Steve Cronan, CEO and founder of 5th Kind (formerly OTC Productions), discusses his cloud-based and enterprise digital asset management workflow system.
The company started on the “Matrix” sequels in 2001 and is dedicated to solutions that manage “all the digital assets across the full production life cycle, all the way from script to screen, for everybody from the PA to the producer.”
Cronan emphasizes a secure centralized system that automates “all the digital workflows around the collaboration, the distribution and communication” by providing the “tools to keep everybody in synch.”
The 5th Kind system includes mobile interfaces for reviewing on-the-go and a series of modules for addressing different workflows (such as the footage module for managing camera reports).
Hollywood movie promoters are finding success with social media — not just with Twitter and Facebook, but also through sites such as Instagram and We Heart It.
Many executives now receive regular briefings on the social buzz surrounding their films.
“If you have thousands of people talking about your movie, don’t you want to know what they’re saying? The leap people are starting to make is that social media is actually reflective of what audiences think about your movie,” says Ben Carlson, president of research firm Fizzioli.gy.
The Los Angeles Times cites the recent success of a socially-distributed video featuring actor Channing Tatum. “Tatum’s performance wasn’t from a movie, but a ‘Sweet Nothings’ video that marketers for his new film, ‘The Vow,’ posted on Facebook in advance of its opening last weekend. It worked: The romantic tear-jerker blew past expectations to open at No. 1 with $41.2 million in North American ticket sales.”
“With new software to help remove unwanted objects from your pictures, Scalado aims to make mobile photography and digital photo editing that much more advanced,” reports Digital Trends.
Scalado’s Remove is a new patented object-removal technology that records stationary objects in a scene and adds the ability to edit and re-edit elements on the fly.
“After the picture is taken, users can pick out moving objects in the frame that the program had deemed impermanent to the shot, such as passing cars, people or stray animals,” explains the post. “Then, with just a quick tap, those items are cleared from your photo as if they were never there.”
Remove software will be officially unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month.
Microsoft and Apple are integrating mobile features, interfaces and capabilities into their desktop operating systems.
Apple’s Mac OS X 10.8 (known as Mountain Lion), will include notifications, reminders, Twitter integration, iMessage, and iCloud synchronization.
Windows 8 will incorporate ARM support, the Windows Phone 7 Metro interface, an app store, improved mobile broadband support and instant-on/off abilities.
The moves are reportedly intended to emulate the mobile devices and make it easier for users who want a more mobile and tablet experience.
In a related article, David Pogue highlights the new features of Apple’s Mountain Lion: Apple will update the Mac OS X yearly and a free iCloud account will synch Notes, Reminders, Messages and Game Center across your Apple devices.
Additionally, Game Center is now available on the Mac so you can play some 20,000 games against 100 million people via their iPhones and iPads. Apple TV users can display their Mac screens on TV at 720p resolution. iWork apps can save to iCloud. Gatekeeper controls which apps you install for increased protection against malware and viruses. Screen-sharing with another Mac allows you to share files.
Mountain Lion will be available this summer. Windows 8 is expected later this year.
ICG president Steven Poster, ASC, suggests that the industry form a DCI-like effort aimed at developing “an end-to-end, device independent color management system that delivers nearly a transparent process to the artist.”
“Without standardized procedures and protocols, the complexity of these systems leave us wide open to various failures with some errors resulting in catastrophic data loss,” he added.
Poster called IIF ACES a “major step toward our Holy Grail.” He also cited the ASC CDL.
Asked about shooting ratios during the Q&A, Lewis Rothenberg, digital imaging technician and ICG National VP, admitted: “I would love the studios to put caps on shooting ratios.”
Testronic Labs CEO Seth Hallen related that in 2011 home entertainment suffered in hardware and content sales. He suggested that part of the problem was the economic environment and in part what he called “consumer burn out.”
Citing FutureSource research, Hallen reported that there were 485 billion video views in 2011, with YouTube making up 45 percent of those. Free online TV and movies represent another 8 percent, and other free content such as MTV is another 46 percent. This means that 1 percent was paid content in 2011. “This represents massive consumer competition for eyeballs,” Hallen said. “This is an indication of what the industry is up against.”
Hallen suggested that growth in connected device ownership will boost online revenues. 60 percent of U.S. phone owners had a smartphone in 2011, and that is expected to grow to 90 percent in next 3-4 years, according to the FutureSource research. “We are moving into a fragmented world when it comes to entertainment access.”
On content: “Packaged delivery is still a very important part of the business, and will continue to be so.” He added that by the end of the year, 1/3 of all U.S. homes are expected have a Blu-ray player, and BD-Live is an important bridge. “Online access is the future.”
DECE’s Jim Taylor — citing rental/VOD, sell-through, subscription, and ad supported models — said, “all of these business models will be part of electronic distribution… I think sell-through will be a tiny part. If initiatives like UltraViolet are able to gain traction, then I think we’ll see the pendulum switch back.”
“We have seen a significant shift to streaming from download.” But Taylor pointed out that ubiquitous streaming requires ubiquitous Internet, and there will be situations when bandwidth won’t be there, especially with the move toward higher resolutions. Taylor suggests that streaming and download will continue to co-exist.
Taylor’s UltraViolet status report: Roughly 100 titles are available from Warners, Sony, Universal and Paramount. A launch is currently underway, focused on streaming. Mid-year developments will “pave the way for download.” “UltraViolet is focused on purchase… I don’t see physical media disappearing anytime soon,” he predicted.
“We are making progress toward ubiquitous access to content,” Taylor said. That effort includes the introduction of DECE’s Common File Format (the spec is publicly available). DECE is additionally working on a Common Streaming Format (CSF).
Taylor: “Nirvana might be that everyone standardizes on CFF… It might also be that UltraViolet becomes the EST option for all services. The ecosystems can interoperate… Do I think we are going to get there? No, I don’t. The question is will we end up with a totally fragmented marketplace. If we can get to at least a semi-fragmented marketplace with more interoperability — that would be a great place to be.”
David Sugg, Warner Bros. Technical Operations, discussed where Warners looks to benefit from the Interoperable Mastering Format. A Warners’ initiative is DETE (Digital End To End), which holds most of the components required to create an IMF package. DETE currently delivers more than 500 different output formats (more than 40 percent qualify as a mezzanine format). Warners is testing DETE and IMF. “For us it is an obvious win,” he explained.
Why does Disney want IMF? The studio’s Mike Krause explained that the studio makes 234 versions of every film including various languages, aspect ratios, etc. “Mastering is expensive,” he pointed out, adding that still 81 percent of the film’s revenue comes from downstream distribution. Adding the various media outlets including airlines, on average Disney is looking at over 35,100 different versions of a single title. “That is a lot of media to keep track of… That’s 35,100 reasons when Disney wants IMF.”
Disney’s Annie Chang, who chairs the SMPTE IMF Working Group, related that ETC@USC started the IMF effort and published an IMF v1.0 document in February 2011. One month later, SMPTE’s IMF work began. SMPTE’s version is very similar to the ETC requirement document. Elements include composition play lists, output profile lists, packages and security.
Chang related that one difference is that the ETC doc includes uncompressed and JPEG2000 codecs; this was modified with a core framework and modular applications that plug into the framework “to allow for specific functionality and allows for future extensibility.”
Some SMPTE IMF documents are in the “finalizing” state for the composition play list and wrapping. Work is still needed in areas such as output profile lists and security.
There will be a testing phase before implementation. The SMPTE effort is moving fast “because the industry really needs this.” To get involved one could join the SMPTE working group or visit the IMF Forum.
Implementors also presented during the session. AmberFin’s Geoff Bowen said the company has a “great interest” in IMF. “Any re-use of existing standards is a good thing … and IMF is reusing everything that it can.” AmberFin is working on tools to migrate existing libraries into IMF assets. It additionally conducted successful IMF interop testing just before HPA, Bowen reported.
“Avid is a big supporter of IMF,” said Avid’s Tim Claman, noting that the company sees it as a way to “complete the transition to file-based workflows.” Avid is working with customers on uses. He urged the HPA Tech Retreat audience to get involved.
“We (vendors) are all working together nicely,” said DVS’ Dan Germain. “We can take packages and move them seamlessly, (when) vendors don’t traditionally like to work together.”
Bob Lambert, in a discussion addressing the future of projection technologies, noted that 14 foot-lamberts are “very hard to do for 3D. It is extremely important that we get the light level up.” He noted that improvements can be made.
“The conversion that needs to take place is not so much technical, but a change in the market,” said Lambert. “The exhibitor that decides to (use solid state lighting) first is a competitive advantage… It needs to be in the hands of exhibitors and others will follow suit.”
Sony’s Peter Lude — wearing his Laser Illuminated Projector Association hat — discussed laser regulatory requirements. He reported that LIPA has completed a regulatory white paper and commissioned a laser testing program.
Barco’s Theo Marescaux related that the company recently conducted a laser demo, aimed at starting to educate the market and prompt industry discussion. “We would like to establish a dialogue,” he said.
Dave Walton of JVC Professional Products demonstrates the company’s new 2D-to-3D conversion workstation.
“This is a system that we’ve designed working in conjunction with Twentieth Century Fox to convert titles, movies, primarily for packaged media — high-definition — over to 3D,” he explains.
Walton suggests that the advantage of the JVC system has to do with the creation and editing of layers in real-time, which results in the reduction of cost for the conversion process. He explains that in many cases the number of layers can be reduced by a factor of 10 with the JVC system.
“The end result is very high quality 3D material from a 2D source that can be used for packaged media, and eventually we intend to migrate this technology where we can actually do a full resolution cinema release,” he says.
Keith Vidger of Sony talks about the F65 CineAlta 4K camera and the Sony partners on hand at HPA showcasing systems (ranging from dailies to color grading) that natively handle Raw files from the camera.
The F65, currently available, features a 20-megapixel 8K image sensor and 16-bit linear Raw file output capability.
According to Vidger, the camera creates Raw files, “that are just stunning, being used on lots of big features at the moment and soon to be working its way into the world of episodic television — and to that end…lots of different workflows available from the Raw side of things all the way down to 220-megabits for smaller bitrate workflows.”
Jon Folland, CEO of Nativ, discusses his company’s cloud-based media management platform.
The platform runs in a private cloud environment, is highly scalable and offers a range of functionality.
Features include: complete asset management in a single interface in the cloud, advanced metadata management and flexible control regarding how media management workflows can be created and run.
“This is a relatively advanced platform, we think, that allows customers the benefits of private cloud without compromising the level of flexibility and strength that they need from a media management platform,” explains Folland.
Although there was no admission of wrongdoing, Netflix is paying $9 million to settle a class action lawsuit that claimed the streaming service violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by retaining information about viewers’ habits.
The lawsuit was filed in March 2011 by individuals claiming that the company maintained viewing information “long after they had canceled the service.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix will continue to “push for changes in legislation that would allow it to make more uses of customer data,” like enabling users to share their viewing habits on social media sites.
“The House has approved a bill to do so, but the proposed legislation has encountered resistance in the Senate after it heard from some critics who say the VPPA is one of the few strong consumer privacy protections out there,” explains the article. “There’s also concern that eliminating the VPPA would allow sites like Netflix to share personal information with advertisers.”
Google Wallet has fixed its prepaid card security problem that came to light last week. Before the fix, anyone could “clear the app data from Google Wallet, reopen it, and gain access to the prepaid card,” explains The Verge.
In response, Google had temporarily shut down provisioning for the prepaid cards.
“The same firm that originally cracked Google’s PIN for Wallet, zvelo, has confirmed that it is possible to achieve root permissions on an Android device without actually clearing its data. Typically, when rooting a device, all data on it gets erased, eliminating most Wallet concerns. With zvelo’s new method for achieving root-level permissions, the original cracking attack on Google Wallet could be applied to non-rooted users,” explains the post.
Zvelo also noted that physical access to the device is not required to gain access to data: “a malicious app could initiate a brute-force attack to guess your Google Wallet PIN code, obtain root-level device access (even on a handset that hasn’t been tampered with by the user), and then transmit the data back to a remote server.”
Eben Moglen, a Columbia Law School professor and the founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, observes that Web technologies that help us stay connected include the ability to spy on us. Facebook is his example.
How much does Facebook know about you? An Austrian law student used an Irish court to force Facebook to turn over everything it knew about him. The result was 1,222 pages of data that included information he never agreed to give them and data he had deleted.
Some 40,000 other people have asked for their own records. In Europe, Facebook’s users are increasingly sensitive to the violation of personal privacy.
Developers are beginning to work on alternatives to Facebook which are open-sourced and can be used in a private manner.
“I think it’s possible that Facebook will still be around in five years, and even in 10,” Boyer says. “But I’d like to see it recede into only being used for that single, simple purpose that it ultimately serves very well, which I continue to use it for: finding that person that I met a million years ago. The rest of it, we can do better.”
