Scott Thomas
4
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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When the station I was working at was looking at Non-Linear back in the mid 1990’s, we were considering Immix, Avid and Media100.
The three demos we had went like this:
1) The Immix dealer sent an engineer that wasn’t an editor, but I had a great time playing with the Turbo Cube, and appreciated it’s real-timeness and hardware.
2) The Avid demo where I was only allowed to actually touch the box for a few minutes before the demo guys headed back to Tewksbury.
3) The Media100 demo by a computer reseller that didn’t know video. They showed us pretty pictures, but didn’t know anything about editing or video production.I admired the Media100 Data Translations prowess for making the best picture, but I didn’t like the interface. Another part of the company did buy one and I had to troubleshoot it. I wasn’t happy about that. My department bought a Media Composer 1000 with the NuBus ABVB.
I picked the Avid, because in that short time I was able to demo it, it just felt like an editor’s tool. The video quality eventually caught up, just like Moore’s Law tells us, but by then I was on to greener pastures.
I’m happy that Media100 is still around, but to me it was that Vincent card that made great pictures that put it on the map, not the editing interface.
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I changed jobs and had to go from saying “timeline” or “sequence” to saying “Tracksheet”. Can you guess the system? I still catch myself saying that sometimes.
I was perfectly happy with “Edit Decision List” until these silly “Non-Linear Editing” systems came about. Why did they have to go and change a perfectly good naming system. I had reels and I may have even assigned them reel numbers (or sometimes names) and I may have saved my E-Mems for my transitions or my K-Scope effects to a floppy disk. Yeah, where the hell is my floppy? Bins? What, are we a K-Mart? Arrrggghhhh!
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They did mention using iPads to edit. Can you pass an iMovie project to FCPX or others?
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NAB 1999.
There was one single Mac system in the Avid booth. The rest were PC systems. Most of the folks I saw in the booth were huddled around the solitary Mac.
From the stories I was told in the late 1990’s, prior to the NeXT acquisition, Apple was pushing Copeland to the developers and the developers were not having it. (And probably for good reason) Thus began the march away from the Mac by Avid and Adobe.
Remember when Adobe started a sea-saw development scheme between Mac and PC? Was it Illustrator 6 that was a bug-riddled mess on the Mac? I don’t remember exactly, but it was an awful time.
Don’t forget that Microsoft around this time asked Apple to “Knife the baby” and was pouring money into Avid, and perhaps Adobe. Lots of politics going on back then. (MSFT bought SoftImage)
One can look back in time and see the purchase of Final Cut as a genius stroke. A guarantee against all of the forces put up against it.
Yeah, Apple may have been a petulant child to Avid by around 1996, but what if Apple never sent Avid those Mac II FX systems to Avid? Would Avid still be here if they released their NLE based on the slower Apollo workstations?
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I believe I got food poisoning Monday. I was out-of-commission Tuesday, but came back Wednesday and Thursday.
So here a week later, I’m OK… for now.
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I don’t mind cuts, I don’t mind quantity over quality, but I hate cuts when there’s not a thought behind them.
Case in point, news promos. I work in a shop where a lot of them are made. Sometimes an editor will start throwing in a bunch of cuts of images and they don’t lead anywhere. They’re just a bunch of images being thrown at you and it starts feeling like someone hitting you over the head with a hammer. Sometimes they don’t even follow a soundtrack.
I like when a cut is crafted. A cutaway to a different angle, different framing, directing focus, leading you somewhere.
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I’ve seen Super8 telecined to SD digital video. Had a neat grainy look.
There is an open-source method for scanning 8mm film that I believe is Linux based and uses a flatbed scanner.
Also there are other film scanning equipment like the FlashScan8.
https://www.flashscan8.us/ -
I’ve been using Photoshop nearly every day for over 20 years.
In the world of doing deadline based news graphics, Photoshop has enough cruft and modal design (not to mention the bugs) to seriously frustrate me and make me want to scream.
I’ve longed for something new, so I will have to try this. I love all that Photoshop can do, but I wish it functioned better.
Fingers crossed.
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How about: FCPX Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Kind of ambiguous, yet smirk inducing.