HD For Indies

an off the cuff observation, coupled with some other thoughts that weren't quite their own entries, and some miscellaneous ramblings, all pasted into one blog entry since I don't have time to develop these enough to stand on their own wobbly/ugly duck feet:

If you're lookin' for real news, there isn't any here, just some self-indulgent thoughts and sloppy writing. Perhaps somebody like Scott Kirsner can make some sense and order of these ideas (or perhaps already has, I'm weeks behind on his blog). In any case, if you're looking for some hard facts, move along, these most definitely aren't the droids you're looking for. OK, you've been warned.

The main premise - TV's fix for dwindling revenue seems to be to chase downmarket, while studios making feature films are trying to push upmarket to solve the same problem. (I then ramble all over those ideas like a drunk at a wedding.)

Can they both be right? Are they both wrong? One or the other? Some other possible variant? Is the answer 42, Douglas Adams?

Premise: ALL media producers are getting concerned about their future revenue potential as the ground shifts beneath their feet:

-Newspapers are concerned about dwindling subscriptions - will the web & TV be the future of news? Both are used to being free or advertising supported (or cable) - where will they go, what will they do? The benefits of newspapers (depth, easy transport, 12 hours to market) are dwindling as laptops & blogs & CNN continue to encroach. Their theoretical trump card, quality writing by professionals, continues to be not as well implemented as theory would indicate. Sigh. But I get their dilemma - it takes some serious TIME and effort to properly research a story and verify all your facts - and it is tough to either have the time, or be able to cost justify the time. A good, serious test & review takes me days to do - that's why I do so few of them anymore, and usually for a magazine, not for the blog (not enough income generated from the activity!)

-The broadcast networks, on the other hand, are concerned about dwindling ratings - I've been reading stories lately about lots of network affiliate stations getting sold off, as this is considered about as good as it is going to get. Cable TV draws away audiences, as does the Internet in general and video games for the younger & maler* skewed demographics.

* (and yes, I just molested a noun).

-The response? The trend seems to be, in part, more cheaper television - a few years ago it was reality TV - it was cheap to produce, didn't need high production value, didn't need stars (certainly not expensive ones, except for the hosts that became stars), and could be cranked out by the bucketful. Now the trend is towards game shows - I just saw an ad for Friday night primetime bingo - as the Wicked Witch said, "What a world, what a world...." Or for competition shows, which seem to have been milked dry - witness A&E getting down to hair & interior design as competition shows. Power yawn. But again - the weekly talent is either hosts (usually non-major cost), the weekly talent is free, and the production value doesn't have to be too terribly high. See footnote (1).

-Studios & theaters are concerned about dwindling box office - it has already been the case for YEARS that DVD income tops theatrical release income - most theatrical releases are a break-even at best, and profits don't occur until DVD time. Most studio films cost roughly $60M to produce, with another roughly $30M in marketing & advertising costs. Yowza. But cable TV, DVDs (which seem to be getting rented more than bought these days - anybody got any hard numbers to back up that supposition?), high def home theaters are snacking away on the studio's piece of the entertainment pie, as well as video games and the Internet now vie for our evening and weekend attention.

So what are they doing? Making fewer, bigger movies that play to the angle you can't get at home - the SPECTACLE. Movies that you WANT to see in a darkened room, with 300 strangers, on a really big honkin' screen with really beefy noise - a fully concussive, immersive experience. Disney has come right out and said that they're doing it (fewer more expensive at least), blaming it on an inabilty to manage that many quality feature projects. Really? I'd think you'd just hire some more six figure execs to oversee projects. If talent is scarce, steal'em from competition by offering them more money. $300K/year isn't much as compared to nearly $100M/feature. Is the issue really managing projects, or that it is harder to impress folks nowadays?

-The counter argument? Sometimes movies can be made that go low market, and they'll work - witness Borat and Jackass: The Movie. Both scathingly funny, relatively cheap to produce (Borat shot on Varicam, BTW - see? It IS an HD for Indies post! ......................................NOT!) But risky - both coulda flopped bigtime, and while production costs were low, they didn't exactly skimp on the marketing of those two films - regardless of production costs, if studios want to push a film, it is still big money to do so. Keep in mind - the typical marketing budget of a mainstream studio film is enough to produce 1-3 (or more) modest but decent indie films. So even if a distributor picks up YOUR movie for $2M, if they're shooting for wide theatrical release, they're going to spend MANY times that marketing the film - and they'd be expecting to make an ROI on that money. Of course, you'd be lucky as hell if they were going for wide release with your $2M acquied movie, but that's another post entirely.

At the same time though, some broadcast & cable networks are going upmarket too - look at the cost & production value that goes into Lost, for instance. (footnote 2). They spend a fortune on that sucker, especially in the early episodes. That first one with the crash was lower end feature quality, but on a TV budget. I continue to read about how TV VFX work is done SO fast, under SO much pressure. It clearly isn't as good as feature film work, and they don't try anything nearly as complex (think about Davy Jones in Pirates 3), but strictly in terms of results/dollar/production hour, it is pretty damned impressive. Alias was another example of this a few years back, and Battlestar Galactica has done a nice job of Looking Big on a not huge budget (thanks to cheap & fast 3D hardware/software - curious to see an inflation adjusted analysis of original Battlestar Galactica episodes as compared to today's). There have also been some damned impressive mini-series, but not lately - remember Band of Brothers? Wow. There are some - Planet Earth on Discovery HD was damned impresive as well, but in a different way.

In any case, a lot of this is just gut feel and supposition, I don't have hard data and analysis to back it up. I pretty much just watch Comedy Central (Daily Show junkie), SciFi, my too many HBOs for my own good, and the HD channels (I'm still too impressed with good looking HD, hopefully I'll get over it and recover some of my life back). In any case, clearly not enough contemporary mainstream TV to claim any of this with any authority, this is just my feel of the situation.

Thanks for reading my ramblings here, this is has been another episode of Sloppy Blogging. If you have facts to prove or disprove any of my gut suppositions in here, feel free to Comment away using the link below the end of the article. If you want to chastise me for my meandering and sloppy writing, send it to our ever vigillant complaint department. We'll get back to you real soon now, promise. :D

Footnote (1) BIG FAT FOOTNOTE, PERHAPS SHOULD BE ITS OWN ENTRY: As a side note, I think it says interesting things about us as a country/culture - we fully acknowledge and admit we, as a Society, want Fame & Money - the national infatuation with Reality TV a few years ago was simply the nation having a discourse with itself on the subject of Just How Far Will You Go For Fame Or Money? I kinda enjoyed the physical challenge bits on Fear Factor - balance on a beam above the water and grab the flags, challenging your inner fear of heights, or race the clock for....something.

There was, at least, a healthy challenge to that - strive to do something scary to yourself, and achieve some bit of physical prowess. I can connect with that on a personal level - the first time I finished a multi-pitch ascent (rock climbing up several hundred feet, up the Black Cliffs in Cannibal Gulch in Donner Pass, and can YOU think of a scarier name for a place to climb outdoors first?), or the first time I finished a marathon (I burst out into tears, and I'm REALLY not the type to do that - I didn't cry when I crashed a bicycle at 50mph, or fractured my elbow, or....hell, anything physical).

Anyway, there was a robustness, a sincerity, a physio-spiritual quest to those challenges. Some of the challenges seemed too much to me, eliciting such a primal fear that it seemed dangerous to suggest anyone try it - the cylindrical water tank with clear plexiglass horizontal dividers with a random hole in it - swim down this one-way-only pachinko trap while holding your breath, then navigate your way out - I could just feel the drowning terror in my lungs just thinking about it. That seemed too much, too unhealthy - or maybe it is my own severe fear of drowning, and I'm not so afraid of heights.

Then there was The Eating Of Goat Balls, and All Such Similar Activities. As any Klingon can tell you with a straight (but wrinkly) face, That Hath No Honor. So reality TV was just us watching ourselves, either literally or figuratively (which Survivor do YOU most associate yourself with?), carefully quantifying with lab test care just how far we'd go to be America's Next Top Schpootie Doo or to win $50,000. Personally, I wouldn't eat goat balls for $50K, not even if you told me I was the only one competing and here's the check, ready to go.

It all boiled down to this - how much are you willing to abase yourself? You're willing to do WHAT? Kewl, we're gonna film that - just sign this release in case you die, or have a permanently mentally damaging shiver/hissy fit from being covered in cockroaches, slugs, mealworms and/or snakes up to your eyeballs, preferably all at the same time. And how many shows did they shoot before they realized they needed goggles, nose pinchers, AND earplugs? Eww ickie grody yick Yick YICK HURL. Oh, and do you have huge boobies? Great, we'll book you next week, wear this tight low cut top.

I like boobies* at least as much as the next 18-35 year old single male (wait, DRAT, I'm not one anymore, let's face it, I'm 39 in a coupla weeks), but that really put the icing on the Lowest Common Denominator Cake, and in a sickly, overly factory sugared way, not the fun way.

* (and I use that word on purpose in this context, as demeaning as I'd imagine the show producers would say/think it, to ram home how Not Cool their approach was)

Footnote (2) Talking about Lost, I loved that show at first, but it suffers from the same syndrome that befalls all my favorite shows (The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Sex & the City, The X Files, etc.) - after having a successful show because they set up an interesting challenge and started to make progress resolving those conflicts, once they started getting successful, they had to freeze any real character growth or change or development - because while they managed to hit the magical hit formula, if they changed something they might break the spell - so Tony Soprano meandered away from the interesting plotline of mobster with a conscience having panic attacks. 4 women trying to find love & happiness in New York is fun and interesting, 8 years later they're all still single? (And so am I?) That's f*****g depressing, change the channel.

The X Files posited some fascinating questions when they turned the corner from what I think of as the Old Testament (anything goes, lots of strange stuff happening) to the New Testament (One Grand Unified Theory of aliens green & grey, impending genetic attack, black oil, etc.) - once they embarked on the fascinating quest of It's All Real & Here, they could NEVER answer and resolve it - because they'd have to end the show. How interesting would it have been for The Big World Showdown to have occurred, Sculley & Mulder right in the thick of it, resolve it, and then move on? Coulda been fascinating, but they'd never risk it (nor could they afford to produce it fiscally).

Lost is, by definition, lost & hosed now - the show is so successful, they can NEVER get off the island. They've been stringing us out for so long (SPOILER ALERT), they had to show flashFORWARDS not flashbacks at the season ender of life after the island the other night, and I'm still trying to figure out what it all meant, and what was "real" in their fictional world. But I shouldn't - I thought deeply about the meaning of the shark with the Darma Project logo on its tail in an early episode, until I realized the only reason it was there was because the writers thought it was "just neat-o to throw that in." THEY don't know what's happening next episode, I strongly suspect, their job is to just to write an episode that makes you wonder what's going to hapen next week. The Big Picture? What Is The Island? What does it all mean? I don't think they know either, and that's what's galling. Think of all the false lead plot threads that have never been resolved (big scary monster stomping around the jungle & stealing people? Hullo? Did the Smoke Monster eat you or scare you off?).Feh. I was prepared to blow it off, but durnit, they made it interesting again...but only by coming up with NEW challenges, characters, etc. (Note we didn't know/care about Ben until HOW far into the show?) I wonder how many episodes he was signed on for when he first appeared, or if the writers knew his character arc/trajectory? Hmm. But without a sense that SOMEBODY has a Cool & Glorious Grand Unifying Theory of the island to drop on us, thus explaining all to us, slackjawed with amazement at the clever, subtle, sublime, ultimately simple bitchingness of it....I don't think it'll be worth watching indefinitely.

I'm also alarmed at how many cop/solve-it shows are on TV - Law & Order & CSI spinoffs, oh my. But that's another thread entirely. Are we THAT obsessed with having to turn to fictional justice served, since it is so hard to find in reality? I watch these from time to time as well, either in primetime or on the cable reruns*. Note what products are being advertised during those shows. Think about who that means they are marketing it to. Feel perturbed, regardless of whether you are in the target demographic.

* (I think you can watch those one of those two shows non-stop from 4pm till 3am if you have enough cable channels)

-on a related note, I used to like The West Wing until 9/11 - then the real world was more interesing yet far scarier than anything they could do on there. They lost their reason to be when the real West Wing switched from {omit my deeply personal political viewpoint} to having to try to deal with truly important issues instead of minor, day to day stuff, and then {omit personal/political perspective on wisdom/success/how insightful approach taken}.

OK, I should stop now, it is far after 1am and I started this at 10pm thinking it would take 15 minutes to get my thoughts out, hahhahahaaaaa, and this is getting into shades of David Foster Wallace (a personal hero, but this trait may not be a good one to emulate)

If you got this far,

a.) thank you, and

b.) my condolences.

As Dennis Miller said, "Stop me before I subreference again."

Too late.

-m

Labels: OT, think

Ideal Front Row experience - AppleTV, older G5, or Mac Mini?

Just got off the phone with my lifelong friend Charlie Wood (who just opened public beta on his Google/iCal syncing software), he wanted to know how well Front Row worked with the computer hooked up to the HDTV - he was thinking about using a computer as a DVD player and Front Row driver hooked up to his high res projector.

Turns out it works pretty well!

While the top pulldown menu is clipped off the screen (If I select About This Mac, I see "bout this Mac", and about one pixel above those words), and the dock is clipped such that the System Prefs icon clips one pixel below the grey Apple logo on this particular set (WHY does HDTV overscan? Why why why?), Front Row works fine - none of the text ever clips, everything is safely inset enough.

And popping in a DVD, MAN it scales nicely! I recall reading an article somewhere not too long ago that graphics card scale video for DVD much Much MUCH better than even the expensive DVD players, and I believe it *. Popping in Flyboys (only rented because shot on Genesis), the intro text scales VERY nicely.

* - I'm writing this line from the couch, watching the text appear 10 feet away on the 60 inch set running at 1920x1080, and I can read it in default 9 point Monaco. It could be sharper, but I can read it just fine

Charlie was thinking about using an AppleTV as his primary DVD watching device. I pointed out that the AppleTV doesn't have an optical drive, and he asked if it could stream it and I said I didn't think so, it only streams H.264 AFAIK.

Then I mentioned I was already planning on running an HDMI from the studio from the Multibridge Extreme, then I thought about running it from a standard DVI port - I have a Gefen DVI switcher that keeps both ports "hot and live" at all times, so I could route the output from a G5 here to the living room.

Then I thought about using my eldest G5 (a dual 2.0) and putting it in the closet that is behind the HDTV behind a wall. I could use a DVI to HDMI cable, run it through the holes already in the floors and through the basement (thankfully I can stand up down there), use my Kensington IR remote that has the IR receiver on a USB cable to remote the whole thing to the living room. That and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse if I want it and I'm off.

I'd been debating putting a server in that closet anyway, but I'd need to put a fan or some kind of ventilation in the ceiling in there, buy all these long run cables etc., so the price goes up pretty quickly from there.

Then Charlie and I were talking about what WOULD work best - the AppleTV is neat and relatively cheap at $300, but the small 40 GB drive is a limitation - I already have 50+GB of MP3 files from all my ripped CDs. I'd been idly debating bulk re-ripping them to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) that is about half the size of uncompressed - I'd end up with hundreds of GB of audio files.

Front Row can ALREADY stream audio and video from a remote machine - I did that the other week - I'd downloaded an episode of Lost I hadn't seen on a G5 in the studio, but wanted to watch the show in bed. So I left iTunes running on the G5, made sure Sharing was on, took my MacBook in the bedroom, hooked it up via s-video and fired up Front Row, and have you noticed that Front Row has a "Shared Videos" option under Videos? That's right, you can stream video just fine, even over my first generation Apple Airport (the flying saucer model) and it ran without a hitch. A little slow buffering at first, and fast forward/remind was utterly screwy/almost broken, but for basic viewing it was fine.

But the G5 is big and hot and heavy and would require some finagling to get it nearby. I don't want it in the living room because it is huge and the fans are loud. So what else?

A Mac Mini.

The HDTV has a HDMI in port, and I'm using a GMA950 based video card in the MacBook right now on that screen, same as the Mini has (or had, has it been upgraded?). A Mac Mini with an external hard drive starts to make a lot of sense - put all your media content on a fanless FireWire drive, and hook up that tiny Mini in the living room as an A/V component. Watch DVDs that'll look better than most players, use Front Row for downloaded videos as well (and for more than just H.264 encoded ones, a limitation of AppleTV), play CDs, MP3s, watch pictures, etc. Of course, that'll be about $800 for a Mini to do that, which is pretty expensive, but it'll do a LOT of stuff, and is pretty much infinitely expandable as far as storage goes - just get a bigger (750GB now, 1TB coming this year) hard drive, or just daisy chain additional ones. So $1000 for the Mini and an external hard drive for a great DVD player and Front Row experience. (Edit - base one I'd use is $600 not $800 - Charlie would want it for a usable machine, I just want a media box, and I could use that $200 to get a MUCH bigger drive).

OH OH OH OH - only in an email somebody sent me about HD-DVD players did it dawn on me - DUH - I have a HD-DVD player that will read DVD-R discs, and I have a DVD-R burner and DVD Studio Pro that will create red laser HD-DVDs!!! I'll be tsting that SOON, trust me!

I see one hitch in that process - I have a dual layer burner in my Quad G5, but I THINK it only does dual layer DVD+R discs, not dual layer DVD-R discs, and I noted support of DVD-R but not DVD+R mentioned in my HD-DVD player manual. Darn it if so, but single layer still lets me test a lot of stuff and ideas.

This makes me want to be able to route outputs from the studio in here in a variety of ways:
-each machine has HD component output - route that
-each machine has DVI output - route that as well?
-each machine can send HD-SDI to the Multibridge Extreme, then I can send HDMI out from that as well

In the living room, I've got HD-DVD and cable box taking over the two HDMI inputs - seems like I'll need an HDMI switcher then to flip between studio, HD-DVD, and AppleTV input.

OK - what else? There's so much to think about with all these toys.

AppleTV

PROS: CHEAP. Quiet. Plug & play. Small, sits in A/V rack nicely. Totally quiet. Cover Flow

CONS: If I do the AppleTV (still have one on order), it'll be interesting to doodle with but limited in a variety of ways:
-limited storage (but can stream from elsewhere)
-can't play anything but H.264 video
-no DVD playback
-720p24 playback MAX - no 720p60, no 1080p24 or 1080i60
from Apple TV Tech Specs page: "Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile"
-so CAN attach my 1080p/i capable display
-so how to efficiently navigate LARGE music/video/media collections?

Convert an existing G5

PROS:
-can attach to TV for Front Row (with available patch/hack)
-can also use as a serious server in the house for all other files & media
-extensible storage - throw a 750GB drive in there and that'll hold me for a while!
-can run non-H.264 video content
-can play DVDs very nicely (just gotta put it in the box in other room around corner)
-if I go to the trouble, should be a pretty awesome A/V experience. Plus, my server can run a 1920x1080 screen!

CONS:
-expensive install - gotta get long DVI-HDMI cables, long USB, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (and Bluetooth upgrade for G5) if I want more control over it (and will they work through a wall anyway?)
-plus I need to ventilate that closet - a thermostat driven fan that leads to the attic? The attic gets over 120 degrees in the summer Texas heat - I'm pushing air into there?
-no CoverFlow
-gotta buy Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, will they work through wall?

Buy a Mac Mini
-base model is $600 - for $200 more, you get 80 not 60GB drive, slightly faster processor, and a DVD burner not Combo drive - but this this utilization, who cares? I'd have to add at least 512MB of RAM to keep it zippy, though

PROS
-fast box, fully featured, good experience
-practically unlimited storage capacity - just keep adding FireWire drives
-small, fits in A/V space just fine

CONS:
-priciest up front cost of all the options
-decent but not outstanding graphics performance - but does that matter?
-no Cover Flow, tougher to navigate large libraries, gotta buy Bluetooth keyboard/mouse to be effective

What else?

I should probably break down the costs for each and ponder the pros/cons some more.

This is total DIY HDforIndies project - what do you folks think? Please chime in with your thoughts!

-mike

update - I've learned that I need to get an OTA antenna for better reception of the major networks, 19.2 mbit vs 10-12 mbit on my expensive digital HDTV cable (harrumph). The Terk was recommended, I just don't know whether I need the $30ish passive or the $100ish amplified model.

Also, Charlie Wood followed up with a link to MacHTPC.com, a site all about using Macs as home theater PCs, and I'm sure they've been thoroughly all over all the issues I've been wrangling with. I'll be reading up on stuff over there. I want a home theater box, a server, and possibly a gaming platform out of it, so I'm not a typical user here.

-mike

PS - sitting here all day tethered to the HDTV on laptop, I can definitely appreciate the idea of wireless HDMI.

Labels: HDTV, original, studio, think

johnaugust.com � Seven Things I Learned from World of Warcraft

This is actually really good, and about life not WoW.

At Sundance, I got a lot of extremely useful-to-know but painful/bleak advice and feedback about some things I've been doing that haven't been working out as well as I'd like.

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been kind of pessimistic of late, cranky and cynical.

I don't like that.

People have been emailing for advice, and instead of sharing in the leave-a-penny, give-your-old-bow-away motif (read John's thing), I've felt like hitting them up with the "I'm a consultant, I won't do that for free." messaging.

It is making me cranky, closed off, and not in the headspace I want to be - out of balance.

I'm trying to let go of the blog for a bit (not spend so much time daily) and catch up on life balance stuff.

What does this have to do with WoW and exactly what John said? Some but not everything.

Gotta pay attention to having a plan but not watching the map too closely.

Gotta find some freedom and randomness and adventure.

I've been thinking too hard about trees, then the forest, and not enough about going for a pleasant walk.

If this doesn't make sense, don't worry about it, I just wrote it in 2 minutes non-stop.

-mike

Labels: think

ProLost: Mastering in the NLE Stu talks some more about why finishing in After Effects has so many advantages - I quibble with a couple of details in the process in the Comments, but Stu then goes on to talk about why finishing in AE - the POWER of what you can do and fix in AE.

It is an interesting trade-off. Stu presumes you only move to AE once you have picture lock. From that point forward, you have tremendous amount of control since you're already in After Effects. The catch is it is SLOW, and watching anything you've done in realtime requires a lengthy RAM preview.

BUT...the benefit is you're ALREADY in the tool that allows for a tremendous amount of control - deciding you have to go out to After Effects is usually a point of friction in onlining - it is a hassle to kick out a sequence (esp. if you want to avoid highlight clipping), bring it into After Effects, THEN do the actual work, then render it, then bring it back into FCP, line it up with the original, blah blah blah.

If you're already in AE (a chunk of work), then it is no biggie to just DO the work to fix the shot - you're already there.

The catch is, it is a HUGE pain to then watch what you've done - on the fly you can wait to render any given sequence to RAM (better have a LOT), or render a chunk of it out and drop it back into the NLE to watch.

Pros and cons, pros and cons...if Apple can get better performance and integration out of its next generation or two of applications, then we may be getting somewhere in terms of staying anchored more in the NLE. The current "Send to Shake" feature doesn't work as well as it should.

-mike

Labels: post, think, workflow

Surfing my usual link gob, came across this article:

MacNN | Apple's Leopard, Final Cut trademarks

which states that the European Trademark Office published trademarks for several items including "Final Touch" - was this just a generic move to do when acquiring a company, or does this signal intent that Final Touch might live on as a standalone company?

My gut vibe was that Final Touch's parent company was acquired to get access to technology, not products - or perhaps even just for the programming talent. For those who recall, Final Touch (in SD, HD, and 2K versions) is color correction software. I first reported it in Jan 2005, then worked with extensively from roughly Oct 2005 to Jan 2006, when I walked away from it, deeming it sufficiently broken for my purposes (Mac based color correction that could QUICKLY and EFFICIENTLY get an FCP timeline color corrected).

The color correction part of it is excellent with multiple realtime capabilities, such as secondaries in power windows, etc. The Achilles Heel of the product, however, was workflow - getting XML to work as was, if not promised, certainly strongly hinted at; never worked worth a damn without ENORMOUS prep & check work, and various hamstringing limitations.

Looking to doodle with it again to grade a friend's project, I went back to the support boards to find out where things stood a year later, months after the company and its assets were sold to Apple. New versions do continue to trickle out, latest being version 2.7 release candidate 2, which DOES have Universal Binary support.

But when I asked about using XML to get timelines in and out of Final Touch back to Final Cut, the list of must do items to prep it going in, and the constraints about what could and couldn't be done was still evilly daunting, reminding me of the fact that I spent more time trying to get projects in and out of Final Touch than the colorist spent coloring them. Even if that situation is improved, the situation still sucks.

So unless Apple is going to do a MAJOR revamp of XML, or a MAJOR revamp of the efficacy of the workflow, I don't see Final Touch continuing as a standalone product - the MacNN article describes Final Touch as "a feature located in Apple's Final Cut Studio software" - which is roughly along the lines of what I expect to see - those capabilities will get folded into Final Cut Studio, and quite likely just as features in Motion, Final Cut Pro, and eventually the Shake successor.

In any case, it was interesting to revisit the whole thing. It was an excellent lesson for me in the necessity of double and triple checking the hell out of everything that you drop a bunch of money on and plan to depend on - the sales pitch sounds the same whether it works great or is a clusterf*cked, non-functional cripple of an app (edit - I meant that as a general description of tech working or not, and not FTHD specifically, and while I have my list of choice epithets about some aspects of that product, it had lots of cool functionality I really liked and hope to see survive at Apple, in whatever way/shape/form.)

After initial high hopes for Final Touch, I'm happy to have it behind me now. There is some excellent technology in there that I hope Apple successfully strip mines for Final Cut Studio, but leave the Old Busted behind.

The Hope was that you'd be able to take your Final Cut Pro project, export an XML, import it into Final Touch, and be able to grade all your footage in there. When done, you'd render out new footage, bring it back into Final Cut, and all of your dissolves, titles, and other effects would just drop right on. Not to be. There are shops out there working with Final Touch, but they use an EDL based workflow that requires much to be pre-baked within Final Cut before bringing it over to Final Touch, and titles etc. don't flow over the way originally intended. It is enough work it makes me think it is worth looking at non-Mac solutions as alternatives, such as Scratch or the Iridas solutions.

My friends up at OffHollywood Digital up in NYC originally worked with Final Touch then bailed on it after much frustration to adopt Assimilate's Scratch instead.

-mike

Labels: original, think, workflow

UPDATED: SEE BOTTOM - while I've updated the article through the day yesterday, I just added a whole new chunk to the bottom with some "day 2" thoughts

Apple - Thoughts on Music:

Steve Jobs made an unusual move today, defending the proprietary DRM used in iTunes, and in offering alternatives pretty much taking a slap (how hard the slap you decide) to the face of the Big Four music labels. Pardon me for running long on this, it includes the entirely of Steve's screed (his in italics, my commentary in plain text), but for journalistic analysis, and the fact that I can run as long as I want on the blog, Let Us Dissect, tweezers and scalpel in hand:

With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.

OK, a very interesting opening proposition. I like that Steve is directly addressing an issue....that has been floating around for years. Glad it is finally being addressed in this clear and public method.

To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.

YES. This is often overlooked, and I am oh-so-annoyed whenever iPod opponents say "you can't play other music on the iPod!" Yes. Yes you can. It is called an MP3 file, they play anywhere, you should look into it sometime (and AAC is good too). I believe they aren't too difficult to come by or convert to, those shiny plastic discs the cavepeople still buy seem to be able to automagically be converted. iTunes can even be set to automatically convert, in minutes, any CD inserted to one of those formats as well, without so much as a single keypress.

The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

Touché, Steve, I do so heartily agree with the validity of this statement - it is definitely the studios that are impinging upon you to slap a lock on the files so they can't be bandied about. However, this engenders one other tangential benefit we'll get back to...

Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.

Definitely a victory in dealing with the labels. However, another way of saying the first part is: "We have the least sucky deal out there." Also interesting to note the deadline/timeline to fix any leaks out there - the Hymn project breaks Apple's DRM every once in a while, and Apple makes changes to fix it again. The old measure, counter measure, counter counter measure struggle continues ever onward. I hadn't heard this detail before (had anyone else?), so it keeps Apple on their toes, honoring their obligation to keep FairPlay legitimately "tight" and leak free.

To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader’s computer or portable music device. To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation.

All standard stuff, plus I love how Steve is able to get away using words like "secrets" in otherwise technical discussions. "Automagically" regretably does not make an appearance in this conversation.

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Apple’s DRM system is called FairPlay. While we have had a few breaches in FairPlay, we have been able to successfully repair them through updating the iTunes store software, the iTunes jukebox software and software in the iPods themselves. So far we have met our commitments to the music companies to protect their music, and we have given users the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music.

Kudos to Steve for fessing up and being very straightforward about the history of all this.

With this background, let’s now explore three different alternatives for the future.

The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music. It is a very competitive market, with major global companies making large investments to develop new music players and online music stores. Apple, Microsoft and Sony all compete with proprietary systems. Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods. This is the current state of affairs in the industry, and customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.

"Well served" is a highly subjective statement. This is the first time I'd say we are straying from the clearly and demonstrably provable so far.

Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store. Is this true? Let’s look at the data for iPods and the iTunes store – they are the industry’s most popular products and we have accurate data for them. Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

...and thus Steve starts to clearly and demonstrably Stray From The Path of Clarity. The KEY issue here is not whether there are OPTIONS to acquire one's music, the point that we looked to see addressed was the fact that music purchased via Apple's iTunes Store is locked to playing on iPods. Thus, The Whinging Begins.

While it is possible to burn a CD from purchased iTunes content and then re-rip that to a non-DRMed format like AAC or MP3, there is a recompression loss. Want to play your purchased content on anything other than an iPod? You have to do some work and degrade the audio quality (and the quality of this purchased content is a whoooole other bag of gripes article).

I feel Steve is sidestepping the core issue here - music purchased from iTunes Store only plays on iPods, not Zunes or Creatives or anything else. Period. The fact that music is acquirable elsewhere is good, nice, and...extraneous to the point that led to this discussion in the first place.

However, this is a good and clear case as to what the reality of the iPod world is like - you buy some content, but you rip (or, ahem, "acquire") MP3s elsewhere for the majority of your content. This "97% from elsewhere" makes for an excellent defense against any accusations of attempted monopoly against Apple.

The unexplored question is this - of that 97%, how much of it was legally obtained, on average? Beyond that, I'd be curious to know, on average, what percentage of that iPod's 97% of remaining content:

1.) Was ripped from iPod owner's own CDs
2.) what percentage of those CDs are still in owner's possession
3.) what percentage came from ripping friends' CDs
4.) what percentage of MP3s/etc. came as digital files from Internet P2P setups, or from friends' hard drives, etc. - Ripping Parties, or "Distributed/Remote Backup Events" aren't exactly uncommon these days

Think about your own music collection - how much of it is either bought from iTunes or ripped from CDs you still presently own? More importantly, how much is NOT from one of those two categories?

The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. And Apple might benefit by charging a small licensing fee for its FairPlay DRM. However, when we look a bit deeper, problems begin to emerge. The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute. Such leaks can rapidly result in software programs available as free downloads on the Internet which will disable the DRM protection so that formerly protected songs can be played on unauthorized players.

An equally serious problem is how to quickly repair the damage caused by such a leak. A successful repair will likely involve enhancing the music store software, the music jukebox software, and the software in the players with new secrets, then transferring this updated software into the tens (or hundreds) of millions of Macs, Windows PCs and players already in use. This must all be done quickly and in a very coordinated way. Such an undertaking is very difficult when just one company controls all of the pieces. It is near impossible if multiple companies control separate pieces of the puzzle, and all of them must quickly act in concert to repair the damage from a leak.

Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies. Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players.

Steve definitely has a valid point that it'd be tough to force downstream sub-licensees to update quickly, and an even stronger point about keeping secrets * . Apple seems to keep secrets better than just about anybody in the high tech and entertainment industries, even though they are paid a vastly disproportionately high level of attention by those industries.

* (Witness the entire DeCSS scenario, all because a single DVD player manufacturer failed to properly encrypt The One Key - cat got out of the bag, never to return)

BUT...Steve does kind of forget to mention one other factor here - that by keeping it a closed economy, it guarantees that the songs you buy on iTunes ONLY work on iPods. And if you look at Apple's fiscal numbers, it is the iPods that are the source of profits, not the iTunes Store. It is a bit like a reverse razors and blades model - Apple wants you to buy pricey iPods (razors) so you can then buy fairly cheap, low margin songs (blades). The two drive each other synergistically, but the bottom line is, the iTunes Store was created to sell more iPods, because that's where the money is.

By omitting this factor, Steve diminishes the credibility of his point. A line about "Yes, I do have to admit this does steer folks towards buying iPods, but we do strongly feel, and the market stats back us up, that we have the most popular and successful music player out there." Something like that would keep him on the Straight and True. Skipping that statement makes my BS-O-Meter needle start to twitch.

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Hmm. Sounds interesting. And it makes sense - just use non-DRMed AAC, or even MP3s (which aren't as efficient, but open standards never are, sigh....)

Do go on...

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

While technically accurate, this argument isn't quite fair. To stop casual consumer piracy, you only need to make it obnoxious enough that most folks won't bother with it. To stop P2P piracy is...virtually impossible. CDs were invented at a time when 650 MB seemed an enormous amount of data, vastly beyond what any consumer would ever dream of working with. I recall working for a large international industrial design/interactive design shop, with 20+ people in our office, and only at ONE station was there a big enough hard drive to routinely burn CD images for client projects. My first hard drive was 600MB (smaller than a CD) and cost $1500. The labels had no idea how quickly storage would get big and cheap, and got burned, and HARD, by a cousin of Moore's Law. The studios saw that happen and decided to put DRM on their 5 inch plastic media discs, DVDs. And that didn't last long, as DeCSS hit the scene and it became cake to pick the DRM locks - because there was only one key in the universe, and once it was out, it was OUT. Prepping for the next round of discs, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, even more stringent DRM was applied...and it too was promptly broken.

So:

1.) DRM will always, Always, ALWAYS be broken.

2.) If no DRM, casual copying will be pretty rampant - witness CDs, either straight out duped, or ripped and the files shared.

3.) If stringent DRM, casual copying will be limited (with varying degrees of success), but P2P copying, it is safe to say, will never be curtailed - DRM is trying to keep you from getting at content you are going to, that they want you to, that you paid to, see - so it HAS to be decoded at some point, and therein lies the hole to be breached or exploited. It only takes one kid in Norway (or Kansas, or wherever) to get around DRM on ONE copy of the work in question, and if he has broadband and P2P, the world will have it within hours. Such Is Life.

In any case, the unfair part is this: labels HAVE to sell CDs - it is the ubiquitous, wide installed base, industry standard format for distribution. Consumers haven't taken to the proposed next generation audio formats for higher quality audio - DVD-A and whatsitcalled (see? If I can't think of it offhand, what are the chances it'll be successful?).

So the labels sell CDs because frankly, they have no other choice. They HOPE, they'd LOVE, to migrate to a more secure distribution format such as DRMed digital downloads, but it takes time to shift, and frankly, consumers need to see a benefit. The convenience of "gimme now" is working, with over 2B iTunes tracks sold, although there are the hassles of backups, incompatibilities, etc.

Another way of saying it? The studios are trapped selling CDs, which get copied rampantly, and they hate it, and want out of that game - so DRM it is for ANY new form of distribution.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

...backing up my point just made about no choice but to sell CDs...

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system?

It makes them feel better? A little bit less robbed? Knowing that stuff they sell has a lower chance of being ripped off, stolen, having benefit derived for which they receive no recompense?

There appear to be none.

Uhh..see above.

If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music.

Clearly, and this entire argument is even moreso the case in the downloadable video market right now (more on that shortly). Witness the failure, or limited success, of many of the other music download stores out there. Apple, to their credit, does an excellent job of understanding the importance of ease-of-use, good interfaces, and as the owner of the entire soup-to-nuts process, can craft an integrated, well functioning whole...which has largely NOT been the case for other online music stores as far as I can tell. If you don't buy your music from iTunes, you're buying it from, uh...the fact that I have to pause more than a second typing to think of viable alternatives kind of proves my own point (at least to me, Apple fan that I am).

If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

OK, I'd put that on the map as a possibility.

Note the equation of his sentence is conditional on this, emphasis mine: "the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies."

That is a bit like saying

"If A might be equal to B and we know B=C, then A could only be as good as C!"

If that doesn't make sense or make my point strongly enough, how about this:

"If a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass a-hoppin'."

Steve plants a big "might be", then if you assume that is true, THEN makes a huge "can only be" leap. Shady math.

The math probably doesn't work for non-DRMed content right now anyway since downloads are such a tiny fraction of current incomes, CDs still sell well (if not as well as they used to), and it would be a tremendous hit for the industry to try to swing the majority of purchasers to online, plus the chaos to their distribution partners and the political chaos that would engender. Blah blah blah, you (hopefully) see where I'm going with that. The labels want to shift to a more secure format - DVD-A and CD-whatsit didn't take with the buying public, so downloads are the next attempt to shift to a secure format.

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries.

YES. Diverging politically for a moment, the countries that don't tolerate invasions of privacy to the level that the US does (atrociously) have a low tolerance for this kind of bull. They see BS, they call it BS and tend to not say "That BS is industry standard, so step in it and don't complain." Kudos to my overseas brothas and sistahs. Keep the faith.

Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

Nice job of saying "Please aim your weapons at those guys not me, I only work with them." But he DOES have a point.

It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that the labels go non-DRM with their content. Apple, as I stated, makes their money off the iPods, not the music. Yeah, they do make some profit margin off the music, but it ain't much, and it certainly is not (presently) their primary source of income. Note you see iTunes+iPod commercials, not just iTunes commercials.

This is a bit like Ford asking Shell to give discounts gasoline, stating "It'd be good for the economy." * yeah, well, Ford makes out like a bandit from this, but Shell carries all the burden and risks. It is entirely valid to make this request, but it isn't as "Hey buddy buddy!" and "It's all good, brother!" as it might appear on the surface.

(* - Robogeek points out in the comments that this isn't a truly valid analogy, because unlike Apple, Ford doesn't sell cars AND gas. But imagine if Ford sold SOME gas, this'd be closer to the situation...maybe if they sold "for Ford only" gas debit cards....or something or other...mumble mumble...)

It IS good PR for Apple to make this request - it makes them look like they're on Our Side (and I think they are on this issue). However, note they've waited until now to go public with the issue - if Apple's market share for digital music players were not as strong, I don't think we'd have seen these statements made. Apple is now firmly entrenched enough as a market leader that it poses little risk for them to suggest getting rid of DRM. If they get it, they'll still sell plenty of iPods, it isn't as if there are major competitors to them. iTunes, even ignoring the whole Store end of it, is the best music organizer/player I'm aware of on the market. And it is free to boot - so Apple's position there is pretty safe. But I think the major labels are unlikely to do as Steve suggests, so even that risk is ameliorated - not much skin off their back in the unlikely event the labels do acquiesce, so a win/win to suggest this plan of action.

And if the Big Four DID sell un-DRM'd downloads, they'd be even easier to distribute and share - the already marginal barriers to entry (difficulty/effort) to file sharing, be it P2P or person to person, would be lifted - "Hey, I got this file, let me email it to you!" or even easier, imagine being on iChat/Yahoo/Messenger: "Hey man, got the new David Byrne music, here it comes, click on "Accept file" and its yours." If your friend asked, would you NOT hand it over?

So while I'm no fan of the Big Four, and they do utterly hoserate a lot of their clients, not to mention the buying public in myriad ways, I can't say I entirely defend Steve's memo here.

It isn't that Steve's comments are inaccurate, just incomplete.

In the end, if the Big Four did open wide and let it all go out unDRMed, I think the net result would be a slight increase in people's willingness to buy music if they could use it freely, but a LOT more sharing would go on. And in the end, Apple wouldn't care too much about that, becuase it would probably mean more iPods to be sold.

And in the end, that is what Apple really cares about.

-mike

OH - all that being said, proprietary, device limiting DRM needs to go away in our future digital world - witness the craziness of the Blu-ray/HD-DVD fiasco that (among other reasons) is holding back high def DVD's future. Proprietary solutions are always how things start in technologically difficult fields, but over time, either one proprietary solution is picked as a standard, or everyone gets fed up enough that the industry gets it together enough to come up with a standard (witness CDs, DVDs, and if they'd just stuck with ONE high def DVD solution!)

PS - OK, now Part 2: Movies

Now apply this whole bolus of thought to movies and it gets worse - since music is something you can appreciate on the go, it is a different animal that video - you can listen to music while you walk/talk/jog/work/ride the bus, but good luck doing any of those with video. Audio is an augmentative experience onto reality, video tends to be an immersive/dominating one - it is tough to do anything else while watching video. Plus audio is technically easier than video - portable audio is cake and cheap, portable video is not.

With audio content, getting it onto an iPod to tote around and plug into better presentation devices isn't difficult. While the video iPod is the first step in that direction, it has a long way to go in terms of storage, battery life, and most especially presentation quality.

DVDs are a half-inch away from being non-DRMed - how to strip the thin veneer of CSS was mastered and shared long ago, and anyone with 20 free minutes and Google can figure out how to rip a DVD - I have more a few acquaintances that use Netflix as a "Rent, Rip, & Return" service, ending up with a high quality H.264 file living on their hard drives (or iPods). This definitely impacts the number of DVDs they buy.

DVDs are defacto barely or non-DRMed - I'd be very curious to know the percentage of average consumers that know how to get around it. The good thing about DVDs is that playback is largely ubiquitous (sorry Linux guys) - the vast majority of us have access to a simple/low cost way to play them back.

How much does CSS keep people from copying/ripping DVDs? I'd guess not much - between the largish file size * and once-only viewing habits, I'd say the majority of folks wouldn't copy DVDs if it were one button easy - takes too long, too much effort, just rent it for $4 anyway.

* public perception of storage costs lags waaaaaaaay behind reality - saw 500GB drives for $140 online this week, that's at LEAST 55 ripped DVDs right there

There is definitely a crucial bit of economic math relating the value of a digital product, the price, the ease of copying it, and the likelihood of it getting copied. Anybody got an equation on that documented? I'd love to see it.

In that equation, music is clearly a likelier target for copying than video. But as video gets easier to copy, the likelihood increases.

OK, that's enough for now, time to go eat, I just wrote most of this in one long rambling screed * after getting back from a run.

Thanks to the half a dozen folks who emailed me the link today - I saw, I saw! Just took some time to read, digest, and get time to comment on it.

-mike, finally done

* - apparently, "screed" is my Word Of The Day

DISCLAIMER:

YES I like Apple toys, AND I have an AppleTV on order, AND I have bought 3 or 4 iPods for myself and family, AND I own some Apple stock, AND I have 6 Macs in my house, AND I could do more analysis/research on the music downloading scene, AND I want to see Apple come out on top because I like them and their toys, AND I've been in a cynical/curmudgeonly mood of late. All that said, I think this is a fair analysis/interpretation of the situation. But of course, as Dennis Miller says, I Could Be Wrong. Think so? Please Comment away using the link below.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY:

After some more thought, Option 2 (licensing FairPlay to others) actually makes more sense - SOME DRM is necessary to protect rampant illegal file sharing. But any industry wide DRM standard is going to require some DRM. And it WILL get broken - witness, hmm, let's see...oh! Every DRM ever implemented. If there is going to be interoperability, it will require some DRM. Maybe even supporting multiple DRMs under an umbrella - could be iTunes or Zune or whoever else joins the consortium. But that opens whole other cans of worms.

I wish the music guys would learn from lesson industries that have already been through this...like software. Software has varying levels of DRM depending on how badly they want to protect their content, usually the higher priced the software the tighter the DRM. Freeware? No restrictions, copy it around. Simple "keep honest folks honest" serial numbers work pretty well. For high value software, the industry tried hardware dongles - little pieces of hardware that you needed one of for each high end app (I still have a half a dozen rolling around in a drawer, unused) - the software wouldn't run without it attached. Well guess what? The software often wouldn't run, or would stop running, even with it attached. The bigger the company involved, the more rapidly they abandoned this approach, since it was more trouble than it was worth. Many legit software owners would run the illegal cracked versions...because they ran more stably (ElectricImage, anyone?). Adobe used to use hardware dongles on After Effects Pro, they gave up. Now the industry tends to use software that locks to a given user account or a given machine - and that has troubles, witness Microsoft's validation woes. And these for for individual applications or operating systems costing hundreds or thousands of dollars. Think of the hassle and difficulty involved in supporting that. Now apply that to a song you want to buy for a dollar or two. Youd better have a 99.99999% accurate and easy metholodogy for dealing with that. And there's no such thing.

CSS was a group consensus effort to use DRM for DVDs. It MOSTLY has worked - MOST consumers don't consider it worth the trouble to dupe or distribute DVDs. Some do. Blu-ray and HD-DVD have much more restrictive and advanced DRM, it has already been broken, but we'll still have to deal with all the hassles sure to follow from it.

Where does this leave us? If there is to be interoperability, either somebody licenses their industry leading standard to everyone else (and here's looking at you, Apple), or the industry comes up with a new standard they can all agree on (that'll take 3 years right there).

And if DRM is used, and the standards do go that way, then we'd likely still be stuck with some of the original snafus - can I sell my copy to someone else as I would a DVD? What if I want to play my movie I bought at my girlfriend's house? Or my buddy with the big badass home theater setup with our friends on a Saturday night? Etc.

DRM still sucks. Does and will suck.

Do I sound like I'm flip flopping? We need it, it sucks and we should get rid of it? Yes, I am. How does the industry get some/reasonable protection from rampant file sharing (sneakernet, friendnet, P2P, whatever), yet give consumers the kind of freedom they get with their physical media to move it around etc.?

A billion dollars to the company that solves (and manages to hold onto the rights) to that one...

More....

John Gruber chimes in with his as usual excellent observations:

Daring Fireball: Reading Between the Lines of Steve Jobs's 'Thoughts on Music', leading off with:

Is it a challenge to the major record labels? An answer to the increasingly hostile European governments (Norway, France, Germany) that are pressuring Apple to “open up” the iTunes Store? A message to the press to clarify Apple’s stance on DRM? A big fuck-you to Microsoft?

It is all of these things.

...and nails it more concisely than I do. Andrew Shebanow calls video "the elephant in the room"

He also has a titled called "Killing DRM would kill subscription services" and I didn't even think of that angle. He also has a great reaction to the industry wanting control over the DRM others use:

In other words, the music industry wants a magical DRM format that gives them — not Apple, not Microsoft — complete control over all digital music. And a unicorn and a rainbow.

AppleInsider's coverage gives me some numbers to use as ammo to defend my razors/blades statement: "'The reason for this is that iPods are significantly more profitable to Apple than iTunes; iPod (35 percent of sales) gross margins are in the 30 percent range while iTunes (5 percent of sales) gross margins are in the 5 percent-10 percent range,' he wrote." - so yeah, Apple cares MUCH more about iPod sales than iTunes Store sales.

NYTimes chimes in - Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection - New York Times

So sue me � Blog Archive
� Steve%u2019s misleading statistics: "if you%u2019ve bought 100 songs ($99), 10 TV-shows ($19.90) and 5 movies ($49.95), you%u2019ll think twice about upgrading to a non-Apple portable player or set-top box. In effect, it%u2019s the customers who would be the most valuable to an Apple competitor that get locked in. The kind of customers who would spend $300 on a set-top box."

....and if DRM goes away, no subscription models could survive...and Apple doesn't do a subscription model - a bit of a "Sucks to be you" to the subscription based services

-mike

Labels: Apple, DRM, iTunes, original, think

more thoughts at bottom


Studio Daily | New Ways to Archive Old Movies

Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the Hollywood Post Alliance event that just occurred, but boy I wish I had - sounds like LOTS of good info being exchanged there.

Damn.

But one of the things discussed was long term archival of assets, specifically final films. A rep from Sun started things off by saying:

“You walk into a film archive, and what you smell is the image coming off the print,”

....and then went on to advocate for lossless digital backups, with a schedule for migrating that data, checking that data for problems, etc:

Sun’s motion-picture archiving model is based around an enterprise-class tape library with a front-end server and disk drive. A studio would maintain two complete libraries in different locations, and each library would include two complete copies of each movie. The library would comprise components that would be changed out on a regular schedule – every five years for the computers and disks, every 10 years for the actual tapes (with an audit of each tape to be conducted every six months to keep on top of any developing problems), and every 20 years for the library systems. Data would be stored in an open tarball data format; as it’s copied from tape to tape, it can be recorded in whatever file format the current tape system uses. Content would be kept in the clear (unencrypted) and uncompressed for maximum readability in the future. The archive would have no network connectivity.

For digital data backup, that sounds like a very solid plan - perfect copies could be maintained indefinitely that way - but at considerable expense, but with multiple backups in multiple locations. I like the idea.

Whether studio execs will go for it remains to be seen - studios have been infamously lax in maintaining their archives, I've heard stories in decades past about California warehouses with leaky roof and hole in wall problems. I could see one wave of execs implementing the plan, then budget cutbacks scaling back updates, data checks, equipment replacements, etc., landing them in a position where at a future date they wouldn't be able to access the data reliably.

Or they may just go with film prints and let them slowly rot over the decades, we'll have to wait and see.

BUT....when digital backups fail, then tend to be binary in failure - it works just fine, then you've lost some data. Analog, as in film prints, degrades gracefully and slowly - the print just fades over time.

By having multiple copies in multiple locations you drastically minimize the risk of digital failure - unless all the media suddenly goes bad in the same six months, you'll be fine. And you'd probably have some warning signals along the way. Data tape backups have error correction, I'd just want to see a LOT of error correction and redundancy in the media, and be able to limit damage to as little as possible - so worst case you maybe lose pixels, or a raster line, or truly worst case a frame.

Not that they'd ever do this, but for instance, I backup QuickTime files...but if there are corrupt bits in the file, it can make all frames beyond the damaged one unreadable sometimes, or possibly the entire file - I'd certainly call that a brittle or binary failure.

Anyway, this is a good meditation on what it means to back up your projects. They are only talking about backing up final results - but what about all the intermediate plate elements? That opens up another huge ball of wax - even if you had all the files and elements...will you have computers, OS's and software to run it on that all still works? Think about if you had a 10 year old animation project you had to resurrect - do you still have a system that can open that file or run that software? What if it was OS 9 software, for instance? You get the idea, and I've written on this subject before (and somewhere else, too, but a quick search didn't find it).

...and yeah, I do seem to be rockin' a cranky, pessimistic vibe today...hmm...gotta work on that...

FURTHER THOUGHTS - the purist in me wants to see the ongoing, perfect digital archives approach taken, where you keep perfect digital copies at all times, and have multiple copies at each of multiple locations, check the media for problems regularly, update the equipment on a regular basis, etc. All of which is constantly fighting the clock on obsolesence.

If, at any point in the future, the chain is broken - somebody fails to fund an upgrade cycle, and the gear is discovered to be too old to work with - no proper hardware, software, OS to read it, for instance, or the tape reading heads have decayed and no replacements are available, etc., you could blow the whole process in theory - once unreadable, a HUGE effort to get it back, and for back catalog, how hard are they going to try?

HOWEVER....if you you simply made good B&W color seps and kept them in a properly cooled/humidity stable environment, that would be TONS cheaper and easier (still keep a database of what/where, but that tech is much more stable and migrate-able) than the digital archives approach. The only downside is a loss of resolution/detail/dynamic range/clipping from re-scanning it in later. Optical encoding for the audio? Or burn to a CD/DVD and shelve it, with perfect digital dupes made every few years of the audio? Ideally do both, but that's even more expensive. If there's a vaulted HDCAM of a lot of the indie stuff that's made I'd be surprised - most stuff isn't archived well, because it costs money, money often not available or thought of. Obviously, on any major release with a marketing budget in the 10s of millions, color seps are certainly cost effective.

Anyway...ponder and comment away.

Labels: archival, backup, think

Quantel is:

...now offering new Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) offline-to-online interchange tools to streamline the process of moving related metadata from Avid Xpress Pro and Avid Media Composer Adrenaline NLE systems to its own eQ and iQ Post and DI systems.


"OK..." you say, "WTF does AAF eQ & iQ mean?"

It means that more of the stuff you set up in your Avid offline edit - things like " effects transitions, complex effects descriptors, audio splits and fades, time-stretch commands, layer event timings and layer priority data" - which means that more of the stuff that you do in your offline CAN potentially survive into your online, automatically carried over without having to do a ton of extra work.

The more I learn about post workflow options, the more little places get in the game that can affect what toolsets are worth considering. Even then, there can be conflicting advice. For instance - lets say you shot your indie masterpiece on Viper (recording however), then edited on Avid.

The DP might be steering you towards the post house with an Iridas color correction solution, because he can load in the looks he made on set and work from there - a definite time saver.

But the editor may be pushing for the house with the Quantel system, because all of his retimed shots and transitions and audio splits and whatnot would carry over automatically.

Which to pick?

Exactly.

Yet more things to think about...

-mike

Labels: DI, hardware, high end, software, think