There are two things that really bother me about technology marketing these days. One is when manufacturers describe their product saying: "This
automates a complex task so that even a child can do it; no thinking required." This "automation makes tools easier for everyone to use" does not make me feel warm and fuzzy when I consider many editors are struggling to earn a living in today's overly-competitive media industry. This phrase makes it seem that soon we'll be replaced by high school kids working for free - let automation remove creativity because creativity is hard. We understand the reality but clients believe the hype. Harumpf.
But a bigger issue is when companies say: "Look how easy it is to
create professional-quality productions with our gear!" then back it up with a live stream or marketing launch so lame that would get a media pro fired if they produced it. This was the situation Boxcast found itself in last week. Boxcast launched
BoxCaster Pro - their state-of-the-art pro-level streaming hardware - with a live stream so poorly done that it serves as a
cautionary tale for live streaming. It's my
lead story.
On the plus side, the
Los Angeles Creative Pro User Group celebrated their 18th birthday last week with a look back at the origins of digital media with an interview between
Mike Horton and
Randy Ubilos. Mike is the head of the LACPUG and Randy invented Premiere. And Final Cut. And Final Cut Pro X. This was a fascinating conversation back to our beginnings and I have the
highlights as my
second story this week.
My third story answers a reader's question about roles and audio mixes in
Final Cut Pro X. This builds on past articles I've written about roles. Whether roles are new to you, or you are trying to make them do more, this article can help.
Webinars continue on vacation for another week due to the July 4th holiday here in the States. We'll be back in two weeks.
Last week, I asked readers to contribute their
opinions on my training. I was overwhelmed by the response. Not necessarily in number, but in sentiment.
Here's the link to what they said.
Oh!
Closed captions are increasingly important to all of us. Last week,
FX Factory released "Caption Converter." This converts, edits and translates captions and subtitles stored inside SubRip (SRT), iTunes Timed Text (iTT), WebVTT (VTT), SubViewer (SUB), Adobe Encore Text Script and Adobe Premiere Pro Markers files. I haven't used this myself yet, but wanted to let you know it exists.
Here's the link. ($99 US)
The
Digital Production Buzz devoted its show last week to
user groups. We spoke with
Mike Horton (LACPUG),
Carey Dissmore (IMUG),
Sue Lawson (ChiCPUG) and
Wendy Woodhall (LAPPG). In today's world of "everything online all the time," are user groups even relevant anymore? It was a series of interesting conversations, including where they see user groups heading in the future. Listen to the show
here.
That's it for this week. As always, I'm interested in your comments. Chat with you next week. In the meantime,
edit well.
