Light ROM 4/Light ROM 4 - Disc 1.iso/text/net_news/1995/040895.doc/text0212.txt

Text File | 1995-04-22 | 3.6 KB | 82 lines

Jim Plant wrote:

>>>Many of you who went to NewTek's pre-NAB event heard from their new
CEO,Dwight Parscale. He's an ex-Deputy Attorney General from Kansas who's
also a long-time business exec. He came on a few months back and has
spent his time figuring out what's going on inside and outside NewTek.
He has lots to learn about the video market, but he's been doing alot of
the right things to gather information. Lately, he's been taking customer
complaint calls and I'm sure that's been a eye-opening experience. At
NAB, he met with a bunch of unhappy Flyer owners from the NewTek forum
on Compuserve and spent several hours listening to their complaints and
addressing their issues.<<<<

I which I would have known about that one.  I would have like to hear his
comments too.  I am also some a kind of unhappy Flyer owner, I think the
system has great potential but putting it in use in a professional
environement in the current state of the software is a bad move.  There are
really a few improvements that Newtek has to come out with and they have to
do it now.  I am thinking here about:

- Program time display should update everytime a change is made in the
project.  It should also appear in the clip process window so everytime
you're editing a clip, you also have timing references relative to the
program
 time.

- A very and simple feature to implement right now would be to have a hot
key to capture the program time while playing back a project and use the
captured time to lock or position further clips.

- While editing a clip (audio or video), you should be able to monitor
other audio or video events at the same time to precisely time it.

- The CG keys have to fade In and Out ASAP

- Right now, it is almost impossible to sequence Framstores with duration
inferior to 5 sec.  The only way to do it is to resave the FS has Flyer
stills.  this takes time and the quality is not great.

- We must be able to do quick cuts of just a few frames.  The current limit
is 10 frames and that's not short enough for a device supposed to allow you
to do cool videos.

- There are still VTASC ugly artifacts on certaing digitized shots that
need to improve.

- Project playback is still subject to few video and audio glitches.


I stopped by the Newtek booth several time to see the demonstrators
performance.  I think Newtek made a mistake to have some of their
programers like Pat Brouliette demoing the Flyer for Windows.  The guy
looked really waisted, his video editing knowledge was not inpressive
and his overall performance was poor.  The other guy, I think it was
Rob was little better but again, as a video professional, I was not
impressed at all by his arguments and editing knowledge.  Plus, he was
sometimes going into really vaporware stuff like the $20 Toys'r Us
battery that can power the system for 1 1/2 hr., the built-in GPS time
code syncing feature which allow to time-sysnc several Flyer boxes on
the field, the prosumer camera CCDs that look as good as broadcast
cameras CCDs, and on and on...

Newtek should have got a real video professional to demonstrate the
system advantages but maybe this would have been difficult since the
software is very primitive.  I think they should also have tried to use
a nice finis
hed piece ready including video editing basics like backgound audio,
narration, interviews, split edits, CG, etc.... just to show that the
system allows you to produce real videos.


Thierry
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