The Future of Media Production

Now, this is some interesting development. Novacut, a Project financed by a Kickstarter campaign implements a webkit based user interface. 

Big deal, Apple did it with iOS and Google did it with Android, so are you about to tell us something new?

Hopefully yes: I have a dream, the dream is a software that provides raw functionality for media editing and generating. 

It needs a timeline, to arrange, syncronize, animate and automate in order to ultimately enable telling of stories,  

The timeline has to be able to sequence all kinds of data. 

The accuracy should be infinitely divisible (beyond tick/frame)

It needs absolute, raw data routing flexibility ( I mean that literally, I want to route a video to an audio channel and listen to the raw data stream, or maybe only the variations of red from the 3rd pixel)

In order to make use of this raw data routing requires intelligent interpretations of the media. This counts for copy/paste as well.

It needs a powerful database to quickly find stuff from your stock, let that be samples/loops, film clips, or a control lane. 

Alongside the database it needs a metadata miner using audio analysis and computer vision.

It shall be cross platform and support as many current extension standards as possible (VST, AU, FxPlug, Ladspa, dssi, directX etc…)

those features I am talking about should not be implemented into a GUI, but a server.

This server shall be accessible over different protocols to provide maximum flexibility how to interface functionality.

All functionality needs to be implemented modular, as plugin to the core server.

Plugins shall be available in central repository (lets not say app store :P ), available for installation if required.

All this will allow for maximum flexibility and scalability.

Some practical examples:

A http Interface: 

Open your browser, enter the servers address, use a HTML5, or better, a WebGL GUI and start producing.

Thanks to the abstraction of interface and function server the way you create can look however you want. 

Do you like music trackers like renoise? 

Connect with a terminal and off you go.

Running out of DSP power on one of your machines?

Add a second server as a slave.

Want to use a mac AU that is not available on your Linux workstation?

Start the server on the mac and slave it to your localhost

Do you like collaborative jamming or bouncing ideas?

Connect to the same server with multiple users.

User interfaces could be as simple as one record button or as complex as a modular patch bay with non interlocking tracks on different speeds in the timeline.

This would even be a way to move media production into the cloud.

Why should anyone desire this kind of inconsistent environment?

Well, this kind of framework would enable more people to build simple access to media production.

I was looking at whats happening with REAPER, Usine, Max for live or Renoise.

Decentralizing this kind of power, making it platform independent, open it up wider. That would be amazing wouldn't it?

I hope someone crazy enough to take that kind of project on has read this article.