Production Gear

Let’s face it, we all saw the Blu-Ray battle won some time ago.  Perhaps a far more interesting battle is heating up between rivals Microsoft and Adobe on delivering content via a graphical open run-time platform or via a web browser.

Adobe has tremendous distribution in Flash technology as it’s nearly everywhere.  Microsoft’s Silverlight leverages the graphical ability of their browser.  Adobe’s Air, is a distributable runtime platform that’s no longer in beta as of this morning.  You can download it here for Windows and Mac.

*Updated*

While perusing the net this evening I ran across something interesting on Tim Sneath’s blog.  Never been there before but was searching for Silverlight and MTV.  Actually trying to track down a rumor that Microsoft is offering Silverlight around and folks - prominent folks like MTV, are passing in favor of Flash.  So as I read his blog post about Silverlight and MTV I then clicked over to his example, which is Jackass 2.5 the movie supposedly being hosted by Limelight Networks and Microsoft.  Well, interestingly enough, it’s Flash.  Hmmmm.  Looks like I have more digging to do.

We’ll be watching this very closely as you can imagine not only here, but also in our soon to launch WebDevCoalition.  For more info, check out BetaNews.com

As a disclaimer - Adobe is paid advertiser of this site, and Microsoft isn’t...yet.  (maybe never now)

Best may be piling it on too much for certain.  Never heard of it, now that may be likely.  Vara Software has been one of my favorite companies since I first encountered VideoCue.  If you don’t know VideoCue, go to their site right now and download it.  It’s an entire TV studio in an inexpensive package.  In fact, I often use the teleprompter alone when necessary.

Ok, enough love, but they do have a new product that does have me equally excited, and it’s called ScreenFlow.  It gives very good flexibility in creating screencasts, tutorials, etc.  You can use your built-in iSight (Mac only folks) and also bring a window of yourself into the mix where necessary.  I downloaded the demo and created a brief tutorial on a SSD MacBook Air.  Yes, only the 1.8 processor, and the software still worked flawlessly.  Needless to say, I whipped out the plastic and you’ll have a full on demo here shortly. 

First things first, I completely agree with Mike Curtis, that the MacBook Air isn’t for us.  Except that....

Excuse me while I hit the way-back machine and meander down memory lane to the days of yore, when if you wanted a great NLE machine, it made sense to make that machine, your only machine.  If you planned to do any business, script writing, Quickbooks, spreadsheets, well then you must have another machine my friend, as the NLE will likely crash if things aren’t just so.  Perhaps you remember those days?  Or perhaps you’re lucky enough to only live using a new MacBook Pro (or insert top of the line PC here), with the latest Office, Logic Pro, FCP Studio, After Effects, Photoshop, InDesign, etc.  I could go on and on, but you get the point.  Today’s top end PC or Mac could run a small country, and at the same time, slice bread, produce the next Grammy-winning album, er CD, er, MP3, oh - and concurrently output the next top grossing feature film.  Perhaps I want my ultra-portable computer to write scripts, handle my day to day email on the road and not have to worry about lugging around my editing machine, when maybe my next trip is finding the right client, not editing on the airplane.

Bear with me here....