[Tim Wilson]

Since several folks here have mentioned the F3, I’ll direct you to a new article in the COW library, about the first feature shot with the F3 in S-LOG mode, “Ghost of Goodnight Lane.”

It’s a great article, written by long-time COW Jonny Revolt. It gets into support platforms, recording, IIF-ACES workflow, and lots of other cool stuff.

Note that it’s a great story about the production itself, rather than a proper review, but feel free to ask any more specific questions about the F3 and related workflows in the comments section for the article, which you find here.

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

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[Tim Wilson]

[Neil Hurwitz] “Just what value does any reseller add?”

If you need to buy one camera, or set up one suite, or can hire Bob Zelin, then no, a reseller doesn’t add much.

But Roscor specialized in things like schools, churches and independent TV stations — multiple systems, often placed into facilities with no IT or other appropriately skilled staff. These customers want single sources for mics, monitors, edit systems, storage, cabling, so when something went wrong, they made one call, and it was taken care of. There, having a dealer is invaluable.

There’s rarely one single reason a company goes under, but the perilous business model isn’t on the sales/service side, or even rentals, but the equipment side of the industry that runs on credit.

Most of the time, this works out well enough, but those net 30 deals became net 90 years ago, and some deals go out 6 months or more. Cash flow has slowed to a trickle, and if one or two deals go belly up, then a whole supply chain collapses.

I don’t have any knowledge of this personally, but in reading comments from Roscor employees elsewhere, they extended ONE YEAR terms to a TV station they were outfitting in Indonesia, and well, you can guess the rest.

I’m not meaning to comment on the specifics of Roscor, though, as much as to observe the market forces that keep companies like them around — one stop shopping and service for small-to-medium non-specialist facilities, a business that’s growing in many parts of the country — and the forces that threaten companies like them, a global credit crunch that leaves everyone vulnerable.

The only specific observation that I’ll make about Roscor is that the individual guys I dealt with in Chicago and Detroit when I was at Boris and Avid are aces, some of the nicest guys in the business. I hated hearing about this.

[Tim Wilson]

[Aaron Cadieux] “I am not really into either of those things (especially web), and I am worried that I might hate it.”

This is why they call it “work” my son.

My advice is to go all-in. Bite into every task with gusto, ESPECIALLY the ones you have no expertise or interest in, because these might be your ONLY tasks at your NEXT job.

I’d have given you different advice in 1998 or 2002. Jobs opportunities were exploding then. They’re IMploding now.

Take the full-time job. Take the money. Give it your all. You’ll put it too many hours, and you’ll spend a lot of time miserable — but you’ll have work and get paid. Learn from the tasks you hate, lay the foundation for a future job that you can’t even imagine today, and remember that this is why they call it work.

And pray that Zelin doesn’t find this thread. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

When Avid introduced DNxHD in 2004, among its specific goals was archiving. Certainly playback of course, but also in response to meetings with studio executives talking about what they were going to do with these massive digital files. The idea was to create a digitally lossless format that could go many generations without decay, with dramatic savings in space. While the studio guys liked the idea of DNxHD, they were concerned about being able to open the files later, so Avid released the codec as open source.

When ProRes was introduced in 2007, I don’t know the extent to which Apple specifically developed it with archiving in mind. I would certainly not expect Apple to release the source code any time soon. 🙂 And, kidding aside, I could understand people’s reluctance to put their media lives in Apple’s hands.

So as you’re looking at file alternatives, be sure to at least consider DNxHD….although it begs the larger question about what you’ll need to do in order to migrate your data to new drives on a regular basis…

[Tim Wilson]

[Juan Morales] ” I distinctly remember a different situation earlier this year; the forum was full of speculations and “leaked” stills of FCPX’s new interface, so where does all this political correctness (gone mad) suddenly come from?”

Bessie sometimes gets mad cow disease, but this isn’t that. It’s also not political correctness. It’s being polite.

The fact is that there is a HUGE difference between Apple and Avid. Apple showed their new interface in a well-attended public meeting, which was well-covered by press from around the world — which Apple knew about. Anything they showed is fair game.

Avid’s page wasn’t intended to be public.

I stand by the call.

[Michael Hancock] “That’s not denying readers on the Cow the news – it’s respecting IP and delivering the news when it comes from Avid, at the time they want it out.”

Trust me, the wheels are already turning. 🙂 When the time comes, nobody here will be lacking coverage.

We recognize that this is big news for our entire industry, whether or not someone is currently using Media Composer or not. We’ve done wall-to-wall coverage for releases of FCPX and Adobe Creative Suite, and you’ll get the whole megillah here too….and probably in more than one forum if you know what I mean….

tw

[Tim Wilson]

[Michael Hancock] “It’s not censorship, it’s respect for intellectual property…Expect individual screenshots to be pulled.”

Dead on, Michael.

First, let me say that I don’t know anything about that particular post being turned off. The COW is a global organization, and I haven’t asked around to our various offices to find the story.

If I had seen it though, I personally would have turned it off in a heartbeat. Not because Avid is an advertiser (or because I worked there before I came to the COW) — simply out of respect. Accidents happen, and we’d honor YOUR request to pull down a post that accidentally revealed YOUR secrets. It’s nobody’s business if you have to bring your blankie and your binkie to work. Carry on.

Please note, though – we are the only site on the internet that I’m aware of that includes a warning to vendors in our Terms of Service: advertisers don’t get special treatment. We protect them from the same inappropriate language, etc. that we do for individual users, but if the language is appropriate, and the criticism specific (“you guys really blew the installer for this release,” rather than “you suck”) and the company really messed up, they have to stand in the fire and take it. They’ll get no quarter from Bessie.

Let me also note, that no vendor has ever asked me to have a post like that removed in all my years at the COW. Not one. Some of them have gotten very, very sharp criticism too, and they’ve all taken it like big boys. To my knowledge, all of the criticisms were also addressed to the original poster’s eventual satisfaction. I’m proud of all of them.

Finally, as our Terms of Service also note, we have never been shy about turning off posts as required, including a good-sized handful in this very forum. (Surprise, surprise.) It’s one way we protect the signal to noise ratio.

And to the extent humanly possible, respectfulness. Especially challenging in this forum sometimes — hence the label “debate,” – but if a vendor pulls down something off their own site because it doesn’t belong, we’ll do the same for them, just as we would for YOU.

Looking forward to seeing it all myself, though. 🙂

Yr pal Timmy
COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “notably the Cow’s very own Tim Wilson, who I have to say was at the very APEX of the talent pool in skilled “users group” presenters. “

Thanks Bill, I really appreciate it. I took the work with deadly seriousness, performed it with absolute joy…and it nearly killed me. 🙂 On my feet nearly non-stop from 7 AM to 11 PM was common.

(I was far from alone in that, btw. If you’re playing for keeps, trade shows are brutal. I’ll observe that the softest carpet I ever felt at NAB was the year I spent working the Apple booth.)

I did a major presentation at the third-ever LAFCPUG meeting, when I was at Boris FX. The last time I asked Michael, I still hold the record for most appearances by a non-Californian. I was also the main presenter at the FIRST meeting of BOSFCPUG, and actually helped start the New York FCP group….which morphed enough times that a large-ish number of people could make the same claim….but for me it’s actually true. LOL

I can honestly say that, during the time I worked at Boris, I’m pretty sure I presented at every single FCPUG in the country, many more than once.

My FCP experience actually went back to the days when I had a disk of Macromedia Final Cut that ran on WINDOWS. (You can see a picture of it in my COW profile.)

Hey, among the reasons they hired me at Avid was my FCP expertise. My knowledge of Avid was superficial at best. Oliver Peters had to remind me how to set up my Boris demos on Symphony EVERY TIME I presented at his Avid user group in Orlando. (He and I had dinner in Vegas the Sunday night before the show started for a couple of years running, and I am happy seeing him around here these days.)

Needless to say, I developed major Avid chops, and came to genuinely love Media Composer…without changing my feelings for FCP, or the Media 100 I built my own long-running video production company around, or Premiere, where I started.

So when I do my yapping in this forum, it’s not as a full-time COW person, but as someone who spent 15 years living this stuff every hour of the day, and in way too many nightmares while I slept. I still think of myself as a video editor….even if I haven’t been for quite a long time.

Anyway, sorry for the Saturday afternoon rambling. Those years as a demo monkey really took their toll on me, and it means a lot to hear from someone who felt I was sticking the landing.

Answering the rhetorical question at the top of the thread — dude, I don’t think any of anything we live through in this business is worth it…and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

[Tim Wilson]

[Herb Sevush] “I’ll agree this whole thread is ridiculous.

If there were no ridiculousness, the COW would cease to exist.

I didn’t see anybody else mention this on the thread…but I confess I haven’t read every post on every thread yet. Hey, it’s the weekend. Now I can catch up.

Anyway, a pretty interesting video doing a side by side comparison of 5D and 4s. It’s a reminder that when it comes to video quality, size isn’t everything. It’s not NOTHING either, so don’t get me started there.

But take a look full screen. The 4s isn’t “as good,” but it’s pretty dang good. It won’t take long for somebody to use this in a major league venue, and nobody’s gonna blink.

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[Tim Wilson]

[David Roth Weiss] “I tried Siri for the first time and received this unexpected result:”

Are you freaking kidding? Is that for real? Classic!!!

Try telling her (and I do think of SIRI as a female) something like “No, really, it’s useless to me as it is,” see what she says.

[Tim Wilson]

I can believe that people are rude ON their phones, but I’m flabbergasted by the filthy things they say TO their phones.

The great thing is that SIRI can roll with it…which is one reason why s/he might be just perfect to have in the edit suite.