Comments It seems that airplane rides are great times to compose blog posts. Now if only I could post from the air! Anyway, first thanks for all of the kind opening comments. I’ll think about an expanded biography for me and how best to introduce some of the members of the team.
I wanted to comment a few things in the screenshots that seem to have raised some eyebrows some folks who haven’t gotten their hands on the product yet:
- Semicolons in the time display–This is a typical way to display time in video applications when the time is a drop-frame format. Since all of our screenshots were taken from sessions that included video that was shot at 29.97 drop, you see the semicolons. If you’re working at 30fps, H:M:S, or any other non-drop format the time will be displayed with colons like always.
- Interface darkness–Some of the screenshots online are set with the darkness of the interface turned way down. Some people working to picture love the idea because it reduces eye strain when you’re deep into the night and trying to keep the picture the brightest thing on the screen. Either that or because it looks cool and will impress clients. Others think it’s gloomy and makes it hard to read. We tried to choose a neutral gray for the default color in all the Production Studio apps, but you can decide for yourself–there’s a darkness slider in Options->Settings under the Colors tab. Note that 19 is the threshold where the hot scrubbable text (the numbers you can click and drag on in the mixer and elsewhere) turn from blue to orange, which some people dig.
- Toolbar buttons–The screenshots don’t show the toolbar buttons that have been in the product way back through the Cool Edit days and some people are worried that we had gotten rid them. They’re still there, but we did change them so they aren’t shown by default. In our research, we found that many people thought they cluttered the screen and were confusing because they offered so many buttons to do what could be done elsewhere. We thought the best idea was to just not show them by default so anyone who wanted them can get them as they become more comfortable with the idea. Just go to View->Shortcut Bar to show them.