Blog Archives

It is a forlorn hope that the technology industry will slow down simply to allow us to preserve the past. Read why here.

A commentary on the need for and success of ad blocking software – and its impact on the advertising and online communities; written by Andy Marken.

Thoughts on recent storage and connectivity announcements from Western Digital and ATTO Technologies.

A caution that LTO-7 marketing highlights storage and speed specs that media creators won’t be able to access.

Protect yourself and your project. Know the rules and keep yourself safe. There’s more to flying a drone than buying one. This article will open your eyes.

Reflections on ad blocking software, great content, and figuring out how to finance a news-based, web business.

The things we purchased used to last forever. Today, they don’t. In bygone years, we could judge for ourselves whether something was good quality by looking at it, touching it and watching it work. Today, we can’t. Products are too complex, change too quickly, disappear. An essay on the impermanence in our life.

We publish 3-4 hours of live video every week, sliced and diced for our website, YouTube, FaceBook and video streaming. Sometimes we use Apple Compressor other times we use Adobe Media Encoder. This commentary explains which and why.

A commentary that students today don’t read, therefore they need training in the tools of visual communication to keep up and get ahead in the media-rich world of tomorrow.

This guest blog, by Clayton Moore, formerly of Apple, looks at the declining interest in media technology, and speculates on what this means for the future.

A blog on the expectations disconnect between buyers waiting for new products at lower prices and sellers needing revenue today to fund the development of tomorrow.

Story-telling is an art, but it is an art infused, driven and controlled by technology. Creatively understanding technology is essential in today’s visual world.

Thoughts on whether it makes sense to upgrade older GPU technology in iMacs or MacBook Pros.

A discussion on how change is disrupting the media industry and what we can do to survive it.

A commentary on why Apple is alienating musicians by demanding they not be paid during the launch of Apple Music. [Updated with late-breaking news that Apple changed its policy and will now pay royalties.]

A commentary on the recent 2015 NAB Show.

“Creativity Matters.” This was the central theme at today’s Adobe Max 2014 keynote; and creativity requires collaboration. As Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO of Adobe Systems said: “In our world, design is becoming more important, not less. We need to …

A detailed explanation of how to configure your Mac or Windows system for audio or video editing.

A detailed look at Adobe’s new updates announced at IBC 2014, PLUS an extended interview with Bill Roberts, senior director product management at Adobe, about the new software.

[ Updated July 29, 2014, to reflect additional comments from Promise Technology. ] A RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) collects a group of hard disks into a single enclosure to provide great speed, storage capacity, and/or security than is …

A series of highlights on what’s happening in the media industry two days before the start of the 2014 NAB Show.

Highlights of Adobe’s “product reveal” showcasing new features in Adobe’s audio and video applications.

A report on Dolby Vision – Dolby’s new enhanced dynamic range video format.

An in-depth look at configuration, setup and use of the new Mac Pro for video editing.

A detailed description of media management in the new Final Cut Pro X 10.1.

Apple today announced that, starting tomorrow (12/19/13), the new MacPro will be available for order; though they did not announce more specific pricing, configurations, or a ship date. Their press release states: CUPERTINO, California―December 18, 2013―Apple® today announced the all-new …

Compressing video using WebM takes forever! Here is more information about why and some custom settings you can use to speed things up.

An overview of the recent 7.1 update of Adobe’s Creative Cloud video applications.

First, let’s be clear: The new MacPro is not yet shipping. So, like a group of blind folks describing an elephant, we are getting a lot of different opinions on what this new animal is. Second, the instant Apple revealed …

I got an email from Tiziano this morning with an increasingly common question: I’m looking forward [to] buying the new Mac Pro later this year! My question is about the external disk to use for editing all formats from DV …

[ Please read this for my disclosure statement on product reviews. ] In today’s world, the speed and capacity of our storage is far more important to the performance of our editing system than the speed of our computer. Virtually …

Products break. I accept that. However, reputable companies make it easy to figure out what the problems are and get them fixed. They also honor warranties. This does not seem to be true with the folks at iLok. And because …

[ This article generated a lot of technical comments. Be sure to view the comments in this blog to learn more. ] Updated: June 15, to reflect a variety of technical comments from readers. On Monday, Apple gladdened the hearts …

iOS devices only stream about 10 minutes of continuous video content when they are connected to a cellular data network, then they stop. This article explains why.

Recently, I’ve had a lot of emails from editors with problems uploading (Sharing) files to YouTube directly from Final Cut Pro X. So, I did some checking and discovered that the problems were caused by Google. In early April, Google …

I love live production, always have. It’s how I got started in this industry. There’s nothing like saying “Fade Up” with millions of people watching to truly focus your attention. My love of live production is one of the two …

In cleaning out my In-box as I dig out from the NAB Show, here are a small flock of completely unrelated thoughts; some from NAB, some not. – – – The week before the 2013 NAB Show, I had an …

Any NAB Show is too massive to be summarized in a single blog post. This show represents the current state of a multi-billion dollar industry composed of thousands of wildly different companies. I enjoy walking the halls just to learn about …

UPDATE: Monday afternoon (4/8) our podcast, Digital Production Buzz, will interview Bill Roberts, Director of Video Product Management for Adobe. You can hear this interview LIVE at 2:00pm Pacific Time. Learn more at NABShowBuZZ.com This evening, Adobe revealed the next …

My first blog – A Whole Lot of Unrelated Stuff – was extremely popular. So, here’s the next edition. TABLE OF CONTENTS FCP X: Export a Batch of Projects FCP X: A Faster Way to Delete FCP X: Revised Alert …

OK. I’m impressed! Last November, the day they went on sale, I ordered a 27″ iMac to replace my main editing system. (Click here to read about the system I ordered.) It arrived the end of December and, as these …

Storage is critical to all media editing and I’ve written a lot about it. So much so, that it is hard to find where to start and which articles are important to read. To help, I’ve collected the important ones here …

One of the problems with writing a weekly newsletter is that, while it is easy to write detailed articles of a single subject, it is hard to write about interesting things that don’t require a lot of space. But every …

I have a new blog on Post Magazine called: “Don’t Waste Your Money on Faster Storage.”  You can read it here: www.postmagazine.com/Post-Blog/2012/December/Dont-Waste-Your-Money-On-Faster-Storage.aspx I get a lot of questions about what’s the “fastest” storage – and I wanted to explain that …

I’ve gotten a lot of questions recently on USB 3 vs. Thunderbolt, so I wanted to share what I’ve learned.  (By the way, I updated this to provide clarity on USB 3 speeds.) Thunderbolt and USB 3 are both protocols …

What are RAIDs, SSDs, or The Cloud? And how do you use them to get the best performance from your editing system? This article explains what you need to know.

One of the cool parts of what I do is discovering new companies. Except, well, actually, I didn’t discover these guys, they sort of reached out, grabbed me by the shoulders, shook hard and said: “Hey! Pay attention!” I can …

Earl Nottingham got this idea started when he wrote: I’m sure you’re familiar with the CALM act which sets new standards for how loud television broadcasts can be (especially commercials). My question: What is the video creator’s responsibility (if any) …

Providing a first look to a package as complex and full-featured as Adobe Audition CS6 is a lot like doing a first look at Premiere Pro CS6 – there’s a lot of the program that you just can’t cover in anything shorter than a book. These are the highlights.

Adobe Prelude CS6 is a brand-new application for Windows and Mac that shipped last week with the rest of the Adobe CS6 update. According to Adobe’s website: “Adobe® Prelude™ CS6 software streamlines your production tasks.