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DaVinci Resolve 8.1 — now with FCPXML roundtrip support
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Thanks so much, Walter. Excellent post.
[Walter Soyka] “When Apple introduced XMEML with FCP4 in 2003, they didn’t do away with the industry-standard EDL. However, XMEML offered significant advantages for interchange over straight EDL, so other developers in the industry began building solutions around it. This meant improved interchange with applications that chose to support FCP explicitly, but there was still the industry-standard EDL to fall back on. Apple played nicely with the industry, and the industry played nicely with Apple.”
But wasn’t EDL in there to begin with? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that in 2004 EDL was a more common language? Do you still use EDL today? Just curious as to how people might still use it. I am not saying it’s invalid, I am just wondering. AS far as Apple playing nice with the industry, I guess I don’t get it. Resolve can’t export an EDL, so is DaVinci not playing nice either? You can get an XML, an FCPXML and and AAF out of it, though.
[Walter Soyka] “Resolve may support FCPX, but FCPX doesn’t support Resolve.”
Please explain. Does Avid support Resolve? Isn’t this the idea of interchange languages in the first place?
[Walter Soyka] “I do take issue with Apple dropping industry standards that they used to support in order to promulgate their new format. FCPXML is based on an entirely different data model than every other editorial-related app in the industry uses, and Apple has put the task of dealing with their design decisions into the lap of every other developer in the industry which wishes to allow their products to interchange with FCPX. Of course, they are well within their rights to do so, but to claim this is somehow good for developers and end users seems strange.”
Again, it goes back to a specialized or generalized system. Why should Apple have to write and support a part of the system when less than 1% of the users are going to use it? Don’t you think that time is better served developing the application and underlying XML language? Take Red for example. They have taken it upon themselves to make a conform tool for their footage. RCX is pretty sweet. It accepts interchange languages, and spits out interchange languages, and also conforms your offline QTs back to the R3ds. It’s the only program that can properly trim R3Ds that I know of. They understand that their users might need to do these sort if things, and they released this software for free. They are taking responsibility because they know that other people might not have to. It allows all NLEs to edit how they need to fit their workflow (MXF, AMA, Native, Qt proxies, whatever) and then bring that back to the conform tool called RedCineX and then either export or finish, or do what you need to do.
[Walter Soyka] “[Jeremy Garchow] “Apple has a pretty decent developer relationship going. They have leveraged that relationship to everyone’s advantage.”
I don’t think this is true at all. Apple had a large third-party ecosystem because the the size of the FCP install base made it an important development target — but that doesn’t mean that Apple makes it easy to develop for FCP or FCPX.”
Yes, I should have been more specific. I was using the App Store/iTunes App model, not necessarily video plugin/workflow developers.
Here’s why I think Apple hasn’t let in very many 3rd party developers to FCPX.
Very simply, the system wasn’t ready.
As of now, AV Foundation is still a really new venture, and I’m not sure if it’s quite complete. I am not a developer so I don’t understand the limitations, but I know they are there, just ask a developer! 🙂 It seems to get better with every Lion release. I think that Apple released a purposely hobbled FCPX because the underlying frame works aren’t in place to let developers go to town, or at least let them go to town in a way that Apple is comfortable with. I know, it wasn’t the smartest way to go about things, but I truly think they were waiting for OS features to be completed.
[Walter Soyka] “Adobe pre-announced the move for After Effects from 32-bit to 64-bit. This architecture change required all plugins to be updated, and Adobe gave early access and assistance to developers so that their products could be ready for launch. Adobe understood the value of their huge third-party developer ecosystem. Red Giant was able to prepare for AE CS5; they were surprised by FCPX and a huge advantage was seemingly given to Noise Industries, who did have launch-day products.”
Yep, I get it. Apple’s system wasn’t ready for this level of involvement. For better or worse. I think they had to make some corporate type decisions, and what we are seeing is a result of those decisions.
And let’s talk about AE for a minute. Yes, AE supports a lot of plugins, but you have to write a plugin, and then we have to buy that plugin, it is the perfect example of 3rd party support to make an application all that you need it to be. Without the relatively recent addition of PPro interchange, you can’t get anything in to AE without third party help (XML, OMF, EDL, etc), and you still can’t get anything out of except media exports (no data interchange). So while it does do a great job of somethings, it’s not as open and extensible as even FCPX as a stand alone application. Does Adobe not play well with the industry either?
[Walter Soyka] “Apple has no history for allowing this kind of truly open development. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but sadly, I don’t see anything in FCPX that suggests that this sort of extensibility is part of Apple’s design.
It’s possible that there really was no grand plan here.”
Is there really no history? What about fxplug? or fxscript before it? Or before that it was the AE script or whatever it’s called?
I do think that it’s not ready yet, but I do think it will be there. Apple doesn’t talk about things until they are ready. So I think there’s a plan as I don’t think that Apple operates without one, it’s just not ready to be enacted quite yet.
Thanks again, Walter, for keeping this going.
Jeremy
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[Steve Connor] “After a lengthy set of extremely funny sushi analogies which I’ve enjoyed immensely, I’ve spent some time roundtripping from FCPX to Resolve today and it works extremely well. “
Steve,
Could you please post a shot of the of the project you’ve been roundtrippin?
I’m curious of how complexity of the projects can be interchanged.
Rafael -
I’ve only done simple projects so far, having a few issues with compound clips. I have a more layered project to try tomorrow!
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Jeremy Garchow] You will need it. And a lot of planning. I stand by my comment.
I have been doing video production on a Windows desktop for a long time, and have only recently gotten a Mac. Use both, and I don’t need luck and lots of planning when I go back to the Windows box.
So, in my experience, your comment is flat out incorrect.
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[Gary Huff] “So, in my experience, your comment is flat out incorrect.”
And if you have been working on only Macs, and recently switch to Windows, be prepared for some pain. That’s all I’m saying Gary. I’ve done it, I’ve needed to do it. Windows is not as easy to run as a Mac in my experience, period. But of course I am a total ignorant idiot, and I am totally fine with that. Can we be done with this now? Thanks.
Jeremy
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Gary –
I think the difference is we both started on Windows and then migrated to Macs. Apparently the reverse approach instills a bit of fear and loathing.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
Jeremy, thanks as always for some excellent conversation. I’ll one-up Bill Davis and buy you dinner next time I’m in Chicago instead of asking you to come all the way out to New York. I sincerely appreciate all your thoughtful responses and extreme patience in slogging through my lengthy replies.
[Jeremy Garchow] “But wasn’t EDL in there to begin with? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that in 2004 EDL was a more common language? Do you still use EDL today? Just curious as to how people might still use it. I am not saying it’s invalid, I am just wondering.”
I use Resolve, so before BMD added FCPXML support, my options for conforming FCP edits were EDL or XMEML. I generally preferred the richer XMEML for interchange, but EDL was the lowest common denominator for getting the edit out of the NLE and into a grading session.
Networks apparently require EDLs as a part of the deliverable (but that’s Shane Ross’s problem, not mine).
I call out EDL as the bare minimum standard for interchange. It’s old, it’s inflexible, it’s naive, and it’s woefully incomplete — but it’s still a good way to get the bones of an edit from one system to another. It’s a lingua franca for editorial communication among apps.
Apple didn’t include any interchange in FCPX at first, and when they added interchange with 10.0.1, they made it proprietary (though open). They ignored all the existing interchange standards (EDL, AAF, and now XMEML [which they themselves originated]).
[Jeremy Garchow] “AS far as Apple playing nice with the industry, I guess I don’t get it. Resolve can’t export an EDL, so is DaVinci not playing nice either? You can get an XML, an FCPXML and and AAF out of it, though.”
What should Resolve export in an EDL? Without meaningful support for file-based media, there’s nothing that Resolve ought to change from the EDL it imported. XMEML, FCPXML, and AAF all include broader media support, so there is meaningful changed data to get from Resolve there after a grading session.
[Walter Soyka] “Resolve may support FCPX, but FCPX doesn’t support Resolve.”
[Jeremy Garchow] “Please explain. Does Avid support Resolve? Isn’t this the idea of interchange languages in the first place?”
I oversimplified, but if I continued my oversimplification, yes, I would say that Avid does support Resolve. Avid is capable of writing industry-standard interchange files, which Resolve is capable of reading. The key here is “industry standard.” Since both applications understand the same standards, no one has to do anything special to get them to work together.
FCPXML may well become an industry standard, just as XMEML did — but XMEML earned its place in the industry by providing richer, more meaningful interchange, not by being the one and only way to interchange with FCP.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Again, it goes back to a specialized or generalized system. Why should Apple have to write and support a part of the system when less than 1% of the users are going to use it?”
See, I think that supporting standard interchange would actually make FCPX better generalized, because it would automatically work with anything that also supported the same interchange standards.
Apple should write and support standard interchange because they claim FCPX was “built from the ground up for professional editors” and because professional editors often need to move editorial decisions from one application to another.
Good interchange actually lessens specific demands elsewhere in the NLE. For example, with good interchange with a grading app, the burden on FCPX’s color tools is lowered. With good interchange with an audio app, the burden on FCPX’s sweetening toolset is lowered.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Don’t you think that time is better served developing the application and underlying XML language? “
I think time spent supporting standard interchange would qualify as “developing the application,” and since it would allow FCPX to be used in more complex workflows, would be an excellent use of development time.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Yes, I should have been more specific. I was using the App Store/iTunes App model, not necessarily video plugin/workflow developers.”
I’ll jump off-topic here. As a user, I’d love to see an “app store” for plugins. The app store is very user-centric. I hate having to deal with a dozen different developers, stores, and update mechanisms.
That said, I can understand why a developer would want to maintain independent control of all these things.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Here’s why I think Apple hasn’t let in very many 3rd party developers to FCPX. Very simply, the system wasn’t ready.”
That’s what I’m afraid of, and it scares me.
Truly flexible and extensible systems are more like platforms than applications. The first-party developer makes their own tools available to third-party developers (like how Adobe uses the plugin architecture themselves to extend AE).
Look at Amazon. They’re an online retailer, but they don’t consider the technology that drives their store a product — they’ve built it as a platform, so now they can sell you everything from books to lawn chairs as well as vast buckets of redundant online storage and cloud computing power.
Back to our industry, the Cinema 4D environment is so flexible that Maxon actually used it to write the C4D installer application.
If Apple really intended for third parties to pick up their slack as some here have suggested, they should have worked on FCPX as a platform. They should have done the hard work upfront on the APIs so that they could be public, not private, and third-party developers could use them to integrate more tightly with the application.
[Jeremy Garchow] “As of now, AV Foundation is still a really new venture, and I’m not sure if it’s quite complete.”
AV Foundation is an integral part of media handling on iOS. It’s still growing, but it’s not brand new.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Yes, AE supports a lot of plugins, but you have to write a plugin, and then we have to buy that plugin, it is the perfect example of 3rd party support to make an application all that you need it to be.”
Again, I’m not saying that FCPX should do everything itself. I believe that it should be as open as possible to allow as much third-party development around it as necessary.
I also believe that well-supported editorial interchange is an important part of this philosophy of openness. A good plugin architecture allows the application to be open to direct extension; good interchange allows the application to have a spot in a larger pipeline.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Without the relatively recent addition of PPro interchange, you can’t get anything in to AE without third party help (XML, OMF, EDL, etc), and you still can’t get anything out of except media exports (no data interchange). So while it does do a great job of somethings, it’s not as open and extensible as even FCPX as a stand alone application. Does Adobe not play well with the industry either?”
This is a very interesting point. After Effects was never intended to be what it has become. The design philosophy behind most compositing apps (AE, Fusion, Shake, Nuke) is shot-based, so editorial information was never necessary.
I think it’s a testament to AE’s openness that users have found ways to make a layered, shot-based compositor into a poor man’s finishing system — which is certainly well outside its stated purpose or first-party toolset.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Is there really no history? What about fxplug? or fxscript before it? Or before that it was the AE script or whatever it’s called?”
I didn’t meant to suggest that Apple had no history of allowing plugins; rather, that they didn’t build the sorts of large, flexible, extensible systems that would allow a third party to, say, add their own machine control to the application.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Fair enough. I see where you’re going.
What you don’t see is me doing is going on a Windows debate forum and asking windows users why “ls” is called “dir” at the windows command prompt knowing full well they represent the same function.
Different languages. Same result.
I cant do what I need to do in windows without learning a different language to complete the same task.
So I can choose to learn the framework, or quit using windows, but Microsoft isn’t going to change command line to Unix.If a saw a compelling reason to fully switch to windows, I’d do it. I just don’t see a reason. With FCPX I see reasons to stick around, even if a sequence is a project and a bin is a keyword collection. I guess I’ll be fluent in a couple of NLE terms by the end of it. Good for me.”
Right, but again, it’s all the same point, isn’t it? If this were the “iMovie Pro” forum, none of us would be here — there’d be nothing to debate.
But the EOL of FCS and the fact that Apple chose to name this new app “Final Cut Pro” inevitably means an entire industry that relies on FCS is now forced to compare the two and figure out what to do.
You may choose to use Windows or not, but FCS users have no choice. Moving forward over the next couple years, we either adopt a radical new UI or switch to something else. I guess a third possibility is that Apple reverses course and brings back an industry standard timeline option, but I think that’s unlikely.
I still enjoy learning as much as possible about the new beast and hope I can make it useful for something. I especially appreciate your detailed examples. Great stuff, Jeremy!
Ironically, I also think your response to Windows is the perfect metaphor for what so many of us “haters” 😉 have been struggling with since June 21. Understandable, yes?
I guess I’ll wind up being fluent in a couple new NLEs as well. Just not the one I was expecting for the last couple years.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[Walter Soyka] “I call out EDL as the bare minimum standard for interchange. It’s old, it’s inflexible, it’s naive, and it’s woefully incomplete — but it’s still a good way to get the bones of an edit from one system to another. It’s a lingua franca for editorial communication among apps.”
Really great post, very well argued – as always you’ve got to the heart of the matter as I see it.
Here in Europe EDL is the only common language currently in use for digital intermediate – it’s old-fashioned (and superceded) but everyone’s sticking to it because it works. (XML makes the occasional appearance, e.g. with Smoke, but it’s still far from common.)
No EDL is almost as much as a problem as no OMF – here the only real standard for audio post is ProTools, anything else is vanishingly rare.
I realize that for many users of FCPX these two interchange formats feel like an obsolete language that make so sense and have no use, but for a small but not insignificant minority they are a non-negotiable essential. Which is why Apple should have included them …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
At some point when reading this great post, I am realizing that we are more similar than different in our disagreements. All of these discussions have been great and has really showed me that despite some details, we really all want the same thing, it’s just we take different roads to get there. Thanks so much for keeping this going.
[Walter Soyka] “I use Resolve, so before BMD added FCPXML support, my options for conforming FCP edits were EDL or XMEML. I generally preferred the richer XMEML for interchange, but EDL was the lowest common denominator for getting the edit out of the NLE and into a grading session.”
But it wasn’t 100% necessary. Certainly a great option, and options are key, but an EDL to Resolve was not necessary. More on that later.
[Walter Soyka] “I call out EDL as the bare minimum standard for interchange. It’s old, it’s inflexible, it’s naive, and it’s woefully incomplete — but it’s still a good way to get the bones of an edit from one system to another. It’s a lingua franca for editorial communication among apps.
Apple didn’t include any interchange in FCPX at first, and when they added interchange with 10.0.1, they made it proprietary (though open). They ignored all the existing interchange standards (EDL, AAF, and now XMEML [which they themselves originated]).”
Agreed, but it is for very very specific workflows. As has been mentioned, DI is one. That is one area where EDL is still used, and Red supports EDLs out of RCX and they are very important to them for film transfer. Broadcast deliverables is another that you mentioned, also extremely useful. I’ll get to my point in a minute here.
[Walter Soyka] “What should Resolve export in an EDL? Without meaningful support for file-based media, there’s nothing that Resolve ought to change from the EDL it imported. XMEML, FCPXML, and AAF all include broader media support, so there is meaningful changed data to get from Resolve there after a grading session.”
Why should it not? It’s a conform tool, ain’t it? 🙂 Is FCPXML not meaningful? Sorry, this is sort of meant as a joke.
[Walter Soyka] “I oversimplified, but if I continued my oversimplification, yes, I would say that Avid does support Resolve. Avid is capable of writing industry-standard interchange files, which Resolve is capable of reading. The key here is “industry standard.” Since both applications understand the same standards, no one has to do anything special to get them to work together.
FCPXML may well become an industry standard, just as XMEML did — but XMEML earned its place in the industry by providing richer, more meaningful interchange, not by being the one and only way to interchange with FCP.”
XMEML simply won’t work as well as it needs to FCPX. Since the whole structure has changed, the XML has had to change, too (you know have to describe an Event and a Project, just look at what happens when you import an FCPXML roundtrip from Resolve). They also “upgraded” a few things, as in true fractional frame rates. Finally. Yes, in order for other applications and workflows to work, they will have to adopt FCPXML.
[Walter Soyka] “See, I think that supporting standard interchange would actually make FCPX better generalized, because it would automatically work with anything that also supported the same interchange standards.
Apple should write and support standard interchange because they claim FCPX was “built from the ground up for professional editors” and because professional editors often need to move editorial decisions from one application to another.
Good interchange actually lessens specific demands elsewhere in the NLE. For example, with good interchange with a grading app, the burden on FCPX’s color tools is lowered. With good interchange with an audio app, the burden on FCPX’s sweetening toolset is lowered.”
OK. So now we are back to FCPX as an application. Many many “complaints” from users (including me) was that FCP7’s “finishing” tools weren’t very good. Audio editing and filters were pretty crappy, I would use the 3way of offline/roughcuts, but that’s about it. If going out to Color and DAW, I wouldn’t worry about any of those things, I’d just edit, knowing we are heading for an external finish. Now, with FCPX, for the non external finish projects, which are happening more and more due to budget/time constraints, I now have tools that require zero round trip. This is a good thing. A very good thing. It makes my job much easier and I can go home to the family a bit earlier, and I can also “finish” while I edit. Of course, we will still do external finishes as well, so of course we will need interchange. I would rather Apple spend the time to get the tools operating much better in FCPX so I can save a little time, rather than work on an EDL exporter. I will gladly pay a third party for an EDL exporter. It’s what they do, they will support it directly and if there’s an issue, I can pick up the phone and talk to a human or get wicked fast response. This just won’t happen with Apple. I personally don’t need EDL, but I am saying for those that do. I do need interchange in the form of OMF and XML the elder for now, if and when applications I use decide FCPXML is OK, then I won’t need XML the elder.
[Walter Soyka] “[Jeremy Garchow] “Here’s why I think Apple hasn’t let in very many 3rd party developers to FCPX. Very simply, the system wasn’t ready.”
That’s what I’m afraid of, and it scares me.
Truly flexible and extensible systems are more like platforms than applications. The first-party developer makes their own tools available to third-party developers (like how Adobe uses the plugin architecture themselves to extend AE).”
I hear you. But do you really think it’s not going to happen? Yes, it’s unfortunate it wasn’t ready all at the same time, but does that mean we will never see it?
[Walter Soyka] “This is a very interesting point. After Effects was never intended to be what it has become. The design philosophy behind most compositing apps (AE, Fusion, Shake, Nuke) is shot-based, so editorial information was never necessary.”
Never is a strong word, I think it wasn’t there because no one thought it necessary to figure it out (although I’m not saying it wouldn’t be tough). There have been many times I have wanted to send my sequence to AE from FCP7, do the work, have it render and then return in a sequence, just like Color does with tc/reel info still in place, just linked to new media. I can now do this with PPro, but it is a recent addition, and is proprietary to an Adobe workflow, sure it might not fit a feature film workflow, but I don’t edit features.
[Walter Soyka] “[Jeremy Garchow] “Is there really no history? What about fxplug? or fxscript before it? Or before that it was the AE script or whatever it’s called?”
I didn’t meant to suggest that Apple had no history of allowing plugins; rather, that they didn’t build the sorts of large, flexible, extensible systems that would allow a third party to, say, add their own machine control to the application.”
A ha.
Now this, this very idea, is exactly where I am heading. As of right now, I would love this to be the model for FCPX. It doesn’t have a capture control window, that will now come from a capture card company. If you use Smoke, Avid, FCPX, PPro and an AJA card, you will be potentially able to use that same capture app across all the different applications. This, to me, is flexibility. You have mentioned platforms, this is how I see FCPX, a new platform from which to jump off. Hopefully the hooks that are in FCPX are big enough and strong enough to support whatever workflow you choose, and yes, part of that specialized workflow might have to come from someone who is dedicated to writing it as it’s in their best interest to keep it functioning. Apple sure isn’t, and I am Ok with that too. Shore up the things that need to be shorn, like FCPXML, and make it as open as it possibly can so people can glom on to whatever they need out of it. The market fragmentation is not going to stop, it is only going to get worse. If third parties are allowed to participate (which once the OS/Application/Frameworks are ready, I am sure Apple will open the doors) the FCPX application is a step in a direction of tying to serve as many possible outlets as possible, which is a monster of a task. I think in order to play nice with everyone, you have to delegate certain tasks to certain people, instead of trying to manage absolutely everything yourself. In my opinion, writing in EDL support at the application level is not a very good delegation of time for Apple. I do not think that they are skirting responsibility, I do not think that they don’t know what they are doing, I do think they tend to show you what’s obsolete before it’s obsolete, not that EDL is entirely obsolete.
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