Author: Philip

A Year’s Work in a Small Software Company

Post author By Philip
Post date January 2, 2013
2 Comments on A Year’s Work in a Small Software Company

You know how the end of the year comes up and you wonder where the year went? Well, Greg (my partner who writes our software) calculated where his year went:

Event Manager X, Â released July 2011 (7 updates over 6 months in 2011; 9 updates in 2012)

Â Xto7 for Final Cut ProÂ Â a.k.aÂ Project Xto7, released October 2011 (8 updates in 2 months during 2011; 17 updates in 2012)

7toX for Final Cut Pro, released Â January 30, 2012 (16 updates over 11 months)

Sync-N-Link X, released April 2012 (5 updates over 8 months)

Sequence Clip Reporter , 7 updates in 2012

With updates to our other Final Cut Pro 7 software, it’s a total of Â 63 releases or updates to apps in a year, or more than one a week.

The Business of Production

Is “Fighting Off the Future” a legitimate business goal?

Post author By Philip
Post date January 1, 2013
4 Comments on Is “Fighting Off the Future” a legitimate business goal?

I think the implicit attitude in this Variety article,Â 2012: The year pay TV fought off the future, reveals just how ill prepared the current established pay TV business is for the inevitable disruption. Variety proclaims:

But despite the fragility of their delicate bond, programmers and distributors didn’t face any real challenge in 2012 from any of the expected upstarts hoping to gain rights to live TV and package it in more innovative ways.

If anything, the content companies demonstrated an increasing savvy in capitalizing on digital challengers. And what little damage the old guard sustained on new platforms seemed more self-inflicted than the result of any outside threat.

Right, there are no threats, the established industry is doing just fine, and we’re going to adapt and lead the future, because nothing dramatic happened in 2012! It’s a fairly long article, and I’m sorry if you get frustrated by Variety’s paywall, but it is worth reading to get an insight how the trade’s own rag thinks the business is going.

Frankly if I were Variety, I’d be more worried about my own future disruption.

Ironically, reading the article through, it makes good points showing where the disruption will come from.

My 2012 retrospective

2012 has been one of the most interesting years I’ve had in a long time. The year started with the release of 7toX for Final Cut ProÂ followed by Sync-N-Link X to mark our fourth pieceÂ of Final Cut Pro X software.Â Then came the intense planning for the Solar Odyssey journey and production, followed by the disappointing reality that it descended into. Fortunately a lot of good has come out of the experience. It’s also been a year where the maturing of Final Cut Pro X has won over more people, and the consensus is favoring big sensors. Terry Curren and I took a look back on the trends of 2012Â and Larry Jordan also did a good take on the trends on his blog. This is much more my subjective take on my year.

General

Episode 49 of The Terence and Philip Show looks back at 2012 trends

Post author By Philip
Post date December 31, 2012
2 Comments on Episode 49 of The Terence and Philip Show looks back at 2012 trends

Terry and I take time to look at the trends in production and post for 2012. Check out the episode

The Business of Production The Technology of Production

“The role of Video has Changed!”

Post author By Philip
Post date December 15, 2012
2 Comments on “The role of Video has Changed!”

I recall seeing the first of the training films from John Cleese’s then company, Video Arts and realizing that they were a cut above what I’d come to understand as “training” videos. High production values, great writing and amazing talent. John Cleese and the founding partners sold out decades ago, but current CEOÂ Martin Addison spoke with beet.tv Â about how the role of video has changed since Video Arts launched thirty years ago.

Addison says, “The role of video has changed. When we began it was very much a specialist market and the cost of entry of having a film camera was very high.Â Thatâ€™s changed completely now.Â All of us have the potential to be filmmakers with a camera that we have in our pocket on our smartphone.”

Or, in other words, democratization has occurred and video is just another literacy.

The Business of Production The Technology of Production

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 48

Post author By Philip
Post date December 14, 2012
2 Comments on The Terence and Philip Show Episode 48

Another episode of The Terence and Philip Show – Episode 48: Who should be using which NLE?

I recall this as a very interesting discussion and a good follow on from my own thoughtsÂ with Terence’s unique perspective.

Assisted Editing

Event Manager X 1.2: Now with Sets and Horizontal configuration option

Post author By Philip
Post date December 11, 2012
15 Comments on Event Manager X 1.2: Now with Sets and Horizontal configuration option

From its simple beginning as the first third-party Final Cut Pro X application, Event Manager X has evolved into a complete Event and Project Library management tool. The 1.2 release adds Sets: saved combinations of Events and Projects for instant reload based around projects or clients.

Apple Pro Apps Assisted Editing

7toX for Final Cut Pro 1.0.16

Post author By Philip
Post date December 11, 2012

The latest release of 7toX for Final Cut Pro available today in the Mac App Store includes:

Bug fixes for Premiere Pro XML
Bug fix for detecting unparsable .xml files
Bug fix allowing translation to continue with missing media files

Business & Marketing Studio 2.0 The Business of Production

One advantage of crowdsourced projects: they return investment!

Post author By Philip
Post date December 6, 2012
1 Comment on One advantage of crowdsourced projects: they return investment!

One of the great problems with the traditional Studio System is the problem they have turning a profit on highly profitable movies. Of course, it’s just an accounting trick to line the pockets of the studios, at the expense of the talent who created the film.

Well, the partly-crowdsourced, Iron Sky, is now returning money to its crowdsourced funders out of the revenueÂ of $10 million that the movie has already made.

Business & Marketing Distribution

Bittorrent drives book sales

Post author By Philip
Post date December 6, 2012

We usually think of Bittorrent in terms of film, music or television “piracy”, but there are increasing legitimate uses (see The Promo Bay for example).

I’ve also noted that the secret to success is to build a connection with fans and give them something to buy. Here’s an example where the author provided a lot of high value add-ons for his book, and linked to the book’s Amazon page, and sales go nuts.