[Joseph Owens]

How are you executing the job?
Are you hand typing the subtitles?
Is there a software solution available (like Maccaption) that you can employ so that you can finish each episode in a reasonable amount of time and what would you consider “reasonable”?
Is your client supplying transcripts that you are cut+pasting as a text generator?
How many hours are you putting into each episode?
Are you simply exporting a QuickTime or are you also mastering to tape?
Where is the net profit cutoff or can you outsource this to some fourth-world sweatshop for ten cents per episode and pocket the rest? Tell me your client isn’t making this very calculation.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Just to temper things a little bit, you know, its great that for a good many enthusiasts looking to step up, the X interface offers a somewhat less intimidating model. It also does offer quite a bit more than an Express/iMovie experience — no question. Sitting in the Supermeet, I could really grasp what the architects wanted to supply — which was hiding as much as possible from its operators, ridding the screen of “clutter”, reducing the overload of multitasking an unarguably, and for most, overwhelmingly complex environment. Commendable. Like that drug for ADD.

I actually got a flash of filmstrips hanging in a bin, a single KEM/Steenbeck display with only one active filmstrip/platter mechanism — a really remarkable return to the roots of editing — almost a full circle, with the exception of limitless previewing/auditioning, and Beaker-the-hapless-lab-assistant keeping that source bin-thing filled, and iPhoto-ing all that gak (apologies to the cinematographers of the world). Maybe I was a bit puzzled that most of the functions the company men were demonstrating was already possible in the “old” version (if you took any time with the manual), but not all software engineers are fully conversant with the subtleties of professional life in the field, production obligations, and what has gone before.

I have maintained all along that X would be invaluable for the unplanned, one-off, cuts-and-dissolves news/vanity (in the book-publishing sense)/whatever crowd. There is a monetized model for that and its a legitimate pursuit, and if you’re in the black with it, something to be proud of. Keep going.

But I have to stand on the dock waving buh-bye to the new ship because I am one of those legacy people (small niche called national/international broadcast) that needs to deliver hierarchical physical media all over the world which also does infer that I usually generate about 9 or 10 versions of the same program in 3 or 4 standards in a couple of languages plus D,M&E, textless, captions, subtitles and so on, on several types of media, including all the paper deliverables. So although the X workflow may feel good for a one-handed operation, it does not really fit the business model that its predecessor did. Errrr… well enough… I guess.

This has all been said before.

For those who “hope” it may be the answer to everyone’s prayers one day… apparently there are plenty of third-party developers who would love to sell you even more software… I just hope those offerings work better as external applications than, for example, Final Touch did, which we also had great “hopes” for. I’m thinking of someone who actually said (with the arrival of FCS) they would prefer to see what they did for COLOR 2.0….
(meaningful pause) at least that wait is over.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Doug Nichol] “You will be able to quickly re-arrange sequences and try things out. The whole process will be more tactile and intuitive. When these new machines come out in about… “

Humour?

You can already do this with iMovie on the iPad2. its a nightmare. Clumsy, (and what do you mean sequences? There are no sequenceS). The touch pad is hardly responsive and its worse than those FIDO ads where the voice-recognition robot assumes that you are a satisfied customer, when what is being expressed is psychotic incoherent death threats. I often wonder if Douglas Adams was thinking of Apple when he characterized the Sirius Cybernetics company — the bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.

I also get a kick out of people who use the work “paradigm” as if they knew what it meant, and no it doesn’t mean ‘new user interface’. While you’re at it look up the Wiki article on the word “hubris”. I can think of a new example which illustrates it more accurately than the latest calculation of “pi”. And those “tau” people are just being silly, IMHO. But Pluto isn’t a planet, anymore either, is it?
Bazinga.

jP (Sheldon Cooper, PhD) o

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Here’s an excerpt from Canada’s “Glob & Mail” newspaper (Toronto-based) that was printed in their “Report on Business” insert, March 22, 2011:

It’s a myth that the return of the Prodigal Geek [Jobs] triggered an instant reversal in fortune. In 1997, as the tech industry was soaring, Apple lost more than $1 billion. The iMac gave the company a brief lift, but by the early 2000s, Mac sales had flatlined again. Apple was no longer bleeding, but it still wasn’t very profitable.

What saved Apple over the next few years was not Jobs, but the rampant theft of music online—and the failure of a fat-and-complacent Microsoft to conjure up a device and music service to compete with the iPod and iTunes. The music industry jumped aboard the iTunes phenomenon, in the belief that getting a few dimes from Apple was better than getting nothing from music pirates. Even then, it wasn’t until 2005 that Apple earned a $1-billion profit. This year, profit is expected to crack $20 billion.

The full article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/is-apple-once-again-riding-for-a-fall/article1951654/

WAS published over three months ago, and has, obviously nothing to do with the X-edition of Final Cut. But something is bad at the bottom of that barrel.

I’ve only been in the Apple game since 2005 (well, after a holiday in-between hand-building an Apple ][e out of a Radio Shack supply) but since coming back, because Final Touch looked like a viable alternative to $1M dollar grade suites, it quickly became apparent to me, and not just this spring, but years ago, that quoting myself … Apple is going to have to decide if its a computer company or a record store.

Well, I guess they have chosen.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

I bought the (then) trio of CP200 panels for my Final Touch installation, but it quickly became apparent that a Wave would also be just as effective (with the advent of COLOR) and would give me an alternative with which to travel when I do “out-call” service visits. I don’t know how much longer FCS users will hang on to their COLOR software, but at one point “everybody” had it and all I had to do was plug and play. Resolve will make that a bit more complicated because a client who does access external colorists won’t likely own the software, or perhaps in the near future will have the FCP7 overlay version that I can tap into for very simple tasks. I’ll have to start suggesting that to my user base.

In some respects a Wave panel is better than a “stand-alone” CP200BK, if you don’t also have the TS and K panels. I do hold my nose a bit with the build/feel of the plastic, but….. it travels better/lighter, and is not anywhere close to the expenditure/outlay to get going with an expanded client base. A Wave should net pay for itself in a couple of sessions.

I have stopped using the word “investment” when referring to either software or hardware, any more than a bingo card is something that anyone would expect an ROI from.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Darin,

Kim was one of the first colorists I ever worked with (back in the days when I was purely an online editor). He pushed a lot of film, and was one of the first electronic colorists, putting up with a Corporate System 60XL (joysticks) for a lot of years, but what came down from telecine was always what we asked for. He also operated one of those StarTrek-flight-deck daVinci Classics for awhile — no joyballs – all knobs. And when I read old-timers’ reminiscing about Dubners… glad I was editing. So he knows what control panels are for. But I can certainly vouch for the reluctance to spend money.

There have been some heated exchanges going on over the past week — really since the NAB Supermeet, which have been somewhat entertaining. Hard to figure out these days whether an expenditure is an investment or a dead-end waste.

I saw a very cynical bit of business advice written in a commerce magazine a couple of years ago, but over the intervening time, I’ve learned to appreciate the sentiment. Especially since June 21. The wisdom passed along was to make sure you charge as much as you can for your services… since for the most part your suppliers certainly are. (I’ve toned down the language and the sentiment a LOT, because it was a Brooklyn-based contractor-type enterprise, mostly eff-bomb vocabulary, so you get it.) Now this might be foreign-thinking for employees… but as a business owner, it reads more like a sermon from the clouds.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Audio would be vulnerable if there was a mismatch in framerate and so on settings, but do you also have the “preview audio” checked in the settings?

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

FCP up to 7 will only export 2:2:2:4 no matter what you choose as a pulldown pattern. I’ve been chasing this for a couple of years now, and the only working solution that anyone has ever been able to suggest has been to export the sequence through Compressor, but you have to get those settings explicitly correct before it will be successful. This sort of started with a procession of Master tape rejections, and discovering that the same issue was being experienced by many others… Mostly starting with the pulldown sequence being locked to 2:2:2:4 in ProRes422HQ sequences. Two/Three wasn’t even an option. Hoping that the rebuild X has given this some consideration, but somehow I doubt it. This becomes extremely important to those of us who deliver network content that includes Dolby E plus collard captioning content. I doubt that these are part of the new application, either.

Yet another show-stopping deal breaker for Final Cut in general, since the other applications do this correctly, out of the box.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

This explanation is incorrect. 3:2 pulldown is 3 fields / 2 fields interlaced.
FCP does not execute this correctly under any circumstances.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Well, actually, I went through all of these at the Supermeet.

[David Roth Weiss] “Denial (Wow, I was just over at the Luxor!)
Anger (They cancelled everybody’s presentations? Even Alex’s?)
Bargaining ( Ok, If I sit through this, maybe I’ll win something at the raffle… like a RESOLVE!…)
Depression (I don’t care anymore)
Acceptance (Assume the position)”

fecal particles and giggles.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?