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.

On Monday, March 14, I will be returning to the editing chair. It marks a change in direction of my career, a return to the path where I’m best suited. For the last 4 years, I’ve been on a detour.

While on that detour, I’ve learned a bunch. I’ve gained knowledge about broadcast video editing, SAN-based editing environments, asset management and business management. I’ve taken two production companies from a few suites up to an insane number of edit suites. I’ve researched, planned and installed two different SAN platforms. I’ve dealt with expanding and contracting budgets. I’ve had to juggle people, rooms, media and schedules. A vendor once told me, as he helped me research SAN options, “with the knowledge you have, Ben, you are in a group of people that number in the hundreds globally.”  I’ve lost the ability to toot my own horn, but I think he’s right – I do know more about this stuff than most other people. So, why walk away?

I don’t think of it as walking away so much as refocusing. While I’ve got this knowledge and this experience that puts me in a small bracket, I’m also aware that a life in management isn’t for me at this time. While I think I’m a pretty good manager, I’m not tough enough. I’m too nice of a guy. A former boss of these past four years told me, “Ben, you need to embrace you Inner Asshole more. Bring him out into the light.” Um, thanks but no thanks, I thought.

See, I believe in a different kind of management style. I’ve always tried to manage like this quote I once saw:

I don’t believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to grab an oar & row with them.

Harold S. Geneen

On my journey through management-land, my philosophy was not compatible with how I was being asked to do my job. I’ll post more on that later…sometime…it’s all just too raw at this moment. In my case, I think I’m too much of an editor’s manager than a manager’s manager.

For now, I’ve got my sights on that chair up there. It’s in Edit 2 at Post Op Media my new (old) home. Here’s how life comes in cycles. 19 years ago I went to work for a post-production house in Arlington, VA. I started at Roland House as the overnight dubber. I was promoted to Assistant Editor and did some highly technical projects that I was suited for. I ended up my time there co-managing the Avid Department. I left after 4 years for an editing position at the PBS Newshour, then the Newshour with Jim Lehrer. After another 15 year journey of freelance editing, owning my own production company and making a go of being a Director of Post Production, I’m returning to the chair. I’m returning to Edit 2. You see, Post Op Media is located in the exact same building as Roland House.

19 years out and back. Now, on to the future!

It. Is. The. Truth.

I have been on the receiving end of these kinds of conversations for many years and it astounds me that things just don’t really change. What’s worse is when you find yourself switching roles (becoming the client of a former client) and woe to you if you try and turn the tables a little – as if “it’s OK for me to do this to you, but how dare you try and pull that shit on me?”

Just a little side project I worked on for the Living Out Loud Project:

Found this cool little free application to do something and thought I’d share: MovieStitch will take a passle of Quicktime movies and stitch them together in one big movie.

Why is this helpful, you ask? In this case, i had to string together a couple hours of MP4 movies from a consumer HD camera that records direct to disk. I don’t have the camera & bringing them into FCP or AE was a hassle (reeeeallllyy long render).

This little app was just drag & drop. You need to have Quicktime Pro on the machine to save the files. And it kills any embedded timecode on the originals. So, it’s not for every instance, but in this case it worked beautifully and saved a bunch of manual effort to get this stuff crunched for output to DVD.