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Apple gives up another network client
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[Walter Soyka] “The question: what has to change in order for freelancers to be able to sell FCPX skills?”
1-word answer: Hardware.
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[Walter Soyka] “I think the “Motion is great for what it is, but it’s not Ae” theme that we all agree on is a key part of Aindreas’s point. As FCP Legend matured, people largely stopped saying “FCP is great for what it is, but it’s not Avid.”
“That took a long time. As I mentioned earlier, FCP didn’t get XML until v4. v4!
FCPX already has XML. Sure, it’s limited at the moment, but it’s there and I’m sure will only get better.
As of this writing today, it’s easier to get to Resolve from FCPX than it is from Pr CS6 when adherining to a clip level edit………
[Walter Soyka] “Motion never had a Cold Mountain moment (which is like jumping the shark, only good). Here we are, 8 years after its launch, saying that Motion is a nice titler that is just not ideal for motion graphics — when mograph was its original raison d’être!”
So you are saying you can’t produce motion graphics in Motion, or that it’s not ubiquitous as Ae?
Motion does allow tracking/masking/matting in decent conjunction with FCP. Since Legend’s tools are no good for this, this is worth the price of admission right there.
I just don’t think Motion is as all-around capable as Ae, and therefore the users are different. Just like FCP Legend was more capable than say, Pr Pro v5 or 5.5 (and some of Cs6). I don’t think we can lump Motion of FCP together and interpolate an FCPX development direction.
FCP was Apple’s money maker out of all the ProApps, and I am sure they are trying to do that again. Motion is fine, the new integration with FCPX makes it good enough to stick around for a while. It’s a tool, not a platform.
[Walter Soyka] “Although I don’t agree with all his hyperbole, I think Aindreas has a fantastic point in saying that there’s no guarantee that FCPX will develop like FCP Legend did (becoming all things to all people). It might develop more like Motion (very good in key areas while disregarding others). If Apple wants FCPX to develop like FCP, they need to pay attention to FCPX’s low-ceiling areas, but is Apple really in the all-things-to-all-people business?”
FCP Legend developed slowly. Very slowly. If Apple keeps it up, FCPX will develop (and already has developed) more quickly than Legend. Will it be all things to all people? Who cares? This market is fragemented, and I am not just talking about NLE sftware. Look at production hardware, it is an absolute mine field.
Last weekend, our team shot a project that involved 5 cameras. All of these cameras were good for different things. One had an intervalometer and was good for timelpase, two had tc and pro audio, so those were handheld picking up talent and dialogue, the other two were smaller and could fit anywhere and could pick up wider lock down angles, or thrown on a ligher weight slider for more dynamic broll with minimal reconfiguration.
Gone are the days where you show up with one really expensive general purpose camera and capture it. You show up with a sh*t load of differing monetary value cameras and point them everywhere. Even on the high end of things, there’s no reason why you can’t have multiple Reds or Alexas. They are great value cameras when you are operating at that level.
This creates mountains of footage, and the edit times are ever shorter. Say what you want about the level of pro of FCPX, but FCPX cuts through this type of organization like a hot knife through butter. Syncing all of these cameras, making sense of all the footage, and organizing it in differing ways that extend beyond a one location bin are fast, relatively easy, and most all extremely helpful and useful. And here’s the kicker, I don’t need a third party application to do this. FCPX can do all of this syncing and organizing right in the application. Other NLE’s I might have to get the footage in, bring it back out to a third party app and sync it all, and then bring it back in. Which one is better? It’s a personal decision.
So, is FCPX underdeveloped? Perhaps in certain areas, in other areas, it is like no other NLE and I mean that in a good way. The SAN level control of FCPX also points to big, pro level ideas, but whatever…it doesn’t matter unless it matters to you and your workflow.
[Walter Soyka] “Personally, I think that FCPX’s improving interchange options are a good way out here. As long as the edit is portable, FCPX can be used for its strengths while mitigating its weaknesses in a way that was never applicable to Motion. I think that if this kind of interoperability work continues (and expands beyond the edit into events as well), the question of whether FCPX itself has a low ceiling becomes irrelevant.”
Yes. I’m just not sure the ceiling matters even today.
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[Chris Harlan] “Yup. If Roles gets sophisticated enough, however, I could manage with that.”
A combination of the Timeline Index to help sort and select, along with Roles to help show you where things are will be the best of all worlds. I have spent enough time with FCPX to see how this could work, I just hope I’m not misreading Apple’s intentions.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “So you are saying you can’t produce motion graphics in Motion, or that it’s not ubiquitous as Ae? Motion does allow tracking/masking/matting in decent conjunction with FCP. Since Legend’s tools are no good for this, this is worth the price of admission right there.”
Years ago on a very different forum a wonderful editor named Ron Shook came up with a useful distinction between an editor’s compositor and a compositor’s compositor (he was actually talking about MoGfx, but the distinction didn’t exist then). Back then he was referring to Boris FX vs AE. According to that distinction it isn’t that one is better than another, merely that they were targeted differently. If you spend 40 hours a week editing and 2 hours a week creating EFX, then the depth and learning curve of AE is actually counter productive. If you are paid to create MoGfx then the limitations of Boris FX, and now Motion, is very unproductive. As an editor who occasionally has to create EFX I find this to be true and use Motion all the time when working with FCP.
However anyone who says that this was Apple’s intent all along doesn’t remember the rollout at NAB – Apple had their sights set on AE and announced that they had a revolutionary new was to create AE type of effects without the difficulty and learning curve. The parallels in marketing between the Motion and FCPX rollout are there for all to see. This doesn’t mean that because they failed to capture the market with Motion that they will fail again now. It does mean however that Apple is not failure proof.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “However anyone who says that this was Apple’s intent all along doesn’t remember the rollout at NAB – Apple had their sights set on AE and announced that they had a revolutionary new was to create AE type of effects without the difficulty and learning curve. The parallels in marketing between the Motion and FCPX rollout are there for all to see. This doesn’t mean that because they failed to capture the market with Motion that they will fail again now. It does mean however that Apple is not failure proof.”
I don’t get it.
Just because Motion didn’t take over Ae’s marketshare doesn’t mean it was a failure.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “That took a long time. As I mentioned earlier, FCP didn’t get XML until v4. v4!”
Half red herring. XML ushered in a new set of workflows, but EDL was initially more important. Legend climbed Cold Mountain on v3 without XML.
[Jeremy Garchow] “FCPX already has XML. Sure, it’s limited at the moment, but it’s there and I’m sure will only get better. As of this writing today, it’s easier to get to Resolve from FCPX than it is from Pr CS6 when adherining to a clip level edit………”
But new, different XML that incompatible with prior XMEML workflows.
Isn’t the assumption that key limitations will get better one of the points Aindreas is raising with his comparison? The argument here is that some things get better and some things don’t. Will FCPXML improve? I sure hope so. Does SAN support indicate plans for collaborative editing? That’d be really cool. Will Motion get expressions? It hasn’t yet…
Premiere has a host of interchange problems all its own.
[Jeremy Garchow] “So you are saying you can’t produce motion graphics in Motion, or that it’s not ubiquitous as Ae?”
I’m just saying, big picture, that Motion shows a different development path than FCP Legend did.
[Jeremy Garchow] “FCP Legend developed slowly. Very slowly. If Apple keeps it up, FCPX will develop (and already has developed) more quickly than Legend. Will it be all things to all people? Who cares? This market is fragemented, and I am not just talking about NLE sftware.”
Motion and Aperture both developed very quickly. Then they both stalled.
I don’t have a horse in this race. There’s a lot I like in FCPX, and there’s a little bit that I dislike a lot, but I could say that of any of a number of other tools that I use on a regular basis.
The only thing I care about here is whether my clients adopt FCPX, because that will fundamentally change my approach to their graphics work (less so for the bit of finishing I do). I am seeing the same thing Aindreas is reporting: to date, not a single one of my clients has adopted FCPX. I agree that the market is fragmenting, and I am very curious to understand which way my particular part of the market will go.
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 -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t get it. Just because Motion didn’t take over Ae’s marketshare doesn’t mean it was a failure.”
It failed to achieve Apple’s goals. For a product that was brought to market with so much fanfare, the fact that it is now solely an adjunct to other software is not my definition of a success. The only people who use it are a subset of FCP editors, so for a company that makes software to sell hardware, the fact that it has not sold a single machine makes it a failure for them.
It’s not a failure as an app, I use it successfully all the time, however it’s failure to achieve market share has limited it — there is no 3rd party eco system at all to supplement it, Apple’s support is luke warm, and many of the things it couldn’t do on release have never been, and apparently never will be addressed.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Walter Soyka] “Half red herring. XML ushered in a new set of workflows, but EDL was initially more important. Legend climbed Cold Mountain on v3 without XML.”
I thought Murch has access to XML at that time.
Also, did After Effects ever have a “Cold Mountain” moment? Does it need it? Does Motion? Does FCPX?
The only point I see AIndreas making is that no one is hiring “FCPX editors”.
We have a story some where else on this forum that a BBC editor asked BBC to install FCPX, and they did.
Isn’t that how FCP Legend came to be the Legend of FCP? There weren’t big facilities using it right away. Editors doing side projects used it at home, and then started asking why they couldn’t use it at the facility. At least that’s my anecdotal experience.
One of the reasons Cold Mountain was so “revolutionary” was the use of firewire, DV, laptops and some desktops using off the shelf storage, in a remote Romanian (?) location. All of that is de riguer now.
I have a buddy who just finished a surf event production in Fiji where the break is two miles off of the coast and blasted it out to the world to watch. Portable and lightweight capability is here.
[Walter Soyka] “But new, different XML that incompatible with prior XMEML workflows.”
Incompatible how? I can put an FCPXML in to Resolve and puke out an XMEML. Same with RCXPro and Xto7. I am sure there will be more options in the future.
[Walter Soyka] “Isn’t the assumption that key limitations will get better one of the points Aindreas is raising with his comparison? The argument here is that some things get better and some things don’t. Will FCPXML improve? I sure hope so. Does SAN support indicate plans for collaborative editing? That’d be really cool. Will Motion get expressions? It hasn’t yet…”
What I’m saying is that there already IS a lot in FCPX that happened within a few months of launch. Collaborative editing IS already there in some capacity. XML interchange IS already there in some capacity. Because it doesn’t have tracks, people say it’s a failure, dead on the vine, doesn’t care about Pro workflows. Even the folks that like it say that it needs some work. Is that to be expected for a new application?
What’s everyone else’s excuse (Avid/Adobe, etc)?
[Walter Soyka] “Premiere has a host of interchange problems all its own.”
Yeah, and how long has that application been around? Long enough for it to not be so much of a problem…
[Walter Soyka] “Motion and Aperture both developed very quickly. Then they both stalled.”
Again, are these comparable to FCP? I don’t think so. Even though they fall under the “ProApp” umbrella, I just don’t see them as extensible of tools as FCP Legend or even X. FCP Legend stalled in development too.
[Walter Soyka] “The only thing I care about here is whether my clients adopt FCPX, because that will fundamentally change my approach to their graphics work (less so for the bit of finishing I do). I am seeing the same thing Aindreas is reporting: to date, not a single one of my clients has adopted FCPX. I agree that the market is fragmenting, and I am very curious to understand which way my particular part of the market will go.”
If FCPX is adopted by your clients, why will it change your approach? I don’t understand.
Of your clients, has anyone adopted anything new, and by that I mean, completely tossed FCP Legend and started over from scratch?
You mentioned red herrings and brought another open up, I could easily say that many haven’t moved to Avid or Adobe, just as easily as I could say that many haven’t moved to FCPX. Many people haven’t moved from FCP Legend quite yet.
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[Herb Sevush] “t failed to achieve Apple’s goals.”
I guess I never knew what those goals were.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I thought Murch has access to XML at that time.”
v4 had just come out, but Murch used v3. Cinema Tools was important.
https://www.digitalcontentproducer.com/dcc/revfeat/video_final_cutting_cold/
[Jeremy Garchow] “Also, did After Effects ever have a “Cold Mountain” moment? Does it need it? Does Motion? Does FCPX?”
Good point. I don’t think Ae climbed Cold Mountain — it never had to. It created a new market (which FCPX may also do).
Flame is 20 years old now, a year or two older than Ae, and when it came out, Flame work was simply unaffordable to entire swaths of the market. Ae came into that empty space; it’s used on all levels of production today, but it has not really competed head-to-head with Flame for the same work.
FCP made a similar grab underneath Avid, but it also went head to head with it, and it had to justify that it could do the “big” work even though it was cheaper and different. That’s what Cold Mountain did for FCP Legend.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Isn’t that how FCP Legend came to be the Legend of FCP?”
Yes! But Aindreas is posing the question: will FCPX follow in Legend’s footsteps, or Motion’s?
In other words, why did FCP become legendary in its space, but Motion did not?
[Jeremy Garchow] “What I’m saying is that there already IS a lot in FCPX that happened within a few months of launch. Collaborative editing IS already there in some capacity. XML interchange IS already there in some capacity. Because it doesn’t have tracks, people say it’s a failure, dead on the vine, doesn’t care about Pro workflows. Even the folks that like it say that it needs some work. Is that to be expected for a new application?”
Likewise, a lot happened with Motion and Aperture in the first few versions. But there was a lot that didn’t happen, too, and it hurt them versus Ae and Lr.
I agree with you that it’s reasonable to think there is much more in store with FCPX. I just don’t disagree with Aindreas that it’s a certainty.
[Jeremy Garchow] “What’s everyone else’s excuse (Avid/Adobe, etc)?”
Worthy of a new thread!
[Jeremy Garchow] “Again, are these comparable to FCP? I don’t think so. Even though they fall under the “ProApp” umbrella, I just don’t see them as extensible of tools as FCP Legend or even X. FCP Legend stalled in development too.”
They are comparable in some ways, but not in others.
I have abused the term “development” — I’m not just talking about the programming, but rather a combination of programming, design, and market adoption.
[Jeremy Garchow] “If FCPX is adopted by your clients, why will it change your approach? I don’t understand.”
FCPX/M5 integration. I’d provide Motion rigs to my editorial clients for their graphics packages.
Stand-alone elements will still be C4D/Ae.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Of your clients, has anyone adopted anything new, and by that I mean, completely tossed FCP Legend and started over from scratch?”
Not really. Most of the editors I am working with are not excited about FCPX (perhaps they haven’t given it a fair shake). I have been fielding some questions on Premiere from editors I know, but that could be bias as they know I am an Ae guy. Almost all production I’m seeing is still wherever it was (Avid or Legend).
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
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