[Mitch Ives]

[Oliver Peters] “It will be interesting to see how sharing actually works. This requires an appropriate server set-up. “

FWIW, at the Supermeet they said you can use one of the machines you’re working on to provide that function. No server required.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Walter Soyka] “In your business experience, do you think it’d be possible for a new entrant to develop and bring a full-featured color corrector and NLE to market — and not charge a dime for it?”

Not on a permanent basis. Personally, I don’t expect them to give away for free forever (personally I’m buying it). Having said that, what about Apple buying Color and then including it for free? Obviously, they thought the good will and increased capability would sell more hardware. What if BMD is doing that short term?

In the course of watching the R11 demo, I was exposed to their 4K Thunderbolt rack unit as well as their rack mount dual LCD monitor, which interestingly was being used to display a waveform and vectorscope. I didn’t know you could use that dual monitor for that? Now I’m interested in their hardware… I wasn’t when I arrived in the booth. How’s that for creative marketing?

[Walter Soyka] “I don’t think anyone who knows me would suggest I hate capitalism! I’m actually looking at this from a capitalist perspective, as a consumer of these tools.

In rooting for a free product whose development is subsidized by the sale of something else, you are rooting for a product with absolutely zero accountability to its users (note I didn’t say customers) in the market. I guess if they’re ever dissatisfied, at least they can get their money back.”

I wasn’t suggesting that… don’t know you well enough for that… probably wouldn’t anyway.

FWIW, both myself and the guy I was with are skipping the free version and buying it. I suspect a lot of people will, in order to reward a positive behavior and to get faster development.

[Walter Soyka] “Resolve’s price tag, or lack thereof, could be a pretty strong disincentive for other companies to invest the resources necessary to develop or maintain a competitive product.

Underpriced and free products devalue the work of the developers who build the tools we need to do our jobs. If the industry that supplies us becomes toxic, how healthy will our industry really be long term?”

That’s a big stretch. Who says BMD isn’t thinking long-term. This is a big boy game and requires lots of money… ask Avid. I could make the same argument about FCP X, except small developers are making a fortune making plugins for it. Why not the same with R11? It’s using OpenFX… they were showing the Sapphire plugins in every demo. Isn’t that not only helping the small developer, but actually building an entire eco-system for them?

[Walter Soyka] “Resolve Lite for free makes me think of the proverbial kid with a camera that everyone here has been complaining about, living in his parents’ basement, who shoots with the 5D his parents bought him and charges $100/day. Except this time, WE are the clients excited about this new, low cost provider without understanding how the price is artificially and unsustainably depressed, and the kid is an ace DP showing up for free with a RED or Alexa and a full grip truck.”

Walter… as a highly talented individual, I know you aren’t discounting the skill involved in properly learning and mastering it? As to your second point, as Bill Davis has pointed out on many occasions, it’s too late to get that Genie back in the bottle. In fact, Apple has done more to foster this than anyone else IMO.

[Walter Soyka] “Let me be very clear: Resolve is a great product. I bought my license immediately upon its relaunch, and the BMD Resolve team has done an amazing job with it since they acquired it.

I’m not anti-Resolve, and I’m not calling for any kind of action. I am just concerned that this business model — much like Apple’s, where some really good software may be subsidized by unrelated hardware sold to different customers — MAY be negative for our industry in the long term by discouraging competitive development.”

I get that… I thought we were exchanging ideas and viewpoints? As for your last point, it’s a valid one. I get pissed every day because as a society I’m subsidizing the deadbeats out there every day. And you know, that might be okay if they showed the slightest bit of gratitude… 🙂

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

I’m sure there will be lots of opinions on this, but for myself, I do a lot of complicated comps and I do them in FCP, not AE or other places. In FCP7 I once had 70 layers. I’ve been doing this long enough that I don’t knock things out of sync. I don’t need a seat belt to keep me from screwing up, so the magnetic timeline isn’t as valuable to me as it is to others. My students would have loved the ML.

Second, it’s easier to organize and visualize big projects using tracks. I know not everyone does big projects, but it’s easier to bring in someone else in the middle of a project if there’s some structure to the project. FCP X is perfect for single users who do the whole thing themselves.

Lastly, as I watching the advanced trimming in R11, I was trying to imagine how you could do a complicated asymmetric trim in X? Or how you’d trim some combination of video and/or audio, while not trimming others.

Again, if your project is simple, none of this matters. The guys I know that love X the most are single users with pretty straight forward projects. I’m not insulting anyone here… there are no small projects, only small editors (apologies to actors everywhere)…

So on some projects tracks would help, while on others tracks would slow things down. I like options, and I particularly like the hybrid approach of R11. I’ll be interested in hearing your thoughts once you work with it.

Then again, I could be wrong altogether…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

Well it looks like Craig got there first and pretty much covered it all. I’ll just add that AJA’s stuff is almost always rock solid from the get go…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Walter Soyka] “Also buried under the avalanche of Resolve cheerleading, Digital Vision is now offering Nucoda at $2695 with a subset of their DVO tools, and with support for Tangent Element panels.

Resolve cheerleading? You don’t sound happy Walter?

[Walter Soyka] “Maybe there is still a little room outside the high end of the market for realistically-priced software that doesn’t fully embrace the race-to-the-bottom pricing we’re seeing elsewhere?”

I don’t often disagree with you Walter, and okay, I admit that having a degree in business and 40 years of experience starting and successfully running businesses may have clouded my vision, but I’d be interested in hearing your logic on how this is a problem?

The music industry thought this too, until they discovered that a billion sales at 99 cents made more money than $15 CD’s. I know it’s popular to hate capitalism these days, but in our industry, more money means more development resources, which means more new features. What have I missed?

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Steve Connor] “Once again AJA have had their thunder stolen by BMD!”

I don’t think so. I was in both booths. The BMD is 4K only… look at all the formats the AJA has. Huge difference. Most people won’t shoot 4K all the time.

Then there is the “AJA only releases things that actually work”. People that I know that have the first BMD camera are still waiting for promised fixes.

Different cameras… different companies… different target.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Charlie Austin] “I’m sure that’s true, and I’ll absolutely be checking it out. But the trackless timeline isn’t all there is about X that makes my life easier. The way the browser works, KW collections, smart collections etc. The TL index, Roles, Clip Skimming, Auditions, Audio Components… things like that are a huge part of it as well…”

Absolutely… I don’t think I suggested removing X… 🙂

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Jeremy Garchow] “As far as compositing in Resolve, there’s already a node system, masking, tracking, keying, they’d “just” have to add some deeper compositing tools. I guess I could see how that could be the next logical step, but that’s a pretty huge step.

Cool. I think I need to watch these demos so I can get my hopes up and be disappointed with yet another missed release date. ;)”

The step between 10 and 11 was huge. I’m no longer thinking that 12 can’t close that gap. I’m not saying Smoke, just closer.

Jeremy, do yourself a favor, don’t watch the demos. Get on a machine with 11 somewhere. It’s different. I found the videos interesting. Standing at the machine… asking Joe tough questions and seeing how it all integrates had me grinning like crazy. As I said, my Premiere using friend only stood there because I wanted to see it. By the end, he was sold (he was a 7 user before X, when he switched to Premiere).

It’s kind of like a car auction… watching it on TV isn’t the same as standing next to the car…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Shawn Larkin] “I struggled with X for a while too. It has matured enough so you can “get around” the timeline now without being super creative because Apple have figured out how to allow you to do all those things you need to without tracks (most of the time anyways).

My gripe has always been: Sometimes tracks are better for particular tasks and I wish you could switch them on / off.”

Well said. I now have enough work-a-rounds for X that it’s workable. I guess my question is: why should I have to have work-a-rounds? Why not have an interface that’s more flexible?

And yes, if your being honest with yourself, there are times where tracks are a superior approach. Not always, but sometimes. Resolve seems to have noticed that. In the old days Apple would have done this, not BMD…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Mitch Ives]

[Charlie Austin] “And I really, really don’t like cutting in a tracked timeline anymore. And I really like the metadata power of X, makes my job so much easier.

But… R11 could be even easier for folks coming from 7 to get up to speed on than Pr, and it should interact very nicely with X so… I can have my cake and eat it too. :-)”

I really think you should take a closer look at 11… it’s not tracks the way most people think of them. Someone else referred to them as a “trackless/track” approach. I’d agree… it’s different, and IMO more flexible than all tracks or no tracks.

I know this will piss off a lot of people, but everywhere I went in NAB I kept hearing the same thing: “Resolve 11 is what X should have been”. None of them seemed to be dissing X, and neither am I… it’s just once you see it, it’s a natural reaction. It’s very polished… very Apple-like. If you use X, the interface is damn near identical… the Inspector is a dead ringer. Resolve 11 seems to be all the good from X plus all the great stuff from 7 that we lost in X. The intuitive trimming will have all the other NLE’s re-thinking their trim modes, IMO.

Your mileage may vary…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill