The Genesis Project

I'm going to be honest here and say that this is one topic that I'll be blogging about a few times before the actual event happens.  I'm really excited to have brought together so many solutions partners for you and as a result, I'm asking you  to do your part and show up!  Yeah, maybe it's the sales person in me, or more likely the result of the fact that I've put most of this together and I want to make sure a lot of people show up!

We'll have representatives from the following companies there:

Adobe, AJA, Blackmagic Design, B&H, CalDigit, DigiEffects, GenArts, Grid Iron Software, Matrox, Maxon, MOTU and Panasonic.

Did I mention prizes? Lots of prizes?  Say thousands of dollars of prizes?  Everyone loves free stuff and there will be a ton of great gear and prizes for those who show up and stay 'til the end.  If you've heard me speak at these kinds of events, "You've got to be in it to win it!"  In other words, you have to be present to be eligible for the prizes.

One more thing - I always try to be careful not to sound like a salesperson because I love to just help people learn more about Adobe products. However, I would be remiss in my dedication if I didn't mention that some vendors including Adobe will have special offers for the day of the event. B&H is one block away and is our featured reseller.  I don't need to introduce them as everyone knows what they're all about...they carry everything! 

How can you miss this event?:  Lots of information, lots of vendors, B&H is one block away, lots of prizes, opportunities to save money with special offers.

So, how do you register?  Glad you asked!  Click on the link below to take you to the invite.  From there, just click on the register button and you're on your way.

Adobe Systems Digital Video Tools showcase

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:14 AM | Permalink

• Cinema DNG
• Metadata which includes...
• Speech to Text (my favorite and likely yours too)
• Designing once for multiple devices (mobile authoring)
• A new software tool for multimedia (Flash for the rest of us)

Each of these has potential impact and I'm not sure which one is the most important, but I have to say that the speech to text demo is quite compelling.  The idea of being able to translate audio into words and then using it for metadata to speed the editing process as well as add context to video online is quite compelling.

Cinema DNG could be huge if the industry wants to get behind it.  The question is do they want to get together.  I happened to be in on a meeting of many of the camera manufacturers and the initial conversation was quite positive.  Lets hope that this comes together because as film making becomes even more democratized, it will be more important than ever to get a unified means of moving and making digital films.

Flash for the rest of us is a promise that I hope we see realized soon.  The initial demo (the last one) is indicative of myself.  I'd like to do some interactive content, but Flash just doesn't jive with me (much as I want it to).  The idea of being able to do Flash without knowing a ton of Actionscript is a good one.

Well, enough of me prattling on, take a look at the video embedded here or get it at Adobe TV ,  better yet, install the Adobe Media Player and subscribe to Adobe TV.

Finally, what do you think of the video?  Let me know your thoughts here with some comments.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Some time ago, I was at ABC in NY and was there to answer questions about any Adobe products.  They are moving from Quantel to a desktop based workstation that includes Production Premium.  Well, one artist asked how to do the tall letters in perspective scrolling by, so I put it together in a few minutes and left it at that. Now months later, I am posting it for everyone to use. 

The project has 3 simple layers.  A background with some fractal noise animation, the text layer and finally the camera.  Explore this simple animation and reverse engineer how it's done.  Of course, I know you'll make it much better along the way - remember, I'm not an artist!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:50 AM | Permalink

Today, while wolfing down cold pizza for 5 minutes during work, I do what I usually do - skim a trade magazine.  Today it was Event DV.  It's been around for a while and honestly I like the format a lot. For the back page editorial they have a long time writer in the tech/video space and that is Jan Ozer.  This month he wrote about HD acquisition and it was so relevant that I wanted to pass it on to you.

Here's the article: The Moving Picture: Ingesting HD Acquisition

Why do I like it? Well, besides rehearsing the history of acquisition starting with the VHS tape, he spends just the right amount describing what each step was and why it was good and bad.  He goes through DV, HDV, Long GOP MPEG, and on through AVC HD, AVC-Intra and DVCPro HD.  Secondly, I like it because he ends the article with MXF and how it will be important for people to choose the right editor to edit MXF, especially if metadata is important to them.  You know where I stand on Adobe's MXF editing - I think its the best hands down and only going to get better.  But, rather than me droning on about Adobe and metadata, take a look at the article and give it a read - I'm glad I did.

Happy Friday from your Adobe pal - Dennis

PS - To my AVC HD crowd - there's something in there for you too, though nothing I haven't really outlined already in my now famous post

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 05:55 PM | Permalink

All right, let me first say that the documentary film was very interesting and fun to watch.  It also stayed on topic and was fairly representing both sides of the topic.  I was impressed at how the movie stayed on the issue of how evolutionary is stifling opposing points of view which is contrary to the scientific method.  They didn't discuss the case for ID at all, which I found intruiging.

However, I digress...

While I was watching the film and trying to keep 20 some odd boys and girls in line at the movie theater (I was a chaperone for one of my children), I was struck at how well the film was edited.  Hats off to Simon Tondeur, the editor.  It was juggling an enormous amount of interviews as well as keep tons of material both scripted and ad-libbed by Ben Stein.

This brings me to the real point of this post.  With the flow of the movie and all of the disparate material being brought together as a cognizant whole, I was struck by how the use of metadata could help movies of this type be done more quickly in the future.  At NAB, we did a technology preview that would read audio in the video and transcribe it to words - essentially creating time-related metadata.  I was thinking that Simon could have used this technique to quickly find a list of clips that were relevant.  He could search the word "eugenics" and find all the clips that mentioned it or referenced it in their takes.  The likely case was that Simon, Ben and the rest of the team were either sifting through the clips and tagging the right ones or more probably, manually entering metadata like "eugenics," "professer XYZ," etc. 

The more I think about this, the more I understand how important metadata is for creating and distributing content in a quicker, more efficient fashion. What do you think - will metadata be important to your workflows in the future?

[DR Update - I have closed off comments on this one entry.  Why?  Well, though I received some very interesting comments about the point of this post, I also received some that were trashing all kinds of things, not worth mentioning.  As the admin for the blog, I can choose what goes up and what doesn't, but I take the freedom of speech thing very seriously.  So, after some internal thought I decided that I wouldn't publish the good only but close off comments altogether.  This is a shame, but I thought the best thing to do.]

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 12:58 PM | Permalink

This episode is about 60MB and I am recommending that people subscribe to the feed to be able to automatically grab a new episode when it becomes available.  That way, it will be viewable in an online and offline experience.  This is the real advantage of the Adobe Media Player and Adobe TV.  If you haven't downloaded the player, then get it here: Adobe Media Player

I may not be as cool as MTV, Star Trek, Hawaii 5-0, CSI, etc.  but I hope that you'll benefit from Adobe TV and Adobe Beginner Classes nonetheless.

On other news, I'm hoping to be able to get back into the swing of things for some tutorials - I love doing them, but Adobe is pulling me in several different directions at once so it is always a balancing act. 

One of the things I am currently immersed in is planning a live Adobe event for may 29th.  This event will gather not only Adobe and show off our video and audio desktop products, but it will also have several other vendors there that are a part of the production process. Our idea is to gather foster the idea of a post-NAB mini tradeshow that will be beneficial to all of the greater NY metro area. 

You can be sure that I will be posting on this event more as we draw closer to the date, but for the time being, I am hoping that you will be penciling in the date on your calendars.  Why you ask?  Well, besides all of the great information, vendors like AJA, Matrox, Blackmagic Design, GenArts, Wacom, CalDigit, etc. etc (over 12 at last count), there will be lots of PRIZES during the event.  Come on, you know you want to come right? ;-)

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In fact, I remarked to someone that most of the theater in our booth was full on the last presentation, even as streams of people were filing out to catch a cab to wherever.

First off, thanks to those of you who took the time to find me and introduce yourselves - it is SO great to meet and connect with you. Hopefully, after meeting me, you'll still read the blog now and again! ;-)

Around the booth, we did have a lot of other companies that no doubt benefited from and contributed to the general congestion that was in the area.  Most notably, the RED booth.  They introduced two cameras, each of which will be fascinating in their respective markets.  The one that struck me the most was a 3K camera for $3k. I certainly hope that Adobe will have RED on the Cinema DNG group and that viable workflows with Adobe and RED products will be a reality sooner rather than later. 

So, what was the buzz around the show floor this year?  Read on!

• Sony XDCAM EX - definitely something that people are excited about.  It can do 1920x1080 both interlaced and progressive and record it at a measly 4.3 MB/s.  At least that is what I've encountered thus far. People love the EX1 and rate it a near perfect camera except it isn't particularly well balanced.  The new camera didn't have the same warm fuzzies - not because of the features like interchaneable lenses, XLR inputs, shoulder mount.  Rather, it was too expensive for the extra features.
• The aforementioned RED booth. The revolution is in full swing, at least according to them and I'm inclined to agree.
• AVC-Intra from Panasonic - DVC Pro HD is big and the new AVC-Intra has seemingly been greeted with warm applause.  I was asked if we supported AVC intra several times while doing a pod (the answer is no for now)
• Adobe technology preview.  While I didn't see it personally, I know what it contained and more importantly I had a gaggle of people come up to me to talk to me about how cool it was.  The speech-to-text feature allows you to convert audio dialog to actual text.  Why is that cool?  Well, what if you want to condense a baseball game to just all of the important plays.  Simply search for words like "strikeout and double?"  There are tons of potential applications that are possible here. That was only one of 5 bits that we presented.
• Adobe Media Player was also hot.  We had 3 "living rooms" that had a big screen TV running a PC or Mac with the Adobe Media Player.  People were watching CSI, Star Trek and my own personal favorite, The Twilight Zone.  I'll leave it to others to comment on the number of people downloading and using AMP, but it is encouring to be sure!

I had a number of meetings and more than ever before I heard from other manufacturers that they wanted to forge closer relationships with Adobe.  Whether its because their customers are using Adobe or because they see a value to it doesn't matter.  Its a win for customers which is what really counts.

Lastly, I should mention that I typed this on the plane ride back from Las Vegas and I was struck by one thing very clearly.  in case you don't know, both Sony and Panasonic have HUGE offices in NJ and yet it still struck me how there were a bunch of Panasonic and Sony people on the plane.  Not surprisingingly, I didn't really see them chatting much with each other! ;-)

I could certainly write more and perhaps I shall...but for now, know that NAB was probably the best yet for Adobe

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

XDCAM EX is interesting on one level because it offers true 1920x1080 frames in a long GOP MPEG2 format.  The data rate of this format is a mere 4.3MB/s meaning that it is one third the size of DVC Pro HD.  Of course, when you import the footage, it has an .mp4 extension, which isn't what you'd expect.  Evidently, they encode MPEG2 and wrap it in a MPEG4 wrapper.

I've played with some XDCAM EX footage late last week and our file-based workflow is the same as it is with DVCProHD - awesome.  In a meeting Sunday with a large media company that was using XDCAM and getting XDCAM HD, they were really excited about not having to transcode or rewrapping.  Native editing is so important especially when you've got tight deadlines like news.

Adobe Press Release on Sony support

Also announced today is Cinema DNG (DNG stands for digital negative) which is the idea of an open standard for digital cinema files.  The idea to have a standard for digital film making would be a boon to both filmmakers and manufacturers alike.  While it will take a while to establish something like this, I think it is good for the industry to embrace and I'm glad that Adobe is leading the charge towards an open standard.

Adobe Press Release on Cinema DNG  

On to the show floor!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're an Avid user and are looking to add the Adobe tools to your toolbox, or are looking to switch, then Adobe's done it's best to make it easy for you. Visit the following link below and check out the details!

Adobe offer to Avid users

Come and get it!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Or, more to the point, are you going?

NAB will be an extravaganza again this year to be sure, despite some noticable absences. If you've never been to NAB it is the ultimate gear fest for broadcasters and media publishers.  It is the Home Depot for tantalizing gear that will do 4D, real-time moves in XL, super HD rez on 40 streams simultaneously to your TV, internet and phone.  It is the ultimate Best Buy boy toy store in the world.  It's Christmas time for gear junkies.

Will Adobe be doing some announcements?  Of course! Is the sky blue? ;-)  However, that will have to wait until at least Monday!  I know, I know, what a tease... It's a weakness as any regular readers will attest.

NAB is the kind of show where what they want to see is individual for them.  In other words, what interests one person may not be the same for someone else.  For me, a lot of the booths that interest me will be related to the Adobe video universe: plugin partners, hardware partners and the like.  Beyond that, I'm interested in asset management partners and other companies that have a need to integrate and communicate with Adobe applications.

So here's a list of the booths that I'll be trying to meet and see:

Matrox, AJA, Blackmagic Design, Signiant, VizRT, EditShare, Playbox

There are a bunch more that I hope to see, but between meetings and booth duty, I'll have a full schedule.  BTW - I would love to meet anyone who happens to be at the show to talk about the blog, Adobe in general or life.  I will be spending time at the Panasonic booth on Monday and Thursday mornings, Canon booth on Wednesday afternoon and the Adobe booth on Tuesday afternoon.  Seriously, come visit me and introduce yourself!

See you there,

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Newspapers have been facing declining circulations for several years now and they've been faced with a fight for their lives as new media threatens to take all of their ad dollars away. 

Fortunately, I'm seeing more and more newspapers embracing new media and delivering video content on their websites as a way to stay 'up-to-the-minute' on news and content in general.

As Adobe, we've been getting more and more interest from Newspapers to tell them about our video message and how we can provide end-to-end workflows for content creation and delivery.

So....If you're a newspaper person and are interested in getting an overview of Adobe video products and how they could integrate into your business, click on the link below and join Jerry Silverman and myself as we do a 60 minute presentation via Adobe Connect.

Register for the Newspaper Video workflow eSeminar

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most importantly Adobe TV will be a channel in the now officially launched Adobe Media Player which you can get here.

This is a great way to get content downloaded automatically or streamed when you're connected.  Right now Adobe TV is a streamed show, but I'm hoping to throw up more episodes at a higher quality level and have them available for download.  After all, I want the content to get out there as widely as possible.

I REALLY hope that you will go take a look at the Adobe TV and also get the Adobe Media Player to view it.  Just type Adobe TV in the Adobe Media Player and you'll be exposed to all of the content.  Subscribe to my show and it will be downloaded into your catalog - pretty neat!

A couple of comments - the first and currently only show is 24 minutes long.  Some might say that's great - others say it's too long and I tend to agree. My shows will be about 15 minutes long so that it can be absorbed in one sitting. 

Things will be changing - Episode 2 and on already have some different things going on, but the essence of all the shows is the same - teaching basic, beginner concepts to people that are interested in learning Adobe video and audio products.

Anyway, take a look and be sure to get the Media Player and subscribe to my feed.  Tell your friends and have them subscribe.  Lets face it - I'm a shameless stat junkie and beside doing it because I love it, I do it so that I can see my stats! Just kidding...kind of.  no really. 

Stop by and meet me at NAB - I'll be splitting time between the Panasonic, Canon and Adobe booths.  I would love to meet as many people who are reading my blog as possible.  Cheers!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Now, in an effort not to gain readers unfairly, I DIDN'T mention the iPhone in the title or the initial excerpt.  What journalistic restraint, you say! I agree - I'll pat myself on the back later.

So, the iPhone is one cool device (I bought my wife one) and the past few weeks has had a bunch of chatter on whether Flash will make it to the iPhone.  I will most ostensibly stay AWAY from all of that, but rather I will point out that despite all of the deserved success of the iPhone, there are 500 million devices today that do support a Flash experience.  I'd like to think in the immortal words of Bill Cosby, "That's pretty cool."

In the press release below, there is also the mention of a new partner, namely Microsoft.

Here's the Adobe press release with the details.

Adobe Flash On: a cool way to look at content!-

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The idea in and of itself sounds fairly innocuous, but the ramifications are potentially very large (at least in my opinion).  I can see these companies wanting to clamp down on people who are ripping movies from bit torrent or songs, etc.  but my support of the providers here is because I don't believe people should be stealing stuff from the rightful owners. 

BUT...what if I'm an avid movie nut and like to watch movies online like Hulu.com and suddenly I am paying for this supposed free content?  How?  If I pull down content via streaming that exceeds my usage, I'm going to be hit with a penalty - meaning money.  More to the point, how is hulu.com going to recognize revenue if people are seeing the embedded ads? Another question is whether this cap is upload only or upload and download?  If it is upload only, then the hulu example doesn't work, but what if I upload a lot of photos to flickr or kodak?

You might not think that this is a big deal, but I for one see it as impacting the economy.  More and more business is transacted on the web.  One of the things that I have thought to be absolutely astounding is the rapidity with which the world has embraced the Internet as a means to do business.  Ten years ago, most people didn't know what the Internet was much less were they connected to it!  Now, imagine the Internet being out tomorrow and what it would do to the economy.  ouch! 

I think that putting the ceiling on usage is ignoring the larger problem of maintaining and improving the Internet infrastructure and recognizing the importance of it in our daily lives,  I mean after all, how many people are using the Internet just for email these days? 

So, enough of the soap box for now.  I certainly hope that America and the rest of the world are working on improving the Internet infrastructure so that this problem doesn't have to happen, since we know that Internet usage isn't going to go down.

Below are a couple of links that are representative samples of what I've looked at.

New York Times article on T ime Warner as an example

Michael Kleeman - "Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure"

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Just a quick entry here this morning to start you off on your creative day (you have your Starbucks or favorite cofee in hand don't you?)

Lightroom 2.0 beta is up on Adobe Labs.  If you're a photographer, then you'll want to check out what the latest is from the Photoshop Lightroom team.  If you've never heard of Lightroom, two things:  Where have you been? and... Lightroom is "Photoshop for Photographers"  and an awesome program whatever your skill level in Photoshop may be.  Give it a test drive.

Also, check out this nifty and quick little tutorial on creating clean silouettes from photos inside of Illustrator with Live Trace.  It comes to you from Layers Magazine and will take you only a few minutes to digest.  You can get it here

And, as a baseball fan, I can't resist posting an article here from Macworld which gives talks about MLB's new MLB.tv service based on Microsoft's Silverlight technology.  As an avid fan of baseball, I look at the MLB.tv service every year because I travel a lot and want to catch the games if I can.  However, based on this, I think I'll either wait or pick up a Slingbox when I have a few extra $$.  It's interesting to note that MLB's Gameday and many other surrounding services and features are all based on Flash. 

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 06:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)