Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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[Oliver Peters] “Wish all due respect to Bill, it’s sometimes hard to tell when he’s talking about the current real world and when he’s drifted off into how he imagines the world could be, extrapolating from existing processes and technologies. ☺ Hence my question. (No offense meant, Bill.)”
None taken.
This is the “conceive it, believe it, achieve it” process in action.
I’ve learned that if I don’t start by imagining working a different way – I never will.
What’s shocked me so much in the past half decade – is how few actual dead ends I’ve encountered when I’ve allowed myself to stop thinking the way ai used to and tried to move on to something better by altering my process.
It’s spooky how much better things appear to be now (at least in my working processes!) than they’ve ever been before.
Better, faster, cheaper tools – that are a LOT more fun to use – combined with new ways to reach audiences that were undreamed of not that long ago.
What an amazing time to be involved in Creative Arts!
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
This is just a pure Guess, but the organization of data is a fundamental business need in a way image management just isn’t.
Something like Filemaker can drive efficiency across every single department in a major corporate enterprise.
Real Estate, HR, facilities – all can effectively use databases as a core management tool.
While ANY photo manipulation tool is just hugely more limited in use.
Far fewer users really need a photo processong tool.
I just don’t think that will ever change.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Craig Seeman] “Claris, now Filemaker Inc, is still an Apple subsidiary AFAIK. I”
I have a strong suspicion that Apple – as a global behemoth corporation – has an almost unimaginable amount of data to manage.
Having a nice, extensible semi-relational database, in house – with the product team under the roof, so to speak – is likely a big value add in the overall Apple scheme of things.
I know I’ve had occasion to call in for FileMaker Pro tech support and the level of expertise and the calm “here is some info that might set you straight” response I’ve encountered has been almost spookily professional.
That FMPro competes in the marketplace as its own product is surely nice, but I’m not sure that if it didn’t – it would go anywhere.
It solves real works organizational problems brilliantly – is extensible and customizable – and well supported. And Apple has a long history of favoring IP solutions they own outright.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Andrew Kimery] “Also, there’s no way for you to QC the final output without downloading it and watching it yourself, which pretty much negates the whole point of having a cloud-based service generate and deliver your files for you.”
Well, right now the FiO Approve/Needs Work tagging system could easily grow into something to manage versions – and really, all you’d need for QC is for someone to watch the deliverable version on line and vet that the file confirms to your requirements. No need to download it, really.
Further, if it’s just matching a distribution requirement checklist – a machine learning system should easily be able to compare the deliverable to your last export and only flag it if it differs.
Fun to think about.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Shane,
This to me is a logical progression of the changes I’ve experienced over the past six years.
I do VERY little the same way I did it back then.
(And yes, to Olivers point, this is not just about X – it’s about the entirety of the new era of digital delivery.)
Maybe it’s my lucky fiber line access – but I simply think about digital files differently now.
They aren’t a fixed “thing” to me anymore. They are part of a living connected stream that I can touch and change any time.
The old way I’d do that was to “load up” my project on my machine and basically master a stand-alone file to send to someone. Actually, as you indicate – lots and lots of standalone versions, often. That’s less and less how it works for me anymore. While I don’t face the same delivery needs that you do, my deliverables are basically all now connected files on-line.
I don’t “push” them to clients – they “pull” them as needed.
And increasingly, I’m starting to see that things I expected to need to do BEFORE the upload – like versioning – can be more efficiently done in the cloud responding to metadata I apply against already uploaded content.
Right now this type of thing is still somewhat unusual, I’ll grant – and I’m no big pioneer in it – I’m just noticing how what I’m being pulled toward today works much better and faster than what I used to do – and it seems to me that the benefits are so HUGE I have to believe it’s going to grow in this direction.
My delivery is an ephemeral connected file on a server. (The “connected” part is the key)
There is no actual MASTER or VERSION as a stand-alone thing – just an expression of what somebody needs in the moment – exported for the moment – revisable in 10 minutes if a flaw is discovered or a new idea is useful to the work.
It’s a change in my thinking.
And I’m just trying to figure out what’s going to be important in this new system. At least what’s important that’s distinct from what’s been important in the past – when a master was a fixed thing on a tape or disk – that was relatively unchangeable past the moment of its creation.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “If you have to deliver a master, a split-track/textless master, and in both NTSC and PAL variations, you’re looking at around 120GB+. “
See, that’s what I just don’t get.
The way X works right now – those splits and M&E versions are just pointers to the original files that your desktop computer renders out on demand.
Seems to me that with a depository if the original frames in the cloud to link to – it would be massively faster to have the big iron behind the cloud apply the version metadata against the stored frames – rather than to replete upload the same underlying data again and again and again..
Why would you ever need to re upload multiple versions of the same exact frames? It makes no sense to me.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Andrew Kimery] “Again, for short form this isn’t really an issue, but when you go from content lengths of 60sec to 60min to 120min then all of a sudden problems of scale start to appear.”
Yes and no in my experience.
You only need ONE entity to upload the master content bucket to one location – one time. Theoretically, that could be happening over a week while The whole team is cutting away on matching ProRez, DNX or even H264 versions.
And there’s nothing to stop someone from setting up a rules based upload system where small chunks of the master timeline “o-neg” are uploaded as parts of the project are approved – or they go off to full Rez required processes like VFX.
There’s no functional reason I can see to wait to do one big massive upload after everything is finished.
It’s how rendering works already. Why not upload?
Just thinking out loud.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Yep.
I’ve had that for six years for basic YouTube and Vimeo delivery directly out of the Share Menu – and that “plumbed in” automated one-click system has improved by leaps year-over-year as those tech systems have grown.
It should not be lost that Frame.io just got that new $20 million round of VC financing – and that Emery Wells and the team there said a priority was enhancing transfer security – presumably to allow the big content players like Hollywood to use it fluidly.
That tells me they don’t view file size as a stopper.
And as someone lucky enough to have Consumer fiber at home – I can vouch that bigger pipes make a multi Gig video upload faster and easier for me today than a 30 min audio upload was in my youth.
There’s nothing I’d enjoy more than consigning the competing delivery specs battles to the past. They are an awful distraction from the creative work that should actually drive project success.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Andrew Kimery] “But what file do you send to Telestream-in-the-cloud to begin with? “
I see this as a temporary issue that will be solved pretty quickly.
The clear trend is two-fold.
The first is metadata instructions against mirrored footage pools. Both X and Premiere have gone there via their Proxy plumbing. It’s trivial and expected now.
That sets up the key factor as the nature of the Original Media pool – wherever that may reside. Right now I have the most experience with how Frame.io handles this – but basically, I work initially with h.264 encodes for ease in the early stage content creation and review. Then I upload full Rez out of X – which just replaces my source pool.
But “full res” can vary, at will, as well.
The “pixel density” of that source media pool is determined by me when I determine my Project settings. But that can easily be revised later.
The clear trend is that cameras are capturing both larger pixel rasters AND improving their color depth capture abilities rapidly – so this seems like a process built for an easily foreseeable future.
So the simple answer is that you send to your distribution service a “digital master” created from the largest, pixel densest, least destructively encoded footage pool you can – and then let the big processing guns in the cloud handle the rest.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “But if my requirement is an MPEG2 or Avid DNxHD in an MXF wrapper, I don’t believe the service will generate that from the ProRes master. Is your experience different?”
It’s the party requesting that deliverable I’m questioning.
If Telestream Episode can fix this on your desktop – shouldn’t a virtual Episode-like system be able to fix it better, faster and more directly in the cloud?
Why should it be your job? It’s “automatable.” Right now.
Asking EVERY editor to become a transcoding expert is silly.
It’s work better suited to the machines.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.