rule 1 of hollywood tech support: Always take what the editor says with a massive pinch of salt. I spent ten years in the movie industry, and the people that were the most forthright, and almost universally wrong about technical things were editors. "The monitor is out of grade" No, you've set the background lights to red. "The sound is out of sync" No, you've turned off the amp and somehow managed to get the crappy…
What you're describing sounds like industry-specific anecdotes from a very common, cross-industry reality about non technical users.
yikes. having written aax plugins for a while, i have to say, i’m kind of surprised this came from AVID. from what it sounds like (having scraped the surface), it’s not their editing software (Pro Tools, et al.) but their copy protection management tool/device driver - iLok. i’m sure there are some very anxious engineers in the AVID offices today.
A few of the Twitter replies say they've seen it on non-AVID devices, which might lend more credence to the iLok theory. https://twitter.com/FamousJerry/status/1176422298535940097 I'm kinda hoping iLok is the culprit, because I've been refusing to buy any plugins that require iLok, even though that means avoiding some effects I'd really love to have & developers that I'd love to support. Thankfully iLok is optional f…
The iLok is just a repository of keys and can’t hurt anything by itself. It’s communicated with by code either built into a license protected application or in a “wrapper” added to an otherwise unprotected app. Pace AP (maker of the software and reseller of the iLok) is essentially in a never ending arms race with the warez crowd, and in the past has resorted to some gray-hat, rootkit-like techniques to prevent cracking. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was either some old Pace code going rotten or some sort of crack gone viral/rogue. I used to develop an iLok protected app and am still on their developer mailing list, but note that I haven’t seen any recent alerts from them so it’s entirety possible it’s something else.
rule 1 of hollywood tech support: Always take what the editor says with a massive pinch of salt. I spent ten years in the movie industry, and the people that were the most forthright, and almost universally wrong about technical things were editors. "The monitor is out of grade" No, you've set the background lights to red. "The sound is out of sync" No, you've turned off the amp and somehow managed to get the crappy…
What you're describing sounds like industry-specific anecdotes from a very common, cross-industry reality about non technical users.
I'd revise that to the far more irritating segment of users who think they're more technical than they really are. Actual non technical users are fine, because they generally know when they don't understand a thing. The thinks-their-technical users will bravely throw in whatever phrases they've heard mentioned in relation to a completely unrelated problem.
A few of the Twitter replies say they've seen it on non-AVID devices, which might lend more credence to the iLok theory. https://twitter.com/FamousJerry/status/1176422298535940097 I'm kinda hoping iLok is the culprit, because I've been refusing to buy any plugins that require iLok, even though that means avoiding some effects I'd really love to have & developers that I'd love to support. Thankfully iLok is optional f…
The iLok is just a repository of keys and can’t hurt anything by itself. It’s communicated with by code either built into a license protected application or in a “wrapper” added to an otherwise unprotected app. Pace AP (maker of the software and reseller of the iLok) is essentially in a never ending arms race with the warez crowd, and in the past has resorted to some gray-hat, rootkit-like techniques to prevent crack…
Yep, after I posted I realized that if this is really widespread & iLok related, surely someone would have posted on Gearslutz complaining about it by now. So far I can't find any threads about it there.
In my iLok case years ago, it was a problem with the iLok KEXT kernel extension drivers causing my Mac to kernel panic at startup that put me off. That would've been around the Mac OS X 10.5 / 10.6 era.
What you're describing sounds like industry-specific anecdotes from a very common, cross-industry reality about non technical users.
I'd revise that to the far more irritating segment of users who think they're more technical than they really are. Actual non technical users are fine, because they generally know when they don't understand a thing. The thinks-their-technical users will bravely throw in whatever phrases they've heard mentioned in relation to a completely unrelated problem.
yikes. having written aax plugins for a while, i have to say, i’m kind of surprised this came from AVID. from what it sounds like (having scraped the surface), it’s not their editing software (Pro Tools, et al.) but their copy protection management tool/device driver - iLok. i’m sure there are some very anxious engineers in the AVID offices today.
> but their copy protection management tool/device driver - iLok. Maybe Hollywood will learn that DRM hurts legitimate users. But they probably won't, I won't be shedding any tears either way.
I hope you don't think that the people dealing with issues like this are anywhere near the discussions on DRM of digital video. It isn't as if MPAA board members are also in a basement somewhere editing films.
> their copy protection management tool/device driver - iLok. They're still using that? These things were successfully cracked in the nineties, I was convinced nobody uses hardware dongles anymore.
Oh, it's not just Avid. Some audio production software such as ReFX Nexus still uses a USB dongle. There is no way to use the software without it plugged in. It also has a policy where if you damage the dongle, you have to buy again and get a 10% discount off the FULL price of the VST. In the age of people gigging on laptops, I'm not entirely sure how they think they are gonna sell any more of them. I fancy it myself…
> There is no way to use the software without it plugged in.
This is only true if the software hasn’t been crack?
The use of 'trashcan' to refer to the MacPro by multiple users in the link is pretty amusing. > Has anyone had their trashcans go down today out of nowhere?
That must really be annoying someone over at apple. Spend all that time design something beautiful. And... Everyone calls it garbage
Beautiful? There's a reason why it got the name, it looks like a trashcan. And the old mac pro is filled with garbage(how fitting, right?). If it was any good then apple would have stuck to it, but it was garbage, so they didn't.
Now we have the new mac pro, and it's a big step up from the trashcan.