The present and future of post production business and technology

Audition officially coming to the Mac http://bit.ly/cOHThO

It seems that Adobe’s move back to the Mac with it’s CS video and audio apps has gone well, since they now plan to bring Audition – Soundbooth’s big brother – to the Mac. I guess that Intel Inside helps keep things compatible!

Earlier this month, video showed the software running on a Mac, but without any apparent acknowledgment from the developer. The arrival of Audition could be important, as it will compete in some respects with other professional audio production tools, such as AVID’s Pro Tools and Apple’s Logic. Adobe will try to carve out a niche in broadcast and post-production work, a representative says.

Audition – originally Cool Edit – is highly regarded and should be a good addition to the creative arsenal for Mac users.

Why Ad Agencies are making a mistake with Flash http://bit.ly/9ie1JV

The use of Flash ads could be the thing that prevents the message:

Many advertising agencies are hung up on having a fun, flashy, aesthetically appealing website that may actually end up working against them. With Adobe Flash struggling to update and revamp their service, the Flash can be the very thing that buries your potential website’s audience reach, traffic and search engine optimization tactics.

And btw, the web is only surfable if you block Flash (and ads in general). Otherwise my eyes bleed!

Adobe Delivers Flash Player 10.1 – Most People Can’t Use It http://bit.ly/9rvosv and http://tcrn.ch/9g8DFS

This quote from TechCrunch is spot on:

Adobe can prove Apple’s decision to bar Flash from running on some of the world’s most popular and capable smartphones and the iPad wrong, but only by doing what it is doing now: by actually shipping Flash for Mobile and showing that it knows how to make it an integral part of the mobile experience, without slowing things down.

Gig Om is a lot less positive with it’s headline:

Adobe Delivers Flash Player 10.1 But Most People Can’t Use It

Ouch! Kevin Tofel continues:

The key word in Adobe’s press release today being “expected,” which appears three times. Platforms other than Android are expected to integrate and work with Flash Player. All of the latest Android handsets are expected to see Froyo, which is required for Flash Player 10.1. The production version of Flash is expected to be available as a final production release for Froyo devices. Translation: Adobe hasn’t delivered anything to most handsets today and the fate of Flash Player is increasingly out of Adobe’s hands.

YouTube Expands Catch-Up, Primetime TV Content Library With WWE Deal http://tcrn.ch/bMHjN4

I’m not sure that I’m the demographic for “current episodes of a suite of World Wrestling Entertainment-related programming” but it’s an important step in YouTube’s evolution to have premium quality entertainment.

Since it began serving full-length episodes last year, YouTube has primarily offered content that was old (in some cases, really old), and it hasn’t been a place people would look to catch an episode of a show they missed the week before. In contrast, recent content has been Hulu’s bread-and-butter, as users log on to catch the episodes they’ve missed. YouTube obviously has a long way to go, but expect to hear about more deals in the near future — I doubt they would have called out the fact that they’re growing their library of catch-up content if it wasn’t the start of a new trend.

Google Counters Apple’s HTML5 Showcase With HTML5Rocks http://tcrn.ch/cCWSht

More examples of what can be done right now with HTML5 (Javascript, CSS) that are pretty amazing.

Google and Apple are arguably the two biggest companies attempting to push HTML5 forward. Notably, both also dominate updates to the WebKit rendering engine (with both Safari and Google Chrome use). But both also seem a bit at odds with HTML5 because both have popular mobile platforms that use native applications not coded with HTML5. In recent weeks though, the two companies (which are in the middle of a war with one another) seem to be trying to show that each is fully committed to the open web.

HTML5Rocks features nine tutorials on HTML5 feature. And there’s a code playground to let you mess around with your own code. Obviously, all of this works well in Chrome — but it also works with Safari. That said, Google made sure to add in this note:

A guide to 3D display technology: its principles, methods, and dangers http://bit.ly/c0G4TI You might as well know the ‘enemy’.

A good background on how stereo vision works and why 3D cinema and television are not the same as 3D in the natural world. Some very nice illustrations of what each eye sees for each type of 3D system. Plus, why and for whom 3D is dangerous.

The penultimate paragraph of a long (and very useful) discussion:

There you have it. 3D is a promising and powerful tool, and I look forward to watching movies and playing games with it — once its initial growing pains are over with. Roger Ebert was impatient enough to condemn the technology at this early stage, and as you have read, there are plenty of reasons for him to do so. But I have faith that 3D can be applied tastefully and judiciously by those creating the media, and viewed with moderation and care by those of us who choose to consume it.

Fair Use: Expanding Opportunities for Documentarians http://bit.ly/8X5MNl

From a documentarian’s perspective. The conclusion of the article:

Fair use is not a rule but a case-by-case analysis. How copyrighted material is used determines whether it is fair use, so context is critical. When judges decide cases, they pay great attention to the actual practices of the communities of practice, for instance documentary filmmakers.

Asserting their shared standards allows documentary filmmakers to do their work knowing what is normal. In the event of litigation, the standards also would help judges understand filmmakers’ working conditions.

The expansion of fair use has not harmed documentarians’ rights as owners, because fair use is a limited right, designed not to impinge unduly on the marketplace.

Rather, it has permitted more work to flourish more easily, releasing work into the marketplace more quickly. It is widely used by large content holders, though they tend to use it very quietly.

How To Pitch [Liz Shannon] Your Web Serieshttp://bit.ly/bdIwFI

Liz Shannon Miller reviews web series for NewTeeVee and outlines what web series producers can do to make it more likely that they’ll get coverage. But it’s not just web series that should pay attention. If you’re pitching anything to any media outlet, you should follow these principles.

And I’ll add one more bonus from my seminars: before you ever pitch anything to anyone, know exactly what they cover and why. When you make the pitch, draw the connection for them: “I’m sending this to you because it’s relevant to your audience based on this and that other thing I’ve already ready from you.”

Scribd’s Decision To Dump Flash Pays Off, User Engagement Triples http://tcrn.ch/bELUlE

I didn’t see this coming:

Over the last few months, user engagement on Scribd has surged, according to CEO Trip Adler, thanks to its transition to HTML5, the introduction of the iPad, and Scribd’s Facebook integration. Of these three factors, Adler says the conversion from Flash to HTML5 was by far the greatest driver for his document sharing company. According to Scribd’s numbers, time on the site has tripled in the last three months.