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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
I’ve long struggled with a good way of expressing the diverse range of work that’s done under the banner of “professional production.” Then inspiration hit me at last month’s LACPUG meeting when I discovered that Blackmagic Design Product Specialist Shawn Carlson used to be a chef in fine dining restaurants: What if we compared the diversity of professional production to the diversity of professional food service.
There’s a very clear distinction between food prepared at home (hobby/amateur) and food prepared outside the home and purchased. There is no “prosumer” in food service, as indeed there shouldn’t be in production.
Professional food service encompasses a very, very wide range of experiences. From Michelin Starred and Fine Dining restaurants, through formal dining, casual dining, quick service, take out, all the way down to food trucks and hamburger huts. Wherever you work, whichever market segment the food service, there’s no doubt that everyone is in professional food service. They are professionals.
I have no problem equating the Studio Film (and high end TV) to the Michelin and Fine Dining restaurants. High cost, high value and a unique experience unlike other dining opportunities.
Fortunately for my budget they’re not the only type of professional food service, and “Hollywood” isn’t the only type of professional production. There’s a lot of different types of professional production as there are food service. Weddings, Events, Journalism, Corporate, Education, Social Media, Product marketing, Product Help, video catalogs, etc.
There’s not one type of “professional” in either industry.