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Is FCP trying to do too much?
I have been thinking about something for awhile and I am wondering what others think.
Is FCP Trying to do much? And do they need to take four steps back before taking the next step forward?
Let me preface this by saying that I do not wish to get into an argument about which is better, AVID or FCP, but as a heavy user of both platforms on a daily basis, I see things that make me wonder.
Recently I posted something asking what I could do with an old g4. I know that it is a dinosaur but I didn’t want to dump it. Overwhelming everybody’s response was, “you need a faster machine”. Well of course they were right it that case, but as I jump on a dual Power PC (yes I know that is very old too) I am amazed at what we thought that WAS fast.
So now when I cut something on a 8 core, i think that, damn this fast. But will I think that in a year? Probably not. I understand that this is how computing works but:
Is FCP using THAT fact, computation speed increasingly exponentially, as excuse to write new code on top of bad code?
I have been using FCP since FCP 2.0, and the interface is relatively the same. Looks yes, guts i know are different. I started thinking about this when I was cutting something on a laptop using AVID Media Composer. It was just slick, streamlined and really moving fast on an old G4 laptop. But on that same machine, same drive config, FCP is a slug. Was the code just written better? That same version of MC ran on my office Quad Core.
I really like FCP and some of features it has are truly amazing, but I wonder if it is not time to tear down the walls to the studs and put in new electrical. Or am I going to be told to buy a new house?
thoughts?
bibbo
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3 Replies
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Which version of Avid Media Composer were you using on that laptop? Avid 3.1? That doesn’t run to well on my Powerbook G4, but Avid 2.8 sure does fine. That being an example, are you trying to run the latest and greatest FCP on that same laptop? Or one that came about about the same time…like FCP 5.1. That runs great on my G4.
Also..what formats are you dealing with? Offline cutting means lower data rates means quicker response times.
A company I worked for still have Avid running on G4’s in the office. Not sure what version, but it was older. And then they had Adrenalines on PCs in some bays, but a majority were Avid 2.8 on G5s, and I was one of the lucky ones to be on a macPro with 3.0.5. And all versions seems to work well together. But, that is Avid. They test THOROUGHLY what exact versions of what you need to have in order for their software to work properly. FCP doesn’t seem to have that…no recommendations for “this is what you need for FCP 5.1.4, and for 6.0.2.” I really wish they would…but they don’t. They tend to say “just get the latest and greatest” and let us beta test. Which is why many of us sit on older versions because they are stable.
But FCP has needed the internal guts revamped for a WHILE now. Hopefully they’ll do something when Snow Leopard comes out.
Shane
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Yeah it was MC 2.8 that I was working on. I installed 6.0 on the laptop, but it is pretty ridiculous, ie clunky. So I guess that I really was not comparing apples to apples.
But it is good to hear that you believe that they need a revamp as well.
I too believe that they sort of rush things to market and let us beta test for them. Meanwhile AVID is much more proprietary, resulting in a little more stability, in my opinion.
thanks for weighing in.
jack
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I think this is a general problem with computers and developing software.
The better and faster chips get, computing simple test patterns is always faster and faster in the lab, but there’s always heavier programs waiting in line, so the overall work speed stays the same in the real world.With video these days there’s also HD that demands huge power, so editing programs in HD is now as slow as DV was years ago. Geesh, in the future, how about 2k or 4k editing? Fast and cheap of course… Something tells me that editors’ job will be waiting and render hell still years and years to come.
Of course fast drives are the most crucial thing for speed. Let’s face it: many of us are editing using cheap and “fast” firewire drives, and then wonder how play back can be sluggish? There might be a reason they’re cheap drives… I remember with really old Macs using Avid and SCSI drive-arrays editing was sometimes almost smoother than with some modern programs!!!
I don’t know about FCP’s code, there might be a thing or two that slow the overall speed.
For instance, it would be cool if FCP could use some of the extra processors to do background rendering while editing, like the motion analysis option does now, or like in Compressor the processor instances are user selectable.
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