Look at this graph. See that tiny yellow-orange line towards the top? That’s Apple’s revenue for software, a little over 4%, maybe $56-57 million. Hardware, specifically the iPhone, is their cash cow. The more I see this, the more I get The Fear™ that while Apple isn’t ignoring pro users, we’re increasingly less relevant.
“Anyone on the planet can afford a pen and a piece of paper. So out of 6.5 billion people on the planet, why do we have so few good authors? The catch here is that from our earliest education, we are learning what makes a good writer. In our industry (post production for the purpose of this article), we have failed to educate the public to discern the difference between good editing and bad. Between good color correction, and the lack thereof. Between great sound mixing, and just acceptable sound. A lot of this was probably caused by trying to protect our jobs, I know in the case of colorists this is true as it was a “black art”. But now we are going to pay the price as the cost of the toolsets won’t protect us anymore. And all the years of experience and perfecting our crafts won’t matter , if the public doesn’t see the difference.”
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Terrence Curren on the impact of a $995 daVinci It seems that for some crafts, we inherently understand it’s the craftsman, not the tools that make the difference (writing, wood-working, painting, illustration, etc…). But for some reason this hasn’t really translated to the digital age. It’s great that people can use something like daVinci (or for that matter, Color) in situations where it would have previously been prohibitively expensive, just as some people can easily accomplish some home-improvement projects on their own. But would these same people buy some lumber and tools and try to build a house themselves?
“This is not to say that 3D can’t be compelling – in the right hands, and with the right content, the effect is impressive – but let’s not kid ourselves. It is just an EFFECT, after all.”
– Bruce Johnson (ProVideo Coalition)
Red Giant Software is having a 30% off sale through the 18th for NAB. Use promo code NAB2010 and pick up the Trapcode suite or any of the Magic Bullet plugins for a great price.
Nice take on stop motion with graffiti as the medium. It’s interesting to see something procedural done this way, where elements must be painted over and re-painted.
(via Computerlove | Motion)
Dolby is producing an LED backlit LCD display that is said to rival CRT monitors. This is what I find most interesting, though:
Power said the new display is not only a reference monitor, but an emulation device. “Once you’ve used our known grade-1 style reference mode for color-correction decisions, you can press a button and have it emulate your favorite consumer displays,” he said. “We can actually go beyond grade 1 and support P3 color space, so you can start to do work in the suite that you previously would have had to take into a more expensive digital-cinema-projector-equipped facility. We can do that right there on a single display.”
That sounds amazing. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but looks to be in the $35,000-$50,000 range.
Joe Clark’s “Denial of Expertise” is a good, concise response to many of the critics of the iPad. But this little bit applies to much more:
Expertise needs schooling, maturation, taste, and quite a lot of attitude.
The foregoing explains why open source has nothing to teach literature or indeed any artistic creation, since talent doesn’t scale as you give more and more developers check-in access to the version-control system set up for your novel.
This is exactly why I think the concept of “open source” doesn’t fit for artistic works. Art is deeply personal. Even in mediums like film which wouldn’t exist in their present state without collaboration, there is usually a singular vision. Open source just isn’t compatible with that, and when it is attempted, usually amounts to simply out-sourcing remedial tasks to over-eager amateurs*.
*And I mean ‘amateur’ in its literal definition, not as a slam against one’s abilities.
Being in the precess of redesigning my portfolio, I’m very interested in current web technologies. One of those technologies is the HTML5 working spec and its <video> tag which I’m hoping to use. It may seem like a geek thing, but it can make embedding a video as easy as embedding an image. Compare that to the current method of embedding video… you’ve seen the complicated YouTube embed code…
John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a good write-up of the current debacle surrounding the choice of video codec in browsers (Safari & Chrome (and IE9) support H.264, Firefox & Chrome support Ogg-Theora). It will be interesting to see where things lead in a few years and what will happen with h.264 licensing, as well as possible patent issues with Ogg-Theora.
AERender is a nice little “dropplet” app to launch AE renders in the background by just dragging a project file to its icon. No need to launch After Effects. It’s a nice complement to the BG Renderer script. It comes in both CS4 & CS3 flavors.
Scott Squires over at Effects Corner has a good write up on the current state of VFX shops and that two more are shutting their doors: Image Movers & Core Pictures.
It’s a shame so many good shops are shutting their doors. But The industry is so fragile. Everyone is trying to underbid the next guy and margins are extremely thin. It doesn’t help that there’s always the push from studios (or clients) to get something twice as good for half the price & half the time.
I just worry that commercial (as in commissioned by agencies or clients, not necessarily broadcast) motion design might suffer a similar fate.