Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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[Oliver Peters] “The real reason to use a desktop isn’t necessarily power, but connectivity. If all you need is an external monitor and a drive, then a MBP is just fine. But many users need a lot more than that, which makes a desktop unit a more attractive option.
“So the next question obviously becomes has “connectivity” itself changed?
I’d argue it already has – massively.
Remember how “Video” used to pass only on specialized video connectors?
Now, when you plug in a Lumaforge Jellyfish via 10gig to enable a small workgroup of editors – all you’re really doing is plugging in a glorified telephone connector.
Your fancy 5k monitor – when you go to plug THAT in, you’re plugging in the same HDMI connector as you find on your living room Sony TV.
Half the “interim components” I used to have to string into my working topology – TBCs, Decks, PatchBays, etc, etc, etc – are GONE.
Input: Wireless
Output: Wireless
100% of the effect boxes I used to need to have “Connected” now live in computer resident silicon and code, not in metal boxes. They are either purchased code snippets or Apps (which are the same thing.)The whole industry wide BET on USB C/Thunderbolt is to simplify connectivity – basically to make it dismissible.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think “connectivity as an issue” has much tail left.
Bob Zelin made the point in your Florida video. When there are hardly any “video specific” monitors left in the video solution vendors booths at NAB – it’s a pretty good indication that things have changed out from under a whole generation of classic practitioners.
Time to adapt again. Oh well. Business as usual today.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
The lesson I learned in 2015 was NEVER waste time “imagining” what hardware might do.
Wait for it to ship and test what it ACTUALLY does.
A few years back I’d read 1000 times that a big desktop level machine was required to do serious daily editing for money.
That wisdom was totally and utterly wrong – yet years later, people are still parroting it.
People working only in desktop machines missed the gap closing in mobile vs desktop processor performance along with the development of modern proxy workflows.Basically, the ground had shifted.
When the iMacPro -and later whatever MacPro replacement arrives – that’s when it’s time to assess the validity of the workflows that it will enable..
When they can be tested in the real world.
Speculation is fun, but often woefully wrong when it crashes head on into reality.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Oliver.
Inflamitory no. Cautionary yes. I think people deserve another view about this. Then they can decide for themselves. That’s all.
I am a bit surprised at the “access to your property via take it to somebody else who rents it” idea. How is that remotely equivelent to keeping control of your own IP? Wait, I get it. Adobe just wants me to maintain a lifelong friendship with at least one CC subscriber to enable me hastle free alteration of my own property if need be. They are clearly just out to encourage me to have more friends! (I should have picked up on that sooner.)
And yes, I actually have dumped the use of both Word and Excel.
Word is (to me) bloatware now. Much happier with Omwriter for disappearing into just writing without so many distractions – and Pages when I need formatting.
Excel offers nothing to me (at my level of use) I can’t do in Numbers.
I’m *trying” to evaluate my tool approaches on their actual merits rather than on the inertia of choices I (or even clients) made long ago and for which superior options might exist if only I keep open to them.
That’s seemed to work out pretty well the past decade for me.
YMMV.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “[Ricardo Marty] “Got a video this week on Facebook which claims that the adobe subscription will go up ton $69. if they don’t renew.”
Completely bogus.”
I completely agree with Oliver here.
This is completely antithetical to the long term success of the Adobe Subscription model since wild fluctuations in price will drive attention to costs that their subscriber base has already accepted. When people NOTICE something – they can decide they can live without it.
In this model, you don’t want people to NOTICE that direct bank draw as anything but totally normal.
At least while you’re actively building the subscriber base, you want those monthly draws to become regularized. Nothing to see here. Just ignore them everyone.
I’d be more concerned that at some future date, they find it difficult to resist – not wild increases like 30% – but incremental adjustments.
Once you have a system with a million people are paying $50 – an increase to $52.50 yields an additional $2.5 million dollars in profits against absolutely ZERO additional costs and likely almost no push back from your subscriber base.
(Just put out a press release mumbling about “keeping up with inflation” and you’re fine.)No individual gets hurt, but you suddenly have a “pure profit” dial in the hands of executives who have nothing to constrain them from using it to make their investors happy. Subscriptions down? Adjustment time. Economic downturn? Where’s that dial?
Hey, we have these other services, right? Stock, etc? How about we just FOLD those purchases into your monthly Billings and let them FLOAT like electric usage? So you don’t really know what’s being charged anymore. Bingo. your Adobe bill becomes like your telephone bill. Lots of tiny charges and taxes and fees – yielding a monthly amount that you are unsure WHAT it should actually be unless you have the time to go through all the line items – but vaguely feel is necessary to continue into a service you can’t really disengage from.
THAT would scare me.
Constant future incrementalism. Not wild pricing swings.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
I’ve never spoken out against subscriptions per se.
Only against subscriptions linked to user access to their own Intellectual Property.
Heck, *I* do subscriptions at XinTwo. But you need to unsubscribe it’s as easy as subscribing and you keep all the knowledge you’ve gained and I control NOTHING outside my own IP.
I have thousands of photos in Lightroom with metadata that I have painstakingly created concerning cropping, color correction, and a thousand other creative decisions.
When my subscription ends this month, Adobe will wall me off from that prior creative work unless I pay them again.
Not acceptable in my opinion.
And it’s MY fault for working in a system that allows someone else to gatekeep my IP.
The other software systems seem to understand that, and come with IP terms that don’t put them between me and my own work.
I don’t know what AVID or others are doing in this area. Just publicly hoping that they develop similar environments where they respect my rights to IP ownership as NOT subservient to theirs.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
More worried that anything written in english behind a transparent sheet will end up looking like Klingon-esque when shot from the front.
Nothing easy about this, IMO.
; )
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
As always, the ONLY thing I want to know is how the company will be treating the IP I personally create with their software under the subscription model.
Can whatever system they devise lock the me away from my own IP should I choose to stop paying?
If so, if I was a customer, I’d nope out.
We’ll see.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Since you specifically brought up revisions to prior work, Alex-
In my opinion this tilts things wildly towards FCP X.
I’ve never experienced a software approach that’s more “revision friendly” than X is.
If your past projects storage/archive systems are properly configured (actually required for any NLE workflow!) My experience has been that revisiting and revising historic projects in X is usually around 50-90% faster than in my old non-magnetic editing days.
Part of this is how X is structured as the central hub of your work with assets like titles and sounds embedded rather than linked from separate programs – as well as the whole magnetic timeline thing making it super easy to make changes to one part of a project without affecting anything else.
Finally, all the database linkage in elements like the timeline index, let you make lots of project wide batch changes really quickly.
As awesom as X is as an editor, I honestly think it’s twice as strong as a “revisioner” of prior work – by design.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Andy Field] “maybe because they are terrific editors who’ve spent years on standard NLEs and found no need to relearn everything to suit Apple?”
(Oooh, the “big bad evil Apple” shibboleth rears it’s head again! Been a while.)
Those folks – who hurt your feelings back in 2011? Keep the flame alive, brother!
Throwing their muscle around and screwing up EVERYTHING for the rest of us poor traditional editors.
They are just so MEAN over there, aren’t they?
They are so cruel to ALWAYS focus on thinking that they might create superior tools that enable editors to work more efficiently.
The jerks.
When are they going to understand that you can already cut a string with a pocket knife, single edge razor blade, or a samurai sword.
Each have their place.
So why did Apple have to take a stab at developing yet another approach – a very refined specialized string cutter that they feel cuts string particularly well, with special string cutting features that no other string cutter has. Sure just maybe it cuts string a bit faster, and with less hassle. And we can’t let THAT take root, can we? THAT’s A BRIDGE TOO FAR!
We must constantly remind them of the value of a slow, methodical approach to string cutting – an approach like our forefathers employed when they settled the string cutting frontier back in the glorious analog age – the age where hard drives spun with a comforting noise and if your red channel offset on gen-3 footage was something you STFU about and LIVED with. (At least until you could afford a consultation with an engineering priest and spend last month’s profits on a TBC or something.)
They MUST be punished for such cheek!
Long live the large group of pro string cutters pushing back that the new Apple string cutter is too complex, doesn’t have features we all know agree are critical to a real pro (perhaps the ability to batch cut strings like the samurai sword? – or to make carrying the blade safer (as with the pocket knife verses the razor blade) and how the new string cutter will NEVER catch on because it’s just too different and the old string cutters are all anyone will ever need.
We have our own innovation, too, dang it. Look, we have Swiss Army style pocket knives. Machine mounted Samurai swords, etc, etc, etc. Things that are BETTER – and don’t scare you so much. W(ell, Except the machine mounted samurai swords – those ARE kinda scary) But it’s just grossly unfair that we have to compete with the Apple String cutter. That damn thing is like a VIRUS spreading world wide now.
It’s SO CRUEL. No matter how much marketing money our priests spend, over time, Apple spends next to NOTHING and yet a TON of people are apparently so dumb that they buy into that stupid, useless, industry-destroying Apple String (dammed) Automated MF*@#Ing cutter.
It’s so annoying.
Sheesh.
(That was fun.)
Hey, OP.
My real suggestion. For six months, let the Premiere editors cross train the X guys in Premiere and let your best X editors cross train the Premiere guys in X.
Then buy a case of beer throw a party and let THEM decide.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Andrew Kimery] “Making content is easier than ever. Distributing content is easier than ever. Garnering an audience and/or monetizing your content is whole other ball of wax.”
Lot of very reasonable observations in this post.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.