Some people and most companies still think closing their gates towards the outside makes (business-)sense. I will give you two examples which show the opposite. In the last couple of weeks we could look at two strong moves in the industry: Avid opening Unitiy towards Final Cut and Adobe supporting the Advanced Authoring Format, AAF, in a better way.

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It has been discussed if it would be “stupid or smart“ from Avid opening the Unity architecture towards Apple’s Final Cut Studio.

I think it is always good to let people step into your environment with tools they are used to and by that, giving yourself the chance of showing off your strengths. This is exactly what Avid did in that case: letting Final Cutters stay on their NLE while simultaneously making them step into the Avid environment. A stroke of genius, in my eyes. If I had a wish than it would be the NLE companies all supporting one approach of media file management so we can really decide which tool is the best for the current step in our workflow. And Avid did a first step into this direction by opening Unity towards Final Cut. It is not yet an integration of the two NLEs but a first step.

Via AAF we can already exchange our projects between FCP and Media Composer, Avid DS or even Premiere. Which leads me to my second example:

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With the lately released update to 4.1 Premiere, part of Adobe’s Creative Suite 4, now supports native RED R3D files (PDF!) and improved AAF support (PDF!). This is a strong move, no discussion needed.

• AAF

With the improved support for the Advanced Authoring Format Adobe makes a huge leap forward, in my eyes. As I have stated just a few weeks ago I always felt CS being a really compact and tightly integrated suite. Now it becomes very easy to import media from Avid Media Composer, Pro Tools or Apple Final Cut. What does that mean, in the end? A really strong (low-cost-)finishing and publishing tool! Once you have your footage inside Adobe’s universe you are able to send it to After Effects for special effects, color correction and anything else AE has to offer. You can send it to Adobe Media Encoder to encode files for the web, mobile devices and so on. You can, without rendering, send the timeline to Encore to author a DVD or Blue-Ray disc (and anyone who has ever used Encore will not go back to AvidDVD/Roxio DVDit). Again, an widely supported standard makes a good toolset really strong!

• RED

For working with R3D files in Avid you still have to go via Avid’s Metafuze, creating DNxHD-MXF files, or via REDCINE (Mac and Windows) or RED ALERT! (Mac only) with the Avid DNxHD QuickTime Codecs v1.10 (Mac and Windows) installed again rendering out DNxHD-MXF files. In Premiere, as well as in After Effects and Encore, you just need an importer plug-in (currently still BETA, also available at http://www.red.com/support) and there you go. I cite the RED-PDF from Adobe (linked above):

“Filmmakers can dynamically change the resolution; applying color correction to the footage in full resolution for example, and then lowering the resolution on the fly to gain better performance from their hardware as they scrub through edits.“

If it works as advertised, Adobe has the best RED workflow available at the moment. If anyone has already made his or her experience it would be greatly appreciated if he or she could tell me something about it.

I will definitely test some workflows on my own, especially cutting in Avid Media Composer then moving my final sequence to Premiere to be able to do post-work in After Effects and lay back to tape from Premiere.

As we see such movement we have to ask ourselves “Cui bono?”. In the end: the customer. Which is good, really good. But also the companies who open their gates and who are integrating new and useful features and technologies. So, dear vendors, listen to us: do not keep us as prisoners in your environment. Let us, the customers decide which tool works best for us. If you produce good tools, soft- or hardware, we will reward you with our money and loyalty. If you do not, you will extinguish yourselves in the era of digital and tapeless workflows.

First of all, excuse my inactivity the last weeks. But I really had a busy time, I think there will be a lot of interesting stuff coming up, including my new show reel, within the next couple of days (I can not promise it, but I will try hard). But the busy time connects perfectly to my topic today: system maintenance.

I thought of making this a kind of open letter to producers, asking them to calculate time for system maintenance within their timetables for productions, but I think that would make no sense (if you ever heard the sentence “We will fix it in post!” you know what I mean!). They simply do not understand the need to keep a NLE clean (I know there are pleasant exceptions, but my experience shows me that the very least know the importance of system maintenance). And some of us - editors - do not do, too. I mean, even in the old days with 3-VCR edit suites you had to keep your workspace clean, keep the tapes sorted and label them correctly. Which leads me to my first point:

Always keep your projects organized in a way that any other editor could step up and start to work. By that I mean everything from naming your footage, naming tapes in the “Capture Tool” (if you ever had to batch capture you will know why you should name your tapes in a way that they can be found again in the future), even giving effects that you saved a unique name so you can find the one you need in your bins.

Keep your sequence organized as well. Basically, keep the video tracks as simple as possible. Organize your audio tracks in a rational manner: place the the speaker/overvoice on A1, the natural tone on A2, music on A3 & A4, sound effects on A5 & A6 and so on.

If the company you are working for has any guidelines and/or sample-projects or workflows: that is a good thing, even if you have to get yourself used to it. It will make everyday work a lot easier.

And after you finished your work you have to clean up your desk, right?

Get used to the “Media Tool”! It is the media organization tool in MC. Within it you will be able to find each and every item MC has created. You can sort them by hard disk, project and three different kinds of media:

“Master Clips”: not actually media files, but the metadata collection of a clip. Master clips contain tape name, time code, resolution, the location of the media if online, and so on.

 “Precompute Clips”: all kinds of rendered files, from mere renders to imported (graphic) files.

 “Media Files”: the name speaks for itself, all media files connected to “Master Clips”.

You can, and you should, delete most of the “Precompute Clips” regularly, even when you are in the middle of a project. You can do that without any danger of “offlining” anything if you follow my advice closely: open the “Media Tool”, check that only “Precompute Clips” is marked, click on “All Drives” and “Current Project”. What you will get is a full list of any renders and imports of your current project (surprise, surprise). Now you will have to do a bit of hand work: if you have imported files into your project, such as Quicktimes or AVIs, you will find them with the “Precomputes”. You do not want to delete them, since then you would have to batch import them. Also, you do not want to delete titles that are still in use, they can be retrieved relatively easy but it is a waste of time, in my opinion. But you can safely delete everything with dissolve in its name, for example. If you have long renders, such as a TC burn in, you might want to delete those to. Or Color Corrections, blurs and so on (you will have to look for the names of your effects in the name of the “Precomputes”. In the MC helpfile search for the term “sifting”. With “sifting” you can improve your workflow when dealing with large bins extremely, and the Media Tool is quite often a large bin). You will not lose the effects, they simply will get unrendered and you might have to render them again to play them back in real time. But as a benefit you will get rid of unneeded renders, a faster responding system and disk space. Although disk space must not be an issue nowadays you might run into low disk space and now you know what you can delete without actually losing something.

If you still use OMFI-Mediafiles, for whatever reason, you should really have an eye on how many media files you got. You will run into problems when you have more then 10.000 files in your OMFI-folder. So deleting “Precomputes” is vital when working with OMFI-Mediafiles.

OK, so now that we have talked about the “Media Tool” already, let us say you have completed a job and laid your final sequence to tape.

How to clean up your workspace?

First, make a copy of the project folder to a backup location. This can be a shared network drive, an external hard disk, an optical media such as CD or DVD or what ever. I highly recommend saving your backups of any kind on a mirrored RAID-system, so in case one hard disk dies you can access your backups anyway.

Now, open the “Media Tool”, choose the “All Drives” and  the “Current Project” options, check that all three types of media (“Master Clips”, “Precompute Clips” and “Media Files”) are enabled and click OK. In the “Media Tool” hit CTRL+A (command+A on the MAC) to select all items in the “Media Tool” and press delete. As always when deleting things in MC the system will ask you if you are serious about deleting. Double-check you have a copy of the project folder as a backup, then tell ‘em you are and there we go. Everything is gone.

Now open every bin in MC, again hit CTRL+A then “DELETE” to delete all items that were left back by the “Media Tool” in all bins. Why? Because the “Media Tool” sees only what the databases show and if your databases are confused it could be that you have not deleted every media file with the “Media Tool”. If you miss to delete a couple of files with multiple projects they can accumulate to a lot of dissipated disk space and lots of files. Then quit MC and delete the original project folder.

There is a tool out there called MDV (although the homepage is partly in Russian language the program is translated to English) which many people over in the Avid Forums like to use. I have not tested it yet but I did not want to keep that information from you. But I think one should first understand Avids own media management: the “Media Tool”, before using third party applications.

Any other suggestions to keep an Avid system fly and clean are highly welcome!

“I too think there is value in being able to offer both.  I know the feedback has been fast and furious so I dont know if the decision to go all SW activation is set in stone.”

I really hope that Avid listens to us. Every week you can observe obscure issues with the online activation. The last incident was that the activation server in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, went offline, which is bad for online activation as you can imagine.

Imagine a true “in-the-field”-situation, for example in crisis areas such as Afghanistan or Iraq: Because of the dust, very high changes in humidity, changes between day- and night temperatures your notebook fails. Well, that is why we never go out there with a second one, right? In that case a dongle will save your life. Without the dongle you will have to activate both Media Composer/News Cutter licenses before even going out to edit, because there will be no time to mess around with unstable UMTS-connections to get your license to work in the field, which doubles your software costs just by having Avid changing the activation system. And they argue that we, the customers, demanded that feature (PDF!). What?! And if some of the customers did, why can not be the decision reversed, now that many customers gave their feedback that they want to keep the dongle?

But there is a solution, at least what I have heard from a friend of a cousins daughter: there are so called “cracks” out there in the www for nearly every software. I do not yet know what those “cracks” do (are they making me addicted?), but there may come a time…

Repeat after me: DRM IS BAD FOR THE CUSTOMER!

At the opening yesterday I had really mixed feelings. We were welcomed with free vodka, gherkins and bacon which I really appreciated! But at the moment I sat down and watched the opening ceremony I all out of a sudden knew why they wanted us to drink vodka: first the director of Deutsches Filminstitut “DIF”, Claudia Dillmann tortured the audience with vacuities, asking the, in that context purely hypothetical, question “if a place for exchange in eastern and middle European film with the west would still be necessary”. Just to answer herself with a “Yes” (no it was not that short, but I really don’t want to give the pain ahead to you). The new festival manager Nadja Rademacher was so nervous that she tried to stay calm by lowering her voice and I nearly had a nap. Contents of her speech: “I am so honored, I feel so glad…” As if that was not enough we had the pleasure to listen to Gerd Krämer, state secretary of “Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst”, the ministry of science and art. Ministry of science and art… I start to understand the German view on art a little bit better. He also tried to answer the question of the necessity of a film festival… Having water every day is a necessity. Having food at least two to three times a week is a necessity. Having a forum for film makers is not a necessity, although it is a “nice to have”. I really can not stand it, when old guys in pinstripes and gowns take themselves so seriously and I really hate that film society feasting itself.

But there was a short film program on that evening too, which was the main reason I went to the opening. And I really have to say I was not disappointed by that! The selection of the five shorts was wonderful, at least in my eyes. Starting with the Slovenian production “From the Electrician, with Love”, a really nicely told story about a classical father-daughter conflict, very amusing. I can not tell you more, it would take all the fun away if you get your fingers on a copy of this film. I will ask the festival management if there is a DVD release and post back here.

But the festival management didn’t allow the evening to drift away in superficialness (yes, I have to compliment them in that point), as the second film was “I don’t feel like dancing”, a German production with (?) Croatian actors having the leading part. You can watch the movie here, in poor quality, but I have not found another version. The film won at last years “goEast” in the category “Best Short Fiction Film” and since you can watch it on your own, I don’t want to say to much about that short but I thought it was very moving thanks to the camera which really made some interesting character- and face studies.

The third short was the first of three episodes called “Flori”, from Romania. A elderly woman buys vegetables and a melon, cooks soup and brings that to their children who are renovating their apartment. But they don’t want that presents at all. A dialog from the film, if I remember correctly (memo to myself: do more notes!):

Elderly woman: Look that water melon.

The young couple doesn’t seem interested at all…

Elderly woman: It weights 9 kilos. 9 kilos! I nearly fell as I bought it!

Young woman: Why did you buy it then?

I think that dialog gives a rough impression of the atmosphere, at least in that first episode.

The fourth contribution was an older, Russian, production: “The certificate”. Very weird. Very obscure atmosphere. A guy runs into a hospital and into an examination room where already an elderly woman is treated by a female doctor. This really old woman stands there in lingerie and garter belts. The guy seems to know the doctor, we will get to know that his mother worked in that hospital, too. He says his mother died and he needs a death certificate, the doctor says that the guy who legalizes the certificates is new and she will go by herself to get the certificate legalized. I always had that feeling, that there is something going wrong and in the end I was right. Morbid and macabre, the script could have been from E. A. Poe. I loved it.

The fifth and last short was an animation called “Tango”, sadly enough I do not remember in which country it was produced. The whole scene was one room, the room started to get filled by a variety of people, untill it was completely full but the people never touched each other. So it really gave you the impression of a dancing ball. Just to give you an idea of what characters were in that room, I will list a few: a basketball, a boy picking up that ball, throwing it out of the window, the ball gets thrown in again, the boy comes again, picking up the ball and so on. A Mother giving her breast to a baby, laying it down in a babies bed, leaving the room, reappearing through a different door, giving her breast to a baby, and so on. A young women coming into the room, naked, going to a wardrobe, slowly dressing herself, leaving the room, reappearing. A drunkard stumbling across the room. A policemen. A granny bringing some food. A man coming in, stepping onto the table and trying to change a light bulb, getting a stroke and goes to the floor screaming… and a lot more. The people are, one after another, leaving the scene. At some point the people stop reappearing. It was really funny but it also made me think: is that the story of that room over the years? Is it a story about a family? I do not know, but what I know is that this (non-CG-) animation made me laugh and think. And I think more then evoking feelings and evoking thoughts can not be achieved by art.

So, all in all, I was very happy with the first evening and I am looking forward for the movies today. In one hour “René” will start in the Caligari theatre, but I think I will get there only in a hurry so I will drop that and go to “ALJOŠA” and “PODAROK STALINU” (”The gift to Stalin”).

“Five industry leaders becoming one.

Imagine the makers of hundreds of industry leading products – including Pro Tools, Media Composer, Oxygen 8, Sibelius and Pinnacle Studio – coming together as one company. A team of artists and industry experts focused on helping people create the most listened to, most watched, and most loved work in the world. We see endless possibilities.“

Sounds nice and I see a lot of possibilities too, mainly because Avid seemed to be asleep for quite a while. And what we have seen from Avid in the last years is basically a downsizing: Avid selling Softimage|XSI to Autodesk, Pinnacle selling the PCTV-line to Hauppauge etc.

That must not be bad. Contrary, you can say it is a concentration on core assets. And what we saw with the 3.5/7.5 releases of Media Composer and News Cutter it is going in the right direction, for example Pro Tools and Media Composer can co-exist on the same machine, AMA makes tapeless workflows easier, “Advanced Keyframes” are supported by more effects, keyframeable color correction is very nice and so on. Even working with RED-footage has been made easier with "Metafuze".

But today I think it is most important to have a strong digital production suite. Meaning that importing footage and editing is just the beginning of a workflow that became very common to many of us: sweetening color eventually in a third party app like Adobe After Effects, doing composites and animations in After Effects, sweetening Audio in a third party app like ProTools, encoding files for the web, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray or just doing a quick clip as a transition in a DVD-menu.

And there I definitely see deficits in Avids integration of its different components. The “Creative Suite” from Adobe, for example, has grown very strong in the last years through tight integration of all its components. I mean, managing assets with “Bridge” became really comfortable and you do not even have to render After Effects projects to get them in Premiere or Encore: you just drag the project file in the other application and it understands the format. The same is true for Apples Final Cut and Motion, although I think the Adobe suite is already stronger than the Apple "Studio", when it comes to really being a full solution suite. Avid might say “AvidFX composites must not be rendered out to Avid, too!”, well I say every time I use AvidFX I feel thrown back in the mid-nineties by the poor UI, the rather slow responsiveness and so on. While the workflow is quite good, the application sucks. The same is true when you compare AvidDVD/DVDit with Encore.

This all must not play a role for big post-facilities, who have the manpower and the budget to have a special application and a specialist for every step in the workflow. But they also have the possibility to go with higher-end solutions then Avid. I think of Autodesk or Quantel, for example.

But it definitely plays a role for freelancers, small project studios, independent film makers, in-the-field editors and so on. And this is the market segment that would have earned some attention by Avid. Those are the people who stand loyal to Avid because they like the strong editing capabilities of Media Composer. But those people also can not afford the price for the new MojoDX for what it gives to them. Those people are not willing to pay extra for .OMF-support in ProTools (a 3.5 MB programm snippet of code for $ 500.-). Those people already use After Effects and Photoshop. And if Premiere gets more development for another couple of years, maybe it will become the best solution for some of those.

But instead of bringing real new features into the Avid world, or ultimately developing their own encoding-, compositing- and authoring tools (which hopefully changes in the coming months) they are wasting money on public relations and the agencies for that new logo. I have seen so many of that kind of reorganizations in the IT-market, the mobile phone market, the industrial markets (yes they call it "Siemens One"!) and I remember not one of those reorganisations leading to a better company (neither for the customers nor for the employees!). By the way, will there be a round of dismissals in any of the Avid companies?

So please, make Media Composer v4 a real digital production suite. I know you have the knowledge and the technics and the specialists. We really need and want those “seamless workflows” you always talk about. And if you want to force us to use your hardware (nothing else does Apple for decades) make it affordable!