So, 2011 is upon us, and as Julius Chan would say “Where’s my rocketpack and hoverboard?!!”
What does the year ahead hold for us? No one really knows but there are a few indications.
Well, finance is still interesting, with AUD vs USD over parity. We rely on the US production in Australia quite heavily and without OS work the high end freelancers are really suffering. Hopefully work picks up soon.
On the tech front, SSD drives are getting more affordable – Im hoping to replace my laptop system drive with a 256Gb sometime this year. Currently sitting around USD$500 for a decent one. They certainly speed up loading PT and general OS tasks, more robust etc.
PT9 is out and about, I guess this year we’ll all be dealing with more apogee and MAudio IO setups, and getting to see the Digi aggregate driver a lot more. I wonder how sales of the latest Digi IO are going? I still havent heard the OMNI or played with HD native. Not a quick uptake so far, downunder. Most likely due to struggling economy and downturn in work.
As far as our local industry goes, these guys are looking forwards to some good projects… which just seems a bit weird given so many production companies are struggling – how can you make good art when you are stressed about bills? From adversity…?
We’re seeing more LKFS and Dialnorm specs, so DMM2 and the TC meters will no doubt do well, but I also found this more affordable set of RTAS meters which look promising.
Feature requests? Wishes for the Avid Santa?
I wish Multi Mono plugin presets would store all info, not just the left channel, when unlinked.
I wish I had multi-mode on my DCommand ES
I wish more dub stages had the dolby 360 bundle.
I wish I had handles on audiosuite processing
I wish I had clip based gain, like nuendo.
I wish I had a batch processor, like in wavelab. Rather than using Audiofile Engineering’s Sample Manager (which is cool BTW).
I wish more video editors put “like with like” on their timelines
I wish more video editors knew what ProRes and DNxHD were and why I dont want H264 media all the time.
I wish more of the industry used eSATA connections, rather than FW800.
I wish my mac pro could play bluray disks…grrrrr
Hopefully some of these wishes will come true this year!
Happy New Year Brent!!
Ya hit the nail on the head there with a few of my annoyances too!!!
I’ve a couple to add to the AVID Santa list…
Since upgrading to PT9, it seems it doesn’t like my 003R any more. However, it’s humming along beautifully with the RME FF800, which is something I must admit I was dreaming of being able to do some months ago. This brings me to another seemingly simple annoyance in the non-ability of being able to turn off software monitoring within ProTools9 (as you can with all other DAWs). This would allow for bypassing the monitoring within PTs and using ‘RME Fireface Mixer’ for talent monitoring etc. Ultralow latency!!
You eluded to some nice metering in your blog and I just wanted to mention that the other bonus in using the FF800 is the ‘Digicheck’ monitoring included with the RME offering.. It’s a great set of configurable metering solutions.
In closing I just wanted to add that I totally agree about the audiosuite handles and the clip gain… I must admit, that the latter has been a welcome addition to LogicPro 9 and due to other limitations within PT, I have been using Logic for more and more post, voice record jobs. I actually love to edit with it and to me (personal opinion) it seems to be a whole lot more flexible and efficient at a whole myriad of editing situations.
I only have one agency that still likes me to use ProTools and most of the talent that they like to use are interstate and using SourceConnect via Audiobrien or Redline for example, so the low latency monitoring issue is moot.
Anyway Brent!! Here’s to an awesome 2011. I hope that things are busy busy busy in Sydney and you have a great year.
Regards,
Matt
…ooh forgot to mention in relation to you wishing you had a batch processor… Not sure what you requirements may be, or whether you have Logic Studio or Final Cut Studio, but Soundtrack Pro allows you to create scripts and droplets allowing for anything that you can do within STPro to be achieved with a simple desktop droplet. Throw a folders worth of samples and have them resampled, reversed, processed with AU’s or whatever you’d like.
Anyway, also a big ‘here here’ to ProRes.
Gee, I also had a look at that industry pump up…. OMG, they sound like they’re beaten already and trying to convince the people of something they don’t really believe. Wow!