For those in the LA area who want to understand what all the Lumberjack System hype is about, this is your chance to get an in depth look at Lumberjack System, and get your questions asked. Everyone leaves with a one month free trial.
Come join us at LumaForge in Hollywood Thursday March 2nd.
With Lumberjack System we don’t focus enough on Story Mode. Of late Transcript mode and Magic Keywords have taken the main focus, and of course the primary real-time logging and pre-editing tools are well known by now.
But Story Mode is ultimately move valuable if the project continues more than a one or two day shoot. Story mode lets us send Lumberjack logged Final Cut Pro X Events or Libraries back to the Lumberyard app to create string-outs from all the footage.
This recently became very valuable for a recent project: extracting the conversations on Final Cut Pro X from nearly 20 episodes of Lunch with Philip and Greg for an upcoming documentary.
I’ve (along with many other people) have been beta testing SpeedScriber, an unreleased app that combines the power of an API for speech to text with a well thought out interface for correcting the machine transcription. Feed the SpeedScriber output to Lumberyard (part of Lumberjack System) and extract Magic Keywords and in a very short period of time (dependent largely on FCP X’s import speed for the XML) and you have an organized, keyworded Event with a fully searchable Transcript in the Notes field.
Rather than take up more screen real estate with a new button, we repurposed an existing function in Lumberyard. Previously, any logged Keyword Range less than 5 seconds long was ignored. We figured anything that short was a mistake. Now it creates a Marker.
The Marker will be named using the Keyword as the name, but it will be applied at the starting point as a single frame Marker.
As you probably all know, I have two day jobs heading Intelligent Assistance Software and Lumberjack System. We’re very proud of the work we’ve done through both companies. We make a decent income from them for sure, but what makes us particularly happy when our tools get people’s work done faster. They get to go home to their families earlier and production has less drudgery.
So it pleases us greatly when that gets recognized, as it did this trip.
The Final Cut Pro X Creative Summit is on again in October this year.
Three days of cutting-edge training on the latest FCPX and Motion.
Hear directly from Apple Product Managers. Learn from top industry experts.
Apparently I slip in as an ‘industry expert’ with these sessions
10:30am Saturday Using Transcripts in FCPX
10:30am Sunday   Production Kit in a Bag
Greg and I will also be showing the Intelligent Assistance Software apps, and will have some amazing things to show with Lumberjack System.
In this episode I get to spend a lot of time talking about the background the Lumberjack System, in the context of the very unsexy topic of workflow, particularly automating the workflow. I share many of the background decisions related to Lumberjack System – our logging and pre-editing system for Final Cut Pro X – including why it’s limited to FCP X.
Other topics include automation; Digital Heaven’s announcement of SpeedScriber; how Lumberjack has developed based on user, and use, feedback; the post NAB development of noteLogger; Prelude LIveLogger and the Premiere Pro ecosystem and NLE market shares; how development resources are allocated.
I’ve mentioned in passing that I’ve been learning to sing over the last two years (almost to the day). Well, it seems like a reasonable outlet to sing about the things I love and do. Here’s a short musical tribute to Lumberjack’s three modes: real-time keywording; story building; transcripts and magic keywords. Adapted lyrics by Philip Hodgetts
Just over 7 years ago I started identifying the types of metadata that would be useful in post production. One that particularly excited me was derived metadata: using a computer algorithm to derive useful information for use in post production. At the time the only example I could suggest was deriving location and type of location from GPS data.
We can now add another: Magic Keywords in Lumberjack System. Magic Keywords are derived from transcripts and are an addition to Transcript mode, added to Lumberjack at NAB 2015.
The production kit for The semiSerious Foodies – Greg’s and my new project – fits on one small bag I can comfortably carry on my shoulder. Each episode of the video part of The semiSerious Foodies starts in a restaurant, and continues to local markets, on into whatever kitchen we have available when we travel.