A new behind the scene interview has been posted on the website for the new PBS series, This American Land, being cut at Biscardi Creative Media. This time with Co-Host Caroline Raville. An 8th grade teacher for Gwinnett County Georgia Schools, she’s making her national television debut. Not only a talented host, but she’s also bringing the funk to the series.
Interview with Caroline Raville.
A new behind the scene interview has been posted on the website for the new PBS series, This American Land, being cut at Biscardi Creative Media. This time with Executive Producer, Gary Strieker, a longtime CNN correspondent / bureau chief. Gary and Walter Biscardi, Jr. have been working together for many years now on environmental and global health projects.
This week we’re finally going to be upgrading our ethernet based SAN, which as most of you know is a Maxx Digital Final Share system. And of course most of you also know is that Small Tree Communications came up with “secret sauce” to make editing HD video via Ethernet a stable reality. So Final Share SAN was really a hybrid between Small Tree technology and Maxx Digital RAIDs.
Unfortunately since we moved into our new building the system has been under-performing. Many tweaks and changes have been made along the way, but nothing seemed to solve the problem of dropped frames across all systems since we got into the new building.
During the original development of the product, Steve Modica from Small Tree Communications would spend hours connected to our system tweaking, modifying and changing many things about how the system worked. Turned out we were pushing the ethernet SAN pretty much to the breaking point because of the long form work we were playing off (300 hours of material in a documentary) in addition to the multiple weekly series. Through many hours of tweaking and massaging, Steve was able to get more speed out of the system and made it incredibly stable.
So now that the time has come for us to step up to another system as we grow our facility from four workstations in the old space to 7 workstations plus 8 iMacs in the new space, I just feel more confident going back to the guy who started it all. And I’ll be honest, it doesn’t hurt that I’ve already been exposed to the “next thing” coming down the road.
So this weekend Steve and Chris Duffy from are coming down from Minnesota to install a new Small Tree GraniteStore ST RAID II 16 drive, 48TB system which is a 6Gig system paired with a new 10Gig Small Tree Ethernet switch.
“But wait Walt, other folks are releasing 10gig systems already, why go with a slower system?”
As I’ve learned over the past few months, it’s not just about having a very fast pipe, it’s knowing how to intelligently direct data through the pipe. So if your data is flowing efficiently to all the workstations, you can get the same performance from a “slower” pipe. Again, these are the guys who basically created the technology and they have many many tricks up their sleeve.
Including that “next thing” I mentioned. Can’t say anything about it right now, but I can say that as soon as it’s ready for real world testing, we will have it in our shop and we will tell you about it. The growth of this technology is just so exciting. What began as a cheaper alternative to Fibre Channel with some major tradeoffs in speed is maturing into much more.
In the mean time, I’ll have lots of photos and maybe even some video from Steve to explain the system as we install it this weekend.
May 17, 2011
BUFORD, GA
Biscardi Creative Media (BCM) Principal Walter Biscardi, Jr. has been named Managing Producer of the new series, “This American Land” from Executive Producer Gary Strieker and Environment News Trust. The weekly half hour series will begin feeding to PBS stations on August 6th, 2011.
This American Land has reporters across the country looking for people with stories to tell about what’s happening to our natural heritage - what all of us should know about what is being done and what needs to be done to protect our natural resources for the future.
Biscardi will also serve as Post Production Supervisor with BCM providing all Post services for the series. To learn more about the series, visit thisamericanland.org
For more information about Biscardi Creative Media visit biscardicreative.com
Partial credits for the series include:
Executive Producer: Gary Strieker
Series Producer / Writer: Marsha Walton
Managing Producer / Post Production Supervisor: Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Host: Bruce Burkhardt, Caroline Reville
Editor: Adrienne Latham, R. John Becker
Sound Design: Patrick Belden
Graphics & Animation: Brandon Smith, David Warner, Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Closed Captioning: CaptionMax
Production Coordinator: Jeanna Thomas
Why is it that Producers treat Post Production as an afterthought? As in, “I need to spend all my money on Production so it looks great, but the editing we can do on the cheap.” The editor is the LAST person to touch your film. As in the person who will make or break your film by their skills to properly cut the film together making the right decisions on scenes to keep / remove, timing and a whole host of other decisions. So you hire the absolute cheapest person to do the one of the most important jobs?
A Professional Editor also knows how to properly manage time, as in being able to handle a project on time, by deadline and also managing the Producer’s expectations. A Professional Editor also knows when a project’s scope is beyond their abilities.
The Perfect Storm of how NOT to plan your Post Production played recently in some unsolicited correspondence I received from a Producer I’ve never met, but they asked for my advice to help resolve their Post Production issues. I’ve edited some of the original email, but my blunt responses are reprinted here in their entirety.
Producer: I have a film shot on RED that I’m planning to submit to Sundance. I hired a college student to cut the film and gave them 2 months to cut it. The film will be about an hour.
Me: You hired a university student to cut a film for submission to Sundance. That’s only the most difficult film festival to get an acceptance in the U.S. because EVERYBODY submits to that one. The way you get accepted is to already have an in with the festival, have a blockbuster coming out, or submit an absolutely superb story that stands out above the rest. So you entrusted a college student to prepare your film for the most difficult film festival to get into. Unless you’re trying to qualify for a student level film, that was a huge mistake right off the bat. Your film would have to be both creative and technically sound. No matter how creative your film is, a university student has no idea how to make a film technically sound to stand out in a crowded film festival submission.
And you did the film in RED which requires a stout editing system and proper professional monitoring to properly edit.
—
Producer: I gave the editor two requirements: make my film at least 60 minutes and have it to me no later than my deadline in two months. I gave him all the RED footage that we currently had (approximately 3/4 of the movie) so that he could get a jump on editing while we completed the film.
Me: Two months is a ridiculously tight turnaround unless you had everything ready to go and laid out for editing. Especially if you were expecting a fully finished film for submission that would include a rough audio mix, rough color enhancement, etc… If you were expecting a fully finished film with full audio mix and full color enhancement, that was not near enough time. Your timeframe was impossible meet unless you had a full post production facility behind you that was skilled in completing quick turnaround projects. No way one person was going to complete all of this in two months have it fully film festival ready.
A university student wouldn’t really know this since when they submit projects to be graded, it doesn’t always have to be fully completed. If it’s creative but not technically sound, well that’s ok because they’re learning and the professor will give them good grades. In the real world, technical quality is paramount to the creative. I’ve seen some amazingly skilled college editors but the one thing they all lack is the ability to properly prepare projects from a technical standpoint. Audio levels, video levels and proper color correction are things I always have to teach new hires.
—
Producer: Delays happen as they do on film sets and half of the last 1/4 of the film footage didn’t get to the editor until 3 weeks before the deadline. “No problem”, he told me, “I’ve been editing the footage as I go. You’ll definitely get your film by your deadline”. Deadline came and he calls me up and says he can’t make the deadline because the film is rendering and the ETA is 12 hours. (As an editor, isn’t this something you budget for as far as time management goes?).
Me: I’m not surprised in the least. A university student is not used to meeting deadlines yet. They can miss a deadline or two in college and it’s no big deal. Of course I can’t understand exactly what they were rendering. Was it the color correction? Was it the RED Proxy Files? Didn’t they convert all the footage to ProRes for the edit?
Yes, rendering time is one of those things you have to budget for in time management, it’s always a trade off on adding more to a project vs. render time to complete on time. Not to mention the DVD compression / authoring / burning time.
—
Producer: While I’m watching it, I realized that it’s not 60 minutes and there are crucial errors in it (i.e. missing scenes, and in one scene you hear the AD say “Action”). I can’t submit this!
Me: So you have not watched any rough cuts of the film at all? When the film is completed this is the first time you’re seeing it? Generally an editor submits rough cuts either on a daily, weekly or other regular schedule that is laid out with the Producer before the edit starts.
Scenes are cut out all the time for timing. I have no idea how long your raw material was vs. the imposed running time of 60 minutes. Did you give the editor guidelines on which scenes could be cut for timing and which scenes have to remain in the film? If you left it completely up to the editor, then you cannot be upset with what was removed. Getting a film to an exact running time is impossible without guidelines from the Producer as to what must stay and what can be cut.
As for the “Action” I don’t think the editor did a sound pass on the film. I would not submit anything to a festival like Sundance without a professional sound designer doing a clean pass on the film first. Basically all he does is smooth all the levels and clean up any extraneous audio. That allows us to submit to film festivals and then he goes in and does the full sound mix which on a one hour film I would expect anywhere from 2 to 10 days depending on whether he’s supplying any original music and if we’re going 5.1 or stereo mix. Barring that, our editors would spend two days on a 60 minute film just smoothing out all the levels so nothing is jarring or extraneous.
—
Producer: So, I have to import the film into my own FCP program, crudely cut out the “Action”, and submit the half-assed film to Sundance with a production note as to why the other errors were not corrected. And then I had to find another editor to fix the mistakes he made, thereby costing me even more money. Up until this point, I had been paying him on a delayed schedule since I was independently financing the project. Every two weeks, I’d pay him for one week’s work.
Me: Again, you’re planning to submit to Sundance and you hired a college student to do the work. And it sounds like you did not review the film at all during the editing process. And you had a ridiculously tight turnaround time to complete the film. Perfect storm.
Indie film producers never budget enough money or time for Post Production. So they hire the cheapest person they can find and they have all sorts of issues in the edit that they can’t seem to explain. This cycle runs like a broken record here in Atlanta yet the Producers don’t learn. Post Production generally costs at least 1/3 more than Production. More if you’re shooting on the cheap. My independent film (20 minutes) cost $3500 to shoot and if I had to pay for the Post Production that would have been over $20,000. But since it was my own film, I didn’t have to pay for the Post or the facility. We spent 6 weeks cutting and preparing that 20 minute scripted film. The first three weeks finessing, the second three weeks in sound mix and color enhancement.
On the plus side you were actually paying the editor so that’s a good thing. Indie Producers are notorious for not paying at all. I would have demanded, and all editors I work with would have demanded 50% of the budget up front and you would not have received the final cut until the balance of payment was received.
—
Producer: He didn’t meet either of the requirements I set for him AND gave me a “finished” project that I couldn’t use. I’ve already paid him for 6 out of the 8 weeks, in the good faith that he’d finish the project per my requirements and continued to send payment after he failed to do so. I know it sucks for him because he really worked all day and night the last week, but this is a business and his actions caused me to lose money. And honestly, better prioritizing on his part would have prevented this entire situation (he spent days color-correcting while raw footage was waiting idly by to be cut into coherent scenes). As an editor, what would you expect from your client if this had happened to you. What do you think would be the fair thing for me to do?
Me: This is a business for you. It’s a learning experience for him. He’s a college student, he’s not a professional editor. You made the decision to hire him I’m guessing because he was ridiculously cheap. Therefore you owe him the payment.
Our one hour documentary took 6 days to color correct with a 30 year Colorist doing the work with professionally calibrated equipment in a professional color suite. So that fact that he took days is not surprising in the least. I would expect a non-colorist to take at least 2 weeks to color correct a one hour film. Did you tell him not to color correct any of the scenes until the film was completed? In fact, why were you color correcting the film at all when you had such a tight turnaround? That’s another mistake and something that you as a Producer needed to clarify with the editor.
As a professional editor you would not have had anything to submit to Sundance without giving me the final payment so the fact that you even had something to submit is remarkable. As a professional editor, I would have prioritized the edit to complete the story first and finish second. But in college you’re all about impressing people with your knowledge of software and effects, so playing with graphics, color enhancement and the like are what it’s all about in college. So I’m not surprised he wanted to play with looks on the film instead of finishing it first.
All in all, you chose the wrong person when you decided to hire someone in college to do a highly professional job. As the Producer it is your responsibility to hire the right people to complete each task of the project. It sounds to me like you did not budget near enough money for Post Production or you would have hired a good professional editor or Post facility. This happens all the time here and what usually happens is a facility like mine has to come behind and clean up the mess.
Sorry to be so blunt, but you made a very poor choice to choose such an unqualified person to cut a project for such high profile expectations.
—
I honestly have no idea if this Producer really was expecting sympathy from me or what, but when you make a poor business decision and then try to lay the blame on an unqualified person, that just really gets to me. There are thousands of incredibly talented artists in colleges and universities across the country, I’ve met a lot of them myself. They do insanely creative work and soon will take over our entire industry.
But it’s not fair to lay down unrealistic expectations on someone who is still learning the craft and then expect them to turn out a film worthy of one of the most famous film festivals in the world. So if the film gets rejected, whose going to be to blame? The Producer / Writer for the story or the Editor because they got in over their head? The Producer made an incredibly bad choice on whom to have cut the film. Ultimately success or rejection will ride on all the choices the Producer and Director made during the course of the production.
I’m seeing this all over the various forums, blogs and twitter feeds in one variant or another in regards to the big Final Cut Pro X reveal at the FCPUG SuperMeet in Las Vegas last Tuesday.
“Hey, don’t knock down this product when it was just a SNEAK PEEK people! Sure there’s some questions out there but we should all be happy that Apple has at least shown us something. You know they’re normally super secret so the fact that actually showed Final Cut Pro X is a big change in the company. I’m excited about these new changes! Now we have to wait till June to see what features are still in the application before we start to complain.”
Apple had two freakin’ hours of stage time available and they wasted it on just one hour of a super slick presentation. Of course we’re going to knock the presentation because all it did was leave us with many more questions than answers.
How long would it have taken to mention planned support for third party filters? 30 seconds?
Third party capture cards? 60 seconds?
Log and Capture / Edit to Tape support? (are they still there?) 20 seconds?
Customizable interface to replicate a more traditional editing style? 2 minutes?
Continued support of OMF, XML, EDL, AAF import / export? 30-60 seconds?
Text Tool? 2 minutes?
Track management? (as in allowing us to specify audio tracks for elements for ease of sending to ProTools and other sound editors) 1 minute?
The other ProApps? (as in are they being updated, retained and if so, expected releases?) 2 minutes?
In other words, MANY of the unanswered questions that all of us are asking could have been answered in that additional hour with plenty of time to spare.
Even if they didn’t want to show one of their patented slick slides or video demo, they could have at least told us about the various professional features that many of us use every day. But apparently those questions I’ve asked up above are somehow trade secrets that simply cannot be revealed because what if (gasp) one of the competitors (Avid, Adobe, Quantel, Autodesk, Vegas) finds out that Apple intends to retain standard pro features?
I’m sick and tired of sneak peeks and teases quite honestly. Put the product out there where we can truly test it out and ask questions like the Adobe, Avid, Autodesk, Quantel and all the other demonstrations that were out on the show floor. Put it in the hands of 1,000 beta testers in all sorts of production situations to get real world feedback instead of relying on a couple of post houses and maybe 10 beta testers. I spoke one on one with the CEO of Avid about the product and the future of the product. That was a useful conversation with frank questions and answers.
“I cannot speak about anything except what you just saw in the presentation” is the response one of my colleagues got from the Apple ProApps team after the “sneak peek.” In other words, you have questions, I have no answers. So what was the point in coming at all if you didn’t want to address the Pro Editors’ questions?
For fanboys it was the ultimate Apple dog and pony show last Tuesday.
But in the end, in front of 1700 video editors, on what could have been the night Apple completely re-invented non-linear editing, quite simply, Apple dropped the ball. Next time come prepared to answer very simple, very basic questions from the professionals in the room.
Wednesday at the NAB Show I had the opportunity for a 1 on 1 demo of the full Baselight color correction system and it’s “little cousin”, the plug-in tool for Final Cut Pro (and other hosts).
First off, Baselight is just the most intuitive color correction tool I’ve seen. I sat through the session with fellow Apple Color Forum host Joseph Owens and as the artist was walking through the various features and functions of the tool, it all made sense. It’s a very efficient and infinitely adjustable tool for working both in video and film. The $80,000 price tag is definitely what puts it out of range of most Final Cut Pro users.
Enter the Baselight plug-in. Well actually plug-in is not the right description quite honestly since it’s really a fully featured mini-app that operates independently of Final Cut Pro. Here’s how FilmLight describes it in their press release:
Baselight for Final Cut Pro is not merely a port that uses the Final Cut Pro interface. Rather, it provides editors with access to Baselight functionality directly within the application. Editors can grade projects and then either render within the host application, or export the grade as an XML list—with all metadata preserved—to a full Baselight system for final adjustments and rendering. Similarly, grades prepared in a Baselight suite can be exported seamlessly to Final Cut Pro for conform and final editing.
After first seeing the full Baselight system run, I can tell you that the plug-in had many of the same features as the big brother. Baselight operates in what are called layers. Each layer is an adjustment. So Layer 1 might be your primary adjustment, Layer 2 a secondary, Layer 3 a mask, Layer 4 another secondary, Layer 5 an effect and so on. So each shot is comprised of a series of layers to make your color correction. This is precisely how it operates in the plug-in. You will have infinite Layers per shot. So you can essentially do a Baselight color grade session inside of Final Cut Pro.
No, the plug-in does not have EVERY feature of the big brother, for $79,000 cheaper it can’t. But it does have a lot. And did you catch that part at the end of the press release? If you do color grading with the plug-in, you can then send that information to a colorist on a full featured Baselight system. OR, a colorist on a full featured Baselight system can send the grades TO YOU on your Final Cut Pro edit system. You will be able to open and render with any grade created on a full Baselight. Regardless of the features the colorist used, it WILL show up in your Baselight plug-in. If it’s a feature not included in the plug-in you will not be able to modify it, but it will show up and you will be able to render with it.
So the plug-in allows you to bring a ridiculously powerful color correction system directly inside of Final Cut Pro. Or you can do an XML round trip between FCP and Baselight just like you do today with Color and Davinci Resolve.
The plug-in will be available in the fall of 2011 and pricing is expected to be below $1,000. But let me tell you, if it was in my budget to pick up the big brother today, I wouldn’t even think twice. It’s just crazy good.
http://filmlight.ltd.uk/baselight4fcp
Yesterday was a whirlwind day. Started off early at a breakfast meeting with the top level executives of Avid and ended with the always entertaining Supermeet. Ok, maybe this year’s Supermeet was a little more entertaining than most.
Let’s start with this morning. For the first time I can truly say that “Avid is listening.” I’ve seen the moniker on their site in the past and I kind of laughed. I mean this is Avid we’re talking about. The company that tells us how we can purchase their software and hardware and if we don’t like it we can go somewhere else.
Ok, maybe that’s how they used to do things, but it was clear from our meeting today, Avid is truly changing the way they do business. It seems to have taken a while for it to really sink in but there is a definite shift in the tone coming from the company. There is a real willingness now to open up the software to third party hardware as we have seen from last year’s Matrox reveal to this year’s AJA Io Express.
First off, it was impressive to me that not only was I meeting with their PR folks, but the CEO and many of the top management and marketing team. One on one for about 90 minutes and I was free to ask any question. Generally I’m used to having many layers of separation between me and the head of the company that makes my NLE. Of course being a Final Cut Pro guy with a bunch of AJA Kona cards, my primary interest is seeing Avid continue their migration to open up the software to even more hardware options not only from AJA and Matrox, but Blackmagic Design as well. Obviously Avid would not answer me directly on any of the hardware questions, but I get the sense that their migration towards openness will continue at some point in the future.
Then there was Apple and the SuperMeet presentation. As expected, the new Final Cut Pro appears to have been built on the foundation of iMovie. But there’s nothing wrong with that, the interface is actually very efficient. You will have to re-think your way of operating, but there’s nothing wrong with taking the iMovie base and building upon that.
The Interface
What Apple actually chose to show was quite nice. Background rendering, Magnetic timeline with the audio always moving out of the way, and “open” timeline with no hard tracks that appear and disappear as needed, pitch corrected audio skimming, improved color correction, Audio fade controls much better, simple retiming in the timeline, color matching with single click and of course, no more transcoding / mixing and matching of formats in the timeline. These are all the super cool, wiz bang features that are the hallmark of any Apple marketing event.
The two highlights for me were Audition and the Magnetic audio. Audition allows us to essentially create a floating bin of multiple clips to insert into the timeline and with simple keystroke try out each shot in the timeline.
Audition
Audio
But Apple was presenting to 1500 video editors, many of whom look past the slick marketing demo and want to know about how it works under the hood and with all the rest of the pro apps that we all use every day. That’s probably why with each new item presented, about half of the room was very excited and the other half was quiet. The only uniform applause throughout the room seemed to be for the price, which garnered about half a standing ovation from the room. So now it’s just $299 for Final Cut Pro only and there was no mention of the rest of the suite period. I guess part of the marketing strategy is “well it’s so cheap now nobody can complain.”
The big question among the pro editors I spoke to after the presentation was what didn’t we see?
Multi format, multi frame rate, multi codec playback. We were told it’s now supported, but it was not shown, at least not that I could tell.
Tape Capture / Layback. Is this still supported internally to the application or has Apple taken the stand that they do not need to support a videotape workflow at all internally? Not only is tape still being shot by many production companies, there are millions of hours of videotape archive material that has to be ingested for projects, such as the feature documentaries we cut today.
In fact what about the capture cards / boxes from AJA, Blackmagic and Matrox? No mention of or appearance from them.
Filters. Do filters still work in the new FCP? As in our old filters that all of us already own and any potential new third party filters for the new FCP X? How will FCP interpolate and handle archive projects that include filters?
Titling. What does the new font tool look like? In the presentation a lower third was shown but it was never explained how it was created.
OMF / XML / EDL Export / Import. Can we still use XML to move projects to After Effects and other platforms as needed for finishing and other work? How easy is it to move the projects around?
Alpha channel / composting modes. How do these work in the new FCP? Some very nice looking effects were shown in the demo but were they created in FCP or elsewhere? Don’t know.
Large project management. How will FCP hold up under a large project such as the documentaries we currently cut. My feeling is that the new FCP is well suited for shorter projects but not long form, it seems like it would simply break if you threw a feature film or documentary at it. Can’t imagine scrolling through 200 hours of filmstrips to find my shots. With some of the organizational tools it might be manageable but hard to tell.
What we were presented definitely felt like a 1.0 release and Apple certainly set that bar throughout the event by comparing the launch of X to FCP 1.0. The original changed the face of NLE editing forever and they believe X will do the same thing. It certainly does with the interface and the price. Apple will absolutely build more market share for the product because at $299 every single hobbyist, school, and anyone who wants to edit video will purchase the product. That very well seems their goal with the price.
How those numbers will translate into pro editors, television series, feature films, etc remains to be seen. Would have been nice to hear from Walter Murch or the Coen Brothers last night to get their thoughts on how X will improve their workflows on feature films. The reaction among the pro editors and others I chatted with after the show was tepid at best. I think an encounter by one of the folks was somewhat telling.
Editor: Nice presentation but what about those features that weren’t shown? What about capture cards, filters and how it might perform with bigger projects.
Other person: This Final Cut Pro isn’t designed for you.
Maybe that’s what Apple is banking on. So many new folks coming into the industry who don’t know about or need capture cards. That’s who the new Final Cut Pro X is designed for. Those who will never have to retrieve an archive tape, handle more than a few hours or material at a time or interface with other applications outside the Apple brand. So Apple will “win” the NLE battle simply by sheer numbers of installed users. As they pointed out in the presentation, based on installed user numbers alone, Avid and Adobe are “fighting” for second place.
It’s impossible to give a true assessment of how good / bad the new FCP X really is since this is the only time any of us will see it. Unlike those “fighting for second place” Apple is not on the show floor so we cannot ask any questions or test out the interface for ourselves. Only those very few select beta testers know for sure what is and is not included in the interface.
The potential is there for the application to be a reinvention of non linear editing. But a one hour presentation left me and many other pro editors scratching our heads with many more questions than answers. Apple went for the slick, we want to know the down and dirty. At least we can go out on the show floor today and talk to those “other two companies” who are fighting for second place and actually address workflow questions.
So what’s my verdict? Apple went “All In” on this one event and came out swinging with a patented, marketing presentation full of slick features. I think they hit a double. Nice hit, but not near enough power to bring it all the way home. The biggest beneficiaries of the one hour presentation will most likely turn out to be Avid and Adobe. Sure Apple will sell millions of copies of X, but those other two A’s my very well come out ahead.
Briefly from the Maxx Digital booth today They’re showing off a new 10 gig ethernet SAN that removes many of the issues that have slowed down this method and Apple’s Ethernet controller changes. Also we can now have one SAN that serves both super high speed needs such as 4k and the Ethernet based ProRes workflow off one media pool.
Basically you send one 10 gig cable to an ethernet switch that feeds all your workstations, much like you do now. Only it’s just one very fast cable instead of multiple ethernets like currently used. You’ll get around 100MB/sec to all the workstations connected That way
But you can also direct connect multiple workstations to the RAID so those would get 300MB/s.
So we could run the SAN as we do now and also add higher speeds to our Davinci Resolve system all from the same RAID. Right now we need to use a local storage connected to the resolve for the higher speeds This new concept is definitely a huge improvement
Stop by Maxx’s booth to see it.
It took a very simple demo to remind me of what I’ve been missing for years. Efficiency.
You all know I’ve been a staunch Final Cut Pro user going on 10 years now. I originally bought the app because quite honestly it was cheap and it was more efficient than the Media 100 system I had been using. Then as Apple kept adding features and applications to what turned into the Final Cut Studio suite, we were able to become more productive and expand our company because, well the software was / is still cheap.
But I guess I never thought about how inefficient our workflow was until I listened in on about 5 minutes of one of the Avid artists giving a demo today. No, not in the main theater with the huge screens and big sound system. Just an editor off to the side with a small crowd around him. Someone had asked a question about mixed frame rates and the editor proceeded to create a timeline:
1080i / 59.94.
Into that timeline he placed:
1080i / 59.94
720p / 50
720p / 60
1080p / 23.96
and a few others.
The codecs were
DVCPro HD
HDV
XDCAM
And he hit play. No transcoding, no conversions, no anything, just hit play and go. And not just hit play, but multi track playback of multiple codecs, frame rates, frame sizes just having at it, all playing out through the AJA Io Express in full quality resolution. For even more realtime playback, he dropped the output to Draft quality which still looked outstanding on the external monitors. And he also had multiple options on how the footage would be interpolated in the timeline allowing him to smooth out the look of the 720/50 material for example.
In other words, just cut the story, forget about creating a workflow to match your system. Give me the footage, I don’t care what it is, and let’s get to work. The system will play it so I don’t have to think about it.
With Final Cut Pro we have to carefully consider our workflow, generally convert all footage to ProRes, convert it all to the same frame rate / frame size and then start to edit. That could be a matter of minutes or days depending on what we’re doing. I preach on the Creative Cow forums all the time about how you can’t mix and match codecs / frame rates efficiently in Final Cut Pro, you need to convert first.
Is Avid perfect? Probably not, but then which NLE is truly perfect? None. Because what’s perfect is the subjective choice of the end user. The perfect NLE would most likely be something with features drawn from Premiere, Avid, Final Cut Pro and Quantel. So it’s a trade off and quite honestly, price has always won out for me. I accepted Final Cut Pro’s lower cost as the trade off between efficiency and getting the work done for our client. Of course now with Avid’s $995 trade in offer, price isn’t so much of a factor. Well, ok, yes it is because I would have to replace 7 seats of Final Cut Pro and that’s significantly more than the standard $299 FCP upgrades.
Those 5 minutes today definitely gave me a new perspective from which I will look at the “new and improved” Final Cut Pro tomorrow night. Is Apple giving us a much more efficient tool or did they just pile on a bunch of new features and completely change the interface because that’s what they think we want to see? As I said in my original “All In” blog, at the end of the day we need an efficient tool that lets us tell the story. Thanks Avid for reminding me of that.
