-
2005-fcp 5, 2012-fcpX
In 2005 I started cutting films for The Culture Show at the BBC. I’d been brought over by a colleague to help with the move from Avid to FCP5. Back then, we were one of the first transmission critical ARTs programs to jump on FCP. Let me tell you, we had some pretty nightmarish evenings. How quickly one forgets just how nightmarish it was. We never missed a TX, but we came close after some hardcore finger biting. Fast forward 7 years, almost to the day, and this evening the final Culture Show for 2012 screens at 10 pm. As in 2005 we have been pioneers with FCP, this time FCPX. During the autumn London run, every episode has contained at least one film cut in FCPX. The difference between now and 2005? The transition to X has been pretty seamless. You would hope so, FCPX is far superior than the version 5 predecessor of 2005. Its been Sooooo fast, edits booked as 2 days, on average have been cut in a day and half, so no late nights. The films, in my opinion have looked great on the telly. Tonight we have two films cut in X. An interview in New York with Lee Child, the author or the Jack Reacher books and a preview of the film by the same name, staring Tom Cruise. Plus the new black Comedy by British director Dan Wheatley, Sightseers.
So here’s to 2013, merry Xmas and good luck to all the folks looking to cross over in the new year. Remember! pretty damn soon, FCP 7 will no longer be an option, and lets be honest, no one wants to cut telly in Premier!!!!! -
75 Replies
-
Great post, Craig. Thanks for sharing.
[craig slattery] “Its been Sooooo fast, edits booked as 2 days, on average have been cut in a day and half, so no late nights.”
This is the first time I’ve seen anyone actually quantify the the speed difference with a reasonable methodology.
I’m very curious — where are you seeing the biggest speed gains? Organization? Skimming? Transcoding/rendering avoidance? Timeline manipulation?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[craig slattery] “Remember! pretty damn soon, FCP 7 will no longer be an option
you may actually be surprised on how long that one plays out I think. And fwiw Premiere is coming up on Mandy pretty regularly lately. FCPX still whistling past the graveyard in total silence job posting wise – a guy on here did a trawl through grapevine, Mandy, prod.base there a week or two ago – not a single FCPX bean.
Fair play on pushing through what sounds like seriously effective workflow your end though.
last wee question – have you dipped toes into PPro 6 at all? – the media management is still a nightmare, but the timeline, and the trimming tools are preTTy damn good. You’d be surprised.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “but the timeline, and the trimming tools are preTTy damn good. You’d be surprised.”
Agreed!
-
Observations on time taken to edit have so many variables like hardware, camera skills, shoot ratios, director and producer expectations and following workflow. For example did editors do more grade and sound edit/organisation seven years ago.
Is there simply more time/budget pressure so less is expected of the edit as overtime and facility access has been squeezed by declining budgets typical in broadcast.
Also how do we remove confirmation bias in such a subjective debate.
-
[Walter Soyka] “I’m very curious — where are you seeing the biggest speed gains? Organization? Skimming? Transcoding/rendering avoidance? Timeline manipulation?
“Walter, its all of the above, but also weirdly something that is quite none tangible and hard to describe. I think I can read the edit visually right from the start. The viewer I guess plays a big part and then the speed at which one can create the smart collections. Overall, I can see the tone of the film, the colours, the frame sizes. How busy the footage is, how wide or tight the material, I know you can do this to an extent in Premier but it feels different in X. Using the smart collections you can mine the footage down very quickly, I can see the presenter travel from one PTC to another at a glance. Having no tracks to deal with. That is probably the biggest time saver. When you get in the groove, cutting in X is so fluid. When you see the shot you need you just drop it in. No need to edit in the viewer, no need to clear room in the time line or select or deselect tracks. Ive got to the stage now, that I don’t even care where the play head is. I see a shot and immediately hit ‘w’, It may land smack in a sequence that Ive just finessed. No worries, pick it up and move it. The clips just move back the way you had them. Ive found that even the directors and the Producers understand the timeline and therefore the collaboration process is profoundly different. So I don’t know exactly why its faster. Its just is.
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “you may actually be surprised on how long that one plays out I think”
Trust me!
[Aindreas Gallagher] “And fwiw Premiere is coming up on Mandy pretty regularly lately. FCPX still whistling past the graveyard in total silence job posting wise – a guy on here did a trawl through grapevine, Mandy, prod.base there a week or two ago – not a single FCPX bean. “
Big changes ahead in Broadcast. The penny has dropped. keep an eye out for in-house FCPX training
-
[Michael Gissing] “For example did editors do more grade and sound edit/organisation seven years ago.”
No. In my example, Grading and sound always done by dedicated professionals in sound studios and Grading suites. We are using FCPX in the same way we used FCP5 7 years ago.
[Michael Gissing] “Is there simply more time/budget pressure so less is expected of the edit as overtime and facility access has been squeezed by declining budgets typical in broadcast.”
Thats simple. The station wants, better, more clever, higher production value on screen, entertaining, slick, cool, shiny, ground breaking. And they want it for less money. We make the show for less than we did 7 years ago and it looks infinitely better today than it did even 7 months ago.
-
[Michael Gissing] “Is there simply more time/budget pressure so less is expected of the edit as overtime and facility access has been squeezed by declining budgets typical in broadcast.
Also how do we remove confirmation bias in such a subjective debate.”
that is what is generally termed, a super interesting point.
I just did audio post level matching on a half hour corporate sponsored doc, and I’m not at all sure I did a very good job.
there was no money to go to actual audio post.
the interesting thing for me, given the time pressure, is that there are compressor tools available in FCPX with live feedback that I might well have loved to have had my hands on. I could have theoretically taken the timeline onto STP – but given I had one day to oversee voiceover, then take the resulting Vo wav to back to production company, and balance it against music and nats for multiple territory output with A3 and A4 running a no Vo mixdown –
there were real DB range issues with the IV, the VO, some of the soundtrack had really aggressive bass – I did pick the tunes mind you…I kept, and I mean I kept thinking all day about this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXxD0L9d7OU
watch it from about five minutes in. Its basically a road map to full edit system native audio mastering with VO, IV sync. forgetting the timeline, there is sheer utter gold in FCPX.
I never forgot any part of this video – four to one ratio etc.its worth noting that, as an editor, you actually have about 90% of the parts of STP architecture available – live in FCPX.
that said, any audio guy reading this should be screaming in their sleep.
I’ll take any word from an avid guy, but as far as I’m aware, no other editing system on the planet has these kinds of live audio mastering abilities in the timeline. I mean look at it – you are getting instant waveform feedback off the pro tools plugin.
that said the FCPX waveform itself is vector simplified unusable trash.still though – it goes to CC as well. in some respects FCPX is simply show stoppingly powerful.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
nope mate, I trust you to present an argument though 😉
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
-
I’ve just made the switch to FCP X, and I’m cutting my first two documentaries on it. I am not an early hour enthusiast. I had FCP X sitting for about one year with only occasional brief tests, and I was upset as many others about FCP X not being FCP8. I am a free-lance producer shooting and editing outdoors documentaries that are broadcasted by a satellite TV channel, about 12 per year, so there are no variables between now and one or two months ago, apart from the fact I’m a bit older :-). I am finding my FCP X experience great so far. The work, up to now, have been faster. I’d say quite faster. On a wild guess in the rough cut stage i’d say 30%. If I had to explain what makes it actually faster for me, I’d answer everything. The media organization is great. I still feel I could make much better once I arrange a tailored use of events and keywords, but it served me fine so far. The skimming is something I really appreciated, since I have to constantly move among a lot of footage looking for those few seconds. In my line of work I can’t plan and organize the shooting before playing rec, so I end up with a lot of footage I have to check later for those few seconds that are actually good. Skimming is great at that. Importing is faster, and I find that with no rendering timeouts I work better (I edit on an early 2008 MP and today I could playback three layers with graphics and alpha with no problems). The ability to review and store native clips that are much smaller is great when you work in the fields with a MBP for one or two weeks, and it is as well when you need to archive. And I also got to like the magnetic timeline. Now that I think about it, that and the new timeline tools are maybe the things that made the work faster and easier so far. I have not gone deep into the audio yet, but so far I found it easier to quickly evaluate the levels visually, plus I like fading audio just sliding the two handles instead than placing keyframes. Once I find out how to export a four channels IMX maybe using the roles (I need to deliver two stereo tracks with full mix down and two tracks with all sounds but voiceover for international use), I think I’ll give my beloved FCP7 some rest after 8 years, and I’ll be more than happy not having to move back to PC. All those “so far” are there because I haven’t finished any of the two documentaries yet. A couple of things I’d appreciate could be giving the clips a different color for each role, since the roles FCP X automatically assigns are not always right and that could be crucial if you need to export international versions with no titles or voiceover, and a small icon in the browser list view. It would also be great to have clips already used in the project somehow automatically marked in the browser.
Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up