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A Question for Broadcast Editors.
I am a professional broadcast editor and without EDL, AAF, OMF, XML input/output FCP X is useless. Unusable.
No dubs, no conforms and no high end. Useless.
However, the fact FCP X supports 4K, has good waveform monitors and other features intimates that Apple have not abandoned professional editors.
I think Apple have made a huge error releasing FCP X as it is but remain optimistic that these features will be added.
I am not an angry villager and FCP X is not Frankenstein’s monster.
Quantel, Lightworks, Smoke and EVS products can all be used/forced as edit platforms and all demand a non-standard source/record mode of editing.
If FCP had shipped with these professional input/output options how would the UI rethink add up? Single seat, could you cut a Promo, a Doc, a Drama or a film on it? Could you do your job on it? And is the dramatic UI rethink a possible improvement?
Can we be patient? Could it be worth it? A roadmap is what we need.
A few Chinese whispers through Apple’s ‘chosen few’ resellers/trainers’ is not good enough, it simply isn’t.
Not for an entire industry.
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10 Replies
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[Mat Rees] “However, the fact FCP X supports 4K, has good waveform monitors and other features intimates that Apple have not abandoned professional editors.”
The only 4K it supports will be Alexa, because it already records to ProRes. Red support is non-existant.
[Mat Rees] “Single seat, could you cut a Promo, a Doc, a Drama or a film on it?”
No. Not for broadcast of any sort. For the web? DVD? If you don’t want any sort of post collaboration…sure. No export to ProTools, mediocre color correction….with an interface that no colorist knows how to use. For someone who does it all, sure. Even then, the tools are limited.
[Mat Rees] “Could you do your job on it?”
No.
[Mat Rees] “And is the dramatic UI rethink a possible improvement?”
I can only say that by trying to use it. But I won’t be wasting the money on it. What I have works, and works well. I don’t know why they thought it needing improving.
[Mat Rees] “Can we be patient? Could it be worth it?”
I’m not going to count on it. I will use FCP 7, and start to rely more and more on alternatives, like Avid. But I was let down by Avid a while ago…the Adrenaline screwed us over…and that caused me to switch to FCP. Well, FCP X might cause me to switch back. No biggie, use the tool that works. And if down the road FCP adds back the pro features we need…I might take a look at it. Until then…it’s FCP 7 and Avid MC.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
My question was purely theoretical: if FCP X had those input/output options would it be of value? I should have said:
Would FCP X be a brilliant offline tool in the same way FCP7 has been?
Audio mixing and colour correction are handled by dubbing mixers and colourists on professional Pogle systems/baselight or protools etc, whatever you choose.
We have never seen FCP as an online tool. Only something to ram together a cut before a conform and grade on a more sophisticated system. Not that it couldn’t do it, there are just better tools for online and finishing.
4K though, any DIT can give you Pro Res or Uncompressed .movs to do with what you will off the back of a RED shoot.
Thankyou for a sensible answer in these time of madness.
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As an offline tool it would be fine if it had XML, OMF, or even a text file EDL output! AS it stands much of FCPs business was the corporate/low budget video world where the final output came out of FCP. Finishing in those markets means putting a sticker on the DVD! Those markets, the bread and butter of FCP are the ones hurt the most by these changes.
Honestly this was probably a smart move by Apple because they were not making enough money off broadcast, feature film, and corporate video users. They have not abandoned all professional users though – wedding videographers are absolutely professional users if they are making their living off what they do, and ditching output to XDCAM and Betacam will probably not hurt their business model. Your average wedding videographer also does not need feet+frames timecode with EDL export for negative cutting, post conforming, etc….
Apple may be throwing the broadcast, feature film, and corporate customers away with the redesign but I guarantee that they will be making way more money off the new consumer I shot this on my flip cam iPhone android market.
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I could live with the UI, and maybe even learn to love it. Keywords can be quite powerful.
The lack of I/O hardware is terrible, the lack of XML etc is terrible, but the project & media file organization is absolute train wreck for the pro collaborator crowd.
The other stuff could be added at a future update, but the idea of project sharing is, I fear, gone forever.
That, more than anything else, is why I do not have any hope that future updates will give the pro collaboration users what they need in an editing tool.
This isn’t an offline editor, and it isn’t an online editor – it’s “good enough” for low-end, non-broadcast videos, created by one man bands.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s what it is.
“Everything just changed in post.”
Unfortunately, that’s the truest statement made in the last few months from Apple.
David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR -
Though i haven’t had a chance to actually play with it yet, from everything I’ve seen my knee-jerk reaction is “no”. The new UI just doesn’t seem nuanced enough to edit quickly and stay organized.
-The idea of a trackless magnetic timeline seems great for a click-and-drag editor, but it is definitely too limiting for what i often need multiple tracks for. The show I’m in the middle of editing now has a ton of layered video and is requiring about 20 audio tracks and 10 video tracks to keep things organized. I feel like it would actually be nearly impossible to cut with FCP-X and keep things organized.
-The idea of keeping audio glued to video and having to go an extra step to separate the two seems like a huge headache. I like to be able to zoom out of my sequences and see everything laid out plain and simple. As it is in FCP7 you can do that, unless you are incessantly nesting clips, nothing is ever hidden and everything is given an equal visual weight. With this new UI, the audio married to your main clips is shrunken down and it is impossible to see exactly what is going on until you expand it out. This is something to get used to at least, but I really don’t think it’s an improvement for someone who is used to having greater control.
-Compound clips seems just like a revamped version of nesting, which I’ve always hated using unless I really needed to.
-The idea of Auditions bothers me in a similar way. (Though i could definitely see myself using this feature a fair bit). I just don’t like not being able to see everything that’s on my timeline. I could see myself adding a bunch of auditions to shots and forgetting about them. I guess that’s not a huge deal, but it would bother me knowing the sequence isn’t clean…
Maybe my “no” is a little harsh. If it had all the functions that are imperative to a broadcast workflow, sure, yeah I could see myself using it, but I can say for sure as it is now, I would much rather stick to a track based NLE that lets me control what I see on the sequence…
But again, as I said before, I haven’t actually used it yet, so hey, I may end up loving it… we’ll see I guess.
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“The lack of I/O hardware is terrible, the lack of XML etc is terrible, but the project & media file organization is absolute train wreck for the pro collaborator crowd.
The other stuff could be added at a future update, but the idea of project sharing is, I fear, gone forever.
That, more than anything else, is why I do not have any hope that future updates will give the pro collaboration users what they need in an editing tool.”
Exactly! You can add more I/O options, XML support and every feature under the sun but its still no where close to what FCP was. This new program wasn’t written with the shared environment in mind…. thus it will never find a way into a pro shop environment.
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[Shane Ross] “[Mat Rees] “Could you do your job on it?”
No.
[Mat Rees] “And is the dramatic UI rethink a possible improvement?”
I can only say that by trying to use it. But I won’t be wasting the money on it. What I have works, and works well. I don’t know why they thought it needing improving.”
Wow. And you haven’t even tried it yet? I thought more of you Shane. Of course you can’t use it for pro in/out yet, but it surely you’d like to try it before dismissing it?
Edit Out Ltd
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FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producerhttps://www.blackmagic-design.com/community/communitydetails/?UserStoryId=8757
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[Ben Holmes] “Wow. And you haven’t even tried it yet? I thought more of you Shane. Of course you can’t use it for pro in/out yet, but it surely you’d like to try it before dismissing it?”
It doesn’t offer anything I need. And I don’t have $300 to throw at it for hobbyist stuff. My hobby is bicycling. My money goes towards that. And photography. I’d only buy it out of business funds…but since I cannot utilize it in any of my workflows, I won’t use it. Learn the new UI? Sorry, i still have Premiere Pro to figure out. That does everything I need..as far as I can tell.
I don’t have to buy something to know that it is lacking. I haven’t commented on the UI or the editing experience. Only the features it lacks.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
A few thoughts.
1) the RED workflow isn’t totally gone here – we had to transcode to ProRes before to edit and we’ll have to do so now. Without the output options, we are limited in finishing off the original RED media however.
2) FCP X project sharing is unbelievably great. Way better than FCP. A shared drive is all you need and FCP automatically sees the events and the projects. Very cool. I think someone should put it through the paces before coming to a quick conclusion on that one. Essentially, if you have a central project server, you can do some editing. And I’m going to test this via my Gigabit ethernet tonight (and that should really test it)
3) For someone who doesn’t plan on going out to ProTools or color correction, this version right now still offers A LOT. I can sync sound WAY faster than before. Fix audio problems faster. I can fix camera shake and rolling shutter. I can do a much quicker color correction than before. I see this product as a serious plus to those in the corporate/wedding field. And they are professionals, just the same as you and me.
4) Without broadcast options, I don’t trust it for that kind of work. Sure, the scopes are good, but you are previewing on a monitor (although it looks fantastic). Web and DVD for now. But then again, I can’t tell you the number of times “professionals” handed me content that had an incorrect field order or other serious problems and they were on the most “professional” systems out there.
Plus, at the end of the day, I show you an amazing piece of content, extremely well edited and I bet you can’t tell me what NLE it was cut in.
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FCP Guru
http://www.fcpguru.com -
I’m principally a broadcast promo editor, and no, even if missing things like omf, edl and xml showed up tomorrow, I still couldn’t work with it. The thing that makes it most useless is the loss of tracks or assignable channels. Can’t make stems. Can’t deliver split audio. Can’t deliver additional contractual elements.
Next, the whole event based thing leaves me cold. There seem to be so many storage and media related minefields, and so little possible customization, that I have trouble seeing this used as anything but a personal editor. The logistics of overseeing four seasons worth of promos, from four different shows, split between five or six different editors on six different machines is a no-brainer for me on FCP7. I can’t even imagine it on X. What’s wrong with project based organization anyway? Why is event based organization somehow superior? I get the elegance of it, but it doesn’t have anything to do with what I have to do.
Next, I don’t like the interface. What I have always liked about FCP is its customizability. Two sequences on different monitors, fine. One sequence taking up a whole monitor, fine. Make sequence act like a bin, fine. Work left to right, right to left, up to down, monitor to monitor. Fine. Fine. Fine. There are numerous ways to do everything. Really, amazing freedom, compared to most other editors. I’ve spent a day on X and it is so forced. YOU MUST WORK THIS WAY. You are forced into a single metaphor that has been determined by the design team to be optimal. Ain’t optimal for me. Some things might be faster, but what really struck me was the degree that it was designed for a non-editor. Its like the forced interface is a template to help you edit. And, is sync really such a problem for someone who knows what they are doing? And, do you really want to trade audio tracks for magnetic tracks? Really? Its all stuff for people who are scared to edit.
So, no I can’t use it now in my work. I will never be able to use it without some way to create splits.
And no, I would prefer not to use the interface. I find it kludgy and domineering, and ridiculously silly that it is confined to one monitor. I will use it if future work forces me to, but after two ways with it, I’m certain I don’t like, and–as faithful as I have been to Final Cut Pro–it is just not Final Cut Pro anymore.
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