The Editblog

A package arrived yesterday that contained a shiny, new MC Color control surface from Euphonix. We have the unit under our roof for a month of testing. This surface has been eagerly anticipated by Apple Color-using community for quite a while. First glance right out of the box feels like a very solid unit. We’ll see how it performs both from a hardware and software POV as we test it out in the coming month. Stay tuned to the Editblog on PVC for first impressions and a full review.

The good folks over at Tangent Devices recently sent us one of their control surfaces for testing with Color; the Tangent Wave. After hooking it up and checking it out for an hour or so this afternoon I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that color grading (and using Apple Color in particular) without a control surface dedicated to color grading is like doing most any task with one hand tied behind your back. And that’s mainly from just using the trackballs and dials and not really digging deeper into all the keys and functionality. Stay tuned to the Editblog on PVC for more thoughts, impressions and a full review of the Tangent Wave.

We’ve launched a new page on the Editblog, Stuff We Use. A page is part of the Wordpress platform; it’s a stationary page that is always available from the front page of the blog. On this theme we’re using they are listed as tabs across the top. The Stuff We Use page is just that … stuff we use in both our professional and personal projects at the Editblog. It’s sort of a recommendation/endorsement/clearing house for software, hardware, gear and resources that we have reviewed and/or talked about from time to time. This is all stuff that we liked and actually, really, honestly use. Most of the links from the Stuff We Use page are links to buy the products from places like Toolfarm or Amazon. If you find yourself wanting to purchase and of these products please use these links as the Editblog will get a small commission.

You know, I’ve never tried to actually make any money off of the Editblog but recently I’ve been very curious if anyone with blogs like this actually do make any money from them. That’s one reason you might start seeing ubiquitous Google ads popping up. I hope that aren’t too obnoxious and somewhat out of the way. But the Stuff We Use page isn’t so about making money as it is an answer to regular questions and emails that I get about what software we use for this, what piece of equipment we use for that. Stuff We Use is a good place to gather it all. We’ll keep adding to it over the years as we work with and test out more stuff! Thanks for reading and subscribing to the Editblog.

I was sad to be involved in the above Twitter exchange because it delivered some sad news, Promax will soon be closing its doors. That Creative Cow link talks about the news and includes several posts from Ron Lindeboom, the head/creator of Creative Cow so I think that’s a pretty reliable source. As I look around my room I can count 8 different things that all came from Promax. They were one of the best sellers of equipment and one of the most knowledgeable of companies out there. Everything seemed fine at the Promax Digital Cafe at NAB 08 so this was a surprise.

Promax, you will be missed.

UPDATE: Check out this post at the Digital Production Buzz for a quote from Promax president Dan Hatch on the decision to close the doors.

As an offline editor, I make great use of Apple’s Firewire technology. I use firewire to get from my DVCam deck to the CPU or to my Avid Mojo. Then there are all of those firewire drives I have and all of the ones that myself and my clients use to shuttle projects and footage around. Today DV Guru linked to an article at IT Business Net that talks about firewire and its future. It paints a pretty bright picture. I truly hope that firewire will continue to get better and faster as the old SCSI days of ID numbers and termination are happily left behind, but I have to question that exact picture painted int he article, if only from real world experience. A year and a half (or so) ago I walked into my local Comp USA and they had a nice assortment of firewire drives and several firewire 800 drives. I walked in last week and they had very few firewire drives at all and only one 800 … which they had to locate via computer. It was in the back. As for cables, they only had a few 6 pin to 6 pin and no 800 cables. For fun I looked at Circuit City and they only had 2 6 pin to 4 pins. Not that they sell much of anything that is 6 pin compatible anyway. Apple has removed firewire from the current iPods. The only Macbook with a firewire 800 port is the 17 inch. But that being said there are two firewire ports on my cable box but according to the yahoo-cable rep they are non-functioning!

So who really knows what the future of firewire holds. USB 2.0 has taken a large part of the market and we all know that firewire has never been super accepted in the Windows PC world anyway. It is a standard for transferring data from consumer mini-DV cameras and a lot of prosumer and professional cameras have the option as well. And the professional audio world has embraced the technology. If you work in this business and rely on firewire as much as I do then the All FireWired Up article is a good read.

I’ve been using hard drives for as long as I’ve been editing. And as is the case with all non-linear editors (Avid, Final Cut Pro, Premiere, DS) they all store media on hard drives. And many of us have LOTS of hard drives around… Maybe it’s chains of firewire drives or maybe it’s a stack of drives in a RAID. But all these drives have spinning platters and a mechanical arm reading the data. Now I always knew they had to be working pretty hard to get all of that data off in good time….now I can see just have hard and fast they are working.

Watch the big Quicktime if you can…. much better quality.