[Tim Wilson]

Yeah yeah, I’m late, but just to be official, here’s my posting:

Blackmagic Design Announces Fusion 9 with VR

Some thoughts from downthread just because:

1) No way BMD does a graphics program. None. Grant Petty has striking with the clarity of his vision: solving BIG problems. Problems that affect the industry in the most sweeping manner possible, and that affect people’s lives, both for technology and even more important, access to technology.

There are a gajillion crazy-ass cheap, crazy-ass powerful graphics solutions out there, and they all work just fine with Blackmagic products. Heck, even Photoshop is an insane amount of bang for the buck, but there is literally not one single problem to be solved with world-changing graphics power, and the access thereto. We’re already there.

It might be different if the guys at Affinity were like the guys at DaVinci, out of money and out of time, but that’s not the case. They’re doing great. The companies who have run out of steam along the way (eg, Painter, and I say Corel, although you may not) really kinda needed to. You don’t get to survive just because you want to. But the great stuff is great, it’s doing fine, it’s alllllll accessible….and as Michael Gissing points out, most people’s print needs are getting met by exporting frames and converting to CMYK in Pshop or similar.

Look, the key to BMD’s utopian vision — and make no mistake, this is a utopian strategy, not a capitalist one (although who knows, maybe I’m the one that’s mistaken) — is that Grant gets to charge next to nuthin’ for his core products because he’s not wasting money chasing niches. In that sense, his strategy is in a way the mirror image of conservative. Almost an ideology, I think. Is it big? Then let’s do it. Is it small? Let somebody else do it.

Take this to the bank.

Or, laugh at me later when I’m wrong again. But I don’t think I am.

But then I never do, until I am. ????

2) I wouldn’t call this an ideology, but Simon makes an observation that’s likely pretty dang close to a mission statement:

We were all quite rightly absolutely awestruck by Resolve 14 and the Fairlight integration, but I think it’s fair to say that this Fusion release is potentially significantly more awesome.

Jobs used the phrase “insanely great.” He wanted jaws to drop. And as Simon also rightly observes just a couple of sentences later:

Nobody, but nobody, is changing the game at anything even remotely approaching that pace that BMD have now achieved.

And that includes Apple at its Jobsiest. The fact is that Steve was easily distracted, and went chasing niches to plug — people talk about Apple chasing Avid, but it never happened. It was always Adobe. Steve wanted to license Premiere, but when he couldn’t, he went after the guy who invented it. Adobe has compositing, Apple buys Motion and Shake. Adobe adds DVD, Apple buys Spruce. etc etc etc.

(btw, I was at Avid while this was happening, and I was the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Avid’s attempt to ALSO address Adobe, known as Avid Xpress Studio — and I’m tellin’ ya, there was virtually no thought of chasing Apple, because nobody chases the company who’s not in front. It was ALWAYS Adobe, imo. And yes, that’s my opinion, but that’s also how I personally played it.

— Digression within a digression: how’s THIS for clarity of vision? Look at how many people were adamant that Adobe was doomed by a subscription-only model who are now completely out of this industry. Gone. Whereas if they’d simply invested their life savings in Adobe stock on the day of the announcement they could have retired gazillionaires a few years later. Although who knows? Maybe that’s where they all went. —

Returning to my digression already in progress….

I’ll also note that Avid started being a little more explicit about chasing Adobe a year ahead of Apple. It was only after I taunted Apple on the road for a year with the phrase “Avid Xpress Studio is the most complete Suite” — often to their face as we went from user group to user group around the world, sometimes in the same meetings, presenting back to back — to describe the combination of Avid, Pro Tools, Softimage, and dedicated video and audio hardware that Apple dropped the name Final Cut Suite, and and came right back at us with the name Final Cut Studio to counter the year-old Avid Xpress Studio.

Apple literally unveiled the sign right as NAB opened that year, directly across the aisle from Avid’s booth and facing straight into it. In fact, Avid’s booth was quite literally the only place on the floor from which you could read that banner. Well played, my friends. ????

And I do mean friends. Indeed, I spent NAB 2003 working full time in Apple’s booth at NAB. It’s a small industry, and sometimes friends trade a little paint on the turns And hey, I’m friends with everyone now. What a great time to be in this business!)

But I digress. ????

My point is that there’s literally nothing that could happen with Affinity or Corel, or even somehow swiping Photoshop, or whatever other scenario you care to name, that would be BIG for what Blackmagic is doing with video, film, and audio. There are no big things to do with still images. Anything further along those lines than is already there is a distraction, moving in exactly the opposite direction that the rest of Blackmagic is going, and the one thing we’ve yet to see is Blackmagic distracted or moving in the opposite direction of itself.

Not that this was necessarily clear in 2009, mind you. We ran a lengthy interview with Grant on the DaVinci acquisition that was 40 minutes of “wtf….no seriously, wtf” until it became clear to all of us….until we asked it again with the camera and Teranex in 2012….and Grant wrapped it up nicely. The two things you need for better video output are better acquisition and better processing. Fairlight completes it today with a sound toolset designed for motion picture and video, rather than music. He’s touching on distribution with broadcast and the web now, but that’s it in a nutshell. Pictures in motion.

My goodness, this is fun.

Oh wait, I just looked up the title of the actual interview that Ronald Lindeboom and I did with Grant Petty about DaVinci, cameras, Teranex, et al in 2012, which was a pull quote: “We Want To Blow People’s Minds”

[Tim Wilson]

Good to go!

Welcome, and thanks!

Regards,

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “Our own Tim Wilson still sits atop my personal pyramid as the best prepared and most engaging software demo guy I’ve ever had the privilege to watch work “

Bill, I can’t tell you how much that means coming from you! I really did what put an insane amount of effort into my presentations, and I know that you do too. And you know that success requires more than caring about JUST the presentation. It gets to that old cliche about coming from the heart and all that, which is another thing I know that you share: really caring about the thing you’re talking about, and caring about connecting to the audience. I wanted people’s lives to be better after my presentations…which is kind of arrogant, I know ???? but in practice, I tried to come at it with humility. It’s not tech support. It’s supporting people’s lives.

I’ve never crossed paths with Al, but I’ve seen how widely he’s been praised as both a skilled presenter and as a genuinely empathetic guy who cares about customers as peers. I’m impressed by the number of such folks I’ve met at Adobe, but in general heartily lament the shortage of empathy industry-wide, and certainly wish him a happy landing in his next venture.

Many thanks again for the kind words, Bill, as well as a reminder on behalf of both me and Al that there are some folks for whom this isn’t just a job.

Regards,
Tim

[Tim Wilson]

Hi Bedo,

No worries. When you report a post, that sends a message to us that we need to look at it. That’s when we decide what to do.

Sometimes, we leave the post off. Sometimes we edit the post. Sometimes we turn the post back on. It all depends on what we see.

To be perfectly honest, most of the times a post is flagged, it is flagged by mistake, by the person who posted it!

So thank you for letting us know, but everything turned out okay. ????

Best,

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

I think what’s also getting lost is that this is maybe the most editing-intensive movie you’ve ever seen. Every single thing that happens in every frame is to a beat. It’s a tour de force.

It’s also fun, which counts even more….but THAT’s the story here to me. Not that it’s done on a laptop, not that it’s being done during the shoot, but that the writer-director’s vision was so fleshed out in pre-production that every set-up called for a go-no go. Nothing was going to get fixed in post. Re-shoots are out of the question. You HAVE TO HAVE IT before you leave the set.

And not just the shots. The BEATS. ALL of it.

It’s a story about creativity, vision, preparation, and execution.

WE’RE the mullets who try to use these stories to make rhetorical last stands when there’s nothing at all to fight about.

From a strictly tools and tech standpoint, t’d be nice if the first reaction isn’t to find familiar elements in stories like these and shoot them down — “I’ve been doing that for 20 years”, “Mine can do that”, etc — but rather look for the unfamiliar. “I never thought of Media Composer as especially nimble,” “wow, AMA has come a long way,” “so that’s what they think the advantages of working non-native are”, whatever.

But more than that, my god, I wish every one of you gets to see this on a giant fgking screen with the best sound in your town. Being totally honest, I can’t entirely get over the Ansel Elgort-ness of the whole thing, but movies like this make me fall in love with movies all over again. The giant brains and hearts applied to craft at this level — you might get a couple of these a year if you’re lucky. This is a real gift, the balm for all the half-assed tripe (or ass-and-a-half of bloated tropes) we sit through the rest of the time.

If anybody else has any more stories to share about it, I’d love to hear ’em. I don’t care what you used to do it. I’m just glad you did.

[Tim Wilson]

[Craig Alan] “The other day it stopped a post of mine from going through because I used the word “b*sketball.””

From March through June, that’s the #1 spam word that bots try to break into our system with, for bootlegged streams for your favorite college and professional playoff teams.

Don’t even get me started on the “f-ball” word during a US college bowl and pro playoff season that occurs the same year as the World Cup. Somewhere in the range of millions of attempts per day for most of the year.

We try to make moderation as seamless as possible, but those two words in particular are by the far most virulent we’ve ever had to deal with, and getting worse every year. If we didn’t automate some of the spam catching, we’d have to close the business. I do apologize for any delays hand-moderating posts that get caught in the net!

And like pretty much every forum site on the net, there’s a time limit here for editing posts. Any time you need anything, though, or have any questions about things like moderated words, swing by the Letters to the COW Team forum, or use the Contact link on the front page.

Regards,

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Noah Kadner] “I’m guessing ironically the phone itself won’t shoot holographic content but only 2D. Creating anything close to holographic content seems like it requires multiple optical lenses plus some form of depth scanning.”

That’s where the future accessories come in, I think. Newshooter actually did a nice deep dive on a couple of recent patent applications in anticipation of today’s announcements, and there are some very interesting drawings I’ll break down in another post.

But no, to underscore the key point: this phone is not about the camera. Nothing about the camera.

Not the camera.

The display.

Only the display.

And no, not a display like you’ve seen before. Glasses-free 3D and AR have been around for many generations of technology. They’re no big deal. After you’ve deflated all the hype and gotten past missed deadlines, you still have a solid legacy from RED of NOT doing the same technology you’ve seen before.

Jannard actually spoke about this at some length in a follow-up to this morning’s announcements. Emphasis added here and there is by me.

So… very interesting day to say the least. I love some of the reactions.

In no particular order, let me take a few swings here.

The Holographic Display.
It is incredible. It is multi-view (4-view) as compared to stereo 3D (2-view). Watching shocked faces light up when people see it is really motivating. There is no good way to describe it until you see it. Hopefully we will get some skeptics eyes on it soon… then they can tell you.

Our display is technology you haven’t seen before. It is not lenticular, which is inferior tech in every way, has been tried many times before and failed for good reason. (see Amazon 3D Fire, LG Optimus, etc). Lenticular display dramatically lowers resolution, cannot be turned off for standard 2D content, only works in one direction (usually landscape), has color crosstalk… to name just a few issues. My bet is that other “big” companies will try to re-package lenticular 3D displays with eye-tracking in response to our program. Don’t fall for it.

Why did some Redusers blindly order HYDROGEN today without even reading the release? This seems incredible to those unfamiliar with the RED program. Over the past 10 years RED has gone from scam (announcing the impossible) to delivering the impossible… over and over. Our core customers have seen and participated in this process and have stories to tell. Apparently we have earned their “blind trust” because we have not let them down. We understand that those unfamiliar with our history will certainly not get this.

Some additional details. One website said it was unclear whether HYDROGEN came with a battery. Let me assure you that it does. ☺

It also comes with internal storage and an external micro SD card slot. And a headphone jack. A selfie camera and a back camera. These cameras will not produce cinema quality images. No cell phone does. What we will have is a modular system that adds image quality well beyond any other camera short of our professional cameras. Remember that we have a lot of elbow room on this front. Our Weapon Helium sensor scored 108 on DXOMark.com That beat the Sony A7RII by 10 full points.

https://www.dxomark.com/Reviews/RED-…me-high-score2

So why do we feel we can make a difference in the cell phone market? Because we are doing everything different and (we feel) better. That is the only way to enter a market. That was the thinking behind Oakley. It was the thinking when we released the RED ONE. Same formula. Make something significantly better and you have a reason to be.

We look forward to releasing many more details and specs about the project as time goes along. Anytime you don’t like what you see, full refund for any reason spoken here. However… be prepared to be surprised on the upside. It only gets better the more information you have.

Today we saw the full range from “complete trust” to “hard skepticism”. I have seen this before… many times actually. Makes me smile.

Jim

While you may or may not agree that the RED One delivered on 100% of its initial hype, it certainly delivered something genuinely substantial, and grew in some compelling directions from there. Whether or not you personally use their stuff, you’ve benefitted from the kick they gave the industry’s ass.

So I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to give them enough benefit of the doubt that, if it sounds like they’re talking about something you’ve seen before to, to recognize that in fact, it isn’t. ????

Which is to say of course that I don’t know anything either. But he said last year that he’s been quiet for the past few years because he was working on something bigger than anything else he’s tried before, and this certainly fits the bill.

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] ”
It seems like this will have to be a field camera first, a great display second and a phone third.”

Nope, it’s all about the display. The headline is “Holographic Media Machine. No Glasses Needed.”

The headline SHOULD have been “Glasses-Free VR/AR”, because that is in fact what this is about. The money quote from Forbes magazine, which ALMOST got the headline right: Billionaire Jim Jannard Launches First Virtual Reality Smartphone.

The only reason the phone is there at all is to prevent device creep. It’s all about playback, which is why the product sheet makes prominent mention of RED setting up their distribution channel for content, including user-created content.

Do take a look at the product sheet if you haven’t. The most striking thing to me is that it makes ZERO mention of the camera. Does it even have a camera? ???? Surely it does, but there’s sure no mention of it here.

Notably, it DOES mention that the system is modular, and includes several mentions of “future” attachments for higher-quality for shooting — but for now, this is for media CONSUMPTION, not production.

With one notable exception: it works with RED cameras (Weapon, Scarlet, EPIC) as a control UI and monitor. The point being that the camera in this device isn’t doing the heavy lifting. It isn’t doing anything at all until the future attachments arrive, which makes sense. We already have a bajillion ways to create VR, AR, 3D, and holographic content, and we have for decades, if not centuries. (Don’t forget that stereography precedes photography by a good long stretch.)

What we HAVEN’T had is a way to view that stuff without glasses. THAT’s the breakthrough here. The DISPLAY.

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] “Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by ‘real NLE questions’, but aren’t the program-specific forums on the COW the best place to ask those questions? Where as this specific forum is designed for, well, debates?”

Yes, please, for the love of all things holy, NOBODY should come to THIS forum expecting to find answers. We have over 200 forums for troubleshooting, such as the Apple Final Cut Pro X forum, also linked at the top of the page.

This is one of only of a couple of forums at Creative COW for troublemaking ????

I love it for what it is, and feel that we’ve had some particularly energizing conversations of late, but I would be truly distressed if anybody was under the impression that the goal here is anything resembling product or technology support.

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

Simon, another superlative effort that I thank you in advance for allowing me to appropriate for Creative COW’s Library. ????????????