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At it’s worst…
FCPX is a great and accurate way of getting 7D and H4n audio synced up and exported to ProRes QT files, which are then dumped into FCP7.
I still get mad at the OMF thing so we don’t use it to cut, but some things are pretty darn useful.John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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15 Replies
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Automatic Duck OMF
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The FCP X team massively re-thought SOME of the fundamental processes of video editing – obviously starting with the basic plumbing stuff and how what they considered the most core and foundational aspects of editing might be improved. (like the astonishingly “ah ha!” moment I got upon seeing how they folded keystroke driven alternate scene (Auditioning) into it!) That function being yet another clear signal of a continued focus on the way serious “work for money” happens with layers of auditions and approval steps before an edit can be locked – something that simply does NOT happen with personal home videos.
I totally get how anyone with a personal editing workflow that lost capabilities could focus exclusively on their losses.
But anyone who can’t see the massive additional possibilities of the new approach, IMO, has blinders on.
I’ll still use 7 till I can grasp everything going on here. But every day, I’ll be reading, learning and practicing with X.
It looks more and more like the future every time I uncover more about how it really works.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner
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[Bill Davis] “But anyone who can’t see the massive additional possibilities of the new approach, IMO, has blinders on.”
I’d love to see it. Let us know when they can get the full video signal out so we can see it on a monitor.
[Bill Davis] “I’ll still use 7 till I can grasp everything going on here. But every day, I’ll be reading, learning and practicing with X.”
Me too. Seriously, FCPX needs 6 months, especially with Lion being such a big change. I was disappointed to see Apple announce that Lion brings no new capability to FCPX. I was really hoping that the A/V Foundation in Lion was going to help FCPX. At least we now know why Apple released FCPX a month earlier than Lion. No point not to, and to avoid confusion.
I just hope it’s 6 months, not a year…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com -
I’m not interested in buying duck again right now with x’s current state. My point is, FCPX is at least a good way to sync separate audio sources for ingest into FCP7. In fact, it’s REALLY good at that. Better than dealing with Pleural Eyes.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Sorry, but I still think you’re playing the wrong game, Mitch. I think you’re getting stuck trying to fit FCP-X into the “traditional video market.” – the one being being HAMMERED from all sides.
Legions of working editors in the future will create content without EVER using external monitoring. Why? Because they’ll quickly learn that most of this “un-monitored” video can look EXCELLENT via web delivery using nothing but the tools already built into the software NOW – in version 1.
The web, for example is a delivery medium with no “broadcast standards” but BILLIONS of eyeballs. This will make people money. Potentially LOTS and LOTS of money. Heck, I just spent $49 bucks for another internet delivered educational download. I can guarantee it never saw anything outside of a computer monitor because it was never INTENDED for any other viewing experience. It was in SUPERIOR resolution to any broadcast file – precisely because it had never had to be “dumbed down” for broadcast. But it worked for it’s function BEAUTIFULLY. I learned TONS. And paid FAR less then going and sitting in a classroom. The entire delivery path was computer – to the net – to another computer – and as a result, money changed hands. That’s a compelling broadcast negating paradigm right there.
Also, don’t wait too long for that “perfect monitoring link” – because in one very real sense, it’s ALREADY sitting there on your desktop – by virtue of simply adding a “quality check” step of taking a QT file into your old suite when a particular project needs to be made “broadcast ready.”
That will suffice and is COST FREE And if they don’t I suspect that like DVD delivery – at some point it will become functionally unnecessary over time.
Right now, DG-Fastchannel, ExtremeReach and other services will take a digital upload and both conform and deliver the content to any broadcast station on the planet. Do you really think they aren’t smart enough to write up and post output standards directly from the FCP-X desktop that will allow them to do what they need to make a digital video file “broadcast ready?”
Dream on.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner
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wow. nicely said bill. it is refreshing to read about someone taking notice of the good changes that are inside of X.
Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D -
Keep hoping while everyone else is making Adobe the ‘standard’.
Having a BROADCAST monitor is NOT about Broadcast – it is about ACCURACY. Simple color correction on a regular monitor can and will make video look like crap. I know because my assistant accidentally changed the calibrated preset on my Eizo, and when I uploaded a video for the producer’s approval, she noted how people looked orange, and all I did was a simple CC. (I also have a Panasonic broadcast LCD fed via SDI from a Decklink Extreme which is slightly more accurate than my Eizo)
FYI, you do not use a broadcast monitor to make video legal – that is what SCOPES are for.
Also, the Aja Kona and BM Decklink are NOT about ‘broadcast’ – they are designed to get a TRUE video signal into a monitor.
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Steve,
You are describing one pipeline for calibrating. One.
Many people could calibrate their suite in this way qith FCP-X (for now).
-Use a properly calibrated second monitor and have fullscreen playback all the time ( i remember when AVID’s did this too!)
-Use the internal scopes of FCP X
-Test it, try it.
-Output an FCP X show to a file.
-Import the file to whatever NLE is in your pipeline (or use AJA TV to view the file in your pipeline.
-Play the file through your existing pipeline and check it against that.It’s not that complicated to see if the colors are out of whack and a secondary monitor can be calibrated to match your definition of broadcast very easily.
David
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The shortest answer is doing.
Lord Herbert
https://vimeo.com/battistella -
I think there’s several points being made in this thread.
The first, as both Bill and David have suggested, is that any perceived shortcomings of FCPX can be overcome by having a secondary system around. This is a legitimate approach, though I doubt that everyone will see that as acceptable, particularly when every other NLE doesn’t require it. Still, if one sees the advantages of FCPX as great enough, it might be able to be justified… at least for as long as you can keep that secondary system alive.
The second is that quality is no longer important, since so much of production goes to web. That’s also a legitimate point, though I believe that correct color will still be required. If there is a company logo or corporate colors involved, plan on hearing from the legal department if you’re not very very close. I’ve known people who have gotten the letters for both print and video over the years, so I believe the “it doesn’t matter cause it’s the web” defense may be weak.
Bill went so far as to suggest that web video is higher quality than the “dumbed down broadcast” quality (as he referred to it). I suspect a lot of people won’t agree with that. Since I’ve been watching HD longer and editing HD longer than Bill, I’ll disagree. As an early pioneer of web video and someone who is always pushing the envelope on web video quality, none of it comes close to what I watch on my 65″ HD set. In fairness that may change in time… and in the interest of full disclosure, yes I’ve known Bill Davis for many many years.
Third, with regard to Bills $49 online training experience… I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that it was a program made on FCPX and about FCPX? No surprise that the absence of external monitoring wasn’t a problem for him in that example.
Fourth, Steve is correct in his notion that Broadcast isn’t about Broadcast. What it’s about proper quality. Always has been. Broadcast monitors were used by people who never went to broadcast. They are your only defense against the “color looks wrong on my TV” argument. If you could demonstrate that it was in perfect color on a known calibrated standard, then you were vindicated. A brass pin serves the same purpose in a survey. If, as Bill is suggesting, we don’t need any brass pins anymore (a potentially true point), then I predict chaos. But perhaps that’s where we’re headed.
Fifth, David’s two step approach to getting correct monitoring may well work. I have my doubts, but perhaps someone will make really great DisplayPort monitors at some point in the future.
Sixth, I’d like to suggest that these beliefs may well be making us the architect of our own demise. If Bill is correct, and I think he might be, since I’ve been making similar points about the death of our industry for a few years… then many of us won’t be in business in a year. If quality, craft or accuracy no longer matter, then the guy who does video on the side while working in shipping and receiving department can do the video. For that matter, why not the receptionist?
We’ve seen this before, so it isn’t without precedent. Perhaps the “Democratization of video” that I spoke of many years ago has finally arrived. If that’s the case, everyone will do their own video… and your phone will stop ringing. Could be that you won’t be using FCPX at all, because you won’t be using anything to edit.
All interesting things to ponder…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com -
Word processing/broadband did this for writing. There are writers now at all levels that get an audience. There will be room for ‘pros’ now that video is a new form of literacy.
I have been wondering for a while … if the cloud is the distribution system, what is the proper form of color correction?
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz MacPro4,1 2.66GHz 8 core 12gigs of ram. GPU: Nvidia Geoforce GT120 with Vram 512. OS X 10.6.x; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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