Gus:
I read both articles in Wired with great interest and I accept the conclusions of both as pretty much matter of fact:
As far as HDTV goes, I agree with the article that by offering the broadcasters a choice, we're giving no incentive to adopting HDTV as a standard. I think they'll take the more profitable route and use the spectrum for 5 or 6 compressed digital NTSC or data streams. It's a shame, I've seen HDTV and it's gorgeous, but I don't think there will be a widespread acceptance any time soon when they can make more money broadcasting Seinfeld re-runs and trash TV like Hard Copy. (Pardon me for my strange view that TV can and should provide worthwhile content.) HDTV proably would lead to higher production value and better content. Oh well...
I agree with Lucas, that the missing ingredient in digital non-linear editing solutions is lack of storage space. However, that is changing and is getting better by leaps and bounds. A year ago almost nobody was going to air out of a digital non-linear system (Avids for the most part---which is the system I use). We were finishing the audio on the systems, but the video was reconformed in an online tape suites. This is changing. More and more programming is going to air directly out of computers. The network engineers still claim that the computer systems are not up to spec, but I know of at least 2 recent instances where 1 hour documentaries were dumped to tape directly from an Avid and aired without the network engineers spotting it. I think there is VERY little visible difference in the picture quality. I sometimea think that old time television engineers are more interested in preserving their status quo than growing with the times. Methinks it has something to do with job security.
No with the image quality output from these systems is so GOOD, but the stoarge capacity is still lagging. I still have to do a first cut at low resolution to have access to more footage and then redigitize the video at the higher reolution when I have whittled the footage down to a manageable amount. This is a time consuming process and also keeps me from making the intial decisions at an acceptable resolution.
THIS is where I think AXC will be crucial. If keepered media can vastly increase the stoage space on an Avid, it will be a major boon to the industry. I also think that the high speed digital tape DCT and DST formats will probably be excellent archival and backup mediums for the machine. I am hesitant to comment further on this because I am not an engineer (my eyes glaze over when they start to talk tech stuff with me). I'm strictly the creative type that wants the tools to tell the story. (I could care less about the metallurgy involved in making a hammer as long as it helps me make a functional and pretty building.)
I also think that all the new digital post-production is going to revolutionize the film making indusrtry and make it possible for more people to express themselves with pictures and sound and then self distribute on the web. Hello innovation...goodbye studio system/broadcast network monopoly. Bill Gates is very smart: witness MSNBC.
As far as Todd AO, I am not that familiar with them except they are in the credits of a lot of movies I watch. I'm more involved with TV than feature films and I'm New York based not LA.
Hope these thoughts from an end user are useful. I've lurked here for over a year because I own the stock, but have not actively commented because I get intimidated because I don't understand the engineering talk and I'm not that saavy an investor. I just remember Ampex tape recorders as a kid in the early fifties and I know they went from there to early VCRs and were the first to market a useable digital effects box (the ADO) in the eighties. I figure a company with that kind of brain power can probably also rebound from their mistakes in the late eighties, early nineties. This is how I pick companies for my Keogh. So far I've made money (tripled on C Cube which makes the encoders chips in the Avids etc---and made nice returns on a supermarket that sold me fresh basil in January and I bought their stock the next day). I guess I liked Peter Lynch's approach.
C-Ya
Tony |
