-
At the risk of sounding presumptuous, another hat in the ring.
This is an open letter that I’ve sent to Apple and posted on my own website (https://goo.gl/X0F0S). It’s wordy… so feel free to click on by, but I rarely get so inspired to put pen to paper, as it were.
I can’t imagine I could dissuade or persuade anyone to purchase Final Cut Pro X at this point in time — enough opinions have been put forward that I would assume the great majority of the potential user base has already taken a position. So, I’d like to think of this review as more of an open letter to the Apple developers.
I’ve been editing in boutique environments for the past decade, and have been using Final Cut Pro regularly since version 2, bouncing back and forth between Media Composer over that time. It’s safe to say I’ve used the application in the most “professional” environments imaginable, having edited hundreds of commercials internationally, working with some of the most highly regarded directors, cinematographers, visual effects artists, colorists, composers, mixers, and designers. I state this as strongly as I do not out of vanity (although I’m proud of my work as an editor and I believe it speaks for itself), but to qualify my opinions regarding FCPX.
Over the course of that decade, FCP has played different roles for me. But over the past two years (mostly due to the release of FCP7), I’ve reached the point that I spend almost exactly fifty percent of my time working in FCP7, and the other half in MCSoft5.5. The very short version is that I prefer the act of editing in FCP. But I prefer the reliability of media management in MC, and when I need to split jobs with other editors — or move a project between systems — I generally work in MC.
Over the past week, I’ve worked on three different projects in FCPX. One short film (5D/7D), one music video (7D), and one commercial (Alexa). The first two I didn’t do much more than play about. On the commercial I put my best foot forward — labeling & tagging the footage with slates and script notes, auto-analyzing for color balance and shot content, and editing all the way down to a proper :30.
Many of the negative issues I encountered are, again, ones that have been covered exhaustively (albeit erratically and with varying degrees of accuracy) by users, and I don’t want to spend too much time with that. Suffice to say, upon finishing my edit, I couldn’t screen it for my clients due to a lack of compatibility with common I/O hardware. But, so what? It’s a major software revision. I have every confidence that drivers will be written in a timely manner. Driver lag isn’t a new, or particularly troubling concept. Of greater concern is that I can’t create a list (printed or electronic) for the telecine session and conform, import an AAF from the sound designer, or export an OMF or AAF (or even export split AIFF files) for the mix session. I agree with the majority of reviewers that these are surprising omissions, and reflect either tone-deafness to the realities of (again, the magic word) “professional” post-production, or simple overzealousness in releasing a product that isn’t quite ready.
But those issues are secondary. Of greater concern is the lack of sensitivity — and frankly, fairness — to the established methods of working professionals, and the surprising lack of depth in new features.
The “One Project Is One Edit” concept at the core of the new architecture is so misinformed it borders on insane. It is based on the idea that an editor is only editing for their own individual wants and needs. At the risk of sounding pedantic, that is not how the real world works. It’s a stunning throwback to everything that was bad about physically (also, literally) cutting film. To change something, one could work in a new direction while doing one’s best remembering what it felt like in its prior iteration, one could work from an alternate set of dailies, or one could strike a print of the original cut to refer back to. And each of those three options directly correlates to options available in FCPX for the versioning of edits. Either continue working on your project (effectively burning the bridges you’ve built), duplicate the project (a three to five click process), or export a quicktime of your project and reimport it as a clip (making only a baked-in reference).
There have been various definitions of the word “professional” flying about in the past week and a half. Some of the discussions thereof have bordered on the unpleasant, categorizing worked based upon budget, or exposure, or medium, or perceived aesthetics. But “professional” has a simple association for an editor: if you have a client, you are a professional. And where there be clients, there be versioning. There could be versions simply based upon subjectivity. Is A better than B? There could be versions based upon necessity. Are there both sixty and thirty second deliverables required?
The ability to pursue ideas in different directions as quickly as one can click double click, and share those ideas with clients with just as little effort, is unquestionably what makes contemporary editing what it is. It is how we make our living. It is so much a part of the process that its presence is, by this point, completely taken for granted. The precious seconds spent switching between projects in FCPX in order to share different edits is a stunning setback to the entire concept of digital nonlinear editing.
To my other point above, and in contrast to my feelings regarding the structure of projects, many of the new features represent a reasonably optimistic view of the future of the industry. Automated color balancing to signal the end of dailies. Proxies and source media sitting side by side to signal the end of conforming. Metadata stretching all the way back to capture. But how strangely specific and academic the automatically generated tags are, and how comically inaccurate. Seemingly random assignments of categories like “Wide Shot” and “Medium Shot,” often to clips shot with the exact same lens. “One Person,” and “Two Persons” when there are neither. And what point is there to assigning categories to some, but not all, clips? And why are “Wide Shot” and “Medium Shot” subsets of a group called “People?” What does (presumed, subjective, inconsistently applied) focal length have to do with people? How about categories like “Handheld,” “Locked Off,” “Dolly,” and “Zoom?” How about detecting the location of slates and adding a marker at their location? How about flash detection for rolls of transferred film? How about tagging shots based upon length, and giving an option to categorize based upon those tags (perhaps giving the option to mark any clip below a certain length as “Rejected,” based on the assumption the camera was turned on in error, and assign a “Master Shot” keyword to anything above a certain length)? How about detecting repeated actions or lines within the same clip and adding markers and/or keywords accordingly?
And in each of those humble suggestions, how about making them optional and customizable? To circle back and expand a bit, let’s touch on (here come the quotation marks) “professional” again. A consumer power drill can help you put up some curtain rods or build a sandbox. A professional power drill can do that and have enough torque to blast through concrete. Point being, you don’t have you use all the power available to you, but you can’t use power you don’t have access to in the first place.
Yes, it is clear that this is a major revision to Final Cut Pro. Yes, it is totally re-engineered. Yes, it feels more like the last release of iMovie (which I admittedly have little experience with) than the last release of its namesake. Yes, I understand that it will be refined and expanded with future releases. And, yes, I draw large distinctions between missing features (XML I/O), features that need refining (inconsistent automatic keywords), features I haven’t used enough to reliably comment on (the Magnetic Timeline — but here’s a sneak preview, I hate it with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns), features that are tied to third-party developers (video monitoring), and finally, the horribly misinformed, disastrous restructuring of the concept of what a “project” is for an editing program.
My advice to Apple? Have a couple of meetings, and figure out if you have the desire to commit the resources necessary to continue developing software usable to pro users. Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s too far away from the profit centers you’ve been establishing so successfully over the past five years. Maybe it’s better to cut bait now.
But if you decide you want to move forwards, talk to us. Developing for working professionals is about responding to industry demands. Better, faster, more efficient, lower costs. Consciously attempting to shift paradigms through product design works better for the consumer marketplace (iPhone, anyone?).
That said, for now, consider making this release free. Seriously. Call it a public beta. Call it something new. But until more is added than was taken away, you can’t spin this as the next big thing to a devoted, international user base. A user base that needs to get their work done, faster and cheaper than the next guy. A user base that has a client on the couch, thumbing through a magazine, getting increasingly more annoyed.
-
26 Replies
-
This post sums it up so completely, there is almost no reason to read any others. In fact, I shall not.
I have no doubts about the word “professional,” or what that word implies for the tools I either choose to use, or must use to complete my job to my clients satisfaction. Like many I will remain with FCP7 for as long as possible, but have already ordered an upgrade to PP 5.5. i am also looking at (together with finance and IT) MC. If and when I hear Apple has heeded the call and made the necessary course corrections I will consider what they offer, for right now they offer me no choice.
Thanks again for the post.
Jim Carey
Director of Video, Radical Entertainment
linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jcarey256
mobygames: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,17212/ -
[Kevin Zimmerman] “The “One Project Is One Edit” concept at the core of the new architecture is so misinformed it borders on insane. “
I think you’re assuming the use of the word “project” is the same as it was in previous versions or even other NLEs. It would have been easier if Apple changed the word
A Project contains the timeline.
An Event, not a project, contains the media.
You can have as many projects (timelines) as you want per event.
. . . and a project can have media from any number of events.It’s much more open ended. You can version as much as you want.
What’s changed is that managing this is much more complex. Apple hasn’t done a good job yet aiding the end user organization of the interrelationship of Events and Projects. This is sort of a Relational Database now. It’s not very well developed yet but I suspect that will be improved both within FCPX and through a server based management utility down the road. Yes, it’s going to get very messy very fast if they don’t improve the management side but there is no limit to the number of Project/Timelines you can have for an Event.
[Kevin Zimmerman] “And in each of those humble suggestions, how about making them optional and customizable?”
I agree if the database is really to be powerful for the end user it must be more customizable.
[Kevin Zimmerman] “But if you decide you want to move forwards, talk to us.”
I’m sure they’re looking at our response to their paid beta. We’ll see their response in the upgrades.
My hunch is they may even go on tour of sorts. One hopes that at least in part it will be a listening tour as well as a telling tour because we need more information from them.
-
Outstanding comments, Kevin. Apple should have your phone number.
Best,
Park -
Brilliant, Kevin. On many levels. I hope they’re listening.
__________
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
Bingo! I think we have a winner!
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
-
A terrific post. Thanks for putting in the time!
As for Apple’s “time to cut bait” choice, I personally feel, based on Apple’s attitude toward the pro apps over the last few years, that they really have blown off the professional niche.
Apple’s calling products “pro” is now simply a marketing tool, making customers feel they have graduated from being a consumer to someone with professional ambitions — in the same way high school athletes wear shoes and gear that is pro-endorsed. No self-respecting teenager wants to work with iMovie — I know because I teach film/video at a high school.
Bottom line for me is that, in pursuit of this cynical use of the word “pro,” they ruthlessly dropped FCP7 out of marketing necessity. Did they need to do it for financial reasons? Could they not afford to keep it available and supported for a transitional year or two? Of course. Even MobileMe was extended another year, FOR FREE!
But the reality is that having a Final Cut Pro 7 out there would be confusing from a marketing standpoint. Do they call it “Original Pro” or “Classic Pro?” Or do they call the new product Final Cut Prosumer X? The very customer they want to reach would be adrift in the same state of confusion that existed before FCPX’s release: “Should I use iMovie, or Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro?” Now there is no confusion: “One Pro to Rule Them All.”
No, their only clear marketing path was to have FCP7 “erased from existence” as Doc Brown used to say.
Are they going to eventually “come back” to pro status with the new product? I suppose it’s possible, but more likely is another poster’s idea of “meeting in the middle.” Add just enough functionality that 99.99% of the public decides “this IS modern pro media.”
And for the few hundred or thousand high-end pros who MUST fuss around with the extra functionality — weel, let them cobble together workflows with high-end devices and software just like Pixar had to do when it built Renderman and its huge render farms. In other words, the high-end pro goes back to being an expensive specialty market as it was until the late 1990s.
To continue paraphrasing “Lord of the Rings,” perhaps we will have to heed Gandalf’s advice to Frodo…
Frodo: “I wish [FCPX] had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such time, but that is not for them to decide. All that you have to decide is what to do with the [tool] that is given to you.”
Doug D
-
Add my vote to this list of Kudos. It’s the best post I’ve seen yet on this topic.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Craig Seeman] “I think you’re assuming the use of the word “project” is the same as it was in previous versions or even other NLEs. It would have been easier if Apple changed the word
A Project contains the timeline.
An Event, not a project, contains the media.
You can have as many projects (timelines) as you want per event.
. . . and a project can have media from any number of events.It’s much more open ended. You can version as much as you want.”
Understood. Although it’s not the Project I’m primarily concerned with, per se. It’s the Timeline.
I insist that it’s a fundamentally flawed concept in that one you are viewing all of your Events (i.e. the source media for all of your different jobs) simultaneously by default, while only being able to view one Timeline.
Another parallel I thought of today was that Apple has developed a “session” based NLE. Sort of a video equivalent to ProTools. Again, there’s something completely tone-deaf in regards to the idea of a professional editing job being primarily a singular act. The fact that when one duplicates a Project, you need to click through a dialog box asking if you’d like to duplicate the associated Events, or just reference them, speaks volumes.
I’ve received a few interesting emails from users with different work-arounds for versioning within projects, based around Compound Clips and Audition Groups. Compound Clips is nothing new to an NLE, but Audition is, and I think it’s one of the more interesting developments in FCPX.
But the key idea is “work around.” It’s insane that we have to use creative problem solving to show two cuts back to back. We should be using that part of our brain for editing.
At my most optimistic, I genuinely believe this can all lead to something great. But it’s going to take more work on Apple’s part than on the end user’s part.
-
Actually I hope they don’t listen. FCP IMO has done more to de-professionalize the industry than anything I can think of. Lot’s of fresh “editors” showing up with no video or technical backgrounds. Let Apple have the prosumers and give the rest to Adobe and Avid. I’m just hoping even if they do “listen” enough people will have had their confidence shaken to jump ship.
-
[Kevin Zimmerman] “I insist that it’s a fundamentally flawed concept in that one you are viewing all of your Events (i.e. the source media for all of your different jobs) simultaneously by default, while only being able to view one Timeline.”
Yes. Both present problems. I have to think they’re going to have some kind of “hide” feature for Events and this is especially a must if it’s going to eventually be server based.
And while you can “version” by duplicating Projects just like you can sequence, a key thing people do when “versioning’ Is comparing the versions. That’s not easy when it’s cumbersome to go back and forth between different Projects/timelines.
FCPX is a relational database . . . but it’s currently a poorly managed one that can slow workflow. It’s a great idea but as implemented, it defeats much of the purpose of a relational database.
Events are “all at once” when one more often want just one or the ones relevant.
Projects are only “one at a time” when this is where you often want to see the relationships between versions and alternate cuts etc by making them simultaneously available.
Basically they’ve got the intended use backwards for many purposes.[Kevin Zimmerman] “Audition is, and I think it’s one of the more interesting developments in FCPX.”
Auditioning is great for scanning through alternates for a given section but there times when you have to do this in multiple locations simultaneously to compare different cuts. Sometimes changing one shot means that several others may also need to be changed. That’s what’s missing in the project handling.
Now if something akin to auditioning could work on a project basis such that one can bounce back and forth between alternate cuts . . .
[Kevin Zimmerman] “At my most optimistic, I genuinely believe this can all lead to something great. But it’s going to take more work on Apple’s part than on the end user’s part.”
I agree. The odd thing is that there’s a lot of focus on the “big” features that are missing (and Apple seems to be underway in handling most of them) but, to me, the real “devil is in the details” in that it’s a lot of the smaller things not yet implemented that could make a very speedy app into a series of stumbling blocks.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up