I dare you to become an uber-nerd....! Amaze your friends, show off
to your family, transcend the rudimentary and banal knowledge base of
most digital filmmakers. Take the plunge and read the Digital Fact
Book...!
This free e-book (embedded below and available as PDF download from HERE)
is a complete A-Z a reservoir of knowledge concerning the terms,
technology and technicalities of digital and electronic media
production. What makes it particularly special is that it is written
and presented in away that is very accessible and eminently reaable
(assuming you're just a little bit nerdy to begin with :)
From AAF format and the AlphaChannel; through Gamma, LUT and the NyquistLimit and on to Wavelet and YUV the Digital Fact Book is a first class resource full of digrams, easy explanations and succinct descriptions.
Knowledge is power. The more you know, the more self-sufficient you are and the more employable you become.
Shooting with the RED camera is the easy bit; it's post-production that can quickly feel like dancing on quicksand. Having put half a dozen short films through post now and heading into shooting the next batch we have certainly learned many lessons and discovered many things about working with 2k, 4k and RAW formats.
With our next set of students preparing to shoot Red and/or debating amongst themselves about whether they want to shoot Red, it was time to revisit the key concepts of 4k and RAW and layout plans for effective and efficient workflows. Whilst some students may vary according to the needs of their projects we have effectively decided upon 2 major pathways. One uses Final Cut Pro and an online 2k ProRes process and the other utilizes a native 4k RAW workflow in Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Both work very well and have been proven in our past productions. The former puts all the heavy processing at the front end with a batch-transcoding process baking the one-light into the ProRes files; the later mantains native RAW all the way through the pipeline. There's no doubt about it, the RAW workflow offered by Adobe leaves Final Cut loooking like a lame duck by comparission. But, that said, the efficiency and simiplicyt of online ProRes 2k files (once you have generated them) is very attractive.
For the full breakdown of the RAW format, its pros and cons and the two workflows we explore at the International Film School Sydney you can read the class notes from our production website http://ifsstech.wordpress.com/class-notes/
Ian Hunter talks about visual effects on The Dark Knight
Special effects master from New Deal Studios, Ian Hunter, discusses his
work on films such as the Dark Knight, Spiderman, the X-Files and X-Men
at the International Film School Sydney. Ian talks in detail about the
process of visual effects production, relationships with directors and
producers as well as some fascinating insights into the productions he
has worked on. Ian in particular offers an informed and holistic
perspective on relationship between digital and physical effects.
Unless you have been a sleep under a rock shrouded in a veil of
techno-seclusion you will have no doubt encountered the great deal of
Buzz around the upsurge in HD video modes on Digital SLR cameras.
Canon, Panasonic and Nikon have all come to the party offering
various implementations of HD video at 720 and 1080 modes. And of
course all these developments have been in the shadow of RED's
forthcoming Hybrid Still/Video camera - Scarlet.
The potential of such cameras is huge - excellent prime lenses for
SLR's are CHEAP and the sensors on even the most humble DSLR are huge
by comparison to that of virtually any video camera. This combined with
the cost falling and capacity rising of compact flash memory cards, is
a rather good recipe for indie filmmakers.
Its not all rosy; none of the cameras from Nikon, Canon and
Panaosnic have really got it 'right' yet. All are flawed. Some like the
Nikon have very little control over exposure in video modes, others
like the new Canon can only manage 20frames per second (presumably
because of risk of overheating that Cannon engineers havnt yet found a
solution for)
But teething issues aside, there is no doubt enormous promise here that over the next couple of years will no doubt mature.A student of mine from the International Film School Sydney, Alex Moir, has gotten his hands on a Nikon D90
and has set about seeing how far its video mode can be pushed. The
results are below and are remarkable. Certainly the image isnt perfect;
the level of compression is a bit overt at times and may cause banding
issues in post-production. There are also frequency issues with scan
lines when shooting under certain light sources (but these of course
can happen with any video camera under certain lights if you're not
careful). But, on the whole the image is rather impressive. The size of
the sensor grabs an enormous amount of light out of the air. The
clarity of even a half decent Nikon lens is superb. Al this in a camera
costing less than $2k. certainly there is not a video camera on the
market anywhere near that price that can produce a moving image as good.
The history of cinema as an art is the history of cinema as a technology. For every technological advancement, every evolution in the tools of both building and experiencing cinema there is profound change in the art cinema presents.
Among the myriad of changes - from the the fluid-head tripod to the steadicam, from chemical film stock to digital binary - the step from the edit-table to the edit-computer is one of the most profound.This change didn't just make things faster or easily undone with an CTRL-Z but, more significantly, changed the expectations of what the editor could do, changed the mindset of the editor's process and, fundamentally altered the job description of Editors themselves.
In setting up a new edit suite at the International Film School Sydney we have implemented a physical manifestation of this evolution. Or new edit bay (geared for real-time uncompressed HD online editing, effects, compositing and colour-grading as well as working with RAW footage from the RED camera) features an 8-core MacPro, terabytes of RAID storage, and AJA video card and SDI interface and a pair of 28inch HD lCD monitors.
And all this lovely digital hardware goodness is mounted upon a custom modified Steenbeck editing table. Old-school meets New school.
The Steenbeck had spent several years gathering dust in a corner of the school until we struck upon the master stroke of mounting a glass top over the sprockets and turning the whole thing into a table. So, as you sit and cut with all the glories of the digital age, you can peer through the glass and reflect upon the olden days.... A unique editing experience that taps into the IFSS philosophy - Never be Boring when you can be Fascinating....
It seems like just yesterday that Celtx emerged from the long tunnel of beta development and into the bright open air of full release. Version 1.0 heralded Celtx's move onto the full field of play and daring to offer a complete end-to-end solution for pre-production and creative media development in a market of largely insular, highly proprietary and niche tools.
The release last week of Celtx version 2.0 marks a maturing of the system and a bold step into online collaboration and access that embodies the leading edge web2.0 ideas of cloud-computing.
Before we get to what is new about Celtx 2.0 its worth surveying what Celtx offers for the uninitiated. Built on an open-source base of the Mozilla (Firefox) engine, Celtx presents what is best described as an open creative production platform. Whilst certainly Celtx is a tool for writing and formatting screenplays it would be a fundamental mistake to think of Celtx as a glorified word processor. Celtx offers specific tools for writing a diversity of media script formats - screen, stage, 2column AV, radio plays and audio scripts as well as plain text documents and even scripting for graphic novels and comics. Celtx embodies the broad spectrum approach of contemporary media industries.
But Celtx does not stop at writing, it envelopes comprehensive systems for production breakdown, scheduling, project management, storyboarding and visualization, a database system for department collation and creative tools for fleshing out the core components of the dramatist; character and plot.
With all this, you could be forgiven for wondering what else could be packed in? More than just refinements and fixes, Celtx 2.0 represents the next major expansions to the Celtx toolbox that go far beyond is base functionality.
Celtx has long had a online component known as Project Central that provides web-based storage and exchange of projects between both collaborators and the wider public. Version 2.0 moves this idea a huge leap forward with the introduction of the Celtx Studio; a virtual online desktop environment. Celtx Studio delivers all the functionality of local access using familiar interface paradigms of desktop folders to provide an accessible online production platform.
Projects can be saved directly to the Studio from the local install of Celtx and shared directly with collaborators. The Studio retains every element of a project, can host multiple versions, do side by side comparison of versions and provide notification of changes by collaborators.
The Celtx Studio embraces the power and flexibility of the online cloud computing model exemplified by Google Apps but in a highly intuitive and logical environment that functions in almost everyway like a local desktop.
On a simple level the Celtx Studio gives you complete security of online backup and storage of your scripts, research, production notes and production documents with the added bonus of all your projects being available to you anywhere anytime you are online.
At a more sophisticated level the Celtx Studio provides arguably the most functional collaboration system for screenwriters, directors and producers available today. A flexible online desktop environment where scripts and projects can be constructed and revised by multiple contributors; not just in regard to script but in the contexts of every phase of production.
The Celtx Studio heralds the arrival of the long awaited Pro Services arm of the Celtx system. Whilst the open-source base application of Celtx is free for anyone to use (on any major OS and in 25 languages no less) the newly introduced pro services system offer the opportunity for users to purchase dynamic and powerful extensions to Celtx to fuel their particular production needs. This begins with the Studio which offers its complete range of online management and collaboration tools for just $50 per year; any way you slice it this is a mind boggling bargain by comparison to any system on the market. Existing Celtx users can use the Studio free until the end of March to see how they like it.
Beyond the Studio the Celtx Toolbox, which is accessible from the Celtx GUI as a simple button, is the mechanism for installing pro extensions to Celtx. For anyone who uses Firefox the system will be immediately recognizable as much the same as the Firefox extensions system. With 2.0 Celtx have added the first extension, a convertor to translate Celtx catalogues to standard CSV data readable in spreadsheet and database tools like Xcel.
Celtx promise a host of new free and purchasable extensions in the Celtx Toolbox over the coming year and have also opened up the Toolbox system for third-party developers to produce their own extensions. The possibilities for this system to extend the functionality and power of Celtx, and built of the infrastructure of Firefox, are virtually limitless. Moreover the plug-in nature of the system makes it a fully extensible open-architecture that leaves the user free to buy only the extensions they need when they need them.
Celtx 2.0 is a huge conceptual and practical step forward and promises a dynamic and exciting period ahead for Celtx as it continues to deliver the most comprehensive and holistic production development platform on the market. Celtx resoundingly breaks the restrictive paradigm mode so many other creative tools seem trapped in to deliver a truly fresh and free-thinking approach to software development.
* Disclosure: Over the past 3 years I have been involved in testing and advising on the development of Celtx in an ad-hoc way and have produced a number of videos for Celtx showing how it may be used in production. I am, however, not an ongoing employee of Celtx and recieve no finanical benefit from championing the cause of Celtx. I simply think it is the most dynamic, vibrant, forward-thinking and down-right exciting software tool Ive ever used in my 15 years of experience. It's free (so I can hardly be accused of 'selling', open-source, powerful and provides opportunity for commercial viability into the future. Final Draft, Movie Magic, Marniner should be downright terrified because their antiquted models and insular perspective are simply not in the 21st century by comparission.
Automatic Duck: the software we love but shouldn't need
Automatic Duck is a system of NLE and DAW plugins that facilitate seamless exchange of projects between different software platforms. The humble EDL served for some time in this capacity but its rudimentary structure is simply inadequate for much more complex contemporary software tools. OMF and AAF likewise promise much in the way of inter application exchange but have thus far failed to fully deliver.
Take up of AAF by major software developers is sporadic and inconsistent. Apple have taken a brave step away from the Avid derived AAF system by moving to XML, a completely open standard that is (at least in theory) universal. XML may well be the future for open exchange but at the moment whilst XML itself is open the manner by which different apps write XML varies enormously.
So we arrive at Automatic Duck whose sole purpose is to form a bridge between applications and platforms. Final Cut Pro, Avid, Qantel, After Effects, ProTools and so on.
Automatic Duck is efficient effective and very bloody useful. It's also a tragedy that Automatic Duck as a product exists. It's a sad indictment of dysfunctional corporate proprietary interests that there is a market for Automatic Duck at all. Automatic Duck is a system whose reason for being is to make up for the shortcomings and lack of vision on the part of the worlds NLE and DAW system developers.
That being so, so many creative producers owe their workflow functionality and mental sanity to Automatic Duck and the gap that it fills. And a great many worthy product solutions have come out of the plugging of gaps left open by the short sightedness of others.
Planning is Power. Any filmmaker woth their salt knows this truism to be well evidenced. In the digital age that power of planning is most evident in the structure and progression of the Workflow model.
This site from DataLab steps through the all-digital, tapless, workflow structure of David Fincher's feature film Zodiac. Charged with developing a clear and efficeint workflow for Fincher, DataLab came up with a system that allow for digital dallies and efficient online approvals as well as a totally uncompressed conform.
The workflow plan made use of standard everyda hardware, the much commoditized Final Cut Pro NLE system and common file formats such as DVCProHD and AVC/h.264. The same workflow today might move away from DVCProHD to much more efficient lossless Wavelet compression codecs such as Cineform and ProRes but, none the less, the workflow shows a major 'hi-end' film employing everyday technology and that should help point the way for all budget spectrums.
In much the same vein I have of late been involved in developing schematic workflow structures for my students at the International Film School Sydney to help guie them through various post production options. These workflow plans are matched to the technology used within the school and the evolving skill and knowledge base of the students as they progress through the course. Starting with simple DV and a limited range of software post-production choices and flowing onto HD and a multitude of editing, effects, sound and colour grading options.
These structures are built around the core cocnepts of the IFSS philosophy which is to develop and educate self-sufficient, holistically skilled, independant filmmakers who are flexible and adpatable; filmmakers who know how to get great results out of limited resources, filmmakers who know how to do More with Less. The schematics dont cover every possibility or nessasarilly the 'best' for your particular prodction but they do provide a good visual infomatic to visualise and plan a clear on-line digital workflow process.
Planning is power because every minute you spend on planning is 5 extra minutes you'll have to focus on creative choices rather than technical ones.
The four IFSS schematics for post workflow covering DV, HDV 720 and 1080 as well as XDCAMEX can be found at the International Film School Sydney student resource site known as IFSSPRODUCTION in the 'Production Bible' section. This student resource, which is open to everyone, contains a huge range of useful production documents, guides and checklists for student and indie filmmakers.
Free creative software and resources list (updated)
Here follows the updated concise list of some of the most useful, powerful, functional and downright clever free software apps, utilities, plugins and resources available to the creative media maker.
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Celtx is the creative development tool of the digital age. 100% Open Source and Free to download and use. It combines screenplay formatting with script break-down tools, research and production scheduling functions. Forget that its Free, Celtx is the best tool of its kind on the market - integrated, comprehensive, holistic and very very functional. There just isnt a reaosn on the planet to Not be using Celtx. (Win, Mac) www.celtx.com
Audacity is an excellent open source, cross-platform digital audio waveform editor that can work with a wide variety of audio codecs including wav, aiff and mp3. (Win, Mac) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Blender provides a powerful, free and open-source 3D modelling and graphics application that is complete with all the professional features you could want. modelling, rendering, animating, radiosity, textures, virtual cameras . (Win, Mac) http://www.blender.org
Directors Boards is a very useful A/V storyboarding and script management tool. Perfect for those who like to storyboard with digital photos Uses a FileMaker Pro engine but doesnt require FileMaker to be installed. (Win, Mac) http://www.directorsnotebook.com/
QT Movie Notetaker allows you to annotate Quicktime video files with specific timecode references. Perfect for reviewing a work in progress or providing feedback on a video project (Win, Mac) http://www.dvcreators.net/qt-movie-notetaker/
Mpeg streamclip Cross platform encoding tool that is extremely effective. Will read program and transport stream formats and transcode to a host of MOV and AVI wrapped files. (Win, Mac) http://www.squared5.com/
DVD Shrink is the long standing Windows-based tool for ripping and recompressing DVD's. Of course many may use such a tool for illegal copies but with a good feature for selective DVD extraction its perfect for extracting individual scene clips. Such clips are great as examples for developing a films design or for those teaching filmmaking to demonstrate techniques and ideas. (Win) http://www.dvdshrink.org/
Mac the ripper. For Mac users who don't have access to shrink Mac the Ripper is your best option for DVD extraction. Though it lacks the detailed extraction of Shrink it can rip by DVD chapters. (Mac) http://www.mactheripper.org/
VLC. When you've finally hit the wall and can no longer tolerate the absurdities and incopetantcies of the QuickTime player (like its inability recognize widescreen anamorphic flags) move yourself on to VLC and never look back. VLC pays just about every format known to humankind. No mess, no fuss, just a better media player for all OS's. Lean, mean and effective. (Win, Mac) http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Aspect ratio calculator. This is a simple java app that runs directly without installing and allows you to quickly calculate pixel dimensions based on 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Just plug in a horizontal measurement and the utility will calculate the vertical dimension (or vise versa). Great for scaling videos for online deliver in correct ratios. Cross-platform. (Win, Mac) http://www.wideopendoors.net/design/aspect_ratio_calculator.html
Zipeg. There are near countless archive formats around (zip, rar, iso and so on) and Zipeg, available for Mac and windows, is free and unzips them all. (Win, Mac) http://www.zipeg.com/
Video space widget. For Mac users the Digital Heaven VideoSpace calculator runs a very useful widget. Elect your video format (hdv, dvcpro, dv, prores, uncompressed, xdcamhd, imx) and the duration and the widget will do an immediate calculation o the fie size. (Mac) http://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/videospace/
Gspot. If you wrestle with online video, downloaded video and video scrounged in all manner of weird and wonderful codecs Gspot is your best friend. A simple drag and drop of the file will reveal everything you need to know about it - data rate, codec, format and what application you may need to open it. Windows only. (Win) http://www.headbands.com/gspot/
Reaper. Not 100% free but very bloody close to it ($50 for non-commercial use, $175 for pro users) Reaper is an amazingly powerful, totally functional and astoundingly efficient multitrack sequencer and audio system. Reaper is directly comparable to Sony's Acid, Adobe Audition and Apple SoundtrackPro and exceeds all three in some areas. What is truly staggering is that Reaper has comparable features to these three apps and yet the installer is just 3.2mb in size. So why is it that Acid, SoundTrack and Audition take up multiple DVD's..? Windows only for now but an OSX version coming soon. (Win) http://www.reaper.fm/
Adobe Media Player. leveraging of the Flash platform and the FLV/On2 video format into what is arguably the most comprehensive net-TV system for RSS vieo feeds. Its slick, its powerful, its free. if you're into watching lots of online video then its hard to go past. (Win, Mac) http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/
Miro Media Player. The open source answer to Adobe Media Player (AMP), Miro is a very comprehensive RSS video feeder, downloader and viewer. Miro offers all the power of AMP but in a completely open platform. (Win, Mac) http://www.getmiro.com/
BlipTV. Of all the copious video hosting sites that flood the internet its BlipTV that have really found the right mix of ease of use, sophistication, clarity and quality. BlipTV doesn't play in the same lowest common denominator game as the likes of YouTube and its numerous clones; instead BlipTV is focused on hosting quality online video as a personal online Tv channel. It has fantastic RSS features, great embedding and player options, a clean simple interface and can host multiple versions and formats. t also has a Blog system built in. Blip once had competition from Stage6 and Brightcove but with Stage6 having its plug pulled and Brightcove going corporate only, BlipTV is left standing as one of the best video hosting options around. For filmmakers in particular Blip makes a perfect on-line showreel system. blip.tv
Ice Clean. The Mac OSX is a lovely efficient operating system but occasionally it demonstrates true absurdity. One such example is that all the built-in OS maintenance features are pre-set to run at ungodly hours of the morning. The geniuses at Apple obviously assume that EVERYONE leaves their computer on all night and doesn't use sleep mode to allow for this self-cleaning. Of course if you, like me, dont leave your computer on all night because you refuse to be a wasteful, environmental vandal, and do use sleep mode, your poor Mac may never get a chance to clean itself. The answer is IceClean which is a powerful system for manually running the maintenance protocols on your Mac. http://www.macdentro.com/MacDentro/Home.html
Switch. Is the free version of NCH audio editing software that functions as a simple but very effective audio file convertor. Perfect for converting OGG or FLAC files to more universal WAV or AIFF. (Win, Mac) http://www.nch.com.au/switch/
Perian for Quicktime Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. In simple terms it gives Quicktime the ability to play a host of different file formats that it otherwise cannot. In even simpler terms, Perian gives to QT what it SHOULD HAVE HAD IN THE BLOODY FIRST PLACE! Perian is an absolute Must have for every mac user. (Mac) http://perian.org/
Databases are one of those things most often shrouded in arcane technical mystery. For those who've yet to utilize a database in a personal or meaningful way, it s easy to dismiss them as belonging to IT nerds and the heavy demands of major corporations needing to keep track of vast amounts of data.
Stalwarts of database software developers, Filemaker Pro, have made a new effort at humanizing database software with Bento, a software app designed specifically for personal users and developed exclusively for Mac OSX Leopard. Bento aims at presenting an open framework that can be assembled to meet specific users needs while retaining template based drag-and-drop functionality. To a very large degree Bento achieves this balance, keeping flexibility and accessibility in equal measure.
In broad terms, the key purpose of a database is to act not so much as a place to store information but rather, more importantly, a means by which information can be retrieved and found, sorted and arrayed. A database is more about data management then data storage. But of course, as the old saying from movie editors the world over goes, ?Garbage in Garbage out. Any database is only as useful as the reliability of the information you put in.
With the recent posts and discussions on the importance of BackUp its worth mentioning some efficient and free ways to backup project files remotely. Its one thing to have your NLE Project Files and EDL's, not to mention screenplays, treatments and outlines backed-up in multiple periodic versions on your hard drive and external backup harddrive, but what if your hard drive(s) is stolen? Dropped in a swimming pool? Eaten by piranah?
The only sure solution is to have a secondary backup to a remote location - ie. in a different city/state/country. There are number of very simple ways you can do this. And The first, best and simplest is CELTX.
I assume you're all using Celtx for your screenwriting, project management, breakdown and scheduling of productions (and if you're not WHERE HAVE YOUY BEEN....? get with the program. Celtx is where it is at. No other software system on the market can do what Cletx does, nothing else is as efficient, flexible, powerful or functional. And its FREE!) )
But even Celtx users may not have yet used the Online Hosting and Collaboration features. In simple terms this allows you to upload your Celtx project to the Celtx server (which is deep in the wilds of Canada in an underground silo protected by polar bears and very fierce moose).
This upload can be viewed online from the Celtx Project Central site (http://pc.celtx.com)
The Project Central service allows for both public or private hosting of your project and is built for collaboration and exchange between writers and filmmakers remotely. But Project Central has some hidden gem features they may not be obvious at first glance. By being a remote host for your project it is also a secure remote backup of your project should your house burn down taking your creative life with it.
But thats not all. Within the local Celtx Project you can not only create screenplays and various text documents but you can also attach outside documents as well - this is most often Word or Xcel documents, PDF, videos, pictures and sound files. These files are zipped up inside the Celtx file and are uploaded along with the rest of the bundle to Project Central.
So it shouldn't take a genius to work out that this is a perfect way to backup your editing software project files (Premiere *.pproj or Final Cut *.fcp or Vegas *.veg), EDL's, XML, AAF and OMF files. All these can be attached as outside files to a Celtx Project and subsequently backed-up remotely with a click of a button, and retrieved at will by simply downloading your Celtx file from Project Central if you need to restore lost projects..
As if you needed any more reasons to love CELTX...?!
That said, if you want more dedicated online remote storage there are a number of services that provide free storage. Size limitations and bandwidth constraints make this kind of storage not suitable for full-res video media itself but if you have large amounts of document data - scripts, writings, project files and so on - an online hosted remote back-up might be a very good idea. X-Drive offers 5gb of free storage and a very efficient local application that enables you to drag and drop from your desktop directly to the online server.
Likewise I-Drive offers a similar service with both Mac and Windows desktop clients for transfer.
And MediaMax tops them all for sheer size with a very generous 25gb of free online storage.
These services are great for storing moderate amounts of data but in truth for sheer simplicity and functionality of project management with the EDL/AAF/XML/ProjectFile, you cant go past using Celtx; keep your edit backup with your script and all your pre-production documenttation. One File to Rule them All.
Ok, so now you have absolutely NO BLOODY EXCUSE WHATSOEVER for EVER having a crash or technology meltdown cause the end of the world! Between periodic project file backups, EDL backups, XML and AAF backups, and remote server backups to Celtx or Xdrive, there really is no excuse.
Take a professional approach to your work, manage your workflow carefully, plan your process and backup daily and you cant go wrong.
Another solution for dealing with MAC/PC hard drive issues
Of late I've written about workign corss-platform and dealign with hard drive format issues of Read/Write permissions between NTFS and HFS+. The freeware HFS Xplorer is one solution which allows for Windows computers to access and copy files from Mac HFS+ format hard drives. It works very well but if you?re willing to cough up a few bucks there is a better solution available.
NTFS for Mac by Paragon software will set you back about $45 and when installed allows for a Mac to natively read AND write to NTFS formatted hard drives. So you can format your external hard drive as NTFS for PC and then be able to work with it natively on your Mac as well Windows machines. If you need to work cross-platform and particularly if you?re using Bootcamp this is a great solution at a bargain price.
There was time when it was unthinkable but the unthinkable, it seems, has become a reality - Windows on a Mac. But aside from the novelty value, the revelation of a dual operating system opens up new possibilities for video and digital media producers and rises above the traditionally application restricted and insular Mac platform.
For far too long the great computer platform debate has centered on the operating system but the truth is that the OS is the least significant part of the video maker's toolkit. It's not the operating system that is the focus of the editor's work, its the applications, the software tool interface that will be center of attention. It's the NLE where the editor will spend most of their time, not the elements of the OS. Choosing your computer system based on the operating system and then forcing yourself to be restricted to the software native to that OS is plainly silly. Logic would dictate that choosing the software tools that best fit your workflow, and which best match your creative style, first and then getting the OS to match that software is a far more functional perspective.
Of course the computer platforms themselves get in the way, enforcing software restrictions and preventing video makers from choosing the right combination of tools to suit them. That is of course until BootCamp.
