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FCP Express rant
A couple of years ago I helped a neighbor install and use the consumer version of Vegas. What a breeze. Lots of easy-to-understand help prompts, etc. Very rapidly she was cutting away, and loving it. This week I helped another friend install Final Cut Express because he has only a Mac, no bootcamp, no Windows ability. What a nightmare. FCP Express has got to be one of the most obtuse NLEs going. Zero help from Apple. Zero help from within the program. We finally got one tape digitized into the computer but the program would not recognize a second tape. Eventually, after phone calls to a Mac store, we discovered we had to shut down FCP, turn off the camera, turn on the camera, start up FCP for it to recognize the new tape. Brilliant!
It remains an utter mystery to me how Apple has been able to so hoodwink the market, and, how Sony has been unable to capitalize on that deception.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Ri**@********DP.com -
27 Replies
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LOL….Really makes you have to wonder Rick.
Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
I totally agree. In our studio, we have 2 Vegas stations (that the real editors use, myself included) and 2 FCP stations for student learning. I find FCP over-marketed, over-hyped and underwhelming.
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I have been dealing with Mac-Heads for many years, now. I have had employees, often college students in training, who are so taken by the Apple doctrine, that it borders on hilarity! You really have to let them know that you are a PC shop when interviewing them. Plenty of clients, who don’t know Final Cut from Final Notice, just have to tell you that they’ve heard that “You really can’t even edit a video unless you have the latest Mac.” But we still hand them the finished project that came from Vegas on a PC. Next time they are in for a project, the subject never even comes up!
John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore
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[John Frey] “I have been dealing with Mac-Heads for many years, now. I have had employees, often college students in training, who are so taken by the Apple doctrine, that it borders on hilarity! You really have to let them know that you are a PC shop when interviewing them. Plenty of clients, who don’t know Final Cut from Final Notice, just have to tell you that they’ve heard that “You really can’t even edit a video unless you have the latest Mac.” But we still hand them the finished project that came from Vegas on a PC. Next time they are in for a project, the subject never even comes up!”
Man, I have to laugh at this thread. I expect comments like those above from children just out of school, but the same kinds of things from grown men? It’s all just silicon, plastic and a little metal, guys. Silly.
As someone who owns more Linux boxes than anything else and has both Macs and PCs in his studio, I have to grin when reading people who are every bit as religious about their “doctrine” of “PC-superiority” as any Machead I ever met.
I can’t recall EVER reading these kinds of comments (that I have quoted you on above) on the Mac forums around here but I regularly read these kinds of anti-Apple comments on the PC forums.
Go figure…myself, I gave up long ago.
Maybe you guys ought to take this conversation to Platform Wars and Axe Grinders forum, that’s why it’s there — to keep the kids out from underfoot of the grown-ups.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
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Ron, you’re missing the point here. It’s not a Mac vs PC issue. In fact, I edit Vegas on a Mac, using Bootcamp. The point is the software: FCP vs Vegas. The first is very clutzy and difficult to use in comparison to the latter.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
[Rick Wise] “Ron, you’re missing the point here. It’s not a Mac vs PC issue. In fact, I edit Vegas on a Mac, using Bootcamp. The point is the software: FCP vs Vegas. The first is very clutzy and difficult to use in comparison to the latter.”
Rick,
I took no issue whatsoever with what you said (although I think it’s a configuration error likely, as I can’t recall Final Cut ever working that way for me when I used it).
What I did take as laughable was John’s comments as I regularly read those kinds of comments across the COW, far more than I ever see saffron-robed Apple devotees handing out tracks at airports.
Beating up on software is quite okay in the COW. Mocking people is another matter altogether and me I find it funny when saffron-robed devotees of one silicon persuasion want to have a holy war with those wearing a robe of another cut.
That was my point.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
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Mocking people is another matter altogether
Thanks, Ron. And I quite agree about mocking. It did seem to me that you yourself were mocking a bit, but perhaps I misread.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
[Rick Wise] “It did seem to me that you yourself were mocking a bit, but perhaps I misread.”
Oh no, you didn’t misread, Rick. Not at all.
When people think it’s okay to mock people, I feel no compulsion to spare them the same treatment — especially when it comes from members who have been around this site for years.
All of this stuff is just bits and bytes and silicon and plastic, to me. No one I know has an environment or user experience that is perfect. Therefore, I have always subscribed to the belief that people are welcome to choose their tools and rip into the comparative analysis of them like wolves on sheep. But when it crosses the line into personal affronts and chiding the users of other tools as if they are morons, then I parade out the mirror — and oddly enough, no one seems to like it when I take the other side of the image.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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Most interesting post i’ve read in a long while…lol
Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
Steve,
Our policy has been, from the beginning 13 years ago when we started doing this, that people are free to tear apart products to their heart’s content. We have always drawn the line at people.
But in fairness, if I hung every tool or company based on comments that I have read from the people on forums that don’t know much about the tool or what a tool is or does, I daresay that any tool would be safe.
I don’t care if it’s an Avid, FCP, Adobe, Sony, etc., I’ve yet to see a perfect tool or operating system. At the end of the day, it’s what can YOU do with it, that matters — not what someone else else can do or not do with it.
I have seen plenty of great productions made with a razor blade.
That too, is my point.
Ron Lindeboom
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