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Back to FCPX From PP (Rant)
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[Craig Alan] “My students that go to film school get complimented on knowing the skills that are used in their programs.”
I am sure they get more compliments on the quality of their films, not what software they use. My students use X (a few cling to Premiere) but if the work sucks, it’s not the programs fault. The student team fails in that project, not FPCX. NLE’s don’t create concepts, write scripts or make edit decisions. It also depends on what you are teaching your students to become. Film and broadcast editors? Media Composer first. Corporate, web, commercials, weddings, producers, directors or education? Pick one you like best and gets out of the way of the creative process. Which is why X is best for me right now.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
I don’t disagree with any thing you are saying. The compliments (if that is the right word) I was referring to was: that they know how to use kino flos and fresnels and grip equipment and audio mixers and boom poles and coil cable, and camera operation. how to frame a shot. production vocabulary. how to write in script format and read and write a shot sheet. etc. As far as editing is concerned, it’s an advantage to already know the editing programs that are available at that school. At one college, a professor required that the students learn AVID. However for any of their projects, they were just required to turn in the exported video. So this student took a class on AVID and edited with FCP X on his laptop.
My initial concern was not that you couldn’t edit on FCP X but that it wouldn’t help them going forward. I chose FCP X because it fit our needs much better than AVID and I did not have the type of funding that would allow us to make monthly payments. But I was nervous that it wouldn’t get developed and that it wouldn’t be used by the colleges and the industry. I feel I made the right choice. Several of the colleges that initially decided not to use it at all, now use it about even with Adobe.
Traditional Hollywood studios and TV broadcast are still old school. But I think we’ll see more and more independent productions using FCP X.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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[Craig Alan] “You don’t feel it needs to round trip better with say Motion?
You don’t feel its ability to handle several layers of audio could be better?
You don’t think it should make the codec of each clip clear?
Just Critiquing my post is the true waste of words.
“This is substantive, so let me address it point by point.
A) Perhaps 15% of my work requires motion graphics beyond what can be done inside X via the titler,, generators or plug ins – and most of that has come up in the past 6 months
Also, X also already does a LIMITED round trip, since I can option double click launch many Motion effects directly from inside X and alter them and even changed the published parameters so they show up INSIDE X. So again, there s a LIMITED set of round tripping (in a broad sense) already there. So you’re really asking if I’d like MORE of what I already have? Yes. Sure. But it’s NOT anywhere remotely close to a “stopper”. I see it as one of those things that people who once had what they felt was a superior workflow in a different software – and would like to have back. I can sympathize. But it’s just no big deal to me. If and when they improve closer to so called “round tripping” I’ll enjoy that. But I miss it like changing a grade in elementary school and missing the fact that last years teacher – along with being a great teacher – told great jokes. The new teacher is even better at instruction – but no jokes. Bummer. But I’ll live.Same with Audio. If I was doing indy feature work without a sound department – or a lot of live music video work – I’d probably value more audio tools hugely. But I do that kind of work rarely, if at all. In the past six months, most of my income recently has come from interview driven projects where I have a mono VO. It will maybe get Music and EFX sometimes, but not always. I already have all the Logic Plug Ins in X – so what am I missing. Heck, even Jan and Mike on Focus were able to work with the scoring houses and audio post folks with hardly a glitch. So it’s not something major missing – and they did most of the movie on 10.0.9! Additional capabilities that would be welcome and nice – but seeing them as make or break is silly.
Codecs? I have MediaInfo on my desktop. I can drop analyze things are during import and can tag codecs in the software – even bucketing them via Smart Collections as needed. Solved by thoughtful workflow. No issue for me.
To me what you’re doing is being a bit pissy about what I see as “first world editor problems.”
It’s largely other system trained editors being annoyed at having to adapt. And as you note when you get crabby again, YOU DON”T HAVE TO ADAPT. Don’t use the program if if annoys you. Nobody will be offended.
But also don’t preach that it’s WRONG WRONG WRONG – when it simply isn’t for a whole lot of us.
Negativity serves a purpose – particularly when it points out actual DEFICIENCIES. But not so much when it simply results from something not doing enough to stroke one particular editors personal predilections.
No OMF? Two responses. Bitch. Or use AAF rather than OMF. And don’t tell me the post houses can’t adapt. That’s pure BS. They are SERVICE businesses. If their clients need a service – they’d BETTER provide it. Period.
That’s all.
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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[Craig Alan] “I feel I made the right choice.”
I know the feeling. I changed over our grad school from FCP7 to X a couple years ago. Of course we have the Adobe CC suite on all the computers too since my students all want to try After Effects.
The increase in speed of learning was pretty astonishing to watch compared to FCP7. Apple has done something very right with this software for people who are not trained in the track-based world (as I was). I sure as hell hope Apple keeps developing the product as I dread the thought of teaching Premier.
[Craig Alan] “that they know how to use kino flos and fresnels and grip equipment and audio mixers and boom poles and coil cable, and camera operation. how to frame a shot. production vocabulary. how to write in script format and read and write a shot sheet. etc. “
Very cool. Those are talents that are so valuable, even if you end up as a director. I have often said that some of the best directors I know have been editors. They know what it’s like to be at the bottom of the hill, and we all know which way the shit rolls! 🙂
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Our classes are only an hour per day and I can teach FCP X basics in very short order. 2 minutes with a kid who never used it before will be doing a rough cut. 2 more minutes and they can adjust the audio, or do a transform or crop or basic color correction. One on one with someone showing you how to use the interface as you need it is just the fastest way to learn. Far easier to teach than FCP 7. Even basic smart collections and keywords are pretty easy to demonstrate and the kids take it from there. Though most of our projects at least in class are short form and don’t need a lot of organization. But events do.
How do you handle round tripping between after effects and FCP X and resolve for that matter?
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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[Craig Alan] “How do you handle round tripping between after effects and FCP X and resolve for that matter?
“We don’t. Any AE they use is exported out of AE and imported to X. I don’t go heavy into CC as I focus on concept and then creative execution. I just teach color inside X (which you can get a damn good result from) and let them know about the other softwares out there. I have Finale on my teaching computer and I might show them that as an example. These are marketing and advertising grad students.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Yeah I use FCP X for color as well but resolve for my visually creative students seems like a nice addition. Most of this type use photoshop which I don;t teach and again can’t budget for a monthly payment
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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[Lillian Young] “Premiere won’t even open on my workstation. It crashes on my laptop. I literally have to go back to my office on the weekend to make revisions on a project. “
Hi Lillian,
Did you ever get this working? Let us know.Thanks,
KevinKevin Monahan
Support Product Manager—DVA
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe
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[Bill Davis] “I also think it’s fair to note that Phil Loews original push back at the X design would be appropriately viewed by him through a news cutters eye.”
Bingo.
Every investigative script we wrote had to be vetted by corporate legal: every sentence scoured and every word parsed by attorneys. They had to get the first look at it and only when we had it approved did it make sense to start editing because any changes we made after that had to be vetted by legal again.
We got pretty good real fast at what would get past legal and what wouldn’t. We usually had 2-3 days for one of these investigative pieces that would run between 5 and 10 minutes. Often, the first day was spent rewriting and refining the script in the bay so that a finsihed script could be delivered to legal. Once we had the script written, we would start laying sound bytes, narration, and music: the skeleton of the piece. After getting sound down, I would work on any graphics that needed to be created, such as scanning documents and producing animated pull-outs from legal papers, etc.
Third day was a chance to look at the piece for flow and pace, and clean up any rough spots we saw, while waiting for attorney approval of what (now) was the final script, which was transcribed from this first cut. I would drop in graphics and B-Roll the piece while the reporter dealt with legal. On rare occasions, small legal changes in either a shot or the narration had to be made to the piece(s) as late as 10 minutes before air. We never missed a deadline.
News is both intensely deadline driven and extremely detail oriented, especially when it comes to investigative journalism. You can’t simply sit down and rough out ideas in editing without having a script first, and the closer you can get that script to the final cut, the fewer issues you’ll have at deadline.
Just thought you all should know.
Canon XF-300, Canon 5DMkIII, Canon 7D MkII, Avid Media Composer 7.05, Adobe CC 2015, iMovie Pro.
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Whatever tool you feel will get the job completed to your specs is then tool you should use, but there is nothing about this workflow that X would impede.
Some (most) of my projects deal with quick turn legal at varying levels, and we are always waiting on legal, they aren’t waiting on us. FCPX nor any other NLE would stand in the way of getting the job to legal.
And since you ARE writing the piece in the bay, X might even help you out because it’s so fast to fling the story around.
Just thought you all should know. 😀
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