Getting giddy over today’s toys could risk HD problems tomorrow

The most profound change in post-production over the last five years has been the proliferation of powerful, yet low-cost editing tools. Aggressive moves in development by Adobe, Apple, Avid and others have combined with remarkable advances in hard drive, graphics processing unit, codec, and mobile technologies to shift the landscape of how we post any given project. Not surprisingly, many productions have been seduced by the opportunities made possible by these new breed editing tools, most notably the reduction in cost and acceleration of schedules in what is sometimes still sensibly called the 'offline' edit.