Longer term readers will know that I have two “day jobs:” at Intelligent Assistance and Lumberjack System. While it’s been a great year for Intelligent Assistance, it’s Lumberjack System that has grown up so quickly in its first year.
We celebrate the second year, with a new website and some real success stories.
When we launched Lumberjack System a year ago, there was the Web Logger and the Lumberyard app had one mode. There was an iOS Logger in beta, released in June 2014.
Since then we’ve added two more modes to Lumberyard – Story and Transcript Modes – added backLogger to the System – for logging archive or library footage in real time – and had two major overhauls of the iOS Logger.
Technically Lumberyard did support a second mode at launch, but Story mode wasn’t practical until we got Library XML from Final Cut Pro X at version 10.1.2. Once we had that, it became possible to send multiple logged Events back to Lumberyard to create select string-outs from multiple shoots, over extended periods. Story Mode lets users correct Lumberjack Keyword ranges before sending to Story mode, as well as adding Keyword Ranges in Final Cut Pro X for use in Story mode.
At NAB 2015 we announced – and released a week later – Transcript Mode for Lumberyard. Bring time-stamped transcript content into Final Cut Pro X using Keyword Ranges and Notes.
The iOS logger – for logging where no internet connection is available – was initially released for iPad only, but an iPhone version was added fairly quickly. The iPhone version is Greg and Cirina’s favorite version; for me, I like the space on the iPad. Early in 2015 we did a lot of work on making the iOS logger more robust and better able to recover while away from an internet connection.
Announced at NAB 2015 – and released a week later - is version 2 of the iOS Logger, that will allow us to take all our library of Lumberjack Events with us, and swap between them and logging multiple Events, all without needing to connect to the internet. At least until it’s time to upload the logged metadata.
backLogger came about because I had to log with Final Cut Pro X after only logging with Lumberjack for a couple of years (testing before release). While I continue to believe that Final Cut Pro X is the best NLE for logging, compared with the ease of real-time Logging in Lumberjack it was a lot of extra clicking.
Having the ability to real-time log library footage makes it much easier to integrate legacy footage into new project and use all the select string-out, pre-edit capability of Lumberjack System.
Finally, a few words about the new website. I created the site in Adobe Muse. Muse works the way I want to design: like I would for printing. It’s relatively easy to learn, and very design friendly. Muse gets my recommendation.
One reply on “Happy First Birthday Lumberjack System”
Congrats Philip and Greg! It’s been a great year and you are well on your way to a major change in the way media is produced and managed in the world!