Bob Donlon’s Web TV Blog

The view from the UAL business class loungs @ SFO

Just when I thought it was safe to be home again . . .

This should be another fun trip. I'm flying to Sao Paulo, Brazil for the Production Studio Launch Seminar on Tuesday, as well as a press conference and some customer visits. I got a plane ticket for my "better half" Anne-Lise, and we're going to fly up to Salvador da Bahia to visit some friends after the week's Adobe activities are done.

Sao Paulo is the third largest city in the world. I've been there before and its sheer scale is mind-boggling. There are neighborhoods that run the gamut from shocking poverty to sky's-the-limit condo high-rises with helecopter landing pads on the roof ( the mega-rich are at too big of a risk of kidnapping to travel by car). The food is really amazing -- very unique -- and I'm glad we'll be there on Sunday for the traditional Fejoada lunch when the restaurants are always packed with families eating rich Fejoada stew & Pao de Quejo (small cheese bread puffs made with tapicoa flour), and drinking Capirhinas & Guarana.

15 hours of flying time ahead, connecting at O'Hare. No bussiness-class seat-bed this time, just the standard UAL deal. I'll catch up with y'all from the Southern Hemisphere (for the 2nd time this month).

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you use previous versions of Adobe's Video & Audio products, you've definitely noticed the darker User Interface in the new releases. Many of us at Adobe prefer the darker UI, but this is not the default setting -- when you first install you'll get the standard Adobe UI brightness.

The last version of After Effects had the capability to adjust the UI brightness, and now we've added that capability to all the Production Studio apps. You need to select Edit > Preferences and then go to User Interface Colors.

The User Interface Prefs in After Effects 7.0

The slider widget adjusts the brightness of the entire UI. Personally, I find the darker setting easier on the eyes, and its also easier to focus on the artwork without the interface getting in the way.

Off to the Brazilian consulate now to pick up my visa. Flying to Sao Paulo tomorrow for a Production Studio Launch Seminar there on Tuesday, as well as some press briefings and customer visits. Obrigado.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I presented my second "Breezo", which is a Breeze Presentation (Breeze+Preso=Breezo). My teeth are aching just from thinking about trying to read that last sentence out loud.

Breeze is a product from the former Macromedia side of the house, and it allows for some really sophisticated real-time collaborative conferencing over IP.

The Breeze interface, in this morning's "Breezo" to Macromedia User Group leaders

Today I showed After Effects to Macromedia User Group leaders and other company partners -- it all happened at 9 in the morning Pacific Time (where I live), and I was barely awake, sitting at my kitchen table drinking coffee, and speaking "& showing AE to lord knows how many people, all over the world. It's a really strange experience since it's just you alone talking for an hour, and then at the end you do a brief Q&A in Breeze's Chat Pot, and it occurs to you that all of these people have just been listening to every word you've said, and seen everything you've done on your computer screen the whole time.

As you'd imagine, Adobe has adopted Breeze for all our internal meetings. It's a really fascinating piece of technology.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 06:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Adobe Audition is the 7th most pirated software program in the world.

Other Adobe apps are up there on the list as well, as you can imagine. Believe it or not, I'm not about to launch into a rant on software piracy, but I just wanted to share some thoughts on the issue.

We all pirate intellectual property at one point or another, be it a song download, or copying software, or whatever. Of course, I've done it myself (although not the song downloads, I've always had a stick up my rear-end about that one). But at the point where you're making money off the intellectual property, it's time to buck up.

Big software companies like Adobe make good money, and piracy is something that comes with the territory. But to me, it's more of an ethical issue. I've always made my living from intellectual property -- first music then video & film, now software. As a personal thing, I couldn't live with myself if I were not paying for the right to have my favorite band sing to me on my I-Pod, or for the tools that enable me to make a living. If you make a living from software, the time has come to buy it. Even if you've got low cash flow there's always a way to make it happen. By doing this you truly become part of the "ecosystem" of creative software.

Things like music and software don't have a the same type of "tangibility consciousness" in the general public to mean the same thing as a "hard good." So it's socially acceptable, albeit illegal., to pirate. People getting rich off intellectual property have no right to bitch and moan, but it's really not about that. It's about a mindset that needs to change -- and it will, over time, as the global economy becomes more IP driven over the coming years.

Stepping down from the soapbox now . . .

Posted by Bob Donlon at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Usually I get ideas for "tips & tricks" postings going about my daily business of working in Production Studio. Then I have to think of a heading for the posting, and sometimes that thought process triggers memories, and in today's posting, which is on After Effects' 3D Camera, I was thinking "Third Dimension," which led to "Fifth Dimension" (i.e. the famous '60's pop group), and then the "Fabulous Fifth Dimension," which is what the Fifth Dimension were called when I played with them back in the early '90's.

The Fifth Dimension had loads of hits in the '60's, like "The Age of Aquarius," "Up, Up And Away," and a song that could have only been written & recorded in the '60's, "Stoned Soul Picnic." I mean . . . lyrics like these:

Surry down to a stoned soul picnic
There'll be lots of time and wine
Red yellow honey, sassafras and moonshine

Moonishine? You've gotta be freaking kidding me! Anyhow, by the time I played with them, the 2 most well-known of the 5 singers, Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr., had long since departed the group. For legal reasons, the remaining 3 singers had to add "Fabulous" to the name of the act, and the act itself in the 1990's was a half-hour "revue" of their most famous songs.

The first night I played with them, Florence La Rue (one of the singers) introduced me onstage, remembering my first and last name (which impressed me because we'd just met right before the show). Every show thereafter, she had to turn to me before introducing me and ask me what my name was. Too much moonshine in the '60's, eh Florence?

Alright, enough of that.

I find that many After Effects users never explore the powerful 3D capabilities within, which is a shame because you can do some really amazing things. One of the key things you need to understand in order to work in 3D are the Camera Settings.

The Camera Settings dialog in After Effects 7.0

The Camera Settings dialog appears whenever you select Layer > New > Camera or double-click a Camera in the timeline. There are loads of settings in here, but when you're just getting started with 3D you should stick to one of the lens presets. In the above screencap, you can see the selections in the Preset menu. The smaller the lens, the more depth-of-field you will get.

The default setting of 50mm will not adjust depth-of-field at all, meaning that your work will look pretty much the same way it did in 2D. A smaller lens gives a more exaggerated 3D, while a larger (wider) lens flattens things out.

I suggest starting out with a 20mm lens as it's easier to get interesting results quickly. Another good idea is to add one camera to your comp for each of the lens presets, and then toggle them on & off to see the difference.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Okay, some days it's hard to come up with decent headings, you've gotta expect that once in awhile.

My cousin Eric was asking me recently about fading out the audio at the end of a DVD slideshow. Encore DVD 2.0 has an incredibly powerful new Slideshow Editor, but it doesn't give you the capability to do audio fades. Here's the workflow for doing it using Audition.

1) Right-mouse-click the audio file in your Encore Project Panel, and select Reveal in Explorer.

2) An Explorer window opens with the audio file highlighted. Right-mouse-click on the audio file and select Open With > Adobe Audition.

3) In Audition, click-drag on the last *X* seconds of the audio waveform to select it (X being the duration you'd like your fade to be -- 2 or 3 seconds is a good place to start).

4) Click on the Favorites panel (it should be in the upper-left corner of the UI, if not you can go to the Window menu and select Favorites to open it). Double click on the "Fade Out" favorite, and the fade out is applied.

5) Click to the left of the area you selected in the wafeform, and hit the Spacebar on your keyboard to play back the fade.

6) If you want to adjust the length, select Edit > Undo and repeat steps 3-5.

7) Once you're happy with your fade-out, select File > Save and quit Audition.

Remember that editing an audio file in this fashion is destructive, i.e. the fade-out becomes a permanent part of that audio file, so it's a good idea to make a backup copy of the original before you open it in Audidion.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This year, I've got the conspicuous gig of programming the main theatre stage for our NAB exhibit. It's gonna be a big one for us, hot on the heels of an enormously successful Production Studio launch, and we're lucky to have a crack lineup of Adobe customers & product experts to show you what people all over the world have been doing with our products.

I can't give up the goods on who's presenting, but I can tell you that our friend Jacob Rosenberg of Formika Films will be with us once again. Jacob is one of the worlds' foremost Premiere Pro experts, and he'll be showing several projects that he's done the past year with Adobe tools.

The video "Cactusflower", by John Gold -- directed by Jacob Rosenberg and post-produced entirely with Adobe Production Studio

Jacob Rosenberg and our own Jason Levine collaborated on "Cactusflower" (screencap above), using Adobe Audition to record performances live on set, Adobe Premiere Pro for editing & color correction, Adobe After Effects for compositing, and Adobe Photoshop for creating the background plate for one of the shots. Click here to watch the video in glorious Flash Video 8.

Jacob shot in HD, but had the camera on its side to get long vertical plates to use in compositing. Come by our exhibit and see how he put this remarkable video together.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I get asked this one all the time -- how to get video from a DVD into an editable form.

First off, you need to understand that commercial DVDs (i.e. Hollywood Films, TV Series, & the like) are copy protected with CSS (Content Scramble System) and/or Macrovision. If you're trying to rip a copy-protected DVD to an AVI or Quicktime, the only way to do it is with illegal software.

Now if you're honestly trying to get non-copywrited material from a DVD to an editable file format (as I myself had to do today) there are many companies out there that make conversion utilities. But I found out something today that I didn't know -- Adobe Premiere Elements has this capability build in! (thanks, Giles, for turning me on to this).

The Adobe Premiere Elements Media Downloader, importing video from a DVD

It's simply a matter of going to the File menu and selecting Add Media>From DVD Camera or Removable Drive. That opens the Media Downloader (above), which is very straighforward and intuitive (select the DVD and let 'er rip)!

I learn something new every day at this job.

BTW -- I picked up my Giants season tix today. Still a Mets fan, but I had to adopt the local team as well (and I have a birthright anyhow as the whole reason I'm a Mets fan is because my dad was a Giants fan back when they played in Manhattan. When the Giants moved to SF, he was without a team until the Mets started up in 1962. So I was born a Mets fan even though I grew up in Yankees country. So I guess I suffered enough with the Mets to feel too guilty about it . . .)

Posted by Bob Donlon at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The past few days in NYC were like a time capsule. Going back to the old 'hood, seeing friends & family, and all that sort of stuff -- there you expect that kind of feeling. But the benefit show I played @ Bowery Ballroom on Saturday night was a timewarp of a completely different nature.

Tim Cloherty & I during The Rake's Progress' reunion on Saturday night (you can just see drummer Pete Klinger's face to the right of Tim''s belt).

Walking into soundcheck was like stepping into a twisted kind of high-school reunion. Nearly all the bands on the bill had members of The Rake's Progress or The Bogmen in them. We all toured together back in the early-mid '90's and the stories of on-the-road-hijinks could fill volumes (in fact, Bill Campion [nee Vic Thrill] of the Bogmen just optioned a movie screenplay to a major studio for some big bucks -- kudos Bill).

The backstage scene was just like it was back in the old days -- a beer-swigging family singalong (the "show within the show"), and all the onstage performances were stellar. We sold the joint out (that's 625 people) and raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 for the education fund of Tim's nieces & nephews who lost their dad Tom Cloherty to a heart attack earlier this year.

The "Rake's Progress Reunion" was a blast -- we haven't been onstage together since 1999. But it all fell back into place instantly -- I guess 10 years, 2 albums, and over 1,000 shows can do that to you. I turned to Tim at one point during the show and said "what the hell is going on?". It was 1995 all of a sudden.

Today, back in SF, it's very much 2006. I'm editing the video of the Sydney Production Studio Seminar, preparing some stuff for NAB, and yet again trying to shake off some serious jetlag.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I'll be on PTO (that's "Personal Time Off" in Adobe lingo) until Tuesday -- heading to NYC later today to visit friends & family. This will include a stop by my ancestral home, Co-op City, a bizarre public housing experiment gone horribly wrong.

A panoramic view of "Co-op" from one of their early 1970's sales brochures.

OK, so it's really not that bad. No, wait, it is.

Build on swampland in the Northeast Bronx, Co-op City was designed to be a community for middle-class families. It's not exactly the safest neighborhood in The Bronx, but not the worst either. It being on a swamp means that all the buildings are coming apart structurally, and they even had to go so far as to condemn all the parking garages and pave over the only green area in the place in order to park all the cars.

Luckily, we'll be spending most of our time in NYC not in Co-op City. Crashing with some friends in the East Village, actually. Don't forget the benefit show on Saturday @ Bowery Ballroom if you're in the area.

Signing off 'til Tuesday. Please remember to turn the lights out when you leave.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday, I had the priviledge of spending some time with noted industry journalist & author Jan Ozer. We got into a deep discussion on color correction -- how it's still a big mystery to most of us -- and eventuallly we started talking about the uses of a Waveform/Vectorscope.

The YC Waveform Scope in Premiere Pro 2.0

Waveform/Vectorcopes generally only come into play when you're editing something for broadcast. There are legal limits on luma (brightness) and chroma (color) ranges in broadcast signals. Even if you're not going to broadcast, if you plan to make VHS copies you'll wind up with that "buzzing" on the audio track if your luma range is too high.

The general idea is that you need to keep your luma between 7.5 and 100 IRE. Looking at the Waveform Scope above, you can see that the luma (represented in green) is within the legal limits, while the chroma (represented in blue) is pushing below 7.5 (in Premiere Pro's Waveform Scope, above, the green and blue lines on the right show you the luma & chroma ranges in the image). So in this example, I'd need to look at the Vectorscope to analyze my chroma and make sure everything is in the safe zone (I'll do a posting on the Vectorscope shortly).

There's a lack of easy-to-understand training material on this subject. One book I highly reccomend is Color Correction for Digital Video by Steve Hullfish and Jaime Fowler. It's got a very clear explanation of how to read Waveform/Vectorscopes, and while not extensively detailed, gives you the basic knowledge you need.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few years ago I was at one of the trade shows and the crew from Macromedia were wearing these shirts that said "think outside the rectangle." The whole idea was to encourage people to look at things that could be done with video on the web that didn't just involve a video playing on a webpage or inside a Flash movie.

Here, in the second "Flash Video Inpiration" posting of the day, I bring you the website of Agencynet, an interactive production company based in South Florida.

The little people in the above screencap of their hompage are actually Flash Video clips within the Flash Movie. Click here to view the site, it has loads of interactivity, and uses video in some very unusual ways.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally got some time to work on the CSS for the blog (CSS, or "Cascading Style Sheets", define how the pages on the blog appear). Please bear with the constant style changes that are bound to happen today as I continue to tweek away in Dreamweaver and rebuild the pages. Should have it in decent shape by the end of today.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm always searching the web to find cool things people are doing with our software and just discovered this little nugget right in my own backyard, on adobe.com. It''s a piece about Flash in mobile phones & consumer electronic devices.

Really simple, elegant, but very clever (especially the navigation -- mouse over the thumbnails at the bottom to see what I mean). Seems more "dvd-esque" to me than a Flash piece.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I decided to take a long lunch today with my buddy Tom who is visiting from NYC (Tom happens to be a very talented web developer -- his company is called Local Galaxy). Anyhoo, I decided to take Tom up to one of my favorite spots in the Bay Area, the Marin Headlands.

It took me exactly 25 minutes to drive from my office, which is completely on the other side of San Francisco, to where I took this photo. 'Nuff said.

Just over the bridge is The Presidio, where George Lucas has his brand-spanking new production facilities. Along with Lucas-owned Industrial Light & Magic, there are a handful of large & small production and post-production companies, such as The Orphanage.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And no, this has nothing to do with my winetasting jaunt through Napa Valley on Saturday. This is a tip for those of you running After Effects 7.0 on Windows XP.

AE7 uses the ClearType technology found in WinXP to smooth the appearance of fonts in it's User Interface. Here's how to make sure you have ClearType enabled:

1) Right-mouse-click anywhere on your desktop and select "Properties". The Display Properties dialog appears.

2) Click on the "Appearance" tab and then click on the "Effects" button. (screencap below)

3) In the second pulldown menu from the top, select "ClearType", and click OK.

This'll keep the AE UI smooth, smooth smooth, regardless of the "After Effects of Weekend Hijinks". Oh that's just sad.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To those that have written me about the blog showing up with a white background on certain browsers and the light grey text being impossible to read:

1) Thanks for the heads-up, I'm only using IE currently.

2) I'm still learning by trial & error how to modify the CSS to get the pages to look like I want, in all browsers so please bear with me.

I'll probably switch to one of the stock CSS templates on Monday, when I resume my posts. Signing off for the weekend -- I hope yours is fun & relaxing.

Saddling up for the ride home. Am I a total dork or what?

P.S. - It hailed in San Jose today, for about 5 minutes, just as I was leaving HQ. Hailstones the size of peas -- one of my colleagues noted that she's been living in SJ for 20 years and had never before seen snow nor hail there.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A tutorial I wrote for Studio Monthly magazine on exporting Flash Video from After Effects 7.0 is now online at Studio Monthly's sister web publication Studio Daily (let's see how long it takes for "Studio Hourly" to show up).

Read the tutorial here.

BTW, Studio Monthly is an excellent magazine that has more tutorials per issue than any other magazine. You can get a free subscription here.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're starting to see the fruit of our steamroller trip through AsiaPac. Wee Ling Tan, of Adobe Singapore, just sent us a video of the interview we did for Straits Times Interactive (The Straits Times is the #1 english-language newspaper in Singapore).

You do need a subscription to STI to watch the video, so here are a couple of screencaps:

Jim provides the "big picture."

I show some of the new Adobe Production Studio features to reporter Melissa Kok.

I also did an interview with the South China Morning Post (#1 english-language daily in Hong Kong) which I'm looking forward to seeing.

We're going to put the archived webcast of the Sydney Production Studio Launch Seminar on adobe.com within the next few weeks, so everyone will get to see what the follks in Asia & Australia got to see earlier this month.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the best online resources for tutorials on Adobe's Video & Audio products is Creative COW (mooooooo) -- COW actually stands for "Communities of the World", so it's really "Creative Communities of the World". They still use a cow as their logo, and give away neat promotional items like "Bovine Bessie's Chicken Sauce" at trade shows. The COW's founders, Ron & Kathlyn Lindeboom, are extremely smart, creative industry vets who have built one of the best onine user forums for Video & Audio on the planet. I used to host the forum for a competitor's editing product there before I started working at Adobe, and if you seach the archives you'll see some of the product reviews & industry reports that I did for them over the years. Ron also happens to be a mean drummer and despite being extremely busy running the COW still manages to produce records & do session work now & then.

Here are direct links to the COW tutorials for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Audition. In particular, there are some really good ones for AE7 and Premiere Pro 2 for those of you starting to work with the new versions.

They also just started a print magazine which you can get a free subscription to, and they have a podcast, hosted by Franklin McMahon, which discusses creative & business issues in our industry. Well worth checking out.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's just like going back to high school.

Well, sort of. Today I drove down to Adobe HQ in San Jose (above), the office that I worked out of until January when the powers that be were kind enough to let me move up to the Adobe San Francisco (formerly Macromedia) office, which is just a 5 minute bike ride from my house, as opposed to a 1-hour drive or train ride (notice the above photo taken through my windshield). Some run-on sentence there, eh?

One of the cool things about Adobe HQ is that there are no cubicles -- everybody gets their own office. Adobe SF is the complete opposite -- very open and as a result a bit more social. Both offices are great. Walking the halls in San Jose today, I ran into several colleagues, and got some skinny on some of the new stuff we're cooking up for the next release. Sorry I can't tell you about it, because if I did"I'd Have To Kill You" (cue canned laughter & comments like "oh, I never heard that one before!"). That's one of the cool things at HQ (death threats aside) it's the epicenter of all things Adobe.

I'll be driving back down there on Friday for a very special 5-minute meeting (you got that right, 2 hours of road time for 5 minutes of meeting). Actually, the meeting is much longer but my presentation is 5 minutes. Sorry I can't tell you about it (again with the "I'd have to kill you -- har har-- good one" bit), but it's gonna be way worth it.

On another note, the Brazil Production Studio Launch Seminar is confirmed for Monday, April 3 in Sao Paulo. I will most definitely be there (and just when I thought it was safe to be back home in SF).

Posted by Bob Donlon at 08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm going to be sitting in with some of these bands at this show -- It'll my first time on a NYC stage since May, 2005. It's a benefit show for a very good cause, one very close to me (if interested, read on . . .).

The headlining band, Booga Sugar, is fronted by Tim Cloherty (lead singer of my former band The Rake's Progress), and Pete Klinger from Rakes is the drummer. Tim comes from a large family (6 siblings), and they were always a major presence at the NYC Rakes shows (I'll never forget this one cousin of Tim's who was the size & shape of a large refrigerator -- he would always stand out even in an audience of 1,000 people).

Anyhow, the sad news is that Tim's older brother Tom died a very sudden and tragic death 2 months ago, while jogging near his home in coastal Maine. He suffered a heart attack during his jog, and even though he was an incredibly strong and healthy young guy of 37 he did not survive.

He left behind a wife and 4 kids, and the proceeds from this concert will go to the kids' education fund. It's a very worthy cause, to say the least, and I personally know all the bands on this bill and they all kick @ss!

So, those of you in the NYC area, I really hope to see you. Anne-Lise & I bought our tix yesterday. Click here for details and to buy tix.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In an earlier post, I wrote that Dean Velez (a multiple Emmy Award winning broadcast designer & former Adobe SE) has a new After Effects training DVD (from Total Training, where he's now the Creative Director). Upon arriving back to my office today, I was delighted to find a copy of it in my mailbox -- "Total Training for Advanced Adobe After Effects 7 Pro - Broadcast Design Secrets". Dean is one of the rare talents that can start with absolutely nothing, create some artwork in Photoshop, animate it in After Effects, and come out with an incredibly deep, dynamic motion design piece. I guess it comes from all those years he spent in TV News, having to create graphics packages with an average deadline of 1/2 hour (!).

I just watched the first part -- creating a News Bumper -- which uses the Fractal Noise effect to great effect (sorry) in creating the animated clouds. Fractal Noise is one of those effects that you should always turn to when creating animated backgrounds as the possibilities are virtually endless. Here's a screencap from the training.

Anybody involved in Broadcast Design should have a copy of this disc.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hello, my friend. How are you today? You are looking wonderful!

Oh -- you are looking at my office. Well, I must explain. You see, I am working today with our partner company Intel. VERY important partner. They make hardware that makes our Video & Audio software run FAST. I am sitting here with the bleeding edge of laptop PC technology -- the HP Compaq NX 9420, which has the new Intel Centrino dual-core processor. Production Studio smokes on this thing. I got to sit here and do press briefings all day, right in front of the bed that John F. Kennedy & Marlyn Monroe allegedly hooked up in. According to hotel staff, the President was enjoying some private time in that bed with Ms. Monroe one afternoon when the First Lady returned early from her shopping trip, forcing Marilyn to hide on the roof until it was safe to make an escape.

Urban legends aside, this was a fun event, held in the penthouse of the Farimont hotel in San Francisco's posh Nob Hill area. Intel always throws unique events, and this was no exception -- the room I had my "bedside office" in was also populated by other Intel partners such as Skype, a telephone-over-IP service.

There's the room looking in from outside, and here's a shot on the balcony with the crew from Intel.

Today was fun, but I'm looking forward to a few days in the office for a change.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Finally back home. I slept like a rock last night, but it was from 8pm-4am.

Here's the view from the upstairs of my house. It's one of those great San Francisco weather days -- nice & fresh. Obviously it's not the fog season -- many times of the year that skyline is completely socked in.

Looking forward to training some of the Adobe SE's (Sales Engineers) next week in San Jose. I'll be doing a press event with Intel on Monday here in SF, and it looks like I'll be off to Brazil for a Production Studio Launch Seminar & press junket in early April.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're looking for a few good men & women to present their work at our main theater stage @ NAB 2006 (April 24-27 in Las Vegas). If you have experience presenting to large crowds, and cool, noteworthy stuff you've done with Adobe tools that you'd like to share, please e-mail me.

Posted by Bob Donlon at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Writing this entry at 36000 feet over the Pacific Ocean in a business class seat that converts to a flat bed. They're serving drinks now.

Some airline cabin, huh? I wasn't kidding when I wrote that Cathay Pacific is one of the best - - actually probably THE best airline I've ever flown (and I've flown 'em all). Aside from the seat-bed the flight attendants are incredibly gracious, call you by name, and look after you so well that you never have to ask for anything, somehow they manage to stay 1 step ahead. I've never seen anything like it before -- even on Singapore Airlines, which I flew on the first leg of the tour, which is reputed to be the best airline in the world (they are also excellent, but as Mark Phibbs put it so succinctly -- "Singapore Airlines is the girl in high school who knows she's pretty, and Cathay is prettier but doesn't know it").

There's Mark at the end-of-tour dinner at Wildfire restaurant in Sydney.

So the AsiaPac Production Studio Launch Tour doesn't end with my return home -- no sirree! Singapore-based Marianne Young Ledesma, the Applications Engineer for Adobe AsiaPac, carries the show onward to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, & The Phillipines.

Marianne was one of the great people we got to work with in Singapore -- big thanks to Wee Ling Tan & team for putting together a really super event at one of the nicest hotels in Singapore (a city with some of the most de-luxe hotels in the universe), the Intercontinental.

No more planes for me until the March 16 trip to NYC. I'll be sitting in at a benefit concert on Saturday March 18 at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC. It's for my freind Tim's nieces & nephews who lost their dad Tom Cloherty 2 months ago to a tragic heart attack. Tommy was only 39 years old and left behind a wife and 4 kids. Tim was the singer in The Rake's Progress (the band I was in for 10 years) and his band Booga Sugar will be headlining with a bunch of other great bands. The ticket proceeds to to the education fund for Tom's kids. If you're in the NYC area please come out and hear some great music -- there might be a Rake's Progress reunion song or 2 . . .

Posted by Bob Donlon at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After nearly 2 weeks of hopping on and off planes, checking into and out of hotels, and presenting to the greatest users in the world (Adobe users), we're finally finished with the 2006 Adobe Production Studio AsiaPac Launch Tour. We met so many fantastic people, got treated like royalty by the local Adobe staff, and somehow managed to suffer not a single injury nor fatality during this jaunt through an incrediby huge and diverse region.

Hart & I enjoyed a fantastic day off in Sydney today (obligatory tourist photo above), and I've got to get up in 5 hours to fly back to my newly adopted home town, San Francisco California, on Cathay Pacific Airlines (one of the best airlines I've ever flown). This involves a connecting flight in Hong Kong, with a 1.5 hour layover, so I guess I can make that a total of 17.5 hours in Hong Kong on this trip.

Me taking a picture of Hart taking a picture of himself. Sleep deprivation does this kind of thing to you . . .

Thanks to all of you who came out to see us present the most important release of Adobe's Video & Audio Products in the Company's history.

Sourdough and Anchor Steam, here I come ! ! !

Posted by Bob Donlon at 04:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)