You could call it a religious pilgrimage. It's an event that brings out the OS worshipers across the country. It's the one and only Macworld and it's this January 14-18th.
I've been once - back in 2002. It was fun. I felt a bit out of place since I didn't live and breathe this stuff. My boss sent me to research Final Cut to see if it was really robust enough to switch over to. I also dropped in to visit Thomas who was working for DDB San Francisco.
Since Mike Kingsley is hosting our next gathering in January, I thought we could create a wish list of things we'd like to see at the Expo - and maybe he could pull a few strings with Steve-o.
Here's my belated Christmas list:
- Built in Blu-Ray burner
- DVD Studio Pro 5 that will really let you author HD DVD's and Blu-Ray disks
- New Apple Cinema Displays that are up to date
- iPhone 2.0 update that installs heat-seeking missiles to blow up slow moving cars on the freeway.
What 's on your Macworld Wish List?
:: Jacob ::
Monday, January 7, 2008
Friday, December 14, 2007
Creativity and Brainstorming
LOCATION:
Los Hermanos, Lindon
IN ATTENDANCE:
Micah Anderson, Michael Kingsley, Jacob Hoehne, Cammon Randle, Thomas Chock, Cole Nielsen, Jason Fredericks, Brandon Davidson, Matt Hoffman
TOPIC:
Creativity and Brainstorming
HOST:
Today - Cammon Randle
Next - Michael Kingsley
CELEBRATE:
Thomas Chock's birthday is later this month.
RECAP:
We're all in creative industries in one way or another. As an Apple Consultant, Mike Kingsley services creative professionals, so we'll count him in the mix. Really, running a small business requires a high level of creativity (business people call it innovation, but it's all the same). How can one tap into creativity and make a living from it? Thomas brought up the question of how to build a system around creativity. Normally, creatives grate at the notion of rigid structure. But at some level, you have to have a routine or a pattern of how you generate the ideas that drive your business.
Matt mentioned the need to step away from the task and letting your mind do the work (a.k.a. render in the background). This is especially important after a rush deadline (are there any that aren't rush?) - to take a breather and recharge your creative juices.
I decided to try it out. We've been pushing hard for a couple deadlines. I stopped at a RedBox and rented Ratatouille and took the afternoon watching it. Honestly, I don't think of taking a break. I don't think of myself as a workaholic (any more than the next small business owner), but I don't take time to slow down enough to be inspired. It was a nice little breather.
Cole Nielsen brought up the difficulty of collecting other people's work for inspiration. Yes, you need to stay abreast of what's being done. But at some point, you have to put the samples down and draw from your own genius. It's been said that artists by nature have to be distanced from society to have the right perspective to see it.
Brian Parrish of ThinkBox graphic design wasn't able to attend the gathering, but he forwarded an article, "Sly as a Fox" that discusses creativity. I'll forward to anyone who's interested.
What do you do to find your best ideas? How do you save your ideas?
Thanks,
::: Jacob :::
Los Hermanos, Lindon
IN ATTENDANCE:
Micah Anderson, Michael Kingsley, Jacob Hoehne, Cammon Randle, Thomas Chock, Cole Nielsen, Jason Fredericks, Brandon Davidson, Matt Hoffman
TOPIC:
Creativity and Brainstorming
HOST:
Today - Cammon Randle
Next - Michael Kingsley
CELEBRATE:
Thomas Chock's birthday is later this month.
RECAP:
We're all in creative industries in one way or another. As an Apple Consultant, Mike Kingsley services creative professionals, so we'll count him in the mix. Really, running a small business requires a high level of creativity (business people call it innovation, but it's all the same). How can one tap into creativity and make a living from it? Thomas brought up the question of how to build a system around creativity. Normally, creatives grate at the notion of rigid structure. But at some level, you have to have a routine or a pattern of how you generate the ideas that drive your business.
Matt mentioned the need to step away from the task and letting your mind do the work (a.k.a. render in the background). This is especially important after a rush deadline (are there any that aren't rush?) - to take a breather and recharge your creative juices.
I decided to try it out. We've been pushing hard for a couple deadlines. I stopped at a RedBox and rented Ratatouille and took the afternoon watching it. Honestly, I don't think of taking a break. I don't think of myself as a workaholic (any more than the next small business owner), but I don't take time to slow down enough to be inspired. It was a nice little breather.
Cole Nielsen brought up the difficulty of collecting other people's work for inspiration. Yes, you need to stay abreast of what's being done. But at some point, you have to put the samples down and draw from your own genius. It's been said that artists by nature have to be distanced from society to have the right perspective to see it.
Brian Parrish of ThinkBox graphic design wasn't able to attend the gathering, but he forwarded an article, "Sly as a Fox" that discusses creativity. I'll forward to anyone who's interested.
What do you do to find your best ideas? How do you save your ideas?
Thanks,
::: Jacob :::
Monday, November 19, 2007
"I don't know how to view a rough cut lady"
I got a kick out of this spoof radio spot. I'm sure we've all ran into people like this who can't seem to connect any dots inside their head. We have Bryce Randle to thank for this clip. It's just an audio file, but I found it easier to embed a video than a link to a hosted audio. Anyone know a better way than posting an audio file?
Thanks,
:: Jacob ::
Thanks,
:: Jacob ::
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Music for your Media
LOCATION:
Demae Japaneses Restaurant, Provo
IN ATTENDANCE:
Micah Anderson, Garrett Batty, Zach Batty, Michael Kingsley, Michael Eager, Jacob Hoehne, Cammon Randle, Jarom Brand, Skyler Jeppson.
TOPIC:
Music for your Media
CELEBRATE:
We recently moved offices - just down the complex. We're now in 1346 W. State in PG. We've liked having more elbow room and more of a place to bring clients.
RECAP:
I didn't opt for the Sushi - but maybe next time I'll be more adventurous. I've had a lot of Korean, Thai, and Chinese, but that was my first time eating Japanese food. Good stuff.
Our discussion started out trying to piece together the best way to network workstations. XSan is great if you've got the +20K for the whole shooting match. Our resident Mac guru, Mike Kingsley, said the jury was still out on NAS drives. What we have set up at Issimo is four workstations connected via a gigabit Ethernet switch with our main Capture Scratch set up on an eSata drive. It works great for DV and even DVCPro HD editing, but as Zach and Garrett can attest, it's lacking when it comes to 10 bit Uncompressed footage.
Cammon has had a good experience with screen capture on the Mac with an application called iShowU. The industry standard, Camtasia, is still only PC compatible.
Micah shared his expertise on music for media. As Akira Kurosawa said, the music is half of what you see. You should check out his stock music on his site. He's been patient with me as we pull together our Mormon Myths documentary that I've asked him to score. Anyone find some hard evidence on the performance rights question?
One thing I came away with was a sense that I should consider music earlier in the creation process and perhaps bring a composer on-board earlier (less common with corporate video) or have music in mind as it is being created on paper.
What are your thoughts?
Regards,
: : Jacob : :
Demae Japaneses Restaurant, Provo
IN ATTENDANCE:
Micah Anderson, Garrett Batty, Zach Batty, Michael Kingsley, Michael Eager, Jacob Hoehne, Cammon Randle, Jarom Brand, Skyler Jeppson.
TOPIC:
Music for your Media
CELEBRATE:
We recently moved offices - just down the complex. We're now in 1346 W. State in PG. We've liked having more elbow room and more of a place to bring clients.
RECAP:
I didn't opt for the Sushi - but maybe next time I'll be more adventurous. I've had a lot of Korean, Thai, and Chinese, but that was my first time eating Japanese food. Good stuff.
Our discussion started out trying to piece together the best way to network workstations. XSan is great if you've got the +20K for the whole shooting match. Our resident Mac guru, Mike Kingsley, said the jury was still out on NAS drives. What we have set up at Issimo is four workstations connected via a gigabit Ethernet switch with our main Capture Scratch set up on an eSata drive. It works great for DV and even DVCPro HD editing, but as Zach and Garrett can attest, it's lacking when it comes to 10 bit Uncompressed footage.
Cammon has had a good experience with screen capture on the Mac with an application called iShowU. The industry standard, Camtasia, is still only PC compatible.
Micah shared his expertise on music for media. As Akira Kurosawa said, the music is half of what you see. You should check out his stock music on his site. He's been patient with me as we pull together our Mormon Myths documentary that I've asked him to score. Anyone find some hard evidence on the performance rights question?
One thing I came away with was a sense that I should consider music earlier in the creation process and perhaps bring a composer on-board earlier (less common with corporate video) or have music in mind as it is being created on paper.
What are your thoughts?
Regards,
: : Jacob : :
Friday, October 26, 2007
Leopard Launch
To upgrade or not to upgrade...
The release of Leopard is minutes away. Not that I'm keeping a countdown, but I went by the Apple site and saw the homepage countdown. Most OS upgrades are mostly fluff in my book, and yet certain features make my life so much easier. A little thing like not having to copy all the files over to a blank DVD or CD - only having to create an alias that references the source files - that one has saved days off my life in the past year.
Is the upgrade worth it to you? Most likely I won't upgrade all of our computers until we buy a new one and then we'll need some feature and so we'll have to make the switch. I figure, let other people be the guinea pigs. I'm sure you're the same way, but I can't afford downtime with some bug. Perhaps that robs me of the joy of being an early adopter. I'll be more adventurous with my hobbies rather than my livelihood.
What are your thoughts?
Jacob
The release of Leopard is minutes away. Not that I'm keeping a countdown, but I went by the Apple site and saw the homepage countdown. Most OS upgrades are mostly fluff in my book, and yet certain features make my life so much easier. A little thing like not having to copy all the files over to a blank DVD or CD - only having to create an alias that references the source files - that one has saved days off my life in the past year.
Is the upgrade worth it to you? Most likely I won't upgrade all of our computers until we buy a new one and then we'll need some feature and so we'll have to make the switch. I figure, let other people be the guinea pigs. I'm sure you're the same way, but I can't afford downtime with some bug. Perhaps that robs me of the joy of being an early adopter. I'll be more adventurous with my hobbies rather than my livelihood.
What are your thoughts?
Jacob
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Future of Media
LOCATION:
Macaroni Grill, Provo
IN ATTENDANCE:
Micah Anderson, Carter Durham, Garrett Batty, Zach Batty, Michael Eager, Jacob Hoehne, Mike Johnson, Cammon Randle, Dave Crenshaw
TOPIC:
Archiving media - new media trends
COMMISERATE:
Cammon mentioned a podcasting conference he spent good money on hoping to learn something, only to discover he had more to teach them.
CELEBRATE:
I'm on week two of my iPhone and I think it's a keeper. The portable media player has been great for showing people what we can do. It has some features I wish it had, but overall, I really like it.
Where is the media industry going from here? Cammon said he's heard of people who think Net content will overtake Network content. While your "average Joe" does have more access to media creation and publishing via the Internet, YouTube style video isn't likely to make the likes of NBC and ABC extinct. Zach shared a quote in regards to that sentiment, that with the advent of the Power Bar no one thought it was the end to meals as we know it. What is more likely to die out, according to Zach, is the Network TV schedule in five years or so. Beyond TiVo, will we have a 2 TB drive connected to a monitor that plays our stuff - ESPN only without having to pay for Bravo - feature films in a digital form, YouTube etc.? The less the media is fixed in a tangible form, the harder it will be to keep it from being ripped off. We stand as both consumers and creators of media and have to keep a foot in both camps.
How do these changes bode for content creators like ourselves? It's interesting to look at the desktop publishing "revolution" in the 90's. Now, anyone could do layout and print without having to go to a typesetter and a designer and all of that. Did that mean the end to graphic designers? Not at all. It lowered the barriers to entry in the industry, and a flood of would-be designers, but the true talent still rose to the top.
It does seem that the trend is only towards more media saturation, for better or for worse. Moving images - be it flash or video (and that line is quickly disappearing) - is becoming the communication medium of choice.
We did touch briefly on media storage and archiving. Right now, we're shooting mainly Panasonic P2, which means there is no built in archive like tape. We've been backing up our 8 GB cards to Dual Layer DVD's, which per gig is actually pricer than hard drives. However, we recently got a 16 GB card which doesn't fit on any DVD we can burn at the moment. We have looked at a LaCie Blu-Ray burner which will do 25 GB on a side and 50 on dual layer (but I'm unaware of any blank media that is dual-layer at the moment). Another strong contender is a LTO-3 drive. It's like a DLT drive of yester-year for DVD replication, but one tape will hold 400 GB. The DLT drives are painfully slow, but the LTO's are actually fast enough to read/write from like a hard drive (65 mbps through put). No clunky SCSI connection either - it mounts via gigabit Ethernet. Sticker shock: $5,00 - 8,000.
What are your thoughts? What other topics did we discuss that you'd like to weigh in on?
Regards,
: : Jacob : :
Macaroni Grill, Provo
IN ATTENDANCE:
Micah Anderson, Carter Durham, Garrett Batty, Zach Batty, Michael Eager, Jacob Hoehne, Mike Johnson, Cammon Randle, Dave Crenshaw
TOPIC:
Archiving media - new media trends
COMMISERATE:
Cammon mentioned a podcasting conference he spent good money on hoping to learn something, only to discover he had more to teach them.
CELEBRATE:
I'm on week two of my iPhone and I think it's a keeper. The portable media player has been great for showing people what we can do. It has some features I wish it had, but overall, I really like it.
Where is the media industry going from here? Cammon said he's heard of people who think Net content will overtake Network content. While your "average Joe" does have more access to media creation and publishing via the Internet, YouTube style video isn't likely to make the likes of NBC and ABC extinct. Zach shared a quote in regards to that sentiment, that with the advent of the Power Bar no one thought it was the end to meals as we know it. What is more likely to die out, according to Zach, is the Network TV schedule in five years or so. Beyond TiVo, will we have a 2 TB drive connected to a monitor that plays our stuff - ESPN only without having to pay for Bravo - feature films in a digital form, YouTube etc.? The less the media is fixed in a tangible form, the harder it will be to keep it from being ripped off. We stand as both consumers and creators of media and have to keep a foot in both camps.
How do these changes bode for content creators like ourselves? It's interesting to look at the desktop publishing "revolution" in the 90's. Now, anyone could do layout and print without having to go to a typesetter and a designer and all of that. Did that mean the end to graphic designers? Not at all. It lowered the barriers to entry in the industry, and a flood of would-be designers, but the true talent still rose to the top.
It does seem that the trend is only towards more media saturation, for better or for worse. Moving images - be it flash or video (and that line is quickly disappearing) - is becoming the communication medium of choice.
We did touch briefly on media storage and archiving. Right now, we're shooting mainly Panasonic P2, which means there is no built in archive like tape. We've been backing up our 8 GB cards to Dual Layer DVD's, which per gig is actually pricer than hard drives. However, we recently got a 16 GB card which doesn't fit on any DVD we can burn at the moment. We have looked at a LaCie Blu-Ray burner which will do 25 GB on a side and 50 on dual layer (but I'm unaware of any blank media that is dual-layer at the moment). Another strong contender is a LTO-3 drive. It's like a DLT drive of yester-year for DVD replication, but one tape will hold 400 GB. The DLT drives are painfully slow, but the LTO's are actually fast enough to read/write from like a hard drive (65 mbps through put). No clunky SCSI connection either - it mounts via gigabit Ethernet. Sticker shock: $5,00 - 8,000.
What are your thoughts? What other topics did we discuss that you'd like to weigh in on?
Regards,
: : Jacob : :
New CoNNECT blog
Creative Professionals:
Our previous blog was through .Mac, which worked well, but was limited in how we could all contribute. Your feedback is welcome regarding how to make the site a more beneficial extension of our gathering.
The hope is to extend the benefits of our monthly luncheons online as a place to connect and share - from technical questions, news bites, customer complaints, and the like.
Regards,
Jacob
Our previous blog was through .Mac, which worked well, but was limited in how we could all contribute. Your feedback is welcome regarding how to make the site a more beneficial extension of our gathering.
The hope is to extend the benefits of our monthly luncheons online as a place to connect and share - from technical questions, news bites, customer complaints, and the like.
Regards,
Jacob
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