Tim Wilson
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COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Steve Wargo] “maybe you should repost and leave out the nudity part”
Actually, I think this is a perfectly legitimate question. Lots of skin tones, balancing low scene lighting with enough light for the camera — a combination of issues that have been discussed here plenty.
So this might get pulled up into the other thread that Robert started on your advice. The answers are best left to REAL cinematographers and not me….but a set of issues that most DPs will encounter, or perhaps already have. Either way, there are bunches of you who’ll have exactly the answers Robert needs.
On a sort of related note, I did a lot of resort videos in southern Florida 10-15 years ago, and developed some expertise motion tracking blurs (and sometimes logos) across stray body parts. I was inundated with requests for how to deal with this by other shooters.
No giggling, no winking or nudging between us — it was a real live production problem that our clients expected us to solve. Trust me, the clients weren’t giggling either — they were sweating bullets. Get it right, we got the check. Get it wrong, our clients got served with papers. And guess who was next in line after that.
Like I said, you real cinematographers will have the answers, but Robert’s problem is a real one too.
tw
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the upgrade will work just fine. The only limitation you’ll have is the same one you have now — no SDI.
This is what’s known as positioning. Avid wants to send a message, that Media Composer belongs with SDI I/O because that’s what “pros” use. Nonsense. Plenty of pros are using FireWire…and over time, more pros will migrate to NO I/O and will go tapeless, skipping SDI altogether.
The other part of the positioning message had been that Xpress Pro was for, let’s say LESS professional pros. Again, nonsense, especially if all you need is analog component to hook up to your broadcast monitor…or FireWire I/O.
The point in both cases was to create a clear difference between the products to justify the price difference.
So here we are today, with only one software solution going forward. You might eventually need HD-SDI to go to an HD deck…and guess what, you can’t do that with Mojo SDI because it’s SD-only.
Avid and its dealers have no reason to make this easy for you. They WANT you to buy SDI. You’ll have to look very, very carefully at Avid’s website to find this:
“Avid Mojo and Avid Mojo SDI are compatible with Avid Xpress Pro, Avid Media Composer….,” and a bunch of other things.
Since you already have Mojo you don’t need to be reminded, but neither Xpress or Media Composer need any hardware at all to run. That’s the point.
The great news is that Media Composer is a true joy to use. Even after years of experience with Xpress Pro — I was one of the product managers for Xpress Pro when I was at Avid– I found Media Composer faster and easier to use, with much more flexibility. So I started using Media Composer instead of Xpress all day, every day. Anyone with Xpress needs to stop what you’re doing right now, and upgrade to Composer.
Have fun,
Tim
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[Ron Lindeboom] “Social networking is *best* articulated as a web phenomenon, not as a tradeshow floor phenomenon”
To be even more specific, the term “social networking” was INVENTED to describe what’s happening on the web — not just forums and blogs, but LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster and on and on.
Here’s Wikipedia: “A social network service uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.”
Great stuff there, including which social networks are most popular in different parts of the world, and software to create your own. (The COW is custom-built, one reason why it’s so successful.)
The Wikipedia article is also detailed on the history of social networks, and the range of their uses.
Note that there’s no need to add the word “online” to social networks. Again, this term was invented to decribe what’s happening online. No need to clarify any further.
[Ron Lindeboom] “Show specials? It has been years since anyone I know of had any real show specials.”
The reason why is simple — there are too few people who attend shows, including NAB, especially for companies with a global audience. Apple and Avid are great examples, but it’s true for pretty much everyone. I’ve worked for a number of NAB vendors, most recently Avid, before that Boris FX and others. Those prices were available all over the world, through every possible sales platform…and not just for NAB, by any means.
You can even find specials at retailers who carry many products, who often add ADDITIONAL specials by combining them across products from multiple vendors.
In other words, you get the best deals by NOT attending the show themselves.
[Ron Lindeboom] “an exception is news like the Apple event.”
That said, Apple is already on the road. They’ve saved a goody or two, but seriously, how long do you think you’ll have to wait for the news? It often hits the wires just before the even begins. Certainly true for both Apple and Avid.
Speaking of whom, Avid was another company that had the “magic curtain” rise on NAB. This year, they’ve made their major announcements — in our market, the new pricing and strategy for Media Composer — and they too are already on the road showing their new news.
Expect these trends to continue, and accelerate.
Timmy
Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
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Go to read one of your posts, and notice that your name is a link. Click on that, and it takes you to your profile page. That’s where you can edit all kinds of good things, from your sig to your favorite movies.
Best,
Tim
Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
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Wellllll, you’re posting now, so I’m not sure what it was. Had you just changed your screen name? That’s among the things that triggers moderation.
In any case, feel free to respond here, then maybe make a post or two in the Test forum and see how it goes.
Best,
TimTim Wilson, Creative Cow
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Ah, but we’re great supporters of Scunthorpe United, the pride of Lincolnshire, and we congratulate them on their 2-1 victory over Coventry.
But yeah, the name will always get caught in the filter. I had to manually push this one through too.
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The only problem is the email address, so I’ve edited the posts.
This solves a couple of problems for US too, things to do with threads, archives, etc.
There are a couple of things you can do to prevent this in the future. One is to make your email address less machine-readable — john at whatever dot com.
I prefer something a little slicker, which I do for all the URLs I use, embedding the link in text with a little HTML. For email, you’d use
The href is obviously your email address.
This does two things. One is to hide your email address from bots, who only see the text. The other is to make your name a clickable link that automatically opens an email to whoever clicks that link, with your email in the “To” field. Much easier for them than cpy, open email, create new email, paste.
Anyway, I hope that helps.
Best,
TimPS. As Ron notes, don’t ask for this again. 🙂 And anybody with a lot of posts, forget it. We’ve created a mechanism to edit your posts, so use it. But I feel your pain, and since this is a Sunday morning, I’ll show some mercy. 🙂
Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
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And after you visit the Editor’s Lounge, step across the street to Donut Prince. Buy an apple cruller and think of me.
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Another tip for navigating the library that I just found out about.
When you’re on the index page of your favorite forums, where all the posts are listed, just click on the name of the forum. That is, on the big letters under the leader pictures.
Clicking there will bring up all the articles tagged with that forum!
Now, some of these are spot on — in the P2 forum, some tutorials on P2 workflow, as well as stories of P2 production in action.
But that category also includes the story on Apple skipping a booth at NAB this year because that forum has such a dramatic majority of FCP users.
Unlike, say, the HDV forum, where the split is much more even. As a result, that Apple story is NOT tagged for the HDV forum.
In any case, you can find the whole range of articles and tutorials for every forum simply by clicking on the name of the forum itself on the page with the posts.
DEFINITELY no need to apologize for that one, ssez me. I’ve been coming to the Cow since the second day (I was absent the first day), and like I said, only found out about this one quite recently.
As Ron points out, the Cow’s interface is very rich indeed….
w
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I type unbelievably fast. Really. You may never have met somebody who can type as fast as I do.
And I think unbelievably slow.
I overstated my objection to the NAB lobby. They’re only number 4 on my list. With #3 as the cut-off for “evil” and “heinous,” the NAB lobby is merely “annoying.” My apologies for the error.
Also, the number of monthly Cow visits is only over 1.2 MILLION. That’s right, only ONE POINT TWO million. I knew that – just another example of my hands moving too fast.
I also know, but left out, that visitors to the Cow spend anywhere from 3 to NINE times as long here as visitors to other industry sites, making our overall impact even larger than visits alone would indicate.
I like the rest of the post just fine.
Believe it or not, I have my typing and thinking geared wrt each other better now than ever, but I’m still working on it.
tw