[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “I know this was posted back in January, Herb – but Wes Plate of Automatic Duck just pulled that nail.”

One less nail then. Excellent.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Walter Soyka] “Remember, friends don’t let friends spec ProRes for mastering.”

Tell that to PBS.

My entire post workflow is now dominated by the need to deliver ProRes for broadcast. If that changed I’d be off OSX and busy researching which new PC workstation I was buying along with planing my future infrastructure for the next 5 years. As it is I’m delaying everything, making do with what I can and spending as little as possible waiting for a workable solution to arise. Apple won’t build what I want, won’t license what I need to others, and still has a stranglehold on my deliverables.

Hopefully Apple’s NDA only meetings at NAB revealed answer’s to all my problems that I am simply to lowly to be allowed to know.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I look forward to hearing about your findings.”

Just back from a quick jaunt to NAB. I had some people I wanted to meet at both Adobe and AJA and that happened, so a successful trip. Not an earth shattering NAb, more incremental improvements.

Avid had the upper south hall to themselves as far as NLEs go and their booth was packed – can’t tell you why because i’m not interested, but if crowd size at NAB is any indication then this is not a dying business.

Black Magic had the lower hall prime position and plenty of action – the Ursa Mini 4K knocks me out for the money, with the caveat that I’m not a shooter. But as a fully robust studio camera for under 5K without glass, someones gonna have to explain to me why it sucks otherwise it will be in consideration for next years shoot. Also amazing how small the Micro Studio camera is – perfect for my ceiling mounted remote cam.

Tons of copter’s in the Central Hall buzzing around – obviously a growing field.

Adobe has some nice incremental improvements plus Virtual Reality editing – which I still believe is a “who cares” option. Very crowded booth, pushing a lot of Adobe Anywhere demos and Feature Film workflow demos emphasizing AE dynamic link with Ppro. Best demo was 2 kids from Austalia home brewing some fantasy you tube videos and turning it into a tv show. Very funny stuff, made for no money, 2 kids showing what can be done with a handful of actors, no money, a lot of talent and AE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nClYDL7jgj0

If you need a multiCamera live viewing option – The Decimator on the South Upper floor has some excellent options for 9 angles, or less, fully programmable, each input with a looping output, on one screen for less than 1K.

Saw a neat AE 3D tracking plug-in for those too stupid for something like Mocha (meaning me) – it’s called FayIn by Faytek. Worth a look for an editor who doesn’t have time to learn something too complex.

Didn’t try any of the VR glasses, the lines were too long at the Dell site, but they were offering free popcorn, so well worth the visit.

Saw a bunch of High Dynamic Range video, with a Korean company showing it in 8K. They had a shot of a rotating glass sculpture on black that seemed like you could reach out and touch it. Even the HD versions were impressive, but since there are no agreed upon standards for TV manufacturers and no broadcasters ready to, you know, broadcast, this is still just a pipe dream – but a beautiful pipe dream that is more impressive than 8K TV or 3D if you could ever get agreement on standards. In the meantime my wife is happy watching super compressed 8 bit on Netflix as long as she can see another episode of The Gilmore Girls.

Met up with the world renown Bob Zellin at the Maxx Digital booth – he was extolling the virtues of simple video networking using the QNAP Thunderbolt NAS as the center of it’s design, and complaining about the many booths talking about Thunderbolt 3 when nobody had it to show.

Spent some time at the ProMaxx booth to review it’s “platform” – a complete software/hardware product taking you from ingest to asset management to team editing to archiving with the ability to open in a panel in Ppro (and Avid I think) and be totally controlled from there. It has tools to lock projects to prevent overwriting while editing in teams and it was impressive.

Anyhow after a day my feet hurt too much to make it to the north hall or look any deeper at the camera’s in the central hall – huge booths for Canon, Panasonic and Sony, with Red exhibiting next to Black Magic in the lower south hall.

Since apple wasn’t exhibiting on the floor I didn’t see much of X anywhere, but I’m sure it was being displayed in places where i wasn’t looking.

I would estimate that 95% of the attendees were male with the highest number of female attendee’s gathered around the various camera booths in both the South and Central halls. Take that for what it’s worth.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

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[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Available Wed tho. Post where if anyone wants to gather.”

I’m planning on being at the Black Magic booth Wednesday morning at 11am if anyone want to meet up. I’ll be the old guy with the white Uconn hat on.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

no.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] “I think this is the 20th anniversary of the time I first saw HD at NAB. What a fgjking joke that was! Looked terrible, insanely inexpensive, no content, no distribution channel, NOTHING.”

Here’s why I don’t think HD and 3D are comparable. Every film maker who had to work with standard def video knew it was sh*t, especially if it was NTSC. Interlacing was sh*t, resolution was sh*t, dynamic range was unbelievably sucky. There had to be something better and for years the main thing slowing it down was the lack of agreement on what the new standard was going to be – there was no question about needing a new standard. It was a problem waiting for a solution.

Photographic 3D has existed for over 100 years. It never caught on. 3D movies have existed commercially since the late 40’s, and that novelty never caught on. 3D has been waxing and waning in popularity since the days of Wyatt Earp and there is no reason to believe that pattern won’t continue for the next 100 years. While the implementation is incrementally better there is nothing really new about modern 3D – all the benefits and all the problems are exactly the same since they made Dial M for Murder and 13 Ghosts when I was a kid.

As for VR, I think it’s different than 3D in that it is genuinely new and I believe there is a market for it – in gaming especially – but I don’t think it helps you tell a story, and if it doesn’t help tell a story then I, for one, am not interested in it, and I don’t think it will justify the money being thrown at it.

As for Adobe, I think software improvements are a zero sum game – if engineers are working on VR they are not working on putting an eyedropper in the Lumetri color wheel. There are only so many coding hours in a day.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Craig Seeman] “Which begs the question, what happens when the old guard retires at a higher rate than they are replaced?”

Avid has certain tools that nobody else has and charges more for them. Until someone comes up with something better than Isis and ScriptSync, tools that are absolutely essential in some workflows, Avid will have a place in the market. Companies who need those tools will pay for it, because it makes them money. They will train people to use those tools and will find no shortage of willing workers because their niche, while small, is very glamorous. Nobody goes to film school dreaming of making a corporate video.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Scott Witthaus] “Question: is Premiere and AE in the same boat as Avid? Any big (and needed, IMHO) changes to the interface will set the “new old guard” howling?”

AE yes, Ppro no, for the simple reason that many Ppro users are fairly new to the system and spend much of their time trying to make it act like something else. Ppro has been changing constantly over the past 5 years and nobody is screaming yet. On the other hand AE users are very heavily invested in it’s form and will balk at any but evolutionary change.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

VR is the 3D of today and the Quadraphonic Sound of tomorrow. Given my grouchy old man aesthetic this opinion should not surprise anyone, but I will hang my hat on my early and frequent disdain of 3D TV. I do think VR has an audience, but not one that requires my services, and I wish Adobe had spent more time on plugging the holes in Ppro rather than adding meaningless features for a market that doesn’t yet exist.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] “[Oliver Peters] “Some of these things will look familiar”
Yeah. No kiddin’.”

Imitation being the highest form of flattery.

And while FCPX might get brownie points for being first –

“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

And Ecclesiastes forgot to mention that if you pissed everybody off during your product rollout it will increase the odds that time and chance will rain’eth on your parade – or something to that effect.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf