Because I am researching my journey through my earlier writings on metadata and interactive story telling I came across my ‘review’ of NAB 1998Â thanks to the Wayback Machine. This was the year everyone was coming to terms with ATSC – digital broadcast – and how it was to be implemented. From my review it seems my attention was on interactivity and QuickTime 3, neither of which is surprising.
A few years ago, we considered supporting transcripts in Lumberjack System. At the time our goal was to quickly prepare for an edit, and transcriptions took days and cost serious money.
Two years ago we supported the alignment of time-stamped transcripts to Final Cut Pro X Clips and a year ago, introduced “magic” keywords, derived by a cognitive service. Since Lumberjack doesn’t (yet, I might emphasize) support a speech to text service internally, what are the options and what do they tell us about the state of play for transcription in April 2017?
With the announcement of Resolve 14 today at NAB 2017, it seems that Blackmagic Design have their sites clearly on Avid’s Media Composer: intentionally or not.
I’ve long wondered what apps would be most threatened by Blackmagic’s rapid development of Resolve.
Adobe’s suite of tools and dynamic link makes a powerful argument for that platform. Although Resolve has improved integration with Fusion, it’s not yet at the level of Dynamic Link. Not that Dynamic Link is the most robust of Adobe tech. Despite being free, it’s hard to see Resolve directly threatening Premiere Pro, After Effects et. al.
Apple’s Final Cut Pro X/Motion combination features a new look at the editing interface – probably the reason it’s the most used professional NLE now – Â and those who use it, love the Magnetic Timeline. The most common response to today’s Resolve announcements was “but it’s track based.” Â Once you’re a fan of the Magnetic Timeline it’s hard to go back.
There are other players like Media 100, Edius and Vegas that will definitely be threatened by Resolve Free or the full version for just $299, but the one company that – mid term – is most threatened is Avid.
Resolve has already replaced Avid’s excellent (but left to die) Symphony grading and with major audio improvements – integrating their Fairlight purchase – and shared project upgrades directly threaten core focuses of Media Composer and ProTools.
Fortunate or not, while these are key parts of Avid’s current software lineup, there are a small percentage of Avid’s overall business.
Very interesting to see how the new features and pricing affect adoption, and who will be most threatened. If you’re looking for a modern, track-based NLE with good audio, great color grading, and excellent DIT tools and collaborative workflows gaining maturity, Resolve deserves a version 14 look.
Alex Gollner (aka Alex4D) has seen the same issues:Â Blackmagic Design has sights set on Avid with DaVinci Resolve 14
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.
While projecting the changes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) might bring about in the future, it was interesting to look back and see just what didn’t exist 10 years ago. Keep in mind that the Internet itself is only just over 30 years old.
In September 2010 Apple purchased Swedish facial recognition company Polar Rose, and today we learn they’ve purchased Israeli startup RealFace: “a cybersecurity and machine learning firm specializing in facial recognition technology”.
What is different between the two purchases is that this latest is based on machine learning.
…the startup had developed a unique facial recognition technology that integrates artificial intelligence and “brings back human perception to digital processes”. RealFace’s software is said to use proprietary IP in the field of “frictionless face recognition” that allows for rapid learning from facial features.
Another step towards our software identifying and labelling people in our media.
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.
2016 was a year of consolidation and growth for Greg and I: citizenship, green card, artificial intelligence and a house and yard dominated the year. 2017 looks like being another interesting and exciting year.
I’d like to introduce you to our first new piece of software for about two years: FindrCat. FinderCat is an easy-to-use app that converts your Final Cut Pro X Keywords into Finder Tags, so you can then filter and search for your media via Finder. In a world of Media Asset Management (MAM), and Digital Asset Management (DAM) this is a ‘no M’am’ asset organization tool.
The biggest advantage is that the FCP X keywords now travel with the media files, and will return to FCP X as keywords when re-imported, on any system.
I guess it won’t be any surprise that I have a lot of metadata entered in my Aperture photo library. In fact the lack of metadata support in Photos is the reason I can’t migrate there.
The real value of metadata is to help find photos, but sometimes the right piece of metadata is beyond value. For some paperwork related to my current husband’s ‘green card’ I needed the date of birth of my former wife. I could not remember it, but looking in my photo library, I found one taken on her 23rd birthday.
Of course I have the original date set on my photos, even those that I scanned from prints or slides. Because I had added the metadata when I knew it, I now had the all-important date I needed, and was able to file the paperwork.
Never underestimate the value of metadata!