FCPX, on set post, and studio level workflows

[MichaelP]

Avid has had script based editing since the mid 1990's, when they acquired that technology from Ediflex (how many people here have even heard of Ediflex?). And since its introduction, there are editors who really like it and use it, and many, many more who don't.

As the guy who designed the original Script Based Editing back in the day, Avid took over the patent as part of a trade to the last 5 Ediflex customers at the time as they went out of business. None of the code was used, but certainly the concept was alive and well. But I do agree, that there was so much not done from the original design, and it was not until my finding Nexidia and working with an engineer to develop the prototype that ScriptSync was brought to market (after Avid had ended talks with Nexidia as they didn't see how it might fit). What that did was remove the one painful part of the process that was associated with Script Based Editing. For better or for worse, Avid is not known for continuing a feature or solution once the first version of the solution ships - But between script, metadata, and phonetic (dialog) technologies, there is so much more that could be done - Some have been filed as patents, and others are still in my notes. But there is a fundamental shift that could happen to take editorial to the next phase. I built a prototype verbal logging track to source clips that worked at 2x speed, was synced description (like TV for the blind) across multiple audio tracks so one couuld track for different metadata descriptions - such as metatrack_1 would be for camera angles, track 2 for people description, track 3 for action description. Everything would be span based and a better designed FIND feature would concatenate all that metadata to find what you needed to find... Think of that for reality TV. I even had discussions with camera manufactures to expand their shooter descriptive track while recording. If you recall, Avid made the first file-based camera with Ikegami (all Avid patents) and has the patent on retro-loop which is the ability to record the previous "n" number of seconds before hitting record. Something many other cameras have added since - is it licensed? I doubt it. The Avid IP portfolio is very deep - if they could just develop and deliver some of those, it would be a very different situation. The last patent I filed before being let go (and just notified it was granted) was the smartphone as dongle anywhere within bluetooth, wifi, or connected to system with license entitlements managed via the cloud an app - with phone s physical dongle. Will it come to market? Will it get licensed? Who knows.

Avid needs to know what it wants to be - it's trying to be a lot of things, but a sharp focus on the priorities would go a long way.


Michael

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I don't see your point. Apple bought Final Cut, Logic, Shake, Color, and lots of other things. So what? Companies buy a lot of things, then they develop and enhance them. That's what Apple did and that's what Avid did.

Haha - you are right, BUT, the Final Cut that Apple bought has been put to pasture in favor of a new paradigm. As have pretty much all the other apps you mentioned. Does Avid have the courage to do that? Or the vision? Or the resources? THAT's my point. Can they innovate from here? Because the past is the past and it is moving into the rear view mirror quite quickly.

And, to reiterate, if Avid owns the Hollywood market but still can't make that pay, what does it mean for their future, and the future of the product?

 

[M Most]

Terry, I honestly don't know what you're trying to prove here. The whole "Apple is smart and great and Avid is dumb and a dinosaur" idea is pretty misguided and a real distortion of the facts. Apple developed the original Final Cut after buying it from Macromedia, and ultimately abandoned it and with it most of the market they had captured. They have not won back the vast majority of that market despite the statements and protestations made here. They chose instead to pursue a new market that may or may not pay off in the long run, but it is certainly their right to do so. They have replaced the original product with a new one that is certainly interesting, has a lot of original ideas, and a lot of virtures, but is still quite non-standard and has gotten a lot less traction in professional markets than the old one did. That's not "courage," it's a very deliberate decision to try to attract a larger user base without a lot of regard as to whether the original user base would accept the new approach or not. Avid has a very devoted following in the professional editing community and it would be pretty foolhardy to alienate their user base by making them change everything they do. As Michael Phillips pointed out, there has been a ton of innovation in their product over the years, but they haven't forced their user base to re-learn how they work. Sometimes different is better. Sometimes it's not. New != Good, and Existing != Bad. It depends who you are, how you work, and what you need. For about 2 years, most of this industry has bascially told Apple that what you now call "courage" was in fact a slap in the face, and many migrated to Premiere Pro and Avid. And they haven't returned. Or perhaps you've forgotten all of that. I'm not sure what Apple's sales figures are for Final Cut X, but I do know that their profile in the professional industry is far, far lower than it was prior to the "courageous" move of completely abandoning a product that had found serious traction. Following a proven course, and serving your user base pretty well may not be popular with people on Reduser who seem to consider just about any company other than Red and Apple to be some kind of dinosaur/enemy. But it's pretty darned popular with actual editors who have to use those tools every day.

 

[Will Keir]

You said it! I'd give FCP X a try when that occurs.

as soon as FCPX supports REDs GPU debayer it's really gonna rock hardcore.

 

[Paul Harb]

You will get nowhere with Terry.

Terry, I honestly don't know what you're trying to prove here. The whole "Apple is smart and great and Avid is dumb and a dinosaur" idea is pretty misguided and a real distortion of the facts. Apple developed the original Final Cut after buying it from Macromedia, and ultimately abandoned it and with it most of the market they had captured. They have not won back the vast majority of that market despite the statements and protestations made here. They chose instead to pursue a new market that may or may not pay off in the long run, but it is certainly their right to do so. They have replaced the original product with a new one that is certainly interesting, has a lot of original ideas, and a lot of virtures, but is still quite non-standard and has gotten a lot less traction in professional markets than the old one did. That's not "courage," it's a very deliberate decision to try to attract a larger user base without a lot of regard as to whether the original user base would accept the new approach or not. Avid has a very devoted following in the professional editing community and it would be pretty foolhardy to alienate their user base by making them change everything they do. As Michael Phillips pointed out, there has been a ton of innovation in their product over the years, but they haven't forced their user base to re-learn how they work. Sometimes different is better. Sometimes it's not. New != Good, and Existing != Bad. It depends who you are, how you work, and what you need. For about 2 years, most of this industry has bascially told Apple that what you now call "courage" was in fact a slap in the face, and many migrated to Premiere Pro and Avid. And they haven't returned. Or perhaps you've forgotten all of that. I'm not sure what Apple's sales figures are for Final Cut X, but I do know that their profile in the professional industry is far, far lower than it was prior to the "courageous" move of completely abandoning a product that had found serious traction. Following a proven course, and serving your user base pretty well may not be popular with people on Reduser who seem to consider just about any company other than Red and Apple to be some kind of dinosaur/enemy. But it's pretty darned popular with actual editors who have to use those tools every day.

 

[MichaelP]

I really never understood the whole mentality of one tool having to be the best and defining its artist and you suck if you don't use the tool I'm using. I still see so many postings on forums for screenings: "come see my film, it was shot on Red, or "fill in the __________" Same for editing, or anything else rather than focus on telling me why I would be interested in seeing the film in the first place like what the hell is it about? I use Media Composer for most of my work. Tha's because I need to deliver lists, change lists, track multiple timecodes for playback, production, etc. I ned a system that is robust enough to hold hundreds of hours with the way people now shoot with digital. And at the end of the day, it is now I interact with the footage to find the moments and beats with the trim model. The system doesn't magically do it for me, but I prefer the way it lest me choose to find those frames. And as Mark mentioned, ScriptSync is a big deal for me and the directors I work with. To be able to audition a single line or lines across all or selected takes is huge. Also matching back later from the timeline - The director asks, what else did we have for this shot? I do a script "matchframe" and it takes me back to the script, shows the span of text used and highlights the take. In one glance I have all alternate takes. And on longer action takes, I have recorded my description track on my eyephone, sent the file to the project, and "synced" it to the takes to use PhraseFind later to get those moments.

If someone finds the same feel and groove with another system, that's fantastic! I could care less that Social Network was shot on Red and edited on FCP, or that the Bourne movies were on Media Composer. It proves to me that it can be done and validates the process - but each artist made their choice base on what works for them. Does it influence decisions for others? Sure - but because my neighbor bought a Subaru Outback doesn't mean I'm going to choose that one for myself. I will talk to them about it though and make a decision that best suits my needs, budgets and where I need to go.

And I have used FCPx for processes that I know are better and easier. For example, I got the six conform check reels bounced out of Resolve by the colorist as H.264 (WAN workflow) that I combined with the mix tracks. The editing of that would have been just as fast in either program, but since I needed to make a Vimeo delivery at the end, FCPx was the better choice as there were fewer steps.

I also have PPro - it is a fast improving system with a ton of functionality that will prove beneficial on some program types I deal with. But it is more difficult "for me" to edit with it as I am used to Media Composer - I am not thinking of what I am clicking, I am making creative choices. It's one thing to have the same function, but how one interacts with it at the moment of the creative decision is a big thing. Which is why the Avid SmartTool was met with cheers and jeers - With all options active, you spend more time making sure the cursor is the right icon to make the insert/trim/black insert/remove that you lose sight of what you were trying to do to start with. But, for quick montage editing, moving shots to around, and such - it's great. But not offering a means to turn it completely off, was the basic problem. I am all for tools that know how to come to the user and not the user having to find the tools. That is a big interaction design challenge for whatever the creative moment is at that moment.

I've blabbered far too long - but editing is more than a list of features - it is how an artists interacts - and let them choose whatever they want. I am judged and paid by what's on the screen, not how I got there. Another editor can get there as well with another tool - but how the story is told and the audience reacts is what is left on the screen.


Michael

 

[MichaelP]

On a related note: there are several press releases coming out of IBC that might help users understand the direction and priorities of where Avid is going. If nothing else, at least they are communicating their direction to the industries they serve. Something that is maddening from the Apple side for those who need to plan ahead in their purchase cycle.

http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/whitepapers/Avid_Everywhere.pdf
http://www.avid.com/US/press-room/Launches-Customer-Association

Michael

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Mike - the discussion turned to the economic and market viability of Avid. I am not trying to prove anything except to support the position someone asked me about as to the viability of Avid as a company. I have said several times that I don't think anyone should move to FCPX if they are happy where they are. I do reject, based on the opinions of others I respect, the notion that FCPX is not for pros. I fully embrace those who want to use a variety of tools based on the project.

i was asked what I thought about Avid's prospects and this was my answer. According to you, they are dominant with "the Hollywood big boys." And, according to you, they own the pro audio space. I have no reason to disagree with either of those statements - I believe you are correct on both counts. So - to metaphorically torture an old saying "If they are so talented, why ain't they rich?" LOL if they are so dominant in two very important markets for them, and yet they are on the brink of financial collapse, what do they do to survive? It wouldn't seem like they have much room to expand revenue with their current product line - it's not like its a growth issue. Are they bloated as a company? Are their expenses just so high that they can't be profitable? They need to do something or you are going to have to get your next Avid license from a bankruptcy court.

And I do think they are a bit of a dinosaur but that is a personal, and I am sure you'd agree, largely subjective and irrelevant opinion. :smiley:

And, Mike, I am curious about your sources for the market share FCP-X has lost and "not won back." I think we'd have to agree that those are guesses on your part as the numbers are just not available.

 

[MichaelP]

Apple is not the Juggernaut company becuase it sells editing software - it's revenue exploding over the past several years as come from being an appliance and distribution company with a near monopolistic control of the device, the OS and the applications that fit the Apple vision. One can certainly look to Avid and ask the same question as to diversification and growth, but Avid, for better for worse, is in the professional production business. But a fundamental differne is the markets being served is the individual pro and shoots, edits, and delivers, and the studio style process where there are are many more involved in the process and each one needs to work and not be the bottleneck to the next. The latter is a harder problem to solve. Maybe there is more money to be made in taking all of Avid's resources and making a kick ass editor, but I doubt it at the cost of what NLE's go for today. I always wondered if FCP Studio at the time could survive as a standalone company at the price point it was selling at without the rest of the halo revenue attached to it for Apple and without the Apple resources for marketing, QT engineering team, blah blah blah.

I posted on another forum the notion (for amusement only) that I would not be surprised to see Apple put FCPx for free with the purchase of the new MacPro as they did with the iWorks suite for free on all NEW iOS devices. There is now precedence that software is loss leader to the hardware sales and only used as differentiation or create the aura of "All you need is Apple".

Michael

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I don't think it's unfair to say that Avid will eventually have to rethink the way media composer works to keep itself relevant in the long term, I think far too many people STILL underestimate Final Cut Pro X and what it will mean for the future of editing. In the short term it seems there are still arguments to be made either way but it seems to me that in its current form Final Cut Pro X is winning over pretty much anyone who is willing to give it a real shot.
"The fact that there is even a debate at this point whether or not it’s a professional NLE is completely absurd. I don’t need anyone else to tell me that what I’m doing is “professional” anymore. The system I just installed ran circles around an Avid Unity with highly trained, established editors who are all fantastic at their jobs. This is not a knock on them. It’s simply about what the tools that are available to post professionals can do at this point in time. In an afternoon, we had more footage on our system synced and ready to edit than they did in a week on the Unity. This is not an accident or a blip on the radar. Anyone who wants to tell me what I’m doing is not professional, at this point, will need to present some actual evidence as to why this is the case."
It goes on to say "It’s really just a matter of time before FCP X starts to get the attention from mainstream editors that it deserves. It’s an awesome program, and Apple has bounced back from their launch two years ago to create the most advanced, forward thinking, and professional NLE on the market. Yes, I just typed that. And it’s true. I’m happy to take the Pepsi challenge with anyone."
Ultimately other NLEs dismiss FCPX at their own peril.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Apple is kind of like the guy who can afford to buy a Carbon Fiber Dragon, not because he has made zillions shooting with his lowly DSLR but because he sold out his tech company for a billion dollars. :smiley: Apple is the rich kid.

Then, it actually turns out he has some talent and makes great pictures, too. Oh, and he fucks up the market by charging less.

So, yeah - Apple will piss people off if FCP-X becomes the popular NLE that FC Studio was, for $300. And, yeah, only they can afford to risk everything because the FCPX revenues are just a drop in their bucket. And, they can afford to buy back some their market with pricing and marketing as the app gains strength.

Hate them if you want. It probably won't matter in the end.

And it has little or nothing to do with Avid.

 

[Sam Mestman - WMM]

Script Sync IMO is a pretty rough execution of concept that is clearly the future. Both Apple and Adobe have serious script based editing functionality in he works that that is so far beyond Script Sync. The ONLY reason Adobe wanted to develop STORY is because they understand in the future - we will edit leveraging meta-data - and all story based meta-data starts with .... the story.

Meanwhile ... while nobody payed serious attention - APPLE built a platform in an application that will lead to on-set auto rough cut assemblies in seconds - based on pre-production script based meta-data and on set tagging.

Couldn't agree more, Mark. What's funny is that much of the work I feel like I'm currently doing with metadata will be fairly obsolete in the not too distant future. In terms of whether all this metadata is of use to an editor... here's what I have to say about that:

There was a time when people said sound shouldn't be included in movies.

There was a time when people said color shouldn't be included in movies.

There was a time when people said you couldn't cut a movie on anything but a flatbed.

There was a time when people said you couldn't make a feature with the RED camera and that digital would never replace film.

There are a lot more examples. It's all so damn boring. Every time something new and disruptive comes along people wring their hands, belittle it, fight it, and eventually forget why they were so worked up about it, and it becomes the norm. Usually the most resistance comes from those that the disruption affects the most, as it causes them the most fear, and they have the least incentive to adjust the way they do things to suit the new paradigm. What's going on now with post production and the digital distribution world in general is not the first time this has all happened and it won't be the last. Cinema and the moving image is still in its infancy in comparison to other art forms like books and paintings. Thinking that the way we currently do things now is going to remain this way isn't particularly realistic. I hope I never hit the point where learning new stuff and trying things out becomes a foreign concept to me, and I really hope I never become one of those guys who sits around telling everyone else that they're doing it wrong, and that they're stupid and unprofessional for even attempting it.

If you look at what Apple has done with metadata, they've taken an approach that every person who uses a computer inherently understands (combining spreadsheet philosophy with internet tagging) and has applied that approach to non linear editing. This allows people who are familiar with Apple products already to dive right in and get comfortable extremely quickly. And while there is a ton of additional functionality that is added with this, I think what people are doing with it (myself included) is fairly primitive and just scratching the surface. I think the next few years are going to be really interesting for moviemaking in general, and what I'm really hoping is that we go from the monk in an ivory tower mentality where only a select few have the knowledge, tools, and resources to achieve something of high quality, to a world where the people who have the talent but fewer resources have fewer technical and financial barriers to going out into the world and telling a good story.

Basically, I'm looking forward to the day where filmmaking actually becomes a meritocracy and where storytellers don't need anyone else's permission or money to go out and make the thing that they want to make... and filmmaking is no longer based on where you live, who you know, or what gear or software you use. It should be about whether you're any good. We seem to be getting closer to that every day... which I think is exciting.

 

[MichaelP]

What's funny is that much of the work I feel like I'm currently doing with metadata will be fairly obsolete in the not too distant future.

.

Maybe it's how you define metadata, but the very XML structure of the events in the timeline is metadata. Automation and "wow" factors are all based on innovative uses of metadata. Metadata will always be around.

Michael

 

[Neil W. Smith]

Avid's strategic vision? ...

Avid's strategic vision? ...

On a related note: there are several press releases coming out of IBC that might help users understand the direction and priorities of where Avid is going. If nothing else, at least they are communicating their direction to the industries they serve. Something that is maddening from the Apple side for those who need to plan ahead in their purchase cycle.

http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/whitepapers/Avid_Everywhere.pdf
http://www.avid.com/US/press-room/Launches-Customer-Association

Michael

MichaelP, you're obviously a smart and intelligent chap and I presume you've actually read the 'Avid Everywhere' white paper .... if so, maybe you could help me out on a couple of things ... I've read the document a couple of times and am still scratching my head wondering if I missed something ... please be aware that I am a Bear of Very Little Brain and as Winnie the Pooh was often heard to remark ..."When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” ... so it maybe that I didn't quite get the Vision thingamabob Thingish thing Avid were talking about :-(

1) seven of the ten pages of the 'A Vision for the Future of the Media Industry' white paper are given over to an analysis of the supposed woes of the M&E industry ... all very obvious and banal and lifted straight out of any management consultant rhetoric of the last ten years and then mixed in with some current buzzword generalizations aimed at making large Corporate customers feel warm and fuzzy ... no real insights into the underlying technological shifts and market forces that are re-defining the content creation and consumption landscape ... and no mention what-so-ever of why Avid has singularly failed to make a profit for the last five years given their dominance of said changing landscape ... but none-the-less, we are impressively informed that ..."With over 25 years of experience working with the most successful media organizations and creative professionals in the world, Avid has a unique perspective for what the industry requires. Only Avid combines the openness, flexibility, cutting edge innovation, and comprehensiveness needed to spearhead the media industry’s fight to overcome the extraordinary challenges we are all facing."

Well, thank goodness that us Bears of Little Brains can now relax and let Avid lead us into our brave new future ... which is?

2) on page #7 we finally get to Avid's proposed solution for all these terrible woes and we are handed the platitude that:

“Avid Everywhere” is our vision for facilitating this process—for
connecting creative professionals and media organizations with their
audiences in a more powerful, efficient, collaborative, and profitable
way. To make Avid Everywhere a reality, we plan to develop the most fluid
end-to-end, distributed media production environment in the industry, a
comprehensive ecosystem that encompasses every aspect of the new
digital media value chain.

Sounds totally wonderful ... but what exactly is this 'comprehensive ecosystem' thingamabob? ... it transpires that it looks a lot like the generic OSI seven layer model - see schematic attached below lifted directly from their document - very pretty but with no explanation of how the model actually works.

But what is interesting is that they do say that metadata is an Important Thing and that Avid is going to save the M&E industry by:

"When ingesting media, robust metadata tagging and management
are critical to realizing full asset potential across the value chain. In close
collaboration with our customer community, Avid intends to lead
the creation of a new industry-standard metadata tracking
system, where metadata will be generated algorithmically and provide
a significantly greater level of detail, making it possible to take a flexible
and adaptable view of assets at any stage of the lifecycle."

Notice the use of the phrase 'intends to lead', i.e., future tense .... one of the reasons I think that Apple took the steps they did to re-architect Final Cut Pro X (and this is pure supposition on my behalf - I'm not privy to any of Apple's strategic plans) is to make it much more flexible and powerful in exactly the area of metadata tagging and manipulation using the power and portability of FCP X XML .... however, Apple started that process over 26 month's ago ... FCP X is NOT just a re-write of the GUI, it's major re-design of the underlying systems architecture to leverage the power of 64 bit processing and the openness of XML .... and they're not just planning on doing it sometime in the future ... they took the pro-active step three years ago to re-think and re-engineer an existing successful product in the knowledge that FCP 7 would not be an appropriate vehicle to navigate the new age of metadata driven content creation, ingest and dissemination.

Tie the improvements being wrought in FCP X with the wider developments in Apple's OSX, iOS and iCloud software platforms plus their innovative hardware developments and then you start to get a sense of a real 'comprehensive ecosystem' that is already emerging among the creative community.

As I said, I'm still scratching my head as to exactly what is this Thingish Avid vision of the future and exactly how they're going to implement it without causing the major disruption to existing editorial practices that is necessary to realize their wooly strategic vision.

Please help out a Bear of Very Little Brain.

 

[MichaelP]

Neil. I agree with you. I only referenced these docs that for better or worse, and at the very least, Avid is communicating its intent. The docs themselves are full of customer challenges, and no actual solutions other than a lot of forward looking statements. To Avid's credit, the solutions today currently solve a lot more complex problems in collaborative workflows than FCPx or Premiere Pro. Emphasis on the word "currently". I cannot say how they are going to achieve this, or when the full picture of these statements will be fulfilled. But clearly from these public statements, they will be investing in these areas moving forward. Time will tell whether they are successful or not. The whitepaper is a thinly veiled marketing document to engage enterprise customers into those discussions. And because of that, is weighed down by jargon and buzzwords that left you and me scratching our heads. And I am sure many others. You are forced to speak to an Avid person just to get the gist of it - and that is a score for marketing - getting the customer to engage... on the other hand, many others will walk away dazed and confused. I have blogged about certain Avid directions - I will be adding my thoughts to this at some point... but my brain cramps, thoughts, and MC workflow tips can be found at www.24p.com/wordpress

Michael

 

[Neil W. Smith]

Avid ACA ...

Avid ACA ...

Neil. I agree with you. I only referenced these docs that for better or worse, and at the very least, Avid is communicating its intent. The docs themselves are full of customer challenges, and no actual solutions other than a lot of forward looking statements. To Avid's credit, the solutions today currently solve a lot more complex problems in collaborative workflows than FCPx or Premiere Pro. Emphasis on the word "currently". I cannot say how they are going to achieve this, or when the full picture of these statements will be fulfilled. But clearly from these public statements, they will be investing in these areas moving forward. Time will tell whether they are successful or not. The whitepaper is a thinly veiled marketing document to engage enterprise customers into those discussions. And because of that, is weighed down by jargon and buzzwords that left you and me scratching our heads. And I am sure many others. You are forced to speak to an Avid person just to get the gist of it - and that is a score for marketing - getting the customer to engage... on the other hand, many others will walk away dazed and confused. I have blogged about certain Avid directions - I will be adding my thoughts to this at some point... but my brain cramps, thoughts, and MC workflow tips can be found at www.24p.com/wordpress

Michael

Thanks for the clarification, MichaelP ... glad it wasn't just this Bear of Very Little Brain who's left scratching his head .... now, where's that honey jar?

Great blog site you have by the way ... why didn't the overpaid Avid management team just ask you to write their Vision thing white paper? .... oh, possibly because that would have entailed actually putting some real money into R&D and coming out with a new product architecture rather than waiting around for their stock options to vest and someone to come along and buy them out.

But luckily enough for Avid stockholders, the highly strategic Avid management team have set up the 'Avid Customer Association' which will address the numerous needs of the M&E Industry. At the first meeting of the ACA (it's a bit like AMA only not quite so functional) at NAB 2014 ... "A Customer Association Executive Board will provide oversight to the individual Avid Customer Association boards, which will focus on topics such as strategic development, products and solutions, industry standards, customer advocacy, customer success, and more."

So now, not only have Avid's management team abdicated any sense of responsibility for the mess they're in, their loyal and trusting Corporate customers are now going to have strategic vision and product development by committee .... wow, that's going to do wonders for Avid stock price always assuming that Avid is still listed on Nasdaq by NAB 2014.

Maybe you and Mike Most should attend the ACA and lob a few intellectual hand-grenades into the fiasco.

In the meantime, Apple will continue to innovate and gain market share in exactly those Corporate Accounts that Avid is so desperately trying to hold onto ... but there again, Apple has a management team that knows what it's doing ... oh, and a very well thought out Strategic Vision thingumabob.

Neil

 

[MichaelP]

I have an interesting (love/hate??) relationship with Avid... I was there for 21 years (started May of 1990) and co-invented the Avid Film Composer, lots of patent filings mainly in the area of 24fps, pulldown, metadata management, and such. I wandered out to interactive authoring and surround sound patents as well... It was a fantastic time in the industry and one couldn't ask for a better job. Not being an engineer, but a filmmaker troubled by both sides of the brain, it was a great match. I met so many people around the world and their creative input was instrumental to the direction of the product. But - with whatever changes management was doing over the past 5 years - I was let go in one of the many layoffs late in 2011 with no other reason other than "to meet our 2012 goals".

I have known Mike Most for many of those years and we have great discussions on workflow, needs and otherwise. If and when they expand their ACA to the markets we serve, we might be asked. But my last job at Avid was driving the past series of Customer Advisory boards and apparently now there are new ones. What happened to the old ones? Maybe they will migrate.

Understandably, I love the MC product. It's part of my DNA when I edit - no thinking, just creating. But of late there seems to be some confusion with interactive design for creatives versus just having a feature. And changing GUI colors and icons is not going to get you there. And new features are halfway there and never polished off which is the more frustrating part. The FIND function for me is the poster child of "better than not having it" but bad design in what could have been a true metadata interaction tool for creative editorial. I have pages of notes on that. But I have channeled that thinking into a new product I am trying to get off the ground that is for a graphical interactive story discovery app for screenplays and transcripts...

Anyway, I and many many others want Avid to succeed. I hope they do, but they do need to clarify their vision and at the very least be able to market it. But to answer another one of your questions, I did write a whitepaper for Avid - one that actually has answers in it. It's valid for versions up to 6.5: http://www.avid.com/static/resource...era/digital_camera_workflow_whitepaper_us.pdf


Michael

 

[MichaelP]

By the way, Mike Most has a very informative blog as well: http://mikemost.com/

Michael

 

[Neil W. Smith]

real workflow

real workflow

I have an interesting (love/hate??) relationship with Avid... I was there for 21 years (started May of 1990) and co-invented the Avid Film Composer, lots of patent filings mainly in the area of 24fps, pulldown, metadata management, and such. I wandered out to interactive authoring and surround sound patents as well... It was a fantastic time in the industry and one couldn't ask for a better job. Not being an engineer, but a filmmaker troubled by both sides of the brain, it was a great match. I met so many people around the world and their creative input was instrumental to the direction of the product. But - with whatever changes management was doing over the past 5 years - I was let go in one of the many layoffs late in 2011 with no other reason other than "to meet our 2012 goals".

I have known Mike Most for many of those years and we have great discussions on workflow, needs and otherwise. If and when they expand their ACA to the markets we serve, we might be asked. But my last job at Avid was driving the past series of Customer Advisory boards and apparently now there are new ones. What happened to the old ones? Maybe they will migrate.

Understandably, I love the MC product. It's part of my DNA when I edit - no thinking, just creating. But of late there seems to be some confusion with interactive design for creatives versus just having a feature. And changing GUI colors and icons is not going to get you there. And new features are halfway there and never polished off which is the more frustrating part. The FIND function for me is the poster child of "better than not having it" but bad design in what could have been a true metadata interaction tool for creative editorial. I have pages of notes on that. But I have channeled that thinking into a new product I am trying to get off the ground that is for a graphical interactive story discovery app for screenplays and transcripts...

Anyway, I and many many others want Avid to succeed. I hope they do, but they do need to clarify their vision and at the very least be able to market it. But to answer another one of your questions, I did write a whitepaper for Avid - one that actually has answers in it. It's valid for versions up to 6.5: http://www.avid.com/static/resource...era/digital_camera_workflow_whitepaper_us.pdf


Michael

Brilliant whitepaper! - highly recommend everyone reads it .... and of course I can see why the Avid management team didn't heavily promote it ... not enough generic management consultant bullshit speak and way too full of practical details and real workflow examples ... jeezz, what were you thinking, dude? ... just needs updating to include 4K/UHDTV workflows and HEVC compression options with MC7 and metadata wrangling and Bob's your uncle.

When are you next in LA? Are you coming over for SMPTE Conf? ... we'll be exhibiting there with Blackmagic ... maybe stop by the booth and we'll grab a bite to eat.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[MichaelP]

I will be in LA at some point in the future, but I don't know when exactly - I am based on Boston, but work out of NOLA and LA as needed with the company. It will be great to have lunch the next time I'm in town.

Michael