Chris Harlan
Forum Replies Created
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[Walter Soyka] “I know — it sounds like holding down the mouse button and dragging the mouse wouldn’t be all that different — but I had no idea how well FCP7 doesn’t skim until I got the hang of the skimmer in FCPX. It really does feel vastly more fluid, and as I adjusted, I was surprised what a difference not having to hold the mouse button made.
For me, this is an issue of credit where it’s due. The skimmer is the coolest feature I never knew I needed.
“How well does it work on large files? I tried to play with it on a 45 min. clip back when it first came out, and it seemed real mousey, like I was speeding through to much at a little flick of the wrist. Was this just me? Or is it harder to use on very long clips?
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[Andrew Kimery] “10yrs can be a pretty long time in this day and age. I mean, in 2002 if you told the people running companies like Borders, Blockbuster, Circuit City and Virgin Megastore that they’d be gone inside a decade mainly because of the Internet I’m sure they would’ve called a cab to take you back to Bellevue. “
I hate to disagree, but the Internet threat to CDs and DVDs was pretty well understood by all at that point, and if you were anything more than a journeyman PC user, obvious a good five years before that. So, Bellevue, no.
[Andrew Kimery] “I think there’s two levels of thing that are in motion right now. First, a ‘desktop revolution’ will happen the same way it did for publishing/printing, music recording, editing, DVD creation and even color correction. Small shops and independent artist will open up their own studios for a fraction of what the established players can and both creators and consumers will start having choices where as they really only had have one before. Second, tech savvy consumers will grab free 3D models from other online users and print a variety of things from simple kids toys to plastic sprinkler heads and peg-board organizers.
“I just don’t see it. I see it becoming a popular hobby once these printers get down in price from 40-100 grand to something under 5. But I just don’t think that they, as they are currently constituted, will provide any serious competition to the existing supply chain. You say they offer more choice, but I say they offer far less. Yes, certain aspects of custom configuration would be easier, but many others would be impossible. For one thing, everything has to be made out of the same material. Let’s say you want some dinner plates–yes, you can eventually have your uncle doing a Bruce Springsteen impression stenciled into the center of each plate, but you can’t have a plate of wood, or clay, or glass, or crockery, or even a different weight and texture of plastic. This might not matter if plates were in short supply, or inordinately expensive, but they’re not. You can get any kind of plate you want right now for not very much, including having some company put your uncle singing Born in the USA right in the center of one. Or on the side of a mug, etc.
I just don’t see what competitive value a printer like this would bring to the average consumer, other than a bit of fun. And, to be able to turn a 40-100 grand printer into a mass consumer device, you’d have to sell it for far, far less than 5 grand for enough users to realize any value in it.
I think people will open shops with the thing. I’m certain it will have a place in local, small volume manufacturing, but I don’t think my time frame is that far off. We are so flooded with inexpensive versions of almost anything that printer can make, that most people won’t have an incentive.
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[Herb Sevush] “I’ve never said to myself while editing – gee I wish there was a way to go faster when I’m looking thru my clips. There are many features I have wished for, “un-lift” being the most prominent, but never once have I ever felt that I couldn’t view my clips fast enough. Often I haven’t been able to make smart decisions fast enough, if at all, but simple viewing never slowed me down.
“Yeah. I’d like to know, too. I get that’s its nice to have something like the skimmer in your bin/clip area, but I find timeline skimming quite satisfying. Let’s forget about one experience being a timeline and one not, what makes the skimming tool superior to skimming in the timeline? This is a serious question, btw–not rhetorical. I’d really like to know why.
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[Andrew Kimery] “An adjustable wrench is scanned into a computer, the 3D model is fine tuned by a 3D modeler (which isn’t really shown in the video) and then printed using a 3D printer.
“Cool looking stuff! I hadn’t seen that particular printer from Z, but I am aware of other 3D printers on the market. I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t want to use that wrench on the pipes I was working on earlier this summer, but an interesting demo none-the-less.
I still think we are many years–probably a half century–away from an affordable consumer printer that will even begin to fill people’s daily needs. In 3001, Clarke makes lots of interesting predictions, like a large, cheep chemical 3D printer that is able to provide for most of the wants on the planet. As I recall, in the short term, it causes an economic catastrophe, but one that is soon recovered from. I think he put such an event two to three centuries in the future. Of course, what he envisions involves not only wrenches but clothing manufacture and food production.
Right now 3D printers are only commercially fit for prototyping and expensive exotic needs. It will be a very long time before they will be able to economically compete with the current–and rather sophisticated–manufacture/distribution chain. Certainly, the price of printers will come down. Unsophisticated units have been in the hands of hobbyists for some time, and maybe within the next decade someone will mass produce something like Z’s stuff so that hobbyists and less well-healed designers will be able to afford something of that ilk. But it is going to be a VERY long time before these things sit in the average person’s home as a delivery unit. I think big box hardware is still safe for a wee bit.
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[Bill Davis] “But if someone eventually develops a cheap acrylic with a tensile strength comparable to steel and an affordable “printer” that can make it wrench shape – our thinking is going to totally change.”
Yeah, and if somebody builds a Star Trek-like transporter our thinking will totally change, too. Arthur C. Clarke wrote about such a thing in the last of his 2001 books, but the reality of such a printer–one that can do a wrench today, a plate tomorrow, a Barbie on Tuesday–is far in the potential future that it just isn’t worth discussing its potential impact on near-future economics. Even if it were nearly technologically viable today, the heat and chemical interactions required would be drastic enough to keep it out of a home.
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[Phil Hoppes] “Hope that never happens to a hardware store.”
I think the reality of a wrench “printed” from foam or plastic will keep that at bay for a while.
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[Gary Huff] “Too late. Jerry Hofmann has already proclaimed X to be the fastest NLE in the entire woild!
“Period.
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[Tim Wilson] “Speaking of long movies, Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” (opening Nov. 21) is going to be 3.14159265359 hours long.
“Long reverberating rim shot.
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[Herb Sevush] “Adding an hour and a half recreation based on stills seems a bit much, but I’ll give it a look. “
It is. Its mostly a curiosity. But it does give you a glimpse of what could have been. Correct that–what was, and is no more.
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[Herb Sevush] “The film I would most liked to have seen is the 10 hour version of Von Stroheim’s Greed – I’ve seen the 2:20 version that was released, and it was brilliant. They melted down the rest of the footage for the silver nitrates, truly a “greedy” decision.”
There’s a four hour reconstruction available on iTunes, which is quite nice.