-
Bill Davis’ LACPUG demo on Multicam…
-
Express Pro was EOL’d in ’08 (I think) and it also seemed like the red headed step child of the bunch. Avid’s begrudging attempt to answer FCP. During most of that era I was primarily using FCP so I missed much of the first hand experience with Avid’s attitude and management at the time though from what I understand a lot has changed.
As far as user bases go… they all have their loud mouths and I’m surprised you’d rule out a tool (a promenant tool at that) because of that. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that suggesting FCPX could benefit from having a second viewing window would get you an earful from some people.
I’m sure it just wasn’t the user base and there were things with Express Pro that you didn’t like but a lot has changed between then and now. I used to own Premiere 6.0/6.5 (not PPro) and hated it. When Adobe said it was rebooting Premiere and it was Windows only I was like good riddance (I’d mainly gone Mac for editing by that time). Now I’m starting to kick the tires on Premiere again (out of necessity and because it’s a whole lot better than it was even just a few years ago). You never know when something will be useful to you again. Hell, FCP X is probably 8th or 9th down on my list of software I feel I should know but I’m open to the idea of it moving up if the situation changes.
-
[Andrew Kimery] “I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that suggesting FCPX could benefit from having a second viewing window would get you an earful from some people.
“Yeah, but there was kinda a REASON they got an earfull.
(and yes, often from guys like me.)
It was difficult to argue with someone about the need for something like a second window, when we didn’t really understand a lot about what we were doing with the FIRST window back then. Unlike Legacy, the Viewer wasn’t ever trying to be a reflection of the Source and Master concept that early NLEs had borrowed from physical A/B roll systems. The Viewer was always designed to be contextural – performing one set of functions in one mode, and instantly switching to another thing in a different mode.
Yes, there are many editing operations where dual windows can be great. But also many where a second window is totally unnecessary. So what’s wrong with the idea that it should show up and grab screen real-estate only when there’s something you need to DO with it?
My default is giving as much screen horizontal real-estate as I can to my Event Browser. The Viewer, and the Inspector. Those are usable for me most of the time. When I’m doing something that requires a second viewer like Multi-cam – X will launch the second window in that context – then I diminish the Event Browser and also put away the Inspector and concentrate on the task at hand.
Coming to it anew, I can certainly understand any editor feeling that a single window design means that something is “missing” – but I have to say that feeling left me pretty quickly. Now my opinion can be summed up as I want two windows when there’s a reason to have them. And when I don’t need them – I’m much happier with just one really smart window.
FWIW.
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.
-
[Bill Davis] ” Now my opinion can be summed up as I want two windows when there’s a reason to have them. And when I don’t need them – I’m much happier with just one really smart window.”
I think that summed up everyone’s opinion. The disagreement was on when there’s a reason to have a second window. 😉
-
[Bill Davis] “I know it’s tempting to simply take a snapshot of where our current software is after a full decade of development and expect THAT to be the SQUARE ONE state of anything new. But I just don’t think that’s reasonable. At least not if you want software engineers to ADVANCE the art at the same time. Code takes time to write, test and perfect. “
This is an oft repeated assertion of yours and I don’t think it holds up. New software in any field is measured against the current standards of competing products. When Word was introduced as the first WYSIWYG word processor, every other new WP had to come up to that standard. After it’s introduction you couldn’t introduce a new word processor that lacked that ability and say – well it took 10 years to come up with this, give us some time and we’ll have it too.
The state of the art in everything is advancing. When new products come to market it is only fair that they be measured against current standards – or else why bring them to market?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “The state of the art in everything is advancing. When new products come to market it is only fair that they be measured against current standards – or else why bring them to market?”
I think the point Bill is trying to make is that, and I realize everyone feels differently about this, there are things that FCPX does that are farther advanced than FCP7. They are the nuts and bolts back end of the software upon which everything else stems from and built upon.
There are other things that aren’t quite there and haven’t had as much attention put to them.
To put in this in real terms, the organizational capabilities of FCPX, as well as mass categorization and sorting, searching and tagging, are leaps and bound beyond fcp7. Bundle exporting, multichannel/stem exporting, multiclip setup, sync and adjustments, color correction quality and control (despite some hating the color board) are also big plussed up features over FCP7, not to mention proxy/high quality transcoding, editing, and creation
The editing interface isn’t perfect yet. It gets better with every release.
So while some of the new features aren’t where fcp7 was, there are many more that certainly could be teeing up what might be a great NLE once there’s some time devoted to better interface control.
Starting over truly means starting over.
-
[Herb Sevush] “The state of the art in everything is advancing. When new products come to market it is only fair that they be measured against current standards – or else why bring them to market?”
Herb,
I would agree with you wholeheartedly if the “brief” for FCP-X was to do another version of a traditonal NLE that would be designed to work on the a class of machines that formed a defacto “standard” across an industry.
But that’s NOT what happened.
Look AVID and PPro both have evolved and they’ve had to manage changes in core technology in their areas – and each time, it takes months if not years for quality new features to evolve for the new platforms. Why isn’t X given that same latitude? I get the marketing issue. They called it FCP-X as if it was the tenth iteration of the same program. But that was clearly Marketing not wanting to lose the brand recognition and cachet. No different from Ford producing a 2012 “Mustang” and everyone understanding it’s a totally re-desitned device compared to the original. That’s just business 101.
X was gutted and re-built to run on a fresh new OS-X – with access to a suite of brand new core services that themselves totally supplanted the old Quicktime framework replacing it with a whole fresh approach to foundational graphics and audio processing.
It’s not like Apple could run an ad for “engineers highly experienced in Core Video coding” since they’d just recently INVENTED the Core Video and Core Graphics approaches that are at the heart of FCP-X.
So you may not feel they should have some evolution time to perfect things – but I absolutely do.
And I think they’re doing a remarkable job based on the constant improvement in the software since its release.
My 2 cents anyway.
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.
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “The editing interface isn’t perfect yet.”
understatement. The fact that holding the tilde key is keeping the unintended delete/drift/it all goes mad beasts at bay is a very unusual feature.
I am gone beyond deliberately acknowledging the strengths of the software – but the pick up professionally is meagre – there was a post here recently on the strangle hold professional practise has on educational choices – and please let no one make a decade old comparison to FCP.
now is actually now. FCP 1.0 in 99 provides no guidance. Apple need to restate the timeline somehow – I’m inclined to think a lot of people could warm rapidly to the footage interrogation, next gen native masking, surreal effects performance, and overall shining new code, if we didn’t all think the timeline was a basket case.
with a tilde key modifier to make it a slightly less basket case.
one way or another, its nearly two years now, for a very odd nodal parent child timeline, that bears no resemblance to anything in use, and it feels hard to see actual realistic likelihood of serious industry adoption? Given the hardened opinions?
I’m not slagging – I just currently don’t see how it happens – unless of course, we get announcements.
As ever I kind of personally feel the PPro vector is more likely to win the FCP space. the Associated Press shift kind of was a thing. If only because the road testing is going to be gigantic there.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “As ever I kind of personally feel the PPro vector is more likely to win the FCP space. the Associated Press shift kind of was a thing. If only because the road testing is going to be gigantic there.”
I guess you and I feel differently that the fcpx timeline has to look and operate like fcp7s timeline.
FCPX’s grouping of relative clips makes perfect sense to me. Sure, aspects of it could be better, same as aspects of fcp7 could be better.
It did take time to get used to it, it didn’t make sense at first, but it does now and the added features help tremendously.
I’m sure development hasn’t stopped, I’m sure more features will be added, and I’m sure there will be more bugs as well, just like every other active NLE on the planet. There will also be plenty more tilde key like releases where one key stroke solves many workarounds.
If I was a big broadcaster, I’d be silly not to look. It runs amazingly well on light hardware, provides fantastic quality, serves as a decent file flipper, has SAN Locations built in, rudimentary but decent media management, and once the concepts are grasped, proves very fast to use.
Adobe has fantastic things going. One thing it doesn’t (currently) have, at least in my view, is a decent multiseat environment, or online/offline, or start in one location move to another location without a decent amount of grief. Fcp7 could be brute forced into submission through its structure, Premiere doesn’t have it quite yet at least in my little opinion. They announced to be working on it with Anywhere so we’ll see where it goes.
-
May look that way but having just finished my first high profile gig in FCPX I have to say I didn’t miss tracks at all. The positives far outweigh the negatives and based on the amount of features and fixes in each update we’ve seen I have no doubt that FCPX has a very bright future…
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
[Jeremy Garchow] “There are other things that aren’t quite there and haven’t had as much attention put to them.”
Fair enough. But every NLE has strengths and weaknesses, they are all steadily improving, as is the state of the art. All I’m saying is that X does not get a free pass for it’s inefficiencies any more that it should be ignored for it’s strengths; this “it’s totally new, wait till it grows up” argument does not pass muster. If someone brings a new toaster to market, no matter how revolutionary, but it lacks a timer, it’s fair to point it out. Yes, maybe the manufacturer will fix that in the next model, or maybe they won’t, but for right now if you use it you’ll burn your toast.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up