DaVinci Resolve 8.1 — now with FCPXML roundtrip support

[Gary Huff]

I did read that post from you. And it doesn’t change the point that your comment about needing luck if you switch over to a Windows-based workflow is ignorant.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Gary Huff] “I did read that post from you. And it doesn’t change the point that your comment about needing luck if you switch over to a Windows-based workflow is ignorant”

You will need it. And a lot of planning. I stand by my comment.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Chris Harlan] “Careful there Jeremy, or you’re going to end up as the “Leave Britney Alone” guy of the FCP X forum. “

Hmm.

Maybe I’m taking this the wrong way, but if you have something to say to me or about me, just say it. I’m a grown up.

[Chris Harlan]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Hmm.

Maybe I’m taking this the wrong way, but if you have something to say to me or about me, just say it. I’m a grown up.”

Oh, heavens, no. Just a joke. And I certainly meant no offense. Your well-reasoned arguments in support of X have been welcome conversation even where I disagree with you.

I’m assuming your “haters” line was meant somewhat in fun. Every time I hear some one use the word “haters” as a dismissive accusatory I think of this guy. Of course, after watching it he doesn’t say haters at all, so I’m not sure why I have such a strong association. Still, I thought it was funny to watch it and substitute in my head FCP X whenever he says “Brittany.”

Again, no offense meant; I was just riffing on your use of H8Rs.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Chris Harlan] “I’m assuming your “haters” line was meant somewhat in fun.”

Absolutely. All in total fun, I thought I had mentioned that! Really, it’s short for “haters gonna hate”. (Which they will and they do.). 😉

It’s now a meme:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/haters-gonna-hate#.TppOnyp5mSM

Thanks, Chris.

Jeremy

[Gary Huff]

Well, stand by it with some examples then.

If I can get a sequence into FCPX via this route, then how will not having my bins organized be any more of a deal-breaker than not being able to get the sequence into FCPX in the first place?

[Walter Soyka]

Jeremy, sorry for the delay. I wanted to try to give your quality post a quality response.

[Jeremy Garchow] “So, with all the variety out there, would you rather have a specialized system or a generalized system? What if you could create a specialized system depending on your needs? What if you could turn the specialized system in to a more general system ? This is how I see third party support working in FCPX. FCPX will provide the underlying language and method, then people would be able to hook in to this to interact and interchange. When Red’s 28k sensor comes out, we won’t have to wait for Apple/Avid/Adobe to develop a method, Red will have to support it in FCPX. They have the hooks, go to town. Support yourself.”

I agree that a generalized system that can be extended to accommodate specialized requirements is ideal. For example, one of the things I love best about After Effects is has long been completely agnostic to things like resolution, frame rate, bit depth, color space, import format, etc. I’ll come back to AE in a minute.

I’m not suggesting that Apple should assume responsibility for absolutely everything, but I do think they’ve gone too far the other way, assuming responsibility for nothing in the way of interchange.

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.

With FCPX, though, Apple has eschewed interchange standards entirely, and are asking the rest of the industry to do their homework for them. In other words, Apple is not playing nicely with the industry, but they are asking the industry to play nicely with them. Resolve may support FCPX, but FCPX doesn’t support Resolve.

I have no problem with Apple introducing a new XML variant to better support the new features and data structures in FCPX — how could you have progress without introducing new standards?

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.

I think Walter Biscardi put it very well when he suggested that Apple is building walls, not bridges.

[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.

I have discussed my thoughts on Apple’s recent developer relations in my recent article [link] and in conversation with Oliver Peters [link], but I’ll summarize: if Apple had good developer relations, third-party developers would have been better prepared for (or at least aware of) the huge changes in FCPX.

As far as the idea that Apple is building a platform that will be good for their developer “partners” and that they are intentionally leaving out functionality to allow room for third-party development, I call bollocks. If that were true, FCPX’s XML and APIs would have been finalized well before launch and they would have had developers on board.

Graeme Nattress would have had something to say on June 21st beyond “When we know more, we’ll tell you.” (Incidentally, he has not told more, so either he still doesn’t know more, or is not at liberty to say.) Baselight wouldn’t have toiled away on a complicated plugin for a dead platform. AJA wouldn’t have suggested using Desktop Display as a viable preview option with a Kona card.

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.

AE is a nice example of a flexible and extensible system, and Adobe themselves add functionality through the plugin system. Open up your After Effects > Plugins folder and dig around. How does AE support JPEG images? Through a Format plugin. Easy-ease? A Keyframe plugin. OpenGL? An Extensions plugin. This is in addition to the more obvious Effects use of plugins.

Autodesk’s Maya is an even more flexible and extensible system. It’s practically as much a platform as it is an application, and studios all over the world customize it heavily to suit their unique needs and pipelines.

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.

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

[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.

For us small band of FCPX users this is BIG, for me it takes some of the sting of not having a broadcast monitor out, because Resolve does, so I now have it when I really need it.

(Sorry couldn’t think of any fish related humour to make this point!)

“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”

[Robert Brown]

Is that really a guy?

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Gary Huff] “Well, stand by it with some examples then.

If I can get a sequence into FCPX via this route, then how will not having my bins organized be any more of a deal-breaker than not being able to get the sequence into FCPX in the first place?”

Gary-

I was simply pointing out the difference.

The text on the movie says you can send an FCP7 project to FCPX using Resolve. It’s not true and I wanted to point out the difference.

You can send timelines around, but not entire projects. For instance, if I started a project in FCP7 and then wanted to move that entire project to FCPX for further editing using Resolve as a translator, I can’t do it. Make sense?

Jeremy