Software Ideas for Artists – Notepad for Video Editors

It irks me to see fellow film editors suffer because software in the video and art world is inexcusably bad. I have a computer programming background, but programmers’ interests seem to overlap the least with artists’. Yet artists continually prove they’re willing to be screwed over by prohibitively high prices and shoddy quality (Premiere 4 should forever be vacuum sealed in carboninte as an example), and programmers rarely see the opportunities present in the art world for new software. Here’s me attempting to reach out and bring light to our needs.

Software idea – Notepad for Editors

When I’m editing video and playing the video on my timeline, if I change focus (switch windows), the player stops. If I’m trying to take notes on an edit, I have to stop the video, take notes, and then resume the video. If I’m taking sound notes, this can sometimes double the amount of time I spent in front of the computer, which, if I’m worth $20/hour (that’s putting it nicely), costs me forty bucks each time. So somebody please figure out either

a) a text editor that runs “on top” of everything so Premiere or FCP
b) a text editor plugin for these programs
c) which setting or hotkey allows me to do this in these programs, because if the ability exists, they sure don’t like to make it obvious

You could probably sell this for fifty bucks.