Chris Harlan
Forum Replies Created
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Craig, just because commoditization made things artificially cheap for awhile, doesn’t mean they will stay that way. Commoditization burned through the PC market over the last two decades. We went from few people in the world having computers to everyone in the industrial world having computers. The emphasis changed then from having a computer to having a portable computer. Apple has actually been a relative bit player in this commoditization frenzy, and only came into its own with the success of the iPhone. “Mobile device” is now at the center, but how long it will remain there before saturation, I don’t know.
Now, when the focus of computer commoditization was on the desktop, market forces drove chip and video card development to a point where ordinary desktops competed with and even out shown workstations. But, that is not the norm. Its a false condition. The market is now saturated, and the focus has moved to mobile devices. And, Apple has moved with it. They are surfing the commodity wave. BUT, workstations are still needed. Specialized computing is still needed by the scientists, doctors, designers, and other heavy lifters. For that matter, heavy lifting editorial software is still needed. It will be provided by smaller companies, as it has been traditionally, with niche foci. Quantity will go down, prices will go up. We may even end up partially back in the world of custom software. If it is not Avid, it will be somebody else.
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[Walter Soyka] “I think where you and Gladwell differ is how you define excellence. You seem to be suggesting that there’s an absolute standard, but outliers by definition are measured by a relative standard against the group as a whole. If everyone could run a four-minute mile, it wouldn’t be special. The outlier would be someone who could run a mile in three minutes.
Gates is an interesting example. Look at all the millions of people who have had increased access to and experience with computers since him. The world is not suddenly full of people who have had his kind of impact, in part because it wasn’t Gate’s absolute access that mattered. His relative access — the fact that very few others had the kind of access that he did — was the source of his advantage”
I would also add that Gates’ early computer access–or for that matter, Steve Jobs coming of age at the epicenter of computer industry–is in no way an analog with what’s happening with FCP X. Cheap editing has been around for well over a decade, and NLE ownership is only one small part of film/video making. For that matter, camera access is only a small part of the process. Over the last two decades, this has gotten a lot easier, and people like Richard Rodriguez have prospered well. But good film and video still takes hard work. Putting training wheels on a low-priced NLE is just NOT akin to giving someone early access to a world-changing power that few others have access to.
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Bill, I agree with pretty much everything you said there.
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[Walter Soyka] “[Bill Davis] “And in ways that those competitors CERTAINLY can’t do if they have to keep their focus on a shrinking (albeit high end) market such as episodic TV and feature shops.”
This isn’t my market, so I really don’t know — but how is this shrinking? I know that big traditional post facilities are hurting, but aren’t smaller shops picking up tons of work here? There are more television channels than ever, they all want fresh content, and TV viewership still dominates video consumption [link].
“It certainly isn’t. Television production is vast compared to where it was a quarter of a century ago. And over the last decade–though we’ve been rocked by strikes and economic downturn–we’ve produced, IMHO, some of the best television ever produced. Cable Channels serve niche markets like never before, with very high-quality programing. There are all kinds of new forms of distribution–some competing, some complimentary–and in general, we have a world population that enjoys being entertained by professional show folk. Movies are healthy as well. I see nothing to suggest that either is a shrinking business.
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[Frank Gothmann] “It’s the whole age-old Apple thing that I thought we had left behind with the move to Intel and that now comes back full-swing with virtually everything that Apple does these days.
“Oh, now. Come on. You’re just holding it wrong. (ironic emoticon goes here)
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[Walter Soyka] “FCPX would really benefit from deeper metadata integration into the timeline.
It’d be pretty cool if you could tag clips in auditions and have FCPX re-edit for versioning based on your tags.
And that’s just one obvious application for metadata-aware editorial. We’ve got some new tools — it’d be wonderful if we could use them to solve common (and easily automated) editorial problems that weren’t easily solved before.”
Exactly! This is the kind of stuff I thought the FCP X’s advanced metadata would be handling. I still see this as the promise, and the place that FCP X might eventually find solid industrial ground. But will it ever open up enough? Or is it going to stay as tight as, say iPhoto, with which it seems to share a number of characteristics.
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Tom Baker! You lucky pup. As far as my childhood self was concerned, he was THEEEE Doctor. His face still comes to mind at the Doctor’s mention, just before the others. All three of the last Doctors give him a run, though, with David Tennant a bit in front.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “that aside: the doctor’s wife?
BEST. BLOODY. EPISODE. EVER.
“Agreed! Or nearly so. That or the “Are you my Mommy?” two-parter. Though “Let’s Kill Hitler” has a lot of bang for the buck. My daughter and I are greedily awaiting the Christmas Special.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “Randy Ubillos, you scion of editing intelligentsia, you visionary of time – “
It didn’t really occur to me until reading this–but could it be that Randy U. is a lost son of Gallifrey, and like the Master before him, has reclaimed his place as a Time Lord and is, even now, preparing to face down the Doctor (and Amy and Rory) throughout the whole next season (or, just the Christmas Special?) Could FCP X be one of the first of many advanced, multi-dimensional, planet-chrushing weapons in his arsenal? Is the iPad3 really a TARDIS?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Copy/paste, change audition clips. Or export each movie, reimport and string out, whichever works best.
String outs shouldn’t add anything much more complicated.
“I don’t think they add anything more complicated, other than they add rendering. Your suggestions, though, are a little more complicated than what I normally do. Normally, I just create a new timeline, drop the other six timelines into that timeline, and then render out.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “This is where the Audition feature can be used in fcpx. One sequence, different outs per audition.”
Yeah, I definately keep thinking about the audition feature and how I might apply it for my work. In this case, it would work fine if my delivery is individual files–which it often is–but not well if I need to deliver a string out. I actually think that audition’s functions–if I understand them correctly–could save me much time across an entire series, so I AM interested in that. I’ll pose that as a seperate question–the ins/outs, plus/minus of Audition–next time there is a lull.