Class on Demand Report Card

News, Views, and Information from COD | November 2009

In this Class on Demand Report Card - Editing with neural interpretation...

COD the next Episode The ultimate access to training has become a reality this month with our friends at Telestream and their integration of the COD training for Episode within the application. Customers of the latest version of Episode can play the COD training at the end of the installation process and have access to the training at any time via the application’s help menu. Safeway in safe hands Our friends at Omneon called on us again to produce an interview with Dan Pryor, vice president of communications and media production at Safeway. This is the latest addition to a series of Omneon customers talking about their specific production challenges and how Omneon solutions have solved the problem. We shot the interview in one of Safeway’s on site studios in 720p XDCam and integrated some of Safeway’s own HD production for B-roll. Omneon has not yet posted the Safeway video to the site but you can see other examples of our work for them by clicking here. COD GenArts training collects award Class on Demand’s "Complete Training for GenArts Sapphire" was recognized with an Award of Superiority from MicroFilmmaker.com in October following a review by AJ Wedding. AJ’s commentary on the training, hosted by COD’s instructor Todd Prives, was very flattering . AJ concludes with this great quote:  “The combination of GenArts Sapphire and Class on Demand’s Complete Training for GenArts Sapphire are a home run. If you are planning on using a floating license or purchasing the plug in system, you need this video. It will absolutely bring your skills and your final products to another level!” To read the complete review click here. COD awarded for Excellence While we’re on the subject of reviews and awards, let’s not forget the award in October of a DV Magazine Award of Excellence for COD’s Fundamentals of Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0. JR Bookwater provides a thorough overview of Sue Jenkin’s latest title for Class on Demand. His bottom line “The easiest way to jump into Photoshop Elements without having to crack a manual.”  To read the full review click here.

Paul Holtz Fires Back

The introduction of the Apple iPhone produced an interesting new way to gesture with your fingers without insulting someone. Users of the iPhone will know what I mean, when you slide your finger across the screen to show the next photo and then slide your thumb and first finger in opposite diagonal directions across the touch screen to zoom in to the photo. It’s a very neat alternative to scrolling and selecting and typical of the UI ‘whizzes’ at Apple.

With much fanfare Microsoft just launched its Windows 7.0 operating system boasting, among other things, the first major computer operating system designed to work with multi-touch displays. The software ‘understands’ gestures on touch screen displays like the growing number of tablet PCs on the market today. This means manufacturers will now be able to include this type of gestural computing for things like ‘flipping’ through photos and video time lines more easily. Dan Gookin mentions gestural control in his new Class on Demand title Windows 7 Made Easy.

Having just spent hours in the edit suite working on the Safeway video for Omneon (see news story above) I starting thinking how gestural interfaces could be applied really easily to what we do every day. Imagine a clip where you could scroll left and right simply by sliding your finger on the display. Found the edit point? Split the clip by sliding your thumb and forefinger in opposite directions; now slide the clip to be inserted into the gap and voila! Insert edit at the touch of a screen. So much of what we do today could be adapted to a large, near-horizontally mounted, HD touch screen making for simpler two-handed operation and ergonomic design to reduce edit room fatigue and Carpel Tunnel syndrome from ‘mousing’ all day.

Another technology that has emerged from Microsoft Research is Surface computing (http://www.microsoft.com/surface/). This really cool interactive technology provides a completely collaborative way to interact with items on the display. This could also be used to great effect in our industry where your production team, or you and your client, could gather round the display with the production clips or dailies arranged in such a way that producers and effects artists could interact with the content and create a far more collaborative view of how a finished sequence might look. Less back and forth, more collaboration will make our jobs more fun and produce the desired results in less time.

Touch screen gestural editing is only the next step. Let’s assume they’ll never work out how to understand what I’m saying and let me control my computer that way (ever tried to call United’s automated phone service?). Maybe we should skip to the next level and edit just by thinking. This may not be too far off either; Adam Wilson, a 28 year old student at Wadsworth Center, New York Department of Health, has developed a sensory Yarmulke of sorts that interprets what the brain is thinking and translates it into actual actions. His developments so far have been to the benefit of quadriplegics who have been able to control their wheel chairs just by thinking. Imagine the possibilities for our industry as this technology develops. Adobe Premiere 19 with Neural Interface, that’s food for thought.