North America Premieres May 19th, 9|8c

It's been almost a year that I've been working as Edit Assistant at Wild Horizons / Silverback Films. How time flies! Anyway, keeping things short, you can catch the fruits of my (and many, many others') labour on the Discovery Channel tomorrow. North America, a seven part series, kicks off May 19th, 9|8c.

Personal Update

Ok, so I've had some coffee and I think that's it's probably as good a time as any to write a small update on what I'm up to at the moment, if only to reassure people that I'm still working.

Over the past three months, I've been working for Silverback Films as a technical assistant, launching myself into the exciting world of Avid and motion-picture workflows (Silverback Films, previously Wild Horizons,  are best known for their Disney Nature projects, Chimpanzee and African Cats). This is, in general, a fairly familiar experience to my work as a Production Technical Assistant at Icon Films, except that I'm no longer required to look into the logistics of acquiring camera kit, only the technicalities of accommodating various different formats (HDCAM SR, RED RAW, etc). Whilst camera manufacturers all attempt to reassure you that this is a painless process, as I've mentioned in a previous post, the land of formats, codecs and software can be a bit of nightmare, especially when mixing footage from several different formats... so part of my job is ironing out those difficulties and testing workflows.

Additionally, my new role entails 'building' edit suites and establishing connections to shared storage, either via high-speed Fibre-Channel or Ethernet. Despite the on-paper complexity of running and maintaining Avid Media networks, Avid, to their credit, make day-to-day maintenance of such intimidating infrastructures quite simple, and the advantages of shared storage far outweigh those of individual hard-disks.

Of course, it would be wrong of me to say that I've slipped seamlessly into the role, and I'm very appreciative of the patience that my colleagues have had with me whilst I battle the steep learning curve.

Alongside my normal job, I've also been continuing with a few freelance projects, including some web-design of all things. Until very recently, when the expedition came to an end, I built and maintained a website for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Instituion, the results of which can be seen here: http://www.greenlandsfrozencoast.com/. Whilst I don't actively search for work in web-design, I do find all aspects of the Internet rather fascinating, and enjoy the challenge of creating content for it... I'm just a lot more comfortable within the realms of Final Cut Studio (which I haven't forgotten about, of course).

Meanwhile, I continue to experiment with Avid Media Composer and Symphony from a creative perspective, engaging with its nuances and discovering why it has become such a successful industry standard.

Anyway, I think that's probably enough writing about myself for one day. Thanks for reading.

So It's Come to This

...Well, to be honest, maybe that's a bit dramatic. All I'd like to say is that I've begun a rather fascinating transition into Avid. I say 'transition' because, to all extents and purposes, I believe it's safe to say that Final Cut Studio is soon to be dead within the film and TV industry. Those companies that are still clinging onto Final Cut Pro 7 are either having to roll back their new machines to the fading world of OS X Snow Leopard, or embrace change, and I've not heard of anyone jumping to Final Cut Pro X... Sorry about that Apple. That's not to say that there isn't a place for Final Cut Pro X - there's really nothing stopping Apple from polishing it into the jewel that Final Cut Pro 7 developed into, but for the moment everyone's looking to either Avid or Adobe for professional media creation. I have mixed feelings about Avid Media Composer 6. After a week of hard-learning with it, it doesn't seem to present itself as modern or intuitive, but what I am painfully aware of is that it is a powerful and expandable tool, especially when you break into Unity and ISIS systems (if you've got the money). For now, watch this space, and I'll have a more detailed update of what's new in my life shortly.

New 2012 Showreel

It's time for another showreel, this time one that's more focused on my ability as a technical assistant. Whilst I do still edit, all the pieces that I've edited for Icon Films as Marketing and Development Assistant are highly confidential, as they relate to programmes that are still seeking commissions. Enjoy, and drop me a line if you fancy employing me.

Wild Scene Investigation

Another Icon production, and another TX card created by myself. Wild Scene Investigation is going out in the UK on Nat Geo Wild from 12th June. This light-hearted production is particularly significant to me because I covered as the Production Technical Assistant for a while (and suffered the wrath of XDCAM codecs in post production).

New York, New York

Summer in the City
Originally uploaded by charlesdyer

In March of this year I took a trip to New York on my own with a camera. I had no contacts and no plans but to create a portrait of the city from my own perspective. Two months down the line, I've finally uploaded some of them to Flickr. Enjoy!

Secrets of Wild India Finally Comes to the US

On the 29th April, Secrets of Wild India (the first production that I worked on for Icon Films) is being broadcast across the United States. As Marketing and Development Assistant, I've created this TX card to celebrate the occasion.

Final Cut Studio 3 and Mac OS X Lion - Possible but Not Practical

Apple aren't known for their sympathy towards legacy products. When they introduced the first iMac back in 1998, many customers were dismayed to see that they'd neglected to include the option for a floppy disc drive. Years later, and the removal of packaged Apple software from its stores reinforces Apple's stance on what it sees as dated tech; it's over - move on.

Apple have been just as ruthless with their programming as they have with hardware. With the introduction of Mac OS X Lion, Rosetta (a dynamic binary translator that allows you to run applications programmed for PowerPC system architectures) is no more.

When I first heard about this, I was pretty concerned. I've been using Macs now for eight years now, and I've accumulated quite a number of PowerPC applications over that time. What's more concerning from a professional stance, is that Final Cut Studio, a software suite that I've spent many years learning and making a living from, will no longer function under the new Mac OS X environment.

But all is not lost! If, like many people, you have a Snow Leopard install disc, you use it to install Rosetta on Lion, and breathe life back into your old applications.

So you'd assume that that was a problem solved. Chalk one up for old-skool Mac users worldwide. Well, not exactly.

In my current job, I've been trying out how Mac OS X Lion plays with Final Cut Studio 3, and its not always pretty. It all comes down to Lion's apparent improvements in dividing processes between multi-core processors, which solves some problems, but introduces others with general use.

Final Cut Studio was not built with multi-core system architecture in mind. For that reason, you'll find that it's rather infuriatingly inefficient at making the most of your system resources. Slam something into Compressor, and watch in Activity Monitor as your 16-core Intel Mac Pro barely bats an eye-lid at your request. It is possible in this scenario to use the virtual clusters trick to force your Mac to work harder, but this is a bit of a dark art, and can render your entire system unusable if set-up incorrectly.

Lion, however, eats these kind of complicated calculations for breakfast, taking the guess-work out of all of this, carefully allocating processor time to all of the tasks presented to it. Sounds great on paper, but then when you want to edit in Final Cut and transcode in Compressor at the same time, Lion doesn't know which tasks deserves more attention. What you're left with therefore, is a slower, less-responsive and asthmatic editing experience, where every render takes considerably longer.

The problems don't stop there, either. In my experience, Final Cut Pro acts erratically even when you haven't got anything else going on in the background. Recently I was editing together a five-minute piece consisting of nothing but ProRes Proxy QuickTimes and a couple of AIFFs on a ProRes timeline, and consistently found that Final Cut would drop frames on two occasions during playback (anything from about 5-50 frames) before I paused and resumed playback again. All this on a brand-new 17" MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, 1GB of AMD graphics memory and 4GB of RAM - specs that dwarf the listed minimum system requirements of Final Cut Studio.

My advice? Don't upgrade at this time if you're still hanging onto Final Cut Studio 3 and below. Save the £21.99 that you would be spending on Lion and put it towards something useful, like some FCP X, Avid or Adobe Premiere tutorials. Just remember that if you choose to stick it out with Snow Leopard for the long haul, then it won't be long before Apple leave you and your aging system behind to fend for yourself.

River Monsters 3D

On 8th April, an extra special River Monsters will be jumping from screens in jaw-dropping 3D. Filmed in the Okavango Delta, Jeremy Wade hunts down a mystery killer that haunts the inhabitants of the region.

The following TX card was created by myself and distributed via e-mail, social networks and Icon's website.