EP023: DIY Part 2 – Software

01:00:00:01 - 01:00:15:13
Robbie
Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. And today we're still talking DIY, but this time around we're talking DIY software. Stay tuned.

01:00:15:15 - 01:00:34:05
Joey
This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIT, or a broadcaster engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at Flanders scientific.com.

01:00:34:07 - 01:00:45:05
Robbie
All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. I am Robbie Carman and with me, as always, is my partner in crime, Joey D’Anna. Joey, how's it going, buddy?

01:00:45:07 - 01:00:46:13
Joey
Good, good.

01:00:46:15 - 01:01:11:18
Robbie
Well, we are recording this actually the day before Thanksgiving, so just a little housekeeping. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody in the US and everybody else around the world who celebrates, us Thanksgiving. We hope you have a nice couple relaxing days off from the edit color, suite or the post production facility, and you can do, like, what every other, person does on Thanksgiving, you know, watch endless movie marathons and, be a glutton.

01:01:11:18 - 01:01:33:08
Robbie
So I'm hoping that everybody has that. Everybody has a good one. But Joey, today we are picking up where we left off with an episode that we did a couple weeks ago about DIY hardware, where we really kind of just pontificated, about 3D printers for 45 minutes, but hey, that's fine. I love 3D printing. But this time we want to kind of look at the other side of that.

01:01:33:08 - 01:02:07:19
Robbie
And that is kind of the idea of DIY software approaches. Now, I'm not talking just to be clear. I mean, I guess I kind of am talking, but I'm not really talking, I should say about like, hey, let's make your own version of Photoshop or your own version of resolve or whatever we're talking about, sort of, low intensity or middle intensity things that you can do software rise, things like scripting, desktop OS, building your own UI for things, things of that nature that can kind of enhance your workflow, and kind of let you do things better, faster.

01:02:07:19 - 01:02:31:12
Robbie
If you've ever stopped yourself and said, man, I really wish that I could do that, you know, whatever that may be, that's what we're talking about today, kind of figuring out some of these kind of workflow enhancements. Quality of life time improvements, that kind of stuff. And so let's start out with the idea of like, really, I, I can do this myself because I think the first thing that a lot of people think of is like, okay, fine by a 3D printer.

01:02:31:12 - 01:02:46:23
Robbie
It's something I, you know, I put filament into, I hit print, I buy some, you know, get something on the internet and make something. But software, I think for a lot of people and kind of the idea of scripting or whatever you want to call it, is just kind of a little bit more this like black box, right?

01:02:46:23 - 01:03:01:13
Robbie
Like obviously people do it right. We, we know on some level there are coders in the world who make the world go round. Right? But is this something that you think you know in your opinion, Joe, do you think this is something that's just even feasible for the average person?

01:03:01:15 - 01:03:36:14
Joey
Yeah. And the cool thing is it's getting, you know, more and more feasible and more and more doable on an easier level all the time. And really, what I want to get across to people is that, yeah, this is something you can do, even if you are not a super diehard nerd programmer. You can be a kind of basic a programmer, or there are tons of tools that we're gonna talk about that are what they call low code or no code tools where you can kind of use a visual representation of what you want your DIY software to do.

01:03:36:14 - 01:04:01:01
Joey
And like you said, you know, we're not saying go write your own full editing software. We're saying if you run into a workflow task where you're doing the same thing over and over again and you think you could automate it, or you're find yourself always doing the same kind of like, oh, when I have a new client, I need to send them an email with information on how to get to our portal and how to log in.

01:04:01:01 - 01:04:18:23
Joey
I need to create a user for them. All of these little repetitive tasks that you kind of feel like a robot could do for you, well, there's a lot of tools out there to make that robot do them for you. So just like we talked about when we talked about DIY hardware, the first thing to really think about is that idea, right?

01:04:19:05 - 01:04:40:08
Joey
Everything that we're going to discuss and everything that we have discussed prior to this related to DIY all starts with an idea. And that's the most important thing. Once you can kind of realize, hey, this is a need that I have for my workflow, here's how I envision it happening in general, kind of blocks of what it needs to do.

01:04:40:10 - 01:04:48:20
Joey
Then you can kind of really start to think about, hey, what's the best approach for this? And that approach is what we're going to talk about today. But it all starts with the idea.

01:04:48:21 - 01:04:49:04
Robbie
What's an.

01:04:49:04 - 01:04:49:19
Joey
Ideal.

01:04:49:21 - 01:05:13:22
Robbie
Yeah. And I think I think on that front, you know, there's this is not you know, while it might seem intimidating to write your own code to a certain degree, a lot of our listeners probably have some experience with this. Right? I'm just thinking of like, hey, I need a website. Right. And so people are like, okay, well, I've started to code my website and I've gotten super confused with CSS and styles and, you know, divs and all the various tags.

01:05:14:02 - 01:05:32:16
Robbie
So what do they do? They move to sort of a Wysiwyg kind of platform, you know, that helps them kind of do that low code, no code approach that you talked about. But in reality they really are still doing coding. And, you know, those platforms they just set up for, like especially for the web. But we'll talk about, more for our industry a little later.

01:05:32:18 - 01:05:53:03
Robbie
Those are, you know, yeah, you can get that, that sort of assist now, especially in the day. And we'll talk about this a little later, too, in the days of, you know, LMS and things like, you know, ChatGPT and stuff like that, those tools can actually assist you if you get stuck. If you have a problem or honestly, just wholesale.

01:05:53:03 - 01:05:59:21
Robbie
Hey, ChatGPT make me a DC two gal that does x, y, z. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, it's there's AI.

01:05:59:21 - 01:06:27:13
Joey
The learning resources, besides just the LMS and the AI side of it, the learning resources out there for this kind of level of programing, we're talking about whether it's scripting DC, TLS, workflow optimizations, these kind of really what's what's referred to as high level software as in high level is your scripting languages, your basic stuff, where the underlying program that you're running this software on is still doing most of the work.

01:06:27:13 - 01:06:39:23
Joey
Right? Low level software is when you get into stuff like DaVinci resolve, where they've gone in and written the whole thing in C and optimized things like memory, architecture and performance and stuff like that. We don't care about any of that for work.

01:06:39:23 - 01:07:00:20
Robbie
We're not, we're not we're not talking about, you know, optimizing Cuda library used to get another friend checking out a thing. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That'll make sense. So let's start with I think what is, I consider low hanging fruit and I only I considered that way because, in these discussions, I, my experience and my skill level always pales to yours.

01:07:00:22 - 01:07:20:19
Robbie
But I have written a fair number of functional scripts in my life, to do different things. And so let's start there with the idea of scripts now. Yep. I think scripts, just to be clear, I think they can exist in a lot of different places, and they also can exist in a lot of different, languages.

01:07:20:20 - 01:07:39:21
Robbie
I'm just going to be a quick, quick example of this. Right. So you could write a script in, say, if you're on a mac and Apple script. Right. That's, that's a tool set that Apple developed 100 million years ago to, to do that kind of work. There are other languages that you could write scripts in, and you might have something, a script that does something on the OS level.

01:07:39:21 - 01:07:57:20
Robbie
You might have a script that does something within a piece of software. So, Joe, you like start ups, like the high 50,000ft view of scripting and how to get started with it, because I think a lot of people do what with what I just said, kind of get confused, right? Like what? What language am I supposed to be using?

01:07:57:20 - 01:08:05:10
Robbie
Is this something I can do in a text editor, or do I need like special software? Like where does that kind of thing exist?

01:08:05:12 - 01:08:30:11
Joey
Yeah, so scripting is kind of the highest level of programing that we're ever going to deal with. At least until I takes over and we're just talking to the computer. Right, right. So a script is very well named. It's like the script of a movie. You're you're writing down instructions for another program to follow. So in resolve, you can write those scripts in a language called Python or in a language called Lua.

01:08:30:11 - 01:08:52:21
Joey
Resolve. So, supports both. And all you're doing is you're telling resolve what to do in a programmatic way, like you said, you can do this with most operating systems. Apple has Apple Script, but even in the simplest, most drag and drop context, Apple has a tool called Automator. Yeah, that you can literally drag on different building blocks.

01:08:52:23 - 01:09:13:17
Joey
Copy all the files from this folder, rename them this way, open them up in this program. Right. So all you've done in Automator is make a script, but with a little drag and drop GUI. And I think a lot of people don't stop to think that, yeah, we can do this kind of stuff without having to do a deep dive into learning Python.

01:09:13:19 - 01:09:18:15
Robbie
The Automator one is a great example because I tend to. I think that most.

01:09:18:15 - 01:09:20:00
Joey
Forget about Automator is, oh.

01:09:20:00 - 01:09:20:14
Robbie
Yeah, do you do.

01:09:20:18 - 01:09:21:14
Joey
Good? In a lot of ways.

01:09:21:15 - 01:09:40:02
Robbie
Well, it's great. I mean, it's for things like especially you actually named one of them that is, is renaming files like that's a huge one. You have a, you have a folder of, you know, 8000 tiffs and you realize that you, you know, put the wrong prefix on the 8000 tips and like, don't, don't rerender those steps.

01:09:40:02 - 01:10:01:02
Robbie
Just open up. If you're on a mac, open up Automator and, you know, rename and build that building. Block out. I guess my, my my question about scripting is, I think, or my statement about scripting is rather, I think of things that like kind of the OS level, storage level, file level where I have, you know, I'll give you a couple of examples of that.

01:10:01:02 - 01:10:27:07
Robbie
The rename is a great example of it. I'll use scripts to do things like to automatically move files from my, my, you know, my primary storage to my backup storage at 3 a.m. for example, or I have, I have another. When we were working, with local databases, I had a set of scripts that would automatically do, a PG dump out of the sequel database every morning at 3 a.m..

01:10:27:07 - 01:10:50:03
Robbie
So I had a backup of that and then move that file up to my Google Drive or whatever. So I had and so there's, you know, that kind of OS storage level automation where I get confused is and then you always get you always give me the back to future line about this is I have a real problem thinking fourth dimensionally when it comes to the, the, the creative software I use.

01:10:50:03 - 01:11:13:06
Robbie
So yeah, you had mentioned resolve kind of has its own, scripting abilities. Talk about a little bit about that some more, because I think that the language thing is one part of it. The whole idea of like the trying to resolve through their API is a little amorphous to I think people like I bet a lot of people don't even really understand what an API is like.

01:11:13:06 - 01:11:21:22
Robbie
So like what? Like what are those building blocks? And then give us maybe an example or two of something that you could, you know, usefully script inside a result.

01:11:21:23 - 01:11:44:20
Joey
Yeah. So an API is what's called an application programing interface. It's basically if you take a programing language and you take a piece of software, the application programing interface is how you can control that software via this language. So in resolve they support, both Python and Lua s scripting languages. And they both support all the same API calls.

01:11:45:00 - 01:12:09:04
Joey
Now number one your very first piece of inspiration I think anybody should take if they're even if they're never going to program the stuff themselves. If you just want to open your mind to what you can do, open up resolve help menu developer inside. It'll come up with a folder. Inside that folder is something called scripting and inside of there there's a read me text file.

01:12:09:10 - 01:12:28:10
Joey
Just double click that little text file and it will literally give you a line by line list of everything that you can ask, resolve to do via Python and all. I've seriously just gone through and read through that, read me and been like, oh, I could do I can make render jobs. Yeah, cool. That gives me an idea.

01:12:28:10 - 01:12:50:01
Joey
I can make a script. So before yeah, here's one example. Before Black Magic added the ability to select a bunch of timelines and right click and add to the render queue. We had a Python script to do that. It would just bring up a little thing. It would. You would run the script and resolve, and that read me will also tell you kind of how to get started with what folders to put the scripts in and where to access them.

01:12:50:01 - 01:13:17:11
Joey
In resolve. You can get to them from the workspace menu. But yeah. So I needed to add, you know, a bin full of timelines to the render queue and my normal workaround of putting them in a nested timeline and doing individual clips for some reason wasn't going to work with the particular render setting that I needed. So I wrote a quick script to just loop through everything in the bin, and if it's a timeline, add it to the render queue with whatever render preset I had selected.

01:13:17:13 - 01:13:31:15
Joey
Easy peasy. Saved me tons of time. I used that script almost on the daily until resolve literally added that feature in. Same thing with Frame.io comments, we were bringing Frame.io comments into our resolve timelines a.

01:13:31:15 - 01:13:32:14
Robbie
Long time before they had it.

01:13:32:14 - 01:13:56:14
Joey
Years before it was ever natively supported either in the integration or now you can export a resolve compatible EDL for Frame.io. Comments. Right from Frame.io, we had been using a script that I wrote basically on day one when we started using Frame.io to to do that. So a lot of times it's a question of, hey, the software doesn't do this yet.

01:13:56:16 - 01:14:00:01
Joey
I'm gonna kind of just instruct it how to do it.

01:14:00:01 - 01:14:21:03
Robbie
So, so, so if I understand this right. So software manufacturers are the API and the API says these are the things that you can basically call out in your scripting code to get to get a result. So you might say, there's a hook for things that you could do with a timeline or hooks that you could do, things you could do with clips or whatever.

01:14:21:03 - 01:14:48:18
Robbie
Right? So there's kind of those definitions of things that you can do with particular lines of code. Python, Lua I get that part. But there's also like the syntax part of this, right. Like you can't like you have to learn a little bit of like, not that we can teach anybody on a half an hour or 45 minute, podcast, but you do have to learn kind of the syntax and the formatting of those languages to work correctly, right?

01:14:48:20 - 01:15:15:22
Joey
Yes. So when you're getting into scripting resolve, there unfortunately isn't kind of a drag and drop low code or no code option. So that's when you kind of get into I'm going to learn basic Python, or I'm going to learn basic Lua and, you know, go online. There's tons of training for that. You don't need super advanced Python skills to get started, especially if you're just going to kind of give resolve a series of instructions.

01:15:16:04 - 01:15:37:09
Joey
You'll just need to kind of understand how data types work and how loops work. And like you said, that syntax. But then from there it's just kind of feeding into the right API calls. Now, it is interesting because you kind of look at that, read me and kind of tell exactly what you can and can't do. You know, they don't expose the full software to you.

01:15:37:09 - 01:15:47:07
Joey
For example, you can't individually tweak, you know, different values on a node because if you could, I could make my own resolve color panel and sell it.

01:15:47:07 - 01:15:48:09
Robbie
Right, right, right, right.

01:15:48:10 - 01:15:55:20
Joey
Magic probably doesn't want that. So there's always going to be this little bit of balance of how much they expose to developers and what they keep inside.

01:15:55:20 - 01:16:23:18
Robbie
But that part that part makes sense. And I do think you said something earlier that, you know, resolve is doesn't have this kind of, you know, kind of wizzy wig editor for that. And that's true. But over the years I have noticed that, you know, in a very this is not even like script level. This is like the, the building block of script level, you know, they have started to do things like the variable use inside of resolved right where you like, you can like you can call out, you know, with the percent sign and, you know, build out things like custom.

01:16:23:23 - 01:16:45:08
Robbie
We talked about that in a previous episode about building out custom names and stuff like that. So it's there is there anything special that a user has to do to be able to use one of these? Like so if I'm, you know, there's a person out there who's interested in, you know, making their own script. Python scripts for resolve, but you can't just like, you know, just go to Python.org or whatever and start using it.

01:16:45:08 - 01:16:48:21
Robbie
You got to download and install like libraries, I'm guessing. Right?

01:16:48:23 - 01:17:07:06
Joey
Well, yes or no. So the Lua support is 100% natively built into resolve. You don't need to install anything. So if you're just getting started, you need to do something basic. That's probably the easiest way to go. And actually I've kind of had that on my list of learning more Lua because I want to transition into using more Lua and less Python.

01:17:07:08 - 01:17:29:02
Joey
Python, you do need to install, so you literally just go to python.org, download the installer for the latest Python, and once you install it, resolve will recognize it. If you go to the workspace menu, drop down open up what's called the console. This is where any debug logging for your scripts will show up. And there you can click on Python or Lua.

01:17:29:03 - 01:17:52:00
Joey
And if you click on Python and Python's not installed, it will say, hey, you need to install Python. Then from there, if you want to run either a script that you wrote or a script that you've gotten from someone else that goes into a folder, that's different for every different platform. So just grab that from the readme, and then once it's in the right folder, you just drop down the workspace menu and there's a scripts submenu and they just populate automatically.

01:17:52:02 - 01:18:08:23
Robbie
Yeah. And you know just one little gotcha about those programing languages is so you know, I, I again with my inability to really think fourth dimensionally with coding, I, you know, I go out on the web sometimes and I'm like, oh, you know, a Python script to do X, y, z, a Python script to do x, y, z.

01:18:09:01 - 01:18:17:05
Robbie
A lot of those scripts are going to be dependent on different external things potentially. Right. So they might be. Yeah.

01:18:17:07 - 01:18:28:04
Joey
When you write your own stuff. Yeah. You don't always take the time to make it generic enough to work with everything. A lot of the use. Yeah. Or kind of hard coded to our environment.

01:18:28:04 - 01:18:40:08
Robbie
Right. So just be aware of that. That just because you find a cool script that might not work. Also like versions of these of these languages can come into mind, you know, version of Python version of Lua, etc.. All right. So I mean, I think that one.

01:18:40:08 - 01:19:03:02
Joey
Last thing I want to mention here, and this is going to apply to basically everything, get on the internet and look at other people's work because people usually post there's a lot of open source stuff. Just get on Google and just search for stuff. The best. One of the best tools you can ever have for learning is just looking at other people's code and seeing how they did it, and and lifting stuff wholesale.

01:19:03:02 - 01:19:16:23
Joey
Because as long as you're not trying to like representative something that you're selling as something as your own work, if you just need to make a tool and somebody has done something similar that you just need to adapt, copy and paste, you know, copy, paste, tweak.

01:19:17:04 - 01:19:18:23
Robbie
I agree, and I mean, that's how people.

01:19:18:23 - 01:19:20:20
Joey
Open source stuff for that reason.

01:19:20:22 - 01:19:39:12
Robbie
Yeah. And in my, in my feeble attempt of this, you know, trying to get into this stuff, I have found, you know, obviously the probably the largest community for this kind of thing is GitHub. But I have found that some of those communities are really actually pretty robust and like, surprisingly, not all that elitist and like talking down to people, right?

01:19:39:12 - 01:20:05:08
Robbie
Like, you know, you you'd expect to find these coding nerds who are like, what? Do you like your code? Sloppy. What are you doing? Right? Like most, most of the time, people are helpful and want to help, you know, pick things out and we'll give you, you know, you know, there's there's I will I will couch that by saying as you dive deeper into this, there is there is, you know, there is preferences for how things are done with code.

01:20:05:10 - 01:20:23:07
Robbie
Right? I always remember the, there's, there was a great show on HBO a couple of years ago called, Silicon Valley. And there was a scene in that scene in that movie, scene that shot one of the shows where two coders were arguing about using tabs or spaces, you know, in their in their code. And it became like this war.

01:20:23:09 - 01:20:37:13
Robbie
So don't let that turn you off. There is preferential kind of stuff for this, you know, and, one person's definition of good code, clean code, is another person's definition is just it's horrible. So just don't think that's a cool thing.

01:20:37:18 - 01:20:57:23
Joey
It's an important thing to to distinguish. There's a big difference between throwing together your own workflow tools when needed and making a commercial product properly to sell totally. You know, for stuff that you're just using internally, it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to to be right. It just has to look right, you know? Wait, that's backwards.

01:20:58:01 - 01:21:16:15
Robbie
I gotcha, gotcha. Well, that's a good segue into the next thing I want to talk about. And that is details. It seems like, details over the past few years have become their own sort of cottage industry. You know, we have, we have some good friends that make some really good details. In programing. Let's start.

01:21:16:15 - 01:21:51:06
Robbie
Let's start at the beginning with this and sort of defining it because, I think a lot of people will be surprised that, CTL is something that is really actually kind of specific to our industry, that color transform language, that actually had its birth with, I think in the mainstream birth was with, the Academy and the ACS guys and programing a new language to do kind of that open source, color management platform that eventually developed into ACS with this idea of the CTL language.

01:21:51:08 - 01:22:10:02
Robbie
Black magic, you know, obviously uses, some flavor of CTL for their support of ACS, but they also took it and they said, oh, this is cool. Like, this is a cool language. We can do something with this. And we can do this to give people some creative tools. So they just kind of rebranded that a little bit D, CTL, DaVinci control trans, our transform language.

01:22:10:04 - 01:22:30:00
Robbie
And it has become like, as I said, sort of a cottage industry with people making tools to do all sorts of things. You've had, you've dabbled in this and like I said, we have some good friends, that are much more advanced than you. And I tell us a little bit about kind of this, d ctl process.

01:22:30:01 - 01:22:45:09
Robbie
Yes, I know you're going to say have an idea before you start coding. But like what goes into that? What, is it super complicated? Because it seems to me that everybody in their mom is creating these details. It can't be ridiculously hard.

01:22:45:11 - 01:23:22:11
Joey
Yeah. So a DTL like you said, is The Da Vinci Code or Transformer library. And the differences between the Da Vinci version and the Academy version is just resolve specific stuff. Yeah, they added features to be able to like let you add sliders so you can adjust things. All of CTL or D, CTL is essentially is a piece of software that you write gets dropped into resolve and it takes in a red green and a blue pixel value, and it spits out a new red green and the blue pixel value, they also now support alpha channels and they can support some positional stuff as well.

01:23:22:12 - 01:23:48:23
Joey
But that's basically it. It is image in pixel in a new pixel out. So the simplest CTL ever is like I want to take this maybe multiply the value by two. Now we're just doubling the gain of an image right. So what do you would use a digital for as opposed to a script which is kind of a set of instructions to optimize a repetitive task?

01:23:49:01 - 01:24:14:15
Joey
A DTL is a way to do custom image manipulations. We've used it for things like pattern generators, for calibration. We've used it for things like blanking detection. Before, major scope products had that feature built in. There were a lot of people using my blanking detection CTL, which literally just takes any value pixel value below a certain threshold.

01:24:14:21 - 01:24:42:12
Joey
And turns it bright red. So you can see if there's any blanking errors in your image. I've used to make custom letter box generators. Yep. And on the more advanced, side of it, yeah, there are a lot of really smart math people doing really interesting color tools in D CTL. You can't make a color tool in a scripting language because you can't change the image with the scripting language, right?

01:24:42:12 - 01:25:02:11
Joey
But you're just kind of telling resolve what to do. Whereas the DTL, you can literally write any kind of mathematical code you want and have that literally change the image in that way. So if you're really smart with color science decals are fantastic.

01:25:02:13 - 01:25:19:02
Robbie
Yeah. I mean, so, you know, it's it's really interesting because I, I've dabbled and had some pretty good success with the basic stuff that like, like you've said, right. Like, you know, whatever, throw an image up on the screen when I do this, like, I, I made one that was like a bug safe zone like that, like that kind of thing, right?

01:25:19:03 - 01:25:48:15
Robbie
Super, super easy. But when you get into the higher end stuff where you're really manipulating stuff, I do think it's important to say that part of the problem solving a problem building is having a little bit of a mathematical and color science understanding, right, with how how color really works, how the tonality and image works, what you can do that will break an image, you know, in sort of the various ways that things are transformed from, you know, one encoding specification to another encoding specification.

01:25:48:15 - 01:25:57:07
Robbie
Like, it's not as simple as just like, oh, I want to make some sliders that do all these awesome things. Like, you have to have some math behind it, right, to figure.

01:25:57:07 - 01:26:01:04
Joey
Out you've got to actually do the color science work if you want it. Yeah.

01:26:01:05 - 01:26:36:23
Robbie
And and I and I over the years as we watched like our, like our buddy, Collin Kelly, Jason Bodak or Hendrickson or Ike a bunch of these other people that have commercial products from the sidelines, I've definitely seen this like this growth and understanding of their math and color science. Right until like to the point where a lot of those, those folks like, they even like, you know, they count like dedicated hardcore right color scientists as their their mentors for helping them figure out kind of some of the math that's involved here, because it's not just a light switch to turn it on.

01:26:37:04 - 01:27:04:14
Robbie
But with that said, there is some really cool things that you can do pretty quick. And I and just, a plug for Black magic. Black magic actually does a, d CTO webinar class pretty frequently that I think, Coach Kelly has run in the past. I think Dario for soon sometimes does it. There's you know, it's a good high level overview of DCT programing and getting started with it.

01:27:04:16 - 01:27:11:10
Robbie
And so if you're not familiar with that I believe those those classes are so free. That's a resource to check out because yeah.

01:27:11:10 - 01:27:29:00
Joey
And just like scripting, help developer. There's also a DTL folder and there's examples in there. So you can open up those examples and see exactly how they're written and what they're doing. You might want to take one of those examples and just start tweaking it a little bit or changing it. And that's kind of the way to get started.

01:27:29:00 - 01:27:35:21
Joey
You know, Black Magic has done a very good job documenting these capabilities. And I think that's that's kind of the the starting point for everybody.

01:27:35:23 - 01:27:54:14
Robbie
Yeah. Yeah. And it's I can't stress enough like the, the putting the, the the problem first that you're trying to solve. That's, it's so paramount especially with the DCT because like if you don't know what you're the end result that you're trying to get to, you have no understanding how to get from point A to point B, right?

01:27:54:15 - 01:28:12:03
Robbie
So that's that's important. Now. So scripts DuckTales I think the next thing I want to talk about is this, I don't even know how to say it. It's like these custom like like custom things that I often want to do and go, wouldn't it be cool, Joey.

01:28:12:09 - 01:28:12:14
Joey
If.

01:28:12:14 - 01:28:33:10
Robbie
We had a way of like, you know, a new client comes in and we could just click a button and it automatic makes like a new user and password for them on our portal and then emails them that and then, you know, whatever. Like there's all these things that I often like big picture and usually it's you want your hand on your chin just like you're now going, all right, okay.

01:28:33:13 - 01:28:52:20
Robbie
All right. And then a week later you come back and you go, hey, I want to show you this right now. I give you a lot of credit, you know, a lot more code than I do, but I. I think it's fair to say that you get a hand, an assist every once in a while, from some various platforms.

01:28:52:20 - 01:29:22:10
Robbie
And I think these are really, to me, as a, as a, as a what I eat with this stuff. It is really kind of interesting. Some of these platforms. And I'm about to tell you something and tell me if I got it right. Some of these sort of low-code, no code automation type platforms like make.com and and Nate and and others, they essentially go out to the wide world of the internet and software and kind of call all these various APIs in one place, right?

01:29:22:10 - 01:29:42:07
Robbie
They kind of curate that. So if you have stuff from Blackmagic or, you know, Adobe or Amazon or whoever, they kind of know what all those various APIs are for those various places, and then let you build and connect the dots between all the various servers and all the various APIs. Is that is that a relatively.

01:29:42:07 - 01:30:12:19
Joey
Exactly connect the dots is the perfect way to describe it. And I'm going to focus on kind of two platforms because they're the ones I'm the most probably familiar with. Makes com which is completely cloud hosted. Yep. And innate in both of them are, you know, low to no code workflow automation platforms that their whole purpose is to go out and do things online with various APIs.

01:30:12:19 - 01:30:26:16
Joey
And they're both node based. So if you're familiar with resolve, you're going to love this. You literally draw out a node tree just like you would in color. Now in color, you start with your image on one end and you do a bunch of operations and then your output, your output.

01:30:26:16 - 01:30:26:20
Robbie
Right?

01:30:26:20 - 01:30:45:04
Joey
Yeah. Well guess what on Macomb or Innate. And I'll say this end to end is my absolute favorite. We'll get into the hosting options later, but it is incredibly powerful because it kind of bridges the gap between no code completely drag and drop, and you can fully throw a code node in there and write as much code as you want.

01:30:45:06 - 01:31:07:19
Joey
You know, you can kind of set how much coding you're going to do depending on how custom you need to do. But let's just take an example, right? Like you said, these services have hooks into all the different APIs of all the cloud services that you might use. So Dropbox, zoom, Monday.com, we use Monday.com for all of our project management.

01:31:07:19 - 01:31:25:10
Joey
So a lot of this ties in to that, you know, Amazon Web Services for files. I mean, hundreds of different services that you may or may not use. Notion I know a lot of people organize their projects with notion that's even got even.

01:31:25:12 - 01:31:30:23
Robbie
Transfer stuff like, massive and like, you know, file transfer services can tie into it.

01:31:30:23 - 01:31:37:04
Joey
Yeah, yeah. So just think about how you want to integrate multiple services that aren't connected at all.

01:31:37:07 - 01:32:00:13
Robbie
All right. So like when we start talking about this stuff, obviously the connection and connecting the dots between all these APIs is an important one. And like, you know, I over the past couple of years, we've really focused on using Monday.com as our project management platform. And so for us personally, a lot of the needs that we have to connect the dots kind of radiate out from, from Monday.

01:32:00:13 - 01:32:17:23
Robbie
So I'll give you a couple examples and maybe, you know, 1 or 2 of these you can break down further if you guess. I probably have some of the details wrong. So some of the ones I want, for example, that we've integrated, we do all of our proposals through Monday.com. Right. So I'll go into Monday, I'll fill in all the, you know, various bits and the cost information and schedule information.

01:32:18:01 - 01:32:44:12
Robbie
And then I literally just hit a make button that makes a PDF that I can then just automatically mail to whoever the contact is associated on that platform. Now, at first it doesn't have a signature line because we might go through some revisions and some back and forth. But once they do, like, hey, cool, this is done. Like I'm ready to go, I click a button that says send for signature and it automatically goes to another, cloud platform and it, sets up the signature line it sends to them.

01:32:44:12 - 01:33:01:08
Robbie
It tracks when they've signed it. Oh, and by the way, when they sign it, it gets back added. It gets added back to Monday.com and says, oh, you've signed this document, this project's ready to go. And even cooler than that, it actually creates a new project that moves to our current projects, and we're ready to see it. Like, awesome, right?

01:33:01:10 - 01:33:16:15
Robbie
Another one I love, is our zoom integration with Monday. Right. So if I have, in the context of talking to a client or like, hey, it would be great to kind of, you know, set up a call on Monday about I'm sorry, I can use Monday on Tuesday about, doing a conform on this project.

01:33:16:20 - 01:33:40:09
Robbie
Cool. Instead of going opening up zoom or going up to Gmail and doing all that kind of stuff, literally just go set meeting, put in the details. It fires off all the emails to everybody, including the calendar invites and all that kind of stuff. I can see right on Monday that it's been accepted. Right? So we have a lot of things like that that are calling out to different platforms and different services to make those connections.

01:33:40:11 - 01:33:59:03
Robbie
And my understanding of this, Joey, is that you scripted that all with these no code, low code platforms, literally by just going, okay, well, if Rob clicks this button, I need this to happen. And if it's fine, it doesn't do this, then these are the three results. So it's like kind of a choose your own adventure tree right?

01:33:59:05 - 01:34:27:07
Joey
Yeah. It's and it's like I said it's a node tree just like resolve. So you would have something that starts it off. Right. That's that's like kind of the trigger. Right. In our case that's a button that we program in Monday.com. Right. And then usually that trigger will carry some data with it. Just like in resolve. You know those little lines in the node tree carry the image and the alpha channel here we're carrying all the data from that service to the next node.

01:34:27:10 - 01:34:51:16
Joey
So let's talk about the the zoom call integration for sure. When you set up that row in Monday for your zoom call, you put in the contact information of anybody that you want on it. You put the date and time, then you press the button, right. That hits are in it and server gives it that information. It says, hey, this is the Monday item that contains the zoom call you want to do.

01:34:51:21 - 01:35:15:02
Joey
That's really all the information we need, because the next step, the next node, is a monday.com node that says, Hey Monday, give me this number, which is the number from the trigger. Then inside that number we've got lots more information, right. That item in Monday has the emails of all the contacts, the subject of the zoom call that you put in with text, the date and time that you want it to be.

01:35:15:04 - 01:35:40:22
Joey
All of that stuff is just populated by innate in reaching out to Monday and saying, hey, give me item number, whatever the number was. Yeah. Then we go down this little node tree again. We say, okay, well, I'm going to go to zoom now, and I'm going to make a new meeting for this time and this date. And each one of these nodes, you can kind of browse through every bit of data from the previous node in a list.

01:35:40:22 - 01:36:05:06
Joey
It'll literally say, okay, here's all the fields that the Monday node gave you. Email, date, time. Drag that data field to one of the input fields on zoom. Now zoom gets the date and time from Monday creates a meeting. Then we make another node where we do what's called a loop. We go through every single contact that was in the list we got from Monday.

01:36:05:08 - 01:36:27:10
Joey
And then each of those we say, hey, zoom, add this contact to that zoom meeting. So I'm dragging in the contact from Monday. Yeah, I'm dragging in the meeting ID we just got back from zoom after we created that meeting and dragging it to the next node and so on and so forth. And you can be as simple or as complicated as you want.

01:36:27:10 - 01:36:52:05
Joey
I have very simple, automations, for example, one that goes back into Nate in it gets a list of the automations, saves them out as individual files and uploads them to Dropbox. I do that every night. So if I mess one of these up, I have a backup to go back to. Right. But there's hundreds of services that both Macomb and eight N can talk to natively.

01:36:52:10 - 01:37:16:03
Joey
And it's very, very kind of what you're used to on the web. Like if you want to get into a Google sheet, for example, you add a Google Sheet node and it's going to come up and say, hey, okay, you need to connect your Google credentials. It will bring up a Google login page. You log into Google, give Macomb or in eight N permission to access your Google with whatever permissions you want to give it.

01:37:16:05 - 01:37:35:18
Joey
And then they're connected and they can talk. So it kind of handles all of the authentication, all of the back and forth and all of the moving of data. So you can just kind of sit there and think, okay, well the client is putting their information in a Google sheet. I want that to get into my Monday sheet in real time.

01:37:35:20 - 01:37:46:08
Joey
So now we just put in some hooks to do that, because we can take all of these different services and just drag and drop data from any field at any stage to any other field at any stage.

01:37:46:13 - 01:38:08:18
Robbie
Yeah. And I mean, I think the other thing too is that like, I think there's a line here where the it's a, it becomes a case of diminishing returns for the complexity that's involved. Right. And so you do you do have to kind of do some mental math on that. So like for example, you know, in principle, what I'm about to say is a straightforward thing.

01:38:08:20 - 01:38:28:01
Robbie
But once we started looking into it, we're like, oh, but there's this use case, and then there's these, what about this? And what about that? Right. So like, for example, like it makes sense in a, you know, a creative business like ours to go, hey, well, if we've track hours or whatever in Monday, we want to port those right over to QuickBooks, and send off an invoice automatically.

01:38:28:07 - 01:38:55:20
Robbie
But that doesn't like, oh, I was like, hold on, Joey, that's cool. But there's some personal finesse that goes in here. Maybe I'm not going to bill all eight hours this time around because we're doing them a favor or you know what? It actually, I'm not going to send the invoice to this person. I'm going to send it to that person because that person has a hissy fit every, you know, like there's a there's some human factor in there that just because you can do it doesn't mean that you always should do it.

01:38:55:20 - 01:39:25:20
Robbie
And so that's actually gotten us to a place where with some of these tools that I would, I would make a distinction where we have automated what we would like to automate, and then still leaving part of it up to human decision. And execution to complete that task. So with a QuickBooks scenario, cool. I made a draft invoice for you, but I didn't send it to whoever and you can still review it and still edit it and do whatever you need to do before you send it off to somebody.

01:39:25:20 - 01:39:26:23
Robbie
Right? Like those kind of.

01:39:26:23 - 01:39:39:08
Joey
Things that figuring out exactly where your pain points are, where your repetitive tasks are, and automate those. But then your actual thinking tasks you want to keep a human in the loop.

01:39:39:10 - 01:40:02:19
Robbie
Absolutely. So that stuff that makes a lot of sense. And I would also just say for, you know, nights like me, make, Nate and there are some great tutorial training videos and all of those platforms because they are so Wysiwyg, they will handhold you through that process of like creating your first couple scripts and, and or, workflow automations and getting it gets it out there.

01:40:02:21 - 01:40:19:02
Robbie
Now, Joey, I'm thinking about this because I'm thinking scripts. I'm thinking this kind of workflow automations we just talked about with make and stuff like that. But at a certain point of time, it just seems to me like this is just like data flowing back and forth between the pipe without any real way to, like, kind of like visualize it, right?

01:40:19:02 - 01:40:41:11
Robbie
Or like to do something with it. And it just it gets me to thinking like, well, what if I want to make my own like interface for something? So like where I have to input something in, but then fires off when these scripts or, you know, even I'm just thinking of something like maybe, you know, there's people out there who want to design their own, like upload portal to get files from clients.

01:40:41:11 - 01:40:52:16
Robbie
Right? So like you have to be able to like, design up front end a little bit for that before the rest of your scripting and workflow automation that can take off. Right? Like how how is that done.

01:40:52:17 - 01:41:07:13
Joey
So, you know, that can kind of take a number of shapes. Yeah. For us, the shape that it usually takes is monday.com. We use Monday.com as a front end for everything, but that's just for Robbie and I. That's not public space. Right?

01:41:07:13 - 01:41:07:19
Robbie
Right.

01:41:07:19 - 01:41:42:20
Joey
Where you need to create something public facing the web can be your best friend in the world, because you can just give a client, give another user, give a freelancer a URL of a custom tool that you've made and that can hook in. But all of these other automations on the back end that we've been talking about, there's a bunch of tools for doing this, but the one I want to focus on and talk about is the one that I'm kind of most familiar with that I use a lot, which is called Buddy Base, and it's essentially kind of a what you see is what you get web form editor that is also tied into

01:41:42:20 - 01:42:07:12
Joey
its own database system. That can also hook into things like Macomb, like innate in and it makes it really easy. So if you want to make a form or, something that, you know, clients or freelancers enter in data into, buddy base is super cool because you can literally do it like a word document, like I want, a text field here.

01:42:07:16 - 01:42:32:16
Joey
I want, file upload field here. And when they click submit, you'll get like a list of options that you can kind of set what it does. So in our case what it does is sends that hook into innate in to get another process started. So for example what we've used this for is I made a front end for some custom Dolby Vision automations that we've built.

01:42:32:18 - 01:43:12:07
Joey
I also made one for making slates. So I work with a lot of clients at a major, major nonfiction set of networks. And their promos need slates. Their promos come in with what's called a cut sheet, which is an Excel spreadsheet. There's a list of all the numbers and the names and the versions that need to go on to slate, and I've got it automated now with, both a combination of buddy based UI where it's just a URL that I give to, to my editor friends that work with this network, and it hooks into an innate in automation that I made to make the actual images from the user perspective and editor logs

01:43:12:07 - 01:43:36:08
Joey
in types in the name of the project uploads the Excel spreadsheet, hit submit, then they get back a link to a Dropbox folder that has rendered out images of all their slates. No typing, no errors, no copy and paste in the wrong fields. Every thing automated. And that's kind of a cool thing to kind of add to all of this conversation.

01:43:36:10 - 01:43:49:19
Joey
The more you automate, the more you eliminate user error and input error. So it's a it's also kind of a cool way to keep your quality control up, because you can't make a mistake if it's copying and pasting the text. Exactly.

01:43:49:21 - 01:44:18:14
Robbie
Yeah. And I mean the other the other one that comes to mind with this kind of custom UI and tie into some of this coding is I often think about, and we we've dabbled in implementing this but haven't, you know, haven't done it fully. But I this discussion is making me think that we should probably revisit that is is the client onboarding process rate of like kind of like the initial sales, like, you know, how many times a week do we go, hey, if you just send us a reference card and like, you know, whatever and tell us more about the project.

01:44:18:20 - 01:44:47:12
Robbie
Well, I mean, yeah, you could do that simply through, you know, true type form or, you know, whatever. I mean, all these other forms to kind of get that data dumped in. I think the distinction, though, that this kind of tie, this all together is that when you use a third party tool like that, sure, it can do like for something like a form that's relatively straightforward, but where this customizability with, buddy base and make and any and come in is that crime you create your own form.

01:44:47:12 - 01:45:10:23
Robbie
But then what happens after that form. Right. So we could be in play. You could be in a place where. Hey, okay, tell me a little bit more about your project, and all of a sudden it's firing off automations that are creating project folders on your storage that are notifying you that, hey, a file's been uploaded from this client, that you send a proposal to, like you know, Bob's your uncle with how integrated and customize you want to get this get this going.

01:45:11:01 - 01:45:41:10
Robbie
I would say with all of this, though, you have to make the distinction between things that are good and in in an internal to your group that you can explain to people like, cool, that's frustrating for you. But whatever, I'm the boss, do it versus the the outside facing stuff. Right. And I think in general, any programmer will tell you, but we've also learned too, that less is always more when it comes to the outward facing part and being really simple, right?

01:45:41:10 - 01:45:59:06
Robbie
You know, if you can make a form with five fields instead of 15 fields, people are way more likely to use the five form field when they are the 15 field form, right? So like thinking about how you can make that stuff, it's even even simpler than that. Things like well, I want to pull down. I don't want to have to type something in, right?

01:45:59:06 - 01:46:10:02
Robbie
Like just like make the choices for me. You have to start when you get into some of the stuff, thinking a little bit like a UI designer, two of like things that are going to make people's life, you know, a lot easier to use this tool.

01:46:10:02 - 01:46:36:02
Joey
But that's one of the cool things about taking this approach versus the very simple like, I'm going to put a web form on my site that just emails me approach, because let's say, for example, you do have a client onboarding form and you do have a dropdown of different options later on. You want to change that. Well, if you're doing a more custom approach, you can have that dropdown pull those options from whatever project management software you're using, for example, Monday for us.

01:46:36:04 - 01:46:42:00
Joey
And then once you change it there, it automatically changes anywhere that you're pulling that data.

01:46:42:02 - 01:47:01:08
Robbie
Yeah, no. Totally makes total sense. Now, one of the things that you have said through this process is or this this discussion is, you know, hey, use this tool, use that tool. And a lot of them sounds like, they're on the interwebs somewhere, right? They are. They are. What do they call that, SAS or something? Software. Software as a service.

01:47:01:08 - 01:47:26:14
Robbie
Right. Exactly. So, you know, in principle, I don't have as much. Data anxiety as you do. Right? In terms of, you know, privacy or things going to mess. But I understand the practicality part of it. Right. If you're you know, if something goes down that's outside of your control, well, it's down until it's not right. And you have to just kind of suck it up and and just deal with it.

01:47:26:16 - 01:47:51:22
Robbie
Tell us a little bit about kind of, you know, the ability to kind of internalize some of this and run it on your own gear. And I think, you know, we had a we we discovered some of these pitfalls when we were, you know, doing the PDF thing with the proposals that I was talking about earlier, that we were like, Holy crap, there's a million PDF services out there, but they all cost an arm and a leg to use.

01:47:52:04 - 01:48:05:21
Robbie
And no, I don't need to make 50,000 PDFs this year. So like we decided to, to to to internalize some of that. And you're actually running the PDF creation software for our proposals on a server at your house. Yeah.

01:48:05:23 - 01:48:36:05
Joey
Yeah. So you know, most of these services that I've talked about thus far all offer a buy it monthly fee, you know, fully supported cloud option where you just log in to their software on their cloud pay them a monthly fee, and they manage everything. For a lot of people, that is honestly a great way to get started, because yes, the risk is that it can go down.

01:48:36:07 - 01:48:42:21
Joey
But I'll be honest, the risk that your own custom server is going to go down is probably a lot higher than theirs going.

01:48:42:21 - 01:48:44:18
Robbie
Down, but it's going to it's more.

01:48:44:20 - 01:48:45:18
Joey
About maintenance.

01:48:45:18 - 01:48:55:22
Robbie
At that point. It's more about sending your proprietary data out of out of your control. I get it. You're. Yeah, you're that's that's 100% a good point because but you're like.

01:48:56:00 - 01:49:20:15
Joey
There's a cost implication there. Right. These do have monthly fees associated with them. And depending on how much you use, each of these different applications have different cost structures. None of them are massively expensive. And I think they're worth it for what functionality you can get out of them. But, specifically buddy base in eight in and a few others can be very easily self-hosted.

01:49:20:18 - 01:49:46:17
Joey
Now, there are certain features in them that require you to buy their cloud versioning. Like connecting it to AI services and stuff like that. There's some really advanced use cases where self-hosting doesn't really work, but for most, like post production needs, the self-hosting does work, and that's the option that we've chosen to use because I'm used to administering servers and I don't have a problem with it.

01:49:46:17 - 01:50:13:18
Joey
And that does let us keep all of our data internal. Yeah. And it also lets us have some hooks that we wouldn't normally have. For example, it can talk to my local storage and make project folders for me. I it would be a lot more complicated to do that on a cloud based version. Yeah. You know, so whenever you're kind of shopping these low code, no code automation platforms, that's just one of the things to consider.

01:50:13:18 - 01:50:39:23
Joey
Can I host it locally? Should I host it locally? How much does it cost to not host it locally? Right. The functionality is usually pretty similar, but the devil's in the details. So just kind of look at the offerings and what features you might think you need. You know, Monday.com is a good example. The more we dug into it, the more we realized, yeah, we kind of got a buy the top level thing.

01:50:40:01 - 01:50:52:17
Joey
We were like, oh, you know, we can use the the free version for this, this and this. And then we can get like the, the base level paid version. And then I'm like, yeah, but I want to do that and connected to that. So we ended up kind of going.

01:50:52:20 - 01:51:10:06
Robbie
No I understand. No I understand I mean, you know, the dream is to be self-reliant, but I, you do have to play on some of these. But I do like, I think for some, you know, for some organizations, this is going to be the same kind of concept of as air gapping your creative machines, you know, like you do want to have control of that data.

01:51:10:08 - 01:51:38:18
Robbie
Now, one thing, one last thing before we wrap this up or two lessons before we wrap this up, I do think something you said at the beginning of this conversation is you kind of glossed over it, but to me, it's a really important and honestly something that I have learned its value over the past year. And that is at some point you have to make a decision about where you want your central clearinghouse of data to live.

01:51:38:18 - 01:52:05:08
Robbie
Right. We I think a lot of people get fatigued with this kind of stuff because they use 27 different services, and everything is kind of even in a different place. Right? We you in what you said earlier was, hey, we've used money. That's kind of our central part. And that's just one that's the choice that we made because it was something we were using for project management, but it also had the ability to hold files, contacts, you know, all this other kind of stuff.

01:52:05:10 - 01:52:30:20
Robbie
I do think it's important, as you start getting brainstorming these plans that you do think about spreading yourself too thin with too many different services, doing too many disparate things. Right. And that was one reason. Like, I had a real hard time for a long time just to be transparent about it, really understanding what the power of Monday was, and why it was as expensive it was.

01:52:30:20 - 01:52:49:01
Robbie
And so I was like, dude, this is just like a, like a live Excel table, like what's what's the big deal? And you kept trying to explain it to me and explain to me, explain to me. And then it was only when I realized that, oh, we have one set of master data that can now be used in 30 different places.

01:52:49:03 - 01:53:11:01
Robbie
That's cool. Right. So we could use the same, you know, the same client name to generate 27 different processes or whatever. And that was like that was a big moment for me to understand that. Like, the more that you can centralize that data into a one living database that can play well with others, the more power you have.

01:53:11:06 - 01:53:41:04
Joey
Yeah. And so it's kind of wrapped the whole thing up. Yeah. I want to go back to the very beginning. And I know I keep saying it, keep saying it, but it's so important. Number one is the idea, right? Once you know, and if you have a clear, articulable idea in your head of what the tool that you need for your workflow is going to look like and is going to do, if you can describe that, well, then in most cases you might be able to program it.

01:53:41:06 - 01:53:50:00
Joey
If you're handy with programing, great. If you're not, though, there are options out there of hiring a developer.

01:53:50:02 - 01:53:52:12
Robbie
You know that's great in freelancers.

01:53:52:17 - 01:54:10:01
Joey
If your idea in your head of this workflow that you want is clear enough and well thought out enough, that you can describe it to somebody who does have the programing skills, then you know that still is a very, very useful road to go down.

01:54:10:03 - 01:54:30:07
Robbie
I always think about our friend Alexis Van Hartman when you when you when we talk about that, that, that part of it. For those of you don't know Alexis, he's, he's an author. He's a colorist. He's a product designer these days. He's currently at Adobe, doing magical things. But for the ever he was writing, the user manual at, black Magic for resolve.

01:54:30:09 - 01:54:47:05
Robbie
One of the things that's always really impressed me about Alexis is his ability to do what you just described. He's not a coder, right? I mean, I'm sure he knows some level of code to a certain degree. Right? But he is a conceptual, like, really spell it out so the coders can go, oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

01:54:47:07 - 01:55:02:18
Robbie
Give me a couple days to kind of, you know, execute on that. Right. And that goes, you know, in a tool like resolve where, you know, he was helping create some of these tool sets. That's everything from not just the initial concept and idea, but to all the way to like wireframing. Like I want the UI to work like this.

01:55:02:18 - 01:55:28:04
Robbie
Right. And I think the what I've always been impressed about with him is germane to what you just said. The more that you can explore it in exacting detail, when you do get stuck or you get beyond your level of ability, it can't be overstated how much that skill can help you get something more out of a developer, not only in getting a better product, but actually like controlling your cost to a significant degree as well, right?

01:55:28:06 - 01:55:34:14
Robbie
If you're just like, I don't know, I want it to be cool. Like a developer is gonna be like, what? Right? But if you can be like, I want to.

01:55:34:14 - 01:55:35:02
Joey
Be real happy.

01:55:35:02 - 01:55:54:21
Robbie
With that, right? But if you can be like, hey, when I push this button, these five things need to happen. If these five things don't need to happen, then this happens, etc. like, the more you can explain that stuff, the the better off you are. You're absolutely right. Like I have for years I have thought about man, it would be great if there was a marketplace for this kind of thing.

01:55:55:03 - 01:56:14:15
Robbie
And then I started looking into it. And guess what? There's marketplaces for this kind of thing. Like, I've recently used a website called quotable.com. Incredible is more like WordPress web developers, but it's the same kind of idea like they have. Hey, I got a problem. You put it up there, you build a little brief of what your problem is, and then they pair you up.

01:56:14:15 - 01:56:32:03
Robbie
They kind of create and kind of vet, people that are best match for your thing. I years ago, when we first started, like prior to the pandemic, Covid pandemic, I was like, oh, man, you know what really be cool is to build my own remote approval, review and approval app to go on like LG TVs.

01:56:32:08 - 01:56:46:03
Robbie
I talked to a guy, I went to one of those websites. He was like, yeah, I used to be an engineer at LG. I can build an app. The, on the way, you know, like, so there's all that kind of stuff out there, but it's you're only going to get as much out of it as you can describe.

01:56:46:05 - 01:57:10:21
Joey
Yeah. So just to kind of close it up, the idea. Yeah. Just I hear you, anytime you have repetitive pain points, that's when I want people to start thinking about, well, I'm working really hard on this really boring task. There's got to be an easier way. And hopefully with all of these different things that we've talked about in this series, both hardware and software, you can start trying to figure out what those easier ways are.

01:57:10:23 - 01:57:29:03
Robbie
Awesome. Well good stuff. I really enjoyed this conversation. I was I always geek out talking about this, even if I, only conceptually understand some of it. I do. I do have fun, to learn, learn about it. Just as a as a reminder, you guys can, find the show on YouTube. Just search for the offset podcast.

01:57:29:03 - 01:57:48:10
Robbie
We're all on social media, Facebook and Instagram as well. You can also go to the offset podcast.com and, span all our episodes and additional show notes. There. And we are on all major platforms like Spotify, Apple, and so on, to find the show. And if you do find the show, just give us a like subscribe, tell your friends, the more the merrier.

01:57:48:12 - 01:58:01:17
Robbie
Well, Joey, this was a good conversation. I'm glad that, you know, I'm glad that we covered these two areas of hardware and software because I think they are important topics. So, until next time for The Offset Podcast. I'm Robbie Carman.

01:58:01:19 - 01:58:03:07
Joey
And I'm Joe D’Anna. Thanks for listening.