The Infinite Desktop

Remember when we had dedicated Tektronix scopes?  Re-live the magic.

Well, maybe not yet but with Air Display by Avatron it's a step in that direction.  This iPhone and iPad app let's you extend your desktop over WiFi and as you can see, this is just the app that a lot of video editors have been waiting for.    It can really suck to edit on a laptop (even a 17") when you're used to editing on a couple of huge desktop monitors.  You feel cramped and crowded like you're trying to look out the window of the #23 bus during rush hour.  I'm glad I drive everywhere and I'm glad I bought this app - even though it's not quite ready for intensive pro media apps.  Sure, it's got quirky issues that you would expect from most version 1 releases but the promise may have a lot of people overlooking it's technical shortcomings.  Then again for $10 it's understandable to want to wait for the bug fixes.

The pros.   
 - More space for your canvas, toolbars, palettes, menus, etc...
 - Orientation in either landscape or portrait mode.
 - Touch-enabled
 - Wireless

Now my selfish laptop can have the After Effects canvas all to itself.

The Cons.

 - Huge battery drain.

-  Reduced image quality

-  Frame dropping

-  Reduced response time

Ok, so they won't be editing Avatar 2 on this but I could see editors of all stripes finding a reason to include this into their workflow.  In the very least it can give you another reason to justify buying a tablet.  And I can only hope when the more powerful iPad 2 arrives this spring coupled with the touch friendly OS X Lion this summer, we'll see a updated version of Air Display that will have us walking in the clouds.

Check out the more detailed review on Smoking Apples.

New Year, New Vine

Sometimes inspiration comes from the unlikeliest of places. I was hours into a day long trek through the deep south when I stopped at a convenience store for some, well - conveniencing. Who knew they were giving away free blog post photos! I snapped this photo of the door to the walk-in cold-storage locker. I immediately understood what context it was written in and it made perfect sense. A double entendre that's part plea and part threat. A marriage between Hal 9000 and Deep Blue. A voice from the void. It also kinda humanizes the space. Poor fridge, I'll make sure no one takes advantage of your ample shelf space and unenforced content management system. And then it hit me (not the loosely mounted security camera) but the idea of turning Splice Vine into a place where editors can learn to get more organized so that they can keep their cool. Ok, actually I've had this idea for a long while and this spring after months of spirited paper-balling and pencil-snapping we will launch the re-branded site. We will will be tweeting updates and planning on going live right before NAB. If you don't already, make sure to follow us on Twitter and be on the lookout for our Facebook page. Until then, keep your projects hot, your fridges cold and your mind organized.

 I found a great post on Recording audio with your video DSLR over on the Digital Photo Experience blog.  It's about time somebody put this out.  Even before I bought my Canon T2i I heard about how bad the audio was (so I guess that's why I never bothered trying to record any).   Maybe the 60D that's rumored to be released this fall will improve upon the situation. 

Other resources:

 - At dslrfilm.com they list the 5 best external audio recorders for DSLR filmmaking. 

 - The JL-DT454 preamp from JuicedLink.  It seems like it could work. 

- Of course the guys at Zacuto have figured out solutions to this problem and have created a video that shows you how to get Advanced Sound for DSLR's. 

- And once you get that audio into your NLE and you want to sync it up you;ll definitely want to use Dual Eyes by Singular Software.  It made its' debut at NAB this year and has been a hit ever since. 

Close Encounters of the Third-Party Kind

MediaMover FCP is here!  I didn't even know they were working on a version for Final Cut Pro.  The original version for Avid has been around for years and has been a God-send.  This tool will bring much needed order to the Lord of The Flies Final Cut Studio ecosystem.  I'm curious to see what workflows will emerge using this, Xsan and Final Cut Server.  Time will tell.

And bringing order to After Effects is Zorro the Layer Tagger.  Great name and even better function.  According to the creator Lord Alvarez:  Zorro makes selection and isolation sets easy and possible in after effects by adding  tags to layers. Similar to the way you would tag photos in Flickr, you can tag layers in your comps and then select or isolate those layers in groups by using the tags.  I can't believe I'm just now using this script - it's been around for a while.  Be sure to check out the other scripts on the site while you're there.

But why stop at tagging layers when you can even create your own effects to use on them.  At least in FCP.  Using FXScript you have the power built right into Final Cut Pro.  Ok, so this method is getting long in the tooth and most developers are using Quartz Composer nowadays - either way, real-time visual programming is here to rescue us from bad glows and page turns.

 But sometimes you just gotta spend the money for 

the sexy plug-ins and that's when you get Trapcode.  

You hopefully already own these peerless plug-ins but 

you may not know how to get all the magic out of them 

that is possible.  Not anymore.  Red Giant has recently 

released the  Official Trapcode Training Suite by Peder Norrby 

- the developer of Trapcode.  You can stream them or download

but either way it will now be easier to shake the pixie dust out of

your fingers and on to the screen.

And Finally, Eran Stern of Creative Cow demonstrates how to create a jumpy and squishy animation using the power of expressions.  Like a wise clown the tutorial is both funny and enlightening.  It will put a swing in your step and your animations and possibly make you look 20 years younger.  And who knows, you might even get the courage to become an After Effects scripting/expressions guru by trying out all of the code over on Dan Ebbert's legendary site Motion Script. 

Splice Vine Links #15

Software

Everybody has been buzzing about the new phoenetic search tool introduced at NAB last month called Get.  It uses the art and science of phonetics to index your FCP project.  Even though it's still in beta and won't be out until July, it appears to be at least as accurate if not more so than the similar speech to text option in Adobe Premiere CS4. 

iPad

The CG channel has seen the future of magazine ads and it is interactive.  Will this translate to more jobs for content creators?  Time will tell but the wheels are in motion.  And increasingly it looks like more than just a distribution tool, the iPad can be used in production as well.  Editor Chris Fenwick explores how the iPad can be used as a camera monitor.  I've been waiting for this workflow since the iPad was first announced.

Next Generation

The new Light Peak technology that I wrote about back in December 2009 is making news again.  Recently, Intel gave a demo of the fiber optic technology at at an industry trade show in Brussels.  Light Peak promises at least 10Gbit/s in and out of computers and Intel's chief CTO "expects that number to increase dramatically over the next year with almost no limit to bandwidth potential".  It will supposedly be available to manufacturers by the end of 2010.  There's even speculation that it will overtake the soon to be new standard of USB 3.0 that is already shipping. 

Education

Remember the days when you actually had to go to a classroom to learn the latest post software?  Well, there are still good reasons to get hands on training but there is an awful lot of augmenting you can do on your own nowadays.  Everybody knows (or should know) about Lynda, Macprovideo and even YouTube.  But there are also other great niche places to learn and stay current with new technology and it's often free.  PSD.tuts has just posted 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design.  This should be really helpful for video editors trying to transition into incorporating more motion graphics and visual effects.

Free Stuff

One of the things that I've started doing is compiling as many free design elements as I can find off of the web and placing them into my Drop Box folder.  That way no mater where facility I am at and what computer I am using (if it is connected to the internet) I will have a access to my creative files.  These are usually vector files, stock photos, fonts, icons - you name it,  I'll stockpile it.  What have I found lately?

- 25+ Free Vector World Maps

- A huge library of free Photoshop brushes and patterns

- Qvecors - free quality vector graphcs

- 18 wireframing, Mockup and Prototyping tools to plan Website Designs

No Country for Old Tech

Gas Station Guy: I didn't put nothin' up.
Anton Chigurh: Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it. You know what app is on this iPad?
Gas Station Guy: No.
Anton Chigurh: The Multi-Touch Color Correction app - Gradiest. It's been traveling 22 months to get here. And now it's here. And it's either good or bad. And you have to say. Call it.
Gas Station Guy: Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
Anton Chigurh: Everything.
Gas Station Guy: How's that?
Anton Chigurh: You stand to win everything. Call it. 


 The big announcements at NAB last week was just another reminder of how the only constant in tech is change. The new MacBook Pro that was just released is in some instances 3x faster than the MacBook Pro I just bought in the Fall of 09.  CS5 will not run on my old G5 Quad - heck, even the last version of After Effects won't run on it.  But even the first generation Mac Pros can not (or at least it is recommended that they not) run Smoke on Mac.  iPhone 3G and earlier will not be able to take advantage of the new multi-tasking feature in the iPhone 4.0 software release.  And only iPhones that record video (the 3GS model) can take advantage of the new relatively robust video editor that is coming out called VeriCorder.  As for all those people that do not as of yet have an iPad (myself included) - our day of reckoning is coming.  There's an app somewhere in development right now that has our name on it.  I might be able to resist the color-correction app Gradiest or the iPad teleprompter rig but how much longer am I going to be able to hold out? 


Wendell: It's a mess, ain't it, sheriff?
Ed Tom Bell: If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here. 

NAB Wrap-up

There were a lot of big announcements made at NAB this year.  A detailed recap of them would take many hours.  So instead, here's the list:


 - There are a million posts that look at the new features of the Adobe CS5 suite but here is a post that looks specifically at how After Effects CS5 will be much faster.  And here Scott Simmons looks at how Premiere Pro will be much faster thanks to the new Mercury Playback Engine.

- Philip Hodgetts discusses Avid Media Composer 5.0 which has a lot of game changing updates including the ability to edit ProRes and Red files natively.  And Pro Video Coalition just released a post on Avid's cloud-based editing technology.  This feature is not in their new release but hopefully it will be in the next major update.  I hope this takes off because it will be a major leap forward for remote post-production.

- Mocha v2 is out and it's 64-bit among other things.

- the news that took NAB by storm:  Davinci's Resolve is now on a Mac for $995.  Boom.  Watch out Apple Color.

- Sapphire plug-ins go 64-bit. 

 - Autodesk announces 2011 versions of Flame, Flare, Smoke and Lustre.

- Digieffects launchs three new $99, 64-bit plug-ins

- "Get" - the phonetic search plug-in for FCP.

- The Arri Alexa.  Great news for us - bad news for RED.


Also, if you want to hear a great discussion about the NAB announcements check out the podcast wrap up by the guys over at fxguidetv.