in the class of “fully developed large, relatively complex and relatively expensive monolithic editing software” buyers.
Apple didn’t see that as the most important market of the future. But that doesn’t mean they think it’s un-important. Merely, IMO, that they think that if they “reinvent” the tool with a more modern focus – then let it grow and develop over time into something that builds on top of that “universality” with constant broadening and speciality use increases, then they get the best of both worlds. Software that is broad, modern and targeted.
Editing was increasingly becoming something done by massive swaths of people in the same way that word processing moved from the secretarial pool into the relm of “general purpose” software that is as attractive to the casual letter writer, as it is to an admin cranking out business correspondence for a “boss.”
I think the new FCP-X is a better tool for modern general purpose editing than Legacy was.
We’ll see if it also becomes a superior “special purpose” editing tool on top of that.
Only time will tell.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Herb Sevush] “Much of the fury and antagonism on this forum would vanish if Apple simply restated your position as their own. Why do you suppose they haven’t?”
Because it’s what a small sub-section of the small sub-section of professional editors want, but not what Apple feels it needs.
They own the product, they make the rules. Period.
They do not consult us, nor should they.
That’s not how companies win in the modern world. They’ve clearly proved this. Apple regularly markets products that nobody ever realized that they wanted. This is a world of hyper competition and instantaneous access to information. It’s not the same world where companies could make a good product in one decade and count on that to sustain an income flow for many future decades. Today, we ALL change our purchase patterns on a dime. Which means that any company can out innovate any other company and strip away market share. I spent a solid 15 years supporting Sony. Then they lost me. They were “out-innovated” by Canon. And if tomorrow Panasonic or Red or JVC, or Kawasaki has the best camera value proposition for what I need to do – they’ll get my money. That sucks for old style companies, but it’s how we all operate today.
Many here exemplify that. They’re pissed because the Mac Editing “brand” let them down. So they’re open to change. But HOW did the brand let them down? By innovating away from where they were. And risking that they would leave behind a chunk of the editors who aren’t as ready to change things.
Apple keeps innovating. They keep moving. They might move away from where you or I are positioned today – but maybe in doing so, they might actually move to where you or I need to be tomorrow. Nobody knows. That’s the exciting part.
If it’s true for more purchasers than it’s NOT true for – they win in the long run. Simple as that.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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I get that this has mad you angry. Anger is a useful human emotion, but generally most useful to the person who is stuck feeling it. It typically encourages us to change things so we don’t have to stay angry.
For everyone else it’s most functional as a signal that theres something bothering the person feeling it.
The big problem here is that the anger has been understood and well acknowledged for months now. Everyone here gets it. Thoroughly.
So the communications function job is well and truly done.
Now it’s becoming a bit self indulgent, IMO. The signal was sent. Mission accomplished. At some point the message changes to “see how superior my analysis STILL is… Or perhaps,” I’m obsessed with my anger and can’t move on.”
Neither is particularly useful, IMO.
But whatever.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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My phase issues “awakening” moment was reading the liner notes of a Poco album back in the 70s.
They warned that playing a particular track in MONO might cause “problems” for the banjo.
I hit the MONO button on my receiver and damned if the banjo didn’t instantly TOTALLY DISAPPEAR from the mix!
I was so fascinated by the effect that I kept brining over friends to demo it.
(now that I look back, I think those who thought it was cool were the friends I hung out with longest at that point in my life, go figure!)
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Art is both completely correct…and, IMO, completely stuck.
As an individual editor, he needs to jettison X and get on with his life. (as to many others who keep coming back here with the same arguments based on their desire to shoehorn the new software into their historic workflows and expectations.)
They need to see their “editing” as thing that lives and dies in the timeline. It’s what they know – and driving it is their central focus. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a noble task that can certainly consume a lifetime. It’s also, unfortunately, increasingly not where “general purposes content creation” is headed.
In that wider game, “editing” (more accurately “content assembly” is just one step in the overall scheme of things. Editing’s relationship to content creation, (like this or not) is becoming a lot like type designs relationship to art. Society still needs pros who can do it – but not so many seats are going to be available for that, as seats for individuals who can work at the wider levels of “project creation.”
Because that’s what the market really values now. The market is increasingly seeking people who can efficiently provide the “whole package” not just one element of the package. This is driven both by a desire for short schedules, cost control, and that whole “democratization” thing where there are hardly any barrier left for anyone who wants to learn anything.
This makes it increasingly hard for specia*ists (spam trap killer), but it’s way the market is going, like it or not.
The decisions that will remain for us are what games we want to play. Do we want to be exclusively “editors” for the rest of our careers? If so, work your ass off to earn one of the gently diminishing number of seats that will always be there for people who are great at narrow skill sets. And use a tool that empowers that.
But if you want to spend your career on a different level – you may want to learn a tool that has a more “balanced” emphasis where editing is ONE task presented to you in the window – along with some newly enhanced other tools like the more robust database management tools in X.
This is not odd, it’s just a simple evolution.
After all, nearly all the “video editors” I know also do “type design” at a functional level. They are seldom true “type designers” – but they’ve learned enough of those skills to do a credible day-to-day job of it.
X encourages us to start building similar functional skills in database management, motion graphics, and compression/export with it’s new design – rather than spending all our time in the narrow (if complex and very important) realm of the timing and finishing of our video streams.
More choices are better, IMO.
Simple as that.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Andrew Richards] “That’s the key- how much would you pay for it? The business model du jour seems to be “software for cheap, hardware required”.”
This is interesting to me.
Hardware was something that the more you made, the cheaper it was to make it – but only up to a point. It functioned via classic economies of scale. Buy 10 motors they’re relatively expensive. Buy 100,000 – you get a huge break on the price per unit.
Software, on the other hand, has hefty fixed development costs. But after those are met – the costs profile drops to maintenance and re-development plus distribution costs.
Apple (via the iTunes store) pretty much slashed distribution costs in orders of magnitude.
And even without that,, – selling more software will potentially leverag much more pure profit than hardware models could hope to – since the costs of sales scale virtually rather than by having to buy assemble, and ship more stuff.
I wonder if, like modern computer printer manufactures – the (hardware) computers will be someday be kept artificially cheap – simply to drive the sales of the high-profit (software) ink.
Interesting to think about.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor