Review of Abaltat Muse

Ireland is a land of fantastic music and musicians. I’ve been to Doolin, in County Clare and heard brilliant traditional musicians there. And for those with more of a rocker sensibility, you’ve got Irish exports U2, Van Morrison and the Cranberries.

The latest musical export from Ireland is a software application called Muse from a company called Abaltat, which means “ability” in Gaelic. This software supposedly analyzes a Quicktime movie and creates a custom musical composition based on the video content. I think most people would be highly skeptical that this software can actually compose a meaningful tune based on actually analyzing the true content of a video program. Its similar to the disbelief that any video editor has about the programs that I’ve heard of that will take your video footage and make a great edit from the raw bits and pieces.

Angelina and Lindsay battle over their favorite RED scopes!

Let’s face it: if I didn’t start with a title like that, there’s no way you’d read a story about waveform monitors. They’re boring! They’re not creative! They’re all the same! They’re not sexy. They’re not RED.

Scopes are important if you’re doing real work that gets duplicated, broadcast or color corrected. They can be used “creatively.” They can help you do better work. Without them, all that other cool gear is worthless.

So WHY are scopes the “Rodney Dangerfield” of the production and post production world? Some of it is probably fear of not understanding them. Some is probably that they don’t really seem to DO anything other than cost a lot of money. Some is probably because they have a lot of unrealized potential.

Using web tools to collaborate between creatives.

Wisdom from the masses – In depth on using web tools to collaborate between creatives.

A few weeks ago there was a short but interesting thread on CML-pro (The Cinematographer’s Mailing List) about how to collaborate with other creatives on a production team using web-based tools. The original poster wanted a solution – a “group scrapbook” - that would allow a small pre-production team to share images, photos and notes. Expanding on the idea a little further, it would be good to be able to communicate across the group, share schedules, comments and video.

There were basically six good solutions presented by members of the list:

JL Cooper Eclipse panel

One of the reasons I got into this business in the first place was for the cool LCD displays, colored buttons, and various joysticks and fader bars. So it’s kind of ironic that less than 10 years in to my tenure in the kind of on-line suites that I’d always loved, I chucked the whole lot for cutting on NLEs like the Avid. No flashing lights. No cool controllers. No feeling like some highly trained fighter pilot (though how many fighter pilots have meals catered in to their “suite?"). I’ve spent most of the last 16 years working at a computer screen feeling like an accountant instead of a fighter pilot (though now, cockpits are starting to look more like computer monitors).

So it was with great joy that I unpacked my recently arrived JLCooper Eclipse controller. But it was more than simply the return of the buttons and various controllers I’d fallen in love with so many years ago. It was a blessing because of the return of EFFICIENCY. That’s what external control devices give the editor and colorist.

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