Cui bono?
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.
