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After a year has perception of FCPX changed?
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My perception has certainly changed. The big question about it has gone from “Is it, or will it, ever be usable for the work I generally engage in?” to “Do I, or will I, ever want to use it?”
So now its much more about style and approach then it is about actual viability. The answer for me, currently, is that it offers me–personally–very little of value, and that its detriments far outweigh anything of value it does have. Much of that is taste, however, and I can easily imagine it being of great value to others. Over the next year, its going to be much more about taste, and also about what Apple will do about computers in general. Their silence on the Mac Pros has not helped them with FCP X at all, and one sizable selling point for both Adobe and Avid is that they have a platform exit strategy.
Another element is that Adobe has done an amazing job with Premiere in making it extremely accessible to FCP 7 editors. I felt at home after playing around with it for half an hour. It also has a lot of what I like about Avid. It’s something that I can just start using, and then spend a few free hours, here and there, over the next few months on Lynda picking up on the hidden stuff. That’s very enticing.
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[David Powell] “I think people need to remember why FCP became so popular. It was cheaper than all the other alternatives for what it could do.”
I really don’t think that’s fair to FCP. It was a lot more than just cheap for what it could do. It might well have been considered cheap for what it could do at several multiples of its price.
FCP was incredibly flexible and tactile. You could rock the keyboard shortcuts, or you could grab media in the timeline and sculpt your edit with a mouse. You could composite in the timeline and manipulate the media directly in the canvas window.
FCP’s “weak” media management eventually became a strength in file-based workflows.
FCP interchanged in many workflows — at first through EDL, and later through XML. You could cut file-based, tape-based, or film-based media.
It was software-only, so you had the same user experience whether you were working on DV material with Firewire on a G3 Pismo laptop, or a Cinewave HD card in a G4 tower.
FCP also brought us ProRes, which has become a linchpin for Apple in many post workflows.
FCP established or popularized all the “modern” things that non-Avid editors complain about Avid not having.
There are many other cheap NLEs that fell by the wayside. FCP won on real merit.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “I think one thing that hasn’t changed since last June is that a lot of people are still making up their minds about FCPX without really using it. There’s really a lot there to like, but it’s not for everyone.”
That’s certainly true, but I don’t blame people for that. Its not people’s responsibility to work deep into a product that goes against there basic assumptions of how a product should work. I’ve hung around and have been able to learn a lot of the good things about X, but thats because I’m interested in the dynamics of such things. Had I not been, I would have been gone with nothing more than the locked-down interface and lack of tracks.
[Walter Soyka] “If Apple had launched with 10.0.3 or 10.0.4, we might all be having a different conversation.”
That is also quite true. If it had launched at 10.04 the question would be about “Do I want to use it?” and not “Is it true that its impossible for me to use?” I might not like Roles, for instance, but they do provide a viable option to tracks. X has to live down a whole half year of people screaming “I can’t even use it if I wanted to! How am I supposed to make stems!”, and “I can’t even monitor the dang thing.”
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Like they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
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I second all you say here, Walter. I was not attracted to FCP by price but by its versatility. At its height, it could do so many things that Media Composer could not, especially before MC3. I feel sad that, even with its passing, I still have this argument with many of the Avid-only folk. It really wasn’t about the cheap seats, y’all.
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For many people – particularly those with entrenched workflows and who wish to continue to approach editing as they have traditionally, FCP-X will probably never be more than an incidental tool.
That’s not the class of users it’s most useful for, IMO.
It shines for those with flexibility and control of their work processes who want to explore new tools and don’t need to fit their tools and habits into workflows that are too different from what they already know.
Which is fine. Anyone in those categories should simply stay with traditional editing tools.
That’s not what X is. At least not for me.
X has pushed me into new thinking and new styles of work that I’ve never done before, precisely because the underlying design of it has made me re-assess what I can do with video as a tool.
X has actually made video production and editing fun for me again.
I fully acknowledge that I don’t have a seat in a facility where someone else is telling me the kind of projects I can do and how I have to edit them. So it’s an exciting new tool for me.
I personally think that “pros” will come back to X if and when they hear about something that it does that the competition doesn’t do as efficiently or well.
It’s first big “re-think” has been Multi-cam. And since I’m deep into that feature this month, I can say with some confidence that Apple has made this miles better than what I’d been used to previously. In that “Apple like’ manner, it just seems to work pretty intuitively and very well.
If they do the same thing to other features as the code in X expands and improves, then they can attack subgroup audiences and incorporate them into the X fold.
I suspect it’s gonna end up on the laptops of the X-games folks, in the locker rooms and court side for sports teams, cutting music performance videos like what I’m working on this week, in multi-part training videos, on-set for Madison Ave Commercial shoots, and a thousand other places where it’s database/metadata approach will drive efficiencies into complex workflows
.It may be a long time before it cuts it’s “Cold Mountain”. But the Hollywood post house is just one place among many where editing happens.
And X has to earn it’s place in them one at a time.
With Apple behind it, I suspect it’s going to do great.
In a nutshell, it can stand all the “heat” that comes at it from the “low information voters” (which is anyone in my opinion that hasn’t cut on it for at least 6 months continuously, because it requires quite a bit of re-orientation to become as facile with it as most of us were with Legacy) but in the end, what’s going to make the ultimate difference is that it’s a reality good modern video editing system right now and it’s getting constantly better.
Which is all that matters in the long run.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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People came for the price and stayed for the features. If FCP wasn’t in the realm of ‘so cheap you might as well buy a copy’ it would have struggled a lot more, IMO. It’s kinda like the color grading scene of maybe 5-6 years ago. Sure, at $25k FinalTouch was a bargain compared to $250k for a DaVinci but it’s still $25k. Then Apple acquires FT, rebands it as Color and releases it as part of FC Studio package and suddenly a color grading desktop revolution is born.
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[Chris Harlan] “I second all you say here, Walter. “
I third it.
We moved from Media 100 to FCP for the app and the ability to use it hardware independent.
No successful shop makes decisions like this based on the cost of the systems if the performance isn’t there. -
My perception had changed. I no longer think its not pro and not capable of many things. In fact, the multicam feature is the best around.
It just employs an editing methodology I can’t wrap my head around. And yes, I gave it a spin for a week, so I did more than kick tires.
It still doesn’t do a lot of stuff I need doing. Capture non-FireWire tape formats inside the app (I’m on lining a show in FCP that is 85% stock footage on tape). Capturing tape outside the app doesn’t fit the bill either, talking offline/online with tape. Something I still do quite often.
It’s very capable and fulfills the needs of many. Not me. FCP Legacy is still my favorite editor, and I’m sad to see it go. CS6 and Avid can’t make up for what I could do with FCP.
Will FCX get to the level of perception that FCP Legacy had? I don’t think so. I don’t see “Hollywood” adopting it like we did FCP. Even years from now. I just can’t see using it myself. I’m not “forward thinking” enough. I’m still “stuck in the past” in using editing methodology that never seemed broken. Just confusing to a few people.
But who knows. The kids of today are using it, and they are the editors of tomorrow.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Walter Soyka] “I think one thing that hasn’t changed since last June is that a lot of people are still making up their minds about FCPX without really using it”
Incredibly true statement. I occasionally teach editing at a college and last year we taught FCP7. This year we’re teaching Avid because you have to train students on what’s being used. However, I talked the head of the dept. into doing a few FCPX seminars for people who want to learn.
Anyway, I was talking to one of my students about it, and he just went off on FCPX. He was saying basically, no one’s using it, right? I heard it sucked. If no ones using it, it probably isn’t worth learning.
And this was from a kid who’s probably been editing on FCP7 since high school. He’s never downloaded X, never played with it, but since he’s always online, he’s heard about it and de facto made up his mind on it.
I had to talk with him for 15 minutes explaining that he should look into it, that it’s much better than he’s heard.
I figure X needs about 4 years to start making a dent in post facilities again. Judging by the update path, it could be a quality high-end NLE at the end of year 2, but the stigma will last longer than that.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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