CatDV and FCPX

[Bryson Jones]

Because I’m not under NDA with Apple and can freely dispense rumors. lol I’ll pitch in.

From what I know, most companies do programming in “blocks”. I’m sure Apple is the same. There’s no way to know what is coming in any one “block” but I would guess that we’ll hear updates on 1 to 3 month cycles (again, no way to know what Apple’s cycles are) and if I had to further guess, which I do cause I don’t know a damn thing for certain, the first block would just be bug fixes and so maybe 2 to 6 months til anything “real” happens as far as additions. (I have heard that XML is “important” to them.)

Now, Mr. Jones, why do you claim that that doesn’t matter a bit to my organization?

1 – If you are stable now, stay on FCP7… as long as you can. My largest Avid shops are on 3.1.3 and refuse to upgrade because they like it and see no reason. (current version is 5.5x)

How???? -see any forum online about ways that folks are getting FCP7 while buying X.

This is pretty commonly done and in fact, I’ve seen it since FCP 5 and most any larger consulting/integration company will, privately, admit to this. Apple simply gives you no other alternative if you are in production already. For the record, I will not do this but I can’t stop a client from doing it. If you’re big, bug your rep to let you add to your Volume License. I see this as buying you 6 months to 2 years. (Remember how long we used those G5’s?)

2 – A lot of my integrations don’t actually use the FCP links that much. (what?!) Read that again… although we show them in demos and they are wonderful, asset management can be done incredibly effectively with no hook to the editing system and a lot of clients simply import their assets without using the FCP data. (Especially in workflows where we hit CatDV first before FCP ingest) Yes, this is heresy, and yes, it’s actually often the case. Not many of the big-iron MAM solutions have any hooks to the editing systems so we know it can be done. And I’ve done tons of Avid shops that until recently had to way to send and receive metadata to CatDV. (thank the Lord for MME) And those work fine as well.

The main issues on this board seem to be media tracking and archiving. Neither of them actually requires a link to the edit flow to work. If you have a solid naming convention and good project layouts, you can drop the media into CatDV and go about your way.

Will I applaud the day that FCPX can transmit data into CatDV and receive it? Yes… will I cease asset management operations until then? No way. There’s so much media being created and not tracked that each day we wait puts us further and further in the hole. Start now…

bryson

bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com

hidefcowboy.com

[Rolf Howarth]

Everyone knows what Apple are like with regard to not announcing forthcoming features until they’re ready. I’m sure they’re well aware of the need for additional support for advanced workflows, however, and will release new versions of FCP X to plug the “missing” features just as soon as they can. They said as much on their FAQ page.

My hunch is that we’ll see the first fruits of this sooner rather than later, more like IBC (this September) rather than having to wait until NAB (next April), so I don’t think there’s any need to move away from FCP just yet. Plus of course FCP 7 continues to work just fine in the interim.