Joost invite
Anyone got one for me? I feel so damn uncool still not having one. frank[at]capria[dot]tv
Much thanks.
May 1: Got one. Thanks.
Xprove offers free accounts (and more)
As our present to the planet on Earth Day, we have decided to offer free online video review and approval accounts on Xprove. No strings attached. The free account is limited to a single project, 100 MB of storage, and lacks custom branding features. Otherwise it’s a full Xprove account. No ads. No Xprove branding. Something professionals can really use.
For those who don’t have a regular need for online video review and approval, Xprove can also substitute as a handy FTP site for file exchanges with team members. But we really hope everyone tries it for review and approval.
Why are we doing this now? Because we can. We’ve grown large enough to be self-sustaining and now we can afford to give a little back. Free accounts can help startups save a few bucks and become profitable faster, and can give students and teachers a way to collaborate with video. Lots of people helped us get off the ground. Now we’re returning the favor.
Our goal: One less car at least once a month. Give it a try, and please send us your feedback.
More news from Xprove
We’ve just updated our software to allow custom branding. Now your Xprove account can look like it’s part of your website. You can adjust the color scheme and add your logo.
Finally, in case you missed it among the myriad NAB announcements last week, Xprove and SyncVue have formed a strategic alliance to advance the use of online review and approval for video projects. We’re exploring different ways of working together to benefit all our customers. We believe it’s important for there to be truly open systems available for review and approval.
Avid’s NAB hangover
It was an overwhelming week on the show floor. With meetings and events, I opted out of the “blogging live from the show” stuff. I wanted to take it all in before doing any analysis. Based on the traffic on the sundry mailing lists, blogs, and forums, the big news of the show got out.
A few observations.
Apple really does think differently. Imagine what Avid would have charged for the Color option on Media Composer or Xpress. The upgrade for Symphony owners would be significantly more than $499. Is Color going to revolutionize color correction? Yes. Like all high end tools that get democratized, most of us will never use Color to its potential, but we will expand our skills with it incrementally and our work will be better. I won’t be doing the color grading for CSI anytime soon, but my clients will see and appreciate the results of this new tool set.
Putting Color in the hands of rank beginners is akin to giving toddlers chainsaws – some ugly stuff can happen quickly, but overall it’s a good thing.
Color’s not the only big news, Final Cut Server is pretty impressive. It does to Avid’s Interplay what Apple’s done to Avid’s everything else – 80% of the functionality — or at least a perceived 80% of the functionality — for less than 20% of the price. Apple could have easily hobbled Server to only work with XSAN – as Avid has limited Interplay to working only with Unity and Media Composer and above.
Talk to some Avid people and they don’t understand why customers are so frustrated with Avid’s approach to the independent market. Sponsoring Sundance isn’t enough. Independents need real tools at reasonable prices. Must fish or cut bait with independents. Lip service without serious action just annoys people.
Here’s what Avid needs to do.
Simplify the product line. No more Xpress. Kill it already. Media Composer is the baseline editor now. It should be priced aggressively. Five thousand is not aggressive, it’s an insult. A standalone editor that costs more than 3x the competition’s full suite of tools just makes Avid look arrogant or stupid. Media Composer, as long in the tooth as some of its features are, is still a superior editor to Final Cut Pro. It can be more expensive, but not much more.
Get a real suite solution. Does anyone have a working as advertised version of Xpress Pro Studio installed right now? It’s going to take a lot of cash to buy up the necessary components. Besides, Apple and Adobe already beat Avid to the good stuff. The answer is to partner with Adobe. Premiere and Media Composer don’t appeal to the same markets. Both companies would benefit a lot from tight integration between the Adobe suite of tools and Media Composer. And it would all work on Windows.
Of course all this is only useful to Avid if it wants to continue to play in the editing space. That might not be the case. It might be happy becoming an infrastructure company with Unity and Interplay becoming the pipes for a lot of FCP seats. It’s Avid’s call. It can let its NLEs atrophy and just milk as much revenue from them as it can for as long as it can. Soon enough we’ll see if Avid’s serious about remaining an NLE company. (I suspect it is.)
Adobe Media Player
If Adobe has its way, FLV will be the new PDF. One of those announcements that might seems a little ho-hum in the midst of all the NAB hype, yesterday’s unveiling of the Adobe Media Player will have a profound effect on the media landscape. First and foremost, the ability to launch Flash Video files outside the browser makes the format that much more attractive to content creators. No longer do we have to concern ourselves with the presentation layer when releasing video in Flash format.
Just like QuickTime and Windows Media, Flash gets its own lightweight player for the desktop. But there’s more to it:
For content publishers, Adobe Media Player enables better ways to deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content. It provides an array of video delivery options for high-quality online and offline playback, including on-demand streaming, live streaming, progressive download, and protected download-and-play. The Adobe Media Player enables a wider selection of monetization and branding options including viewer-centric dynamic advertising and the ability to customize the look and feel of the player on the fly to match the brand or theme of the currently playing content.
The hooks into a targeted advertising engine are great, but I wonder if Adobe is planning the next obvious step – a simple pay per download system similar to iTunes. With Akamai as a partner, why not? A system more open, but just as ubiquitous as iTunes can really change the distribution landscape in a hurry.
Speeding up Apple Mail.app
I love my Mac. I hate Mail. Get a few thousand messages in there and it slows down considerably at launch, waiting up to a couple of minutes for the first message to display. This AppleScript has been making it’s way around the software developer blogosphere. I thought I’d share it with my video geek friends.
