-
An NLE change from FCP poll results
-
[Shawn Miller] ” People should use the applications that get them where they need to go with the least amount of angst. 🙂 “
Amen to that!
Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure” -
[Shawn Miller] I was referring to hardware… I thought that was what Chris was talking about. I don’t deny that FCPX is powerful.
Gotcha. 🙂
[Shawn Miller]I wasn’t making the case that FCPX is not responsive. My point is that usability wise, some people find FCPX’s UI less desirable than a traditional NLE. Of course, I also think this is a completely subjective preference. People should use the applications that get them where they need to go with the least amount of angst. 🙂
Shawn”
Well then, we agree. 😉
————————————————————-
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
-
[Chris Kenny] “it’s entirely possible that you’re right, but unless you’ve measured it, you really don’t know. You literally cannot determine which of two (small) UI interactions is faster via your own subjective experience. Your brain lies to you. This is not really a controversial opinion in the UX world.”
The speed benefits of dynamic trimming have nothing to do with measured performance. Dynamic/rock ‘n roll trimming allows the editor to make decisions in realtime, during playback, without ever touching the mouse.
Advanced editors don’t cut by looking, they cut entirely by feel, looping playback and trimming until the cut feels right without ever lifting their fingers from the keyboard.
This, and rock-solid media management/sharing is why AVID remains the standard for Hollywood and large-scale productions. Premiere Pro CS6 has already caught up with trimming. As soon as Adobe works out media management, you can be sure Premiere will be a strong contender for the new industry standard bearer.
The best editors cut by feel, not by look. An edit is a time-based event and the most efficient way find that perfect cut is in time. There is simply no equivalent in FCPX.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Lawrence] “The speed benefits of dynamic trimming have nothing to do with measured performance. Dynamic/rock ‘n roll trimming allows the editor to make decisions in realtime, during playback, without ever touching the mouse.
Advanced editors don’t cut by looking, they cut entirely by feel, looping playback and trimming until the cut feels right without ever lifting their fingers from the keyboard.”
Look, I’m not a professional full-time creative editor, but I’m not a rube. You’re seriously overselling this. The idea that most edits are made during live playback — and apparently Apple is as ignorant as I am about this fact — is a little implausible. You’re also pushing this feature as a critical advantage when classic FCP — which captured more than 50% of the ‘pro’ market, as measured by SCRI’s survey — never really had this either. Trimming in FCP X is pretty unambiguously better than it was in FCP 7.
Plus, the demo video of Premiere that started this subthread does not actually appear to show the Avid behavior you’re describing.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[David Lawrence] “The best editors cut by feel, not by look. An edit is a time-based event and the most efficient way find that perfect cut is in time. There is simply no equivalent in FCPX.”
I’m with Chris, there are tools. They might not be as good as Avid’s or Freddie Mercury’s Rock and Roll Trimming, but there are ways to trim, in real time while looping in FCPX (shift-/).
I know it’s not perfect, and it is also limited, but there’s the precision editor as well.
It could be better in FCPX, yes, other NLEs are better, but it’s not like there’s nothing.
I find trimming to be better in FCPX than in FCP7 as FCP7’s “dynamic trimming” functions weren’t very good either.
Plus, I seem to experience editors that don’t need the speed do not muck with keyboard shortcuts, it is all mouse all the time and all menus all the time.
Editors that need to be fast use the shortcuts.
It has nothing to do with ability.
-
[Chris Kenny] “[Shawn Miller] “I think you may be overestimating the proportion of Mac users in the larger creative community (senior and aspiring). If there weren’t millions of folks doing creative work on Windows, there would be a lot less cross platform software.”
FCP is still, according to the SCRI survey over 50% of the NLE market, despite being Mac-only. And most of the Avid deployments I come into contact with are Mac-based as well.”
First, you’ll note that I said “the larger creative community”. And that was in response to your statement that “… most folks in this industry, including those who are still just aspiring, do seem to use Macs” You didn’t limit your comments to editors.
[Chris Kenny]It doesn’t seem that implausible that the Mac is 75% or more of the video editing market.”
It does if you include all professional editors. Can you provide a link to the SCRI report, please?
[Chris Kenny] “[Shawn Miller] “Although, FCPX seems to have encouraged a number of editors to seriously explore other OS, software and hardware vendors.”
People constantly make statements like this here, but there is, as far as I’m aware, absolutely zero systematic data to show anything of the kind. Nor does it particularly make sense — there’s no reason for an NLE switch (evidence for which is also pretty thin on the ground) to entail a platform switch.”
I didn’t make an absolute statement, Chris. Just as I never said that switching NLE’s necessarily means switching OS’s. I said a number of editors (not all) are exploring their choices; OS, applications and hardware. As for evidence, may I suggest the following articles?
———————————————————————–
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/larger-than-4k-larger-than-life“The launch of FCPX gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate my workflow. I realized that the software packages I was working with most — Adobe’s Creative Suite and MAXON’s CINEMA 4D — are cross-platform. Final Cut Pro 7 was the only thing I was using that I absolutely needed a Mac for, and when it reached the end of its life as we knew it, I would eventually need to replace FCP7 with another NLE like Premiere Pro, anyway.”
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/alphadogs-editorial-a-cross-platform-house
“I began to see a pattern with Apple products, and I didn’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling about it. I saw that everyone would wait and wait for the new Mac Pro, and when it came, there was really nothing new about it.”
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/no-time-to-waste
“When Apple neglected to upgrade the Mac Pro, for me the future of workstations became only HP. It’s not that HP is the only company making workstations, but of the things I’ve used to do this job, Apple and HP provided the products. Apple doesn’t seem to want to do that anymore, but HP does. I’ve been very happy with HP workstations, and they clearly want to continue making them for this market.”
———————————————————————–“[Shawn Miller] I guess this is a case of YMMV, I have multiple installations of the Creative Suite across a half dozen machines, and I’ve never had installation issues. All of my machines are also rock solid with very rare instances of crashing or instability (and I push these machines hard).”
[Chris Kenny] Meh. There are entire web sites dedicated to gripes about Creative Suite. It’s very, very common to hear such complaints in venues where there isn’t active advocacy of Adobe’s products going on.”
So… are you calling me a liar then? Not sure what this comment is about.
[Chris Kenny][Shawn Miller] “What if you actually NEED a truck? ”…And the analogy doesn’t entirely map, because higher end video workflows often involve the use of multiple tools, so you don’t necessarily need a ‘heavy’ tool that does everything.”
Honestly, I thought you were talking about hardware, since your reference was to Steve Jobs talking about the iPad and traditional PCs. However, if you’re talking about FCPX in relation to the Creative Suite, then you’re making a case for the Creative Suite.
[Chris Kenny][Shawn Miller] “I think this is subjective, plenty of people seem to be moving away from FCPX because of usability issues. ”
Again, there’s no evidence for widespread switching at all. In the year or so after FCP X was released, Apple’s feature/broadcast NLE market share was down all of three percentage points. And we know that as of April of last year, there were more FCP X installs than FCP installs. It is not at all impossible that Apple has actually gained share in the overall NLE market. People can’t just keep using the assumption that Apple is losing users to justify their opinions about FCP X.”
And where did I say that there was widespread switching? Are you seriously meaning to imply that no one is switching from FCPX?
[Chris Kenny]To address your point more directly, some people don’t like the magnetic timeline. This is a matter of personal preference; it’s not, strictly speaking, a ‘usability’ issue. There’s no general usability principle that prefers tracks over clips relationships or bins over metadata, and it’s not at all clear that the magnetic time e.g. makes editing tasks slower. The reverse may well be true.”
Agree to disagree, usability is a matter personal taste. I’ll say it again, people should use what allows them to be most productive. My usable, time tested timeline is your clunky, backward looking UI.
[Chris Kenny][Shawn Miller] “Let me ask you this then. Do you think that FCPX alone can meet the needs of an aspiring motion graphics or VFX artist? ”
No. Why should it?”
Let’s bring this whole thing back to the original point (see original comments below). Aindreas made a comment about the relative value of the Creative Cloud subscription vs. FCPX. You disagreed, implying that, for people just entering the field, FCPX was the better value. My question relates to that same question about the CCS’ value proposition vs FCPX’s. For the aspiring artist who wants to explore motion graphics, VFX and editing, can FCPX match the same capability/value as the Creative Cloud subscription?
[Chris Kenny][Aindreas Gallagher] “Also, given it sits currently in the production suite – PPro is, in very many cases, free at the point of delivery.”
True for people who are already in the industry and already own $1500+ software packages (or already paying $50/month, I suppose). Not so much for folks just entering the field, and capturing those folks is critical for long-term success.”
Shawn
-
[Chris Kenny] “[David Lawrence] “The speed benefits of dynamic trimming have nothing to do with measured performance. Dynamic/rock ‘n roll trimming allows the editor to make decisions in realtime, during playback, without ever touching the mouse.
Advanced editors don’t cut by looking, they cut entirely by feel, looping playback and trimming until the cut feels right without ever lifting their fingers from the keyboard.”
Look, I’m not a professional full-time creative editor…
I am, and I found David’s comments to be highly subjective at best, but mostly incredibly condescending. There are generations of “the best… advanced” film editors who would probably disagree.
————————————————————-
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
-
As someone who spent a decade plus on Avid before spending a decade on FCP and now using X, FCP7 still couldn’t touch Avid’s trimming from 10 years earlier.
I’d agree with Chris that FCPX trimming is very far ahead of FCP7 although not up to the immense power of Avid (and I haven’t used Avid in years). FCPX is much closer though. PixelCorp did a trimming comparison between FCPX and Avid. They felt that with a few more tweaks FCPX trimming could be competitive. This was during a PixelCorp live stream.
It’s nearly an hour and a half. Keep in mind the episode is now over a year old so things may have changed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHQ73zaA2VYSome 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.
-
[Chris Kenny] “Plus, the demo video of Premiere that started this subthread does not actually appear to show the Avid behavior you’re describing.”
It’s just how the demo was done – it could have been done without touching the mouse.
Shawn
-
[Shawn Miller] “First, you’ll note that I said “the larger creative community”. And that was in response to your statement that “… most folks in this industry, including those who are still just aspiring, do seem to use Macs” You didn’t limit your comments to editors.”
Honestly, I meet a fair number of people in the industry, I see what personal machines interns and students own, etc. and it’s very rare to see anything other than a Mac. Maybe it’s different outside of New York or something, but unless you’re talking mostly about 3D guys or something, the Mac seems to be overwhelmingly dominant.
[Shawn Miller] “I didn’t make an absolute statement, Chris. Just as I never said that switching NLE’s necessarily means switching OS’s. I said a number of editors (not all) are exploring their choices; OS, applications and hardware. As for evidence, may I suggest the following articles?”
I was already aware that there are some people on the Internet who don’t like FCP X.
[Shawn Miller] “So… are you calling me a liar then? Not sure what this comment is about.”
I think you’re advocating a particular position.
[Shawn Miller] “However, if you’re talking about FCPX in relation to the Creative Suite, then you’re making a case for the Creative Suite. “
Only if you think Jobs was making a case for traditional PCs.
[Shawn Miller] “And where did I say that there was widespread switching? Are you seriously meaning to imply that no one is switching from FCPX?”
Some people are switching. It’s not clear that the FCP universe (comprising both classic FCP and X) is suffering a non-negligible net loss of users.
[Shawn Miller] “For the aspiring artist who wants to explore motion graphics, VFX and editing, can FCPX match the same capability/value as the Creative Cloud subscription? “
The question is stacking the deck.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up