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Amplify Your Own Creativity

Every time there is a major shift in technology it is uncomfortable. Established workflows and patterns change. We have a saying at our place: “No-one voluntarily changes their workflow!” The innovations that are coming are going to be disruptive. 

How quickly and directly these changes are going to affect you depends where you create in the broad spectrum of film, television, corporate, education and other production. 

At the big money end, everything remains extremely conservative. Changing editing platforms is major news. (Well, editing a major motion picture on something other than Avid’s Media Composer is news, but I digress.) Because of the investments involved everyone is conservative. To change a workflow is a major challenge. There are months of testing involved before a commitment is made. If you work on network TV or feature films then nothing will change in the next couple of years.

Realistically, that end of the market will not embrace ML driven Smart Tools until they’re Avid sanctioned and available in Media Central.

Outside of that market uptake will be mixed. The most adept will explore which of these new tools enhance their creativity. I expect the smaller the creative group, the faster the uptake. These new smart tools particularly benefit small independent production groups, whether they’re creating their own projects or providing the creative and physical services to clients. The more efficiently they can work, the more they can create and/or remain competitive.

Although the exact words are a summary of Charles Darwin’s thesis and not his own, the intent is certainly applicable: 

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

Insist on working without amplification and you will fade into irrelevance. Adapt, adopt and amplify your creativity and thrive. As Alvin Toffler said:

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As we get closer to “Computer Enhance” there’s a big problem

Artificial Intelligence driven image uprez has been improving dramatically over the last few years. There are already commercial products like Topaz’ Video Enhance AI that seem like they will inevitably lead to the “computer enhance” featured in so many science fictions shows, where it is used to pull some tiny detail out of an image, or a license plate, etc.

Ironically, that’s probably one thing it cannot be used for.

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Thoughts on Frame.io and Adobe

Now I’ve gotten over the surprise of the sale price, it really doesn’t matter what I think. What it comes down to this:

To Adobe, Frame.io is worth $1.275 billion. Ultimately that’s the bottom line. Adobe invest in anything they think will add value to the company and pay what makes sense for them.

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EditMentor sets a new standard in educating future editors

Up front I should state that I have been a fan of EditMentor’s founder Misha Tenenbaum’s work since he first founded EditStock.com. I was excited when he first hinted at what he intended with EditMentor, although I did not envy the challenge.

You see, I have a little insight. For a large part of my career I was an educational designer, and came up with the concept and content for our series of “Intelligent Assistants” – ultimately for Final Cut Pro (classic), Boris Red et al, Cleaner and Media 100. Our goal was simple: let people learn how to use a NLE or similar tool, while working in that app.

That took significant work, but by comparison with what Misha and CTO Gor Vardanyan have done it was nothing. Teaching functions in an NLE is easy. Teacher people why they should use those fi\unctions is not easy.

EditMentor is based around a functional NLE, that runs entirely in a browser (specifically Chrome). A NLE interface that is smart enough to report clip, marker and trims to the back-end for scoring! Add in a student management system, and a complete set of tools for building lessons, EditMentor is an amazing technological achievement.

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Rotoscoping and Infill tedium gets a new Machine Learning Replacement

In the back of my mind I always thought, if I had it to do over, I’d go into Visual Effects. The combination of creativity and technology that goes into VFX fascinates me. Then the reality of the industry that I read about and its financial woes, makes me rather glad my life took a different path.

But what would VFX be like if the tedium – rotoscoping and background removal – were simply a couple of clicks away. The video below compares “traditional” (up to Rotobrush 2 in After Effects) rotoscoping tools, against RunwayML for isolating moving actors, and in filling. Stick around to the end for a preview of ML creating cartoon images based on text descriptions!

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Reviewing Larry Jordan’s “Techniques of Visual Persuasion”

When Larry Jordan asked me if I knew anyone who might like to review his new book, Techniques of Visual Persuasion I immediately volunteered myself. After all who doesn’t want to “Create powerful images that motivate?” Plus, I always feel I can learn more about marketing and motivating people.

The first chapter of the first section – Persuasion Fundamentals – sparked off ideas as I was reading. It seemed like every new topic inspired and idea I could use to improve my marketing.

There is so much good information in the first chapter alone that I’m scheduling time to reread and apply the lessons.

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Content Creating Entrepreneurs

I do not immediately think about satirist Randy Rainbow as a Content Creator, but with a body of parody music videos that have hundreds of millions of views combined, he is obviously a successful Content Creator.

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We have a 10 Year Old App!

While it’s not the first app we released, Sequence Clip Reporter has now been serving the Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and Resolve communities for 10 years! That’s an impressive achievement for a small Independent Software Vendor.

Greg and I are fortunate that we are able to make a decent income serving our community with tools that give them more time to do what they really want to do, instead of the boring parts of post. We’ve seen other ISVs move on to employment where they can get a more stable return for their skills. Being an ISV is a hard business.

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The Terence and Philip Show Episode 85: Is It Time to Retire?

The discussion in this episode started with a recent article in The Atlantic Your Work Peak Is Earlier Than You Think. Is it time to think of a career as an evolving series of “careers?”

After listening to the show, what you you think?

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Has editing digitally reduced our ability to visualize?

When I think back to the days of editing tape to tape you had to both visualize how the series of shots were going to edit, but you also had to keep in mind and plan the current, previous and next edits at once. It was hard to go back and “trim” an edit! It usually entailed remaking every edit from that point!

With digital NLEs we make the changes instantly. We can go back five clips and trim an edit to make it flow better, without needing to reconstruct subsequent edits.

That flexibility has made it so much easier to edit visual stories. I certainly don’t miss those days, but has it reduced my ability to visualize the whole sequence, or doesn’t it matter?

Instantly preview and edit without that creativity killer: preroll alone is a huge step forward!