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Adobe – IBC
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[Scott Witthaus] “Key word is “was”. Why emulate that?”
The downfall of Avid is all related to the company not being forward thinking. They stubbornly stuck with the proprietary architecture for far too long and by the time they realized their mistake it was too late.
I too spent many years cutting on Avid and I also owe my entire career to Avid. In addition, I worked primarily in Avid shared environments. It needs to be emphasized that the shared edit environment is incredibly efficient. I no longer work on Avid at all but it’s design should be emulated.
Personally, I could cut ridiculously fast on an Avid because of it’s phenomenal keyboard layout that was so highly customizable. The Avid engineers built a product that worked extremely well for any user. Premiere Pro and FCPX have adopted those customization options but so far it ain’t the same.
I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles -
[Steve Connor] “I hope that’s true and that their onward development doesn’t start to exclude what is clearly their core user base”
I think if you look at how Apple handles things when they make these changes, they typically strip an app down to the core essence. Then they slowly build it up again over successive versions. Take a look at what is happening now in Photos. The new upcoming version adds back a lot of the image editing capabilities that used to exist in Aperture.
Often Apple will not add a function if they can’t do it 100% correctly. Those tasks they leave to third parties. They could have made an FCP7 to FCPX conversion utility if they wanted to. However, the translation would always be flawed at some level. Thus the task went to Philip and Greg.
So as more capabilities get fleshed out – and as the needs of the marketplace change – Apple reacts in ways that may get them in front of the curve. The 2013 MP was such an effort. It’s a great machine, but ultimately the wrong design for most customer needs for that type of computer. The puck isn’t always going to be where you think it will be. ☺
Another factor is that X was one of the last things influenced by Steve Jobs. Apple is now very much Tim Cook’s company, which quite likely is having a major effect on FCPX, too. Hopefully, good.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[greg janza] “The downfall of Avid is all related to the company not being forward thinking. They stubbornly stuck with the proprietary architecture for far too long and by the time they realized their mistake it was too late. “
I’ll add also that the price remained too high for too long and their customer service tanked during the Adrenaline days. The mid-2000s were not a fun time to be an Avid customer. The ire from that era still exists today even though we are 10-15yrs removed from it.
[greg janza] ” It needs to be emphasized that the shared edit environment is incredibly efficient. I no longer work on Avid at all but it’s design should be emulated.”
It’s also dead simple because an MC project is just an MC project. There is nothing you need to do to make it a multi-user project or to share your bins with others. You can even copy the whole project onto a laptop to work on it out of the office then copy it back to the shared storage when you return and it all just works. All you have to remember is that a locked bin means you have read-only access so if you make changes you’ll need to do a Save As if you want to save those changes.
Now, what Resolve is doing by letting users work on the same timeline concurrently is a type of collaboration that Avid doesn’t offer and understandably requires a bit more work by users to coordinate things, but on a basic level I think making collaborative features as straightforward as they are in MC should be the goal of the competition.
[Steve Connor] “Good point, I hope that’s true and that their onward development doesn’t start to exclude what is clearly their core user base in single-user environments in a grab for the smaller, higher end of the market.”
Out of curiosity, aside from multi-user collaboration (which is just a single feature), what other features do you think would be of no use in a single-user environment and/or of no use in the lower end of the market (which itself is composed of both single-user and multi-user environments)?
This kinda continues a reoccurring a riff about software in that people in general want software be tailored to the needs of their niche in the industry and any feature not tailored to their niche is a waste, but one man’s steak is another man’s cardboard so it’s impossible for one application to be all things to all people w/o anyone pointing to features they think are useless bloat.
Many times we make broad delineations between high-end and low end (typically this is based on budget), but from a practical perspective I think workflow is a more meaningful guide to go by than budget since high and low budget projects will often have similar workflow hurdles. For example, the people making the fan film “Star Trek: Axanar” are going to run into a lot of the same problems that J.J. Abrams ran into making “Star Trek” (just probably on a smaller scale) so a tool that helps Hollywood make movies can also help YouTubers make movies. And it doesn’t have to be movies. Corporate videos, weddings, game shows, etc., can all have similar workflows needs even if one is high budget and the other is low budget.
Or take multicam as another example. At one point in time multicam was a niche feature because having multiple cams could get really expensive really fast. Now video cameras are a dime a dozen so even no-budget projects can have half a dozen cameras w/o breaking the budget, so multicam isn’t considered a high end feature anymore but a staple of any good NLE.
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[Tero Ahlfors] “As someone who is actually working in a company that is doing VR projects I wish people would stop calling 360 videos VR.”
Just be careful Tero,
One false move and you become the guy hollering because some company used the term “project” differently – and then all hell breaks loose! ????
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Really? you haven’t used the ‘P’ tool in 6 years?”
It’s crazy, but I’d guess I’ve used it half a dozen times in the last year, if that?
It’s a shift in my editorial thinking.
I know it’s destructive. I see that as a PITA since it potentially creates situations I then may have to waste time “fixing” – so I now kinda find myself subconsciously thinking in vertical magnetic storyline “modules” that have their own internal rhythm – and going into position mode potentially screws that up. (I probably use the tilde key more, actually, to re-position secondaries – but I try to avoid that as well.)
For me, the vast majority of shot timing is done via trimming with magnetism “on” not defeated. It just feels more X-like, to me I guess.
I guess I think a lot more “vertically” and earlier now than I did before X.
FWIW.
(Sorry for the bold – on my phone and tried to cut down the reference quote that had too much in it and screwed things up. My bad)
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Scott Witthaus] “Trust me, I cut a bunch on Avid products in my career. Having been a freelancer for so long, I can thank Avid for allowing me that career. Hell, I still own a little stock in the company (yeah, THAT was a great investment!). It is still the gold standard for Hollywood and broadcast, but you must agree it is struggling outside those niche environments.”
I don’t consider Hollywood (the movie industry) or broadcast facilities a niche environment for video production. 25 years ago that was about the only market with a few niche markets here and there. With the internet gaining bandwidth over that last 25 years there is more media outlets but broadcasting facilities and movie studios are still the standard as far as I can tell. People would prefer to have their work on TV stations throughout the world or in theaters throughout the world as opposed to being on YouTube or a closed circuit system at the local high school or the local mega church. Having said that a lot of A/V facilities could probably benefit form a collaborative workflow.
There are a lot of media outlets in the year 2017 all with different work environments but I don’t think the broadcast facilities and the movie industry are a niche environments in the year 2017. Maybe in the 2025 they will be.
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[Bill Davis] “I guess I think a lot more “vertically” and earlier now than I did before X.
“That makes absolutely no sense 🙂
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[Steve Connor] “That makes absolutely no sense :)”
It’s getting close to ‘beer-30’ in Bill’s neck of the country ☺
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Steve Connor] “That makes absolutely no sense :)”
Basically, during my 10 years on Legacy, I’d pretty much always start with a horizontal string-out on V1 to shape my narrative – and not really “build off” that too much, too early with B-Roll and titles – because it was inconvenient to trim or move whole sections around. (Particularly with the constant legacy “re-render” penalty!)
Starting in about my second year with X (so five years ago) I started realizing that I could spend more time perfecting smaller “chunks” vertically – going ahead and attaching B-Roll, Titling, futzing with audio timing, etc, etc – and since the magnetic timeline would preserve all my vertical relationship choices – and I could subsequently move those blocks around as a unit so easily since they were “relationship connected” – there was FAR less Benefit in waiting for the Primary Storyline to come together as a unit before perfecting further.
After X, if everything arrived for “Act 3” of whatever…I felt totally free to just build THAT starting at 00:00:00. Who cares? Inserting and working on Part A or B or attaching Part E later just moved all my prior vertical assemblies ahead or behind as needed.
That’s what I refer to as “thinking vertically.”
You can do similar things with all NLEs of course – but magnetism drives a TON of friction out of the process in X since you NEVER mess anything else up by inserting new content either after OR before your existing work – and all the timing relationships you take the time to build are so sticky in X.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “Starting in about my second year with X (so five years ago) I started realizing that I could spend more time perfecting smaller “chunks” vertically – going ahead and attaching B-Roll, Titling, futzing with audio timing, etc, etc – and since the magnetic timeline would preserve all my vertical relationship choices – and I could subsequently move those blocks around as a unit so easily since they were “relationship connected” – there was FAR less Benefit in waiting for the Primary Storyline to come together as a unit before perfecting further.
After X, if everything arrived for “Act 3” of whatever…I felt totally free to just build THAT starting at 00:00:00. Who cares? Inserting and working on Part A or B or attaching Part E later just moved all my prior vertical assemblies ahead or behind as needed.
That’s what I refer to as “thinking vertically.”
You can do similar things with all NLEs of course – but magnetism drives a TON of friction out of the process in X since you NEVER mess anything else up by inserting new content either after OR before your existing work – and all the timing relationships you take the time to build are so sticky in X.”
That explains it, thanks. For me what you’ve explained isn’t one of the benefits of FCPX as I’ve never worried about timing relationships in other NLE’s whilst making edits, but I can see how it would be a benefit to some Editors.
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