HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
Tim Feess, Co-Founder, GNARBOX
Bob Dawe, Assistant Professor, Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine atRush University
Bob Benson, President-Founder, 24 Shots
Erika Nortemann, Vice President, TANDEM Stills and Motion, Inc.
Michael Rubin, Marketing Director, YI Technology
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

==

Larry Jordan: Tonight on The Buzz we are looking at a wide range of inventors and new tools that loosely revolve around production.

Larry Jordan:  We start with Tim Feess, he’s the inventor of the Gnarbox, a computer the size of an iPhone 6, that can capture images from professional cameras, organize and edit them then wirelessly send them wherever you want them to go.  This small box can replace your laptop on most photo shoots.

Larry Jordan:  Next, Bob Benson invented the Silencer Air.  This remote controlled wirelessly connected device automates focus pulling for any kind of camera, including drones.  Tonight he tells us how this works.

Larry Jordan:  Erika Nortemann is the vice president for Tandem Stills + Motion.  They provide high quality rights managed images focusing on the outdoors.  Tonight she explains why they created their website and how photographers and videographers can use it to make more money from their images.

Larry Jordan:  Bob Dawe is using motion capture technology to determine brain health.  Specifically he’s using it to determine Alzheimer’s symptoms early.  This is a bit off our normal coverage, but he’s doing some really cool research with tools that many of us use every day.

Larry Jordan:  Michael Rubin is the director of marketing for YI Technology.  They just released a brand new 360 degree camera.  We want to talk to Michael about their new technology, along with the new 180 degree video service that YouTube just launched.

Larry Jordan:  All this, plus James DeRuvo with our weekly DoddleNEWS update.  The Buzz starts now.

Announcer:  Since the dawn of digital filmmaking – authoritative – one show serves a worldwide network of media professionals – current – uniting industry experts – production – filmmakers – post production – and content creators around the planet – distribution.  From the media capital of the world in Los Angeles, California, The Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan:  Welcome to The Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry, covering media production, post production and marketing around the world.

Larry Jordan:  Hi, my name is Larry Jordan.  If tonight’s show has a theme, it would be let’s take a look at what’s new.  As you’ll discover in James DeRuvo’s news update, there were a number of new products announced this week from major companies in both hardware and software.  Beyond that, however, tonight we look at some smaller companies, folks that are just getting started.  In our interviews tonight, you’ll meet a number of people that came up with a better idea, and turned it into a product that we can use in our own projects.

Larry Jordan:  Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact rapid technological change has on our industry and there are some significant negative effects.  But tonight, we celebrate the positive side of change, where someone comes up with a new idea, turns it into a product, and the rest of us go, oh, cool.

Larry Jordan:   By the way, I want to invite you to subscribe to our free weekly show newsletter at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Every issue, every week, gives you an inside look at the Buzz, quick links to the different segments on the show, and curated articles of special interest to film makers.  Best of all, every issue is free and comes out on Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Now it’s time for a DoddleNEWS update, with James DeRuvo.  Hello James.

James DeRuvo:  Hi Larry.

Larry Jordan:  How you doing today and what is the news?

James DeRuvo: Well the big news today was Canon announced finally the second generation 6D platform.  The 6D mark II.  It’s got a full frame, 26.2 megapixel CMOS sensor with an updated DIGIC 7 processor.  All the usual refinements, dual pixel CMOS autofocus, 45 point cross-type autofocus, blah blah blah.  But sadly, it still only shoots in 1080p.  It is up to 60 frames per second, and Canon is making it increasingly clear that if shooters want to make the move into 4K on the Canon platform, they’re going to have to pay for it by going into the upper level.  That’s going to continue to leave many users who are on a limited budget to look elsewhere.

Larry Jordan:  First, it’s exciting they announce the new camera, but you’re right.  With all the push toward higher resolution, especially with HDR, you’d think they would support 4K?

James DeRuvo:   Yes, they do have an HDR mode, so you’ll get a little bit better color gamut, but when you look at what Magic Lantern has done with the 6D, you can actually get 2K video on the mark I 6D, using Magic Lantern.  I don’t understand why they’re so conservative with pushing the edge of their own platform, especially when Panasonic and Sony all have 4K cameras that cost less and do more.

Larry Jordan:   What else we got?

James DeRuvo:   As you know, this week we are at Vidcon which I like to call Comic Con meets NAB with a little bit of Katy Perry thrown in.   Vidcon is bigger than ever this year and we were there to cover it.  The big story was YouTube is pushing a new alternative to 360 degree video.  It’s called VR180.  According to YouTube most of their viewers who watch 360 video on YouTube like the immersion but they find keeping up with 360 degree action tedious.  So they usually ignore what’s going on behind them.  So YouTube has developed this new VR format called VR180 which will reduce the need to keep your head on a swivel, but still get that immersive vibe.  The new spec offers viewing of 90 degrees on either side of the field of view, and VR180 cameras are expected to be out by the holiday.

James DeRuvo:  YouTube may have a point.  When you’re watching VR online, you really don’t want to constantly see what’s going on around you.  You just want to see what the action is in front of you.  This has always been the flaw of 360 degree video for me in virtual reality and YouTube not only wants to redefine the VR experience, they want to save on that wasted bandwidth showing that no-one is looking at.

Larry Jordan:  We’re going to be talking with Michael Rubin whose company has invented a brand new 360 degree camera specifically about this new YouTube announcement, so we’re going to follow up more with that later in the show.  What else you got?

James DeRuvo:  Well, Avid release updates to Pro Tools today.  Joining Media Composer First, Avid this week released the Pro Tools First as a free update.  So now you can get a version of Pro Tools for free which will offer all the standard audio editing features, as well as online collaboration.  Then, if you want a little bit more, you can go to version 12.8, the paid version, which is now offering native mixing of 3D sound for Dolby Atmos in concert with the Atmos rendering software, you can even plan out where this sound hits in a theater floor plan.  That’s really cool.  Avid is making the full version more future proof, expanding the mixing options to include Dolby Atmos, but they’re also tossing in that free version to get people interested and get people into it.  That is a huge new development.  There’s also enhanced re-recording workflow, shared storage features.  Let me tell you, it’s making that paid version look very attractive.  But if you can’t afford it, that free version is no slouch.

Larry Jordan:  It’s a great way to get started with the free version of Pro Tools, and I thought I’d never be able to hear Pro Tools and free in the same sentence.

James DeRuvo: That’s right.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information, where do they go on the web?

James DeRuvo:  All these stories and more can be found at Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:   Doddle has got a ton of other news that you want to pay attention to, so be sure to visit the site at Doddlenews.com.  James DeRuvo is the senior writer for DoddleNEWS.com, returns with the latest DoddleNEWS update.  James, good to hear your voice, we’ll talk to you after the holiday.  Have yourself a great weekend.

James DeRuvo:  Happy 4^th Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Take care, Bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Here’s another website I want to introduce you to.  Doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries.  It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry.  DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platforms specifically designed for production.  These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listings, provide in depth organizational tools for busy production professionals.  DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts Community, a worldwide community of artists, film makers and story tellers.  From photography to film making, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with resources you need to succeed.  Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go.  Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  Tim Feess is the co-founder of Gnarbox.  He’s responsible for product development and managing the growth of the business as a whole.  Hello Tim, welcome.

Tim Feess:  Hi Larry, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  It’s my pleasure.  Let’s start with the obvious.  What is Gnarbox?

Tim Feess:  Gnarbox is effectively a rugged, compact pocket sized computer that’s designed to make it easier to back up, edit and share full resolution media while you’re in the field.  It’s inspired by years and years of travel and not having a whole lot of time to come back home, back up, organize and edit all of the content.  As a result, oftentimes our Go Pro videos would go unshared.  So we began to think about ways we could make it easier for folks to be able to get something out of their videos and their photos.  And we found that it really is applicable to DSLR, professional cameras and drones as well.  So it’s designed for all of those various capture devices.

Larry Jordan:  You define this as a computer which sounds like it’s more than just simply a hard disk?

Tim Feess:  That’s definitely the way that we think about it.  A lot of people compare our product to say the Western Digital My Passport wireless rugged mobile drive.  We see it as a computing system in a hub, more so than a hard drive.  It’s got an Intel Quad Core processor.  It’s got an onboard GPU as well as customized software that makes it really fast at processing media, not just storing it.

Larry Jordan:  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can shoot pictures on my mobile device, I can look at pictures on my mobile device, I can send them wirelessly anywhere, and depending upon the apps I’ve got, I can edit it.  Why is Gnarbox necessary?

Tim Feess:  That’s certainly true.  If you’re taking photos and videos with your phone, there aren’t as many problems for you.  But when you start looking at professional cameras or high end prosumer cameras, that content’s often not accessible on your phone, whether it’s because the interfaces are lacking as in with an SD card or with a USB port, or whether the wifi transfers wirelessly from your camera to your phone are slow, or just because your phone or your iPad doesn’t support that format, we’re here to help you bridge that gap.

Larry Jordan:  So this really is not an attachment as much for a mobile device, a cell phone, as it is for a camera which doesn’t have built in wifi capability?

Tim Feess:  It certainly is.  It’s also considered to be a laptop replacement by a lot of our customers who are travelling with their cameras.  They want a hub so that they can download everything, store it safely and edit it in one fluid workflow, maybe across multiple cameras, just in the way they would with their laptop, and that’s what Gnarbox is all about.

Larry Jordan: How does it work?

Tim Feess: When you’re done shooting, you can take the card out of your camera.  We’ve got a number of ports on the side of the box, whether you’re using an SD card, a micro SD card, those can be directly plugged in.  If you’re using a compact flash or a CFAST XQD card, you can just use a reader via the USB 3 port to plug that in.  What you’re going to do is power the box on, you can connect to it with wifi using your cell phone or your tablet, up to four people can connect at the same time, so they can view and interact with their footage, right there on the spot.  In the app, everything is automatically organized by date, time and camera using XF metadata, and those shots will be compiled into these thumbnail collections so you can visually swipe through, you can mark favorites, you’re able to import them to the box, and from there, piecing clips together into a timeline by adding music to that, doing some basic color grading and color correction even on full res 4K, 60 frame per second video for example.  You can do all of that from our app.  When you’re done, you’re able to get a final product exported onto social media, or if you’re in a production scenario getting maybe the day’s selects back to the producer.  All those things, depending on who you are, you can connect back to the world when you’re done shooting.

Larry Jordan:  Is this principally a device geared toward folks who are posting media to social media?  Or is it geared more towards people who are using this as an interim capture device to send back to the studio for additional editing?

Tim Feess:  It’s certainly both I would say, and we’re working on features for both of those audiences.  It was initially conceived of as a device for social media, that’s because that’s how we thought of it.  But as we continue to demo the prototype to various folks, we realized that in the production world, it was just as valuable, like you’re saying, to get something back to the studio.  So we’re building in cloud connectivity in a future software update.  We have a number of users that are event photographers, or event videographers, that don’t want to have a laptop.  Whether it’s something that they’re shooting for Getty Images or for the news media out in a riot or a protest zone.  This is a really great way to get your footage off the camera, store it securely, and then get it back using maybe an FTP app on your phone or something of the like.  There are a number of different connectivity use cases for those in the production world in addition to the quick social posts that we first envisioned for the product.

Larry Jordan:  How big is it, how much does it weigh, and does it require a separate suitcase to carry?

Tim Feess:  Absolutely not.  It’s about the size of an iPhone 6 but thicker.  It weighs just less than one pound, and you can fit it in your pocket.  As long as you’re not wearing super tight jeans, you can fit it in your pocket, and you can just throw it in your camera bag as well.  A lot of people like to do that.  You can connect a hard drive, whether it’s SSD or HDD, pretty much any type of storage that you like to use via the USB 3 port and you can run backups to that when you’re done using the box itself.  So when I travel, I’ll take my Go Pro and my RX100, those are my two favorite cameras.  I’ll oftentimes shoot a bunch of photos and videos, plug in the SD card.  First thing I do actually is back it up to a hard drive plugged in via USB 3, and while that’s happening I’ll work on an edit, and I’ll be done pretty quickly thereafter.

Larry Jordan:  Tim, what camera and formats does this device support?

Tim Feess:  Gnarbox is built to support any Go Pro, drone, DSLR and mirrorless camera.  It also supports a number of other professional formats.  In terms of video, anything that’s H.264 encoded, included XAVCS and a number of the other Sony formats will work with it, and it also supports all RAW photo types.

Larry Jordan:  How much does it cost?

Tim Feess:  It’s 299.

Larry Jordan:  Where can we go on the web to learn more about the product?

Tim Feess:  You can go to gnarbox.com to learn more about the product.  We have live chat and we support our customers and prospective customers pretty much instantly if they have any questions or want to send us sample files to test out.  You can buy them on our site, as well as Amazon and B&H.

Larry Jordan:  That website is gnarbox.com, and Tim Feess is the co-founder of Gnarbox.  Tim thanks for joining us today.

Tim Feess:  Thank you.

Larry Jordan:  Bob Benson began his career as an engineer.  After watching a small film crew struggle to pull focus on digital cameras, Bob came up with a concept of a wireless trigger controlled follow focus.  He then founded his new company, 24 Shots.  Hello Bob, welcome.

Bob Benson:  Thanks Larry, great to be with you.

Larry Jordan:  Bob, tell me about this new wireless focus puller.  What’s it called and what does it do?

Bob Benson:  We came up with the Silencer Air follow focus.  We saw how everyone was struggling with pulling their own focus, especially on the newer rigs and gimbals, it’s very difficult to pull focus.  So our system incorporates a trigger into the handle, so you can adjust the focus on the fly just by simply moving your finger, which works really well.

Larry Jordan:  What makes it so hard to pull focus?  I mean, we’ve been focusing cameras since they were invented.

Bob Benson:  With the latest invent of the new stabilizers and gimbals where the camera has to free float and move, there’s no way to actually reach in, touch the lens, it throws the whole rig out of whack.  So that’s where you need an electronic wireless system that’s lightweight, that’ll easily adapt to a rig like that and doesn’t throw the camera and everything out of balance.  That’s where the Silencer stands out.

Larry Jordan:  What was it that got you on a film set to begin with to discover this is a problem that needed solving?

Bob Benson:  You know, I just was helping out some friends shooting some film, and I said, “Gosh, there’s got to be a better way.”  It just seemed like there had to be and within a month or so we decided to do a Kickstarter campaign.  We had some great success with that and it was successful.  Now we’ve come out with the latest and greatest which is the Silencer Air.

Larry Jordan:  What did you learn as you were funding your project on Kickstarter?  What were the big lessons you took away from that?

Bob Benson:  We actually had a campaign that started originally that failed.  That we learned a lot from.  We were able to go back and cost reduce even more, get the tooling costs down, get the production costs down, and we were able to put up another campaign and we were able to rally a lot of people, especially in the industry.  I wasn’t an industry guy, but we were able to rally a lot of people behind the new campaign, and with the lower costs and really getting that final number down to where people could afford it, especially in the indie market.  People are looking for a great product that does the job, at a relatively low cost.

Larry Jordan: How did you rally support?  What did you do to get people to pay attention?

Bob Benson:  I think again our Facebook, getting out there and just talking with indie film makers.  Trying to get into the community.  Talk with people, see what they needed, see what their struggles were.  We contributed to some film makers projects, pretty much anything to just get out there, get the word out, get some feedback which ultimately we put a ton of their feedback into the initial design, and then four years later we’ve got a ton of great feedback.  We were able to leverage the technology and put all their needs, wants and desires into the latest product which is so exciting for us.

Larry Jordan:  What’s some of the new features in the latest product?  What’s new?

Bob Benson:  What’s new is the product uses an app which is our 24 Shots app.  Within that app you can save all of your lenses, all the lens profiles, so when you’re switching lenses on set it’s not a major adventure.  You put the lens on, you call up the file and it remembers everything to do with that file.  You can also save profiles.  Let’s say you’ve got a certain type of lens, you want it to always work at this kind of speed, and this kind of trigger sensitivity, you can save all of that.  Also you can save up to 20 focus points, so within that app you can save 20 points while you’re on set you can quickly go through the blocking, set all those points, and when it’s ready to go it’s a basic push button, step right through all 20 sequences.  Within those 20 you can actually adjust the curve and the motor speed to give it the artistic touch for every single shot, and that’s something that hasn’t been available at all.  So that is an aspect we’re so proud of.

Larry Jordan:  That’s a ton of new features, congratulations.

Bob Benson:  It is.

Larry Jordan:  The thing I like is that because it’s wireless you can have that camera flying all over everywhere, and still be able to hit the focus points you need.  That’s a huge benefit I hadn’t considered before.

Bob Benson:  It’s absolutely huge and one other aspect is, we have a drone mode, so you can actually mount this onto your drone and control your focus directly from your radio control, which is again, for the price point, you’ve got a wide variety of uses for the product and we think it’s just great.  We’re excited.

Larry Jordan: How much does the product cost?

Bob Benson:  The standard product is 875, and we do have an upgrade where if you’ve got a cine lens or if you’re using a gear drive lens, that would be our Pro Gear drive we’d recommend, and that would be an additional 120.

Larry Jordan: So for less than $1000?

Bob Benson:  Yes.  Absolutely.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information, where do they go on the web?

Bob Benson:  If you go to 24shots.com, and check out our Silencer Air.

Larry Jordan:  That’s the number two, the number four, 24shots.com and Bob Benson is the founder and CEO of 24 Shots.  Bob, thanks for joining us today.

Bob Benson:  Great.  Thanks for having me Larry, have a great day.

Larry Jordan:  Erika Nortemann is a veteran photography industry professional with over a decade of high level management experience.  As vice president of Tandem Stills + Motion, she oversees three leading platforms, photography and motion clip licensing, digital asset management and original content production.  Hello Erika, welcome.

Erika Nortemann:  Hello, thank you.

Larry Jordan:  Tell me, what is Tandem?

Erika Nortemann:  Tandem Stills + Motion, we are a visual media company that represents three very different, and yet cohesive units.  So Tandem Stills + Motion represents a stock photography agency, we represent a digital asset management company, and we also represent a motion film production company.

Larry Jordan: We’re going to talk digital asset management in a couple of weeks, so much though I’m fascinated with that subject, we’re going to put that to one side and focus on the photography side.  There’s at least 700 million other photography and stock footage sites.  Why did Tandem decide to start their own?

Erika Nortemann:  That’s a great question.  Back in 2010, the CEO and founder, Ian Shive, he was a photographer himself and he was represented by agencies and just thought he could do something a little bit differently.  He thought that he could offer photographers better percentages in their sales, and also thought he could get higher rates for them as well as offering, on the flip side, to clients buying images, really offering them a very well curated experience.  They know down to the color of the shirt the photographer was wearing on the day they were taking that photo.  We maintain that data and we’re able to share that with the client if they need that much.  So it’s a really personalized experience.  We know all of our clients very well and they’ve been with us from day one.

Larry Jordan:  Who is a typical client?

Erika Nortemann:  We focus on the outdoor active lifestyle, so a typical client for us could be, or is, Outside magazine, or Sunset magazine, folks who are really focused on getting people out and travelling and enjoying the outdoors and leading healthy lifestyles.

Larry Jordan:  Is this more of a photographer management group?  Are you managing photographers and assigning them photographs to shoot?  Or is this more of a stock house where people just dial in and see what’s there?

Erika Nortemann:  It’s both actually.  So we represent about 400 photographers who send their work in that they’re shooting on their own, either passion projects or assignments that they are shooting for other clients that they don’t have exclusive rights over.  They’ll submit it to us and we’ll get it out there.  Folks can come to our site and search the database to find what they’re looking for, but we do assignments as well so some of our long term clients like the Nature Conservancy, they all have a specific project in mind and they’ll come to us and we’ll set them up with a photographer who we think is best able to shoot that assignment.

Larry Jordan:  You’ve talked a lot about photographers which I take to mean stills.  Where does video fit into this equation?

Erika Nortemann:  When Tandem Stills + Motion started, it definitely was marrying photography and video together.  What we found is that, the world was ready and eager for the photography side of things, and over the last couple of years, we’re starting to see video play a bigger role in stock licensing as well as in assignments themselves.  So we’re finding some of our photographers, they love their still photography and that’s what they’re shooting, but we’re also finding a number of them who are interested in video and telling stories with motion.  We’re starting to incorporate the clip licensing aspect to that.  That was originally there seven years ago, but we’re incorporating that more and more into our daily sales.

Larry Jordan: Why should a photographer or a videographer for that matter, bring their art to Tandem?

Erika Nortemann:  I would say there are probably two good reasons.  The first being that we offer rights managed pricing, so they’re going to get more money for an individual sale than they’ll see with royalty free pricing, they’ll see cents on the dollar.  Two, we’re a small team but one of the reasons that Ian founded this company is because he wanted it to be a personal experience.  So photographers and clients alike, when they pick up the phone and call us, they will be talking to one of a handful of people.  We get to know our clients and our photographers.  They can ask us questions, and hopefully it feels like a very rewarding mutual partnership.  I think it provides a more personal and hopefully a more fun experience.  It definitely is more fun for us.

Larry Jordan:  Erika, for people that want more information, where do they go on the web?

Erika Nortemann:  They can go to tandemstock.com.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, tandemstock.com and Erika Nortemann is a vice president of Tandem Stills + Motion.  Erika, thank you for your time today.

Erika Nortemann:  Thank you very much.

Larry Jordan:  Michael Rubin has a 20 year background in digital still and motion photography.  Currently he is the marketing director for YI Technology.  They have a full line of mirrorless action, drone, home and VR cameras.  Hello Michael, welcome.

Michael Rubin:  Hi Larry, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  I’ve already described the fact that you make cameras.  Is that the entire business for YI?  In other words, what does YI do?

Michael Rubin:  YI makes all types of cameras.  You mentioned the action, the mirrorless, and we have VR of course and the drones, but we also have home cameras as well for security and for monitoring inside the home.

Larry Jordan:  One of your new cameras is a VR camera.  What got you into 360 degree design?

Michael Rubin:  A little over a year and a half ago, Google approached YI’s head designer for at that time, the action cameras, and said “We really want to work on the next generation of cameras.”  A lot of effort went into it and we were able to come out with the YI Halo at NAB that has 16 cameras around, and one camera up.  It ended up delivering about 8K by 8K stereoscopic 3D VR capture, and it will also do 6K by 6K at 60 frames per second.  It’s relatively light, eight pounds, and very portable.

Larry Jordan:  How many cameras?

Michael Rubin:  16 around and one up.

Larry Jordan:  That’s a ridiculous number of cameras.  Why so many?

Michael Rubin:  It allows us to get stereoscopic, you obviously need to have at least two lenses capturing.  It also gives us overlap which allows for great stitching, and in the event that one of the cameras was to go down, three cameras cover any particular part of the scene, so it can be recovered to some degree at that point.

Larry Jordan:  There’s a lot of 360 cameras out there.  Why do we choose the Halo, or better yet, how do we pick the best one for our project?

Michael Rubin:  That’s a great question.  First up, if you’re doing a full immersive planning to produce it maybe in a planetarium or a 360 round theater, certainly you want to be looking at a camera like the Halo.  You need the resolution, you need more importantly the stitching too, and that’s where we were able to join up with Google and use the Jump system.  Being able to do that just makes it so much easier, you send the data up, it comes back stitched beautifully, it knows which cameras it came from.  But then if you’re looking at just capturing everyday 360 around you, or maybe you’re at a concert, we have at the other end, professional quality but really very inexpensive, 399 for the 360 VR.  That’s two lenses, you’re able to hold it up or put it on a tripod or a monopod, and that will capture all of the audio around you and will capture video all around 360.  It’s not stereoscopic and so that was the first that we’ve announced, and actually, before the show we’ve been talking that we have a new 180 VR announcement as part of the Daydream and YouTube set up and that’s a whole new way to do VR.  It’s not really new, but it’s a new approach to it that hasn’t been done for quite a while.  So now we’re looking at stereoscopic 180.

Larry Jordan:  Last week YouTube announced this new program, as you mentioned, featuring 180 degree video.  Yet you just announced a 360 degree camera.  Now 180 degree video decreases file size and makes it easier for the viewers to know where to look, but where does your 360 gear fit into YouTube’s 180 new service?

Michael Rubin:  Well with the 180 camera which was in development at the same time as the 360, this does give you a new point of view, one that we’re much more familiar with and allows you of course to hide the lighting, hide the crew.  So that’s in those choices where you really want to have a planar view and look at things in one direction, 180 is perfect.  When it comes to 360, you want to capture the whole event.  Maybe it’s a live streaming event, so you want to use our 360 VR, it’s in the head mounted display, and you want to have that full immersed, maybe it’s a documentary inside a building and you want to go through the whole of the building?  That’s where 360 and really high resolution 360 comes in.

Larry Jordan:  So if you want to show an environment, 360 is probably the best choice?  But if you want to tell a story 180 may be better?

Michael Rubin:  Absolutely.  I think it really depends on the story.  I had lunch with a couple of gentlemen who have been shooting 360 VR in the Jump system for the last year or so, and we were talking about how the storytelling business has changed radically, where we always were thinking about maybe forward and maybe we change point of view using the cameras.  Where now we have to figure out where the cues are to send somebody to look behind them.  So that’s where 360 does become a whole new way of thinking, a new way to make decisions.

Larry Jordan:  Well 360 and now 180 video’s been generating a ton of hype.  What do you think the actual reality is going to be?  What are we going to use it for in two to four years?

Michael Rubin:  I think in two to four years, we’re going to have displays that will be just like wearing glasses, that will be very easy.  I’m sure you saw at NAB, all these new AR mixed reality glasses, augmented reality glasses are pretty incredible.  I think we’re also going to see theaters that can handle a full 360 in the round, and they may be 3D they may not.  And I think the head mounted displays, they’re getting much smaller, and they’re becoming self contained.  By the end of this year there should be a few, so we’re really at the beginning of it all.  But it’s going to be slow at first, and then it’s going to be really fast.

Larry Jordan:   We’ll have to see if this ends up skyrocketing the way folks like you expect, or tanking like stereoscopic 3D did and becoming just a very niche product.  I’m really curious to see how this plays out and for people that need more information Michael, where do they go on the web?

Michael Rubin:  You can go to our website, YItechnology.com.

Larry Jordan:  All one word, YItechnology.com and Michael Rubin is the marketing director for YI Technology.  Michael, thanks for joining us today.

Michael Rubin:  Thank you Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  I want to introduce you to a new website, Thalo.com.  Thalo is an artist community and networking site for creative people to connect, be inspired and showcase their creativity.  Thalo.com features content from around the world with a global perspective on all things creative.  Thalo is the place for creative folks to learn, collaborate, market and sell their works.  Thalo is a part of Thalo Arts, a worldwide community of artists, film makers and story tellers.  From photography to film making, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with the resources you need to succeed.  Visit Thalo.com and discover how their community can help you connect, learn and succeed.  That’s Thalo.com.

Larry Jordan:  Robert Dawe is a PhD and an assistant professor of radiology at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago.  Recently, they’ve discovered that motion capture technology can help spot symptoms early.  Hello Bob, welcome.

Bob Dawe:  Hi Larry, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  You know, I was just remarking, you are the first radiology research person we’ve talked to in the 17 years this show has been on the air, so while your research is way outside what we normally cover on the show, the tools that you’re using and how you’re using them are just really cool.  So I’m looking forward to chatting with you and let’s start by, what is it that first got you interested in ageing research?

Bob Dawe:  Like many people that I speak to, I have a personal connection to the ageing research.  I’ve seen grandparents descend into this heartbreaking world of not quite knowing fully what’s going on, and since I was in high school I knew that I wanted to be some kind of engineer and be able to help people.  So biomedical engineer really spoke to me and I fortunately ended up in an area where I can really, I hope, make a difference in people’s lives.

Larry Jordan:  More specifically, what are you studying?

Bob Dawe:  I consider myself kind of a gadget guy, and that gives me the opportunity to study lots of different things fortunately.  My work started off in radiology, hence my appointment as an assistant professor of radiology and specifically I was studying MRI.  I really got my foot in the door with the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center by taking post mortem brains that were donated by our very giving study participants, and imaging them post mortem, in an MRI scanner, just like the one you see in a hospital.  By now, we have hundreds of these scans and we can tell some very interesting signatures of not only Alzheimer’s Disease but many other neural pathologies and behaviors that were observed before death.

Larry Jordan:  Make the transition from post mortem brains which means after somebody’s died, to motion capture where they’re not moving a whole lot once they’re dead.

Bob Dawe:   Absolutely, so that was my first foray into the gadgetry and studying ageing.  But over the years, I’ve transitioned into studying things like mobility and sleep, and in particular, this project with the Kinect and iPi Software really spoke to me because I kind of had this feeling that you injure your knee, and your range of motion in your knee decreases somehow.  That influences your ability to exercise, be active, walk to the grocery store, go out and see friends.  So you’re getting less aerobic exercise, less social interaction and it’s possible, and in fact looks more and more likely every day that that leads to some kind of cognitive decline.  So although it seems disjointed this connection between the biomechanics of gait and your knee range of motion for example, those may somehow influence the way you think, or your ability to think critically later in life.

Larry Jordan: I was just reading new research this week that seems to indicate that exercise, combined with lowering blood pressure and cognitive training, can reduce the risk of getting Alzheimer’s?  But where does motion capture come in?

Bob Dawe:  We already have our study participants go through a battery of motor performances, a structured motor exam.  It involves them walking a couple of feet across the room, standing up from a chair, standing on one foot or the other for 20 seconds.  That’s already in place, and we were getting some very basic measures, usually with a stop watch.  Like, how long does it take them to walk eight feet?  Or how long are they able to stand on one foot without losing balance?  But we had the feeling there’s a lot more we could be capturing from this motor performance, and that’s where Kinect comes in, the motion capture with iPi software.  The goal really is to create a 3D digital record of this performance, so that we can go back at a later date and measure any number of interesting biomechanical parameters.  So that kind of led us directly to the motion capture solution.  You know it’s done in Hollywood.  We didn’t quite want that expensive rig to be transporting around, but lucky for us we found a much less expensive and much more portable solution that involved just a single Kinect sensor and this iPi software which drives the data collection process, and also helps in the post processing aspects of the data.

Larry Jordan:  Why did you choose Kinect, and why did you choose iPi?

Bob Dawe:  Well as many of your listeners are probably aware, the Kinect started life as a video game peripheral.  So by its own nature it’s got to be very inexpensive which is good for us.  I think Microsoft is probably disappointed at how it fared as a video game peripheral but it’s found many other uses, especially in the research community, and one of those is what we’re doing with it, gait analysis.  We were drawn to it, not only because it’s cheap, inexpensive and portable, it’s easy to use, it’s only one sensor.  We developed quite easily a strategic positioning method, that’s consistent from test to test.  In addition, the iPi software, we tried to make a home brew solution for how we were going to take the raw data and estimate body position from that data, and I quickly discovered that was not going to be an option with my programming experience, because the frame rates went from 30 to about ten or 15 maximum.

Bob Dawe:  So some quick Googling revealed the iPi software which is really impressive I think, probably for motion capture, and certainly for the gait analysis that we’re doing.

Larry Jordan:  What are you hoping to determine as a result of your research?

Bob Dawe:  Well I mentioned that I have this inkling, and I think most people probably do, that you injure your knee very slightly for example, or your knee range of motion goes down.  That influences how often you get out of the house, but although we have this inkling that that might be true, it’s really hard to get hard numbers on that.  What is a significant decrease in knee range of motion?  Is it five degrees?  Ten degrees?  And what happens as a result of that?  When is it time to go see the doctor, and when is it time to have some physical therapy?  I think that’s the answer that this Kinect set up can provide us.  It can provide us with hard numbers and then we study in the future how many of our participants become disabled, how many have falls, and based on that we can say, if we see your hip or knee range of motion decreasing at a rate of X degrees per year, that’s significant.  You need to go see a doctor.

Larry Jordan:  How do you capture movements without using traditional sensors?  One of the things that iPi is famous for is that it uses markerless sensors.  What is it using to detect the movement?

Bob Dawe:  Yes, that was crucial for us.  We’re going out into the community, we send our research assistants to the residences of our participants, it makes it more feasible to study thousands of people.  But I was very skeptical of the ability of this sensor to provide any meaningful measurement without those markers.  But it turns out we’re really not sacrificing much at all by using this system, compared to a full blown professional motion tracking rig.  I’d like to call it a depth sensing camera, so it assigns to each pixel in the frame a distance from the sensor to that pixel, so we can see the motion of the participant moving toward the camera, getting closer towards the camera as they perform the walking activity.  To do that, it uses a infrared projector which projects a unique pattern of infrared light onto the field of view and it senses any distortion in that projection with an infrared receiver.  Based on that, it calculates the distance of an object from the sensor.

Larry Jordan:  That is very cool.  What data are you pulling out?

Bob Dawe:  We get the raw depth information and we bring that back to the lab where we have a brigade of specially trained research assistants who are really skilled at using the iPi motion capture software, to post process that depth data and smooth out the measurements in order to get a really good and true to life representation of what the participant actually did.  How they actually moved.  Once we have that, at the moment we’ve started looking at just knee range of motion, hip range of motion, some timing parameters like cadence or what we call the single support time, how long one foot is on the ground compared to two.  But there’s really any number of parameters we could go back in the future if we decide that they’re interesting, and pull out.  That’s really a strength of this technique I believe is that it creates a permanent digital record.

Larry Jordan: How many tests do you need to make before you can start to draw conclusions and what’s the projected duration of this research project?  In other words, how soon can you tell us the results?

Bob Dawe:  We’ve already run a 50 person pilot study, the purpose of which was really to give us the answer, is it going to give us anything at all?  Is it going to be accurate?  The answer was yes by the way.

Larry Jordan:  Thank you.

Bob Dawe:  But beyond that, we have more than 2,000 people we’re planning on capturing this type of data in at least every two years, and possibly every year.  So once a year or two goes by, we’re going to have cross sectional data on the entire cohort.  That should lead to some interesting findings, I’m quite confident.  I don’t know what they’ll be, but I’m excited.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information about your research, where can they go on the web?

Bob Dawe:  I would send them to rush.edu, and from there they can find the link to the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center where they can read all about not just the Kinect research, but everything that we’re doing.

Larry Jordan:  That website is rush.edu, and Robert Dawe is a PhD and assistant professor of radiology at Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center.  Bob thanks for joining us today.

Bob Dawe:  Thanks a lot.

Larry Jordan:  One of the things I enjoy the most about this show is discovering new tools that expand our creative horizons, either by extending existing technology or creating new ways to create images that we were not able to create before, and we had a really great range of guests to talk about that today.

Larry Jordan:  I want to thank my guests this week, Tim Freess, the co-founder of Gnarbox, Bob Benson, the founder of 24 Shots, Erika Nortemann, the VP of Tandem Stills + Motion, Michael Rubin, the marketing director for YI Technology, Bob Dawe, assistant professor at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and James DeRuvo the senior writer for DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan:   There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website, at digitalproductionbuzz.com. Here you’ll find thousands of interviews, all online and all available to you today.  Remember to sign up for our free weekly show newsletter that comes out every Friday

Larry Jordan:  Talk with us on Twitter @DPBuzz and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan:   Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner with additional music provided by Smartsound.com.  Text transcripts are provided by Take1 Transcription.  Visit Take1.tv to learn how they can help you.

Larry Jordan:   Our producer is Debbie Price, my name is Larry Jordan, and thanks for listening to The Digital Production Buzz.

Larry Jordan:  The Digital Production Buzz is copyright 2017 by Thalo LLC.

HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
Paul Babb, President/CEO, MAXON US
Bruce K. Long, CEO and Co-founder, BeBop Technology
Pierson Clair, Faculty, Viterbi School of Engineering, USC
Denise Muyco, Co-Founder and CEO, StratusCore
Emery Wells, CEO and Co-Founder, Frame.io
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

==

Larry Jordan: Tonight on the Buzz we look at IaaS, infrastructure as a service.  This has the same power to disrupt traditional media creation as did digital video or NLEs, but what is it?  Is it just cloud storage, or is it something much more?  Tonight, we find out.

Larry Jordan:  We start with Paul Babb, the CEO of Maxon US.  Paul defines the three latest cloud buzzwords, IaaS, SaaS and PaaS, then he explains why they’re important to media creators and their potential to disrupt our entire industry.

Larry Jordan:  Pierson Clair is a digital forensic investigator.  He gets called in when companies have a data breach.  He also teaches computer security at USC.  Tonight he explains whether the data we store in the cloud is actually secure and what we can do to keep it safe.  His answers will surprise you.

Larry Jordan:  Emery Wells, the CEO and co-founder of Frame.io explains their cloud based media tools.  Frame.io focuses on collaboration, media transfer and review and approval for teams.  This week they launch their latest product, Frame.io Enterprise.

Larry Jordan:  Denise Muyco is the CEO and co-founder of StratusCore.  This is a cloud based service designed for visual effects artists.  Rather than run powerful VFX software from your personal computer, you can run it from much more powerful machines, stored in the cloud.  Tonight she explains how it works.

Larry Jordan:  Moving our tools to the cloud requires a major change in our thinking about where we store assets, the kind of gear we need to buy, and where we can do our work.  Bruce Long is the CEO and co-founder of BeBop Technology.  Tonight we talk with Bruce about the implications IaaS has for artists, production houses, software developers, and clients.

Larry Jordan:  All this, plus James DeRuvo with our weekly DoddleNEWS update.  The Buzz starts now.

Announcer:  Since the dawn of digital filmmaking – authoritative – one show serves a worldwide network of media professionals – current – uniting industry experts – production – filmmakers – post production – and content creators around the planet – distribution.  From the media capital of the world in Los Angeles, California, the Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan:  Welcome to the Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry, covering media production, post production and marketing around the world.

Larry Jordan:  Hi, my name is Larry Jordan.  Tonight’s show grew out of a conversation after this year’s NAB about what were the new technologies that were likely to disrupt media creation, and we realized that cloud based collaboration was one of those services.  While the cloud itself is not new, what is new is the number of firms that are using it to provide new services to filmmakers, all revolving around the idea of collaboration.  But the cloud is not a perfect place.  We read every day about data breaches, malware and inadequate security, so tonight we look at a variety of tools for improved collaboration, along with a deeper look at a new term called infrastructure as a service, or IaaS, and whether the cloud has enough security to keep our assets safe.  This is a show you need to hear.

Larry Jordan:   By the way, I want to invite you to subscribe to our free weekly show newsletter at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Every issue, every week, gives you an inside look at the Buzz, quick links to the different segments on the show, and curated articles of special interest to filmmakers.  Best of all, every issue is free and comes out on Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Now it’s time for a DoddleNEWS update, with James DeRuvo.  Hello James.

James DeRuvo:  Hi Larry.

Larry Jordan:  It’s wonderful to hear your voice, but I understand you’re on the road today.  Where are you?

James DeRuvo:  I’m on assignment.  I’m covering VidCon, the annual digital media content creator confab in Anaheim, California.  Think of it as NAB meets Comic Con.

Larry Jordan:  Anybody interesting there?

James DeRuvo:  A lot of really big YouTube stars are here, Freddie Wong, Joseph Graceffa, you see them all over the floor, and I’ll give a hint.  If you hear 1,000 pre-teenage girls screaming at the top of their lungs, there’s probably a YouTube star nearby.

Larry Jordan:  Let’s shift gears from where you are to what the news is.  What’s our lead story this week?

James DeRuvo:  The big breaking news yesterday was that Adobe acquired the Mettle SkyBox suite of Virtual Reality Tools.  These are drag and drop plugins for Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.  Mettle got everybody’s attention because they created the world’s first virtual 360 degree camera for editing within the VR space, and Adobe being that they have wanted to amp up their virtual reality workflows in Premiere Pro, have decided that they wanted to buy it.  So they didn’t buy the company, they just bought the SkyBox Virtual Reality suite of tools.  Mettle’s creator Chris Bobotis will join the Adobe family and even though support for the existing SkyBox plugins will continue through Mettle, any new purchases will be handled through Adobe after a brief hiatus, and with their new SkyBox VR tools, Adobe is expanding into the virtual reality workspace with a vengeance.  It only makes sense that they go after some shovel ready tools designed to easily incorporate into the create cloud eco system.

Larry Jordan:  Adobe has taken the lead in VR though Apple has announced that Final Cut will be catching up later this year.  I think this is a very interesting acquisition and I’m curious to see what they do with it.

James DeRuvo:  We’ll see how it works.

Larry Jordan: What else have you got?

James DeRuvo:  Well being as I’m at VidCon this week, Switcher Studio announced a new update, version 3.3 and it only comes out three months after their last update which they announced at NAB.  As its main features, it has the ability to connect to up to nine mobile devices that can then be switchable for live video streaming.  New controls include quickly adding photos, videos, lower thirds and overlays to Facebook Live broadcasts and YouTube Live.  Plus connections to desktop webcams or via Skype for interviews and talking head segments, and motion control via the DJI Osmo Mobile device.  Since Facebook and YouTube Live have gotten into the live streaming game, it has exploded and Switcher Studio and mobile Switcher Go apps make it shamefully easy for anyone to start their own IPTV studio.  With up to nine IOS connections and switching from an iPad or an iPhone, you literally have a broadcast studio in your pocket.

Larry Jordan:  It’s just amazing what we’re able to do with mobile devices these days, and Switcher Studio has been taking the lead.  I’m looking forward to hearing how that new version ends up.  What else have we got?

James DeRuvo:  You know what you can also do with a mobile device?  You can make phone calls.

Larry Jordan:  Shocking isn’t it?  So what’s our third story today?

James DeRuvo:  Our third story this week is Filmstro Music, the music scoring app got a big update this week.  The music licensing app offers recording soundtrack music that can then be edited for the tone and feel of the music, according to the piece’s momentum, depth and power.  So you can take this pre-recorded music and you can tweak it and make it sound different than it originally is.  It’s a really interesting concept.  They’ve expanded the library to over 60 albums of music and over a selection of different genres with expanded collections and favorites features for organizing, and you now have the ability to buy each track a la carte, or purchase the entire album licensing.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information, where do they go on the web?

James DeRuvo:  All these stories can be found at Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  James DeRuvo is the senior writer for DoddleNEWS and returns with our weekly DoddleNEWS update next week.  James, you take care, we’ll talk to you next week and enjoy VidCon.

James DeRuvo:  Talk to you next week Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Here’s another website I want to introduce you to.  Doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries.  It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry.  DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platforms specifically designed for production.  These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listings, provide in depth organizational tools for busy production professionals.  DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts Community, a worldwide community of artists, film makers and storytellers.  From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with resources you need to succeed.  Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go.  Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  Paul Babb is the president and CEO of Maxon US as well as a graphic software technology expert with almost 20 years of experience in 3D animation, visual effects and motion graphics.  Hello Paul, welcome back.

Paul Babb:  Hey Larry, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  Paul, today we are talking about the cloud and collaboration, so to get us started in this discussion, could you define the three latest cloud buzzwords which are IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS?

Paul Babb:  Don’t you love that?  They have to make the cloud even more complicated by breaking it into sub subjects.

Larry Jordan:  Well, as a media person, I’m not sure we can stand on any kind of platform when it comes to acronyms.

Paul Babb:  Exactly.  Well the AAS is as a service for all these different cloud service models, and yes these three are just different types of cloud service models.  I’d say most people are tapping SaaS on a regular basis if you’re using Google Docs or any kind of the Google apps or Microsoft 365.  Basically software as a service, SaaS, is a software distribution on the internet.  So it’s the ability to use a piece of software that’s not hosted on your own computer, it’s hosted on the cloud.

Larry Jordan: Is that similar to just renting software?

Paul Babb:  Well, you can certainly rent software as a service, or SaaS, but it defines that it’s hosted on the cloud, so for instance if you have Adobe Creative suite, but the software is on your machine and you’re subscribing to that, that wouldn’t necessarily be software as a service since it’s hosted on your local machine.  You have to download that software and install it.

Larry Jordan:  OK, what’s PaaS?

Paul Babb:  PaaS is platform as a service.  Now, platform as a service is the next level.  It’s a pre-defined environment that allows developers to build applications and services over the internet.  So for instance, our development team at Maxon is very virtual.  There are programmers all over the world, and they utilize PaaS by developing on a particular platform so they can share code, the same code base in the same location, a cloud location, so they can all be contributing to that.  That would be something like Atlassian which is great provider of platform as a service.  There’s Beanstalk, Windows, Heroku, and Google actually has an app engine I believe that you could call that as a platform as a service as well.  It’s a platform that’s been pre-defined, there’s a framework that the developers can work from and deploy products on that service.  So they could use that platform to deploy a software as a service for other people.

Larry Jordan:   OK, that gets me to the one that I’m most interested in for tonight, which is IaaS.

Paul Babb:   Really?  The one you’re most interested in?

Larry Jordan:   Indeed.

Paul Babb:   I would say that IaaS is the base layer.  It’s virtual machines, it’s hard disk storage, it’s servers, it’s machines that serve as load balancers.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical server, it can also be a virtual location. But that’s the base level, you’re paying a company to provide you hardware on the fly, on a network, and you’re building from scratch basically, so programmers have to build the complete architecture.  They’re responsible for implementing everything on that server.

Larry Jordan:  It seems to me that IaaS reminds me of back in the old days when we had mainframes and local terminals which the PC revolution replaced.  Is IaaS just another turn of the circle back to emulating mainframes?

Paul Babb:  Yes, and you could even call these companies that provide web services to you, I mean the more commercial ones are PaaS because they provide a lot of infrastructure for you, but let’s say I want to build something from scratch.  I want to build a website from scratch and I don’t want to use the packaged components that a web service might have, then I might ask to have a virtual machine or actual hardware built for me and access from different locations so that I could build from scratch.

Larry Jordan:  We’re going to be talking to a number of companies today that are providing a variety of either IaaS platforms or software as a service platforms, but it seems there’s a number of different communities involved; people that are using the service, the clients of the people, the artists in Cinema 4D terms.  There’s also the cloud firms that are providing the service, but the one that nobody seems to talk about are software developers.  Does this expansion of software to the web have any advantage to a software developer?  Because traditionally you guys have sold software to individual people and now it looks like you’re really just selling licenses to a mainframe.

Paul Babb:  Well if we’re providing that kind of service, sure.  But there’s positives and negatives to that obviously.  For the consumer, there’s very low cost entry.  The barrier to entry becomes very low cost, especially if you’re renting on the short term.  For the software provider it provides some combatance against piracy.  If you’re controlling the environment which, with the software is available, you can control the piracy part of it.  But you’re then also selling your software for short term as opposed to long term and, in our case our software sells for over $3,000 and you’re moving from a $3,000 single purchase to whatever it is per month or per quarter.

Larry Jordan:  One of the things that strikes me as I was chatting with some of our guests for tonight in other IaaS companies, is it seems like they have the potential to significantly disrupt the way that we create media today in terms of tools get located in a different location, and media gets located differently.  Do you see the same thing, or is this really just business as usual running off a different piece of hardware?

Paul Babb:   I think in some ways it’s the same order of business, running off a different piece of hardware.  But also, there’s going to be a lot of content creators who are not going to want to move the content to a virtual environment, they’re going to want to keep it local because of copyright issues and those types of things.

Larry Jordan:   In our next interview, we’re going to talk to Pierson Clair about network security and cloud security, but from your point of view, what are your thoughts on the security of our media and your applications when we move it to the cloud?

Paul Babb:  To tell you the truth, like I said, I think that having software as a service as a software provider, will give us a lot of security in terms of piracy.  Right now, once we’ve delivered the software, it can be shared, it can be pirated and utilized all over the place.  I actually think that there’s a greater potential for us to protect our software much better than we are now and in some ways, once we get to a place where we can offer this and we have the business model for it, we could reach a larger audience because they don’t have to put down $3,000. There’s the opportunity for them to get in that lower cost of entry and try out the software, utilize it, make it part of their workflow.

Larry Jordan:  Is piracy still an issue?

Paul Babb:  Oh heck yes.

Larry Jordan:  I’m going to leave that sit there.  Another factor is the speed of our connection to the web.  Not only the speed with which we’re able to access these remote service, but getting our files transferred to the cloud initially.  How does bandwidth affect the performance of these services?

 Paul Babb:  I think it’s the most important issue that people are going to have to deal with, especially in the media industry.  If you’re going to be editing video or you’re going to be creating special effects on a virtual server, you’re going to have to load the assets that you have to that server. Otherwise you’re not going to get the kind of performance you need to do the work you have to do.  So the connection is going to be the most important aspect of this workflow.

Larry Jordan:  If you were wearing the hat of an artist for just the next minute or two, when does IaaS make sense?  When should you go to running your software on the cloud?  And when should you run it locally?  How do you make that choice?

Paul Babb:  As an individual artist, I don’t think I’m ever dealing with IaaS because that’s very much a customized, I’m responsible for that architecture environment.

Larry Jordan:  Let me restate the question.  As an artist, when do you want to run your software locally versus accessing one of the companies that provides the software on the web, either software as a service, or as part of an IaaS platform?

Paul Babb:  Personally, I would I’m more apt to run locally to do media work at this time.  I believe that we are moving quickly to PaaS as a viable platform for content creation, but I think right now I personally would prefer to keep things local at this point.

Larry Jordan: How come?

Paul Babb:  I’m not confident in the connection to the internet.  It concerns me if for some reason my internet connection goes down.  What am I going to do?  I could lose valuable production time if I’ve got a deadline and I can’t get back on the internet to reach the assets, or to reach my project files or reach the software to do the work.  That could be disastrous.  Something goes down or wrong with the internet and I can continue to work if I’ve got my assets and my software locally.  But that being said, I’m a little older, I’m in a different generation.  I think the mindset’s a little bit different as far as that’s concerned, and I do believe PaaS is an inevitability and maybe eventually SaaS.

Larry Jordan:  Inevitability I’ve learned is a very relative term, because it seems like every five or ten years the wheel turns a little bit differently and we find ourselves back where we were before, and I’m getting a strong sense of déjà vu as I listen to your description of these services.

Paul Babb:  Let’s not forget it was only three or four years ago that Adobe switched over to be 100 percent a monthly subscription service, and at that time there was a pretty large segment that was not happy about that switchover.

Larry Jordan:   I think not happy is a very kind term.

Paul Babb:   Yes.  And now, it’s somewhat expected.  We have not yet moved to a monthly subscription service.  We do have short term licenses of three and six months, but we have not moved to a monthly subscription and there’s, there is sometimes some criticism about that.  “Why aren’t you offering what Adobe offers?”   Well, it’s a different business model.  There’s certainly a volume that can be managed in that way, but as I said, I do believe that it will be somewhat of an inevitability.

Larry Jordan:  So there’s still interesting things to discover and think about I understand.  Paul, for people that want to get more information about what Maxon is doing, where can they go on the web?

Paul Babb:  They should go check us out at maxon.net.

Larry Jordan: That’s maxon.net, and Paul Babb is the president and CEO of Maxon US.  Paul, this has been a wonderful visit.  Thanks for sharing your time.

Paul Babb:  Thanks Larry.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Pierson Clair has spent the last decade conducting digital forensic investigations in support of companies who have suffered a breach or other loss of data.  His investigative specialties lay in the realm of Mac and mobile devices.  Pierson has also spent the last five years teaching classes in information security and advanced forensics at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC.  Hello Pierson, welcome.

Pierson Clair:  Hi there, how’s it going?

Larry Jordan:  Well I am looking forward to our conversation, that is a true statement.  Tonight is all about IaaS and cloud based collaboration. Increasingly, media creators are being invited to move their assets to the cloud.  Given that we are all paranoid by nature, is it possible to keep our data safe once it’s stored in the cloud?

Pierson Clair:  The joy of the cloud is you’re trusting your data to somebody else.  You are trusting that they can house your data better than you can, and you’re trusting that they will take better steps to protect your data than you can.  The cloud is one of those great marketing terms that just means, you can’t put your hands on your data.

Larry Jordan:  It’s just essentially a remote server, is what you’re saying, under somebody else’s control?

Pierson Clair:  Truly.  So we’ve been using email forever.  Email is now what’s known as the cloud, we just never talked about it that way, ten, 20 years ago.

Larry Jordan:   So how can we determine if a cloud vendor that we want to use is secure enough?

Pierson Clair:  The current state of cyber security is pretend and envision for a second that you are that king or queen in the middle ages who has a castle.  And you are under siege, and you’ve got to protect your castle against 100 percent of inbound threats.  You’ve got to be right 100 percent of the time.  The attacker who you may not even be able to see, just needs to be right once.  So it’s difficult to say “How do I guarantee that something is secure?” because unfortunately the only way to guarantee security is to have your data on a computer that’s turned off and the computer itself is in a safe or safe deposit box, which unfortunately, really makes it kind of useless as a computing device.

Larry Jordan:  If we’re a film maker and we’re shooting a movie which has not yet been released, so we’ve got all these proprietary assets that we’ve created, Amazon and Microsoft talk about how much built in security they’ve got in AWS in Amazon’s case, and Azure in Microsoft’s case, if we’re trying to protect assets which are not otherwise available, is there security enough or do we need to do more?  And if we need to do more, can we?

Pierson Clair:  That’s a great question.  You’ve got intellectual property that you need to protect, how do you do it?  Every cloud provider is going to say “We’ve got great security.”  But let’s go one level higher.  Let’s talk about the content of what we like to see as cyber security hygiene.  When you’re a small child you get multiple immunizations.  Why?  To protect yourself and to protect those around you.  So cyber security hygiene starts with yourself, with your own computer.  Starts with password policy, starts with what you click on.  Could an attacker go after a cloud service?  Sure.  But why do that if they can send you a phishing email that you then click on.  A piece of malware is downloaded to your computer without your knowledge.  A key logger exists, it scrapes all of your passwords and it may just log into AWS or Azure or Rackspace as you.

Pierson Clair:   So taking a step back and looking at your whole cyber security posture, we like to use a phrase called trust no-one.  Validate everything.  The biggest thing with the current state of cyber security is the technology itself is quite good, which means that most attacks are now what we call social engineering attacks.  Whether this is a phone call that you receive saying something along the lines of “This is Microsoft, this is Google, this is Apple, this is Cisco or this is the IRS” and the next line is something like “Your computer is infected, or you haven’t paid your taxes” and they create this sense of worry.  This cognitive dissonance whereby you are then compelled to let them have remote access or to send them money.  So many of the attacks we now see against Macs are these social engineering attacks where people are coerced either by a banner ad, by an email, by a phone call, into saying “My computer’s infected, because my computer’s telling me so, so I must call this number, I must give them some money” and all of a sudden the computer wasn’t infected before, but is sure infected now after you’ve given them remote access.  Never give somebody remote access unless it’s a guaranteed service provider that you have worked with before.  Pair that with, trust no-one, because if you question everything, then you’ll maintain a safer security posture.

Larry Jordan:  I got five calls from AT&T yesterday saying that my computer had a bad IP address.  I know exactly what you’re talking about.  How can we tell if we’ve been hacked?  Whether we’ve downloaded one of these malwares that you just mentioned, and what should we do if we are?

Pierson Clair:  One of the common misperceptions is that Macs don’t get malware.  We have been lulled into the belief that Macs are inherently secure.  And yes, they are more secure than your standard Windows installation, but it doesn’t mean that they are a magic shield that nothing can pass through.  One, it’s keeping your computer up to date. It’s running patches, it’s keeping those operating updates up to date.  It’s also running anti-virus, but anti-virus is only going to stop about 50 percent of attacks.  There are far simpler programs, be they things like Little Snitch that will look at just outbound connectivity.  “Hey, do you know that your computer’s currently calling out to this server in this geographical location?”  On the other hand, if you’re doing really sensitive work, don’t be connected to the internet.  Convenient, no.  But that way you know that it’s not connected to the internet, so if it’s going to get lost or stolen, somebody has to physically enter your office to take the data that you’re working on.

Larry Jordan:  Mac people have been told for a long time, especially media creators, that when we run anti-virus software, there’s a significant performance hit, and because performance is everything when we’re editing media, just because it’s such a complex thing to do in the first place, we’ve turned off anti-virus.  How big of a performance hit is there with today’s anti-virus and which companies should we consider using?

Pierson Clair:  So there are many great companies out there, and in my capacity at USC I can’t recommend an option, but yes, there will be a performance hit.  One of the interesting things is that most anti-viruses allow you to turn off what’s referred to as on-access scanning.  And what on-access scanning means is, when you’re working on a file, it’s scanning that file in the background.  If you turn off the on-access scanning, you lose a certain level of real time protection, but if you set up scheduled scans, to run say four in the morning when you probably aren’t in front of your edit bay then at least you know that everything that’s changed in say the last 24 hours has been scanned.

Larry Jordan:  What references can you suggest for those that want to learn more about data security, that don’t require you to be an engineer to understand?

Pierson Clair:  I use Feedly as a seed aggregation service.  And I have a Feedly list that’s public, so if you go feedly.com/pclair, so that’s feedly.com/pclair, and I make a couple of hundred resources that I read on a daily basis available, broken down into many different topics.

Larry Jordan:  That web address again is feedly.com/pclair.  Pierson, for people that want more information or would like to get in touch with you, what do you recommend?

Pierson Clair:  They can email me pierson@pinnaclecyber.com.

Larry Jordan:  The voice you’ve been listening to is Pierson Clair at Digital Forensic Investigator and on the faculty at USC.  Pierson thanks for joining us today.

Pierson Clair:  Thank you so much Larry for having me on.

Larry Jordan:  Emery Wells is the co-founder and CEO of Frame.io a video review and collaboration platform used by hundreds of thousands of media professionals and companies like Vice, Buzzfeed and Facebook.  Hello Emery, welcome.

Emery Wells:  Hey Larry, wonderful to be back on the show.

Larry Jordan:  It is always good to hear your voice, and thanks for joining us tonight. How would you describe Frame.io?

Emery Wells:  I think you did a really good job.  It’s a video review and collaboration platform and in real world terms it means that we act like a command central for all your videos while you’re working on them.  So you have large files you need to share, you have work in progress to share, you need to communicate around that work in progress, you need to manage all the versions and the back and forth, we have lots of integrations with the desktop creative tools like Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Final Cut.  So we really just handle all of that in one cohesive platform.  If you weren’t using something like Frame.io you’d probably be using a mish mash of a few different tools for file sharing and something when you want to share work in progress.  Frame.io really just streamlines that entire process.

Larry Jordan:  We’re talking to a number of companies that all facilitate collaboration.  What makes Frame.io different from other collaboration companies?

Emery Wells:  Frame.io is the largest and most popular service of its kind, and I think that one of the things that’s really resonated with our customers is, I think they feel that we really get it.  We can always do a feature to feature comparison of what Frame.io has that another solution doesn’t have, but I think when users use it they feel that it was made by people who get it, because the people who made it are post production professionals that have been doing this all their lives.  That’s what I did prior to starting Frame.io, I owned a post production company.  And then we also just happen to have a really great product.

Larry Jordan:  We’ve heard a lot today about issues with security when we store stuff to the cloud and slow internet connection speeds.  What can Frame.io do to reassure us that you have sufficient security for our data and our projects?

Emery Wells:  Well we’re certainly investing heavily in security.  It’s a really important topic I think when events like the ‘Orange Is the New Black’ leak, or in the news, it’s something that’s always a concern, but when events like this happen, it becomes something that’s really top of mind for everyone.  And it’s both a challenge for a solution like ours, and also an opportunity.  It’s a challenge because it makes people wary.  “This is happening out there in the world, and how do I know it’s not going to happen on Frame.io?”  It’s an opportunity because we really investigate where these leaks happen.  It typically comes from negligence.  It’s from organizations whose core proficiency is really not software or software security, and when you use a solution like Frame.io you’re putting your content in the hands of people who are spending a lot of time trying to ensure that your stuff is safe.  In most cases, or maybe all cases, it’s going to be safer than even storing it on your local network because local networks are not secure as we’ve discovered with the ‘Orange Is the New Black’ leak.

Larry Jordan:  What minimum internet bandwidth do we need to use Frame.io effectively?

Emery Wells:  It really depends on how you’re using it.  We recommend that a 10 megabit connection is kind of the minimum, but also sufficient.  If you’re using it for work in progress that’s totally fine, you can upload mp4s and certainly review any of the video that’s on Frame.io.  If you want to share big, high quality camera original files, then you’ll want a faster connection.  The good news is Frame.io is able to saturate the available bandwidth that you have, so if you’re on a gigabit connection, you can fully saturate that bandwidth and you can move some very serious 50 gig, 4K pro res files.  Frame.io can handle that.  We have an accelerated uploader.

Larry Jordan: I was struck that you guys announced a new product this week called Frame.io Enterprise.  What is it and who’s it for?

Emery Wells:  Frame.io Enterprise is all the core collaboration features of Frame.io with all the additional security permissioning and identity access management features that larger organizations need to deploy Frame.io.  So from the beginning we wanted to build a product that was accessible to individuals and small teams, but we immediately had all this interest from larger media organizations like Turner, and like Vice, and when you’re deploying Frame.io at that scale where you have thousands of users using it, a number of new challenges crop up.

Emery Wells:   One of the big challenges is just, how do we give each functional group a space for them to work in Frame.io that feels contained for their stuff, but then how do the admin have an overview of everything that’s going on in the organization?  So Frame.io Enterprise introduces the idea of use, and a team is like a mini account within Frame.io so the people on that team, only see the projects for their team, but you could also be on multiple teams and the admins are able to manage everything from one central location.  We do have additional security features like single sign on, and actually we added a security feature that’s available not just to Enterprise, but to everyone which is the ability to remotely disable active sessions.  So if somebody loses their device, you can log into the admin console, and just log them out of all active sessions.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information about Frame.io where can they go on the web?

Emery Wells:  They can go to Frame.io.

Larry Jordan:  That keeps it simple.  That’s Frame.io and Emery Wells is the co-founder and CEO of Frame.io, and Emery thanks for joining us tonight.

Emery Wells:  Alright, thanks so much Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Denise Muyco is the co-founder and CEO of StratusCore.  She founded StratusCore in 2011 to enable artists and content producers to take advantage of emerging cloud technology to streamline the content creative process and make it more cost effective for artists and studios alike.  Hello Denise, welcome.

Denise Muyco:  Hello, welcome to you and thank you for having me on your show.

Larry Jordan:  I’m actually looking forward to our conversation.  I’m glad to have you with us.  How would you describe StratusCore?

Denise Muyco:  A way for both individual freelancers and studios to bring content production into the cloud.  Specifically it’s a way for digital artists to use services, and when I say services I mean both the software and hardware services, to create content.  So when we talk about our core services, that’s anything from storage to render or compute processing, to moving content and to creating the content which is the actual workstation and connection with the software, that’s what we mean by content creation.

Larry Jordan:  Why?  I mean, why can’t we just work with our own personal gear on our own personal computers, in our own personal little office?

Denise Muyco:  About 70 percent of the market really can’t afford those upgrades, both on the hardware and the software side, so they’re usually late to the game in terms of using the best tools or the most efficient tools.  So, what StratusCore does, is it enables all of those both individual small companies, and large companies, to get access to the latest and greatest tools.

Larry Jordan:  But I feel sometimes like I’m at a carnival where there’s barkers on either side saying, “I’ve got the greatest service, I’ve got the greatest service.”  It’s like there’s thousands of cloud vendors out there.  Why should I consider StratusCore?

Denise Muyco:  For two primary reasons.  We’ve been doing this for the last six, seven years now.  We are a purpose built platform for the content creation community and what I mean by that is, we’ve been doing this from the ground up for years.  The ecosystem itself that we have created and developed with our partners include both different cloud companies, and as we know cloud companies are not all created equal.  We also have our own private infrastructure and we also are able to work with on premise infrastructure.  So having that hybrid cloud is really the right solution for this industry, and as it relates to talking about the software components, we’ve worked for many years to earn the trust and respect of large companies, and small companies like Autodesk and small companies like Shave and a Haircut.  We have worked with multiple software vendors that support this ecosystem.

Larry Jordan:  What are we actually using from StratusCore, and what are we actually storing on the cloud?

Denise Muyco:  We call them the four core services, and those are storage, render processing, work station and transit.  Those are the four core services that people are using.  When it comes to what software are people using, the software is the usual suspects, or the most popular software.  So when you’re talking about what’s being used on a workstation, so it’s anything from Adobe all the way through to say Houdini in terms of content creation software.  So that’s step one.  Step two, what people are also using, we’re talking about storage, storage can be used in two ways.  If I already have existing content that I want to use StratusCore services for, whether that be rendering or I want to use a different software to finish out a creative asset, I basically move that existing file up into our cloud storage, and you can begin working on it.  So it’s two ways in which you get content into the cloud.  You can start from creating it in StratusCore or you can move it to StratusCore and you can do something with that content when it’s up in the cloud.

Larry Jordan:  Well if we move our assets up to StratusCore, how do we keep them secure?

Denise Muyco:  That is a very important component of StratusCore and is one of the pillars in our company.  There are three ways in which we look at storage.  Data at rest, motion and storage.  We secure them in basically two different ways.  One is through our private network and the other is through access control.  Those are the two primary ways in which we can lock down one’s very valuable assets.

Larry Jordan:  How are StratusCore services priced?

Denise Muyco:  It is variable.  So it is based on an on demand way, another is through what we consider more of a SaaS based approach which is if you know one’s going to be using the service over and over, the pricing gets more efficient.  We also have longer term contracts so if there is an entire project or production that is utilizing our services and several are collaborating, we can get very efficient on using all of our services.

Larry Jordan:  If I’m just using StratusCore for a short period of time, when that contract is over, what happens to my assets?

Denise Muyco:  You have the choice to either extend storage or you can pull all of those assets down.

Larry Jordan:  If we wanted to do long term work with StratusCore, how do we budget for ongoing expenses?  Is there a spreadsheet or something we can use to help us figure out what we need to build into our production budget?

Denise Muyco:  Yes.  That’s a great question.  We actually have a pricing calculator for that.

Larry Jordan: What would you say to a producer who’s paranoid about losing their assets, to reassure them that it’s safe to store their assets on your service?

Denise Muyco:  This does come up a lot.  What I do say is there is a higher risk right now in a way that content production is done today which is people can walk out with actual assets on USB sticks.  What’s great about StratusCore is it is stored up into the cloud and unless you have permissions, you cannot pull those assets down.

Larry Jordan:  Denise, for people that need more information, where can they go on the web?

Denise Muyco:  You just go to www.stratuscore.com.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, stratuscore.com and Denise Muyco is the co-founder and CEO of StratusCore, and Denise thank you for your time today.

Denise Muyco:  Thank you Larry.

Larry Jordan:  I want to introduce you to a new website, Thalo.com.  Thalo is an artist community and networking site for creative people to connect, be inspired and showcase their creativity.  Thalo.com features content from around the world with a global perspective on all things creative.  Thalo is the place for creative folks to learn, collaborate, market and sell their works.  Thalo is a part of Thalo Arts, a worldwide community of artists, film makers and storytellers.  From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with the resources you need to succeed.  Visit Thalo.com and discover how their community can help you connect, learn and succeed.  That’s Thalo.com.

Larry Jordan:  Bruce Long is the co-founder and CEO of BeBop Technology.  He’s a technologist, inventor, entrepreneur.  His extensive experience includes work at Deluxe and Technicolor, Ascent Media and CBS as well as founding successful businesses, including Next Element, Encore Video, Encore VFX and co-founding Cloud Takes.  Bruce, I get tired just reading your resume.  How you doing today?

Bruce Long:  I’m filled with energy.  I’m doing great thank you Lord.

Larry Jordan:  Let’s start at the beginning.  What is BeBop?

Bruce Long:  BeBop Technology is a platform that lets you do post production on your laptop or on your PC.  The tricky part is your laptop or PC is actually connecting through a small internet connection completely securely to a computer in the cloud and the computer in the cloud has the editorial or post production software.  So, it’s a cloud solution Larry.

Larry Jordan:  This is analogous to what we did 30, 40 years ago with terminals and mainframes, where I’m just running a dumb terminal on my end and the software’s happening in the cloud, on the mainframe.

Bruce Long:  That’s a great example, yes absolutely.  I think Cray Computers would be very proud to say that they were the forerunner to BeBop Technology.  But we do do a lot of explaining when really all we’re actually doing is working on a powerful computer in the cloud.  It’s the mystique around the cloud gets in the way sometimes.  But really, we love the idea of just providing people a more powerful computer on an hourly basis, that’s really what it’s about for us.

Larry Jordan:  I want to come back to that, but before I do, why did you decide to start the company?  You’ve clearly started plenty of others that you could have picked from.

Bruce Long:  I have a long history in the entertainment space, and post production specifically, although I ran National Lampoon for a little while too.  I really felt strongly that the financial models in our industry were just getting crushed.  The off the shelf computer and software marriage has been really great for the industry but not so great for the institutions, so what we are trying to do is move away from the tradition of brick and mortar and come up with a solution that supports both the post production facilities, the post production talent and I guess most important, content creators.

Larry Jordan:  I think there’s another one which is software developers, and I want to get into that in just a minute.  But before we do, as we’ve heard earlier in the program with some of our other interviews, there are a large number of cloud based tool vendors available.  What makes BeBop unique?

Bruce Long:  The exciting part for us is we’re totally agnostic, whether it’s the public clouds.  We’ve worked on Amazon, and we worked on Microsoft Azure as well as IBM and a bunch of others.  But we’re also agnostic to the tools.  We have a bring your own license model, so we can work with any of the softwares that are being developed to work on the edge in the cloud and we worked on a bunch of different visual effects and post production softwares.

Bruce Long:   My goal really having spent so many years in our industry, is to take the softwares that our creative talent have been using on an everyday basis, and transition them to the cloud.  And the biggest reason is because we want to make sure that artists that are not in the mainstream cities, that are not in mainstream environments, even guys and girls that don’t have access to really expensive equipment, still can compete and contribute to content creation.  I think we’ve seen a huge decentralization of Hollywood, and empowering the individual I think is the key to the transition.  So BeBop really makes sure that any individual wherever they are, they could be in the Ukraine for all I know, can do editing or color correction or visual effects on the BeBop platform.  So it’s sort of empowering the individual, and by doing that, I think we also empower the industry.

Larry Jordan:  OK, but now I’m confused.  I’ve got my software, I’ve got a license for the software, I’ve got a computer that the software runs on.  Why would I transfer it to BeBop?  I’ve got everything I need right here at home, whether I’m in the Ukraine or Florida or Hollywood.

Bruce Long: That’s a great question Larry.  I think that it’s not always that easy.  I think that the industry as we transition to larger file formats like 4K, augmented reality and virtual reality and HDR high dynamic range and 20 20, all these things are really pushing the envelope.  But I think a simple example is, if you’re going to edit a 4K television show, and you’re going to do it on a small laptop, you’re either going to be working on a pretty compressed image, or you’re going to be spending some time rendering it, pushing the horsepower of that computer.

Bruce Long:   In this scenario you’re actually getting a really powerful computer.  We could actually allow you to edit, color correct, do visual effects in 4K or even 8K in real time.  It’s because the computers in the cloud are so powerful.  So certainly we love the fact and every day have people editing and doing color correction on small projects, but when you get up to features or high end television, it’s really just not viable on a small laptop without a whole bunch of extra investment in hardware.

Larry Jordan:  But the flip side is, if I’ve got a feature, and I’m shooting even a 200 to one shooting ratio which seems small these days, I’m generating multiple dozens of terabytes of data, and if I have to upload that through a standard web uplink, it’s measured in weeks not measured in hours.  How do we solve that last mile connection problem?

Bruce Long:  That’s a great question, I love the way you said that.  That you’re uploading, it’ll take days even weeks.  That is the challenge that I think people face, especially in the past four or five years, because they really didn’t want to play out through the satellite.  The transition is really happening way before we talk about production.  So what’s happening is distribution has migrated to the cloud, I think we all know, we’re all very aware of Netflix and Amazon.  But I think what we don’t realize is so many of these cable companies, the Discovery channels of the world, are all migrating all of their content to the cloud.

Bruce Long:   So the challenge is really not about getting the content to the cloud.  It’s about getting the entire ecosystem to the cloud.  So the way we see it is, of course I’ve been shooting for years on sets, so taking a few terabytes a day, migrating that up to the cloud as it simultaneously goes to the cutting room, is the work process that we see a lot.  And for us, we love the idea that once it’s in the cloud, it’s virtually impossible, I say virtually, to get your hands on.  The thing that happened with so much of the piracy with the motion pictures, and the television shows that were in the press the past few weeks, I think that has obviated the need to put the ecosystem in the cloud.

Bruce Long:   So just to answer your question really directly, of course we support Aspera and the Signiants of the world for that uploading part of the solution.  We also really think that the proxies of 4K and 8K are getting fantastic, and they’re probably broadcastable, so it’s a really powerful solution to send the content each day to the cloud and even have the cutting room drives mirrored to the cloud.  We see a lot of that.  The short answer is that we’re migrating content to the cloud every single day and we have our own proprietary tools and we use public tools to do it, but that’s not as much of a problem as it is distribution.  The real challenge we have is getting all the tools we have up into the cloud so anyone can work on it, anytime and still make their delivery deadlines.

Larry Jordan:  But looking at this, and looking at the pricing models of Aspera and some of the other companies you work with, sounds like BeBop is more of a studio solution and not the independent filmmaker solution who can’t afford the big pipes to go up to the web, and can’t afford the regular fees that Aspera charges.  So it sounds like this is something that we need to aspire to but it’s outside the reach of an independent.

Bruce Long:  I’m glad you said that, because I think that’s the horns of the dilemma that BeBop and the industry both are facing.  And that is, is there really a good solution if it only works for an Enterprise customer or a studio?  I think my answer to that is no, it doesn’t work, so we really are driven and committed to making sure that, remember BeBop can use a small 20 megabit internet line to connect to our platform, and I’m very proud of the fact that we have eliminated the cost of uploading into BeBop. So BeBop has delivered a product called BeBop Rocket which is our competitor to Aspera and Signiant and that solution is completely free and no charge for any individual doing post production or visual effects on the BeBop cloud.  So that’s how we solve that.

Bruce Long:   But you know, I want to move forward and I want you to imagine or envision an ecosystem of content that doesn’t differentiate between the big users and the small users.  I suppose today that ecosystem lives at YouTube, but I think quickly we’re going to see Amazon and Netflix have a lot of very high resolution, high dynamic range material that still is streamable over a very small line.  And that transition in technology not only protects the creatives in the hinterlands, and I think you’re having editors and colorists from all over the world working on major projects, and part of the reason is because once the content’s in the cloud, when they’re in the cloud it takes away the barrier to entry.  They don’t have to be in the approved post house or the most secure editorial bay.  They can be in BeBop.  So we’ve eliminated the cost of the upload, we’re actually celebrating using proxies.  The rate at which we can get those uploads done even at 4K, and then lastly we believe that once the content’s in the cloud, it empowers the individual as well as the collaboration of a large group.

Larry Jordan:  Let’s flip this around.  You ran a post house which is Encore Video.  How does a post house benefit from BeBop?  It sounds like you’re actually threatening your business.

Bruce Long:  Well, I’d like to think that BeBop is going to co-exist for a long time with both the brick and mortar solutions and the cloud solutions.  You’re right, I ran Encore and I worked for a long time at both Technicolor and Deluxe, and I take really seriously my friends that work in those environments.  I’ve always felt the difference in those companies, big and small, was their talent not their equipment, and so what I believe is that these facilities that are being so challenged by their price points and the costly overhead, I think are going to reinvent themselves.

Bruce Long:  I like to think that my friends at Technicolor and Deluxe, as well as my friends at the 16, 19s of the world are going to have an opportunity to reinvent themselves and drive the talent into BeBop platforms and really bring closer the relationship between their talent and the creatives themselves.  I think collaboration is still absolutely imperative in what we do, and so you’ve got a lot of collaboration tools build into BeBop so that facilities and cutting rooms and all these organizations can deconstruct the post production models because I think the days when we had to have one colorist for dailies, another colorist for final color, an editor for offline, another editor for online.  We’re seeing so many projects done with a smaller group of creatives that are empowered to work across multiple areas.  So I think as those models change, we’re trying to keep the tools abreast of those changes, so we have a lot of tools where one person’s cutting and another person can look over their shoulder in a secure environment.  We have a lot of digital streaming tools that allow you to cut and do visual effects and color correction using a really small internet connection.

Larry Jordan:  Well there’s another group that I think is impacted by this and that’s software developers.  As we reduce the number of people who are buying tools because the tools are now in the cloud and you access the tool when you need it, and you don’t when you don’t, their revenue’s going to fall.  What’s the incentive for them to work with you to provide cloud based tools, and how do they make money in the future to continue developing them?

Bruce Long:   My answer to that is that our goal, and I’ll use DaVinci as an example, for Blackmagic and DaVinci to have BeBop resell a license on the cloud and in time increase the number of users they have by having people both on hardware and on the cloud, and having those be different licenses.   Today you’re absolutely right. The bring your own license model which is what most of the software guys are using, is challenging because it doesn’t give them the lift on the cloud that we think is there.  So I spent a lot of time lobbying those companies you just mentioned, to encourage them to deliver me a license which I can resell on the BeBop platform and make sure that we’re always growing their user base.

Bruce Long:   I’m really sensitive to making sure that we don’t ever cannibalize these licenses.  Certainly, I’m working really hard with the guys in the software companies to have them make that transition to the cloud, get their software up there, and then get me empowered to start licensing new licenses because you’re absolutely right.  My dream, forgive the cliché, is that this wave of the cloud bring revenue and blue sky and fresh opportunities to all of the Adobes and Blackmagics of the world, to all the Foundry and Nuke softwares of the world as well as to the creative talent that uses it.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information, where can they go on the web to learn more about BeBop?

Bruce Long:  It’s beboptechnology.com.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, beboptechnology.com and Bruce Long is the co-founder and CEO of BeBop Technology.  Bruce, thanks for joining us today.

Bruce Long:  Thank you so much Larry.

Larry Jordan:   As Pierson Clair described, tonight the cloud is simply a remote server with a fancy name.  But because of its remote capability the cloud is providing increasing opportunities for media creators to collaborate, share tools and expand their reach.  We still need to be concerned about security and insufficient internet bandwidth can make using any of these services very frustrating, but like the introduction of the NLE in the mid 1990s, cloud computing can provide new and faster ways to tell our stories.

Larry Jordan:  I want to thank my guests this week, Paul Babb, the CEO of Maxon US, Pierson Clair from the USC Viterbi Engineering Faculty, Emery Wells, CEO and co-founder of Frame.io, Denise Muyco, CEO and co-founder of StratusCore, Brian Long, CEO and co-founder of BeBop Technology, and as always, James DeRuvo the senior writer for DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan:   There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website, at digitalproductionbuzz.com and be sure to sign up for our free weekly show newsletter.  Talk with us on Twitter @DPBuzz and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan:   Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner with additional music provided by Smartsound.com.  Text transcripts are provided by Take1 Transcription.  Visit Take1.tv to learn how they can help you.

Larry Jordan:   Our producer is Debbie Price, my name is Larry Jordan, and thanks for listening to The Digital Production Buzz.

Larry Jordan:  The Digital Production Buzz is copyright 2017 by Thalo LLC.

HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
Tony Cariddi, Product and Solutions Marketing Director, Avid
Sam Mestman, CEO, Lumaforge
Rollo Wenlock, CEO, Founder, Wipster
Jennifer Jesperson, Relationship Manager, Qwire Music
Rory O’Farrell, Founder, Melosity
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

==

Larry Jordan: Tonight on the Buzz we are talking about collaboration with an emphasis on music.  We start with Tony Cariddi, the product and solutions marketing director for Avid.  Tony explains the challenges that make musical collaboration different from video and how the latest version of Pro Tools is designed to enable collaboration.

Larry Jordan:  Next, Rollo Wenlock, the founder and CEO of Wipster explains how their video review and approval software has expanded to help media teams collaborate.

Larry Jordan:  Music rights management is a murky science, but Qwire has invented a collaborative tool that allows composers, producers, editors and music rights managers to work together in real time to simplify clearing music rights.  Tonight, Jennifer Jesperson, relationship manager for Qwire Music explains how it works.

Larry Jordan:  Rory O’Farrell founded Melosity to enable musicians to collaborate online in real time to create their music with minimal technical hassles.  Tonight Rory describes how their newly released platform works, and his plans for the future.

Larry Jordan:  When it comes to video, collaboration works best when the technology disappears and you’re able to focus on creatively telling your story.  That’s where Lumaforge can help.  Tonight we talk with Sam Mestman, the CEO of Lumaforge about how they enable video teams to collaborate.

Larry Jordan:  All this, plus James DeRuvo with our weekly DoddleNEWS update.  The Buzz starts now.

Announcer:  Since the dawn of digital filmmaking – authoritative – one show serves a worldwide network of media professionals – current – uniting industry experts – production – filmmakers – post production – and content creators around the planet – distribution.  From the media capital of the world in Los Angeles, California, the Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan:  Welcome to the Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry, covering media production, post production and marketing around the world.

Larry Jordan:  Hi, my name is Larry Jordan.  The big news this week is Adobe’s releasing a new version of Premiere to fix a critical bug in the software.  I’ll have more details on this in our news segment with James DeRuvo in just a minute.  In other news, we’re continuing to hear reverberations from Apple’s WWDC conference last week. New iMacs, new laptops and new iPads are now shipping, and initial reports are that everything is a bit faster than we expected.

Larry Jordan:  In the Buzz newsletter which releases tomorrow, I’ll have a detailed article on how to configure an iMac for video editing when you don’t have an unlimited budget.  And in thinking about our newsletter, I want to invite you to subscribe to our free weekly show newsletter at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Every issue, every week, gives you an inside look at the Buzz, quick links to the different segments on the show, and curated articles of special interest to filmmakers.  Best of all, every issue is free and comes out on Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Now it’s time for a DoddleNEWS update, with James DeRuvo.  Hello James.

James DeRuvo:  Hi Larry, how are you?

Larry Jordan:  I am doing great.  You know James, two days ago, Adobe released an update for Premiere Pro CC that fixed a critical bug that was causing data loss for some editors.  What was the problem?

James DeRuvo:  Well not every update is about killer new features.  Sometimes an update is just about housekeeping and making the app perform better.  And in this case, the update addresses a critical bug in the media cache management that could delete media files by mistake.  And I think we all agree that would be a bad thing.  They also had some stability and performance improvements.  Mostly housekeeping issues, better formats in file support, additional effects and a variety of other fixes scattered throughout the program, but it’s also added 10-bit support for the Panasonic GH5, something that was missing.  And we knew it was going to come sooner or later, and I think it’s pretty cool that it came sooner Larry.

Larry Jordan:  That’s very true.  Well in addition to the Premiere update, what other news do we have this week?

James DeRuvo:  GoPro is still testing their new Fusion 360 camera with a killer new feature. The camera’s the third camera they’ve developed and it is a 360 degree camera with two fisheye lenses, juxtaposed like your typical handheld camera, but it captures in 5.7K resolution and it has three microphones for recording audio in the round.  The real killer feature is this new support called OverCapture which allows you to literally pick out or punch out for a flat traditional clip and export it in 1080p which is called reframing.  So if something happens that’s away from your attention you can literally move the camera in post and grab it and record in 360.  It’s a groundbreaking feature which will give editors and directors the freedom to move the camera where they want it in post after the fact.  I think it’s a game changer for any shooter, not just in VR.

Larry Jordan:  That is an amazing feature.  What else we got?

James DeRuvo:  Yes, it’s going to be tremendous.  We’ll probably hear more about it at the end of the summer.  Also at the end of the summer, we are going to be getting Samsung’s latest 49 inch curved computer monitor.  Imagine in HDTV in front of you and it has a 32:9 aspect ratio.  It was designed for immersive video gaming, the monitor is able to display in 4K at 60Hz.  Again, 32:9 aspect ratio, but it has monitor software that allows you to split the screen up to six different ways.  You could do all of it, or you could do a split screen, you could have four way if you’re doing four way gameplay.  You have up to six different options in there and although Samsung is aiming for the gamer community with this monitor, it’s easy to see how it can benefit us in the post production realm.  Since real estate is everything, the 32:9 aspect ratio gives you the ability to split that image into sectors which gives editors, colorists and visual effects artists a beast of a tool to manage the post production workflow.

Larry Jordan:  This emulates the kind of monitors we would see in a television control room or on a trade show floor where the screen itself splits and we’re able to feed different video sources to different parts of the screen, is that what you’re describing here?

James DeRuvo:  Very similar.  It’s on one screen, but because it has that curved design, you get the periphery and if I can talk about gaming for a second, it’s literally going to be able to show sections of the game to gamers that you don’t see on a regular television.  So imagine doing that while you’re editing virtual reality for instance and you’re doing that OverCapture thing with GoPro, and you’re able to see a lot more and be able to make adjustments. It’s just going to make it a lot easier to do your job and I think that’s going to be exciting.  It’s a little expensive, I believe around $3500-4500, but you can bet that’s going to go down in price as time goes on.

Larry Jordan:  For everybody that wants more information, where do they go on the web?

James DeRuvo:  All these stories and more are at Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  James DeRuvo is the senior writer for DoddleNEWS and returns with our weekly DoddleNEWS update next week.  James, you take care, we’ll talk to you next Thursday.

James DeRuvo:  Alright Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Here’s another website I want to introduce you to.  Doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries.  It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry.  DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platforms specifically designed for production.  These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listings, provide in depth organizational tools for busy production professionals.  DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts Community, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers.  From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with resources you need to succeed.  Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go.  Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  Tony Cariddi joined Digidesign which is now part of Avid, in 1996.  Now he’s the product and solutions marketing director focusing on Pro Tools.  As an audio engineer and artist, he’s recorded, mixed, prepped and cued sound for just about everything, including working with such notable artists as Jennifer Lopez, Keith Richards and Joan Jett.  Hello Tony, welcome back.

Tony Cariddi:  Hey Larry, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  How would you describe Pro Tools?

Tony Cariddi:  Pro Tools is an application that is in a category that is generally referred to as a digital audio workstation.  In plain terms, it’s software that enables you to record, edit, and mix audio and it’s used for doing that for music, and music creation.  It’s also loaded with a bunch of MIDI and virtual instrument capabilities, so it’s a very powerful music creation tool.  And at the same time it’s used for audio post production for the biggest films in the world, over 70 to 80 percent of what you hear on the radio and what you see in the movies or on television has gone through a Pro Tools system.

Larry Jordan:  You’ve been with Pro Tools for more than 20 years.  What is it that made Pro Tools so dominant?

Tony Cariddi:  I would say there’s a few factors.  One was we were there early on, and we provided a very robust, very stable solution. It was something that was a really great alternative in those days to doing something very simple, like cutting tape.  In its origins, it was a two track system that was used for editing, primarily.  You could do very surgical precise edits visually using a wave form as a guide, compared to the edits that you would do by eye with tape and rolling the reel to reels back and forth and using your ear at getting a sense of where to cut, based on what you were hearing.  There was just no comparison between the accuracy you could get.  Then as it grew in capability to four track, eight track, 16 track, 32 and up to the hundreds of tracks that we offer today, it was something that we were very focused on making sure that the workflows of our target audience were met.  Originally there was plain old editing, and then we were doing more for audio post production and we partnered up with Avid which like you referred to earlier, was a different company at the time to offer the audio tools for their video editor.

Tony Cariddi:  Fast forward, long story short, we really focused on serving the needs of professionals and making sure that the workflows that they were doing in a then analog world that we could facilitate and really accelerate in the digital world, make it much more efficient, more precise, give them better results.  And for the past 20 years, it’s been a constant process of improving that and further innovating in it.

Larry Jordan:  This week we want to talk about collaboration.  That is, multiple musicians working together, either locally or remotely.  How does Pro Tools allow musicians to collaborate?

Tony Cariddi:  Over the past ten, 15 years, all of our worlds have become a lot more connected than ever before.  We all know that through our phones and our watches and laptops and tablets.  So there’s this expectation that you should be able to leverage these tools whether it’s laptops and high speed internet, make it easier to work with someone else.  What happened to us when we got more connected is in some ways we got less connected in the real world.  We got more connected virtually, but we maybe saw each other less.

Tony Cariddi:   So, with the introduction of all of this technology, we’ve seen a lot of studios close down.  We’ve seen what’s been referred to as the cottagisation of the industry, where a lot of professionals have created their own private studios, their home studios, so in a lot of ways there’s a lot less space timer or real face to face interaction.  So there’s this growing need to keep on working efficiently, so people have relied on file sharing sites to send media back and forth, and it works pretty well.  But the whole reason we introduced new collaboration capabilities in Pro Tools is because we’ve really found that those workflows would basically be today’s version of sneaker netting a drive across the hall, is basically Dropbox which is like, “Hey, I’m going to drag these files over to this Dropbox and let you know I put the files up there.  Time for you to take a swing at it, add your part or do the edit or whatever you’re going to do with it.  Let me know when you’re done.”  Then when they’re done, you’ve got to find what they did.  There’s a lot of manual file management going on.

Tony Cariddi:  We thought there’s a great opportunity to make this more fluid than ever before so we introduced something called Avid Cloud Collaboration in Pro Tools.  It operates in a similar way as a Google Docs would, if you’re familiar with that kind of a paradigm where if you and I were working on a written story on Avid let’s say and you’re writing it, and share that piece with me.  Both of us can start writing the document and editing it at the same time which could be chaotic, but in other circumstances it might be really helpful, like a PowerPoint.  So you could be updating certain slides here and I could be updating other slides and we can keep working at the same time and we never have to collate those changes and figure out what goes where.

Tony Cariddi:  With Pro Tools and Avid Cloud Collaboration, we’ve provided a way for you to share your project on a track by track basis, so you have the ability to share the entire project with every single track and every master and every auxiliary, or you can just share specific tracks or stems.  It’s a real time collaborative environment, where if you make a change, whether that could be pulling down a fader, it could be adding automation, it could be changing threshold on a dynamic effects plugin, it could be doing a playlist change or doing an edit.  All that stuff would be marked as a change and would tell me “Hey there’s a change over there.  Do you want to accept that change?”  And it would give me that simple click of a button, “Yes, I want to accept that change.” Music especially is something that is collaborative by nature.

Larry Jordan:  It sounds to be like music collaboration is different from other media collaboration.  How’s this so?

Tony Cariddi:  Well with music maybe compared to video, it’s pretty complex.  There’s a lot of different tracks potentially.  It’s not uncommon for pop music today to have over 100 tracks in it.  Even a basic rock song can have dozens of tracks easily.  Music by its nature is collaborative.  You know, from the very origins of music we were doing it communally with other people, we weren’t doing it completely alone.  Today it’s still the same.  A lot of people are making music in their bedrooms or in their own project studios, but by the same token, most of the stuff is done by more than one person and certainly when you get to the mix process or if you want a producer involved, if you want other players, it becomes collaborative that way.  What we found is, the better we can make the connection closer and more efficient between those people, the better the experience, the better the results and the more efficient it’s going to be.

Larry Jordan:  Later in this show, we’re going to hear from Melosity which is a new company that provides a web based method of recording and collaboration for musicians.  There are a variety of different collaborative tools for the musician.  Why should musicians consider using the collaboration tools in Pro Tools?

Tony Cariddi:  The benefit clearly of doing it in Pro Tools is that it’s already been used in every major studio.  It’s already established as a workstation that can take you not only from that initial creative inspired step when you’re writing the music, but it can take you all the way to the final mix down and master.  It can take it even further when, let’s say you want to sell that song for some video sync so you can make some money on the back end.  They’re all running Avid too, so you’re in an eco system that is widely used all over the world, and it’s great that there’s very lightweight, browser based solutions.  It’s really cool.  But the problem is working with other people, and the core of collaboration is the compatibility component.

Tony Cariddi:  One of the things that we did to get over the big hurdle, giving access to these capabilities, is we announced that in the coming weeks we’re going to be introducing this same cloud collaboration capability into the free version of Pro Tools, called Pro Tools First.  So literally we’re completely wiping out any barrier to entry into this process.  Now anyone can collaborate with anyone else, using cloud collaboration, and they’re doing it on a platform that’s broadly accepted.  If there’s going to be something that you could call an industry standard, it’s Pro Tools.

Larry Jordan:  What’s required to make collaboration work in Pro Tools?  Do we need a special version?  Do we need minimum bandwidth up to the internet?  What’s the criteria?

Tony Cariddi:  Cloud collaboration was introduced in Pro Tools version 12.5.  We’re currently at version 12.7 soon to be 12.8 in the next few weeks, so you need a minimum of that.  If you’re going to use the free version, Pro Tools First, that’ll be version 12.8 that’ll launch in a few weeks.  Bandwidth wise, we haven’t set minimums.  If you have a slow bandwidth, the performance will be slower, uploads and downloads.  What I can tell you is that anticipating that people never want to wait for anything, and fast is never fast enough, we’ve done a lot of work to accelerate uploads and downloads, and we have flat based lost list compression for the uploads and downloads.  That can cut down a bandwidth up to 50 percent.  I’ll tell you, I’ve done it in a hotel room just with the standard free bandwidth and it was not the way I’d like to work every day, but it was definitely usable.

Larry Jordan:  Am I sending audio files up and down, or am I sending track settings, or am I sending Pro Tools projects?  What’s being transferred?

Tony Cariddi:  Yes, yes, and yes.  You’re sending absolutely everything.  So what’s happening is that the master project is actually living in the cloud.  Any changes that you make on your side, it compares it to what is living in the cloud, the master version, and if there’s a difference, it will put a little flag and what you see as a user is you see an indicator on the track that something’s changed, it’s a little orange button, has an arrow that’s pointing upwards, and that indicates that you have a change, and do you want to upload it to the cloud?  That could be audio, it could be a MIDI velocity change, it could be an edit, a plugin change. Any parameter in Pro Tools that you can think of is fair game in the collaboration.

Larry Jordan:   So I could be experimenting with a different track or different settings, and then when I get the feeling that I want, I can then hit the button and send it up to the cloud?

Tony Cariddi:   Absolutely.

Larry Jordan:  How about security?

Tony Cariddi:   Security wise, this is all based currently on Amazon Cloud Services which has the same level of security that your medical and financial information is stored on.  The security that we trust to protect our most valuable data and financial information is what’s being used for this.

Larry Jordan:  Can Avid listen in on these sessions?

Tony Cariddi:   No.  All of that stuff is anonymous data.  We can’t listen in, you know, it’s not something that we access, unless with the customer’s consent, we need to troubleshoot something.  So you’ll find in the terms and conditions that there’s some legal verbiage in there that says that we can access this stuff if we need to troubleshoot with the customer.  It’s definitely not something that we can listen in on.

Larry Jordan:   For people that want more information about Pro Tools, where can they go on the web?

Tony Cariddi:   They can always go to avid.com/protools.  And for more information on Pro Tools First, you can go to avid.com/ptfirst.

Larry Jordan:  That website is avid.com/protools to learn more about Pro Tools, and avid.com/ptfirst, to learn about Pro Tools First.  Tony Cariddi is the product and solutions marketing director for Pro Tools, and Tony thanks for joining us today.

Tony Cariddi: Thanks, always a pleasure, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  Rollo Wenlock is the CEO and founder of Wipster.  He’s also an entrepreneur and a filmmaker.  Hello Rollo, welcome.

Rollo Wenlock:  Hey, good morning, good to hear your voice.

Larry Jordan:   It’s wonderful to chat with you.  The last time we visited was about a year ago, and I want to get brought up to speed on what’s new since then.  So let’s start by describing Wipster.  What is it?

Rollo Wenlock:  Wipster is how we see brands, media companies, freelancers, production companies doing the feedback and sign up process on creative work.  We started with video and we’re expanding it out to all creative assets.

Larry Jordan:  What do the words feedback and collaboration mean to you? Aren’t they the same thing?

Rollo Wenlock:  It’s interesting because there’s this movement in software to make everything collaborative.  In the simplest term it means that more than one person can log into the same thing.  I think in the past it was very difficult to do that.  So now, collaboration really means we can be in the same space, so you can create a working environment say in the cloud or on your computer.  The difference between collaboration and specifically feedback and sign off is that feedback and sign off is a process that all productions go through which is very specific.  It’s that piece where you’ve done some work, you need some notes from some people, and then when you’re at the final stages, you need them to sign it off before it goes out the door.  I think collaboration is the greater umbrella and within that, feedback and sign off lives within it.

Larry Jordan:  How does Wipster enable collaboration?

Rollo Wenlock:  Wipster enables collaboration by creating a collaborative work environment.  We have some teams, we’ve got Time Inc for instance that has a team of over 100 who work in the same environment.  We have big brands, who again have these very large teams who are creating a collaborative work environment in the cloud where they can upload and share work in progress content while it’s being produced.  Then at the end point where it needs sign off, those people can come in, all at the same time or over a period of hours, and sign it off one by one which is really important for a lot of companies.  The feedback is where you make sure that the piece is on brand and then the sign off is really compliance, because if it hasn’t been signed off by the right people and it gets published, you can have quite a lot of big issues that come up.  So it’s a pretty serious piece of the project, and we’re seeing many more companies jump on it because it speeds them up.  Who wants to be hanging around doing all this with email?

Larry Jordan:  Give me a more specific example.  I understand I think in broad strokes, but let’s say we’ve got a team of five to ten people, small not big.  When would they use Wipster, and what would they use it for?

Rollo Wenlock:  I’ll use Shimano as an example.  Shimano is a bike company, they produce bicycles.  They’re trying to turn themselves into a media company which is a theme that I’m seeing.  So they have this small team of video producers, they work in America and Japan.  When they’re producing a video, the editor will upload it into Wipster, through the Adobe panel.  So they use Adobe Premiere, they’re editing, they click one button and it uploads the timeline into the cloud and it automatically invites the stakeholders within Shimano.  So there’s six people that get invited, all the way from somebody who’s looking at the brand, somebody who’s looking at the story, and then somebody who owns the product that the video is about.  They come in, they watch this early edit in the cloud, and as they’re playing this video either on a computer, on a phone, they can pause it anywhere, click on the video specifically and start making comments about that piece of the video.  They can point at a logo and say, “Hey this isn’t the right logo.”  They can point at color grade and say “It could be brighter, or it could be darker.”  They can point at the music track and say, “This music seems a bit dull.  Let’s make this a bit more vibrant.”

Rollo Wenlock:   All these different people can come in at the same time.  They can see each other’s comments in real time, and start having these conversations directly on the video, pointing at things, asking for changes, coming up with ideas.  But what you find is that before Shimano was using Wipster they had a review cycle that went for 14 weeks for one video.  So 14 weeks would pass before they could get to the next edit or even just getting it signed off and then published.  Now this all happens in less than a week, and what it’s allowing companies like Shimano and tens of thousands of other brands to do, is to start thinking like a media company because as you know, if you want to win with concept marketing, you need to win with video.   So now that they have this workflow that’s really efficient, very fast, gets everyone involved, they can now produce a lot more video, pretty much on the same budget as well.

Larry Jordan:  What do you think the future of collaboration looks like?  You’ve mentioned already that many apps are adding collaboration features, what are we going to be doing in a year or two?

Rollo Wenlock:  What I see coming up in the future is instead of viewing collaboration as the be all and end all, collaboration is a means to an end.  What I see coming up in the future is tying very much to what I’m seeing in the market.  I speak to so many brands, so many big companies every day, and what they’re all trying to do is pretty straightforward.  They’re all trying to become media companies.  So if you sell soap, you want to become a media company to sell your soap.  And what I mean by that is that they’re all trying to create lots of short videos put them out on social, put them out wherever the audience is, and we know the audience is not on TV any more.  It’s all social.  It all has to be out on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram.  That’s where it’s all at.  So these companies are going, “How do I figure out what video to make?  How do I get that video produced at high speed, at a high enough quality and then how do I get it out there and analyze whether it worked or not?”  So they’re really trying to invest in video to be their go to market.

Rollo Wenlock:  Collaboration ties into that perfectly because if you create a really succinct, collaborative work environment where you can be producing video at high speed, you can get the creatives you need, whether they’re in your team or not, you can get the stakeholders involved at high speed whether they’re on the phone or not, you can create an ideation to creation to publication workflow that is super high speed.  You’ll be able to win at content and become a media company as well.  So that’s where I think collaboration’s going to tie in.  It’s going to be a means to an end for all the tens of thousands of brands out there to become media companies.

Larry Jordan:  How do we get Wipster?

Rollo Wenlock:  You go to wipster.io and you can sign up or you can talk to a sales person.

Larry Jordan:  How much does it cost?

Tony Cariddi:  It starts at $25 a month for five videos and at enterprise it starts at $1500 a month and you get a customer success rep.

Larry Jordan: For people that want to learn more, where can they go on the web?

Rollo Wenlock:  They go to wipster.io.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, wipster.io, not .com.  Rollo Wenlock is the CEO and founder of Wipster, and Rollo, thanks for joining us today.

Rollo Wenlock:  Thanks Larry, it’s been a lot of fun.

Larry Jordan:  Jennifer Jesperson is the relationship manager for Qwire Music, handling music clearances.  She has more than 25 years of experience in the clearance business, along with helping the company find new business and keep in touch with users.  Hello Jennifer, welcome.

Jennifer Jesperson:  Hello Larry, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  It’s my pleasure.  Tell us about Qwire.  What does the company do?

Jennifer Jesperson:  Qwire is basically a software program that helps everyone involved with putting music to picture work better together.  It’s a collaborative tool that is built for music editors, music supervisors, picture editors and clearers, which is what I do.

Larry Jordan:  Why is it even necessary?

Jennifer Jesperson:  If you’ve been involved with any kind of music and post production, there are a lot of things that can happen.

Larry Jordan:  Give me an example.

Jennifer Jesperson:  I was working on a television show and we cleared 30 seconds of a very popular song.  Throughout the week I’d been trying to get information from the music editor and the music supervisor about the specific timing because I wanted to let the artist know.  And I never heard back from them, and when the show aired, I was watching it as it aired for the first time, and they ended up using a minute and 30 seconds.  They didn’t tell me.  So the owner of the song thought that they could charge me three times as much money and I had to negotiate with them to try to keep the fees down, even though we used way more than we should have.  So with Qwire, that doesn’t happen because when the music editor makes a change, the music supervisor or the clearance person sees that change instantly, so you’re collaborating together in real time.

Larry Jordan:   Who are typical customers for Qwire?

Jennifer Jesperson:   It was created by two composers, John Ehrlich and Leigh Roberts.  As it started out, it was just a tool for composers to help them keep better track of the work that they do.  Then as they started showing it around to some friends, some people would say, “Well jeez if you add this feature, then you could get a music editor to use it, and then we could collaborate together.”  And then it grew from there.

Larry Jordan:  Is this a downloaded app, a plugin for editing software, or web base or what?

Jennifer Jesperson:  We have two versions.  We’ve got a file maker version which we call Qwire Music and that is where we have the composers, editors, music supervisors all working together.  But we have also just created a new product for Warner Brothers studios, and it is mainly a clearance product for production studios to use.  It couples the studio’s music clearance tools to a very robust music rights database, and they are our first customer.

Larry Jordan:  Well congratulations.  What does music clearance, and for editors, why should they care?

Jennifer Jesperson:  Music clearance people are the ones who get your approvals.  If you want to put a song in a television show, you need to have it approved.  So what I do is, give me a song title, I do the research, find out who owns it, and there’s a publisher and a record company involved mostly.  And I have to go to each one of those parties and get their approvals and negotiate the fees.  So when I get that done, when I get my approvals, then the music editor knows that they’re safe to put that song in the program.

Larry Jordan:  What if they don’t get clearance?

Jennifer Jesperson:   Then they could get sued, so you don’t want to do that.  But it’s a long, involved process.  If you’ve got a, let’s say, a Bruno Mars song, there could be seven, eight, nine, ten writers on that song with maybe 11 to 13 different publishers.  So you need to make sure that that is approved before it goes to air.

Larry Jordan:   How much does Qwire cost?

Jennifer Jesperson:  Right now we are offering it free to individual users.  All they have to do is pay for a file maker license.

Larry Jordan:  So where does Qwire make its money?

Jennifer Jesperson:   From the studios and the productions.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information on Qwire, where can they go on the web?

Jennifer Jesperson:   They can go to qwire.com and that is qwire.com.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, qwire.com and Jennifer Jesperson is the relationship manager for Qwire Music, and Jennifer, thanks for joining us today.

Jennifer Jesperson:  Thank you Larry, it was a pleasure to talk with you.

Larry Jordan:   Rory O’Farrell is the founder and CEO of Melosity.  This is a website that allows musicians to collaborate when creating music.  Rory’s background is in marketing until he was struck by the Melosity idea.  Hello Rory, welcome.

Rory O’Farrell:    Hey Larry.

Larry Jordan:  What is Melosity?

Rory O’Farrell:  So it’s an online platform that allows musicians to collaborate together on the same track from anywhere in the world.  So it eliminates the need to have to send files over and back, and cuts out all the time wasting that currently takes place.  We built it from the point of view that we’re all getting busier, musicians included, and we want to build a platform that will allow them to fit their musical passion in the more limited hours that they have every day.

Larry Jordan:  But we can already share audio tracks in Pro Tools.  Why do we need Melosity?

Rory O’Farrell:  Melosity actually allows you to work live as if in the same room.  So if for example, I’m based in Dublin right now and you’re in California.  If we wanted to work together on Melosity, I can record my part and it will appear immediately on the end with you.  You can then record over it, and it appears on my side.  Unlike Pro Tools or something like that, you have to record your part, and then you’d have to send it to me by the likes of Dropbox.  With Melosity, essentially it’s real time.  So it’s as if we’re recording in the same room and cuts out all that file sharing.

Larry Jordan:  It’s not really real time because we’ve got way too much latency with the web.  What does real time mean to you?

Rory O’Farrell:  Real time for me is when I record on my side, once I finish recording it’ll appear on your side.  So rather than have to, like I said, Dropbox or we transfer and send it to you, it cuts out all of that part.  So once I finish my recording it goes to the server, and it goes into the platform, and then you see it on your side immediately, and you don’t have to wait for it, you can just play over it and it’ll appear back in my side.  It also has chat built in, so it has a messenger where we can actually chat to each other, and then we can add comments, right within the project.  So you can add comments anywhere within the project where I can say “Should we add some effects in here or should we maybe tone this down a little bit here?  Or should we add a high hat in here?”  So it allows musicians to get more in depth into the project as if sitting beside each other.

Larry Jordan:  Am I recording in Melosity so I’m not using Pro Tools or not using Audition as a recording function?  I’m recording on your application itself?

Rory O’Farrell:  Good question.  Yeah, you can do both.  We actually have a complete mixture of people that use it.  So we have some musicians that find the other softwares, the Pro Tools and the Cubase’s too complicated, that use our platform just to record, upload and do all the basics.  But then we’ve also got musicians using it alongside their Pro Tools where they’ll use that part to get all the good quality and then they’ll use our platform purely for the collaborative part, I suppose like a sketch pad in order to get their ideas down.

Larry Jordan:  What kind of connection do we need to have with the internet to use Melosity?

Rory O’Farrell:  Our objective was always that we have to make it work for a musician with a really bad laptop in an area with really bad internet connection.  That was always the user that we were building the product for, that if we can get it work for that person then everything else would fall into place. So we’ve not had many issues.  We’ve obviously released it and worked on that quite heavily.

Larry Jordan:  Does Melosity link musicians, that is can it help me find people?  Or can you only work with your existing contacts, for instance if I’m looking for a drummer, can you help?

Rory O’Farrell:  Right now we can’t.  Right now it’s a collaborative tool to work with people you already know but that’s because it’s just version one.  So we only released it a few months back. We’re currently working on a social network that we’re going to build around it.  Version one was always, let’s get a platform where you can collaborate easily with people you know, and then version two has always been, let’s build a social network around it, kind of like a Linked In for musicians where then you’ll be able to find people around the world.

Larry Jordan: How much does Melosity cost?

Rory O’Farrell:  Currently free, and again that’s partially due to the fact that it’s brand new.  Our long term plan is to always keep it free to do all the basic stuff.  Musicians love to collaborate.  How I’ve always seen it is even a solo artist has a backing band.  Musicians in a band are technically collaborating with each other in the band.  So we want to have a platform that really adds value to musicians so the objective is to always have it free, but we’re going to add in some more advanced features for people that want to upgrade.  But to be honest, our objective is that somewhere between five and ten percent will upgrade, and that 90 to 95 percent of people will always remain on the free platform.

Larry Jordan:  Free does not pay the rent.  How is Melosity funded?

Rory O’Farrell:   According to the maps that we’ve worked off, we’d be able to charge, and this is early days, but we’re looking to charge about $10 a month to people that want to upgrade.  And if we get between five and ten percent of people upgrading, we will be able to grow on that.  We have other concept ideas that we’re working off, but for now that’ll be the front runner.  Then the plan will be to add in more monetization ways as we go.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want to learn more, where can they go on the web?

Rory O’Farrell:  The best place is to go to melosity.com, so it’s melosity.com.

Larry Jordan: That’s all one word, melosity.com and Rory O’Farrell is the founder and CEO of Melosity and Rory, thanks for joining us today.

Rory O’Farrell:  Thanks for having me Larry.

Larry Jordan:  I want to introduce you to a new website, Thalo.com.  Thalo is an artist community and networking site for creative people to connect, be inspired and showcase their creativity.  Thalo.com features content from around the world with a global perspective on all things creative.  Thalo is the place for creative folks to learn, collaborate, market and sell their works.  Thalo is a part of Thalo Arts, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers.  From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with the resources you need to succeed.  Visit Thalo.com and discover how their community can help you connect, learn and succeed.  That’s Thalo.com.

Larry Jordan:  Sam Mestman is the CEO of Lumaforge, a company that makes server based hardware that is optimized for media editing.  He’s also the founder of We Make Movies, a Los Angeles based independent film community.  Hello Sam, welcome.

Sam Mestman:  Hey Larry, how you doing?

Larry Jordan:  I am doing great and looking forward to talking to you.  How would you describe Lumaforge?

Sam Mestman:  Basically what we do, at its essence, is we simplify video content for professionals.  That’s our only goal.  And the biggest problem we could tackle at first was to build a shared storage server that’s optimized for video editing, that’s also easy and approachable for editors to set up maintain and basically get some work done on it.

Larry Jordan:  Now I could without really making much effort, throw a rock around and hit about five other vendors who say they make video servers or servers optimized for video editing.  And there’s another million storage vendors.  Why did Lumaforge even enter this market?

Sam Mestman:   Without naming any names, the main reason that we did it was because we used to integrate some of the other vendors, and found that they were not simple and easy to use, and really designed from a video editor’s perspective.  So when it came time to designing our own product, we approached it from the idea of what do post professionals want to do and how do they get as close to a plug and play experience with collaborative editing, as humanly possible, so they’re maybe not a prisoner of the IT department.

Larry Jordan: How do you define collaboration?

Sam Mestman:  Collaboration, in any given project that you might have, you have multiple people that are part of a team that are working together.  When you talk about collaboration specifically for post production, there’s usually multiple departments at play so you have a graphics person, an editor, a colorist, a sound designer, and all of these people need to work together in some fashion.  So when you’re collaborating effectively you are saving time getting from person to person and theoretically making the project and the client significantly happier along the way and spending more time on your story.

Larry Jordan:  How does Lumaforge’s products help editors collaborate?  It’s a server, we log into the server, we get the file that we need, and we log back out again.

Sam Mestman:  No, you should never need to log back out, and you shouldn’t really have to log in.  It should all just kind of happen for you, but really the key is it needs to be optimized for video.  Video is very different than PDF files, and emails and Word documents.  Video has fundamentally different requirements in order to work effectively from a network, and when you’re managing traffic to and from multiple editors, you will find without naming any names, and a lot of solutions, that some of these things break down, especially once you start to hit 4K video.  We have designed a system that is designed for no other purpose than to work with video in an extremely efficient, fast and cost effective way for teams.

Larry Jordan:  So it sounds like what you’re doing is rather than optimizing for small file transfers, you’re optimizing to have enough bandwidth to support media playback off the server to multiple editors which means we’ve got to have both a fast network and fast switches, and a fast server, would that be correct?

Sam Mestman:  Well we actually optimize for both because part of this thing, for instance we designed this to really crack the problem of collaborative editing of Final Cut Pro X, which I have a big background with.  What we found was that for a variety of reasons, Final Cut X libraries could not work very well with it, and the reason for that was because Final Cut X requires lots of small files that are passing to and from and lots of these tiny little interactions with the server, or shared storage, and it also is pulling massive files on video.  So it needs to both things, and that is the thing that we cracked, was that it allows you to deal with these tiny little metadata files which are going constantly to and from the Final Cut library and cache, and it allows you to big pipe for like you can do 16 streams of 4K ProRes directly off the new MacPro on Final Cut X with our server.  And you can do that across multiple machines all at the same time.  This is sort of the deal which is delivering the bandwidth that people need to work, while also allowing the libraries and the projects to work at the speed that they need to work with, and feel like you’re connected to an SSD, because unfortunately most servers feel like you’re connected to the old three and a half inch start up drive that used to be in your old MacPro.  Whereas, we’re now all very used to an SSD, that allows us to edit at the speed of thought.  And what we do is try and do that in a collaborative environment, and build a server experience like that.

Larry Jordan:  Well Final Cut X does not allow two editors to be in the same library at the same time.  Are you saying you’ve found a way around that?

Sam Mestman:  Well, what we do is we allow people to keep their media separate from their libraries, and the best thing to do is duplicate a library so that it’s lightweight.  So it’s kind of the old Final Cut 7 quite honestly, and if the media is separate from the library, and you separate your cache on the server as well, getting someone’s work is as simple as duplicating that library on the network.

Larry Jordan:  Got it, so what we’re doing is, we’re keeping small libraries which makes it easy to create copies, as opposed to cracking Apple’s secret code and being able to have multiple editors editing inside the same library at once?

Sam Mestman:   Yes, and I think that’s what we would all like to see, but to be quite honest this is perfectly functional and usable.  And you can also use the copy and move events commands to move projects and events, and you can match frame back to the same clip from another library if you use the copy and move events command and you have a similar event structure.  That’s some of the stuff that we work with our customers on too which is best practices, not just for Final Cut X but also quite honestly for Resolve and Premiere, and even Avid, in terms of educating them how to collaborate with each other.  We’re not just a shared storage vendor that has support that starts and stops with whether your server turns off.

Larry Jordan:   That’s an important point.  So you support both DaVinci Resolve and Avid and Adobe and Final Cut? Can I run all these on the same server?

Sam Mestman:   You absolutely can.  It’s also Mac, Windows and Linux compatible so you can have all of these working in a cross platform environment.  For instance, you could have a Final Cut editor sharing with a DaVinci Resolve colorist, who is working with someone who’s working in After Effects and that Resolve colorist could be on Linux, that After Effects artist can be in PC, and with our server they can all work seamlessly together.

Larry Jordan:  There’s been a lot of talk recently and in fact next week I think we’re talking with a vendor that provides cloud based collaboration, and Adobe has made an attempt with this with its cloud based offering.   What’s your opinion on cloud versus local storage based collaboration?

Sam Mestman: Well eventually we’ll get there.  That’s where it’s going to be.  The main issue at the moment is the speed of the US’s internet.  And that’s really the bottleneck.  They’re going to have to lay an entirely new network of cabling and internet speeds to even think about dealing with 4K video.

Larry Jordan:  So it’s not going to happen next week?

Sam Mestman:  No, but I do think you’ll be able to do remote editing proxy form in some of that stuff to be able to work offline remotely and have team members living remotely. I think probably the best case scenario is you have a centralized video network for people working in house.  Your remote collaborators would be able to work through proxy or even have your server work as a watch folder with one of these services, and be able to pass renders to and from in varying ways.  A lot of different ways to use it, but having your media in one place, and being able to collaborate remotely with that media and have it be offline and online and all that, and the dream is the completely tied up at the moment due to the cost of cloud storage as well as the fundamental speed that the internet provides.

Larry Jordan:   Let’s shift back to collaboration for just a minute.  Assuming that we’re working off a local network, and we’re not worried about security in terms of the vast hackers that are out there, but how do we keep media and libraries safe when multiple people within the collaborative group, can access them?  What’s the best practice to keep somebody from accidentally erasing somebody else’s media?

Sam Mestman:  The best way to go about it is to do one of two things, which is to either create users and groups directly within your server, or create separate shares where certain things live that are protected or not protected.  Then if you want to get a little bit more complicated, but also a little bit more secure, you can integrate something like Open or Active Directory to do basically user level on a network level, that not combined to your server, and you can have custom user.  So large facilities tend to do that, smaller facilities tend to make just separate shares that have people’s stuff that they can do.  Getting involved on file level permissions is usually more trouble than it’s worth, we’ve found.

Larry Jordan:  It sounds like your hardware software combination’s going to require an IT person to run, is that true?

Sam Mestman:  No. Actually that was the big thing, it had to be someone that somebody like me could use.  And I have no background in that.  In fact I know more than I ever wanted to know, and I want to know less.  We designed something where you can literally plugin, figure out what number port you are, plug that number into our software, it’s going to configure everything in your mount, there’s no switch required. Some of our products are quiet and can live in the room with you.  We have some rack based solutions as well, but it does not require that whatsoever, and so really our idea is not to get rid of the IT department, the idea is to turn the IT department from the gatekeeper into enabling more workflows for their people where they can instead go and start figuring out how to do things better as opposed to keeping users from getting things done.

Larry Jordan:  Sam, for people that want more information about Lumaforge, where do they go on the web?

Sam Mestman:  They go to lumaforge.com.

Larry Jordan: That’s all one word, lumaforge.com and Sam Mestman is the CEO of Lumaforge.  Sam, thanks for joining us today.

Sam Mestman:  Larry, thanks so much for having me.

Larry Jordan:  Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  As we’ve heard tonight, collaboration means different things to different people.  But in all cases it means helping creative teams work together more efficiently.  I agree with a comment that Rollo Wenlock made which is that collaboration is at the heart of most creative projects.  And soon all the apps we use will support it in some fashion.  The challenge will be in allowing teams to access the same project while keeping it secure from everyone else.  Collaboration may be extremely helpful to the creative team, but it is extremely difficult for developers to create, and it’ll be interesting to watch this process evolve.

Larry Jordan:  I want to thank my guests this week, Tony Cariddi, the product and solutions manager at Avid, Rollo Wenlock, the founder and CEO of Wipster, Jennifer Jesperson, relationship manager for Qwire, Rory O’Farrell, the founder of Melosity, Sam Mestman the CEO of Lumaforge and James DeRuvo for DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan:   There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website, at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Make a point to visit today and talk with us on Twitter @DPBuzz and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan:   Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner with additional music provided by Smartsound.com.  Text transcripts are provided by Take1 Transcription.  Visit Take1.tv to learn how they can help you.

Larry Jordan:   Our producer is Debbie Price, my name is Larry Jordan, and thanks for listening to The Digital Production Buzz.

Larry Jordan:  The Digital Production Buzz is copyright 2017 by Thalo LLC.

HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
Scott Murray, Vice President of Marketing, Telestream
Benjamin Nowak, Founder/CEO, Cinamaker Inc.
Rony Sebok, VP Technology, 1 Beyond, Inc.
Claudia Barbiero, VP of Marketing, Americas, LiveU
George Hall, President, Video Streaming Services
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

==

Larry Jordan: Tonight, on the Buzz we are looking at the process and challenges of live video streaming.

Larry Jordan:  We start with Scott Murray.  He’s the vice president of marketing for Telestream.  He sets the scene on video streaming by explaining what it is, how it works, what you need for gear, and what to consider when feeding your programs to the web.

Larry Jordan:  Rony Sebok, vice president for 1 Beyond, describes the challenges of streaming, including inadequate bandwidth or insufficient gear.  Then Rony showcases the benefits of their new all in one StreamMachine.

Larry Jordan:  Claudia Barbiero, the VP of marketing for LiveU explains how they help distribute your program to broadcast for the web and why CDNs are necessary for the successful streaming of your event.

Larry Jordan:  George Hall, the president of Video Streaming Services joins us to talk about how to plan for streaming a live event, and how the typical three steps of a project, pre-production, production and post, now include a fourth.  Live distribution.

Larry Jordan:  Benjamin Nowak, the founder and CEO of Cinamaker has invented a new application which supports live multi-cam project switching, and streaming from mobile devices.  Their brand new app can replace a table full of desktop gear.

Larry Jordan:  All this, plus James DeRuvo with our weekly DoddleNEWS update.  The Buzz starts now.

Announcer:  Since the dawn of digital filmmaking – authoritative – one show serves a worldwide network of media professionals – current – uniting industry experts – production – filmmakers – post production – and content creators around the planet – distribution.  From the media capital of the world in Los Angeles, California, the Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan:  Welcome to the Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry, covering media production, post production and marketing around the world.

Larry Jordan:  Hi, my name is Larry Jordan.  Apple surprised many of us with the depth of their announcements this week at the Worldwide Developers Conference.  We were expecting announcements about operating systems, but most of the hardware announcements were a surprise.

Larry Jordan:  Also, you may have missed this news in the midst of everything else going on, but Apple also announced new upcoming versions of Final Cut Pro X, Compressor and Motion that will support H.265 compression, along with editing and titling 360 degree video files.

Larry Jordan:  Finally, Final Cut will be supporting some flavor of VR.  James DeRuvo and I will have more on key WWDC news in our DoddleNEWS segment coming up shortly.

Larry Jordan:   By the way, I want to invite you to subscribe to our free weekly show newsletter at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Every issue, every week gives you an inside look at the Buzz, quick links to the different segments on the show, and curated articles of interest to filmmakers.  Best of all, every issue is free and comes out on Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Now it’s time for a DoddleNEWS update, with James DeRuvo.  Hello James.

James DeRuvo:  Hi Larry, how are you?

Larry Jordan:  I tell you, I am drowning in news this week.  Let’s get right to it.

James DeRuvo:  You’re not kidding, it’s been blowing up since Monday.  Actually since Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Let’s hold on WWDC for just a bit.  What else is making news this week?

James DeRuvo:  Well last Thursday, Friday and Saturday was Cine Gear at Paramount here in Hollywood.  Panasonic finally lifted the veil off of that mysterious compact camera that they were talking about at NAB.  It’s called the Panasonic EVA1 and positioned to be somewhere between the Panasonic GH5 interchangeable lens camera, and the VariCam cinema cameras and the high level EVA150, right square in the middle. It shoots 4K RAW internally at 60 frames per second, but it’s going to get 5.7K RAW coming in a future firmware update.  Thanks to dual image ISO, it’ll have great low light performance.  Today, Atomos announced that they’re going to be supporting external recording in 4K RAW via 6G-SDI in the Shogun Inferno.  When Panasonic tempted us with …. mini camera at NAB, we couldn’t wait to get the details, and now that it’s here, it looks like the EVA1 won’t disappoint Larry.

Larry Jordan:  That is so cool.  It’s good for Panasonic to come out with a new camera and I’m looking to see what the images look like when they get this in production.  What else we got?

James DeRuvo:  Not to be outdone, Sony started saying, “Wait a minute, we’re going to have a camera too.”  Sony handed out a full frame CineAlta cinema camera coming as well during their presentation at Cine Gear.  They said it’s a new full frame camera and it’s going to be a next generation cinema camera and they’ve got a huge team of engineers designing a brand new sensor which promises a minimum of 4K and being that it’s full frame, I’m betting by the time it comes out, it’s going to be at least 6K and maybe even 8K.  It’s also going to be aspect ratio agnostic so it can handle 16-bit RAW color in full frame, super 35 4K, 4:3, anamorphic, 4K spherical, 17:9, the works.  We’re short on details, they didn’t say a lot other than that, but Sony promises that the new image processor will have exceptional picture quality, better dynamic range, and support HDR.  I’m betting this will be their next entry into 8K.

Larry Jordan:  We’ve got a new digital camera from Panasonic, a new digital camera from Sony.  Clearly, film is dead.

James DeRuvo:  No, not at all.  As a matter of fact, film is making an amazing comeback and Kodak is opening ten labs all across the country including reopening their old photo processing lab in Queens, New York.  What they realized was that all these filmmakers are starting to shoot on film again, and they were taking this gigantic leap of faith of shipping all their unexposed negatives to Los Angeles to FotoKem to have it processed, and they’re saying, “We need to open up some labs across the country.”  So they’re opening them up in ten cities, including Atlanta, Georgia where ‘The Walking Dead’ is filmed, and rebuilding the lab in Queens, New York.  They also signed a five year deal at Pinewood Studios in London for a central film processing lab that will also provide digital conversion services.  The idea is to make it closer for filmmakers to get a safer and faster turnaround, thereby making it more affordable and easier to shoot on film again.  It was only a few years ago that Kodak was in bankruptcy and having one fire sale after another on their assets.  Now they’re the only game in town providing film services to the industry and they show no signs of slowing down.

Larry Jordan:  I’m really pleased for their turnaround, it’s nice to have an alternative to digital and Kodak is a company that’s worked hard to get back into the game, so good for them.

James DeRuvo:  It’s very exciting.  Other stories include how you can use the DJI Mavic Pro drone as a handheld gimbal stabilizer, and there seems to be this little confab going on up in Cupertino.  Do you know anything about that Larry?

Larry Jordan:  James, you and I know that that little shindig was Apple’s WWDC that opened on Monday with a keynote which you live Tweeted.

James DeRuvo:  Indeed.  I live Tweeted on it @doddleme and Twitter, and it was very exciting.  A lot of really great products, the iMac, the MacBooks, new iPad Pro that’s going to be a little bit bigger.  I think it’s 10.5 inches.  Gosh, a lot of really cool stuff, and the software updates that support it, are really cool too.

Larry Jordan:  While there were a lot of high expectations, Apple managed to beat most of them.  We were expecting updates to all the various operating systems, but we weren’t expecting all the hardware announcements.

James DeRuvo: I didn’t think they were going to come out with the iMac Pro which is gorgeous.   Space gray finish.

Larry Jordan:  I was thinking about it.  As far as media creators are concerned, there were probably five announcements that we need to pay attention to.  There were relatively minor upgrades to the laptops, but major upgrades for the iMacs including, as you mentioned the new iMac Pro which is shipping in December.  But they also announced support for H.265 video compression, support for external GPUs via Thunderbolt 3, and support for the new Apple file system.  I was impressed with that.

James DeRuvo:  That external GPU thing is really an interesting development in computer processing.  It was originally driven by the gaming industry when gamers were starting to use laptops to play games, but GPUs and laptops are so poorly underpowered that they started cobbling together these kluges of high powered external video cards that they could run through Thunderbolt 3.  That created a new product, an external GPU that will handle all the offloaded high performance GPU work while the processor does everything else.  It was originally a Windows thing, but with the upcoming OS X High Sierra, Apple is going to be supporting it for the first time.

Larry Jordan:   We probably won’t have it released until spring of 2018, so the external GPU support won’t come in the fall, it’ll come next year.

James DeRuvo:   The iMac Pro isn’t going to be out until December, just in time for Christmas.

Larry Jordan:  I’ll buy you a couple of them and mail them to you.

James DeRuvo:   There you go.

Larry Jordan:   By the way when we talk to Rony Sebok a little bit later today, we’re going to also talk about the implications of the H.265 compression, so we’ll talk more about that in a minute.  James, for people that want more information, where can they go on the web?

James DeRuvo:  All these stories and more can be found at Doddlenews.com and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, at @doddleme.

Larry Jordan:  James DeRuvo is the senior writer at DoddleNEWS and joins us every week with the DoddleNEWS update.  James thanks for joining us, we’ll talk with you next week.

James DeRuvo:  Talk to you then.

Larry Jordan:  Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Here’s another website I want to introduce you to.  Doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries.  It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry.  DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platforms specifically designed for production.  These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listings, provide in depth organizational tools for busy production professionals.  DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts Community, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers.  From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with resources you need to succeed.  Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go.  Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  Scott Murray is the vice president for corporate marketing and desktop products within Telestream.    He’s been in marketing for over 30 years, with marketing management and executive positions at Grass Valley Group, Scitex Digital Video and Miranda Technologies.  Hello Scott, welcome.

Scott Murray:  Hi Larry, it’s great to be here.  Thanks for having me on your show.

Larry Jordan:  I’m looking forward to our conversation because in our show this week, we’re looking at video streaming and when I think of essential software for streaming, I think of Wirecast which is a Telestream product.  But before we talk about the software, I want to back up to set the scene.  What makes video streaming different from traditional video production?

Scott Murray:  Boy, that’s a pretty interesting question because it’s so deep, there’s so much to it.  I hate to go back to history, but you have to learn from history so you can figure out where you’re moving forward.  The history is I went to a college called Cal Poly on the Central Coast of California and I had never been able to get Cal Poly football games once I graduated.  The reason was the production costs were too high, but also there was no distribution medium.  So the way that you had to get broadcasted content was either have an affiliate connection with one of your local television stations, or you had to have a relationship with something like a Comcast or Direct TV to be able to actually get to your customers, the consumers at the end.  That was the way it used to be up until just a few years ago.

Scott Murray:  What’s happened with technology, it’s so fantastic is that the cost to produce the show has become reduced substantially, and the number of people that’s required to produce a show is really low.  But probably the biggest transition that’s occurred, is now companies like Cal Poly or Universities like Cal Poly and other companies, can distribute their content live OTT, over the top streaming, to the end destination, either through their own website with a CDN or to places like Facebook Live.  So the transition that’s occurred is enormous, so now everybody in the world is able to produce, broadcast and distribute content to viewers that have like-minded viewership around the world.  It doesn’t matter if you’re producing and distributing content from South Africa for the wildlife, and you want to produce a show that reaches out to the whole world.  You’re able to do that now by utilizing the streaming technology.  It has changed the world.

Larry Jordan:  But I would argue that video production is the same whether you’re going to broadcast or cable or YouTube or streaming, you still need lights, you still need cameras, you still need mics, and while there’s a variety of price points there, the process of production hasn’t changed.  What streaming affects is not production, but distribution.  Would you disagree?

Scott Murray:  I agree and disagree.  So the streaming part of it has substantially changed the ability to move content that you produce to the masses, OK?  No doubt that has substantially changed.  But if you look at the products that have been created to produce, what you needed ten years ago, was a truck or a fly pack that had a production switcher, a camera, titling to do graphics, an audio mixer.  You needed a lot of kit that was individual components.

Scott Murray:   With technology, what has happened is, equipment has now been consolidated to be able to have one product that supports multiple technology needs, and the user interfaces have been simplified such that now one operator can operate multiple pieces of equipment.  Obviously we promote that with Wirecast, but also if you take something like a NewTek Tricaster, and I’m real familiar with the NewTek guys who are great, ten plus years ago they were working towards consolidating a lot of the functionality to have a computer that was able to create a single production of live integrated content cameras, coupled with pre-produced content, coupled with graphics.  They all ran on one single computer to do live production.  You see what’s happened in the shift is that the content production capability has become integrated such that the price has gone down and it’s simplified to be able to allow less people to produce a show.

Larry Jordan:  What you’re saying is that while the process of video creation is the same, the tools that we use have become simplified and consolidated, which is the perfect lead in to Wirecast.  What is Wirecast?

Scott Murray:  Wirecast is a software product, and it runs on either a standard computer, a PC, or a Mac, and it allows you to produce and then distribute a show.  It brings in video sources from cameras, it allows you to create and distribute pre-produced content.  It provides graphics and titling and it also has audio mixing capability.  It’s an all in one video production package and then once you produce your show, then you distribute your show.  What’s interesting, is many people use Wirecast to do their live production.  Let’s say they have a two camera shoot with a remote interview with a customer, and then they want to record that and put that onto Facebook or YouTube and not do a live show.  A lot of customers will use it for that capability, just to produce a show, and record it and then distribute it as a video file, or on demand viewing.  That’s one function.

Scott Murray:  But then you add the streaming capability on the back end of Wirecast, and now you can go live, you can go live to churches.  We have a lot of churches that their output streams to a destination called churchstreaming.tv. And churchstreaming.tv will actually do the distribution off a church’s website.  They’ve got the player application that gets integrated into the website.  Or it goes to Facebook Live or Twitter, Periscope, YouTube Live, any of these destinations.  So it’s really a two stage component which Wirecast provides.

Larry Jordan:  Why would we use Wirecast and not NewTek?

Scott Murray:  They’re actually very complementary.  There is a little bit of overlap on the bottom end of the NewTek line, but as you move upmarket and many times you have more cameras, and that requires more input.  So Wirecast runs on a standard computer but we have a product called Wirecast Gear which is a single appliance.  Many of our customers ask “What capture card should I use for my computers, and what kind of computer should I use?”  So we created an appliance called Wirecast Gear.  That’s got four base band video inputs.  They’re either HDMI or SDI inputs.  If you look at what NewTek provides, NewTek kind of starts at that level and then moves up from there.  Where we cap out at the four inputs.  So they’re very complementary.

Scott Murray:   One of the things that we’ve recently just done as well is we’ve supported NDI which is NewTek’s network device interface for either NDI streaming into our Wirecast system, or with the new version that’s coming out in a couple of weeks.  We’ll be able to stream to NDI output.  So that means for larger productions, that have more camera sources, you could use Wirecast as a input side to the Tricasters, or you could even take the Tricaster production and put it into Wirecast and stream out of Wirecast.  The two are very complementary, but if you have a lower end application which applies to a large number of customers who have one or two cameras, Wirecast is a perfect solution.

Larry Jordan:  Is there a difference between streaming a live event, and streaming a recorded event?

Scott Murray:  From the end user perspective, no.  However, it has to do with the engagement, so many times things like Facebook Live, when you’re streaming there, there’s a running commentary that goes on, and there’s an interactive chat that can occur.  So if you’re streaming a pre-produced show, and you don’t have somebody to moderate the comments, you wouldn’t actually be able to interact with those people that are commenting.  Unless you had somebody that’s actually doing the moderation during the pre-produced event that’s being streamed.  So, the difference is really not a lot technologically, it has to do with the actual engagement and delivery of the content itself.

Larry Jordan:   One thing that we’re minimizing that I want to talk about briefly, is the idea of a streaming server, or a distribution server.  Once the signal comes out of Wirecast, we need to send it somewhere to have it to be distributed.  How does that process work?

Scott Murray:   That’s a really interesting black box that a lot of people don’t understand the technology behind that.  It really is defined by the player application that sits either on your phone or your tablet or your desktop or even at your television set.  So those applications like a Roku box or an Apple TV, they actually are the ones that are controlling the bandwidth and the request for the streams themselves.  So the player application is really important to the streaming.  That’s the end game.

Scott Murray:   Now, when you send a stream out of Wirecast it’s what’s called an RTMP stream, which is an encoded MPEG transport stream using a standard in a package that Adobe created years ago.  It’s the standard that’s used for Wirecast.  The stream comes out of the Wirecast box, and goes to an origin server.  An origin server is the master computer somewhere in the world, and it keeps the content, then if you move to the edges, there’s the content delivery network, the CDN.  Let’s say you have the origin server in Chicago, I’m sending my stream to Chicago, he then sends it to New York, to Philadelphia, to Dallas, California, around the globe to where the edge devices exist.  So that when somebody then connects to say Facebook Live, they’re actually connecting to one of their local servers.  Send it to one computer, it then gets sent to multiple computers that are distributed throughout the world based around very sophisticated algorithms for where traffic patterns exist for where people are demanding the streams.  So it’s a one to very many relationship for the actual distribution.

Scott Murray:  It becomes quite simple for us as a user to say, “Oh, I don’t want to do the whole CDN thing, I don’t understand it.  But I can go to Facebook Live.  I got credentials.  I can log in, bang, I’m right there, streaming to Facebook Live and I’ve got a live presence throughout the entire world.”

Larry Jordan:  Having gone through this whole process about two years ago as we were setting up our own video stream, there’s a lot to learn, and I’m very grateful for your taking the time to summarize it.  Two quick questions before we wrap up.  How is Wirecast priced?

Scott Murray:  We have two versions of it.  We have a $495 version called the Studio version.  Then we have a 999 version called the Pro version.  The Pro version has, as you would expect, more bells and whistles for higher end production capability.  I don’t really want to go through the details here, but a lot of customers will get into streaming with Wirecast Studio which is the 495 version, then they’ll realize they want more capability, better titling, more stuff for their productions.  Then they’ll move up to the Pro version so they can add more pro features in their production, and it really is the difference between the production capability of the two versions.  The streaming capability and the destinations are identical between the two.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want to learn more about Wirecast and Telestream in general, where can they go on the web?

Scott Murray:  You go to www.telestream.net.

Larry Jordan: That’s all one word, telestream.net and Scott Murray is the vice president for corporate marketing and desktop products.  Scott, thank you for joining us today.

Scott Murray:  Great to be here, Larry, thank you for having me on your show.

Larry Jordan:  Rony Sebok is the VP at 1 Beyond Digital Video Systems, a company that designs and manufactures professional video systems for all aspects of the production and post workflow.  Hello Rony.  Welcome.

Rony Sebok:  Hi Larry, how are you?  Thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  I am delighted to have you with us.  I was just thinking, Scott Murray gave us a solid background on what video streaming is but I want to look at the more practical side.  What do we need to consider when we’re setting up a live video stream for our events?

Rony Sebok:  It’s wonderful to follow Scott because what 1 Beyond does is build upon the Wirecast product that Scott was telling everybody about.  A quick summary of what we do and then I’d be very happy to answer all the questions about the practical applications because we have a lot of experience with that through helping our customers do streaming.

Rony Sebok:   1 Beyond builds a turnkey streaming system based on the Wirecast software.  So as Scott said, “What’s the positioning of Wirecast and the NewTek Tricaster?” 1 Beyond turns Wirecast into as powerful, or more powerful of a system than the Tricaster.  So we actually sell turnkey solutions starting at $4,000, and then going all the way up to 10, $12,000 with minimal number of inputs, like four professional HD-SDI inputs, all the way up to 16 professional inputs.  The big deal that we’re doing is providing a much more powerful computer.  It’s all the transcoding, encoding for streaming, all is bound around the CPU and GPU that you have in the system. So with the advent now of network streams coming in, the Wirecast software and the 1 Beyond StreamMachine that’s based on it, doesn’t just let you switch between live video feeds that are coming through SDI or HDMI from a camera, but also switching to media files, overlaying graphics, bringing in IP streams from your phone or tablet.  All of that comes into the box and you can switch it, record, stream it, use Skype for conferencing with it.

Rony Sebok:   To do all of those things you need a powerful computer.  The wonderful thing right now for anybody interested in streaming is that you can get started with a $500 piece of software that you can load on your laptop and start experimenting even just with your iPhone as your video source.  As you move up the ranks, and you want to get into doing more professional productions, that’s when you really need more hardware, more built in input, and more horsepower, and that’s where the 1 Beyond system comes in.  From a practical aspect I guess one answer to your question is depending on how many video sources you want to bring in, how many streams you want to stream out.  Some people are not just streaming to YouTube but they want to stream to YouTube and Facebook at the same time.  Now you’re sending two streams out, and encoding potentially two different bit rates.  You need more horsepower if you’re going to do that.  Your jalopy will get you there, but if you can get a Ferrari for a reasonable price, that’s what you’d drive right?

Rony Sebok:   Anyway, that’s where 1 Beyond comes in.  We like to provide a turnkey solution with a lot of support at a very reasonable price, and really enable people.  You can now do broadcasts that are equivalent in terms of the production values of what you see on television.  There is nothing that they do on television that you can’t do.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want information, where can they go on the web?

Rony Sebok:  We’re at www.1beyond.com.

Larry Jordan:  Rony Sebok is the VP at 1 Beyond Digital Video Systems, and Rony, thanks for joining us today.

Rony Sebok:  Thank you.

Larry Jordan: Bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Claudia Barbiero is the VP of marketing in the Americas for LiveU.  She oversees the strategic marketing planning and execution for LiveU’s IP based live video services, and broadcast solutions.  Hello Claudia, welcome.

Claudia Barbiero:  Hi thank you Larry, good to be here.

Larry Jordan:  How would you describe what LiveU does?

Claudia Barbiero: In a nutshell, we enable the ability to go live meaning live broadcast to air, or broadcasting online, from anywhere.  Essentially we have products and solutions that take multiple cellular connections, bond them together and through some special transport protocols, we’re able to dynamically send those to any destination, anywhere in the world.  We’ve also now taken that same technology and made it super portable and super affordable, so that content creators of all sizes not just the major television news networks, can take advantage of that and really bring dynamic live content to audiences everywhere.

Larry Jordan:  Why is LiveU necessary?  Why can’t we just stream directly from our computer or our phone?

Claudia Barbiero:  So you’re limited to the bandwidth, in essence.  You’re also limiting yourself in terms of the quality of that video, so what we like to call good glass, is the better quality input.  Traditionally, if you’re using your smartphone, you’re limited to the sound, lighting and camera quality that’s on that phone for what you’re capturing, and we’re finding quickly now that brands and online entertainment outlets and different types of institutions like educational institutions, who spend a lot of time and money on their brand and their image, want their live video to also be up to snuff.

Larry Jordan: That gets me to an interesting concept.  In streaming we hear the term, CDN.  What is a CDN and why are CDN’s necessary?

Claudia Barbiero:  It’s the content delivery network.  Some people call it an online video provider, and what that service is in its essence, is taking that stream in and then providing a way for viewers to watch that video.  Think of it as providing the online channel for you.  Today, that can mean a whole host of things including Facebook Live, Twitter, YouTube.  They’re all content delivery networks.

Larry Jordan:  How do we balance image quality with budget?

Claudia Barbiero:  That’s a very interesting question because there’s a couple of things.  One is your equipment.  The second is your resources, meaning personnel, production team and I said that with air quotes because that sometimes is just the same person as the one who’s on camera.  As well as your bandwidth, so data.  Those three things combined together to work up your budget for what you want to produce.  Then at the other end is what you were talking about with a content delivery network, there are usually fees and costs associated with that.  That has changed drastically, definitely in the last year with the advent of social media networks providing that delivery vehicle in essence for free.

Larry Jordan:  When should we use Twitter or Facebook or even YouTube for streaming?  And when should we set up our own custom distribution network?

Claudia Barbiero:  I think it’s a combination factor.  Different vertical markets have different types of content needing to get out there, but at the end of the day you want to be where your audience is watching at that time.  So you do want to take a look at your core audience, so a lot of people do have a great Facebook fan base, or people who are already following them on Facebook.  The benefit there is they’ll get instant notifications of when you’re going to go live.  But you can also expand your reach to people who have similar interests, and you can target that live stream out there.  I do think that most people are looking at multi platform, because the more people that can view, engage and interact, the better.

Claudia Barbiero: That was going to be the second follow up to this question, which is there’s a lot of great reporting tools for your online content, and the content delivery networks that are available provide that to you.  But when it comes to some of the social media networks, you actually get to interact live with your audience, which can dynamically change the course of your content and your programming and ultimately, tie yourself closer to that at home audience as well.

Larry Jordan:  There’s dozens of streaming services out there.  Why should somebody consider LiveU?

Claudia Barbiero:  We really are what we call the first mile of that live transmission.  So we integrate into any of those live streaming services.  In essence what we’re doing is providing any content creator the ability to go out, so with a unit that fits in the palm of your hand or sits in your pocket, you now have the reliable connection that you need in order to send a high definition quality live stream to any destination.

Larry Jordan:  Claudia, for people that want more information about LiveU, where can they go on the web?

Claudia Barbiero:  I encourage you to visit liveu.tv, I also encourage you to take a look at our live streaming unit which is called Solo, and that’s at gosolo.tv.  And of course follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  We share a lot of great customer stories and what other people are doing with our technology.

Larry Jordan:  That website is liveu.tv, and Claudia Barbiero is the VP of marketing in the Americas, for LiveU.  Claudia, thanks for joining us today.

Claudia Barbiero: Thank you so much Larry, have a great day.

Larry Jordan:  George Hall is the president of Video Streaming Services.  They are an internet video broadcaster providing multi camera live switched broadcasts for a large variety of events.  Hello George, welcome.

George Hall:  Hello Larry, thank you for having me on.

Larry Jordan:  It’s my pleasure.  You’ve been involved with video streaming for many years now.  What’s some advice for someone who wants to get started streaming an event?

George Hall:  One camera, as some of your guests have talked about, it’s pretty simple to do these days.  Whether it’s an iPhone to Facebook, to YouTube to what have you, it’s pretty easy to do.  It doesn’t cost a lot, in some cases most people already have a cell phone and a Facebook or a YouTube account, and it’s just that simple.  It’s easy to do for one camera.  As you move up the food chain though into multi camera live switched events, it becomes a little bit more complex and a little bit more involved.

Larry Jordan:  Typical video production has three steps.  Pre-production, production and post.  Streaming seems to add a fourth which is live distribution.  Do the first three steps change if you’re streaming?

George Hall:  Not at all.  In fact, streaming is transparent from that perspective.  That is the piece that we deliver, the stuff under the covers if you will, the magic sauce, that we deliver.  On the front end, it’s still a multi camera shoot, sometimes you have multi media integration, Powerpoints.  Sometimes you even have to integrate captioning, and that’s some of the special sauce that more high end video production companies offer.  The streaming component is fairly straightforward, at least from the customer perspective.

Larry Jordan:  There’s a variety of different streaming protocols, I’m thinking Adobe Flash versus HTML5.  Do we need to worry about what protocol our streaming service supports?

George Hall:  Google’s going to make you worry about it whether you want to or not.  The folks at Google began earlier this year telling folks that they were going to begin slowing down, if not ceasing entirely, support for Flash video.  Yet in the ten years we’ve been doing this, we started out with Windows media which worked great for a while.  Then everybody wanted to go to Flash.  Flash had some issues, not the least of which was it wouldn’t support native streams on iOS or Android as well.  And the solution to that is HTML5.  What’s happened in the last several months is the decline in support by Google in particular with their Chrome browser, to support Flash in every instance, has forced people fairly rapidly here, to move to HTML5, and the great thing about HTML5 is that it does support natively iOS, Android, your Mac, your PC, what have you.   It’s universally applicable and you don’t need any plugins or anything special like that.

Larry Jordan:  When we’re planning an event, how important is bandwidth and how much bandwidth do we need?

George Hall:  Well there’s a big difference between what people tell you they have in bandwidth and what you actually experience when you get there.  The first things our guys do when they get to a venue that we’ve never been to before, is test the bandwidth.  We tell people that we like at least twice the bandwidth that we’re going to be uploading.  So if we’re doing a one megabyte stream, we better have two megabytes up in order to make sure there’s no packet congestion or other types of interference, because that is the single stream that leaves the venue that goes to our CDN that then rebroadcasts to the rest of the world.

Larry Jordan:  George, for people who want more information about the services you and your company provides, where can they go on the web?

George Hall:  www.videossc.com.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, videossc.com, and George Hall is the president of Video Streaming Services.  George, thanks for joining us today.

George Hall: Thank you Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Take care, bye.

Larry Jordan:  I want to introduce you to a new website, Thalo.com.  Thalo is an artist community and networking site for creative people to connect, be inspired and showcase their creativity.  Thalo.com features content from around the world with a global perspective on all things creative.  Thalo is the place for creative folks to learn, collaborate, market and sell their works.  Thalo is a part of Thalo Arts, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers.  From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with the resources you need to succeed.  Visit Thalo.com and discover how their community can help you connect, learn and succeed.  That’s Thalo.com.

Larry Jordan:  Benjamin Nowak is an entrepreneur, has been for more than 30 years, specializing in network systems, digital imaging, new media, as well as sales and marketing automation software.  Today, he’s the founder and CEO of Cinamaker and the originator of the Cinamaker app.  Hello Benjamin, welcome.

Benjamin Nowak:  Hi.

Larry Jordan:  So why did you decide to start the company Cinamaker?

Benjamin Nowak:  Got a lifelong history in new media, and software.  This company came about as a result of leveraging some technology and R&D that had been done for about a year’s time around synchronization technology.  I thought this would be a perfect application in the video space to use our sync technology and what it would be able to afford us.

Larry Jordan:  What does synchronization mean to you?

Benjamin Nowak: Our core technology is our ability to set the clocks of various cameras and smartphones to the precise same time, with millisecond accuracy.  We use algorithms to keep all the devices at the precise same time so that switching and editing becomes effortless and no set up required.

Larry Jordan:  Tell me about the application, Cinamaker.

Benjamin Nowak: What we’ve built is a multi camera recording and live production studio on tablet computers, smartphones, action cameras and IP cameras.  We believe we’ve built the first professional solution on tablet computers, incorporating synchronization, multi camera, live preview, remote control with multiple cameras, live switching, audio mixing, full graphics engine.  Really a lot of the features you would expect to find in a desktop or a dedicated solution.

Larry Jordan:   Today for the show we’re focusing on video streaming.  How can Cinamaker help?

Benjamin Nowak:   We think we’ve got the simplest to operate, lowest cost solution to allow someone to do professional live streaming.  Professional meaning multi camera HD streaming.  So our app very simply connects multiple smartphones and action cameras to a tablet.  A tablet is used as the director pad, and allows you to start and stop a live stream to Facebook Live, YouTube Live, or we integrate with about every live streaming destination.  The tablet computer becomes the live switcher and graphics engine, making it very simple for non-technical people to manage and automate a live stream from multiple cameras.  The synchronization can slip over time if you’re not actively managing that process, and I think that’s one of the fundamental architectural differences between the system that takes it to a professional class solution.

Larry Jordan:   A few weeks ago, we talked with the folks at Switcher Studio which also provide the same multi camera capability with streaming.  How is Cinamaker different from say Switcher Studio?

Benjamin Nowak:  I think there are some fundamental differences in our architecture that we believe are significant.  Primarily our synchronization engine.  I should speak specifically to features.  The most meaningful one is synchronization, but they don’t audio mix, their graphics engine actually does some things better than us, but a lot of things not.  That’ll be our challenge to differentiate ourselves from them.  But I think when people use the product, it’ll be clear.

Larry Jordan:  I was just reflecting, we’ve got a tablet device which is serving as the control center for controlling the cameras, and it’s doing the audio mixing, and it’s doing video compression and it’s doing synchronization.  Can a tablet handle that level of workload?

Benjamin Nowak:  Surprisingly, today’s current generation of tablets can.  The newest $329 iPad is more than enough horsepower to handle 4 HD streams, synchronization, media management transfer, and we also have an android system under development that works fine with all the current generation tablet computers.

Larry Jordan:  Taking the same question, but looking at it a different way, you’ve got a control center, and you’ve got audio mixing and you’ve got graphics control.  Does the interface make it so complex that one person can’t really run the whole show?

Benjamin Nowak:  That’s a good question because typically these functions are done by more than one person and across various systems.  We’ve built the app like a mobile app, and not like a traditional piece of video software.  So, simplicity is what we are very good at, while allowing a rich feature set.  You can easily tab between your switcher, your audio mixer, your graphics engine turning on and off layers, picture in picture, chroma key.  It’s all pretty straightforward to the degree that my six year old has learned how to operate the platform, and can do everything.  That’s my best way to explain how easy it truly is.

Larry Jordan:  There’s your beta tester, right there.  What’s involved in getting started with the app?  What do we need to do?  I’ve decided that I want to do a three camera multi cam live stream.  If we exclude distribution because I want to come to that in just a second, what do we need to get started?

Benjamin Nowak:  Simply the app running on a tablet computer, and our capture app running on a smartphone.  Alternately, you can connect directly.  We’re interfacing the E action camera that’ll connect directly to the tablet, and Panasonic’s line of IP cameras, their Pan/Tilt/Zoom line.  They’ve just licensed our software to be their mobile solution for the remote control and live streaming of their Pan/Tilt/Zoom products.

Larry Jordan:  Congratulations, that’s a major win.

Benjamin Nowak:  Thank you.  Then once you have your cameras connected with the tablet, it’s a matter of just choosing your destination, setting your resolution, any settings and hitting go, determining if you want to do a simultaneous HD record while you’re streaming or potentially save out a live cut of your stream.  You have various options there.

Larry Jordan:  How about audio?  Many audio is going to go through a mixing console.  How do we handle integrating audio from an external device?

Benjamin Nowak:  Right now we have the concept of camera assistance and audio assistance.  Every camera that is using a smartphone or any of the IP cameras that have a microphone or an audio input, can be an audio source that can be mixed in.  You can also use a smartphone as a dedicated audio assistant to plug in to anything, a mixer board or a microphone, and to allow the director to easily mix in up to eight audio sources.  Four from the various cameras, and then four additional audio sources.  So you can do the mixing inside of Cinamaker, or you can use an external mixer and just have one source come through.

Larry Jordan:  What are your recommendations to optimize for quality?  How do we get the best sound, and how do we get the best picture?

Benjamin Nowak:  They’re centered around a lot of the traditional video production best practices and principles.  From a production standpoint of course it’s all the regular stuff, lighting composition, all the things I don’t need to explain to you. From a technical standpoint, while we allow for a variety of different technical configurations, we pretty much simplified in taking out the complexity.  So as a user, you’re really just setting your destination, your resolution, and we have some settings to adjust bit rate and if you’re doing a recording some more professional higher bit rates.  But it can also work in default setting very easily and produce a very high quality HD image.

Larry Jordan:  You’ve mentioned that this connects to Facebook.  Should we consider using a content delivery network like Akami, Live View or are we locked into a particular distribution format?

Benjamin Nowak: We got to really any custom RTMP destination, so we can connect to about everybody out there.  We’re pretty integrated with a couple of services like Facebook Live and YouTube Live, and we’ll add a handful of others.  But there’s really no limitation to what we can go to with our manual settings.

Benjamin Nowak:   One other thing I just wanted to tell you because I see you’re a big Final Cut Pro guy.  We have recently integrated continuity and handoff with our app, so you can shoot multi camera and then have the footage from the individual cameras all go sync into the cloud and become available, and then we create an FCP XML file that you can open that has all your footage on the timeline, and sync ready to go.  So we’re real proud of that feature.  We’re just finishing that up now.  It won’t be in our initial launch but it’s coming.

Larry Jordan:  When does the product ship?

Benjamin Nowak:  Our product ships on the 21^st of the month.  We have a special offer for your listeners.  We’re glad to offer early access to a private beta, got a web page on our site if folks would like to sign up.

Larry Jordan:  What’s the price of your product?

Benjamin Nowak:  We are going to launch with a free version, that gives away 90 percent of the functionality.  Then we’ll have a professional version that is going to be sold in a monthly subscription for $49 a month.

Larry Jordan:  That gets me to the next question, where do they go to sign up?

Benjamin Nowak:  Our URL is cinamaker.net.  Then go to the URL/DPB, Digital Production Buzz, get your early access.

Larry Jordan:   That website again is all one word, cinamaker.net, not .com.  Cinamaker.net and Benjamin Nowak is the CEO and founder of Cinamaker.  Benjamin, thanks for joining us today.

Benjamin Nowak:  Thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan:  Video streaming is the latest incarnation of live broadcasting, except we no longer need massive audiences to make it commercially viable.  We can successfully stream highly targeted programs to micro audiences and still make money.  It’s a very exciting time because streaming opens up new methods of distribution allowing us to make money on gear we already own, combined with the production knowledge that we already have.  It’s a win for us, a win for our clients, and a win for our audiences.

Larry Jordan:  I want to thank my guests this evening, Scott Murray with Telestream, Rony Sebok with 1 Beyond, Claudia Barbiero with LiveU, George Hall with Video Streaming Service, Benjamin Nowak with Cinamaker, and as always, James DeRuvo with DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan:   There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website, at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Here you’ll find thousands of interviews, all online and all available to you today.  Remember to sign up for our free weekly show newsletter that comes out every Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Talk with us on Twitter @DPBuZZ and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan:   Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner with additional music provided by Smartsound.com.  Text transcripts are provided by Take1 Transcription.  Visit Take1.tv to learn how they can help you.

Larry Jordan:   Our producer is Debbie Price, my name is Larry Jordan, and thanks for listening to The Digital Production Buzz.

Larry Jordan:  The Digital Production Buzz is copyright 2017 by Thalo LLC.

HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
John DeBevoise, Host, Bizness Soup Talk Radio
Paul Rodriguez, Executive Board member/Vice President of Audio Services, Motion Picture Sound Editors(MPSE)/RoundAbout
Jim Bask, Marketing Director, Videoguys.com
Aasim Saied, Chairman and CEO, Akyumen Technologies Corporation
Kaur Kallas, CEO, Digital Sputnik
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

==

Larry Jordan: Tonight on the Buzz we are looking at ways to do things better.  We start with John DeBevoise, host of Bizness Soup Talk Radio about the challenges of running a small business and ways we can do it better.

Larry Jordan:  Jim Bask is the marketing director for Videoguys.com, a company that’s been selling video technology for 30 years.  Tonight, we talk with Jim about how their focus on the customer makes their business better.

Larry Jordan:  Aasim Saied is the CEO of Akyumen.  They make a smart phone with a built in video projector.  Imagine how that can simplify what you need to take on business trips, as Aasim explains tonight.

Larry Jordan:  Kaur Kallas is the CEO of Digital Sputnik, they make color tunable LED lights that allow you to dial in exactly the look you want on set.  Kaur explains why tunable lighting simplifies both production and post.

Larry Jordan:  Paul Rodriguez is on the executive board of the MPSE which stands for Motion Picture Sound Editors.  This is an organization dedicated to educating the public and the rest of the filmmaking community as to the artistic merit of sound editing and tonight Paul tells us more about it.

Larry Jordan:  All this, plus James DeRuvo with our weekly DoddleNEWS update.  The Buzz starts now.

Announcer:  Since the dawn of digital filmmaking – authoritative – one show serves a worldwide network of media professionals – current – uniting industry experts – production – filmmakers – post production – and content creators around the planet – distribution.  From the media capital of the world in Los Angeles, California, the Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan:  Welcome to the Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry, covering media production, post production and marketing around the world.

Larry Jordan:  Hi, my name is Larry Jordan.  Cine Gear starts tomorrow in Hollywood.  Now NAB has more exhibitors, more product announcements and more attendees, but Cine Gear makes up for it with an absolute focus on the hardware of filmmaking.  Cine Gear has the greatest collection of production tools from the largest number of exhibitors in the world.  You want a gimbal controlled camera mount for the front of a motorcycle?  You’ll find several to choose from here.  Looking for the latest in DMX controlled LED lighting technology or automated green screen cameras, or specialty background drapes?  All at Cine Gear.

Larry Jordan:   This show is one giant toy store located on the Paramount Studio lot, and well worth attending for anyone that can get to LA either tomorrow or Saturday.  Every year, I enjoy walking the streets of the Paramount back lot, appreciating how incredibly diverse the range of gear is that we use to make movies and marveling at the latest tools.  In large part, NAB is about the business of media.  For me, Cine Gear is all about the gear, and especially for us grownups, there’s something wonderful about a toy store.

Larry Jordan:   By the way, I want to invite you to subscribe to our free weekly show newsletter at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Every issue, every week gives you an inside look at the Buzz, quick links to the different segments on the show, and curated articles of interest to filmmakers.  Best of all, every issue is free and comes out on Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Now it’s time for a DoddleNEWS update, with James DeRuvo.  Hello James.

James DeRuvo:  Hello Larry.

Larry Jordan:  So what you got for us this week?

James DeRuvo:  Cine Gear has started, today’s the first day, and yesterday Canon got it off to a roaring start by announcing their new Cinema EOS C200 cinema camera which shoots 4K raw, internally, with your new Cinema RAW Light codec.  It can shoot up to 120 frames per second in HD without a crop, or 150 frames per second high frame rate in 4K with 15 stops of dynamic range, and it’s under $8,000.

Larry Jordan:  Would this be a video camera or an extension of their DSLRs?

James DeRuvo:  It’s a cinema camera.  It’s part of their Cinema EOS line, C100, now the C200, then the 300, 500 and 700.  But what stands out about this camera is that it can shoot natively with 4K RAW internally and writes to CFast 2 cards.  Or you can shoot also in 4K MP4 files, or CLog onto ESD cards.  You can bet with such a small form factor and with RAW as its driving force, documentary shooters and corporate wedding crowd are going to love this Larry.

Larry Jordan:  That sounds beautiful.  They announced it, did they say when it ships?

James DeRuvo:  I believe it’s going to be shipping in the middle of summer.

Larry Jordan:  Very cool.  What else have we got?

James DeRuvo:  This is my favorite story so far.  Intel launched this week an 18 core, i9 processor.  This thing is a beast.  It was designed for virtual reality gaming and ultra high definition content creation.  It’s the Intel Core X i9 but the Core X family also has everything from four cores all the way up to 18 cores, with a maximum clock speed of 4.5 GHz using Intel’s Turboboost 3.  The Turboboost 3 basically takes the most important function and routes them to the most efficiently performing core, so that they’re squeezing every ounce of performance out of that processor.  It uses DER4 RAM memory, up to 16 megabytes of shared cache, and can handle up to 44 PCIE devices at once.

James DeRuvo:  Not to be outdone though, AMD has announced a 16 core part of their Threadripper processor line to stay within striking distance of Intel, and although AMD is number two and has to try harder, the resulting competition between these two processor giants, is giving computer geeks like us all the benefit Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Well, AMD was the first one to announce their 16 core, and about a week later Intel announced 18 core.  These are some amazing processors.

James DeRuvo:  They’re beasts.  They’re not going to be cheap.  But they’re going to be extremely high performing, and I’m sure Mac fans are going to be thankful that Apple has waited on their new Modular Mac which is supposed to becoming out next year.  They’ll be able to take full advantage of this i9 processor, and that is going to be a beast of a rig when it comes.

Larry Jordan:  So what else we got?

James DeRuvo:  Microsoft announced that they had developed a curved image camera sensor, drawing inspiration from the human eye … this new CMOS design takes sliced portions of the sensor and presses it into a spherical mold using pneumatic pressure.  The result is twice the amount of image data and five times the resolution at the edge for a resolution that they say is better than the Canon 1DS Mark III, and it is scalable for every form of image sensor, including cell phones, all the way up to full frame.  This curved image sensor has been in development since 2014 with Sony and now Microsoft giving all their effort to it.  It’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing it in cameras anytime soon, but once it arrives, I think it’s going to be a game changer for everything from cell phones to cinema cameras.

Larry Jordan:  What advantage do we get with a curved sensor versus a flat sensor?

James DeRuvo:  The curved sensor enables you to see more.  That peripheral vision that you have with your eyeballs to where you can see details on the edges, the curved sensor will be able to provide more detail and more resolution at the outside of the edge whereas with the flat sensor, you tend to start losing detail as you get further away from the center, and so that curved sensor is going to be able to provide more detail and more resolution which will translate to a better image.

Larry Jordan:  James, for people that want more information about these and other stories, where can they go on the web?

James DeRuvo:  All these stories and more can be found at Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  James DeRuvo is the senior writer at DoddleNEWS and joins us every week with the DoddleNEWS update.  James thanks for joining us, and enjoy Cine Gear tomorrow.

James DeRuvo:  OK Larry.

Larry Jordan:  Here’s another website I want to introduce you to.  Doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries.  It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry.  DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platforms specifically designed for production.  These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listings, provide in depth organizational tools for busy production professionals.  DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts Community, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers.  From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with resources you need to succeed.  Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go.  Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan:  John DeBevoise’s career began as a national champion horseman and a rodeo writer, but that’s in the past.  The much more interesting part is that he’s the current host of Bizness Soup Talk radio which covers the business of running a small business with a focus on distribution.  Hello John, welcome.

John DeBevoise:  Well good evening and thank you for letting me be a part of your show.

Larry Jordan:  I was just reflecting, I went through our records of over 5,000 interviews we’ve done on the Buzz, and I think you are the first national champion rodeo rider I have ever interviewed.  So this is a first for me, and I’m tickled to be able to talk to you.

John DeBevoise:  I love being everybody’s first.

Larry Jordan:  Let’s focus on the interesting part of your life.  Why did you decide to start Bizness Soup Talk radio?

John DeBevoise: Bizness Soup Talk radio or Bizsoup came about after I had successfully launched an early internet company and it was successful in spite of myself.  I didn’t know how to start a business, I just knew that there was a business opportunity that technology could improve and make it work in a paperless environment which, at that time, it was in the real estate industry and every time we closed a transaction it was like we cut down a forest to make the deal, and I wanted to streamline the process.  And I did it, and it was such a struggle for me to do it, and then when somebody else came along and bought this company from me, an angel investor who had believed in me and invested in me, came forward and said “John, it’s time for you to do for others that which was done for you.”  It was at that moment that I became what is known as a business angel.  I thought the best way to get the message out, and the most cost effective, was through radio.  Now I didn’t know a thing about radio but I had a very good subject matter on not what to do when you launch a business so I created Bizness Soup Talk radio and surrounded myself with the experts in every aspect of business, and shared that information and wealth of talent on a radio program called Bizness Soup.

Larry Jordan:  I understand why you started it, but what are your goals for the program?  What are you hoping to accomplish?

John DeBevoise:  My goals are multi-faceted.  One is to share information and help entrepreneurs, small businesses, anyone who has ever wanted to have a business and show them that they should have a business.  When you have your own business, you’re able to do magical things, or at least seemingly magical, and that is take advantage of the tax code.  You don’t have to know the tax code, just know how to use the tax code, and there’s only one tax code.  It’s for those who are, as I put it, you’re either on a W2 or a 1099, and the 1099s are the ones who are small business owners, and we pay our own taxes.  We know how to convert ordinary expenses to deductions and with Bizness Soup that is one goal is to educate my audience.  The other goal that I have is to take businesses and help them grow through distribution.  Where do you want to go?  Who do you want to do business with?  And let’s go get them, and then I become the voice for them to network them into the businesses they want to do business with.

Larry Jordan:  Do you find yourself principally talking to companies that are marketing to the consumer, or companies marketing business to business?  Is there a difference in how you run the company?

John DeBevoise:  The answer is a cop out, and that is yes to both, because there isn’t anything that we do in our life that doesn’t have a business associated with it.  Even the air that we’re breathing has a small business tied to it, through the HVACs.  So I talk to my audiences both a consumer and a business person.  If you are a consumer, you should also be a business person.  A lot of times, and most of the time behind the scenes, when I go off the air is when I go to work with the people or the businesses that I work with, my sponsors, my advertisers.  I ask them, “Where do you want to go?  Who do you want to do business with?  Let’s build your company’s value and perhaps its stock value through the best and only way your value should go up, and that’s through revenue.”  If you make a big sale you boost your revenues, your stock value should go up, not because somebody went out and said “Buy this stock because I told you so.”

Larry Jordan:  Sorry, I was just waiting for the rest of that sentence to finish.  But here’s the question I’ve got John.  Take a breath.  The question I’ve got is, is every business similar or is every business unique reflecting the personality of the owner?  And the secondary question to that is, do people like yourself that are media focused and creating content, is their business different than say a real estate agent or a donut shop?

John DeBevoise:  Business is business.  It’s numbers.  It doesn’t really matter what kind of business you’re in when it comes to the paperwork.  Everybody has similar challenges, they’re just spelled differently.  A restaurant to a, well I’m sitting in a barn right now with a horse trainer.  They all have their own unique business models.  When you start to get into each one of the businesses, then the dynamics change, especially where your money is spent.  Some business models have a very low cost to acquisition of their product. As opposed to some industries where the cost of product is the highest number that they have, depending upon what it is.  In some industries your labor is highest.  A lot of industries like online, are not.  So the numbers on the spreadsheet add up all the same way, in the same kind of columns.  How you earn that money is different in the dynamics of the business model itself, and of course I come from the ranching and cattle industry and our margins are not very big.  We deal on volume or weight you might say.

Larry Jordan: I have to ask because there’s a key question I want to come back to in just a second, but you’re sitting in a barn with a horse trainer, and you grew up on a farm.  What got you started as a professional rodeo rider?

John DeBevoise:  Well, it certainly wasn’t because I had brain cells to sacrifice.  It was something that I grew up riding young horses, and I happened to be good at it.  And I was very difficult to buck off a horse at a young age, and it turned out that I could ride just about anything.  Unfortunately, my mother caught wind of my aspirations and she nipped that one in the bud.  I had to do that edumacation thing, you know, go off to school and earn a real living, and now I’m too old and I actually have some brain cells that I don’t want to lose.  And now and then on the weekends I get to sit up in the safe seats and announce rodeos.

Larry Jordan:  Oh that is very cool.  Well I want to come back to another question because I know that you attended NAB this year.  What did you think of the show?

John DeBevoise:  I love the show and the technology.  Oh my gosh, what I see on the other side of the glass where everybody with all of the buttons and whistles and everything such as that, it’s amazing the technology.  I’m not allowed to touch those buttons because good things don’t happen when I touch them.  But I was so impressed with distribution.  The content of our programs can now be terrestrial.  The traditional radio, internet, blog, you can text, you can do Facebook.  My gosh, what used to be such a simple job as to just turn the mike on and then shut up at the end of your term, now we actually have to work when we go off the radio.

Larry Jordan: Given the amount of technology in our lives, as typified by NAB, who do so many small businesses find technology overwhelming?

John DeBevoise:  It’s overwhelming in that in my opinion and from my experience in the creating of other businesses, in that the learning curve is so difficult.  So many software applications that I’ve found have so many steps and so many interfaces, that I get lost trying to find my way just to one page.  And I’m working with some companies now on the simplification, just because you have this big wheelhouse of a software application, doesn’t mean that everybody in the wheelhouse has to know how to use it.  The worker at the front counter doesn’t need to know how to apply the spreadsheet to tax returns, yet that is there on the screen in a lot of cases.  I find that either I’ve gotten dumber, or the technology has gotten so complicated that I’m overwhelmed with trying to learn.  Another aspect is I don’t have the patience that I used to have to try and learn this stuff.  If it doesn’t pop up and run as soon as I turn it on, that instant gratification syndrome, then people are going to lose interest and move on.  The frustrating thing for me is the learning curve on trying to apply this new technology.

Larry Jordan:  So what tips do you have for somebody running a business?  How can they improve their business?

John DeBevoise:  Video is where I see, and what I saw going on at NAB, is the big drive.  Is having the ability to engage your audience in video, not a long video, a short video which then takes them to a page that will give them an incentive to go deeper into a website. You’ve got to capture their attention and you’ve got 15 seconds to do it.  I’ve always found that humor works the best.  As we can see, some humor such as what Cathy Griffin did, falls far short of being effective and can be very negative.  I like to be able to entertain someone and if I can make them laugh they will remember it.  Engage them in some humor, and they’ll likely click on it, get them to give you some kind of personal information, an email address, phone number where you can be in contact with them on a regular basis, and I mean regular, depending upon the type of business.  If it’s weekly or monthly, be in touch with them on a regular basis and personalize it.  There are services out there that do this and I find them very effective.

Larry Jordan:  John, for people that want to have a chance to chat more with you and keep track of what you’re doing, where can they go on the web?

John DeBevoise:  The best website anywhere around can be found serving each and every day at www.bizsoup.com.

Larry Jordan:  That shy, modest and unassuming voice is John DeBevoise.  He’s the host of Bizness Soup Talk radio.  John, thanks for joining us today.

John DeBevoise: You’re welcome.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan:  Jim Bask is the marketing director for Video Guys.  He’s also a 20 year veteran of the challenges of selling video technology at retail, which explains why Video Guys focuses so intensively on customer service.  Hello Jim, welcome.

Jim Bask:  Hey Larry, nice to be here.

Larry Jordan:  How would you describe Video Guys?

Jim Bask:  Video Guys has been in the business for over 30 years, and we are a value added reseller.  A video production, video editing and live production equipment, hardware and software.  We try to help our customers before and after the sale, find the products they need that fit into their budgets.

Larry Jordan: Now is this online only or online and retail stores?

Jim Bask:  We do not have retail stores, but we have a crew of about 20 to 30 people here, full time that are ready and willing to answer phone calls and speak with the customers.  So we have a lot of stuff online, but we are here to answer phones as well.

Larry Jordan:  Without really working too hard at it, I can think of MacMall and I can think of B&H Photo and I can think of Amazon.  Why should somebody come to Video Guys?

Jim Bask:  Those customers are all very good people to buy from, Video Guys is just another resource out there.  We specialize in a very narrow niche in the marketplace.  B&H is a great resource to go for your cameras, your computer and everything else surrounding that.  MacMall has a huge Mac database of people.  We’ve been in the video production business working with local event videographers, and people of that sort, for this long, so we’ve all carved out our niche in the marketplace.

Larry Jordan:  How would you describe your niche then?

Jim Bask:  Our niche is really the video production person that is trying to duplicate what they may do on a professional setting in their home setting back in their office.  We have customers that are doing it as just a prosumer type use, we also have some entry level broadcast people that are coming to us as well.

Larry Jordan:  With this audience, why is customer service so important?

Jim Bask: Because there’s a lot of questions, first and foremost from budget.  The more you have to spend, the more choices you have available.  But the trick is to always find the right equipment for you at the right price.  Since we sell a huge catalog of products that fit into this very narrow space, we can help narrow down that solution to find the best product based on the project that you’re doing.

Larry Jordan:  Every vendor of every product you carry provides support.  Why do you need to get involved with support in the first place?

Jim Bask:  It’s not always easy reaching out to the vendor directly for support.  They all have different obstacles and different hurdles, and they can all speak very knowledgeably to their own product.  What we can do is speak knowledgeably to the complete solution.  So if you’re combining a live production unit from NewTec, with some pan tilt cameras from PTZ Optics, we’ve used that exact set up in our own studio here, and can help answer specific questions to how they work together.

Larry Jordan:  Did you go to NAB this year?

Jim Bask:  I was there this year, yes.

Larry Jordan:  How does NAB change your thinking in terms of what products you carry?  And what changes are you making based upon this year’s show?

Jim Bask:  One of the things that was great to see at this year’s show is that we’re already making some of the good decisions.  NewTec NDI technology was all over the show floor.  We’re excited to be one of NewTec’s nationwide resellers, so to see how NDI is becoming so prevalent and so popular, was a real encouraging thing to see.  But it also means that we’re expanding our catalog and our product base to include some more of those products that worked with that technology.

Larry Jordan: NDI means video over Ethernet as opposed to standard video cables.  They’re actually audio and video over Ethernet, correct?

Jim Bask: Correct.

Larry Jordan:  OK, what else caught your eye?

Jim Bask: There were quite a few things out there.  I think some of the great stuff that Avid is doing with their Media Composer software, and integrating that more with some of their Pro Tools and other audio tools is definitely exciting to see.

Larry Jordan:  If people are trying to make a decision on where they buy their next piece of gear, what criteria should they use in deciding who their vendor should be?

Jim Bask: First and foremost they need to identify what’s important for them as far as service goes.  If they can contact the vendor, get the answers to their questions and then what kind of support will they need after the sale?  We offer support here for all of our customers, but we also have a nationwide resource of other resellers.  So if there’s a school or university that calls us, and says they really want to work and deal with someone in the Texas area, we have resellers that we can refer them to in Texas to help set up and service their TriCaster or any other system that they’re looking at.

Larry Jordan: For people who want more information, where can they go on the web?

Jim Bask:  They can go to our website at videoguys.com.  They can also check out Facebook, Twitter or YouTube for videoguys.com.

Larry Jordan:  That website is all one word, videoguys.com and Jim Bask is the marketing director for Video Guys.  Jim, thanks for joining us today.

Jim Bask: Thanks Larry, have a great day.

Larry Jordan:  Aasim Saied is the chairman and CEO of Akyumen Technologies Corporation.  Akyumen designs, manufactures and delivers innovative electronic and mobile technology products to consumers worldwide.  Hello Aasim, welcome.

Aasim Saied:  Hello Larry, nice to talk to you.

Larry Jordan:  I first noticed you at your booth at the supermeet, at NAB.  You were demonstrating a new product called the Hawk Projector Smartphone.  What is this?

Aasim Saied:  The product that you saw at NAB is a cell phone that can project on high definition and this phone has all the bells and whistles of the latest and greatest smart phones and at the same time, it has nano technology architecture, so it’s a state of the art phone that can project on high definition.

Larry Jordan:  Why did you decide to develop this product?

Aasim Saied:  I saw that there is a big need for smart phones to take itself to the next level.  When it comes to people being so mobile, adding a projector to that device would help them make presentations, so putting a projector in there made sense.  But in order to do that, we literally needed to change the whole architecture of the device, so we went about making the powerful device that can not only help you do your business work, but it can be an entertainment device and also a device through which you can learn more through education content.

Larry Jordan:  Is this an entire phone, or an attachment to the back of a phone?

Aasim Saied:   This is a whole phone and there are no attachments to it.

Larry Jordan:  Who’s your target audience?  Gamers, media professionals or just people who watch movies?

Aasim Saied:  All the above.  A universal device that anybody can use to entertain, educate or do business.

Larry Jordan:   This is an android phone, I remember seeing that from the website.  What are your plans for ios?

Aasim Saied:   As you know, when it comes to Apple, they’re all about I, only for themselves.  They don’t share their operating system with others, so we made our devices for Android and also for Windows too.  For Windows we made a tablet and a fablet on Windows 10 with a built in projector as well.

Larry Jordan:   Is the Hawk phone shipping or is it still in development?

Aasim Saied:  It’s finished development, it’s shipping to carriers and distributors directly.  So it’s up to them to give it to the end customers.

Larry Jordan:  I noticed that there was the ability on your website to purchase the phone, and there it was listing a shipping date of August 1^st, so do we buy it from you or do we buy it from traditional retailers?

Aasim Saied:   That was created for the purpose of test marketing, so we had limited numbers, and those were sold out.  So those dates were meant for us shipping it to carriers and distributors.  We actually haven’t really marketed it out to the end customers yet.

Larry Jordan:   What’s the suggested retail price of the phone?

Aasim Saied:  It’ll be 799.

Larry Jordan:  Tell me why you decided to start the company, and what are your goals for it?

Aasim Saied:  The company was started a little while ago to solve the major problems in the mobile industry.  Our goals for the company is to build state of the art technologies which are a solution to people.

Larry Jordan:  What problems do you see having to be solved?

Aasim Saied:  One of the biggest problems people had was their devices were not that efficient.  If you look at most of the companies out there, they cut a lot of corners when it comes to components that go in the devices.  We don’t do that.  We make sure they’re high end components inside the device.  Of course a consumer may not see that, but they’ll feel it when they use the device.  Another big change is we used nano technology architecture to reduce heat.  When heat was reduced, battery life lasts longer, and because we have a projector in the device, if you don’t have our nano technology architecture, the device would have heated up and melted.  Solving the heat issue was a big thing that we did.

Larry Jordan:  There’s a lot of companies that have launched phones in the android space and some of them are pretty well capitalized.  What makes you think this is going to be successful?

Aasim Saied:  Getting capitalization in today’s world is not that difficult.  We can get capitalized too.  Usually a lot of people think that there’s Apples and Samsungs and the rest won’t have a chance.  You see that there are a lot of other devices out there that people don’t talk about, but they sell a lot more than the Apples and Samsungs if you look at the numbers globally.  So the market is filled with a lot of different devices, and there’s a chance for everybody to be successful looking at the growing market.

Larry Jordan:  Where’s the company based?

Aasim Saied:  We are headquartered in Los Gatos, California, and we have offices globally.

Larry Jordan:  It seems to me that you’ve taken a different perspective on what mobile technology can do.  What do you see as the future of mobile devices?

Aasim Saied: I think that the original idea for mobile devices was for people to travel and use it no matter where they go.  That’s the whole purpose of cell phones.  But a lot of people who travel are the ones who are doing business, and for business the most important thing is presentations.  So now they don’t have to carry those big projectors any more. They can just carry their own phone and with a click of a button they can do their presentations.  So cell phones with projectors make more sense for people.

Larry Jordan:  What website can people go to learn more about you and your products?

Aasim Saied:  They can go to Akyumen.com.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, akyumen.com, and Aasim Saied is the chairman and CEO of Akyumen Technologies, and Aasim, thanks so much for joining us today.

Aasim Saied: Thank you.

Larry Jordan:  Digital Sputnik makes a fully color tunable lighting solution for content creators.  Kaur Kallas is their CEO and joins us tonight to explain how they’ve embedded a colorist’s tool set into their tunable LED lights.  Hello Kaur, welcome.

Kaur Kallas:  Thank you, how are you?

Larry Jordan:  I am doing great.  I’m looking forward to learning about this because I love lighting.  How would you describe your products?

Kaur Kallas:  Our background is actually more colorist than traditional lighting person.  So when power LEDs came to the market, we looked around and we didn’t see any products that we really liked, because we wanted to make our life easier.  So, what we decided to do is to do color tunable lights.  So our concept is that you can now grade the light instead of grading the image.  So when digital imaging took the guesswork out of imaging by showing you an image on the set, you still had to light in the middle and then hope that it will work out in color grading.  So we want to do the same thing now for lighting that digital imaging did for imaging.  You can now have a look up table on the camera, and you can light according to the look up table.  So basically you can create a light to achieve the look that you want, instead of grading the image in post production.

Larry Jordan:  Your website describes the content creation industry going through a fundamental change.  What change is this?

Kaur Kallas:  Well it’s the same change that we’re moving away from programmable tool kits and shooting from experience to a totally visual world where we can already right then and there on the set, see an image that is very close to the final image.  I think ‘Ghost in the Shell’ was one of the first feature films to embrace our technology’s full potential.  We’ve had ‘Rogue One’ and ‘Independence Day,’ they dabbled with the lights, but they didn’t use the functionality to its full potential yet.

Larry Jordan:  There’s two schools of thought.  One is where you want the light on set to look exactly the way you want.  And the second is that you want to tweak your look in post production, especially color grade, because as the story evolves you may want to change it, and if you bake all of your look in on set you can’t change it later.  It sounds like you fall on the side of making it look right on set?

Kaur Kallas:  Because if you don’t know what you’re doing on the set, you’re not going to be able to know what you’re doing in color grading either.  So basically, our concept is, we’re seeing that more and more people are spending more time pre-lighting to find exactly what you want, and this way it’s visually easier because if you just shoot something in the middle and hope that it works out in color grading, then you’re not usually going to end up with a very good finished product.

Larry Jordan:  You were talking about the fact you can apply a color look up table to the lights.  It sounds like your lights are more than just white?

Kaur Kallas:  Yes, our lights have a very wide color range on whites. You can start from 1500K which is candlelight and then go all the way up to 10,000K which is kind of a bluish moonlight light.  Then in addition to the Kelvin, controls, you can now either warm up or cool down the light with a Kelvin on white, and then you can mix in any primary or secondary color into that light.  So, you can basically use the same color wheel base to set that is used for color grading now to control your lights.

Larry Jordan:  Other LED companies tout how color accurate their lights are with a 90 percent or 95 or 98 percent accuracy.  It sounds like you’re less interested in the accuracy of the light and more the color spectrum, is that a true statement?

Kaur Kallas:  No, it’s not correct.  We’re interested in accuracy also, but what we’re not interested in is getting a high CRI number because we are looking at giving the digital CMO sensors as much dramatic information as possible.  So our approach is to give the sensors more color depth or aesthetically more saturation than they get from white light while keeping the light very precise.  This way you get a lower CRI rating with our lights, but you get a higher quality image than you get with high CRI lights.

Larry Jordan:  How do you control your lights?

Kaur Kallas:  You can control the lights locally over DMX, or our own application which runs on ios wirelessly.

Larry Jordan:  You’re wandering around with an iPhone adjusting the lights?

Kaur Kallas:  Exactly.  So you set up your lights, you go behind the camera, and now you can use your iPhone to fine tune these lights remotely.

Larry Jordan:  What’s the pricing for your instruments?

Kaur Kallas:  The DS1, that is a single modular light, is $2,500 list price.  At Cine Gear we’re launching a new product called the Voyager which is an RGB pixel controllable tube light.  The two foot unit is going to be $390 and the four foot unit is going to be $590.

Larry Jordan:  So for people attending Cine Gear later this week they can find you there?

Kaur Kallas:  We’re lighting up the RED ticket cinema booth.  They have a stage there, and it’s all our lights.  So we don’t have our own separate booth, but you can see our lights at the RED booth.

Larry Jordan:  The RED booth is probably the best possible place to be in terms of size and visibility.  Congratulations.

Kaur Kallas:  Absolutely, thank you.

Larry Jordan:  For people that can’t make Cine Gear, where can they go on the web to learn more?

Kaur Kallas:  Digitalsputnik.com or Instagram/digitalsputnik.  We put our latest images from behind the scenes on Instagram usually on a daily basis.

Larry Jordan:  That’s all one word, digitalsputnik.com and Kaur Kallas is the CEO of Digital Sputnik, and Kaur, thanks for joining us today.

Kaur Kallas: Yeah, thank you for having me.

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Larry Jordan:  Paul Rodriguez is a member of the executive board of MPSE, he’s also the vice president of audio services for RoundAbout, which oversees sound operations across feature films, television, home entertainment, new media and restoration.  Hello Paul, welcome.

Paul Rodriguez:  Thank you, good to hear your voice.

Larry Jordan:  Paul, the last time we talked was at NAB where you gave us an overview of the MPSE.  Tonight I want to spend more time learning about it.  What is the MPSE?

Paul Rodriguez:  The MPSE is the Motion Picture Sound Editors.  It’s an organization that has been around for 63 years, and is dedicated to promoting the art and craft of sound editing for all media.

Larry Jordan:   Now is it a Guild?

Paul Rodriguez:   No.  It’s not a Guild.  We don’t have anything to do with labor.  We are a community.

Larry Jordan:   Now what does community mean?

Paul Rodriguez:   Well it means we have about 500 members, we have monthly meetings, we have a new series called Sound Advice for our members, where we introduce them to vendors, new ways of doing things, and we have those usually at the studios.

Larry Jordan:   What are typical activities that people participate in?

Paul Rodriguez:   We just had one with Isotope, a plugin company.  We sometimes invite members of the organization that have done a major feature film or television show.  Those are also taped, and available to members who can’t make it to the show.

Larry Jordan:  One of the things your website says is that you try to encourage young people to consider a career in sound editing.  How does your organization do that?

Paul Rodriguez:  We have a student membership which is relatively inexpensive, and as they travel down that road to becoming a sound editor, they can move up to an affiliate and then a full time member.  We offer our members to speak to any of the young students and give advice.  I get many calls from young people trying to figure out how to reverse the world of getting into the business.  Usually they’re very interested in music, and so we all have a lot in common.

Larry Jordan:  I can believe that.  I was just thinking, this is probably a volunteer position.  What do you do for your day job?

Paul Rodriguez: My day job, well I’m on the business side of things, and what I do is I bring in shows and hire mixers and editors and promote our work.  Just this year we did the first season of Westworld.  The remake of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ shows like that and next year is going to be crazy too because right now we’re doing a show called ‘Mister Mercedes,’ and it is based on a Stephen King novel so it’s going to be kind of crazy.

Larry Jordan:  I should probably take a step back.  What is RoundAbout then?

Paul Rodriguez:  RoundAbout is a full service post production facility, about 60,000 square feet in Burbank, California.  We just opened a new 10,000 square feet facility in Santa Monica, so we have a Westside presence as well.  And together we do pretty much everything that you do in post, with the possible exception of visual effects.  I have four mix rooms for two men.  Two one man mix rooms and a full ADR at both locations.  Tomorrow, I’m proud to say, we have every one of our stages booked.

Larry Jordan:   Congratulations.  That’s an accomplishment.

Paul Rodriguez:  Thank you.  It is, especially since you know, two years ago they didn’t exist.

Larry Jordan:   When you’re looking for projects are you looking just for work from the major studios or do you do a lot of work with independents?  Who’s your clientele?

Paul Rodriguez:  Major studios, networks.  We like independent films as well.  We just did something for an IMAX company today so we do quite a bit.  We’re varied in our work.  Mostly what we do is put relationships together, so most of the shows that we have have worked with a company before, somewhere down the line, and what we do is invite them to our house and make them dinner.

Larry Jordan:  Well what does it take to build a relationship with a filmmaker?  What do they need to bring to you to make that relationship successful?

Paul Rodriguez:  Well, it takes time and it takes experience.  It’s always a good experience.  If you have a good experience on a prior project, they’re going to want to seek you out and come back.  If you have a fabulous facility, they’re going to want to come in and hang up their coat.  So it’s a combination of the two things, and people don’t come for the business guy, me, but they might stay because I’m here.  But I rely heavily on my mixers and my editors.  We work with a lot of different companies, and this just happens to be the hot spot in Hollywood right now.  And when I say Hollywood, that’s a state of mind.

Larry Jordan: It is, it spreads out over a lot of cities.

Paul Rodriguez:  Yeah, even the MPSE, we’re based in Los Angeles, but we have members all over the world.

Larry Jordan:  Because you speak to so many young students, does MPSE have a scholarship program?

Paul Rodriguez:  Yes we do.  The one thing I forgot to say is every year we also put on the Golden Reel Awards which has been happening ever since the beginning of the organization. In that Awards show, we present over 26 awards to all aspects of sound editing for film, broadcast, for gaming, and at some point soon, for VR which will be something that people will be getting into.  It’s a banquet that’s held every year at the Bonaventure.  We usually feed 750 people and I produce that show and it is a flaming success.  Everybody loves to be there.  I encourage people once they get involved in the MPSE to make that trip to the Golden Reel Awards.

Larry Jordan:  For people that want more information about RoundAbout, where can they go on the web?

Paul Rodriguez:   They should go to roundabout.com, it’s relatively easy.

Larry Jordan:   That’s all one word, roundabout.com, and for people who want more information about becoming a member of MPSE, or taking advantage of some of your programs, where can they go?

Paul Rodriguez:   They should go to MPSE.org and they will see all of the applications, and it’s very easy to traverse and get in, and then they’ll contact our office.

Larry Jordan:  That website again is MPSE.org, and Paul Rodriguez is both a member of the executive board of MPSE, and the vice president of audio services for RoundAbout.  Paul, thanks for joining us today.

Paul Rodriguez: Thank you for having me.

Larry Jordan: Take care.

Larry Jordan:  Today’s show has focused on ways to do things better, and whether we’re looking at better ways to run a business, or better ways to buy product or some of the new products that are out there, it’s been a very interesting and diversified show which has been fun to listen to.

Larry Jordan:  I want to thank our guests this week, John DeBevoise, the host of Bizness Soup Talk radio, Jim Bask, marketing director for Video Guys, Aasim Saied, CEO of Akyumen, Kaur Kallas is CEO of Digital Sputnik, Paul Rodriguez of MPSE and RoundAbout and as always, James DeRuvo with DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan:   There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website, at digitalproductionbuzz.com.  Here you’ll find thousands of interviews, all online and all available to you today.  Remember to sign up for our free weekly show newsletter that comes out every Friday.

Larry Jordan:  Talk with us on Twitter @DPBuZZ and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan:   Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner with additional music provided by Smartsound.com.  Text transcripts are provided by Take1 Transcription.  Visit Take1.tv to learn how they can help you.

Larry Jordan:   Our producer is Debbie Price, my name is Larry Jordan, and thanks for listening to The Digital Production Buzz.

Larry Jordan:  The Digital Production Buzz is copyright 2017 by Thalo LLC.