True irony [dictionary.com] is perhaps the highest form of humour.
Since fifth grade I've been hearing this bizarre heirarchy of humor, with puns and/or slapstick most frequently cited as the LOWEST forms.
What the hell? Are people so insecure/arrogant about their sense of what's funny that they have to actually rank them? To what authority does this appeal? Is there some consortium of comedians or something that releases a yearly report on the latest comedic standings?
Apple switch ads don't offer a single reason to use a Mac that WinXP doesn't have. You can burn cds and dvds, which you can do on WinXP. You can make movies, whihc you can do on WinXP.
The big difference is that Apple's ads are fighting a perception that these things CAN'T be done on a Mac. The Apple campaign is +1 informative, saying, "that stuff you do on Windows, you can do on a Mac too. And you can do it in a stable environment with a better, easier interface and STILL be compatible with those Windows losers."
The Windows ad has little/nothing to say, unless you somehow didn't know PC hardware is generally cheaper than macs. Duh.
The ad says can use Windows for stuff you can do on Mac... but WHY ON EARTH would you want to?
I suppose Logo would have said something, but it took him wayyy to long to travel, and it turned out he'd been heading in the wrong direction by about 10 degrees anyway.
W
And what of recordable greeting cards?
on
Fritz's Hit List
·
· Score: 2
Pity poor greeting card companies. Their five dollar recordable birthday cards are gonna get a lot more expensive. That means your red box budget will go up as well.
Of course, Hallmark's cost/profit margins are probably higher than the RIAA's.. how much does a $2.99 greeting card cost to manufacture?
I have lots of suggestions-- but the one thing I can use is a way to make the dock "double-clickable" -- I don't know how many times I've launched a document and/or application accidentally while reaching for the scroll bar next to or above the dock (depending on placement).
It's just too touchy. A double-click rather than click will solve this.
Anyone know of a 3rd party tweak to fix this? Some how I'm guessing it's hard to do because it deals with the dock's basic functionality.
(Oh and native windowshade would be nice. In the meanwhile, there's this "haxie".)
W
This is a good question...
on
RC5-64 Success
·
· Score: 2
Is anyone knowlegable enough out there to take a guess at how much power may have been used for this project in the last four years and how the energy consumption translates to pollution?
Of course, to calculate this, there are some assumptions that have to be made-- how many machines were on solely for the purpose of cracking keys, how much energy on average does a machine use, and what percentage of that is used by the processor when cracking, improvements in keycracking speed and energy efficiency over four years, etc.
It's not proper to use "she" in this context. Chairperson, spokesperson, and the like are not correct either. They are awkward and unnatural words that have been created by politics, and have no place in the speech of properly educated people.
These words have been adopted by business, and as "properly educated" women continue to advance economically, I am confident you'll be seeing such words more in the future;)
In order to reduce application launch times, the kernel now maintains information about the working set of an application between launches (in "/var/vm/app_profile"). Pre-heat files are meant to be transparent to the user; however, developers who are constantly re-working their applications may find that their pre-heat files are getting large. The files may become clogged with out-of-date profiles on applications who's versions have changed. As a result, developers may find that it is good to clear out the old pre-heat files on test machines once in a while. To do this, become super-user and do a rm -r/private/var/vm/app_profile and then reboot. app_profile is the directory which contains the profile files. The directory is automatically re-created on reboot. (r. 2847332).
Hmm. Wonder if this will slow down my nightly upgrade of Chimera, Mozilla, etc?
The recent CNET debacle over will-Apple-or-won't-apple-help-w/OS-X has apparently driven a lot of Mac developers to the site. I've been following the porting mailing list activity a bit (as you can see here, there have been nearly twice as many posts this month as last month), people really seem to be interested in getting this thing working on OS X.
So it looks like there are more than the original two developers on this thing now.
I can't wait...I was thinking for a while that Abiword would have an OS X port first, but now it looks like OO.o has the momentum.
Yes, but weren't you saying PTFree was a valid solution? A buggy, crash-prone, unsupported piece of software is not a valid solution.
I haven't had any problems with it at all... it is certainly a valid solution for my purposes. As others have pointed out, there are free multitrack audio editors out there on many platforms, so you may have to do some searching around if you don't like PTFree.
As for PTFree... My job calls for maintaining several audio workstations, including some running PTFree... One of 'em recently crashed, losing several hours of work by an editor. I called up Digi, they asked what I was using, I said PTFree, and I was told "we don't support that" and hung up on.
Of course not! It's free... you don't expect free tech support too?!!!
I called my local Digi sales-rep, and was told the same thing (though he didn't hang up on me, he tried to sell me the 888/24 instead).
I'm confused. You called a sales rep. You were using a free program. Didn't you say you were talking about non-professional use, people who are doing small projects themselves?
By the way-- why was someone who was doing Protools editing not saving their session regularly?
The official viewpoint of Digi is that PTFree is there to attract users as a demo, but it is unsupported and buggy. They have no intention of offering bug-fixes or support.
It's unsupported, of course (except for the documentation). It's not really THAT buggy, as I've used it for several projects without too much trouble.
As for audio editing, sadly, although I'm on slashdot, I'm not a professional programmer. As it says in my blog, I'm an audio/electrical engineer, and I dabble in programming. I wish I had the ability to write a really good audio editor, but instead, I'll have to content myself with pointing out the flaws in current programs in hopes that some enterprising programmer will take my suggestions to heart.
Seriously, though, yes, in most professional situations, there's a separate video editing system from the audio editing system... But I think here, we're talking about putting filmmaking ability in the hands of the masses who can't afford Avids... in which case, they also don't tend to want to shell out an extra thousand for an audio editor.
Yes, but just because they're working on the cheap doesn't mean they have to spend shit. There are tons of good free audio editors. I think some of them were already linked to in this thread, but Audacity springs to mind as a simple but free solution. Or, try The Free Protools, which is a fully featured non-expiring non-demo version of Protools you can use for simple projects, no extra hardware required.
Otherwise, if you want better audio editing in Cinelerra, get out the source and your text editor and start coding. I seriously don't understand what all the complaining is about here.
Why should you have to export your audio tracks into an external program in order to do scrubbing or effects editing? That is like Photoshop requiring you to export your alpha channels into an external program in order to edit them separately from your RGB channels. Audio is an integral part of the video experience yet is treated like a redheaded stepchild when it comes to NLE editors.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. My analogy is exactly correct. If you want to insert an image into your word processed document you do not create that image in Word. You use a program that is designed to create that document, specifically. If it's a graph, you might generate it with Excel. If it's a bitmapped image, you might touch it up in Photoshop. In fact, you might take your images from one graphics program to another, layering it and adding 3d-generated images, and compositing and in short getting it all nice and ready before you plop it in your word processor.
Now, why does audio work demand its own program(s)? Why is it not like alpha channels in photoshop? Because you're not giving audio post enough credit. It's not as simple as "throw in some effects and some scrubbing" and we're done.
WHY AN AUDIO PROGRAM IS A STANDALONE APP
1. Combining audio and video into one master editing app wastes system resources An audio editing program frequently requires significant processing power to manipulate and add effects to multiple tracks. If your NLE is tapping your CPU w/displaying and uncompressing video, that's quite a bit taken from the audio.
2. You are not editing the final recorded sounds When editing movies, you are generally editing with a "scratch track" taken from the field, which is frequently unusable. It's not the job of the editor to deal with sound issues. It's just not. In many productions, the sound track must be built from the ground up through ADR ("looping"), through peices of alternate takes, etc.
3. Editing and Post-Audio are different professions, different fields. In real life, each is a speciality with its own tools. Expecting an editor to have to deal with audio crap in a NLE, or an audio tech to deal with picture is ridiculous. Even if it's a small one-man production-- when you're editing, you don't need to obsess over sound-- you don't want to have to deal with 50 layers of sound. It's only when you've got picture lock that you move on to the next phase-- the audio, which logically deserves its own program. You can go back and forth anyway, so why not do what makes sense?
4. There is rarely one final audio mix When you mix a film, you will typically create several mixes-- 35mm and 16mm have different frequency ranges-- video sound can be encoded in a number of different ways using a variable number of audio sources. You may want to have many, many mixes of your film (keeping sound effects seperate from dialogue so that you can put alternate language tracks, music tracks may be mixed in different ways, etc.). To try to do all this from a NLE is insanity.
5. Non-linear editors and audio editors are physically different things With an Avid, you got two monitors, maybe a third for video. You've got the keyboard, and you've got the computer. Maybe you have some extra drives, a camera, and a deck of some sort. The only funky gizmo you might have for Avid is one of those shuttle things. Protools looks different. No multiple monitors-- just one big one for viewing one of many many many audio tracks you might be using. No shuttle. No decks. Add in a rack of DSPs, maybe some MIDI devices. A keyboard or two. A DAT, a TASCAM. And of course, any good audio editor will have amixing board-- it's hard to nudge the volume for seven tracks on the fly with one mouse to get just that right dialogue mix with three equalized microphone positions, and some ambiance...
6. Video apps use video plugins, audio apps use audio plugins -- if you wanna compare to photoshop plugins, look at this simple fact-- video apps usually allow for plugins to allow you to do funky effects, video filters, and transitions like wipes, dissolves, morphs -- video stuff. Audio apps usually have plugins like phlange, reverb, pitch shifting, MIDI stuff, effects filters, compressors, and other frequency manipulation stuff. They're different types of effects for different types of programs.
7. Moving between applications is precisely what the OMFI (Open Media Framework Interchange Format) and similar formats are designed to do. You are SUPPOSED to export your audio information and take it into a program that is specific for audio.
So, ok--- could you have some kind of "super-program" that lets you edit picture and do fine audio tuning in the same app? Yes. Would it be unweildy? YES. Would it suck to have to rely on a single vender for all you want in a single program? YES. Would it be a pain in the ass? YES.
Why not just throw in some 3d modeling/rendering software, a compositing progrram, and the script-writing software in there too? And an email program so it can invite your friends to the premiere of your project?
In short-- It is not the role of an non-linear editor to do a significant amount audio effects. As they are different professional fields, they are and should be different programs.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm picturing the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Nazis get their faces melted off.
Of course, from your own point of view it would be more like when Sigorney Weaver opens the fridge door in Ghostbusters...
Quick, mod the parent down before anyone gets any ideas! ;)
I have to disagree. Bill Wyman is going to win. The other guy doesn't have a chance.
W
They haven't enforced it against Apple Mail's junk filter, so (without reading the whole patent), I wonder if it applies.
W
Something like this?
W
True irony [dictionary.com] is perhaps the highest form of humour.
Since fifth grade I've been hearing this bizarre heirarchy of humor, with puns and/or slapstick most frequently cited as the LOWEST forms.
What the hell? Are people so insecure/arrogant about their sense of what's funny that they have to actually rank them? To what authority does this appeal? Is there some consortium of comedians or something that releases a yearly report on the latest comedic standings?
(funny answers are appreciated)
W
Check out the bottom of the story--
Would you recommend this story?
Not at all 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Yahoo members, you can mod this one up!!!
W
Apple switch ads don't offer a single reason to use a Mac that WinXP doesn't have. You can burn cds and dvds, which you can do on WinXP. You can make movies, whihc you can do on WinXP.
The big difference is that Apple's ads are fighting a perception that these things CAN'T be done on a Mac. The Apple campaign is +1 informative, saying, "that stuff you do on Windows, you can do on a Mac too. And you can do it in a stable environment with a better, easier interface and STILL be compatible with those Windows losers."
The Windows ad has little/nothing to say, unless you somehow didn't know PC hardware is generally cheaper than macs. Duh.
The ad says can use Windows for stuff you can do on Mac... but WHY ON EARTH would you want to?
W
I suppose Logo would have said something, but it took him wayyy to long to travel, and it turned out he'd been heading in the wrong direction by about 10 degrees anyway.
W
Pity poor greeting card companies. Their five dollar recordable birthday cards are gonna get a lot more expensive. That means your red box budget will go up as well.
Of course, Hallmark's cost/profit margins are probably higher than the RIAA's.. how much does a $2.99 greeting card cost to manufacture?
W
I have lots of suggestions-- but the one thing I can use is a way to make the dock "double-clickable" -- I don't know how many times I've launched a document and/or application accidentally while reaching for the scroll bar next to or above the dock (depending on placement).
It's just too touchy. A double-click rather than click will solve this.
Anyone know of a 3rd party tweak to fix this? Some how I'm guessing it's hard to do because it deals with the dock's basic functionality.
(Oh and native windowshade would be nice. In the meanwhile, there's this "haxie".)
W
Is anyone knowlegable enough out there to take a guess at how much power may have been used for this project in the last four years and how the energy consumption translates to pollution?
For help, consider this discussion.
Of course, to calculate this, there are some assumptions that have to be made-- how many machines were on solely for the purpose of cracking keys, how much energy on average does a machine use, and what percentage of that is used by the processor when cracking, improvements in keycracking speed and energy efficiency over four years, etc.
Anyone up for it?
W
It's not proper to use "she" in this context. Chairperson, spokesperson, and the like are not correct either. They are awkward and unnatural words that have been created by politics, and have no place in the speech of properly educated people.
;)
These words have been adopted by business, and as "properly educated" women continue to advance economically, I am confident you'll be seeing such words more in the future
W
In order to reduce application launch times, the kernel now maintains information about the working set of an application between launches (in "/var/vm/app_profile"). Pre-heat files are meant to be transparent to the user; however, developers who are constantly re-working their applications may find that their pre-heat files are getting large. The files may become clogged with out-of-date profiles on applications who's versions have changed. As a result, developers may find that it is good to clear out the old pre-heat files on test machines once in a while. To do this, become super-user and do a rm -r /private/var/vm/app_profile and then reboot. app_profile is the directory which contains the profile files. The directory is automatically re-created on reboot. (r. 2847332).
Hmm. Wonder if this will slow down my nightly upgrade of Chimera, Mozilla, etc?
W
This was a big stumbling block in getting RIO & iPod type players to support Ogg.
Any idea if this means we can look forward to some Ogg lovin' built-in to consumer products? Timetable?
Thanks Xiph!
W
P.S. If I said "NOP NOP NOP"
EA EA EA
Help! I'm in peek/poke flashback hell! Someone CALL -151!!!
W
the bounce-to-sender feature makes it look like you don't exist anymore
This is available in 10.1, btw. It's under View->Customize Toolbar. Just drag the "Bounce to Sender" icon onto the toolbar and off you go.
W
The recent CNET debacle over will-Apple-or-won't-apple-help-w/OS-X has apparently driven a lot of Mac developers to the site. I've been following the porting mailing list activity a bit (as you can see here, there have been nearly twice as many posts this month as last month), people really seem to be interested in getting this thing working on OS X.
So it looks like there are more than the original two developers on this thing now.
I can't wait...I was thinking for a while that Abiword would have an OS X port first, but now it looks like OO.o has the momentum.
W
Yes, but weren't you saying PTFree was a valid solution? A buggy, crash-prone, unsupported piece of software is not a valid solution.
I haven't had any problems with it at all... it is certainly a valid solution for my purposes. As others have pointed out, there are free multitrack audio editors out there on many platforms, so you may have to do some searching around if you don't like PTFree.
W
As for PTFree... My job calls for maintaining several audio workstations, including some running PTFree...
;)
One of 'em recently crashed, losing several hours of work by an editor. I called up Digi, they asked what I was using, I said PTFree, and I was told "we don't support that" and hung up on.
Of course not! It's free... you don't expect free tech support too?!!!
I called my local Digi sales-rep, and was told the same thing (though he didn't hang up on me, he tried to sell me the 888/24 instead).
I'm confused. You called a sales rep. You were using a free program. Didn't you say you were talking about non-professional use, people who are doing small projects themselves?
By the way-- why was someone who was doing Protools editing not saving their session regularly?
The official viewpoint of Digi is that PTFree is there to attract users as a demo, but it is unsupported and buggy. They have no intention of offering bug-fixes or support.
It's unsupported, of course (except for the documentation). It's not really THAT buggy, as I've used it for several projects without too much trouble.
As for audio editing, sadly, although I'm on slashdot, I'm not a professional programmer. As it says in my blog, I'm an audio/electrical engineer, and I dabble in programming. I wish I had the ability to write a really good audio editor, but instead, I'll have to content myself with pointing out the flaws in current programs in hopes that some enterprising programmer will take my suggestions to heart.
Or you could learn
W
Seriously, though, yes, in most professional situations, there's a separate video editing system from the audio editing system... But I think here, we're talking about putting filmmaking ability in the hands of the masses who can't afford Avids... in which case, they also don't tend to want to shell out an extra thousand for an audio editor.
Yes, but just because they're working on the cheap doesn't mean they have to spend shit. There are tons of good free audio editors. I think some of them were already linked to in this thread, but Audacity springs to mind as a simple but free solution. Or, try The Free Protools, which is a fully featured non-expiring non-demo version of Protools you can use for simple projects, no extra hardware required.
Otherwise, if you want better audio editing in Cinelerra, get out the source and your text editor and start coding. I seriously don't understand what all the complaining is about here.
W
Thank you, Gray. Excellent example, too.
Read my response.
W
Why should you have to export your audio tracks into an external program in order to do scrubbing or effects editing? That is like Photoshop requiring you to export your alpha channels into an external program in order to edit them separately from your RGB channels. Audio is an integral part of the video experience yet is treated like a redheaded stepchild when it comes to NLE editors.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. My analogy is exactly correct. If you want to insert an image into your word processed document you do not create that image in Word. You use a program that is designed to create that document, specifically. If it's a graph, you might generate it with Excel. If it's a bitmapped image, you might touch it up in Photoshop. In fact, you might take your images from one graphics program to another, layering it and adding 3d-generated images, and compositing and in short getting it all nice and ready before you plop it in your word processor.
Now, why does audio work demand its own program(s)? Why is it not like alpha channels in photoshop? Because you're not giving audio post enough credit. It's not as simple as "throw in some effects and some scrubbing" and we're done.
WHY AN AUDIO PROGRAM IS A STANDALONE APP
1. Combining audio and video into one master editing app wastes system resources An audio editing program frequently requires significant processing power to manipulate and add effects to multiple tracks. If your NLE is tapping your CPU w/displaying and uncompressing video, that's quite a bit taken from the audio.
2. You are not editing the final recorded sounds When editing movies, you are generally editing with a "scratch track" taken from the field, which is frequently unusable. It's not the job of the editor to deal with sound issues. It's just not. In many productions, the sound track must be built from the ground up through ADR ("looping"), through peices of alternate takes, etc.
3. Editing and Post-Audio are different professions, different fields. In real life, each is a speciality with its own tools. Expecting an editor to have to deal with audio crap in a NLE, or an audio tech to deal with picture is ridiculous. Even if it's a small one-man production-- when you're editing, you don't need to obsess over sound-- you don't want to have to deal with 50 layers of sound. It's only when you've got picture lock that you move on to the next phase-- the audio, which logically deserves its own program. You can go back and forth anyway, so why not do what makes sense?
4. There is rarely one final audio mix When you mix a film, you will typically create several mixes-- 35mm and 16mm have different frequency ranges-- video sound can be encoded in a number of different ways using a variable number of audio sources. You may want to have many, many mixes of your film (keeping sound effects seperate from dialogue so that you can put alternate language tracks, music tracks may be mixed in different ways, etc.). To try to do all this from a NLE is insanity.
5. Non-linear editors and audio editors are physically different things With an Avid, you got two monitors, maybe a third for video. You've got the keyboard, and you've got the computer. Maybe you have some extra drives, a camera, and a deck of some sort. The only funky gizmo you might have for Avid is one of those shuttle things. Protools looks different. No multiple monitors-- just one big one for viewing one of many many many audio tracks you might be using. No shuttle. No decks. Add in a rack of DSPs, maybe some MIDI devices. A keyboard or two. A DAT, a TASCAM. And of course, any good audio editor will have amixing board-- it's hard to nudge the volume for seven tracks on the fly with one mouse to get just that right dialogue mix with three equalized microphone positions, and some ambiance...
6. Video apps use video plugins, audio apps use audio plugins -- if you wanna compare to photoshop plugins, look at this simple fact-- video apps usually allow for plugins to allow you to do funky effects, video filters, and transitions like wipes, dissolves, morphs -- video stuff. Audio apps usually have plugins like phlange, reverb, pitch shifting, MIDI stuff, effects filters, compressors, and other frequency manipulation stuff. They're different types of effects for different types of programs.
7. Moving between applications is precisely what the OMFI (Open Media Framework Interchange Format) and similar formats are designed to do. You are SUPPOSED to export your audio information and take it into a program that is specific for audio.
So, ok--- could you have some kind of "super-program" that lets you edit picture and do fine audio tuning in the same app? Yes. Would it be unweildy? YES. Would it suck to have to rely on a single vender for all you want in a single program? YES. Would it be a pain in the ass? YES.
Why not just throw in some 3d modeling/rendering software, a compositing progrram, and the script-writing software in there too? And an email program so it can invite your friends to the premiere of your project?
In short-- It is not the role of an non-linear editor to do a significant amount audio effects. As they are different professional fields, they are and should be different programs.
W
What makes you think this is supposed to be an AUDIO EDITING program?
it's a non-linear video editor, which is completely different.
Think AVID or FINAL CUT PRO vs. PROTOOLS
Totally different purpose-- it's're like critizing a word processor because it doesn't have good Photoshop-like paint features.
W
Let me be the first to predict that this technology will be used to manufacture the most precision-shaken or stirred martinis science can create.