Apple says new Mac Pro is on the on the horizon...

And by which they mean, next year at the earliest. Yay.

Phil Schiller - “As part of doing a new Mac Pro — it is, by definition, a modular system — we will be doing a Pro display as well. Now you won’t see any of those products this year; we’re in the process of that. We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do.”


So apparently it's a ground-up redesign and there will be a new cinema display. My guess would be that they're probably aiming for a display that outclasses the current iMac's 5k display. Apparently it will not be a touch screen display, which is no shocker since Apple thinks the iPad Pro addresses everyone's touch and stylus needs (it does not even come close, but whatever).


Apparently one of the big issues with the current Mac Pro was that it was designed in such a way that it could not cool a single high-end graphics card, which limited upgrade options for new iterations of the Mac Pro. They also admitted that limiting the configurability of the machine pissed off a lot of customers (yours truly included) and limited it's appeal to Apple's pro customers. As they say, admitting you've may a mistake is the first step in fixing it, so I would say this is good news.


“We’re committed to the Mac, we‘ve got great talent on the Mac, both hardware and software, we’ve got great products planned for the future and as far as our horizon line can see, the Mac is a core component of the things Apple delivers, including to our Pro customers."


Of course once you've been burned as badly as we pro film/video people have been by Apple in recent history, you view statements like these with a little cynicism. I'm taking a "wait and see" approach and we'll see what Apple actually delivers next year. On the software side, Apple's "pro" apps have been dumbed down beyond repair, so they would also need a ground-up redesign to be worthwhile to anyone again, with the exception of maybe Logic, which seems to still satisfy a lot of people after they've turned on the advanced mode, or whatever it's called.


In the meantime, Apple is offering new configuration options on the current Mac Pro, none of which seem particularly compelling and if you've waited this long to trade in your cheese grater Mac Pro, you'd might as well wait another year and see what that brings.

More details are available at TechCrunch

Why I'm beginning to hate Apple after being a fanboy for the better part of two decades. WARNING: Lots of cussing inside.

Look at the beautiful piece of craftsmanship there, what a stunner, am I right? Yeah no. I use this kind of stuff professionally and I'm telling you straight off the bat, that POS should not have the "Pro" moniker tacked anywhere on it's overly svelte body.

I know the computer's been out for months now, so I'm a little late to the hatting on Apple game, but I just can't help myself. It's just so fucking stupid. They literally have no new performance or functionality to add to the computer, so instead of putting a true touch screen on the laptop, they put a little OLED bar that becomes contextual buttons. Well that's not terrible I guess, oh wait, it's at the expense of the already compromised dual function FN keys. Fuck you. That's just so annoyingly stupid, I just want to punch whomever came up with that in each of his four eyes.

Alright, alright, it's not the end of the world, calm down... wait, there's no USB3 ports. At all. WTF. It was bad enough that my 2015 Mac Pro only had 2 ports which, let me tell you, is a daily source of irritation for me. Ok, so I'll just use my Thunderbolt 2 dock that I bought to get back all the ports they deleted on the 2015 Mac Pro... wait, there's no Thunderbolt 2 ports!?!? Who the fuck decides to convince/force everyone who uses a Mac to switch to TB drives and then a generation later gets rid of it??!?!? This is worse than the whole display port debacle, but hey, at least they hung on to that for a few generations. Wait, that's gone too?? Motherfucker. Are you serious???

So what DOES it have, other than that stupid gimmick keyboard screen thing? "Oh well sir, could I interest you in a few hybrid USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports?". I honestly can't understand why they would pick two standards that are not actually standards, knowing that everyone who's owned a Mac before is going to have to go out and buy several dongles and adaptors to make all their peripherals work. Actually, never mind, I just answered my own question.

My next computer will be some sort of Surface thing that has advanced features like, you know, a fucking USB port. Or maybe one of those Razer laptops which manage to have USB3, USB-C, Thunderbolt and HDMI all in one package. Amazing.

So to sum things up, Fuck You Apple, you're an asshole.

Media Composer 8.8 musings... A.K.A. "Script Sync: The Return"

Hey, so I actually managed to skip and entire calendar year! 2016 is a blur, I guess I must have been busy. Anywho...

So to be honest I haven't actually used MC 8.whatever that much since it's release. I have used it a couple of times for small shorts that I've edited for friends but I haven't used it in a real production environment much. Most post facilities are still renting out MC 7.4 systems on "Cheese Grater" Mac Pro machines, as they're fairly unbuggy (yep, just made that word up) and still support Phrase Find and Script Sync.

Now the very latest, greatest version 8.8 supports Phrase Find and Script Sync (It was as if millions of Assistant Editors suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...) so I'm sure we'll finally start to see a slow adoption of MC 8 in post houses. Most facilities are reluctant to shell out for the premium priced but under specced and non-upgradable "Trash Can" Mac Pros though, so I'm not sure what's going to happen there. It's likely that we'll soon all be forced to work on HP Winblows machines soon, much to every creative person's chagrin.

Ah the steady technological march forward, well unless you're Apple, then it's the steady crippling of your own products and adding the "Pro" moniker to decidedly consumer oriented products, but I digress...

Media Composer 8.3 and the 4k timeline...

I'm about to cut a short for a friend which was shot on the Sony F55 in 4k, so this will be the perfect opportunity to test out Avid's new 4k timeline with proxy display and everything. I'm looking forward to not having to spend hours and hours of time transcoding, as with this small projects I don't have to they luxury of an assistant editor.

I'll post some initial impressions once I have some rushes in my machine.

UPDATE: It went fine, 4k though they mixed 4k and 1080p for some reason. MC 8 is such a huge step forward from MC 7. 

Interesting Article on the Rise of the GPU on Redshark News

RedShark News posted an interesting article a couple of weeks ago about the rise of the GPU. It's an interesting (if basic) overview of how GPUs have become more important over the years.

It's a fairly glossed over history of events, but as we all now know, having a high-power GPU is becoming more and more necessary in the Post Production world. For instance, I recently upgraded my GPU to an AMD 7970 3GB card in my aging 2008 3Ghz 8-core Mac Pro in order to speed up real-time performance in applications like Resolve and Smoke, which is has, hugely, when compared to my old Nvidia GTX 285. As an added bonus, when using Adobe Media Encoder to render an h.264 version of the feature film I'm currently editing, my render time has gone from about realtime (1hr 45min) to about 1hr 15min. That's a half hour savings, just from changing my GPU… now imagine if I had a newer Mac Pro! It's because of this kind of compute power that Apple decided to go with dual AMD GPUs in their new Mac Pro trashcans. They're now using OpenCL to accelerate their Pro Apps and with software like the Creative Cloud suite, Scratch, Smoke and REDcine-X all moving to give stronger support of OpenCL, it makes a lot of sense for creative types such as ourselves, to get a graphics card with a lot of OpenCL muscle.

For those interested, I picked up my AMD HD7970 used on Amazon for about $130. That's a whole lot of processing muscle for not a lot of money. It's a fairly easy card to get a deal on, since it's been replaced by the Radeon R9 280x (which is essentially the same card) and since it's a popular card with bit miners, there's lots on the used market. By the way, the AMD D700 cards in the new Mac Pro are also essentially 6GB versions of the 7970 on a custom board...

Anyways, I digress… read the RedShark article here: http://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/1965-the-incredible-rise-of-the-gpu

GPUs, CUDA, OpenCL and how to leverage them for Post

So, there's a lot of confusion, misinformation and half-information on the internets about GPU acceleration in your favorite NLE, coloring or conforming app and unfortunately the companies that make the software we all know and love are not particularly helpful on explaining what makes for a good graphics card for their systems, so I decided to break down what I know on the subject.

Editing via the lowest bidder… really.

This site has me a little concerned. www.videopixie.com
They've basically made it so that you submit the project you want edited and desperate editors bid on it, then you go with "best" (read: lowest) bid. But wait there's more! If you're not happy with the edit, you don't have to pay! So some jackass, who managed to bid lower than the other jackasses on the site, doesn't even get paid because you're not happy with the edit, which is maybe because you paid for the lowest bidder, or maybe because what you shot is shit. This just sounds like a fucking nightmare. But hey, thanks for demeaning and lowering the value of the work of creative artists even more. Awesome.

B Camera

A Director once said to me "There's no real plan with B-Cam, they're just there to grab shots when they can and hopefully they give us something useable."… I almost strangled him.

B-Cam can be very important to a shoot, but if you're not going to have them do anything important, you'd might as well just save the money send them home. The unfortunate thing is that too many directors have the same attitude towards B-Cam as the one I mentioned above. Unless it's a really experienced operator, who's normally A-Cam, and is doing the show as a favor to the DP, B-Cam should never really be left to their own devices. B-Cam is usually either an operator that doesn't have enough experience for A-Cam, or is experienced, but doesn't have enough of an eye for A-Cam. In either case, their shots are going to be pretty useless unless the DP is actively framing every shot for them, and they spend some real time on blocking.

Anyways, so what happens when you leave B-Cam to their own devices? You get hours of unusable shit that you have to sift through just in case they accidentally shit a nugget or two of gold. Oh, and if you're really lucky, some of it might actually be slated. That kind of shit didn't fly on film productions, no slate, no telecine. Shoot unusable, poorly exposed shit and you'll find a day-call op parked in your spot the next morning.

Avid Log Exchange IS Discontinued. D'oh.

Apparently someone saw my query on the Avid forums and wrote a brief article HERE.

It really is disconcerting that ALE is gone, as 24p points out, it really helps when moving logs between software and when I was an AE, I was always in the habit of running ALE files from the lab through Avid Log Exchange to make sure they're "clean", which, usually at least once a week they weren't. It's also handy for converting EDLs into log files for batch capture if you're having to rebuild an old project.

Anyway, it's annoying that it's gone, I'm sure a lot of people are going to be cursing when, like me, they eventually bite the bullet and upgrade to MC8. MediaLog is gone too btw, which was a useful tool to help keep your 2nd AE busy for a few hours  if your production was too cheap to have a lab log your dailies.

I'm starting to get nostalgic for the old days of tapes and floppy disks arriving every morning...

Avid Media Composer 8

I've recently upgraded my system from MC 6.5 to MC 8, yes I know, I know, never upgrade mid-project but honestly, it's  pretty simple task to roll-back to MC6.5 if I have problems.

So far so good, it's been a few days now and it feels like snappier and more stable than 6.5. I had briefly tried MC7 last year, and had had some stability and performance issues with full screen playback, and I'm happy to report that so far, MC8 has none of those issues.

For those one MC7, there's not really any compelling reason to upgrade at this point, as they haven't really introduced any new, tangible features to the software (other than licensing options) but if you buy an annual support contract before the end of the year (for $299), you'll get free version updates with it, along with latest version of Squeeze Lite, but I wouldn't bother with it, your older Squeeze still works and is more full-featured. At NAB I was assured that, while there wasn't much in the way of new features with MC8 now, by the end of the year they will have rolled out some significant updates.

Concerns: The current installer does not include Avid Log Exchange and does not support Phrase Find or Script Sync. So if those are options you need for your workflow, then you'd best stick with MC7. Of course, if you're an MC6.5 user and purchase the Upgrade/Support license, you'll have access to the MC7 installer and can continue to use it until Avid is able to eventually negotiate a deal with the companies behind Phrase Find and Script Sync. Why Avid has dumped ALE, I have no idea. It's one of their most useful tools. I tried using an older version, and for some reason even though it worked perfectly before I upgraded to MC8, it now crashes at launch. Avid has also seriously reduced the software bundled with Media Composer, but you can get it all back, along with the Symphony upgrade, for and additional $599.

A note about the new license structure: it seems that Avid has learned from the fallout around Adobe's Creative Cloud fiasco, and whether or not you get your latest version of MC via upgrade/support contract or perpetual license, it will still continue to work after your contract has expired. If you're on month-to-month, or yearly subscription it will stop working when the contract expires if you're not auto-renewing.

The Cut Needs More "Overlaps".

It's interesting when you get a note from someone that reads something like "As a general note, I think we need more overlaps (read: overlapping dialogue) in the cut/scene". Now, this is fairly ignorant note, and that's not meant as an insult to the person who gave it, but it does show that their film IQ is a little lacking. It's the film equivalent of "Needs more cowbell".

A dialogue overlap is a technique that can help you accomplish a number of things in the edit.

• It can help to smooth over a jarring edit, or to avoid a bit of worrisome camera work 
• It can help compress time or remove "air" in a performance
• It can help create a sense of conflict between characters
• It can be used to create an emphasis on the dialogue that is on character who's speaking

The above things are essentially editing tricks, but are useful to have in your toolbox. The main reason to overlap dialogue, is to show the character for whom the dialogue is most important. For instance, you have a scene where a Police Officer shows up at your hero's home and says "I regret to inform you that your sister was killed in a car accident last night". Now, is that information important to the cop? No, not really, he's just the messenger, but it's very important to your hero. That dialogue will have a lot more impact if it's played over your character who's receiving it, and then reacting to that information. You can even play it heavy handed and cut to the receiving character right as the cop says "your sister was killed in a car accident last night" for added impact. The other way to play it would be to have the character open the door to reveal the cop, then play the entire piece of dialogue on the receiving character and watch the emotion grown on the actor's face. Either are effective ways to drive home the importance of the dialogue, and who it's important to.

The reason why I hate arbitrary overlaps is because if your film is full of them, it takes power away from the technique, so that when you do actually want to use it for emphasis, it's impact is diminished. However, this can also be used to your advantage, for example, lets say you have a scene with your hero and the villain. They're bantering back and forth until the scene climaxes with villain saying "It was I, who killed your sister". Already, big, impactful information for the hero. So you can play it two ways, you can do what I described earlier and play that line on our hero's face to see the emotional impact, OR we can intentionally play the preceding dialogue in an overlapping fashion, then cut to the villain's for his "It was I, who killed your sister" line, and then cut to our hero for his/her reaction. So what does that accomplish? Well the previous overlaps reduce the importance/impact of the preceding dialogue, and so cutting to the villain for his line creates a strong impact on the viewing audience. Now, neither way is right or wrong, they're two different approaches to the same beat, but the point is to use overlaps in a deliberate fashion, not arbitrarily.

So this leads me back to the cut note and why it shows ignorance on the note giver's part. They don't really know what overlaps are for or how to use them to create emphasis in a scene, they just know they see them a lot in other shows, and therefore they should be more present in the one he/she's looking at now. When someone sits down to give notes on a cut, they are sitting down with the intention of finding things to criticize in the edit. That's just how it works. You'll always get dumb notes from people who only know what they're looking at doesn't conform to what they think everything is supposed to look like, it's just part of life as an editor. If they're sitting in a room with you, you can try and educate them but likely they're sitting in a office at the studio and your show is just one of 5 that he/she had to watch that day. If you have a strong director (or show-runner if your on a TV show), those kind of notes will likely either get filtered out or vetoed by them, but yes, they're still annoying when they do make it to you. :)

Keep rolling!

This has got to be a first… I have a take that contains 4 different setups! Like, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SETUPS! Wow.

Boom In The Shot

Footage ≠ Coverage

I don't know how you can have this much footage of one actor and still not get all their lines on camera. Okay, so it's not like I'm going to play every line on screen but you know, I'd at least like to get their first line on camera so people know they're in the fucking room!

Tailslate

Crossing the Axis

Uh yeah, there's this thing called "crossing the axis", you shouldn't do it, for reals. Now I have to deal with jarring cuts and eyelines that don't work, thanks for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-degree_rule

Err, what? How many pages?

I think this says it all...

Editor Meme

Wonderfully Horrific Editor Job Ad #1

Wonderful! This is exactly the unpaid opportunity I needed to break into the competitive field of Demo Reel Editing! Just imagine how awesome your DP reel will look... on my… editor's… reel… wait, what?

BTW, jobs are always for money, that's why it's called a "job". 

¹job

 noun \ˈjäb\

: the work that a person does regularly in order to earn money

Boom. Yeah, that just happened.

No Time to Slate

If I hear just one more AD utter the words "Cutting between takes costs us too much time and we won't make our days" things are likely to get messy.

You can't make your day because turning the camera and sound recorders off and on takes too much time?  Isn't that like an admission of incompetence?