Categories
Apple General

Please don’t trust reporting about Apple, particularly by “analysts”.

I recently posted that 90% of what is written about Apple is Crap! but it seems it’s worse than that. Two recent articles make the point about just how bad reporting about Apple really is.

Categories
General

Will we get A La Carte Cable Channel Selection?

Over time I’ve certainly thought a la carte cable channel selection would be a step up. We dropped from a 100 channel, to a 50 channel package, but in reality we needed something like a 12 channel package, including the broadcast networks. A recent story at Variety, explained why we’re not going to get it, and why that’s probably what we want.

Categories
Monetizing The Business of Production

Apparently ‘Piracy’ isn’t always a problem.

Two recent reports suggest that ‘piracy’ is not the problem some parts of the legacy industries seem to want us to believe. The Institute for Prospective Technological StudiesDigital Economy Working Paper 2013/04 studies Digital Music Consumption on the Internet:Evidence from Clickstream Data found that overall, piracy has a positive effect on music sales.

HBO programming president Michael Lombardo has just announced that not only is the huge piracy [of Game of Thrones] a compliment, but the phenomenon hasn’t hurt DVD sales at all. A couple of months earlier the show’s director, David Petrarca, said that unauthorized downloads actually do more good than harm. Petrarca explains that the show needs “cultural buzz” to thrive and survive, and this buzz is being generated in part by pirates.

Mmm.

Categories
Assisted Editing The Technology of Production

HPA Retreat Vindicates Lumberjack approach

At the recent Hollywood Post Alliance Retreat, the panel ‘Professional Forecast: Cloudy but Clearing’ strongly supported the idea of capturing metadata (log notes) at the time of acquisition. This is exactly our goal with Lumberjack.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps The Business of Production

What does Avid make from Professional Video Editing Software?

We can use Avid’s accounts and their 10K filing to calculate revenue for their professional video editing software (i.e. Media Composer/Symphony and DS). In Avid’s 2011 10K filing they state:

Sales of professional video-editing products accounted for approximately 11%, 13% and 13% of our consolidated net revenues for 2011, 2010 and 2009, respectively.

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The Business of Production

What’s the truth about Avid’s Financial Position?

There’s been a lot of speculation about Avid’s Financial Position – some of it by me for sure – that I decided to spend a little time examining the most recent accounts I could find to work out what the facts are.

Categories
The Business of Production The Technology of Production

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 55: NAB 2013

Terry and I got together at NAB 2013 and recorded our impressions of the show in the Press room.  http://www.theterenceandphilipshow.com/?p=489

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The Business of Production

Jobs in Movie and Music business just hit an all time high!

According to the Department of Labor Statistics – somewhat more impartial than the RIAA/MPAA block – Jobs in the Movie and music business just hit an all-time high, which is somewhat at odds with the (incredibly biased and largely fabricated) reports from the dinosaurs in the studios and networks.

We don’t buy your lies any more.

Categories
Career

Post FCP 7, Which NLE do I teach?

Probably the most interesting conversation I had at NAB was Sunday night at the Independent Filmmakers of the Inland Empire KISS mini-golf event. The setting might have been unique but the problem was not: Now that Final Cut Pro 7 isn’t the default choice for colleges (and high schools) to teach, which NLE do I teach? As the conversation continued it became obvious that there were more factors at work than just taking a punt on which NLE will become the “next FCP 7”.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Assisted Editing The Business of Production

Are the “Pros” at the tipping point with Final Cut Pro X?

It’s the end of the month and, as do most small business folk, I look at how the month has been, and how the year is going. Looking at the end of the March quarter, I noticed that our Sync-N-Link sales had tipped from our Final Cut Pro 7 version to favor Sync-N-Link X (for Final Cut Pro X).