[Tim Wilson]

That’s what this forum is for! Whisper away!

If you really need it to be offline, send me a note via the Contact Us link above.

tw

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

Hi Stu,

We did for almost two years and got no posts in them. What we’ve found is that if somebody uses, say, FCP, Premiere, Resolve, whatever — those questions get asked in those forums. How do I work with this codec, etc.

Otherwise, the cameras work pretty well, so there’s not a lot to talk about. 🙂 We do know that COWs are using them, for exactly the reason you describe. But as long as the questions are more about post and the footage, they’ll wind up in the editing/finishing forums…..

Thanks,
Tim

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

Hi Lillian,

First, thanks for being a member of the COW since 2008!

Taking a quick look at recent posts, the only ones I see that haven’t been answered are two that you posted earlier today about Maya and Element 3D.

I hate to suggest that anybody look anywhere else for ANYTHING, but since Element 3D is a Video Copilot product, I’m going to suggest that you check the forum at videocopilot.net. We started the Video Copilot forum here before Andrew had any forums at his site, but now that he has them, I think you’ll find your answers there.

(BTW, Andrew got his start at Creative COW, and we couldn’t be more pleased to see his success!)

Thank you again for being part of Creative COW for so long! Good luck with your Element 3D issues!

Best,

Tim Wilson
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

Here’s why I’m inclined to keep the Debate forums separate:

1) They’re different debates.

The one there is basically, “Q: Why are you changing licensing? A: We think it’s best for you and us. Q: Nuh-uh. A: Yuh-huh.” Not meaning to make judgments or be overly reductive, but there’s a short half-life for that kind of thing.

Here, from the beginning, it was for all the marbles. Workflows, careers, self-identity, and blowing up the entire industry to start over.

Unless it wasn’t. But that’s where the debate began, and very quickly expanded to take in, well, as Steve’s sig says, everything.

This one’s about everything. That one’s about one thing.

2) They’re different communities.

How many of you post regularly in the Premiere and AE forums? If not, there’s my point. If so, then you know what I’m about to say, which is that many of the people in those forums have online and even in-person relationships that go back years, and they may never have set foot in THIS forum once.

Turns out that some people hadn’t been using FCP at any point in the proceedings, and still don’t much care one way or the other.

Likewise, plenty of FCP folks don’t use AE enough to frequent those forums, and feel like they’re finding what they need about Premiere Pro right here.

They’re not just forums. They’re communities of their own.

3) I try to manage as little as possible.

Both because I’m a lazy bastard and because it works.

When I started at the COW, there were many topic-specific boards with lots and lots of sub-boards, and some of these guys had more traffic than the entire COW on their own. Now, some of them are simply gone, and none of them has a tenth our traffic. Maybe combine them. What we’re doing by is mostly working. We only create new subforums slowly, when it seems to us that most of you think it’s necessary.

Related to both this point and #2, I’ve moved the conversations as little distance as I possibly could. FCPX or not debate stuff? Goes in the FCPX-originated forum right next door. Creative Cloud debate stuff? Goes right next to the Premiere and AE forums.

We anticipate overlap, but in the long run, that’s preferable to overmanagement. I can imagine a day when they might be better combined too, but so far, in trying to respect the organic evolution of each forum and the communities of specific people they represent, it’s making sense to me to keep them as two different discussions.

As always, I’m open to suggestions. Feel free to email me directly, too. But that’s what I’m thinkin’.

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Harlan] “Apple FCPX or Adobe Premiere or Not: The Master Debate”

Your online home for masterdebators.

[Tim Wilson]

[Todd Terry] “I always say “Sure, we’ll give it a try….””

I know that gentle negotiation is the goal, but “What do you think?” always feels passive aggressive to me. I’d much rather have somebody say, “I’d like to try this.” Good. Thanks for being clear.

Sometimes they really DON’T know until they try a few alternatives. Sure, that’s true of me too. However, it’s only AFTER I trust that the client isn’t trying to manipulate me into thinking that THEIR choices are MY idea that I can meaningfully collaborate.

[Tim Wilson]

[walter biscardi] “MOS – Man on the Street interview”

MOS is also a term from film production. It means picture only, no sync sound, but what the letters stand for is a hilariously long list of wildly divergent possibilities.

The top candidate in my mind has always been “motor only sync,” but a legend attributes it to any number of directors (I’ve heard Germans Lang and Lubitsch and Austrians von Stroheim and Wilder among others) saying that they wanted to shoot “Mit out Sprechen” and “mid out sound.”

The English term for “man on street” is “vox pop” (for vox populi)…so, to the point elsewhere, there are fewer standard terms than you might think. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Tim Wilson] “As a result, nearly all of the information in the 12 years that people have gotten in this forum is simply wrong. It’s out of date and it’s dangerous.”

I should mention that I’m at the top of that list. I’ve made dozens of posts here over the years, full of Fair Use resources, encouraging people to go for it, providing whatever tools I could to help make it happen.

The world has changed. So when you’re looking for advice from older posts to avoid, start with all of mine. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

[Todd Terry] ” In fact I can recall a couple of times them mentioning some obscure film and saying “… unfortunately we don’t have any clips of it to show you, but…”
“

A humongous and critical point. If they didn’t have actual written, contractual permission, there was no way they’d touch it. This was ESPECIALLY the case when the studio didn’t provide clips in advance. It told them that the studio was explicitly NOT granting permission. Why would they go there?

And this was when they were owned by Disney. They had the world’s toughest legal muscle at their disposal, but were still very careful. They had a full-time staffer doing nothing but music clearances for music WITHIN movie clips, and subcontracted an entire company (April Productions) to do clip clearance.

This is a big deal because the music in a clip is often held differently than the visuals — and the movies themselves had to get clearances from the music holders to use it in the movies. See all those credits at the end of a movie with all that copyright info? Every movie and TV show you’ve seen anytime recently has at least one person, typically several, doing nothing but rights.

Great example: MGM holds all Elvis movie footage, but Sony holds all music rights…and depending on the use, Elvis Presley Enterprises owns rights to the likeliness of Elvis. We did a great article with Bevin Baddorf, whose EPE office for video archiving is actually IN Graceland — how badass is that, btw — and even within the 4 walls of Graceland, they have to get clearance from AT LEAST Sony and MGM for EVERY CLIP. Sometimes more rights holders than that.

This isn’t like trying to Fair Use your way into a music clip. This is exponentially bigger.

This is a whole ‘nother conversation, but for practical purposes, Fair Use no longer exists for normal people. There are whole books on the collapse of Fair Use. Here are some great examples:

Public Domain: Enclosing The Commons of the Mind. Public domain isn’t exactly fair use. It’s much broader and THAT’s closing up.

Reclaiming Fair Use. Plenty of best practices…but also reminders that you don’t have to be right. You have to more money than the people coming after you…and you don’t. The book hopes to help rebalance things in favor of users, rather than creators, as the law intended, but pie, meet sky.

Moral Panics and the Copyright Laws. An even better explanation of how we let the Jack Valentis of the world bully the courts into reversing 200 years of copyright law with the straw man of piracy, which doesn’t actually exist in the way that the MPAA and RIAA claim…but you know what? Tough. Because right now, the courts ARE on the side of these guys, even if the law isn’t.

Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression In the Age of Intellectual Property. Did you know that Donald Trump’s “you’re fired” gesture is trademarked? As is “thumbs up” in a review. The estates of Gene and Roger are probably pretty mild about this. Disney less so. How gentle do you think Trump is?

The Story Of The Letter U and the Numeral 2. Cast your mind back to U2’s Achtung Baby tour, when they appropriated whatever signals they could pull down from whatever satellites they could reach. A performance art troupe tried to do the same to U2, and got sued into oblivion. Then they tried to write a book about the story, and the BOOK got sued into oblivion because U2 claimed that THAT was a misappropriation too. So a story about the story was deemed an infringement!!!! And that was held up by the courts! You have nobody in your corner on this.

Sorry for the rant. This is all new news. These books (except for the last one I mentioned) have all been written in the past 2 years to reflect how quickly this is changing, and NOT IN YOUR FAVOR.

As a result, nearly all of the information in the 12 years that people have gotten in this forum is simply wrong. It’s out of date and it’s dangerous.

Do some research and you’ll see for yourself. Not to say that rights holders aren’t granting access. They are. In many cases they’ll fall over themselves to help people who ASK. But NOT people who try to hide behind Fair Use. Those days are long gone.

Anybody trying to get by with Fair Use alone has already stabbed themselves in the weenie. The question is, are you going to take the knife out of your weenie and put it back in the drawer, or take it out of your weenie and stick it in your heart? In your business’s heart? In the heart of your family’s future? How wide a swath of destruction do you want to want to cut through the lives of the people you love?

Hey, and have a nice day! LOL

No kidding man. This was one thing back in the day. Today, this is playing with the fire that is burning around a nuke.

[Tim Wilson]

[walter biscardi] ” you can literally pay $30 for one month of service to access and export your project and then let the subscription lapse.”

Or, for a single application, pay as little as $19 for the month.

I can’t figure out how NOT to make this work out. I’ve tended to upgrade every 2-3 years. We bought Design Premium for $1899 (yes, we buy our gear here at the COW), and paid $599 to upgrade. That’s $2500 for 3 years, working out to $830-ish/yr. Or $49/month for $600/yr, and $1800 for 3 years. We’re ahead $600, enough to buy another seat AND stay current.

My wife also had a gig where she needed the new Illustrator, paid $29 for a one-time only use, and was done.

To me, this is Adobe listening. Don’t need every app every day? Don’t pay for ’em. Need to budget predictable costs? Do it. Need to work everywhere? Do it.

Comparisons to Apple are nonsense. This business was never more than a drop in the bucket to Apple over the past dozen years. (Please don’t tell me that it helped Apple sell hardware. There’s no more demonstrably false and utterly ridiculous thing said in the COW during the entire past 2 years.)

Adobe though, THIS IS ALL THEY HAVE. If they screw up the software business, they’re done. Gone forever. This is IT.

They’re not the stupidest company in the industry. They’re one of the top 2 or 3 smartest. I’m gobsmacked that anybody would think they overnight stopped thinking about the best way to serve their customers, when there’s been not one thing in nearly 30 years to make it seem like they’re not zeroed in.

Other than my mention of business purchasing, I’m speaking for myself of course. I’ll keep reading of course. I do, even when I’m not posting, but I’ve yet to see an even tiny bit of credible indication that the wheels are falling off the wagon.

And for the record, I enjoyed the heck out of the yelling about FCPX. Still do. Some of the most fun I’ve had in 18 years of being in this forum, and in many cases, among the best insights into the industry that anybody on the web has ever articulated.

This though, this is driving me insane. I don’t need any help with that. LOL