Category: Interesting Technology

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Interesting Technology Metadata

What is new from Intelligent Assistance?

Sorry about the little haitus in posts. It’s certainly not because I’ve got nothing I want to talk about! (Ryan Seacrest’s $13 million deal for American Idol and why doesn’t Robert Iger’s outrageous salary go down when Disney’s profit drops 26%, but they’ll either wait for later today or tomorrow.)

The pause has been caused by a couple of reasons: number one of which is that this week (and the next two) I’m looking after myself. Partner Greg is in Australia for a Visa renewal and I’m once again realizing how much he does to make our lives easier. (Mine particularly).

Also, we’ve been releasing new software, updating older products and revising earlier books. In fact we’ve been doing so much that I can’t announce stuff in press releases yet!

About a month back I finished completely revising Simple Encoding Recipes for the Web 2009 edition. Anyone who purchased in 2009 should have received a download link. Announcements to everyone else are coming or you can buy the update for $4.95. (It’s a complete rewrite).

Last week the revision of The HD Survival Handbook 2009-2010 was finished and, again, those who purchased in 2009 will have received an email with an update link. All other previous purchasers will have received a $4.75 upgrade offer. It’s been about 30% rewritten, almost an additional 20 pages, so the upgrade price represents the value add that’s gone into it. The “upgrade” is the full new version, not changed pages. Also this year we went with Avid support – codecs, hardware and workflow. Given that’s now a 233 page US Letter book, it’s a huge project to revise. So much has changed in a year.

In between, Greg’s been working hard to release an updated First Cuts to First Cuts Studio by adding in the functionality of one of our new applications, exceLogger. Have I mentioned we love customer feedback? It’s made Sync-N-Link a much stronger product. Naturally we want the same feedback from customers of our other products. Good, bad or feature request, all feedback is welcomed. (Begged for!) exceLogger was a feature request for First Cuts for Final Cut Pro, and is available as a stand-alone application for those who just want to log in Excel but merge with captured media in Final Cut Pro.

BTW this now makes  First Cuts Studio great value: At $295 it includes Finisher (US$149) and exceLogger (US$69) – so the Auto-edit functionality of First Cuts is just $77!

Greg also developed two additional applications that fit perfectly in our metadata focus. miniME (Metadata Explorer) when we discovered (just four years after Apple told us!) that the QuickTime metadata from IT-based digital video sources (non-tape) is preserved in FCP but only visible in exported XML. So, Greg wrote me a simple tool to view the hidden metadata and export to an Excel spreadsheet. (That functionality is free in the demo version.) The paid version lets you remap that metadata into visible fields in Final Cut Pro.

Finally, the night we demonstrated miniME and exceLogger a friend of mine again suggested an idea for software that would report clips used in a Sequence – video or audio – as he has to provide reports to his clients, but equally useful for music reports. Greg worked on it for a while and this week we released Sequence Clip Reporter. (Yeah, we tried to find a better name but that’s descriptive and stuck.)

Now there’s a lot of work goes into writing software. There’s the work on the actual functions of the software, but then there’s questions about interface and how functions should work. Then there’s software updating to be added, serial number support to be added and feedback mechanisms added. All beyond the actual functionality.

Me, I get to design a new logo for each piece of software, write website and postcard copy, write a press release and send it out. Plus Help files need to be written so people can actually use the software. So, around any new software there’s a lot of work that doesn’t actually involve much software writing!

And that’s why posting has been sparse.

Categories
General Interesting Technology Video Technology

What we learnt from the editor/software face-off at NAB

Let’s start by saying we’re working with a very specific type of video production: trade-show style video where there is an A-roll interview and limited b-roll that goes specifically with the A-roll. These are generally shot on a trade-show booth with shots of product from the booth.

Finisher was originally conceived as the book-end to First Cuts. First Cuts will save documentarians many weeks of work getting to first cuts, with the ability to create first cuts almost instantly while you explore the stories in the footage you have. These cuts are complete with story arc and b-roll. We worked on the assumption that an editor would probably delete the b-roll while they worked on cutting the a-roll into the finished form. (Although not necessarily: I cut one piece while keeping the b-roll around to save me having to go find it again.)

Finisher was suggested by Loren Miller of Keyguides fame who wanted an “editing valet” that would take his a-roll and add b-roll and lower third back in. That suggestion became Finisher.

However, I’ve been long interested in the application to these trade-show type edits that had never been near First Cuts and had to use much simplified metadata. My gut told me that an experienced editor would be faster but the cost effectiveness of a novice with Finisher would be compelling.

I was wrong. As it turned out, I ended up being the editing contender. I was happy about that because I trust my abilities – I’m fast and effective at this type of video. Up against me was the software’s co-developer, Greg Clarke. Greg’s first FCP lessons (other than import XML, export XML, open a Sequence) were on Sunday afternoon ahead of a Tuesday afternoon shootout. To say his editing skills and FCP skills were rudimentary is a huge understatement!

Greg had his edit complete in 27 minutes from being presented with raw footage. (Both competitors saw the footage together in raw form in a new project.) This video shows the Greg + Finisher cut. It’s acceptable but could definitely use an experienced eye.

My cut took 40 minutes to add in lower third and all the b-roll. There is a third cut, which is where I took the Greg + Finisher cut and added my editorial experience to that, which took an additional 11 minutes, for a total of 38 minutes. Yep, almost exactly the same time to get to a finished result.

Until you work on the cost side of the equation. Let’s assume that an experienced editor is going to work for $45 an hour for this type of work. (That’s approximately the Editor’s Guild rate for an assistant on a low budget documentary.) Let’s also assume that we’re paying Interns $15 an hour.

Rounding to nearest quarter hours for easy math, my cut was $33.75 to the producer; the basic Finisher cut would be $7.50 and the Finisher plus novice with editor tidy-up (however you would write that elegantly) would add another $7.50 of craft editor on top of the cost of the Intern cut.

Under half price.

Scaling production

Here’s where it gets exciting (for me anyway – I am easily excited). The Digital Cinema Society and Studio Daily produced some forty videos during NAB 2009 with the talented Chris Knell editing. Let’s assume that Chris got paid the hourly rate he should have and worked 10 hour days (with breaks) to get forty videos done within the week. By rights he should have been paid in the order of $1800 for that time.

One craft editor can tidy and clean four videos an hour (five based on my numbers, but let’s say four). Each video will take an Intern about 30 minutes to prepare a video for the craft editor. We need two Interns to feed the skilled craft editor four videos an hour. (2 Interns producing two cuts with Finisher per hour). Now 10 videos can be produced in 2.5 hours instead of 10 (getting them to the audience faster).

Faster and cheaper: Cost per day is 2.5 x 45 = $112.50 plus 2 x 2.5 x 15 = $75 for a daily total of $187.50. For the four days the editor also gets to enjoy NAB – show or hospitality – and the total cost to the producer is $750, not $1800. The massive reduction in time means that one crew could shoot and edit without damaging their personal health.

So, what I learnt at the Face-off is that Finisher is a tool I can use as an editor (more on that shortly); it helps scale large volume production to get results out faster; and it can substantially reduce the cost of the mass production of these types of video. It was not only Studio Daily producing forty videos but FreshDV, Mac Video and  MacBreak were also producing video and could have achieved similar savings.

Analysis

Both approaches required logging the material. During the Face-off we both trimmed or subclipped our b-roll to individual shots. (Here’s a tip we both used: drop the b-roll clip or clips in a Sequence and add edits, deleting bad sections of b-roll as you go, then convert to independent clips and name something appropriate. Finisher will use the name as metadata).

We also trimmed up our A-roll adding Markers as we went. For Finisher the Markers were added to Sequence Markers and given a duration that the novice wanted to cover with b-roll. I was placing Markers into the A-roll clip – so they would move when I cut the clip – so I could locate where b-roll shots would go based on topic.

What I learnt was that, if I adopted the convention from Finisher and basically added comments to my Markers that matched clip names, I could automate the process of laying in clips to the Timeline – 2 minutes for the Finisher round trip vs 10 or so to do it manually. It’s basically an automation tool.

Plus, as an editor I’d be closer to being finished as I’d place my Markers a heck of a lot better than a novice does/did.

But it’s really in the scaling and cost reduction for mass production that came as a surprise – a pleasant one.

Categories
Interesting Technology The Technology of Production

What were the technical trends at NAB 2009?

There certainly wasn’t much new in NLE at NAB. Avid had already announced, Apple are keeping to their own schedule that apparently doesn’t include NAB (although Apple folk were in town) and Adobe have a 4.1 update coming for Premiere Pro CS4. The only new NLE version was Sony’s Vegas, which moves up to version 9. With, of course, RED support. Can’t forget the RED support – it was everywhere (again).

Lenses for RED, native support, non-native support: everyone has something for RED, or Scarlet/Epic coming up. Lenses are already appearing for those not-yet-shipping cameras.

Even camera technology seemed to take a year off. I certainly became convinced of the format superiority (leaving aside lenses, and convenience factors) of AVCCAM, which is a pro version of the consumer AVCHD, with higher bit rates. The evidence supports the hypothesis that AVCCAM at 21 or 24 Mbits/sec should produce a much higher quality image than MPEG-2 at the same bitrate. Before this NAB I was only convinced “in theory”. Of course, choose the AVCCAM path and you’ll be transcoding on import to FCP or Avid to much larger ProRes or DNxHD files, which is an optional (and recommended) path for HDV or XDCAM HD/EX.

Everyone has a 3D story to tell. Panasonic promise 3D-all-the-way workflows “coming” and there were all sorts of tools on the floor for working with 3D, projecting 3D, viewing 3D…  As one of my friends quipped “The presentations were amazing. What’s more I took off my glasses and the 3D experience continued around me!”

I confess to being a little torn on 3D (and Twitter, but that’s another post). I’ve seen some really amazing footage, and some that simply tries too hard to be 3D.  I also worry how we’ll adapt to sudden jumps in perspective as the 3D camera cuts to a different shot. I noticed a little of this when viewing an excerpt from the U2 3D concert film. There are natural analogs to cutting in 2D – in effect we build out view of the world from many quick closeups, so cutting in film and TV parallels that.

I can’t think of an analog for the sudden jumps in position in 3D space and perspective that would help our brains adapt. Maybe we’ll just adapt and I’m jumping at shadows? Who knows. I don’t plan on 3D soon.

Nor do I expect to see Flash supported on a TV in my home for at least a couple of years. That’s the problem that Adobe faces in getting support for Flash on TVs and set-top boxes. For a start it will require a lot more horsepower than those boxes have already, but Moore’s law will take care of that without a blink. A bigger problem is the slow turn-over cycle of Televisions. Say it’s 6 months before the first sets come out (and none are yet announced). It’s probably ten years before any particularly provider can rely on the majority of sets being Flash enabled. Assuming it catches on.

So I rather see that as a non-announcement. Remember the cable industry already has it’s own Tru2way technology for interactivity on set-top boxes.

I am much more interested in Adobe’s new Strobe frameworks, even though it could take some business away from my own OpenTVNetwork.

For the geeky, my favorite new piece of technology for the show would have to be Blackmagic Design’s Ultrascope – an HD scope package, just add PC and monitor to the $695 hardware and software bundle for a true HD scope at an affordable price.

I’ve already given my opinions on the Blackmagic Design announcements, AJA announcements and Panasonic announcements during the show.

Two more trends this year: cheaper and better storage and voice and facial recognition technologies are becoming more widespread.

I am amazed at the way hardware-RAID protected systems have fallen in cost. Not only the drives themselves but the enclosures are getting to the point where it’s no longer cost-effective to build your own, certainly not if you want RAID 5 or 6.

Five years ago the only company demonstrating facial and speech recognition were Virage, who I didn’t see this year. But there are an increasing number of companies that have speech recognition that seems to be, overall, about the same quality as that bundled with Adobe’s Premiere Pro and Soundbooth CS4, i.e. it can get reasonably high in accuracy with well paced, clean audio and no accent. Good enough for locating footage.

Facial recognition seems to be everywhere, from Google’s Picassa to news transcription services. Not only do they recognize cuts but they also recognize the people in the shots, prompting when a new face is recognized.

How long before the metadata that powers First Cuts doesn’t have to be input by a person, again? That’s what really excited me about NAB 2009.

Categories
Interesting Technology

What do Blackmagic Design’s NAB announcements mean to you?

For the details of the announcements, see my news report at the Digital Production BuZZ.

Among a blizzard of NAB announcements Blackmagic Design’s Ultrascope is another of Grant Petty’s breakthrough products. Grant has always had as his goal to bring down the price of truly professional tools without sacrificing quality.

Until now, HD monitoring has not kept pace with the drop in prices for other parts of the HD production workflow. The Ultrascope runs on commodity PC hardware (i.e. cheap) and a 24″ display to bring six SD or HD Waveform Monitors into a single display, for a total investment of around $2000. The bundle includes a DeckLink card and the Ultrascope software for $695: bring your own PC and monitor.

Like the VideoHub router, Ultrascope breaks through the price/performance barrier. All we can wish for now are future software updates that add Vectorscope and other scopes to the display. (All things in time I guess.)

The optical fiber support in HDLink and a new DeckLink card positions Blackmagic Design well for the “big iron plant” business. Optical Fiber is a little out of my league but it is becoming increasingly important in those large facilities and previously needed to be converted to HD-SDI before capture. The new card takes the conversion out of the picture for direct capture to anything offered.

While I didn’t mention it in the main press release, I was interested to notice that there is now Linux support for Blackmagic cards and their Media Player software. Linux is not widespread in the post industry except in the large facilities that would also be likely targets for VideoHub and optical fiber support.

Seems to me that Blackmagic Design are providing more and more for the higher end facility while maintaining low cost products for the wider production community. And that’s a good thing.

Categories
Interesting Technology

How will AJA’s NAB announcements affect you?

For the details on the releases see my story at the Digital Production BuZZ  AJA’s NAB Announcements.

The Ki Pro is the most exciting announcement I’ve heard at NAB so far this year and is likely to garner a number of awards before the week is out. A direct shot at Panasonic who are constantly touting AVC-Intra as “pristine 10 bit full raster capture”, that quality is now available to any camcorder, regardless of format, direct to ProRes 422. It’s even possible to shoot with an SD camera and have the Ki Pro scale to HD before converting to ProRes. At $3995 it’s comparable to similar recorders from Panasonic for AVC-I and AVCCAM.

It’s a smart device – recording either to removable hard drive modules that come complete with FW800, or to Flash RAM modules in the ExpressCard 34 form factor that will go directly into any modern Mac laptop. I’m told there’s also an ‘exoskeleton’ that mounts the Ki Pro under the camera between camera mount and camera so it doesn’t need to hang off the camera.

This is a great product for those who mostly want to shoot, say, XDCAM EX/HD but require higher quality at times; or for those with older cameras who want to move forward to a ProRes workflow. Unlike the JVC GY-HM700 or GY-HM100 “Final Cut Pro ready” camcorders, the Ki Pro is full raster ProRes master quality while the JVC records in XDCAM HD within a QuickTime movie.

Definitely the Ki Pro is an amazing product, if only they could get the price down a little.

The Io Express appears to be a direct challenge to Matrox’s MXO 2, at a slightly lower price point. The key difference is that the Io Express, like the Io HD, converts to ProRes 422 in hardware before sending it to the computer. The MXO 2 pushes uncompressed video through the ExpressCard34 slot (or PCIe slot on a desktop) where it can optionally be converted to ProRes on the CPU. (Of course Matrox have new products as well, the MXO 2 mini at $449, which I’ll cover shortly.)

With fewer inputs than the Io HD (although not that many fewer, mostly reduced audio input support) the Io Express at US $995 is pretty darned cool.

Finally, the Kona LHi and Xena LHi (essentially the same card with minor differences due to platform support) seems to be everything the Kona 3 was with added support for HDMI in and out but at only US$1495 it’s cheaper than the Kona LH/LHe with more capability than the Kona 3 that was twice the price. Plus the new cards have analog input support missing from the Kona 3.

A great set of new tools for us all to play with. Now, let’s see what everyone else has been up to!

Categories
Interesting Technology

What did Panasonic reveal at their NAB 2009 Press Conference?

With Panasonic executives lining the wall, Nation Marketing Manager for Services, Jim Wickizer reminded the crowd of Panasonic’s role in the last 10 Olympics and revealed that Vancouver 2010 will be shot exclusively with Panasonic P2 HD -  the official recording format for the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympic games. Interestingly he noted the format would be 1080i60, which is not my first choice for fast action sports.

John Baisely, President Panasonic Broadcast waxed lyrically about MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) compression, commenting that it’s used in a “full range” of cameras, conflating the all-I-frame AVC-Intra used with P2 cards, and the AVCCAM range of camcorders featuring long GOP H.264 MPEG-4.

In probably the most exciting announcement, Panasonic revealed the P2 E series of cards. The E series are faster at ‘up to’ 1.2 Gbit/sec but more importantly, it is a more economic series, with 64 GB coming in under $1000 ($998); 32 GB $625 and 16 GB just $420. Unlike the original P2 media, the E series has a limited life of five years. The 16 and 32 GB cards will be available in May with the 64 GB coming in August. This significantly changes the cost dynamics of P2 media making it much more affordable to a wider range of people.

For the first time that I noticed, Panasonic have stopped using 720p24 as their benchmark for record time on P2 media, instead stating that a 64 GB P2E card will record one hour of 1920 x 1080 (full raster) 10 bit, 4:2:2 Intra-frame recording. With five slot cameras that’s a lot of continuous recording time at the highest HD resolution.

Director, Product Marketing Joe Facchini took the stage to reintroduce the HPX-300 – originally released just a few months ago – with 3MOS chips. 3MOS is Panasonic’s way of saying 3 CMOS chips. With 10bit AVC-Intra 4:2:2 recording, 20 variable frame rates and dynamic stretch it is a very nice camera. What was new is that there is going to be a customized studio configuration, for under $10,000.

Joe also addressed the rolling shutter issue that affects some CMOS implementations, like that in the HPX-300 (and most CMOS camcorders for that matter). He announced that a future firmware update for the HPX-300 will have “Flashband Compensation” to accommodate flashes that take less than a full frame, by borrowing information from an adjacent frame.

New to the P2 range are the:

AG-HPG20 P2 Portable 10 bit, 4:2:2 general purpose portable player/recorder weighing just 2.5 lbs (about 1 KG). The HPG20 has HD-SDI in and out for easy integration in existing workflows.

AJ-PCD35 five slot P2 card reader that connects to the computer via PCIe for high speed transfer.

AJ-HRW10 – a P2 ‘rapid writer’ that offloads up to five P2 cards at a time to two 3.5” hard drive RAIDs simultaneously. It includes the PCD35 and connects via Gbit Ethernet to the rest of your facility.

The only new P2 Varicam is the AJ-HPX3700, which outputs 4:4:4 RGB dual link signals live from the camera and records HD in camera to 4:2:2. It is positioned as a premium production Varicam.

Robert Harris, VP Marketing and Product development took to the stage to talk about the success of the AVCCAM format – based on the consumer AVCHD format but with higher bitrate options for improved quality. Pitched as “for those who can’t afford P2 independent frame products” like schools, event videographers, churches, etc.

AVCCAM records to ubiquitous SD media at data rates comparable to HDV. Like HDV AVCCAM is long GOP, although AVCCAM is H.264 not MPEG-2. H.264, which is also known as the AVC coded (Advanced Video Codec for MPEG-4). AVCCAM is gaining NLE support and theoretically provides significantly higher quality at any given data rate. H.264 is generally considered to be 2-4 times higher quality than MPEG-2 (HDV and XDCAM HD/EX).

So, while both HDV and AVCCAM produce Long GOP material, all else being equal, the AVCCAM footage will be significantly higher quality than that from HDV. All else being equal!

Panasonic announced a new camera to join the existing two products in the AVCCAM line: the AG-HMC70 and HMC-150. The new camera – AG-HMC-40 is a compact handheld camcorder (prosumer form factor) that weighs in at around 2.2 lbs (1 KG) with three 1/4” 3MOS chips, 12x optical zoom, Dynamic Range Stretch and Cine-like gamma. The HMC-40 records full raster 1080 at 60I, 30P and 24P; 720p60 and SD. Well equipped with outputs the camera features HDMI; USB 2; Composite and Component out. An optional XLR input adapter has manual level control. The HMC-40 will be available in August. The HMC-40 will carry an MRSP of $3195 and records to standard SD cards.

Also in the announcements from Robert:

HMR-10 – a compact, portable, battery powered recorder/player with  3.5” screen, HDMI and HD-SDI output, HD0SDI Input, USB port, audio input, remote start stop. At the highest bitrate it offers 3 hrs full raster recording or 12 hrs at 1440 x 1080 and a lower bitrate. (1440 x 1080 matches HDV and XDCAM HD/EX at below 50 Mbits/sec).

Billed as “HD Quality” the AG-HCK10 is a compact camera head with 3MOS 1/4” images. It teams with the HMR-10 where iris, focus, zoom and remote control come from the deck over HMR cables up to 10 meters each.

Both deck and compact camera head will be available in August with the HMR-10 coming in at $2650 and camera head similarly priced.

That completed the new product announcements but Robert Harris returned to the stage to commit Panasonic to supporting 3D throughout the entire camera-to-home workflow. He noted that the recent Monsters vs Aliens release had 28% of the screens showing a 3D version but those screens took in 56% of the total revenue! No wonder the industry is heading for 3D. The slide showed a single camera that had two lenses on the body – most unusual looking as the appeared to merge into the body.

No timescale was revealed for the Panasonic push to 3D but they are previewing technologies, particularly display technologies, on the NAB 2009 booth in the Central Hall.

Categories
Interesting Technology Metadata Video Technology

What are the different types of metadata we can use in production and post production?

I’ve been thinking a lot about metadata – data about the video and audio assets – particularly since we use metadata extensively in our Intelligent Assistance software products and for media items for sale in Open TV Network. And the new “Faces” and “Places” features in iPhoto ’09 show just how useful metadata can be.

Back in the days when tape-based acquisition ruled there wasn’t much metadata available. If you were lucky there would be an identifying note on or with the tape. For linear editing that was all that was available at the source – the tape. The only other source metadata would be frame rate and frame size, and tape format and perhaps some user bits with the Timecode. With a linear system that was all you could use anyway.

With non-linear editing we moved media into the digital domain and added additional metadata: reel names; clip names, descriptions etc and with digital formats we’re getting more source metadata from the cameras.

But there are more types of metadata than just what the camera provides and what an editor or assistant enters. In fact we think there are four types of metadata: Source, Added, Derived and Inferred. But before I expand on that, let me diverge a little to talk about “Explicit” and “Implicit” metadata.

These terms have had reasonable currency on the Internet and there’s a good post on the subject at Udi’s Spot “Implicit kicks explicit’s *ss.” In this usage, explicit metadata is what people provide explicitly (like pushing a story to the top of Digg) while implicit metadata is based on the tracks that we inadvertently leave.

Actions that create explicit metadata include:

  • Rating a video on Youtube.
  • Rating a song in your music player.
  • Digging a website on Digg.

Actions that create implicit metadata include:

  • Watching a video on Youtube.
  • Buying a product on Amazon.
  • Skipping past a song in your music player as soon as it gets annoying.

We didn’t think those terms were totally useful for production and post production so instead we think there are the four types noted above.

Source

Source Metadata is stored in the file from the outset by the camera or capture software, such as in EXIF format. It is usually immutable.  Examples:

  • timecode and timebase
  • date
  • reel number
  • codec
  • file name
  • duration
  • GPS data
  • focal length, aperture, exposure
  • white balance setting

Added

Added Metadata is beyond the scope of the camera or capture software and has to come from a human. It can be added by a person on-set (e.g. Adobe OnLocation) or during the logging process. Examples:

  • keywords
  • comments
  • event name
  • person’s name
  • mark good
  • label
  • auxiliary timecode
  • transcription of speech (not done by software)

Derived

Derived Metadata is calculated using a non-human external information source. Examples:

  • speech recognition software can produce a transcription
  • a language algorithm can derive keywords from a transcription
  • locations can be derived from GPS data using mapping data (e.g. Eiffel Tower, Paris, France) or even identifying whether somewhere is in a city or the country
  • recalculation of duration when video and audio have different timebases
  • OCR of text within a shot.

Derived metadata is in its infancy but I expect to see a lot more over the next few years.

Inferred

Inferred Metadata is metadata that can be assumed from other metadata without an external information source. It may be used to help obtain Added metadata. Examples: 

  • time of day and GPS data can group files that were shot at the same location during a similar time period (if this event is given a name, it is Added metadata)
  • if time of day timecode for a series of shots is within a period over different locations, and there is a big gap until the next time of day timecode, it can be assumed that those shots were made together at a series of related events (and if they are named, this becomes Added metadata)
  • facial recognition software recognizes a person in 3 different shots (Inferred), but it needs to be told the person’s name and if its guesses are correct (Added) 

We already use inferred metadata in some of our software products. I think we will be using more in the future.

So that’s what we see as the different types of metadata that are useful for production and post production.

Categories
Distribution Interesting Technology

How will video be distributed on the Internet?

At his Blog Maverick, Mark Cuban reveals the “Great Internet Lie”, which apparently is that the utopian dream of distributing “Television and Film” over the Internet is doomed. He goes on to “conclusively” prove that it’s not possible to reach Network-sized audiences (even cable network) simultaneously across the Internet.

And he’s right. Certainly I’ve got nothing to refute his numbers. Real time streaming is difficult and expensive. And totally unnecessary. Broadcast Television and its cable/satellite brethren deliver simultaneous viewing to many millions of people at a time, without incremental cost. The bigger the audience, the more profitable the show because there’s not incremental cost and bigger audiences equal more viewers for advertisements.

The trouble is, that’s trying to resolve a new problem with an old solution. (When you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.) The problem that will need to be resolved in the future is “how do we deliver a broad multiplicity of program choices tailored to individual tastes and smaller per-show audience numbers?” 

Programming has to be available when people want to watch it, not at some “appointed” time. It’s been more than five years since I watched real-time television. PVRs and digital downloads replace broadcast schedules. Even for the big-pipe broadcasters appointment television is dying. Broadcast will eventually become the home of sports (real time delivery to big audiences is highly desirable); American Idol and reality TV. These are the only shows that will garner large-enough audiences to meet the mass-audience requirement of a broadcast station or network.

vintcerfSo, how do we deliver that multiplicity of program choices – from traditional and new media suppliers – to meet customer demands? None other than Vint Cerf, one of the “inventors” of the Internet, feels that the future of video on the Internet is downloading instead of streaming real time like a broadcaster.

Already the majority of the video on the Internet is downloaded – progressive download (a.k.a. fast start) drives YouTube, Google Video and pretty much every How to and travel video website on the Internet. It’s only the traditional media folk that think emulating their old business is the way to build a new business, so Hulu and ABC.com stream. (Hint: it’s never been the case and isn’t now.)

Progressive download requires much simpler technological configurations. It’s far less sensitive to the variability of speeds on the public Internet and shared neighborhood nodes, and it meets the needs for the future, instead of the past.

Advocates of real time streaming attempt to draw a distinction between a viewing and “ownership” of a copy. Real time streaming never leaves a copy on the viewer’s hard drive; download does. But realistically a viewing = ownership (potential) has been the de facto reality since the introduction of the Betamax in 1975. Ever since then every broadcast has had the potential for people to keep a personal copy of the show. Digital only accelerates that with built-in PVRs and DVRs in cable and satellite boxes. 

One trend that defines the current state of mass-market television is increased choice and control over viewing schedule, moving the viewer away from the broadcast or cable programmer to effectively programming their own entertainment channel. This is the trend that will increase in the future and that’s why Mark Cuban is completely right and totally missing the point.

Addition: It seems like I’m not the only one questioning Mark’s assumptions. The Forrester Blog for Consumer Product Strategy Professionals posted “Mark Cuban Goes off on the Internet Video Lie” pointing out that Broadcast and Internet delivery were complementary media. They also have links to some of their other writings on the subject.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Interesting Technology The Technology of Production Video Technology

Why Final Cut Pro specific cameras?

At the MacWorld Final Cut Pro User Group Supermeet on Wednesday night (Jan 7th) JVC announced two new ProHD camcorders. The 1/4″ progressive sensor 3-CCD compact (prosumer form factor) GY-HM100 and the shoulder mounted 1/3″ sensor GY-HM700.

There are a couple of things that make these two cameras interesting. They record in QuickTime native format ready for native editing in FCP. No import, no conversion – just copy and edit (or edit off the card). They also use SDHC compact memory cards instead of expensive proprietary formats. Both cameras have two card slots and with two 32 GB cards, can record up to 6 hours continuously for just a couple of hundred dollars.

You can read up on the rest of the specs but there are three points I’d want to make.

As far as I know this is the first camcorder made specifically for Final Cut Pro. While there have been some earlier attempts to make Avid-friendly camcorders, they didn’t hit it off in the marketplace. Clearly JVC see Final Cut Pro as a big enough market, with at least 1 million unique registered users (and probably twice that if unauthorized copies are counted) to justify doing a specific camcorder.

Secondly, increased use of SDHC. As well as these two new cameras the AVCHD/AVCCAM (Panasonic HMC-150) use compact flash as does the Red One camera. These are multi-vendor, non-proprietary formats that are readily available up to 32 GB. Take that P2 and SxS media! Of course, all these sources use compressed video of some format.

The third point is the most interesting one. JVC acknowledge that the camera does 720P at 19 or 35 Mbit/sec; 1080i at 25 Mbit/sec (aka HDV) and 1080P at 35 Mbit/sec using an “Enhanced MPEG2 Long GOP Encoder”. Traditionally ProHD has been working within the HDV specifications but there is no 35 Mbit/sec spec for HDV, particularly not one that’s already supported by Final Cut Pro. It appears that JVC are using Sony’s XDCAM EX format or something very like it, for these two new cameras.

This is not the first time JVC has worked with the Sony format. Back in September 2008 JVC announced support for XDCAM EX media and created a version for 720P licensed from Sony, which only supports 1080 in XDCAM EX.

Increasingly, Sony’s XDCAM EX format – at 35 Mbit/sec – is the grown up version of HDV.

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Apple Pro Apps Interesting Technology

Assisted Editing – the beginning

I originally wrote this to a friend over the weekend and I thought that, with a bit of an edit, it might be interesting to some others.

Last week we released two new pieces of software through my long-time company, Intelligent Assistance, Inc: First Cuts and Finisher. Collectively we call the category “Assisted Editing” because they, well, assist the editor and going with Assistant Editor was getting confusing.

What I think makes this so exciting is that it’s the first real innovation in editing since Non-Linear Editing was popularized with the release of Avid’s Media Composer version 1, 19 years ago. 19 years is a long time in the computer business. Non-Linear Editing has certainly developed since that first release of Media Composer. Then 160 x 120 16 gray images were the “state of the art” while now we effortlessly manipulate High Definition (and beyond) images in our systems. But, despite this development, the way NLE systems work today is much the same as they did 20 years ago.

What Media Composer did, was to make the “cost” (time, effort, expense) of an edit much more affordable. With linear editing bays, making small changes to, or alternate versions, of a program was difficult (read expensive). Non-linear dropped the cost of a change, revision or alternate edit dramatically. Assisted Editing achieves similar dramatic cost reductions by allowing the computer (and specifically our software) to do some of the work of the editor.

Back at NAB in April we announced “The Assistant Editor” for long form documentary editing. After three months of beta testing we have now released that application as “First Cuts”. First Cuts (for Final Cut Pro right now but we’re exploring other platforms) take the log notes made by a documentary editor (or their assistant) and turns them into very, very fast first cuts. This allows editors and producers to explore the stories that are available in the material, and to juxtapose different versions while they seek inspiration and direction.

First Cuts take the log notes that long-form documentary editors have traditionally made (and their workflow) and makes them much more useful. The logged clips are exported from FCP as XML and opened in First Cuts, where the editor chooses opening title and lower third template (Motion templates preferred), the duration and story keywords that will be used for this edit. Within seconds it creates an edit with beginning, middle and end to the story arc, with opening title placeholder and fully finished Lower Third titles used appropriately to identify speakers on camera. The edit will also have b-roll used appropriately and the audio on the b-roll is lowered in volume and faded in and out. It’s an edit a producer or finance person can watch without being distracted by jump cuts or lack of visual interest from the absent b-roll. You can see the process in a quick five minute tour at the First Cuts home page.

First Cuts is primarily focused on long form documentary editors because they have the discipline to enter log notes (if they don’t they will have a very hard time of it) and because they need to explore a lot of material. The payback is significant. Fortunately there are a lot of documentary editors working with Final Cut Pro.

We discovered that one way of working with First Cuts would be to find a cut that was close to what was desired, and then the skilled editor would add the polish, trim and emotion that a first cut lacks. In doing that we discovered that blowing away the b-roll and titles was the cleanest workflow. Since that removes a lot of the time saving, we decided to make a product that restores that finishing effort. Hence, Finisher.

Finisher takes a project with an edited a-roll sequence (aka “radio edit”) and adds Lower Third titles and b-roll as above. This is the perfect bookend product to First Cuts.

But we worked out that we could do a lot more with Finisher for those who don’t want/need to enter a lot of log notes. Finisher will work with any of the log notes that are provided for First Cuts, but does not require them. In fact Finisher can randomly choose b-roll to place in a Sequence. Location of b-roll can be forced with Sequence Markers, so obvious jump cuts are covered first. While it can run with random selection it will use b-roll search terms in the comment field of those Sequence Markers and search for matching b-roll if available.

You can see some examples of Finisher’s work, including a guided tour that shows a couple of different ways it can work, at the Finisher home page. Particularly interesting is the final example – ‘Ode to the Beach’ – because that is a simple audio recording, some b-roll pulled out of my stock collection from Final Cut Server, and Finisher adds b-roll to the cut (with Sequence Markers) randomly. The result – for almost zero effort – is quite acceptable and may even be useful in some situations.

Not too shabby for a version 1 product.