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Back to FCPX From PP (Rant)
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[Craig Alan] “And their history for EOLing stuff without more communication and support is troubling”
As an Avid D|S editor and beta tester, I can attest that it’s not only Apple that will tell you sweet lies until they pull the rug out from your favorite product.
I can’t worry about what Apple might do. I use (and/or teach) the best tool that I have now, like I did with DS, and change if I have to. I dread the thought of having to use and teach Premiere or Avid, but if I have to, that’s what I will do.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Craig Alan] “Imagine if they had released FCP X by saying up front that it was a work in progress”
I think it might have helped some people but it wouldn’t have helped me, because I already figured it was a work in progress. Almost all software is.
I still say to this day that one of the main problems X had was “misinformation” by people online that didn’t know what they were talking about. Some people did, but many didn’t, and it was hard to tell the 2 apart at first.
People putting out a bunch of information that was flat-out not true. Like, you couldn’t turn the magnetic timeline off.
Even the famous Conan joke clip was misleading. Having the audio out of sync, which most people will agree is very difficult to do in X. People saw that clip around the country and it still gets posted to this day.
I know it’s meant as a joke but most jokes are based on truth, and this was a stretch, but if you did’t know better you would think that X throws stuff out of sync really easy, which in fact, the opposite is true.
I get it though, the things that people were most angry about would have been hard to make fun of.
Like, I can’t import my 7 timeline. Not really funny. The whole sketch was already too insider baseball for the audience anyway, without getting farther in the weeds.One day I decided to try X so I could decide for myself what was true.
I’m glad I did.
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[Tony West] ” Like, you couldn’t turn the magnetic timeline off.”
Just for fun we could resurrect that argument 🙂
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/17555
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[Steve Connor] “Just for fun we could resurrect that argument :)”
hahaha only it’s not an argument. it’s fact.
I saw a woman’s review early on that said the clips snap back and there is nothing you can do about that.
You could do something about it, she just didn’t know how. She put out her video before she learned the program.
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[Craig Alan] ” that people that know how to edit have an easier time learning FCP X then people who don’t.”
Only if they approach X with a clean slate. Sure, they know more of the terminology, but I see new users “getting” FCPX faster than “track-baked” editors if they try to make X work just like PP or MC.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
The end game is the same.The UI has a lot of components that are the same. You may not prefer connected clips but it takes almost no time to get. If you don’t like magnetism then you haven’t learned the position tool. Trackless is different and I can see not liking it and I can see learning to use it in complex edits, if you have already learned to use tracks, could be a difficult learning curve. But mostly I don’t find experienced editors saying that it was a hard learning curve as much as they didn’t like it . Early on they may ask if they are missing some aspect or operation that would allow them to work the way they were used to working. Well with the position tool the answer is yes. But if you want the equivalent of tracks, you start learning stuff about secondary storylines and using gap clips to place a sequence at a fixed location, compounding clips, etc. And yeah that is trickier than transitioning to another track based timeline. But easier to keep audio in sync not harder. And the reason that you needed tracks has not gone away. You are still editing multiple layers of media for a project that will appear as one linear timeline.
And if they really want to learn it rather than just say its not for them, then telling them they must embrace FCP X way of thinking is not helpful. What is helpful is asking “what specifically do you want the edit to do” and then give directions of one or three ways to get it done. FCP X still has traditional use of layers like all visual apps from photoshop to AVID. The top layer dominates the visual. You can set opacity to allow lower layers to create a composite. or just as a way to cut between shots while keeping a consistent audio track. Same as all NLE.
So the real difference is how to manage those layers without tracks. My take is with a limited number of layers FCP X is easier and faster. With more layer, its more difficult to manage or at least not as obvious to manage but doable.
Deal breakers are missing features not a different interface.One thing I love about X is I have never found an edit that I couldn’t find tutorials on on line and if I was motivated and had the time could learn. In some ways this is Apple legacy. Apple users “share” more. But please don’t cal an export a share. Its just condescending renaming a universally understood operation. If you want to upload to Video fine. But if someone doesn’t know what an export is they will not know what a share is.
[Scott Witthaus] “I see new users “getting” FCPX faster than “track-baked” editors if they try to make X work just like PP or MC.
“I don’t doubt this is your experience; but my guess is, they are going back and forth between different NLEs, and not spending as much time in 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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said someone from Apple support never……
Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852 -
[Tony West] “I will toss in on this topic. After just finishing an investigative doc as the producer director and editor I can certainly tell you that my “script” changed plenty of times. “
No one said the script never changes. The position was pretty much that the better the script, and the better the execution during production, the better post production will go. Basically, let’s avoid fixing it in post if at all possible.
[Tony West] “When you are doing a doc, these people have no obligation to be in your film. They can say yes or no. It’s up to them and that’s part of what you have to deal with as a producer/editor.”
And I’m sure during the course of your shooting if I asked you why are you shooting at location X or, why are you interviewing person Y that you’d be able to explain your reasoning to me. You might not know exactly what the interviewees are going to say, but you have a general idea of the information you are seeking and roughly how that will fit into your story. Long story short, you have a plan (even if that plan gets tweaked after each and every shoot).
For example, I cut a feature length doc about Lenny Bruce that originally started out as just a 10min behind-the-scenes piece about a guy named Matt researching, writing and acting in a one-man play based on part of Lenny’s life. This project was shot and cut over the course of six years and had many ‘re-writes’. It went from a BTS piece, to a full blown follow doc about Matt’s journey, to a doc-within-a-doc (think “This Film is Not Yet Rated), back to a follow doc about Matt’s journey and ultimately ended being a PBS-style historical piece that had no mention of Matt or his play. Those are some drastic course changes, but every time it happened the director and I would reformulate our plan of attack (what do we need to shoot now, who do we need to interview now, what questions do we need to ask them, etc.,.). Our final two interviews were Richard Lewis and Hugh Hefner. We really had no idea what Richard Lewis would say (but one of his bites ended up kicking off the beginning of the film) where as with Hefner we had some narrative points that needed fleshing out so we asked him more specific types of questions to help fill in those gaps.
On the flip side I also worked on a doc where the director wanted a more cinema verite approach but he didn’t have the resources to shoot a lot (which you kinda need in order for verite to work) so I ended up with a lot of footage of the people but not a lot of story. The director also knew the people very well so the story about them in his head was much more fleshed out than the story he actually captured on tape. I still think the piece turned out well, but it could have been better (and required much less work in post) if there and been more focus and clarity during production about what the story was and what needs to be filmed in order to tell that story.
My rambling point? Even in docs you need a plan (some sort premise, script or outline) and you need quality execution during production otherwise you are going to be hurting in post.
-Andrew
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Wow this drifted a bit.
I skipped to the end so maybe someone mentioned this already. Has the OP considered maybe the projects are corrupt or there is a disk permissions issue? Are you on external storage? Have you checked the file/folder permissions? Are they propagating properly downward? At the very least you can use disk utility to repair basic permissions. If you are good at using google you can fine pretty much anything you want to know about the UNIX command line, and there is a built in manual…
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Oh yeah, and I’m ready to catch shade…
There is always Avid
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