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AE drives the NLE decision
I edit and do training from time to time at broadcast facilities. What I’ve seen has been FCP in the commercial/promo department and Avid in news. The general flow I’ve seen is to cut a base layer in the NLE of choice and then embellish that in After Effects. Usually some shared storage is involved and when that’s FCP, it’s never Unity.
In this environment, FCP X simply is an extremely poor fit. For example, when you have to bounce between half a dozen different existing and/or new commercials/promos on a given day, FCP X simply can’t compete with the flexibility of FCP 7 and Premiere Pro. In the workflow that I see, AE is almost more important than the NLE used. IMHO, the best options for the broadcast commercial/promo departments are Creative Suite, Avid+AE or Smoke. Smoke has a steep learning curve and more people know AE than Smoke. Avid+AE is a bit cumbersome, so going CS becomes a no-brainer. Even better if you take advantage of Audition, Photoshop and SpeedGrade or want a mix with PCs.
Probably the real fault here is less FCP X and more the fact that Motion was never seriously pushed to compete with AE. I don’t see this changing. FCP X will likely get used in broadcast islands, but I really don’t see it as a viable core application in most TV stations or networks that are heavily invested in After Effects.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
89 Replies
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[Oliver Peters] “FCP X will likely get used in broadcast islands, but I really don’t see it as a viable core application in most TV stations or networks that are heavily invested in After Effects.”
I know it sounds crazy for a lot of people here to confront the scope of change out there – but I have to tell you that the single most transformative trend I’ve recently witnesses as the father of a post teenager (he’s 20) and his peer group – is that a tremendous number of his friends of both sexes who are now establishing their first homes and apartments and they don’t even HAVE television sets at all.
I mean not even a SINGLE set capable of receiving a broadcast or cable signal.
It’s weird. But that’s what’s happening in my area. Anyone else with insight into the college age demo seeing anything similar?
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “I mean not even a SINGLE set capable of receiving a broadcast or cable signal. It’s weird. But that’s what’s happening in my area. Anyone else with insight into the college age demo seeing anything similar?”
My son is a 26 year old graduate assistant at the University of Connecticut with 2 TVs, a 42″ flat screen and an older 20 inch tube set. He has never been in a situation, on campus or off, that he hasn’t had a TV. If you play video games or watch sports they seem to be useful.
Bill, you’ve been predicting the imminent demise of broadcast since this forum started and I realize that nothing, including the overwhelming evidence of the increase in size of broadcast audiences will ever sway you. Sometimes, i guess, the facts are not enough.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
My son is 21–has not had a TV or broadcast hookup in 3 years. All his programming comes via the inter webs.
Don’t what the demographic stats are but broadcast TV is on the wane. The good news for video producers, editors, writers, crew–there are now more outlets and opportunities than ever before. That said, the pricing and pay have come down as well.
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What’s up with the Pro Apps package as whole? It is disjointed, even awkward. Despite FCPX being fast updated, there seems to be a widening gap developing there, specially when compared to Adobe’s efforts. I know it is priced/targeted differently, but come on, Apple! You should be offering better things than an old 32 bit Compressor plus no A/V round tripping within their own set of apps. FCPX alone won’t cut it. Stop talking the talk already.
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I would have to say I agree with you Oliver. I do a bit of work for the promo folks at the local NCB station and this is exactly what they did. They were an FCP7 shop but are now doing it all in Adobe. A lot of the work requires heavy use of AE and that was a driver in the decision to make the mover to where they did. So far I have mixed feelings about Premier, to be honest X has become my editor of choice, but premier is firmly now entrenched in my shop as well. I think the days of just owning one edit system are gone.
Michael W. Towe
President M2 Digital Post
http://www.m2digitalpost.com -
[Herb Sevush] “Bill, you’ve been predicting the imminent demise of broadcast since this forum started and I realize that nothing, including the overwhelming evidence of the increase in size of broadcast audiences will ever sway you. Sometimes, i guess, the facts are not enough.
“Uh, huh?
Show me an example of where I’ve EVER argued that broadcast is in imminant peril? Don’t PROJECT what you think I’ve said here, because I know I haven’t said that because I don’t believe that. Remember, I’ve worked in and around broadcast as long as you have. When I owned an ad agency, I lived and died by Arbitron and Neilson numbers like everyone else. So I know exactly what the long term trends in viewership are. The pie (Base Cume) is getting a larger as the population grows – offset by a diminution of the share that broadcast TV gets in the face of so many alternative entertainment and information choices. But I agree it’s still a major entertainment medium. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t major changes effecting it.
Your “increase in the overall size of the broadcast audience” is smoke and mirrors. It’s real, but only relevant to someone like Budweiser who can pay to try to reach everybody with traditional howitizer style advertising. Most advertisers can’t do that with enough practical reach and frequency to drive sustainable results.
Want proof? Go visit any of your local TV stations and ask the sales manager the size of the sales staff this year compared to 10 years ago. Case closed.
Broadcast TV will be relevant for a long time. But it’s audience is getting older and greyer and is NOT being refreshed at the rate it used to be.
Just think about it. Tell me about the big maquee shows for the coveted 18-34 demo? (or better yet, the 18-24 sub-demo? I’ll tell you what my kid watches when he’s home. He watches Law and Order and CSI and NCIS and Auction shows and all the other general purpose TV syndication stuff that everyone else watches. And he doesn’t watch ANY of them as “appointment TV.” He sees what’s on and watches it to kill time. And while he watches it, he simultanesoudly surfs the net on his laptop and texts on his phone. He doesn’t even HAVE a favorite show – it’s whatever is on when he wants to consume some TV. And I’m telling you that TV has done such an abysmally poor job of branding TV as “thing that’s important” to him and his friends, that they all can literally take it or leave it.
He’ll go out of his way to see a particular movie, he will check daily with his friends and favored web destinations and his facebook profile – but he will NOT go out of his way to watch a TV show. Period.
Maybe he’ll develop those loyalties over time – but maybe not. And if not, TV has a big problem ahead of itself. Particularly in the modern model where the Cable TV Company is convinced that those 200 channels of 80% re-hashed older content is worth $100 a month ($1200 a year!) diverted from your hard work to a monopoly cable operator.
In the long run, good luck with that.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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Seems that there are two topics here, but I’d like to comment on both.
First, the scenario that Oliver describes is exactly how I had been working for much of the past 10 years. Do all of the precise timing of the cuts and simply effects (dissolves, wipes, etc) in FCP7, and then use Automatic Duck to get the project to AE. Around the time of CS3, I slowly started integrating Premiere into my workflow. I felt that it would start becoming more of a player in the post world because it was cross-platform, and was getting more innovative with each release with things like Dynamic Link. And like most, I already had the software as part of the CS, so it was basically free.
The important factor, however, was always the ability to bring my project to AE as individual elements. Motion was always a fun program for trying things out, but After Effects could never be beat when it came to flexibility and intuitive interface. Expressions are IMO the most powerful tool in motion effects creation. For this reason, above all others, FCPX will not be a viable option for quite some time, if ever. The Avid-AE workflow is still okay, but it is definitely hard to beat the flexibility of Dynamic Link. Because of this, my workflow will be Premiere-AE for the foreseeable future.
I also happen to teach Digital Media at a college. Regarding the Broadcast/No Broadcast choices of my students, it seems to mostly depend upon whether they are sports fans. Those who follow sports tend to stick with broadcast, but heavily supplement with streaming and torrents. Those who don’t like sports tend to ignore broadcast almost entirely. Of course, I could certainly see this dynamic changing, as sports streaming has gotten very good. But for now, however, with the exception of major league baseball, the infrastructure to make online-only a viable option for sports-junkies is still lacking.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
I have a daughter who’s 19 and she’s not really into sports. She still lives at home (mostly) and never watches tv.
That is to say she watches tv programs, downloaded onto her ipad mini. But as far as flicking on the set to veg out. Nada.
My 17 and 15 year olds (a girl and a boy) do not sit and watch tv either. Ever.
I reckon that even in the age difference from Herb’s son, 26, to my kids, there is a large demographic shift. And I know it is rare but I find myself siding with Bill here and find it difficult to see how broadcast tv will still be a viable business – under its own steam – within a generation.
But I could be wrong . . .
Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia -
[Michael W. Towe] So far I have mixed feelings about Premiere
CS6 is still very rough around the edges, but the new version that’s about to drop looks very solid. There are improvements and refinements throughout, and the efficiency of the overall workflow is an order of magnitude better.
I could imagine the new Premiere being very attractive to the AE crowd. From what I can tell, it’s basically FCP 7 with tight AE integration.
I’m also curious to see what the Avid folks think of the next version. If nothing else, I could see it making a great addition to their workflow. The AAF importer has been re-built by Automatic Duck, and of course there’s the DNxHD stuff built in. With those two upgrades, I imagine hopping between Avid and Premiere should be pretty smooth- and then they have AE right next door, and can quickly bring compositions into Premiere to see them in the context of the entire edit…
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“Up until here, we still have enough track to stop the locomotive before it plunges into the ravine… But after this windmill it’s the future or bust.” -
We find motion templates as fcp x generators very easy to manipulate and powerful and as a consequence, we use them more everyday.
Finding a good strategy for distributing motion templates in a facility is the real trick to making it a success.
AE (and C4D) still does the bulk of our creative animation work, but motion is nice as a partner app.
Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D
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