[Jim Wiseman]

I hope you continue to speak out to Adobe and all of us, David. You’re making more sense than anybody I have read on any of the Forums concerning the Creative Cloud issues. Your options 1, 2 and 3 are right on the money. If I can use the word “money”.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “Educators, independents, and artists tend to have a very different relationship to their work and its future. They’ll assess tools differently in light of those values.”<

[David Lawrence] Personal computers transformed industries and society by enabling the individual to own means of production that previously were completely controlled by centralized powers. You buy a computer, you buy the software, and you do whatever you want with the system because it’s your system.

Software rental flies in the face of this notion. Once again, the central powers want to own the key part of the system and rent it back to you. It’s ironic that Adobe – the company that single-handedly transformed the publishing and pre-press industries by making the means of production own-able by anyone – are leading the charge back to the old days when you had no choice but to rent.<

Sorry I missed this thread. It happened when I was sleeping out here in the Pacific. I even posted earlier today (still the 10th here) about the articles Lloyd Chambers had written and the implications of the EULAs on the Creative Cloud debate Forum.

I have to say I am very much in tune with the two statements above. I do believe that artists especially have a different relationship to their tools than those whose ambitions are more mercantile. My background and degrees are in video art, 1972, CalArts BFA where I studied with Nam June Paik and built his video synthesizer which I performed with, also Gene Youngblood whose classic “Expanded Cinema” foretold most of the video revolution. Then my MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1974 where I worked with Dan Sandin and his Image Processsor while also interning at WTTW, PBS Chicago as a producer and AD on what became Soundstage. I say all this to try to explain that it required a great deal of passion to do this in those days. You literally had to go to the masters and build your own tools. I still have the synthesizers here in working condition. In the ’70’s when this was the coming thing, my work was shown in museums in the US, Europe, and Asia.

I could no more consider these tools as rental objects than I can the software and computers I work with now. To think that a tool like Photoshop that I have been learning since v.1.0 could be ripped from my reach for any reason, especially one like the rental model of Creative Cloud, makes my guts churn. I was just getting into Premiere. David is right. This is the antithesis of what the personal computer model was meant to be.

I was lucky to make my living doing commercial work at One Pass Video in San Francisco, the first video film style company in the US, perhaps the world, and here in Hawaii as the Avid and Media 100 dealer. So I have seen both the commercial and artist’s side of things. But now that I am in the position of finally concentrating on my art again, it is more than disconcerting to see the progression toward models that seem to be more about taking tools out of our hands than putting them in them, regardless of the marketers siren call. Pay up now and forever, or find another tool. That is like telling a painter like Van Gogh to move from oils to watercolors because someone has bought the rights to the former, and you will have to meet their requirements to use them. If you don’t like it, well, it is still a form of painting. It just isn’t right.

I truly hope that Adobe, the company with more digital tools for artists than any other, realizes that there are enough artists and independents that recoil from this rental model that they will be required to provide realistic alternatives that will never force us to give up our tools and our work unless we wish to.

And Walter, I have been interested in the possibilities of networks since the early 70’s. Realtime artistic creation of visual and sound works with artists participating from all over the world in realtime. I wrote about that for my MFA. I thought it would be by satellites then. The internet will make it possible. But that is another discussion.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

There are many other searches you can do from the finder window from those two popups if you explore them. You can also combine and remove search parameters with the plus and minus keys on the right side of the search window bar. For instance Kind: Movie, Before: 6/11/12, etc. It uses the Spotlight indexing which can search out anything on your storage volumes, including textual content. Very powerful and very simple. Glad it worked for you.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

Double click on the hard drive you want to search to open its content window. With that window still selected, do a Command F (Find) or File/Find from the menu bar, either while in the Finder. A Search window will pop up. Select the drive you want to search from the menu in the window as opposed to “This Mac” , the other choice, which would search all volumes. At the top of the window you have two pop ups. One will already be set to kind, leave it there. The other will be set to “Any”. Press that popup and change it to “Movie”. A list of all the movie files on that drive will then appear.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

Thanks. Glad to see they are keeping up to date with new I/O hardware and OSX system software.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

I really enjoy the ability to open and work with many codecs in Premiere, particularly XDCam EX and Nikon H264. I have been doing selects and color correction in Premiere with a CUDA video card, and this has been a very good experience. At that point, I export my selects and perhaps some graphics from Premiere as ProRes, and import to Media 100. I find that I much prefer the Media 100 editing interface for it’s power, simplicity, and stability. On the Mac it just works. With Premiere, you get the feeling that the Mac is a bit of a stepchild to the PC. For many years, Premiere was almost exclusively used on the PC, and I am afraid that it shows, especially in the area of stability. I imagine it will improve, as they are after all of the dissatisfied Final Cut users. However, as Media 100 was originally written exclusively for the Mac and is now a Mac only program, I feel much more confident that I will be able to finish a program, especially long form, without the headaches many are experiencing with Premiere. Most of my work is documentary, and Media 100 lends itself very well to that form. I was very glad to see the 2.1.3 update, as that is a good indication of future hardware, and one would hope, future OSX support. As long as these two items are being addressed by Media 100, new hardware and new Macs and new versions of OSX, it will continue to be my finishing application. I have absolutely no intention of moving to a Windows computer.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

This is exactly my work flow now. Previewing and correcting in Premiere and exporting ProRes to Media 100. Works very well and saves a lot of time and disk space. I’m also shooting XDCam EX.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

I have nothing to “report”. Just my minimum wishes. Of course I would love to see Boris pour an unlimited amount of effort into to the M100 software. I have always had positive responses from everyone I have spoken to there that improvement is ongoing. Would love new features and bug fixes. Not much has appeared recently, though. Just want M100 to maintain it’s relevance to current Mac system software and hardware, including third party (especially AJA) as it is released at the very least. It would seem that a lot more effort is going into their effects plug-ins. Please just don’t forget about M100. Would like to hear something positive. Maybe NAB.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

Glad to hear that, Michael. If they keep up with Apple system updates and current AJA hardware and drivers, I will be happy for the most part. I use it to finish with, and am quite happy with the results. Must admit I am using several other systems for their flexibility. But in the end, stability and ease of use are very important to me, and Media 100 does that. Wouldn’t hurt to hear a word of encouragement here, though.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Jim Wiseman]

Unlike Michael, I have never edited film, although I have been doing portable and broadcast video since 1970, well before computer based editing. I was the exclusive Avid dealer here in Hawaii from the early to late ’90’s, as well as one of two Media 100 dealers from near the beginning to the end. Since then I have returned exclusively to production work. I also now use Adobe Premiere to preview material in any codec and do some color correction and titling, then exporting ProResHQ to Media 100 for final edit. Why? Because it has the fastest, simplest, most direct editing metaphor of any non-linear editor I have worked with, the quality is superb, audio simple and direct, and exports have always been flawless. It just works. Premiere on the Mac has been less than stable, but seems to be improving. A bit too much concentration on features as opposed to functionality. The M100 software has grown up on the Mac, it is not the second choice platform. The other reasons I prefer M100. And Avid, while great for closed system feature production, is not open enough for my workflow that can involve many sources.

I am almost exclusively in documentary production these days, so my need for complicated effects are few when I get to final. M100 has good hooks to After Effects, and of course RED is integrated. I could also do effects at the Premiere stage of my workflow. I do hope that Boris keeps developing M100, at least keeping up with OSX updates, AJA drivers including support for Thunderbolt devices, and bug fixes. I would hate to see M100 fall by the wayside. The silence has been rather deafening. I, like Michael, will probably continue to use it for as long as possible.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe