Magisto

 
Magisto!

Our Hawaii-based friend PF Bentley sent me an email yesterday:

FORGET FINAL CUT.

FORGET ADOBE PREMIERE

FORGET SONY VEGAS.

FORGET EVERYTHING WE KNOW.

Check this out. The future is here!

Beam me up, Scotty.

http://www.magisto.com

http://www.magisto.com/examples

PF

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PF BENTLEY
Documentary Filmmaker
Multimedia Consulting

www.pfworkshops.com
www.pfpix.com

OK.

I think PF was being a bit facetious.

Clearly Magisto is not going to replace FCP, X or no X. But it is the harbinger, I think, of something interesting.

Steve Jobs great success was in taking what had been the province of specialists (ie, computer nerds like Wozniak and Gates) and tuning a home computer into an appliance that anyone could use.

Now, here's the thing about appliances. They generally have only one on/off button, and not a whole lot more.

Lisa has a very complicated giant food processor in the kitchen, but it only has 3 really big buttons on it - ON, OFF, PULSE.

That's it.

I am sure to someone who works at Cuisinart, the inner workings of the machine - the grinding speed, the gears, the blades are all pretty interesting.

I bet that on their own machines they have ways of variable speed or changing the blade density.

Who wants that?

I myself have an incredibly complex stills camera - the Hasselblad H4D.  I have an owner's manual the size of a book. It is, in fact, 415 pages long and hard cover.  I am sure that I don't even know 90% of what the camera can do. But I still use it and for me it works. I think I am probably no different from people who own iPhones that can do a lot more than make phone calls or text or take photos. They are just not interested.

As video moves from the domain of nerds, geeks and filmmakers (see, everyone gets a retreat!), to ... well, everyone.... most people are just not going to be all that interested in more than one or two buttons. Three at the most.

I don't think Magisto is going to replace FCP, but I do think that it tells us a lot about what is going to happen as making video becomes as common as writing.