On the latest episode of the Critical Path podcast Horace Dediu and Moisés Chiullan talked about the future of TV. Horace said that he thinks that the future of TV is in applying software engineering tools to story and interactivity development. Apple have some tools that could achieve some of this.
I wonder if the Final Cut Pro Share menu will one day include the iTunes Store as a destination
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Alex Gollner (@alex4d) February 07, 2013FCP.co has reported in detail on Apple’s new Methods, systems, and apparatus for collaborative media editing patent:
Methods, systems, and apparatus for collaborative media editing. In one aspect, a method includes presenting, to an originator, an originator interface including multiple media panes; establishing a connection with a collaborator; receiving from the originator a selection indicating an item of media content associated with at least one of the multiple media panes; transmitting to the collaborator the selected item of media content; and enabling inter-user communication relating to the selected item of media content in the originator interface with the collaborator. Further, a connection can be established with a second collaborator, the item of media content can be transmitted to the second collaborator, and communication can occur in the originator interface with the second collaborator.
The ‘method’ (patent parlance) they use as a example in the abstract is shows an editor sending media clips to collaborator A and having a window-based chat session about prospective changes. Collaborator A then goes on to share the task with a new collaborator, B, who gets the footage and who can appear in the chat window of the original editor.
Here’s the picture FCP.co used to illustrate the news:
They pointed out a possible code name for a collaborative media application is included in Apple’s mockup: ‘Light Table.’ In this case the role of the user on the project is ‘Assistant Director,’ the tasks listed are Storyboarding, Acquisition, Organising, Placing Media, Effects, Collaboration and Delivery.
In which I explore the kinds of features that might be coming to Final Cut Pro X that competitors will find very hard to compete with.
Although some people think that Final Cut Pro X was released before it was ready, the features that have been introduced in updates have made it more appealing to experienced editors.
As editors look forward to updates, the features that appear can be divided into two categories: those that help Final Cut Pro X catch up with competitors and those that clearly supersede the rest of the market. At the moment the main competitor seems to be Final Cut Pro 7, or perhaps the imaginary ‘improved and more stable plus a few more features’ update to 7.
Apple have dealt with strong competitors during technology transitions before: in the case of MacOS X, Mac users wanted to stay with OS 9. In the case of iOS, Apple were competing initially with cheap non-smartphones and Blackberries.
The fact that the iPhone and its OS (which was eventually branded iOS) wasn’t quite ready at launch followed on from MacOS X. MacOS X 10.0 and the iPhone 1 were for pure Apple fans and developers. As the years went by, features were added to both platforms that caught up with and superseded competitors.
This post compares the major releases of iOS and Final Cut Pro X, and shows that the first few versions were more about the promise of a new platform and later versions started to deliver on that promise.
Over the last few days there have been a couple of pieces of evidence that point to Apple launching a new version of the MacPro very soon – in time for their Worldwide Developer’s Conference next week.
What does this mean for Final Cut Pro X users, and users of other post-production software?
Many in the industry have accused Apple of giving up on professionals in order to go after the consumer dollar. The basis of this accusation is fact that the MacPro hasn’t been updated in almost two years and that Final Cut Pro X was launched without many features found in Final Cut Pro 7 and that it seemed to be designed for novice consumers.
My guesses as to why Final Cut Pro X was launched the way it was are for another time. My question is: What will it mean if Apple announces a new MacPro next week?
Judging by the user interface of Final Cut Pro X and MacOS X Lion, it seems that Apple want to move us away from accessing complex file systems and letting us manage our projects from within full-screen applications.
If this so, the way that Final Cut works with effects and helper applications will have to change. For now Motion-created effects, titles, transitions and templates must be installed in special folders in the Movies folder in the home folder. If we need to import Final Cut Pro 7 timelines or export clips to Motion or After Effects, we have to run separate apps.
In the case of effects, transitions and titles, there are ways user interface could be improved.
Inside Final Cut Pro itself is the best place to manage effects.
iAds is the system where iOS developers fund their work by letting Apple insert adverts into their applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Google make their money by displaying adverts that are possibly relevant based on what you’ve searched for and the history of how you’ve used Google’s services (search, mail, maps…)
So how will Apple choose what ads to insert into iOS applications? Here’s a quote from their iAds sales site:
And using our unique audience interest and preference data, your ad is delivered to the consumers most likely to respond and buy.
Standard targeting options on the iAd Network include:
Demographics
Application preferences
Music passions
Movie genre interests
Television genre interests
Location
Looks like Apple is using information gleaned from how you use iTunes on your Mac or PC. It might be that those who downloaded iFart and Jiggle(?) might get served different iAds than those that use ‘Shakespeare’ regularly.
Apple could go further. They could also analyse how you use your iOS device. They could profile you based on which books you buy using iBooks and which videos you watch on YouTube and Vimeo. Could they tell your level of education by analysing your spelling and grammar? They could also judge you by your friends (using the social networking features of iTunes, or even from your Contacts list)…
In the long run, Apple might even be able to detect your state on using your iPhone: “Judging by app use, they seem to be working at the moment. Best not to serve frivolous content” or “The Twitter list they are using is a list of tweets by entertainers, no need to show work-related iAds.”
This sort of analysis will be much more accurate than what Facebook offers its advertisers. However much time people spend in Facebook, Apple is able to gather more information about its users by controlling the devices used to access the internet and all forms of media.
In an ideal world I’d see no commercials, but if I want others to fund TV, radio, podcasts and iOS apps, I’ll put up with some ads. If so, they might as well be relevant to me. If I’ve just bought a car, it’ll be a waste of my time and their money for the media to serve me any car ads for a while. However, in return for this kind of convenience, I need to give up some privacy.
I wonder if the default user option for this kind of profiling be an opt-in or opt-out…
PS: iAds might not just be only for iOS apps
An imaginary ‘media payment preferences’ control.
Fun fact: Apple got a patent for inserting adverts into media at playback back in June 2008. I wrote about the implications back then.
In which I describe how Twitter Lists could supply us all with the power of context.
Twitter have just announced that you will be able to organise individual Twitterers into Twitter Lists.
This makes official the kind of organisation users have be doing with client applications such as TweetDeck – the kind of application anyone who follows more than 500 people has been using in recent months. Instead of seeing every update from all the people you follow, you can view just the tweets from specific groups of people.
At the moment Twitter is selling this new feature as a method of finding interesting people to follow. I might want to curate a List of people who write about post-production for example. By default, user-created Lists will be public. Once this List is known, and favoured by many people subscribing to it (as opposed to those ‘other post-production Lists’), I’ll have an incentive to keep it fresh, so the people that follow the List will have a continually refreshed list of ‘experts in a field’/'entertainers on a topic’/'philosophers of a specific school’/'fans of a given TV show’/'alumni of a school’ etc.
The first side effect of Lists will be that people who follow a couple of hundred others can now follow many more – knowing that these ‘check out their updates every once in a while’ follows can be relegated to a list that doesn’t clutter up the main feed. This will mean well-followed people/organisations will become even-more-followed people/organisations. But being followed by many people more who don’t read your updates very often might not improve your ‘Twitter Authority’ score.
Search
However, once people can limit searches to these Twitter Lists, the results they get back will probably be much more useful. Firstly, they’ll be able to search the text of the tweets of people in a given list. Then they could have the option for that search to include the content found at the site linked to on List members’ profile pages. After that the search could include the content linked to in the tweets, such as TwitPic pictures, Song.ly lyrics, text/images/videos from web links.
If Twitter then saw which link was clicked from the list of results, they’d be able to create a ‘PeopleRank’ algorithm that could stand a very good comparison to Google’s PageRank algorithm. In this case the person/organisation which supplies the best information on a subject will have their content moved further up the list of search results. A new measure of Twitter authority.
Sharing your contexts with the world
I’d also suggest that Twitter set up some default private Lists for each Twitter user that would define which sorts of updates they’d like to receive, for instance:
0. Family
1. Friends
2. Acquaintances/Facebook friends
3. Close colleagues
4. Co-workers/Superiors/Subordinates
5. Industry contacts
6. Work-related pundits
7. Entertainment/Pastime-based commenters and pundits
8. Governments
9. Everyone else
If there were default lists like these, Twitter would become very powerful in many ways.
If users got accustomed to switching between these standard Lists of Twitterers they wanted to see the updates of, Twitter would be able to infer the new context they are changing to. If someone wanted to be entertained, they’d view List 7. If someone wanted to do some background research on their field of work, they’d view Lists 5 and 6. If they were in a frivolous mood, they might view Lists 1 and 2.
Once Twitter knows your context, they can associate your context with the tweets you write, the information you give out and the searches you do. In this way context 2 would allow Twitter to act like Facebook-Lite. Other contexts could implement versions of other social network models: e.g. context 5=Linked-In, context 7=MySpace.
Also if you defined the mode you were in, then the searches you do could supply better tuned content.
It also means the day you spend searching for content associated with work would skew the searches you do when looking something up for a family member.
If users maintained these lists then different groups could get different versions of other information, such as location. When I’m in Family and Friends mode at the weekend, only they get my location information – other lists might get a ‘blurred’ location such as ‘London’. When I’m away at a conference, people in my Colleagues and Industry Contacts Lists would be able to find me on the exhibit floor (or at a specific local bar), while Family and Friends need only know that I’m away in ‘Barcelona’.
Who else would like to know what context we are in? How about advertisers? Imagine if we’d never see an irrelevant advert again. I don’t want to see or hear ads for movies when I’m concentrating on work. When I’m catching up with friends, I won’t be interested in being served adverts associated with my job. I think advertisers would get much better responses if their messages were being presented to people who were in the correct context to receive them.
Given that Google have tens of billions of dollars of cash, maybe now’s the time to buy Twitter – before someone else does…
In which I suggest that making it easy for everyone to show movies and TV shows to various-sized audiences would revolutionise media.
In these days of democratic production and distribution through digital technology, it’s about time we had a look at the exhibition side of things.
In the UK there has been some support for indie film distribution through the Film Council’s Digital Screen Network. They’ve fitted out over 230 screens around the country with digital projectors. This means microbudget films could even be released on DVD to many cinemas around the UK.
How about adding a few thousand more screens to the programme?
I suggest it would be a good idea for the UK government to combine two aspects of movie exhibition to make it simpler for anyone to create a cinema:
1. Some sort of open-source digital rights management scheme, so that content owners wouldn’t be worried about making their work available for exhibition. This would include automatic payment for rights holders by exhibitors.
2. A one-stop licensing scheme so that amateurs can arrange to pay rights-holders, public liability insurance, get permission from local authorities (and whoever else needs to get involved) for a single price.
Maybe by 2011, movies will premiere all over the country on all sorts of screens.
Any person with a room and projector could simply create a permanent or one-off cinema for whatever content they wanted. Licence prices could be banded so that the economics was straightforward based on audience size.
Films could be made available at different screen resolutions. SD for up to 40 people, 2K for larger audiences. Most TV shows would be cheaper to show, unless you want to show the HD version with surround sound. People would then be able to promote screenings, knowing how many people they need to get to watch. You could set up a season of obscure films or have a weekend party based around watching 23 episodes of your favourite TV show (leading up to a final 24th episode).
Indie and short film makers might get their films shown as part of creative double bills. Once this form of distribution becomes common, producers will be able to calculate how many licences at which price points they’ll need to sell to justify producing an idea in the first place.
The easier it is for movies to find audiences, the better it is for the film industry.
Here’s a link to a previous post on charging for content based on screen size, which implies the size of the audience.
In which I suggest a feature for Apple’s Final Cut – a way to create and edit multiclips (clips that can be switched as live between different camera angles).
Here’s another idea for a future version of Final Cut. To make multiclips a lot more flexible, imagine being able to use any (single codec) sequence as the source of the multiclip in any other sequence.
Shooting productions in order to prepare for multiclip editing is a little unforgiving. If sequences can be switched like multiclips, shows with timecode problems could be set up in sequences like this:
You can see here that cameras 1, 2 and 3 were started and stopped during the performance. Camera 4 had a sync problem, which was fixed by delaying the audio 9 frames.
Imagine if you could view this sequence as a multiclip. Instead of video layers, you would have video angles. Audio channels would move to be associated with their specific video angle:
All the angles would remain editable as tracks – you could change filter settings, clip positions and keyframes. The extra rows at the top of the display would give you the option to blade to cut between angles, choose which angle to switch to, roll to reposition cuts, add transitions to video and audio edits (but probably not ripple, slip and slide. You could make those kind of changes in the rows in the lower part of the window). You could treat the area as a preview of how the multiclip will appear if it was added to a ‘parent sequence.’
Once you are happy with the sequence, you could then add it as a multiclip to a parent sequence by holding down a modifier key as you drag to the canvas:
Once the multiclip is on the parent timeline, it would be editable in the same way as it is today.
In which I suggest that Apple could use their expertise in creating an App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch to create a store for post-production professionals.
Now is the time to start guessing about the new features Apple might introduce in the ProApps that will make up Final Cut Studio 3. Most people are guessing that new versions of Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Motion and DVD Studio Pro will be launched around the same time as the next version of Mac OS X. Snow Leopard is expected to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer conference in May, with availability in June.
Some people say that Apple have had more and more problems dealing with Final Cut’s aging codebase. Fixing faults that have been around for years has proved too costly, however much they get in the way of long-time users. For example it is possible that Apple wanted to add draggable markers in the timeline, but implementing them caused too many bugs and unpredictable effects elsewhere in the application. It was probably easier to add features such as multicam.
This means that it might be that the best Apple could do with Final Cut would be to rewrite the whole application to fit better with the technology of 2009. It would probably take a few programmer-years to rewrite it all with no new big features. Experienced users would upgrade if all those little niggles were fixed, but Apple Marketing would have a problem with the ‘All new Final Cut Pro 7: Now works like it should have done for the last few years. Part of the new Final Cut Studio 3. Upgrade for only $499.’
Faithful Studio users are starting to request new features for their favourite apps, but it is likely that the feature list was frozen a little before Studio 2 was announced.
So, what would I add to Final Cut Studio 3? A built-in store for Final Cut Pro, LiveType, Motion, DVD Studio Pro, Compressor, Color, Soundtrack Pro, Aperture, Shake, Logic Pro, and MainStage.
Imagine having access to extra software and help from directly inside Apple ProApps. The Apple ProApps Store could also provide instant download access to plugins for Final Cut, Soundtrack, Motion, Compressor, Color, Aperture, Shake, Logic Pro and MainStage.
The economics of the App Store for the iPhone has changed the way people expect to be charged for their tools. Instead of buying large collections of royalty-free content, people could download just the parts they need. This would apply to clip video, livefonts, sound effects, music loops, and templates.
This would give people direct access to extra tools and help. This would also give tool makers access to a large community of users. As a Final Cut plugin creator, I would gladly give up 30% of my fees for Apple to handle distribution and billing for my software. They could even associate my plugins with specific serial numbers of Final Cut Pro and Motion. I could also provide free plugins, tutorials, footage and fonts to those who want them.
The Apple ProApps Store could also give access to freelancers who could provide personal tutorials, instant help and workflow consultancy. Sound designers, motion graphics professionals, typographers and programmers could make themselves available for commissioned work. Not many editors have created a professional environment for colour correction. Via the ProApps Store, freelance Apple Color graders could even colour correct a few representative frames from a series of shots in a difficult scene.
The Store could also provide a special search facilities that index external forums that might provide help when things go wrong or ideas when inspiration fails us.
Access to the store could be arranged through the Help system of each application. Version 1 could use a special version of the iTunes application. That would make the software engineering relatively simple given the huge effect this would have on the ProApps community.
If there was an Apple ProApps Store, what would you provide on it?
