In this show we talk about the support that a small boutique facility has both in terms of the features needed, and the ongoing support.
Author: Philip
As a small independent software developer we don’t have a huge staff. There are exactly two of us: Greg and myself, so if we’re traveling together we have to be able to support customers. That means Internet access and some means of answering the phone. These are not as easy as I’d like when traveling internationally, so I thought I’d share our approach.
In the first Terence and Philip Show for – well, too long – Terence Curren and I look back on the trends of 2014.
CNET are reporting that the February 25th Episode (Season 6 Episode 16) was shot with iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 (with a little assist from a MacBook Pro). An iPad Air 2 was my primary “camera” for my family history video shoot back in early January.
As it turns out, Gatekeeper wasn’t finished with us yet, as it turned out when Greg went to add another feature to Producer’s Best Friend.
Writing the code for a new feature is often the easiest part of the life of a small software developer. Two recent examples tell the story very well. Both involve updates to our reporting tools: Sequence Clip Reporter and Producer’s Best Friend. Part 2 follows tomorrow.
Of recent time I’ve been discussing my minimalist production kit. Well, in our neighborhood today, we had exactly the opposite.
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It’s in the Bag
How small can a high quality production kit go? It depends on the usage, but the kit I used for a recent trip to Tasmania to record interviews for a family history project. This is the same kit I discussed in A New Production Haiku recently. I also discussed the audio portion in more details Larry Jordan’s Digital Production BuZZ on February 5th. The BuZZ segment is below the LACPUG presentation.
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Why I Love Keyword Ranges
One of the Final Cut Pro X features that really resonates with me, is Keyword Ranges, and by extension, Keyword Collections. I realize now that this enchantment is because Keyword Ranges are a very pure embodiment of Content Metadata. I also realize now, that I’d been simulating this approach in other software, for as long as I can remember. In order to understand better, we’ll need to take a little trip to the past.
One of the joys of 2014 for me was to learn to sing – from very much a position of sucking at it. I still suck whenever I start learning a new song. What I realized is that we have to be prepared to suck at something before we can be good at it, or even learn it.
By “sucking” at something I mean, being very, very bad at it. I realize now I’ve been there many times.
There was a time when I had no idea what XML was; now if you search that term and my name you’ll find I have a contribution to be made.
There was a time when I sucked at metadata – like XML I had no idea why it was important.
The thing is, I’ve sucked at so many things and yet, putting through the sucky period, eventually we suck a little less, then barely at all, until we arrive at a point of knowing we don’t suck at that skill or knowledge any more.
Never be afraid to start off badly: it’s the only way to learn something new.