Another gift from Dean Velez
Some more free After Effects projects have been posted by Dean at the Anvel. This batch’s theme is fire. The motion graphics community is lucky to have so many generous people like Dean, Chris and Trish Meyer, and Angie Taylor (who’s promised me a signed copy of her new book).
Now I met some great people in b-school, but it’s just not in the MBA DNA to share one’s trade secrets. People like those on Avid-L2, FCP-L, and the After Effects list are the reason I can never leave this business. It’s funny how the sterotype of the industry is a back-stabbing Type A, but those people really are the exception.
Download the AE projects and enjoy.
Totally cool browser-based NLE
I haven’t gotten around to cutting my trailer on JumpCut.com. I’ve spent a couple of minutes here and there on the site, but I haven’t been totally thrilled with the performance of the video playback. It reminds me of Google Video’s performance when it launched. Nor have I been able to master the JumpCut interface. Grabbing, sets, etc. don’t quite work for someone used to working with projects, sequences, and bins. I guess I’m just not Web 2.0 enough. Call me a Web 1.5 guy.
Click image for larger view.
But this interface totally rocks. I registered, logged in, and was cutting in seconds. It’s a great editing interface. Clean, simple, and responsive. Of course the SFiFF (everything needs a lowercase i somewhere in its name) Remixer has limited the available pool of media, so searching and organizing are vastly simpler tasks. Still, it’s a hell of an interface.
Thanks to Bradley Horowitz for responding to an earlier entry. I discovered the Remixer project through his blog, and appreciate the value left in his wake.
One prediction from 1999 came true
While archiving a bunch old data on a new machine, I came across an NLE review I wrote for DV Magazine back in July, 1999. The article was a roundup of all the big names in software-only NLEs of the day – Premiere, Speed Razor, Edit DV, and the new kid on the block, Final Cut Pro.
All said, Final Cut Pro is that rare version 1.0 package that works right out of the box, with minimal hassles. Its innovations are functional, not eye candy. This package will find its way into many professional studios in a very short time. Should Apple not rest on its laurels and continue to develop Final Cut Pro, it has the potential to become a truly revolutionary product at a very reasonable price point.
Make predictions long enough and you’re bound to be right sometimes.
We’ll just forget about the time in 1981 that I passed up the opportunity to meet Bono and the band for a drink in NYC after meeting U2 in their dressing room. In the elevator at 30 Rockefeller Center my friend asked if I planned on taking Bono up on his offer. “Nah,” I replied smuggly. “One hit wonders. Let’s catch the Yankees game instead.”
Hey, they had that Flock of Seagulls thing going with their hair.
Old media bubble?
Fascinating report out from Kagan Research earlier today. The report notes that even though cinema is the text book definition of a mature industry, private equity money keeps pouring in to the industry.
“This volatile business, amazingly, never seems to be short of investment capital,” notes Wade Holden, analyst with Kagan Research. “One big reason is that the major studios have a knack for turning every new technology that, at first glance, is threatening into a source of money. That goes back to the VCR and before that broadcast TV itself.”
True enough. Coupled with the steady cash flow still generated by old media, the sector’s a pretty good hedge against the inevitable burst of the social networking bubble. Think about it. How much money is there behind a social network? According to Fast Company’s hype machine, a lot.
It’s a tough read without a Web 2.0 jargon dictionary. The article focuses on the work of a 28-year-old “internet anthropologst.” Enough said?
Personal connections–forged through words, pictures, video, and audio posted just for the hell of it–are the life of the new Web, bringing together the estimated 60 million bloggers, those 72 million MySpace users, and millions more on single-use social networks where people share one category of stuff, like Flickr (photos), Del.icio.us (links), Digg (news stories), Wikipedia (encyclopedia articles), and YouTube (video).
Gotta love that 60 million bloggers quote. Let’s assume that about a third of the world’s bloggers are Americans – a conservative guess. That means that about one in ten American adults are bloggers according to FC. I think not.
It gets better.
“Social networking isn’t a product or, God forbid, a company, but a feature that lives in service of some other mission,” says Bradley Horowitz, head of technology development for Yahoo. “The spirit of social computing is the concept of leaving value in your wake.” That value starts with expression. Users of social-networking sites are producing and freely sharing a whole universe of content for others to consume. Some of it approaches journalism in quality, some approaches art, or advertising, and a great deal of it is more fun and appealing to the 18-to-34 target demographic than whatever is on TV. Why watch fake “reality” shows when you can connect with actual reality?
Yeah, every 18-34 year-old’s all about leaving value in his or her wake. Where do they come up with this stuff? Oh, and by the way, 18-34 year olds aren’t the demographic they used to be. They don’t represent the proportion of disposable income in the economy they used to.
Why watch that fake reality? Because that fake reality is edited by a professional. It’s fun to watch passively. I understand Horowitz’s point… to a point. This social networking stuff might eat into old media consumption, but what it’s really going to eat into is good, old-fashioned face to face social networking. Our personal social networks will become broader, but also shallower. That will be social networking’s legacy.
Apple phone home
If Sony, Creative, HP, and company can’t seem to slow the iPod jaugernaut, maybe Nokia, LG, and Samsung can. Earlier this month, ABI Research cited the possibility of 4-gigabyte hard drives in mobile phones rendering the portable MP3 player obsolete.
“As the cellular handset becomes the one device that the world carries, the standalone MP3 player may well be left behind,” says Alan Varghese, ABI Research’s principal analyst of wireless semiconductor research. “What’s important to many users is having one device that handles mobile music as well as the other functions—phone calls, digital photography, email, web browsing—now performed by mobile phones.
Intersting point. I need to carry a phone, but choose to carry an iPod.
Only two things stand in the way of this outcome. The ingenuity of the MP3 player designers, especially Apple, and the really awful marketing track record of mobile carriers.
It’s not so secret that Apple’s working on some sort of wireless communication device. The patents have been applied for, and the rumors have been flying. If Sony or Apple were to design the ultimate mobile phone, it surely would bypass the mobile carriers’ online music (and video) services.
There’s evidence that consumers would prefer such an outcome. Strategy Analytics reports that mobile carriers price their music offerings 100% to 150% beyond what consumers are willing to pay. The report notes customers are willing to pay a 35% premium for access to their tunes on a wireless device. Sony and Apple would happily take that… after you buy their phone.
