The Video Road

Thanks to everyone I met last week in Brazil! Answers to some of your questions are forthcoming!

Posted by Karl Soule at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey Everyone,

NAB Madness is upon us!

Here's a schedule of where I'll be presenting and when:

Monday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am - Accelerated Tapeless Workflows: Go from Shoot to Edit Faster in Premiere Pro CS4
9:30am - Everyday Timesavers: Edit Faster with the Top Timesaving Features in CS4 Production Premium
11:00am - The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm - Technology Sneak Peeks: See What's Coming in Adobe Creative Software

(In the FCP SuperBooth)
5:00pm - Integrating Adobe Production Premium into your FCP Workflow

Tuesday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am - Life without Walls: Open Workflows with Avid and Apple
9:30am - Everyday Timesavers: Edit Faster with the Top Timesaving Features in CS4 Production Premium
11:00am - The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm - Technology Sneak Peeks: See What's Coming in Adobe Creative Software

Wednesday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am - Accelerated Tapeless Workflows: Go from Shoot to Edit Faster in Premiere Pro CS4
11:00am - The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm - Technology Sneak Peeks: See What's Coming in Adobe Creative Software

(In the FCP SuperBooth)
3:20pm - Integrating Adobe Production Premium into your FCP Workflow

I'll also be presenting at the RED Supermeet Wednesday night.

Thursday
(In the Adobe Booth Theatre)
9:00am - Life without Walls: Open Workflows with Avid and Apple
11:00am - The RED Workflow from On‐Set to Finish with CS4 Production Premium (With Ted Shilowitz & Lucas Wilson)
12:00pm - Technology Sneak Peeks: See What's Coming in Adobe Creative Software

I'll also be hanging out at the pods around the back of the Adobe theatre each afternoon, so come by and say hi!

Posted by Karl Soule at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently came back straight from Moscow, and went down into the studio to record some new episodes of Short & Suite for AdobeTV.

By the way, AdobeTV is now 1 year old! 1 year ago last week, Adobe launched the AdobeTV site with 210 videos. Today, Adobe TV has almost 3,000 videos, including offerings in English, German, Japanese and French. The content is growing weekly, and all of the evangelists just wrapped up shooting new episodes in the brand-new studio in San Francisco.

This week is a prep week for NAB, which will be action-packed. In addition to many presentations in the Adobe Theatre, I'll also be attending user group meetings for FCP and RED users, presenting in the FCP SuperBooth, and also covering a couple of Adobe-specific user group meetings. I'll be posting a full schedule later in the week.

On a completely unrelated note, I ordered a gift for my friend and coworker, Jason Levine, way back in December. It was backordered until very recently, and now it's sitting on my desk. I'm going to present it to him at NAB, but I thought I'd have some fun in the meantime seeing if he can guess what it is. Here's one of the very blurry photos I've sent Jay over the past couple of weeks:

Any guesses?

Posted by Karl Soule at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks to the team in Moscow, we had a spectacular event, with over 1200 people attending. The crowd was super energized, and I am very much looking forward to coming back in the future!

I usually shoot a lot of video on my travels, but I rarely have enough time to get anything produced before I'm off to the next event. This time, I made the time on the flight back. This edit is VERY rough, and I wanted to insert some of the great photos that were taken into it. This was shot on my HV-30, all handheld (it really shows - sorry for all the shakycam!) and captured into Premiere Pro as a single clip, which I then created a massive amount of subclips from. In CS4, subclips perform just great, plus I added metadata to each of the subclips, so my media can be organized by location, content (buildings, people, etc.)

Here's the video:

You'll see Rufus, Paul, and myself, plus Roman and Olga from the local office. Both Roman and Olga took personal time to show us around Moscow, each on different days. Thanks again, Roman & Olga!

The music track used is "As the Rush Comes" by a group called Motorcycle. Copyright by Armada Music, and the track is available for purchase and download here: http://www.armadadownloads.com/

Posted by Karl Soule at 5:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made a startling discovery tonight - the AVI files that my little still camera shoots are NOT readable by the Adobe Media Encoder on the Mac. Solution? Use Photoshop! Using the new Adjustments panel, I also quickly added a Curves preset (increase Contrast) and used a blue filter to lessen the sodium yellow caused by the lamps. Here's the result:

I stood in the center of Red Square, and shot this video as the Kremlin Clock on Spasskaya Tower struck 8pm. the video starts with Spasskaya Tower, shows the walls of the Kremlin, shows Lenin's tomb (with Roman waving at the camera,) the Iberian Gate and Chapel (with Slava waving,) the GUM department store all lit up, and then St Basil's Cathedral.

Thanks for the comments, everyone! Looking forward tot he event Friday!

Posted by Karl Soule at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's a balmy 32 degrees F (0C) here in Moscow. It actually feels warmer. I was braced for really cold conditions, but this feels warmer than some days in the Sierras skiing back home. Moscow has a reputation for incredibly cold conditions in the winter, and most of the locals are commenting on how this almost feels like an "early spring."

The ground is covered in what's called "Moscow Cocktail," which is a gray slushy mixture of snow, ice, water, and road salts. It's EVERYWHERE. You can't avoid it when walking down the streets. I step carefully.

In the Adobe office, I'm sitting next to a map of the entire Russian federation. This is the first time I've seen a Russia-centric map. Globes and world maps don't do justice to the size of this country. It just amazes me. Slava, the sole Sales guy here, says it takes 8 hours to get from Moscow to the Eastern shores. That's 2 weeks by train. In the US, I've driven Coast-to-coast in under 52 hours before (not recommended, but it's possible.)

Today is a prep day for me, along with the possibility of meeting with a high-end broadcaster here. Tomorrow, Rufus and Paul will be joining me here to brief our partners on CS4, and Friday is the Creative Futures event. The early attendance numbers for the event on Friday are astounding - 3,000 people have registered! This is the first time for an event like this in Moscow, so that's a HUGE number! If you're reading this in the Moscow area, come on out and say hi.

Posted by Karl Soule at 3:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Overall, I've had a FANTASTIC weekend in Prague. This is the first time visiting the city, and even though it's really cold, I've enjoyed everything - the food, the people, just the overall atmosphere. It's such a beautiful city.

Today, I've been sequestered in my hotel room prepping some custom content for this week's road tour through Bratislava (on Tuesday) Prague (on Wednesday) and Warsaw (on Thursday). I'll be covering a little of everything Production Premium related each day over a 5 hour period. If you are in the area, definitely stop in and say hi.

For those who follow me on Twitter (KarlSoule) you'll know that I've had some issues with my hotel room chair. Something I've never been able to understand is why hotel chairs are most often chosen for style over comfort. Case in point:

I've been sitting on this piece of lucite for the past 6 hours, off and on, and I officially declare it is the MOST UNCOMFORTABLE CHAIR EVER!! :)

With that rant done, I'm back to work. See you later in the week.

Posted by Karl Soule at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to everyone this week for all the love at Broadcast Video Expo! Our Adobe theatre was absolutely PACKED the entire show, with lots of interest in CS4. Even in the Panasonic booth, as soon as I began demoing our P2 workflow, the theatre was left with standing room only. Just a phenomenal show. I'm still waiting to see final attendance numbers, but this show had the floor traffic of shows of yore - people packed in the aisles.

I'll leave you with one pic of the Adobe Theatre, showing my friend Angie Taylor in mid-demo. Again, every seat full, people sitting on the floor, and standing 4-deep in the aisles:

Headed to Prague as I type this - really looking forward to my first visit in Eastern Europe!

Posted by Karl Soule at 9:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm safely in my hotel room on the West side of London. I'll be at Earl's Court 2 this Tuesday - Thursday doing a variety of presentations. If you're in the area, please say hi.

Each Day:

10:15am - See an overview of CS4 Production Premium at the Dreamtek booth.

1:45pm - 2:30pm - See P2 Workflow with CS4 Production Premium in the Panasonic booth.

4:15pm - See an overview of CS4 Production Premium at the Dreamtek booth. (Not happening Thursday - show closes early.)

Wednesday:

11:30am - The CinemaDNG Initiative: Find out about Adobe's mission to bring RAW workflows into the video space.

For the Production Premium sessions, I do take requests, if there's something specific you'd like to see. :)

Posted by Karl Soule at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm currently gearing up for my next big road trip - I'll be:

* In London for Broadcast Video Expo from Feb 17-19th.

* In Prague Feb 20-23, meeting with video customers.

* In Bratislava Feb 24th for a CS4 Production Premium day seminar - details to be posted later.

* Back in Prague for another Day Seminar on Feb 25th.

* In Warsaw on Feb 26th to wrap up the CS4 Production Premium tour.

This is my first overseas trip since December, so I'm really looking forward to it. However, I've been in an exercise routine during my home stay, and the one thing that blows up any regular exercising for me is a road trip. Inevitably, due to jetlag or long work hours, I don't get the exercise that I need. I try to use the hotel gym if available, or go out walking, but I don't always have the time. Any tips from other world travelers?

Posted by Karl Soule at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now is definitely the time to learn about Production Premium CS4! There are several different road tours either ongoing or coming up soon. here in North America, the tour started last week, and will be hitting up cities across America for the next few weeks. For more information, and to register for the tour, head to this link: http://www.ce1.com/adobe/2009/cs4rs/resellers/training.html

For those of you outside of North America, tours are coming in your region as well! My fellow Evangelist, Jason Levine, has a Nordic tour during the first 2 weeks of February. I will be in London for the Broadcast Video Forum from Feb 17th - 19th. March will have some new dates, possibly including my first trip to Moscow. I can't wait! I will be posting more dates as they finalize.

In the world of Design, check out this new article from Rufus Deuchler on how the world of print is expanding into new territory.

Posted by Karl Soule at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow! what an exciting couple of months! I've literally been around the world twice since my last serious posting, and I'm midway through the CS4 launch tour in Asia right now.

We started in Mumbai, with over 1100 people attending and staying for the full day. The highlight of the day was the Evangelist Shootout at the end of the day, and over 80% of the crowd stayed for the whole 9-hour event!

We had a similar crowd in Hong Kong, and again the shootout proved to be a big crowd pleaser. For those of you who tried to ask us questions at the end, I apologize! We had to RUN to catch our flight out and make it to our next event. Please feel free to email or post comments, and I will answer ASAP.

Taipei featured crowds in not just one hall, but 2 halls. Our overflow hall (complete with larger-than-life video feed) was packed to capacity, and the crowd was so into the show, they were even answering questions to the screen.

I want to give a big shout-out to all of the regional teams who worked so hard to put these events on! All 3 events were well-produced, and I can't thank you enough!

The travel this week has been tight, and sometimes, it means grabbing sleep when and where you can, as this clip shows of Paul Burnett:

Continue reading "Long overdue posting..." »

Posted by Karl Soule at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm back in the office for a big part of July. We're gearing up for a bunch of video production for new episodes of Short & Suite, and I'll also be conducting a series of online training classes on Production Premium.

The upcoming eSeminar classes are listed here. I'll be covering the ones on creating and burning Blu-Ray discs on the 22nd, and one on adding Production Premium to your Final Cut Workflow on July 29th.

Posted by Karl Soule at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spending the week in Paris conducting training. First time in the city!

Posted by Karl Soule at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Working from a remote office (I'm based in Folsom, CA) and travelling as much as I do, I don't get enough time in the San Jose headquarters. Today I had the pleasure of coming down for the day, and doing some presentations here.

For those who have never been to San Jose, the offices are BIG. Adobe's headquarters take up most of a city block, with 3 towers around 18 stories tall. In the very center, between the towers, there's a basketball court.

I realized today that my family has never seen the corporate headquarters. I've got to take the family down here and give 'em the tour. :)

Posted by Karl Soule at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Been in Boston and New York this week talking to various people in the press. We're leaving for Canada this afternoon, going to Toronto for the first time. I always enjoy Canada. I've been to Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver a couple of times. It has a distinctly different feel, almost like visiting Europe without the long plane ride. I've never seen Toronto, and I wish we had more time there - I'm flying home Friday afternoon.

Posted by Karl Soule at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey everyone - sorry for the lack of posting in March. This month has been absolutely INSANE with travel and events, and April is going to be doubly so.

Here's a quick list of where I was in March:

LA for HD Expo, hanging out with the Cineform team. Cineform has some really exciting stuff that adds to Premiere Pro's capabilities, including working with RAW files originating from the DALSA and RED cameras. Need an online 2K or 4K worflow with RAW image manipulation in real time? Check out Premiere Pro with the Cineform Prospect 4k Add-on. Simply amazing! I hope to blog further about it in the upcoming weeks.

I was also in LA for CLASSIFIED where we were shooting for CLASSIFIED. It was a terrific experience, and I have to thank CLASSIFIED and CLASSIFIED for all the work they did!

On a similar note, I spent a couple weeks now in the Bay Area working on CLASSIFIED for the CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED.

Well, I hope that clears up how I spent my March! Here's to a busy April! Next week, I'll be presenting for the AIGA in Providence, RI chapter, and then it's off to NAB for a week of exciting Vegas action. I'm especially looking forward to CLASSIFIED when I'm in Vegas!

Peace!

Posted by Karl Soule at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Special thanks to Claudia Crask and everyone at the SF Cutters user group for having me last Thursday! I had a lot of fun presenting Encore, and showing off Adobe's Blu-Ray authoring solution. We had almost 100 people in attendance by my count.

Posted by Karl Soule at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had the opportunity last week to work with Robert McDaniels, a member of the Education team here at Adobe. We covered 2 different events, one in Birmingham, and one in Tampa. The events were sponsored by the AIGA, which is one of the oldest and largest organizations for design professionals. In both cities, it was a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowd.

Robert and I covered a lot in the 3+ hours, including web, print, and video workflows. I found it interesting that the attendees came from all 3 parts of design, and almost all of them now have to work outside of their core area of expertise - print people jumping into video, web people creating PDF's for print, etc. We really are seeing the age of the "renaissance designer" that has to move between disciplines when necessary.

Out of my video workflow demonstration, I think seeing video in Photoshop was a big hit among the print crowd. Using a tool they already know and love to manipulate video is really exciting. The Puppet Tool in After Effects also gets high marks from both the web and print crowd because of the ease-of-use factor.

I'm looking forward to later this week - I'm doing a Blu-Ray authoring class tomorrow night in San Francisco. Blu-Ray is a very hot topic now that the format war is officially done with, and we have a nice solution for early adopters.

Posted by Karl Soule at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, I had a wonderful time in London at Broadcast LIVE / Video Forum UK. The show had an attendance of over 10,000 people. Video Forum is a special show for me, because it was the first trade show I attended as an Adobe employee. This year saw larger crowds than last, and a packed theatre schedule.

The Adobe booth had 2 different theatres, and I had 5 45-minute sessions in Theatre 1. 2 sets of classes were back-to-back, with the first covering Production Premium CS3, and the other covering Premiere Pro CS3 in-depth.

Now, I'm pretty OS-agnostic these days, and feel comfortable in both MacOS and Windows, so demoing is always a conundrum. I love showing off Production Premium on the MacOS since it is new to the platform, yet I also like showing OnLocation (which is one of only 2 utility programs that have to run under Windows.) This show schedule worked beautifully, with back-to-back classes. I started in MacOS, showing how great the workflow is between the applications. Then, at the 5-minute break, I jumped over into Windows, and started my Premiere Pro class there. It gave people an opportunity to see Premiere Pro in both operating systems, and see how well it performs in either.

The theatres stayed packed with people, even on the last day of the show, and there were LOTS of questions, especially from the Mac community. I think the flexibility of Premiere Pro, and the interoperability between Pr and Ae is really turning heads in the Mac community.

I also got an opportunity to hang out a bit with my friend Angie Taylor." Angie runs a site called www.creativeaftereffects.com and has a book out by the same name. I'm forever learning new tips and tricks on Ae thanks to her. Check out her site - it's a great resource.

Posted by Karl Soule at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in Dallas in a darkened hotel room working on a top secret project. I've been staring at my computer screen for the past couple of hours, looking at the face of the man who will become a legend of Rock and Roll.... Johnny Encore.

All will be revealed soon...

Posted by Karl Soule at 5:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in London this week for Video Forum UK. Spent this afternoon wandering the streets nearby, and stopping in some institutions, like Harrods, and the V&A Museum. The jetlag is always the worst for me the first day. :)

Posted by Karl Soule at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)