Biscardi Creative Media Comments turned off

Science Nation renews with BCM for 40 episodes

By Walter Biscardi on April 20th, 2010

We’re pleased to announced that the series “Science Nation” produced by Kate Tobin Productions has signed on with BCM to post another 40 episodes. The series, produced for the National Science Foundation, has been with BCM since the creation and at the end of this new contract will have produced almost 100 episodes.

We’re proud to not only have helped create the look and start the series, but to continue the post production for another year. Editor Roger Mahr helms the series for BCM and along with Kate Tobin, contributing Producers include Marsha Walton, Ann Kellen, & Jon Baime with Miles O’Brien serving as an awesome host.

The series is produced in High Definition (both 720 and 1080) and delivered to multiple outlets in HD, SD and web based formats each week. BCM’s infrastructure allows us to deal with the multitude of camera formats that are used in the field to supply a very tight turnaround for each episode. In particular, the AJA Kona 3 video capture cards allows us to convert pretty much anything to conform all raw materials to a single format for ease of editing.

This is one of those projects that’s just so much fun to do and we really enjoy working with Kate’s team and all the incredible folks at the National Science Foundation. We definitely learn something new every week. Science is fun!

Biscardi Creative Media, Random Thoughts Comments turned off

First official purchase for the new BCM studios!

By Walter Biscardi on April 20th, 2010

UPDATE DOWN BELOW. THE MACHINE ARRIVED!

Yes, it has finally happened. We have made our very first official purchase for the new facility. A new monitor you ask? No. A RED camera? Would be nice, but no. Well surely a new control surface for Apple Color or DaVinci? Not exactly.

Yeah, it’s a popcorn machine. A CLASSIC popcorn machine! Saw it on Overstock.com, only 4 units left and just HAD to have it for the new game room. I figured we already have the classic 1960′s Coke Machine, this baby is going to look great right alongside it. This thing is over 5′ tall and the entire popcorn maker section comes off and you can put that on a tabletop if you want. How cool is that?!

Yes, we’ll be getting some cool new monitors and other new cool production toys as we move forward, but we gotta have some fun too, right? That’s the main theme of the new facility. Great production tools and people in a very fun and relaxing environment. Course now I just might have to pick up the companion Sno Cone machine…..

UPDATE 4_23_2010

It was like Christmas Morning today. Huge and I mean HUGE cardboard box showed up with a fun carnival looking popcorn machine on the side. Well we’re nowhere’s near moving but of course we HAVE to test this thing out since we only have 30 days to return it. So………..

It was really REALLY good popcorn and we cannot wait to get this into the newly expanded kitchen and game room in the new place!!!!

Random Thoughts, Technology Comments turned off

Fun Finds at NAB

By Walter Biscardi on April 20th, 2010

One of my favorite things about a convention like NAB is the neat stuff you find when wandering around. We all hear about the big news from the likes of Avid, Adobe, Panasonic and Canon but some of the best stuff can be found in the smaller booths. LED lighting panels in particular just blew me away with their brightness and low power usage. Might not have any need for a particular item at the time, but these are some of the fun things I brought home the brochures for.

Squarebox Cat-DV. Ok, I already knew about these guys before NAB but if you are finally serious about managing your media assets in your production company, no matter how large or small you are, this is the product for you. Period. Please don’t ask me to go into details, just look at their website. Bob Zelin was very appreciative I pointed him in their direction and now he’s excited about installing this product for some of his clients too. It’s just a great GREAT product for managing both your in-house library and also on-going productions in the field. Weird name, but awesome product! http://www.squarebox.co.uk/

Anton Bauer. Yeah that battery company that’s been around for ages. (40 years to be exact) They have a series called the Elipz for handlhelds that are smaller and rounder than the traditional “bricks” we all know and love. No idea how long these have been around, but I’ve never seen them before. Very slick array of batteries and they also have some of their own LED lighting panels for the handhelds. http://www.antonbauer.com/Products/Lines/ElipZ

Film Chest. This company licenses films and films clips from the turn of the century to about 1970. A neat resource if you ever want to bring some actual movie clips into your project. Very reasonable prices too and great guys to chat with. www.filmchest.com

Lite Panels. Reasonably priced LED lighting panels, rings and camera lights. All sorts of sizes and the camera ring light is especially cool. These are big with music videos so you can get the light right on the subject while in an extreme closeup. Felt like pretty solid construction throughout. www.litepanels.com

Barber Tech. They also had LED lighting kits that were very reasonably priced. Interesting idea with small LED panels that can be combined to make a larger panel. They also have the “Mega Light” which only weighs 2 pounds and uses a total of 40 watts. Their entire package was very light and I could see this being really nice to travel with. www.barberTVP.com

Vocal Booth. Pretty much self explanatory, these are high quality vocal booths for both voice over work and music / vocal recording. Really cool rigs and a wide range of pricing and options. I’m considering one of these for our new facility instead of building one from scratch. ../../../voc

Cache-A. An LTO archive backup device that also has local hard drives to allow for the organization of archive materials before you move it off to the LTO tape. LTO has a 30 year shelf life for saving off all your digital files more or less permanently. The folks at Squarebox were using this as part of their Cat-DV demo and that’s how I came to see it. www.cache-a.com

Countryman Associates. These guys make killer microphones. Tiny, incredible quality and very reasonably priced. The one that I’m interested in is the EMW Omnidirectional lavalier mic. It’s completely waterproof. They were dunking it in a container of water and you could still listen to it with headphones. Great for weather report or outdoors / fishing types of shows. www.countryman.com

Lectrosonics. The guys at Countryman sent me over to Lectrosonic to see the waterproof wireless transmitter I can use with their waterproof mic. It’s the MM400C. The other thing I found there was a very simple wireless transmitter and receiver for a Producer in the field to listen to the camera audio while shooting is going on. This is critical for two new series we’re launching here. The Producer will be able to hear everything that is being recorded to take notes and such without being tethered to either camera. This uses the IFB RIA Wireless Receiver and the LMA Wireless Transmitter. www.lectrosonics.com

Nila. More very cool LED lighting technology. These are essentially small to medium sized bricks that can either be used alone or in groups of up to four lights interconnected together. The best thing about these? They’re nearly indestructible. While the President of the company was talking to me he started slamming the unit (while it was turned on) onto the desk. Startled me for sure. The lights never stopped working. Very cool and they have some larger models as well. Definitely more expensive than the other lights I mentioned, but well worth the money. www.nila.tv

CineBags. Same idea as PortaBrace but I have to say the bags felt much better constructed and felt like they would protect my camera gear better. Solid products and worth a look if you need some new bags for your gear. www.cinebags.com

Stardom. An interesting storage solution from a small company out of Taiwan. Basically you can use the exact same drive inside a Mac Pro, remove it and use it as a stand alone drive with a power supply and also plug it into a RAID array or external multi-drive array. Very clever idea and something worth watching as they further refine the idea. Thanks to Jon Schilling for pointing me towards their booth. www.stardom.com.tw

DoStudio. Well I already use their software for authoring BluRay discs but they’re already poised and ready for BluRay 3D authoring. Great great tool and if you’re serious about offering this service, even if you’re a very small company, this is the tool you want. www.netblender.com

Noise Industries. These guys have plug-ins for Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Motion and one of my favs at the SuperMeet was called Nodes. Super cool looks and just some of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Support independent plug-in developers! Buy some stuff at Noise Industries!! http://www.noiseindustries.com/

Well that’s everything I can remember. If I think of anything else, I’ll update this entry. Enjoy!


Random Thoughts, Uncategorized Comments turned off

Would be nice to see NAB move around.

By Walter Biscardi on April 20th, 2010

Maybe it’s part of the “Sin” part of being Sin City but it seems like every time I return to Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters, the city just gets dirtier. Particularly in the mornings when I usually like to take a walk. Broken glass, empty bottles and cans and of course thousands of those “direct to you girls” mini pamphlets those hand slapper guys try to hand you. The sidewalks are just a dark grimey mess anymore. I suppose that’s from all the spilled alcohol mixing with the dirt and grime of the city but it’s just sticky and nasty.

Sure, Vegas is a fun town if you ignore the dirt, but I’m wondering if there’s a possibility NAB could be moved around to a few other cities. Maybe cities like New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Dallas, Orlando and Vegas could share the event? I guess going back to Vegas year after year just gets kind of boring after a while. And instead of the city looking better each time I go back, it just gets dirtier. It’s definitely an alternate reality when you’re on the Strip but move off and there’s one vacant lot after another.

Maybe it’s just me, but I would enjoy the opportunity to see other cities at NAB than just Las Vegas.

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DaVinci Resolve comes to the Mac

By Walter Biscardi on April 20th, 2010

At NAB 2010 the biggest Post Production buzz, by far, was the new DaVinci Resolve software package for $995. Not only that, the software is being opened up to work with third party hardware such as AJA video boards and Tangent Wave control panels. For many facilities, such as mine, designed around Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, this means many of us already have the hardware in place to run the software. Or we can start running with minor modifications.

For those of you who don’t know what DaVinci is, it has long been the standard for color enhancement for both film and television. The systems consist of proprietary software and hardware with $500,000 (US) and up being a fairly common price tag for one top of the line system. Many facilities in New York, LA, Atlanta and around the world run multiple systems at prices from $400 to $700/hour and up. In other words, you really had to be a dedicated colorist in a major facility to run one of these units and you had to have the clientele to support the hourly rates. DaVinci was not something that “anybody” could get in to. Until now.

Within minutes of the blockbuster announcement, Twitter and internet forums like the CreativeCow.net Apple Color forum lit up with people praising Resolve as the long awaited answer to Apple’s Color. This is the tool that everyone needed to become a true colorist and we can finally move on from Apple Color.

Well, let me first say I am purchasing a copy of DaVinci Resolve because it will plug in very nicely to our upcoming color enhancement suite. But I’m not buying it to replace Apple Color. I’m simply adding it as another tool in the toolbox so we have choices as to which tool we want to use based on the project at hand. It also opens up our facility to freelance colorists who are fluent with Resolve but might not work with Apple Color at all. And of course it opens up our facility to work with pretty much any NLE on the market since it will work with EDLs and XMLs meaning we’re not locked into a Final Cut Studio workflow for color enhancement.

What many people fail to realize in praising Resolve (and boy it DOES deserve a lot of praise as an awesome color tool) and dismissing Color is that neither one with make you color grade a project better than the other. Knowledge and practice in the art of color enhancement is what will make you a good colorist. The tool is immaterial.

I was reminded of this last night while watching the first pass of our feature documentary, “Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” with colorist Ron Anderson. See I know Apple Color pretty well and I’ve done colorist work on probably 100 projects now, a mix of broadcast, corporate and independent films. Because our post production schedule is so crazy right now and this is our first major feature to come out of our shop, I asked Ron to be the Colorist on this film. He has a sweet Apple Color Suite set up in his facility using a JL Cooper Eclipse panel with the Flanders Scientific 2450W monitor and of course the 18% grey wall with a 6500k light. He’s a 30 year colorist who has been working with daVinci systems his entire career and in his facility and he’s running Apple Color 1.5. Why? Because it’s affordable and extremely powerful.

His work on the film is nothing short of remarkable. The film is entirely shot in Africa with blazing sun, dark skin and a host of lighting / exposure issues caused by both. What I watched last night was the work of someone who has been doing feature films for 30 years and what was spectacular about it was the fact that it all looked completely natural. There was nothing that said “color trick here,” it was just all natural to the eye. Color enhancement is truly an art. I’m learning the craft for sure, but what I saw last night reminded me that color enhancement is less about the tool itself and more about the artist and the proper environment.

The environment, there’s something to think about. Using the Apple Color forum on CreativeCow.net as an example, I was amused that so many people were so eager to spend $995 right off the bat for the DaVinci name but we have so many people on that very forum who find $2,495 (US) too steep to purchase a proper video monitor. Or $1,500 (US) too much to purchase a control panel to drive Apple Color or now Resolve. Ok, so the software is just $995 but you need to purchase a good beefy Mac Pro, two graphics cards (one to drive your computer monitors and one to render Resolve), an AJA or BlackMagic video card to feed the video signal to your monitor and a proper broadcast monitor or film projector to properly monitor your footage. Again, if you’re a Final Cut Studio facility like mine, you might already have much of that in place and Resolve will drop in nicely. If you don’t, you need to allocate funds to properly surround the Resolve software or you’re just wasting the $995. Unless of course you want to train yourself on the software so you can drive someone else’s system or offer yourself as a freelancer to other facilities.

One thing that comes with the DaVinci name is an expectation. The expectation that you are a serious colorist using professional equipment. Remember that $500k price tag I mentioned earlier? Most Producers who use DaVinci colorists know all about the huge expense of these systems and that’s one reason why they are willing to pay the high hourly rates. Plus the folks who drive them have usually spent years learning the craft. So if you plan to simply plug in Resolve on your laptop and call yourself a DaVinci colorist to take advantage of their reputation, you might have a hard time convincing clients you’re serious.

I’m not trying to be a snob here, just realistic. Paying $995 is just the starting point. If you want to be a professional colorist and charge clients for your time, do them the courtesy of surrounding the tool with the correct equipment and environment. It’ll be good for you and your clients.

So what BlackMagic has done for all of us independent and small shops out there, has given us a a major known tool for a fraction of its original price. It’s a new tool that gives options that were simply out of the financial reach of many of us. It’s a true game changer in the same way that Final Cut Pro opened up a professional video tool for everyone. It also brings to Avid and Adobe artists a very powerful color correction tool that in my opinion is better than any other CC tool they had available.

In a complete fluke on the NAB show floor, I got a spontaneous one hour chat with Grant Petty. I was walking to see the Resolve demo and he was adjusting some products on the show floor. As he explained it to me, the plan is for Resolve to support a lot of third party hardware, not just be restricted to BMD and DaVinci proprietary equipment. AJA & BMD video cards, Tangent & JL Cooper panels and the like. It does require nVidia graphics cards to render the files and you need to run two graphics cards in your system. One card to drive your computer monitors and one to do the rendering.

Resolve is a different kind of interface than most NLE based color correctors and even Apple Color. They’ve done away with the three color wheels and there’s a real emphasis on curves, which quite honestly I prefer to the wheels. And there’s a really nice node interface that controls pretty much everything you do in Resolve.

The big thing Resolve brings that completely blows away Apple Color is its ability to play video in realtime in full frame rate. This is remarkable to me since Apple’s own Color software can’t do this using the exact same Apple hardware. I’m used to working with 1/2 to 1/4 frame rates it was so nice to see the video playing back in full frame during the demos.

Some people are really excited that Resolve plays back audio while you’re playing the video. I’ve asked several colorists around and they do the same thing I do when grading. Listen to music. I’m partial to country, my buddy Ron is a jazz kind of guy. I’ve never had a client ask to listen to the audio as I’m working on a scene. But I guess this is kind of cool if you require it.

Ok, I’ve gone all over the place with this post, but I’m incredibly excited with the opportunity that BlackMagic is giving us smaller guys by making Resolve to affordable to install and giving us yet another option for color enhancement. They’ve taken what Silicon Color and Apple started with Apple Color and completely raised the bar to a whole new level.

So just remember, this is truly exciting stuff to have a tool so affordable. But please, if you plan to charge clients for your work, put together the right environment whether you’re working in your home or a major facility. The means a proper video monitor or projector at the very least. And if you’ve never read this, please do. The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction by Steve Hullfish. This should be required reading for all folks new to color correction.

So Thank You Grant for bringing Resolve into the reach of “the rest of us” and Happy Grading everyone!


Technology Comments turned off

Uncompressed HD via Ethernet? It just might be!

By Walter Biscardi on April 18th, 2010

Most of you know that we’re running an ethernet based SAN here at BCM. It’s the Maxx Digital Final Share SAN which runs a combination of their drive arrays with Small Tree ethernet wizardry and some stout Atto Host Bus Adapters. We generally get around 100 - 120MB/s to the 7 workstations that are connected to the SAN. More than enough speed to cut using Apple’s ProRes codec all day long.

At the moment we’re cutting two feature documentaries (over 300 hours of material), 3 PBS series and a multitude of other projects all on the SAN simultaneously. It’s been a very stout performer and when we need to do Uncompressed or 2k work, we have two local 8TB RAIDs directly connected to two workstations giving us 500 to 650MB/s. So for our needs, we’ve got everything set up to handle whatever comes in the door and need to allocate the uncompressed workstations as necessary.

Well at NAB 2010, Bob Zelin brought me over to the Maxx Digital Booth to show me 350MB/s coming off a single 8TB RAID connected via ethernet. Now we’re getting into Uncompressed HD territory. Albeit a single stream of Uncompressed HD, but that’s perfectly fine for color grading or sound mixing and even editing. Not to mention serious multi-stream ProRes capabilities. Via Ethernet!

I knew this technology was going to get better as we moved along but I didn’t expect a 250MB/s jump in just one year. In fact, the system could go faster but we need to wait for the drive manufacturers to catch up! Can you say Multi-stream Uncompressed HD and 2k via Ethernet on the horizon? All I can say is Wow.

Really looking forward to working with these new speeds once everything is ready for shipping. I’ll update you all as details become available.

Random Thoughts, Technology Comments turned off

NAB and the Trade Show: Making a Resurgence?

By Walter Biscardi on April 18th, 2010

In 2006, the National Association of Broadcasters Convention had over 108,000 attendees in Las Vegas. That dropped to 82,600 by 2009 amid cries that the big trade show is rendered useless in today’s internet connected world. All you ever need to know about your business and “what to buy” and “how to do” can be found on the internet without all the hassles and expense of traveling. In 2010 attendance crept back up to 88,044 for one of the most dynamic shows I have ever experienced.

I have to say, I’ve missed the last three shows myself. The first one by choice, the other two due to the work schedule. This year I made a decision that my schedule would be cleared for the event, particularly with the buzz around 3D. The decision was made even easier when we saw the lowest hotel rates in Vegas we’ve ever seen!

But back to the show. A 6,000 person increase is a modest jump when you consider the size and scope of this event and quite honestly, I was of the mindset that with resources like CreativeCow.net there really was NOT much of a need to get out and attend the show. It’s four (or more) days of a lot of walking, coffee, standing, talking, coffee, more walking, listening, coffee, walking, coffee and coffee. What can I say, there’s Starbucks all over in there and I’m drawn like a moth to flame.

I was reminded this year of just WHY these trade shows truly are still relevant and important to all of us in the production industry. There really is no other way to see everything you want to see, in person, operating at one time. What makes Avid unique from Adobe? What’s the difference between the new Panasonic and Sony small cameras? What kind of microphone can go underwater and still keep working? Are LED lights really any good or do I still need HMI? Why is the Grass Valley booth bathed in green light? (never got the answer to that one)

You’re spending money on equipment, software and you need answers on what will work for you in your budget. You have questions on how to do certain workflows, there are literally thousands of experts in one location. The internet is sweet and it certainly has empowered many of us to make decisions we could not otherwise have made from glossy brochures and sales pitches. But nothing beats the ability to literally compare two, three, ten similar products in the space of a few hours. Watch demo, use the product, ask questions, get answers and then have the ability to go back and ask more questions.

Nor is there any other place where you can stumble on to products and ideas you’ve never heard of. I’m starting two original television series here and I’m interested in some new Panasonic cameras and Canon Lenses. On the way there, I found a whole series of LED lighting setups. Lower power consumption, bright lights and potential HMI replacements. Prices ranged from $250 to thousands of dollars. What’s the difference in the brands? From what I could tell it was really the ruggedness of the frames, the rigs and the electronics. Some felt flimsy and fragile while one brand they literally slammed the lights on the desk to show they’re almost unbreakable.

We might be producing a new fishing series as well and I found a microphone company that was dunking one their products in water and the mic was functioning perfectly AND it was much less than the mics I had been looking at online. They pointed me to another company that had a reasonably priced waterproof transmitter. I never would have found either if I wasn’t walking the show floor. Yes I could have asked about this on the internet and would have gotten some really good advice from pros in the field. But this was nice to see, hear and touch.

So with this uptick in interest in 3D particularly, it seems to be that the Trade Show might be even more relevant in today’s internet world than ever before. We can make reasonably informed decisions based on the information we get from the internet. We can make completely informed decisions based on a combination of information from the internet AND first hand experience at a Trade Show. If I did not attend the show this year I would not have believed that, but it’s just true. Also, I can’t tell you how many people would tell me, “Did you see such and such? No? You have to go check this out in Booth….” We see this all the time with internet forums where one question leads to advice to look at an alternative. At a show like NAB you can not only look at the alternative but make a reasonable decision very quickly whether it’s a good alternative or not.

If you looked at Twitter, CreativeCow.net and many other sites during the 4 day run of NAB this year, those sites were just completely flooded with requests for more information, please test this out, please look at this, is this really as good as they say it is, etc…. People were begging for information that was on display right there on the show floor. Does it cost money to go to a Trade Show? Yes. Is it money well spent? Again I have to say Yes. With the incredible changes our industry is going through, you simply can’t afford NOT to attend these events at least every other year.

If you did not make NAB this year, plan to come out in 2011 as 3D should be in full swing. If you are in Europe, plan to attend IBC and check out what is on the horizon. At the very least, try to attend one of these Road Shows from the various manufacturers, though I do find them somewhat of a waste of time. You only get the one perspective from those, you really can’t compare and contrast what you’re seeing in the road show vs. another manufacturer.

Apple, Apple - Final Cut Pro Comments turned off

The Three A’s, Apple, Adobe & Avid

By Walter Biscardi on April 18th, 2010

The 2010 National Association of Broadcasters convention had the Post Production world buzzing about the Three A’s of the industry. Apple, Adobe and Avid. Well, really more Adobe and Avid since they were actually at the show and had something to demonstrate.

Adobe brought their CS5 creative suite to the show with some incredible announcements. Not the least of which to me is the ease of integration with other NLEs like Final Cut Pro and Avid. Adobe has decided to “play nice” with with their competitors to make it easier for Post Houses like mine to get projects into and out of After Effects for one. Right now this requires plug-ins like the Automatic Duck Importer for AE (which is totally awesome by the way), but with CS5, we could essentially take an FCP timeline, send it to Premiere and then send it over to AE. Ok, the Duck plug-in is around $500 and Premiere is $799 so it’s a bit silly to even consider Premiere just for this functionality. But……

Premiere has taken a huge step forward with their 64bit enabled Mercury Engine. Much more realtime functionality and you can see in their online demos 4k and 2k material scrubbing and playing back in the same timeline. You will have to install CS5 in a 64 bit system to run and run an Adobe Certified graphics board in order to take full advantage of the Mercury Engine functionality. But the functionality of Premiere is very much on par to what Final Cut Pro based facility are used to and the real-time functionality of the CS5 package simply blows FCP out of the water.

Avid brought us Media Composer 5 and what really got the show buzzing was their support of Quicktime. More specifically, Apple’s ProRes codec. So now there is the very real possibility of Avid working right alongside Final Cut Pro in the same facility or for sharing projects across facilities.

Not only that, Avid’s H.264 native editing support refutes everything we’ve been saying about that codec and Final Cut Pro for the past few years. Whenever someone said they could not get H.264 to edit well in FCP (such as from a DSLR), we would inform them that it was not a proper editing codec, it was a finishing / delivery codec. Transcode it to something else like ProRes. Avid (and Adobe for that matter) is now showing that assumption to be false. Take the H.264 and start editing right away in realtime.

And like Adobe, Avid has a much more seamless P2 / tapeless workflow that does not require transcoding, wrapping to be able to edit with this material. Simply bring it in and start working pretty much instantaneously.

Now the one thing Avid has NOT really done is open up the platform to third party hardware. Right now you can use the Matrox MXO2 Mini for display only. So you can watch your project on a monitor and do a crash record to a VTR or DVD Recorder but that’s pretty much it. No support for the AJA Kona Boards or the BlackMagic boards at this time and Avid was very vague on whether that would come in the future. “The MXO2 Mini is the first step” is what I was told during a meeting, but that was all they said. What I would ideally like to do in our situation is install the Avid Media Composer 5 software to work on our AJA Kona 3 based systems. This would allow me to hire any freelancer whether they want to work with FCP or Avid and we could work in one universal codec, ProRes so any system could access the media. This is going to be a wait and see with Avid to see how willing they are to really open up the software to third parties. Short term I might install one copy of the software with the Mini so an editor could use Avid in our shop and we would lay back to tape using a Final Cut Pro workstation utilizing Automatic Duck to move the project over. Right now to really use the Media Composer software fully, you still need the Mojo hardware and I’m not going to spring for that.

So that leaves us with Apple. (sigh) Apple’s lone appearance was at the Supermeet. Note I said Supermeet and not FCPUG Supermeet. That’s because the FCPUG part of it was dropped and in this case, for good reason. Apple sent up Steve Bayes, Sr. Product Manager for Final Cut Studio to give a presentation. Mind you, this followed the two jaw dropping presentations from Adobe and Avid. Steve starts off with “I’ve got a secret” and proceeds to tell us really nothing at all about Final Cut Pro. There was no secret, just more marketing buzzwords about how wonderful Studio is and how many production partners are using Studio or something along those lines. See I can’t even remember much about what he said because it was basically meaningless.

Your two strongest competitors take the stage in what used to be the Final Cut Pro Users Group Supermeet, completely knock it out of the park, and all you can do is whiff? I would like to say we heard crickets in the room, but that would be a disservice to the Rio Hotel so it was more or less silence that greeted this earth shattering “secret” from Apple.

When Final Cut Pro came out, the industry laughed at it. Here’s a cheap little NLE knock-off that will never get traction. Apple proved that wrong by offering a very low-cost, yet powerful editing tool that can truly work in all manner of film and television post production. Apple worked its way to the top of the heap in terms of users worldwide, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3 to 1.5 million registered users (and who knows how many more “non-registered” users). Nobody could match the suite of tools, particularly with the addition of Color, for just $999.

Well, now we’re all kind of laughing again. Apple’s notorious silence allowed Avid and Adobe to completely leapfrog all discussion about Final Cut Studio and leaves the post-production community wondering whether Apple can keep up. When your competitors can work with your very own codec (H.264) better than your own product, that’s a problem. When your competitors can work with tapeless workflow better than your own product, that’s a problem. When your competitors can work with more realtime functionality using your very own hardware, that’s a problem. Basically Apple sent up Steve as a sacrificial lamb and really should not even have bothered.

The integration of the entire Adobe Suite has been much tighter than the Final Cut Studio suite for a few years now, but there really wasn’t anything to get me to even consider dumping FCP for Premiere. In fact, despite the fact that many of us like to defend Final Cut Pro vs. pretty much any NLE out there by saying it’s the artist that makes the difference, not the tool, I never really considered Premiere as a viable alternative for editing. It just never felt like a “professional editing tool” for whatever reason. Probably just a personal bias and I just don’t hear of very many “pro users” that base their facilities around Premiere.

With CS5, the Adobe suite suddenly looks very promising as an alternative. Even more so since it runs with all of our existing infrastructure we have in place for Studio. The only change would be to replace our ATI graphics cards with the proper nVidia cards to support the Mercury engine. If Avid opens up their software to all third party hardware, especially the AJA Kona boards, well then that certainly becomes a very viable alternative as well.

That’s one of the beauties of what Apple has actually created. A very strong third party hardware market that is software agnostic. By concentrating on just the software and computer hardware, Apple opened up the Audio / video hardware to multiple independent companies like AJA and BlackMagic who designed their products to work with multiple NLEs out there. And as we all know, FCP / Premiere / Avid all work essentially the same way so if you know one, you can switch to another one pretty darn quickly.

Will I make the switch? I’m not doing anything immediately though I will upgrade all our systems to CS5 when that is released. We run CS4 on all of our systems currently as we’re very heavy After Effects and Photoshop users so we have the Production Premium suite. When the CS5 bundle gets here you better believe I’ll be poking around in Premiere to see how it operates and just how well it “plays with Final Cut Pro” and how it compares to working with Final Cut Pro.

No I’m going to wait to see what Apple has to show us, whenever that is. They have to not only hit a home run, but knock it completely out of the park. I want to see a realtime alternative to Adobe’s Mercury Engine. I want to see the ease of use of H.264 and other tapeless formats that don’t require Log and Transfer with a re-wrapping. I want to see very tight integration between the apps in the suite like CS5. And I would really like to see Apple open up an “ease of use” path for working back and forth with Premiere and Avid systems.

So right now, my feeling and what I heard very often on the show floor, at the Supermeet and my various meetings with people is it’s time for Apple to put up or shut up. They set the bar high for a full featured non-linear editing system at a very low price. Adobe and Avid just blew right by them using the same hardware that is available to FCP facilities. Is Apple going to move the Studio suite forward and really improve the workflow for professional editors as the other A’s have done, or are they simply going to maintain the status quo with a few updates to just continue to sell Mac hardware? At the moment, Apple’s silence is deafening. I’m reminded of the NFL Playoffs commercial campaign a few years ago, “Show Me Something.” Anything….. Once I can see what Apple has to show us, then we’ll make the decision on where we go from there. We’re about to grow from 4 to 9 edit suites in the next few months so what we see revealed from Apple will make the decision on where our company goes from here. I’m hoping they hit it out of the park so we don’t have to change anything, but it’s easy enough to make the switch if that’s better for our company.

Of course the one thing Apple still has going for it is Color. Adobe and Avid still don’t have anything to match that. Oh that’s right, DaVinci took care of that for them, but that’s another blog entry…..

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Great to meet so many of you at NAB

By Walter Biscardi on April 16th, 2010

Well another NAB has come and gone and it was so great to meet so many of you at the show! Always love putting a face with the names I see up on the forums and around the Twitterverse. I’ll be preparing a series of reports over the next few days on what I saw out there and my thoughts on how things will impact our Post Production world.

According to what I’ve read attendance was up over 20,000 for this show and it was definitely a great show to attend with all sorts of new announcements impacting how we do what we do. So again, great to see so many of you and watch the blog over the next week for my series of reports.

Walter

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New BCM Facility: Update 2

By Walter Biscardi on April 7th, 2010

Moving along in our new building process, the surveyor has done his work out on the site. Makes no sense to me whatsoever, just a bunch of orange ribbons attached to stakes and trees out there. Still waiting to see his drawing, but he’s satisfied with the land and our idea for the location of the building and the parking lot.

Since we’re going to be laying down a fairly large parking lot, around 24 parking spaces, my contractor and I are going to look for a good spot on the site to lay out a regulation half basketball court for outside. Since he has to bring in all that asphalt equipment anyway, might as well lay down a nice basketball court at the same time! I used to play and Adrienne played back in high school so she’s excited about this too. We’ll definitely have to mark off the 3 point arc. So I’m seeing some good 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 basketball in our lunchtime future……

Part of the fun of starting from scratch. We need to bring out a bunch of heavy equipment anyway, so try to figure out “little things” you can do cheaply while the equipment is there.