It’s been 5 months since I last wrote anything on this site. My absence has been multi-faceted.
- I’ve been busy and learning an awful lot
- I like these thoughts to be my own thoughts and learning doesn’t necessarily rule that out but it also isn’t easy to filter other peoples ideas.
- Various NDA’s have made writing tough at times.
On with the Miscellany.
Virtual Katy - After a reorganisation on the business side VK have released version 4 of their flagship product. VK 4 Premium which now works with Pro Tools 10 and has been tweaked in it’s conforming algorithms to improve speed and accuracy. It’s no secret that I am a big fan and am really pleased to see the product now operating on PT10 and look forward to developments continuing.
Ediload - Mark at Sounds in Sync has released an incredible update to his utility application which now creates a conform reference track for use with Pro Tools Field Recorder functionality to assemble production sound rolls for editorial. First time I used it it’s accuracy brought tears to my eyes. In my testing I needed to do very little nudging of the assembled material to bring it in line with the AAF material the one caveat is that it does rely on the Pro Tools expansions, which are getting much better but can over-do the expansion when compared with Titan (Tip- Expand tracks before importing AAF materials). Clean up of the Assembled session is fairly quick once you get used to it and should get better as PT improves this aspect of it’s functionality.
The second impressive feature of this new version is it’s ability to build a change EDL from a conformed session. Why would I need this? The way I’ve taken to using it is in combination with VK. I’ll import the guides and do a conform using VK, fix any problems, heal where appropriate etc and then import that into Ediload. This gives me the best of both worlds a kind of personal change list but with the Project Management of VK.
The descent of Apple - If you follow me on Twitter then you’ll know about a growing frustation with Apple over issues such as customer service, disregard for ‘international’ customers, lack of updates to Mac Pro, dumbing down in general. Am I suggesting that they are going to disappear? Absolutely not but if they continue to irritate me they are in danger of losing at least one customer. Then yesterday (June 18th) something truly interesting appeared.
Microsoft Surface - A few years ago Microsoft first demonstrated a product called Surface it was about the size of one of their ‘phones’ ie coffee table sized. It had some tremendous features: Multi touch was the first, wireless transfer of files between devices that were layed on it amongst other things but it was a coffee table. If you’re in London and want to see it in action make your way to HSBC/Barclays (?) in Piccadilly Circus where they use it for customer information.
Yesterday they shrunk that to a couple of models of tablet/ultrabook. The RT model doesn’t really interest me as it requires specific apps to be written for it and Apple has that market all but sewn up. The Pro version however will run standard Windows applications in addition to custom designed apps. It also has an full USB port also known as an “oh look I could put my ilok there” port. Pro Tools on a touch enabled tablet just slightly larger than an ipad? Sounds nice. Let’s see how this progresses.
Oh yes, then there were Track Presets in Pro Tools which is exciting.
That’s all for now.