Categories
Assisted Editing Item of Interest

Project Xto7 has been accepted into the App Store

Project Xto7 has been accepted into the App Store as Xto7 for Final Cut Pro (a clearer name). Our first App Store App of many I expect.

The subscript 2 was just too much for the app store – no provision to include it in the name, so we did a rethink. Smooth sailing into the store – approved in less than a week.

And there it is. Doesn’t show by search yet, but here’s the direct link:

Mac App Store – Xto7 for Final Cut Pro: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xto7-for-final-cut-pro/id487899517?ls=1&mt=12

Categories
Assisted Editing Interesting Technology Item of Interest

Automatic Fact-Checking Coming to the Web.

Automatic Fact-Checking Coming To The Web – Complications Follow http://t.co/1aTaVRQo

My interest in this story is simply because I want to harness that power to speed the pre-post process or understanding what content we have, in order to better (and more quickly) use it. It also confirms my long-held belief that we are – at least for some kinds of work – be able to semi-automate first assemblies.

In this context:

My best guess is that this will be a growing part of the behind the scenes internet services industry. Google would be a natural contender, indexing as it does much of the data one would need to reach a reasonable judgment. But Google isn’t really in the judgment business. Sure, you’ve got their “best guess for Patrick Swayze age” if you search for it (59!), but evaluating natural-language claims, political or what have you, doesn’t seem like their business. They store and index data and surface what you’re looking for. I think it will be a startup, or someone in academia like Schultz, who provides the first germ of this and starts a movement, though his own contributions may in the end be minimal. The competition will, hopefully, be based on the accuracy of their evaluations, just as the search engines competed on speed and simplicity, or device makers on build and design.

Although let’s not forget what my friend Doug Luberts pointed to: Colossus: The Forbin Project

Forbin is the designer of an incredibly sophisticated computer that will run all of America’s nuclear defenses. Shortly after being turned on, it detects the existence of Guardian, the Soviet counterpart, previously unknown to US Planners. Both computers insist that they be linked, and after taking safeguards to preserve confidential material, each side agrees to allow it. As soon as the link is established the two become a new Super computer and threaten the world with the immediate launch of nuclear weapons if they are detached. Colossus begins to give it’s plans for the management of the world under it’s guidance. Forbin and the other scientists form a technological resistance to Colossus which must operate underground.

I’m mildly more positive.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Assisted Editing

Should we put Event Manager X in the Apple App Store?

We currently sell a little utility called Event Manager X directly from our web store, which was really designed for selling much more expensive software, where the ability to log back in and check serial numbers and other status was useful. As it’s a $4.99 tool it seems perfect for the App Store and it has always been our intent to get it there, in among other projects.

Finally, some time has become available and we’ve been exploring what’s required and there’s a problem.

Categories
Assisted Editing Interesting Technology Item of Interest Metadata

Who’s looking at you? Apparently everything!

Two stories today that caught my attention are:

Facial Recognition App Detects, Captures Smiles Technology intrudes more & more into “human” territory

Meet Swivl, The Motion Tracking iPhone Dock That Always Keeps You On Camera More and more automatics!

Now, it would be really cool if Swivl tracked you and kept you on camera using facial detection but it does not: instead it uses a hand held transmitter/controller to “know” where to point the camera.  Even with that it will make a great addition to a video blogger, web episode producer as the producer/talent can move and have the camera follow them as they do.

Categories
Assisted Editing Interesting Technology Item of Interest

How I automated my writing career!

How I automated my writing career http://t.co/Q7ld3YHH

Naturally, any automation of “creative” processes interests me because I believe that some parts of the creative process of video postproduction can be automated. However, author Robbie Allen is right when he says:

Categories
Assisted Editing Interesting Technology Item of Interest The Technology of Production

Facial recognition in the cloud

Facial recognitiion in the cloud http://t.co/kznweJhC

At one level this is kind of scary – these were the folks who discovered a Social Security number way too often, from a casual photograph in the street – at the level of production automation it shows the direction we’re heading for automatically generating metadata for postproduction.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Assisted Editing

Announcing Project Xâ‚‚7

At LAFCPUG’s special meeting at DV Expo we showed, for the first time a brand new app from Assisted Editing (my day job): Project Xâ‚‚7 (10 to 7), which takes the brand new FCP X Project XML export and converts it through a simple drag and drop applet to FCP 7. FCP 7 sequence XML is generated and loaded directly into FCP 7.

Categories
Assisted Editing Metadata

prEdit: Edit paper cuts without the pain with any type of transcript!

I’m incredibly proud to announce that prEdit – our paper cut editing tool for Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro users – has been updated to version 1.5 with some great new features.

prEdit 1.0.x required the transcript to be generated in Adobe Premiere Pro or Soundbooth; or be processed through either of those applications to lock text to video. While prEdit 1.5 still supports that workflow, it now also works with:

Text, DOC and RTF formats that have timecode at (least) the start of each speaker. More frequent Timecode entries will make the text/video match more accurate.

3Play Media’s JSON format, also available from Media Silo, is supported and has absolute word accuracy. We recommend the JSON format for new transcripts in the future, for now prEdit works with what you’ve already got. (3Play Media also offer more conventional formats with the JSON format, so you can have multiple options for the same transcription fee.)

Categories
Assisted Editing Interesting Technology Item of Interest Metadata

Semantic Text Startup for Textual Analysis

Semantic Text Startup for: Cliff notes, keywords, key points and important facts derived from raw text. http://tinyurl.com/5sr5myk

One of the technologies I’ve been following, because I think it’s relevant to my goals with Assisted Editing (to take the boring out of postproduction). One piece of the “boring” is deriving keywords and concepts from spoken word (transcribed, of course).

Technologies like this, and others developed for the Library and Archivist industries, are becoming very sophisticated.

In an Assisted Editing context, the extraction of keywords (particularly) from a “chunk” of transcribed spoken word (let’s say an interview for a documentary), removes the need for a human to enter the keywords.

Having keywords is valuable because you can search for all instances of the keyword (to find common themes), which is something prEdit really does well, whether you’re going to build the initial outline manually in a tool like prEdit or Final Cut Pro, or use an Assisted Editing tool to get to a rough first assemble.

Categories
Assisted Editing Item of Interest Metadata

Can A Computer Do Your Job?

Can A Computer Do Your Job? http://tinyurl.com/4nt5kf8

The examples in the article are surprisingly “high end”, pitting humans choosing potential University entrants against a simple algorith, and the algorithm wins.

Could a computer do your job as a ‘creative’ individual? An editor, writer or producer?