The Internet is an Echo Chamber Full of Sheep
(And I'm a wolf with a megaphone.)
This is just a short post on how people receive information. Most people just read the headlines, or if they do read more, they just retain the headlines. And while tech-savvy people like most of this blog's readers (I suspect) might know a bit more about technical areas, they likely won't look much deeper into areas that don't interest them.
For example, politics interests me, but conversations with other people reveal how little many people actually think about it very hard. And most people treat technical problems (what kind of TV should I buy, what phone is best, what does that button do) with a similar lack of information. It's completely understandable: why should a random person know, for example, what Bluetooth does? Maybe they saw a logo on their new stereo and got curious. (Unlikely, there are many logos there.) More likely, a tech-savvy person told them: a relative or a salesperson recommending a solution.
So, it's sad when people receive opinion second- or third-hand and accept it as truth. For example, the new FCP X received a rocky welcome — it wasn't what people expected, it looked more like the consumer iMovie app than the old Final Cut Pro, it was missing a few features that some workflows require, they changed the interface, and the old version became instantly unavailable. But the program, judged on its own merits, is actually very good. It's quick, it's capable, it's on a modern foundation. It's not perfect, and will never be suitable for every workflow that the old FCP was good for. It's not bad, it's different. Simply because it's easier to learn, in terms of the numbers of people who will use the program effectively, it's a clear win.
The received wisdom, simply that "Final Cut Pro X isn't any good" is simply wrong. But hey, it's an ecosystem. If half the world's editing schools decide that FCP X is unusable, it won't be anywhere near as popular as FCP 7. The main reason they might decide that: because the prevailing industry mood is sour. And why is the mood sour? Largely because the initial feedback was bad. We're still hearing the echoes from the sound of a thousand teeth gnashing. And because the internet is an echo chamber full of sheep.
Take another look. (There's a free trial.) Evaluate your workflow. See if the next point update will bring back features you need, and keep using FCP 7 if you need to. And if you decide that FCP X is a great program that doesn't deserve its flak, shout it out.
Be a wolf with a megaphone.
Why Do Schools Buy Crappy Tablet PCs?
This is how I imagine it goes (though see update at end!):
- Someone high up in the government sees that kids somewhere like using iPads — perhaps even for educational purposes.
- That person sets the process of "getting kids touch computers" in motion.
- A committee agrees on a checklist of requirements by which tenders can be judged.
- Vendors present their tenders.
- One of the presented options ticks more boxes than the others, and is chosen.
This process means well, but misses its goal by a wide berth. Checklists aren't completely worthless, but if the people who draw them up aren't razor-focused on the needs of the kids rather than their own jobs, it's going to be deeply flawed. If you get long-entrenched IT people on the list, you might end up with truly poisonous, irrelevant nonsense on the list:
- can connect to wired networks (because we haven't deployed wireless yet)
- can use legacy Windows XP software (because Mr Jones likes Minesweeper)
- comes with Comic Sans (because it's "friendly")
If they'd focus on the kids, they'd come up with a checklist containing items like:
- weighs as little as possible
- can go through a school day without being charged
- is simple to use and hard to mess up
- allow kids to comfortably read textbooks on-screen
- allow teachers to discover and share new software
- allow kids to discover and share new software
...none of which they'll get with a tablet laptop. Instead, they end up with heavy systems that don't last the day, that come with some limited demo software, and which will eventually be binned with the same software and nothing new. The teachers will end up doing IT support instead of teaching, and kids won't care about the laptops at all. The "tablet" part will end up as merely a box on a checklist that nobody uses. Art class will try, until they discover that the provided software is MS Paint.
Simply adding "touch" to existing solutions doesn't change them. It doesn't encourage kids to read more. It doesn't reduce the teachers' IT support burden. And as many teachers have discovered, you don't revolutionise education by providing an electronic whiteboard. Doing "the same things we've always done, but with computers" isn't going to lead to anything revolutionary for students.
Finally, here's the big checklist item they haven't considered.
- allow the kids to do things we haven't even thought of yet
That's why they should get iPads.
UPDATE: Apparently it's simpler than that. A source tells me that a very large company (that I won't identify because I don't have a lawyer handy) routinely bribed high-up government staff to keep Apple out of NSW schools. So there you go. Journalists: investigate!
Hazelwatch
On Siri, the intelligent assistant in my new iPhone 4S, after I'd asked it to play various tracks and albums:
"How does she find all this music?"
Steve
Late, I know, but worth a few words.
Steve Jobs, the late founder and CEO of Apple, has had a huge impact on my life. Since grade six, when I found an Apple IIe (sorry: Apple //e) and discovered the joys of programming in AppleSoft BASIC, my die was cast. I hung around Apple resellers in high school, wishing I could afford a Mac; I looked through Mac magazines and picked my favourite fonts from font ads (Claude Sans I liked at the time). My father shared this passion for technology with me. We'd look over these things together, and he wanted a Mac too. We did have a CAT, an Apple II clone, which I had used all through high school for assignments, but it was time to upgrade.
Eventually, my parents bought a Mac LC, on paper for the family but (of course) mostly for me. Much discussion was had about the configuration we'd choose: with two floppy drives or with a single floppy drive and a 40MB hard drive? With a larger 640x480 monitor in 256 (8-bit) colours, or a smaller 512x384 monitor and 16-bit colour? Those 16MHz were pushed to their limits, and eventually I installed a video output card (the screensaver Satori played at a club one night) or a maths co-processor that I used to render 3D models a frame at a time. That one was fun: the render was controlled by a text file, full of all the instructions for the scene. During ad breaks in the Friday 13th movie I was watching, I'd uncomment a single line, set the render off, then head back down to the TV. Next break, I'd come back up, re-comment the previous line, and uncomment the next one before setting it off again. This was not a simple project; the animation was of a bubble rising from a sink in front of two mirrors with a camera swooping around in front (using sine waves for smoothness). It's all a little easier now.
Since then, I've owned:
- A Mac SE which sat at the end of my bed which I wrote my Honours thesis on (in Nisus Writer)
- A Power Macintosh (7300/140?) which I created some multimedia projects with)
- A PowerBook G3 (bronze keyboard, 400MHz) which could play DVDs and cost about $7000
- A sunflower iMac G4, utterly awesome for the time
- A PowerBook G4 12" (2004) which was small, cute, and useful
- A white iMac 17" which seems a long time ago
- A MacBook Pro (2006) which was my primary Mac for some time
- A Mac mini (2009) which sits under the TV as a media centre
- A Mac Pro (2009) which I'm typing on now
- A MacBook Pro 13" (2011) which is an awesome, portable training box
- And of course a succession of iPhones and iPads, though not a 3GS.
The first Macs I had weren't made while Steve was in charge, but he set them in motion. The changes he brought in 1984 to the general computing world are still with us, and the continuation of that with the iPad in 2010 (just last year!) will spur more changes to the otherwise mostly stagnant desktop environment. Lion has changed things already. In a few years time, Macs will have touch screens and will likely function in a similar way to iPads for much of the time. The distinction will blur, and Windows 8 is going the same way, with a tablet interface front and centre.
As anyone who's worked in a large organisation knows, committees have a tough time changing things. Big change comes from above, without warning. Steve did that, famously dismissing focus groups: "If Henry Ford had asked consumers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse" and simply making what he wanted to use. No committee forced the inclusion of some "vital" feature (like a "call" button, or a hardware keyboard, or F-keys on the earliest Macs), and the result upturned industries. That single-minded focus doesn't make friends with everyone — but it does make the majority happy. Of course, we're all part of minorities too, and won't like every choice.
(Side note regarding openness: I'm happy knowing that there's no malware in the App Store, but disappointed that I can't exercise my own judgement regarding apps that contain nudity, swearing or anything else that's deemed objectionable. On balance? The web is still open, web apps can be saved to the home screen just like App Store apps, and I'd rather not need antivirus software on my phone.)
What Steve also did was to bring a sense of the importance of design to technology. It defined my career. I could create and edit videos on my Mac, so I did. I could design on my Mac, so I did. Every creative thing I've done since school has been done on a Mac, or an iPhone. Something Steve invented. It's absolutely remarkable for one man, who I never met, to have such an influence on so much of my life.
All I can say is thank you, and rest in peace.
Hazelwatch
Hazel is looking at a photo of Jake, my late father.
"Looking at this photo makes me sad, because Grandpa Jake has died. But I'm happy because I can still look at it."
Hazel, you rock.
Defaults are everything for 95% of us
First, read Do users change their settings? » UIE Brain Sparks. Then, think really hard about the way you design your next piece of software, website, object, etc, because 95% of your audience will likely experience it the way they first see it. They won't tweak fonts, change font size, or anything else. If it's a TV, they'll use it on default settings, and won't switch it to saner brightness/contrast/whatever settings, or retune it to receive more channels. If it's a computer, they'll probably never change the desktop picture, screen saver or keyboard shortcuts. If it's a car, they might not even know that you can change the steering wheel position.
If you change your environment to better suit your needs, you're not normal. Other people are not like you. Give yourself a pat on the back for exploring, but don't be surprised when everyone you know is using the defaults, and make sure that you choose good defaults for your projects.
Hazelwatch
As she gets older she's coming our with some real gems. This morning:
My question to you is: why don't Q and U have any mouths? How can they speak? That's my question.
And yesterday, in tears:
Where is the ship coaster? That's my favorite coaster, and ships are my favorite vehicle.
Real life is offline
Just a quick note in this (thankfully) slow week. Sometimes I need reminded that the world offline has a longer attention span than the world online. Twitter (which, yes, I use and enjoy) is often exactly what my brain doesn't need: a whirling maelstrom of focus-killing distraction. With any luck, I'll be able to read a book again soon.
Probably on my iPad, though.
Hidden Final Cut Pro X Techniques
1. Adjustment Layers for video
Open Motion. Create a new Text title. Select, then delete the Text Layer. That layer that's left behind represents everything underneath the text, and we'll use it to our advantage. Save. Call the title Adjustment Layer and pop it in a new category called "Experiments" or some other unique name.
In FCP X, add that Title from the category you gave it. Put it above another series of clips — anything at all. Now, apply an effect or a colour correction to that Title, and it will apply to every clip below. You could even apply multiple copies in an Audition and switch between different looks for your whole edit. Fantastic. [Credit: Tapio Haaja on Creative Cow]
2. Audio-only transitions
Open Motion. Create a new Transition. This transition is a straight cut, but the standard audio transition is applied when you use it. Save, into a new "Experiments" category or similar.
In FCP X, just apply it when you want an audio-only transition. Standard controls in the Inspector will let you adjust the audio fade type.
3. Use advanced timeline features
A few related tips for those struggling with the new magnetic timeline. Remember: if you get frustrated with the default ripple-style behaviour of the timeline, just select the Position tool, and it'll be just like FCP 7.
Connected clips are great, but you can't apply transitions between two neighbouring connected clips. To make this work, select them both and choose Clip > Create Storyline or press command-G. Now you can transition between neighbouring clips, and there will be only one point of connection for the whole storyline. Leave gaps (shift-delete) to reveal the primary storyline underneath.
Limitations: three-point editing (choosing in and out points on the timeline) and Appending a clip only target the primary storyline. You'll also have to specifically select the secondary storyline if you want to Insert or Overwrite there. Yes! Overwrite works; there's no button, but the shortcut is D.
Lastly, you may sometimes wish to send clips up or down in the stacking order. Command-option-up or down will do this nicely, and will create gap clips if needed.
4. Use Ken Burns with Timelapse footage
The workflow here might not be too different, but it's certainly easier than before. In QuickTime Player 7 (Pro), Open Image Sequence as usual, and choose the preferred frame rate. But rather than just cropping off the top and bottom of the image by exporting to 1920x1080, export a tall 2K QuickTime Movie. For Settings, choose ProRes 422 as the codec. For Size, choose custom, 2048x1556, and tick maintain aspect ratio with Letterbox. This is a 4:3 aspect ratio, a little squarer than a DSLR shoots, so you'll have mild letterboxing top and bottom that we'll crop off in FCP X.
Import the movie into FCP X. 2K is a supported resolution, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with playback. Drop the clip into a timeline, select it, and press the Crop button in the Viewer. Crop will work if you only want to reframe, but Ken Burns should work well to allow a simple pan, tilt or dolly move. Zooming in a little is OK, but too much will cause blurriness, so if you want to blow the video up quite a bit, export from QuickTime Player 7 in 4K: 4096x3112. This will be slower, but you should be able to zoom it to 200% without quality loss.
5. Use hidden color correction keys
In FCP X, choose Final Cut Pro > Commands > Customize. In the search field in the top right corner, type "color". You might like to add some keys to the top three commands: Apply Color Correction from Previous Clip, from Three Clips back, and from Two Clips back. You might also like to add keys to select the next or previous puck, and to nudge these pucks about.
6. Use Disk Images for extra media control
I was thinking this would work, yet Steve Martin thought a little faster and quicker. The quick version: use Disk Utility to create a huge "Sparse" image (sparse means it only takes up as much space as the media on it). Mount that image, then import your files to the image. When you unmount the image, any Events or Projects on that image will be inaccessible — good for projects you don't want visible all the time when you don't want to put them on an external drive. This is also a potential workaround for using unsupported disk types like Xsan. For much more info on this, read this article by Steve Martin.
If you have any more tips, send them on. If you'd like to learn the new Final Cut Pro X and you live in or Brisbane, Australia, head over to my training site, TrainingBrisbane.com.
Alphazed for iPad is now available
Finally, my new picture dictionary for iPad, Alphazed, is available on the iTunes App Store. Free worldwide, it makes use of Creative Commons images, linking back to the original photographers and to the wikipedia entries. There's a colour, an animal, a place, a food and an object for every letter of the alphabet, and they're not the first ones you'd think of.
If you like it, please rate it!
