Opening editing up to more people - Are Apple's ideas good news?

Apple have applied for a couple of patents that are relevant to editing: 'Smart Transitions' and 'Smart Scaling and Cropping.'

They help people create quick edits by automatically selecting transitions (including straight cuts), removing badly shot footage and zooming into shots to emphasise important people and things.

I've written about them on my blog ...

If we ignore the debate on whether such ideas should be patentable, the ideas hint at the future of editing software.

This relates to a very interesting post by Oliver Peters on how established editors are dealing with the influx of new people into their trade with the advent of more affordable hardware and software.

This gentleman is absolutely right in his assessment. However, what he disregards is that the taste of the public also goes downhill. I don't think that the general public still has a feel for art. I remember the time when each movie was a master piece of story telling, not a mass produced clump of cut together special effects like most Hollywood releases are nowadays.
The same holds true in event photography and videography. There is no real appreciation for the craft anymore. Quick n dirty seems to be the future.

Film and TV of the past does seem better, but that might be due to the fact that most of the film and TV we remember we remember because it way above average.

We forget the past films that are as bad as those that open each week.

If the general public has no feel for art, you're in big trouble my friend. Time to find a new profession. But I very strongly disagree with you. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and not some quantifiable standard. There are many levels and types of "art", also. So which specific level and type of "art" are you referring to? Are comic books art? There was a time photography was considered technological mumbo jumbo and not art, because it simple recorded what was there, the photographer didn't "create" anything. So with that narrow minded, unenlightened point of view, photography, film, videography are not in any way art at all. Right?

Wedding and event photography and videography is very, very sophisticated. That comment suggesting it's not shows me you're really not aware of what's going on in that field.

There are a handful of professionals in every industry that feel threatened when the general public is given access to their craft via advances in technology. It has never many anything "worse" ever. It does make the world "different". People who are good, dedicated and seek out education will flourish as the new generation of professionals. Many of those probably could never afford some elitist formal school otherwise, but are talented and produce quality work anyway.

Desktop Publishing didn't destroy the print world nor degrade it in any manner. It gave those who can get by with less quality work that option. But those who need really good quality work still go to professionals. More professionals exist because you don't have to go through some elitist program or system to learn the trade.

The idea of "the good old days" is an historic trap that is false. To state no one makes good quality movies anymore is false. Great, fantastic movies are made today that stand up to anything made in the past. There are "more" movies of every genre out now due to the accessibility of the technology. More good ones, more bad ones.

To say EVERY movie made by Hollywood in any given era was a work of art is false. Hollywood made tons more crap than art at any time in it's existence. Do some homework.

The general public doesn't know art? Action movies can't be art? Someone needs to reassess the difference between what "art" really is, and what "elitism" really is. Those are very different things.

The media production industry is worse off today than ever? No it's not. Travel the world, see reality.

The whole subject is also very subjective. The cream rises to the top, but there's no reason to deny the common folks, nor belittle them for having fun and expanding their abilities.

As for Apple's new patents, they're not the only ones. Metadata, that's all it is. They're using more automated metadata which we're doing with our software now! It's not a future thing, it's being done NOW, by YOU! Much of FCP X's tools are doing it right now. Philip Hodgetts has written about this extensively, also. It won't remove anything from quality work, just make it potentially faster. Simple as that.