What complicated workflow workaround you routinely use that would seem absurd to someone entering the industry today?
ASKED BY · Josh Kaufman · PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA · 30 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:51:31
Built complex Rube Goldberg transcoding pipelines using Snapstream and Telestream Vantage with watch folders to deliver content in multiple formats, which taught scripting logic and systematic thinking.
Modern cloud-based workflows like real-time collaborative editing and AI-assisted assembly represent a paradigm shift where previous barriers to entry no longer constrain creative possibility.
Summarised by AI from what the panel said. Watch the moment for the full answer.
From the transcript.
Machine-transcribed, so it may contain errors. Every timestamp opens the episode at that second.
51:02young who's watching this is just keep exploring, keep figuring things out because you never know what's going to be the light bulb flip switch. Let's go to the next question in our list. This one is coming in from Josh Kaufman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What complicated workflow work around you routinely use that would seem absurd to someone entering the industry today? Skyrace's hand on this one. Well, I did because I'm thinking about my friend in Boise, Idaho, that he and I are
51:31now sharing a nonlinear editing system. It's in the cloud. We're sharing the timeline. I'm watching him edit. He's watching me edit. We're seeing things in real time. But then just last week, we did hook up Claude to Black Magic and he is not an editor but he assembled an edit in a matter of minutes because we've got the pipes all connected together
51:59and so in this exponential thing that used to be the barrier to entry of doing something we are now physically being duct taped to the outside of the rocket ship of things that are happening So while we're bringing up these old archive dusty things, then the generation that's not listening to this show is is doing things that we didn't know couldn't that we didn't we didn't believe could be done because we didn't have the imagination.
52:29So I'm going to I'm going to vote for what complicated workflow is routinely used. I'm going to say the imagination. That is a pretty complicated workflow. David Brady, thoughts? Yeah. For us in the work group that I was with, we used to record just about everything on TV via this product called Snapstream. And Snapstream would do it in TS format, but then we had to deliver things to sports division, all these other places, in whatever flavor that they wanted.
53:04So we had this complicated Rube Goldberg system that would, the Snapstream would record to one drive. We'd have some watch folders that would then get pulled into a Telestream Vantage. And depending on what the target was, it would transcode and re-mux everything. And it was just overly complicated for us to do on the front end for people down the road instead of them doing it on their local thing.
53:30But it was still fun. it was a scripting education for sure. And maybe that was the point. It got you into a different way of thinking. And the first time you dive into something like scripting where there's legitimate rules you have to follow, it kind of programs your brain to think in a different way. And that way turns out to be really useful
53:51for a lot of other things you do. Let's go to our next question. Oh, that's me. Josh Kaufman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania says, If you had to produce a show today using only gear available 25 years ago, what would be the hardest modern capability to give up? Oh, my God. Everybody wants to get on this because it would be difficult. So, Guy punched first.