Monday, January 31, 2011

The Killer App for Post in 2011: The Cloud

To The Cloud!
As sure as rain and random as computer errors, we'll soon be getting bold predictions for NAB this year.  Some of them will be coy teasers.  Some of them will be completely speculative.  Regardless of what happens, you will undoubtedly be disappointed that your dream update/product/service/merger didn't happen - again.  That's okay because there's one thing that continues to get better.  The Cloud.

Google's ultra-fast broadband network ambitions
You know, the thing that you are relying on more and more for downloading, uploading and even encoding.  The feds promise "to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of all Americans" in the next 5 years.  Uh, ok, that's great you think but how does that help me today?  Well, it acknowledges how inadequate our network infrastructure is and it helps keep the dialogue flowing on efforts to improve it.  This will hopefully create more demand from consumers for faster, more reliable and hopefully cheaper internet connections.  This allows smart-people-containing-companies like Google to work on potential solutions that will get us rip-roaring speeds sooner than 5 (achingly long dial-up modem) years.

Air Display for iPad
More attention being given to the cloud is great news because we are relying more and more on virtualization.  You may not use the web based compression site encoding.com that I mentioned earlier but I'm sure you use a host of other web services.  Almost every editor I know uses You Send It, Vimeo or DropBox - regularly.  More and more clients and producers are realizing the power of collaborative, synchronized document services like Google Docs, Zoho, Office Live and Evernote.  Mmmm...Evernote.

But what's really interesting is how editors are starting to leverage these new media tools to create workflow hacks they could have only dreamed of a few years ago.  And when you throw iPhones and iPads into the mix, things really get crazy.  We're constantly reading about post-production apps for iOS devices like PhotoShop Express, AJA DataCalc and Cut Notes.  But not enough attention is given to the creative workarounds.  Some hacks are obvious like the app Air Display I recently wrote about that extends your desktop onto the iPad/iPhone.  A not so obvious hack would be to take screenshots of hard to remember menu settings and put them on flickr, where they can be sorted, tagged and called up at a moments notice, anywhere.  This extends the functionality of iOS VNC apps like Screens and can be a lifesaver for remote troubleshooting.  And according to the research firm Gartner, more people will gain access to the Internet through mobile devices than with personal computers. (NY Times 1/31/11).  So imagine when these web-enabled devices become faster.  MC Siegler on This Week In Tech thinks there will be some interesting things that people will be able to do with video editing like, on the fly.   Even to non-editors the possibilities are obvious and endless.

How do you use The Cloud in post?  Leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter.


No comments:

ShareThis