And we’re back…

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Just a brief note to say that buttonpusher.tv is back up and running.

We got hit with a “base64 hack“. It infected every single PHP file on the server that hosts buttonpusher.tv. So its been a pain to get everything re-installed. The only back up I had was from just after the infection hit on March 15. It did give me a chance to clear out a bunch of old theme and plugin files, but what a hassle.

The site is back online and it looks like I didn’t lose anything important. I did discover that my favorite theme – K2 is now only sporadically updated, so I may be in the market for a new WordPress theme later this spring.

Mostly just posting this to see if everything is back in working order. Thanks.

Avid Studio for iPad – quick take

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Super quick take on Avid Studio for iPad:
- much more intuitive than iMovie on iOS.
- it reads ALL media on your iPad. All your music. All you photos. All your videos. And all your iTunes U content (that won’t last, I’m sure – so easy to rip off that content)
-very good set of editing tools – surprising for a version 1. Good Job Avid
-you cannot (as far as I can tell) take a video with married audio and then cut shots into it without stepping on the audio. (i.e.-no master shot with audio and then cutaways). The only way I see to make it work (so far) is to rip the audio off of a movie and then bring it back in as an audio source. This needs to be fixed.

Very impressed with this first effort though. An editor for $5 that can send projects to a professional desktop editing app…wow.

UPDATE: So it only sends projects to the PC-version of Avid Studio. But its a step closer.

Speak out against SOPA/PIPA

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While you are waiting for the next part of the “Faster. Better…(not necessarily) Stronger” series, take some time to educate yourself about the Stop Online Piracy Act(SOPA) & The Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). These bills are bad ideas. I’m all for protecting the rights of creators of material but SOPA and PIPA are the result of allowing a group of self-declared non-experts, who are being guided by companies who aren’t satisfied with only 40%+ market growth over 10 years to legislate something as wild and untamable as the Internet. It is a bad idea.

Educate yourself. Watch this video:

Visit killsopa.org – The EFF’s clearing house on what to do to help stop these bills from becoming laws.

Contact your representative and make them aware that you don’t want these bills to become law.

And check back tomorrow, because we’ll be here. We aren’t going dark. We’ll be posting part 2. Maybe in all that extra time you’ll have *not* surfing Reddit or Wikipedia, you can drop by here!

Faster. Stronger. . . (not necessarily) Better. – PART 2

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If you recall from Monday’s post, I related an example of a very complicated and convoluted set of media files related to a one hour-long nature documentary. 10 camera formats. 1080 & 720. 23.98fps. 29.97fps. All delivered on 25 external hard drives.

With all the the recent advancements in cameras and acquisition technologies, the expectation is the process of media production should become faster, easier and more stream-lined. We associate improvement with advancement, right?  If it’s new then it must be better. As I mentioned in part one of this post, though, as media production has moved into the digital space, it has become bogged down by the plethora of choices available to creators. The work  feels more complicated and time-consuming, and it doesn’t necessarily result in a better product.

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Faster. Stronger. . . (not necessarily) Better. – PART 1

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It’s the whole premise of The Six Million Dollar Man: ”We have the technology to make him better, stronger, faster than he was before!” I’m all for it in most aspects, but some things have become faster and stronger, but not really better. And in some cases, much worse than before.

Take acquisition. I’m talking about capturing material in the creation of a program. It can be whatever kind of show you’d like. Developments in digital acquisition have exploded in the last few years. We have such cool toys with which to capture events in 2D or 3D – Red EPIC, Phantom, Viper, DSLR, P2, XDCAM, F3, AF-100, 5D, 7D, C300, GoPro – the list goes on and on.

The image quality cannot be denied for many of these new cameras. They are amazing. If you had told me I would be working with HD images at 5K resolution just 5 years ago I would have doubted you. The detail and latitude these new devices provide are incredible. But there’s a downside to it all. A downside I don’t think anyone really thought through as these new technologies were being proposed, designed and invented. It’s a downside that many production people don’t see or even think about. It’s a downside that foists responsibility onto the last person in the chain of program creation that needs more responsibility.

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