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Did anyone lose their job after FCPX mistake ?
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[Shane Ross] “Not in my town (Los Angeles). People are flocking back to Avid. Adobe is gaining some ground, taking over in a few smaller areas that used to use FCP. Well, “flocking” is a strong word. This town moves slow when it comes to editing systems. They change only when they are forced to, so people are still using FCP 7…still using Avid Meridians and Express Pro, still using Avid MC3. The amount of seats that have upgraded to Avid MC 6 are minimal. Over time they will. L.A. is a big ship, and it takes a long time (years…many years), for it to turn around.”
Yup, were still on MC 4 for the most part, no ones talking about changing anything anytime soon, cause it works great for our mostly XDCAM workflow. The web counterpart is still rocking FCP 7 and there havent been any talks to going anywhere else yet. If it aint broke!
Neil Goodman: Editor of New Media Production – NBC/Universal
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[Shane Ross] “L.A. is a big ship, and it takes a long time (years…many years), for it to turn around”
Yeah, but cash is still king. In a race-to-the-bottom scenario and the mythos of “digital revolution,” one would expect Apple or Adobe to beat Avid, simply because they have more dough than Avid. And by beat Avid I mean put them out of business, in a decade. I say a decade because capital budgets are based (usually) based on 5 year depreciation schedules. So that’s 2 capital investment cycles.
For Avid, the question is what are they gonna do now? How can they compete against Apple basically giving away FCPX and with Adobe’s Creative Cloud monthly rental-cost structure? Does it really come down to hardware? <–These are actual questions by the way.
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[Dean Neal] “Apple managed the transition from FCP 7 to X (poorly)”
That’s like saying the French Revolution was a failure. ;0
Off with his head!
The king is dead.
Long live the king.Revolutions are ugly…and not televised…d’oh!
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[Richard Herd] “That’s like saying the French Revolution was a failure. ;0
“HA! I see what you did there…That’s funny, Richard!
But even then, it took a while to chop all heads off!
And, of course, the revolution led France to Napoleon… -
I
[Christian Schumacher] “[Richard Herd] “That’s like saying the French Revolution was a failure. ;0″
…And, of course, the revolution led France to Napoleon…”
I’ve observed elsewhere that Apple was like Robespierre, if Robespierre then cut off his OWN head…
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyouThe typos here are most likely because I’m, a) typing this on my phone; and b) an idiot.
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hello can you explain to me how you edit in tracks an forget the magnetic timeline. I would also like to do this but have not figured a workflow that does it
Been using FCP since version 1.2…it’s been quite a journey
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[James Ewart] “hello can you explain to me how you edit in tracks an forget the magnetic timeline. I would also like to do this but have not figured a workflow that does it
“Essentially, if your brain is conditioned to how tracks used to operate – and you can’t re-condition it, you’re going to struggle.
The key principals are that instead of having a track layout system that works ONE way – exclusively in horizontal relationships between discrete clips (which is what tracks essentially were)- you have to start by seeing your work as stacks of clips in vertical relationships that you willfully establish as a primary editing mode.
It moving from thinking exclusively about stringing shots into strings defined bylength – and starting to think about buiding your program in “sections” by HEIGHT.
It’s a scene approach, rather than a program approach, even tho we all understand that the program is just a collection of scenes. The important thing is to get the mindset that you have a new way to connect the assets in your segments that you never had before. And once you build those segments, you have a new tool, magnetism – whiich is extremely useful for rapid assembly of scenes.
If you can star to see yourjob as the editor as one of building these stacked relationships as a primary work method, then you discover that magnetism helps you greatly, since you can move your stacks (clip relationships) around at will and, unlike in the discrete track system, you’ll never lose your clip positions relative to each other inside your stacks because not only are they are “magnetically linked” in that stack relationship – but the program keeps track of their relationship to other clips and stacks and automatically prevents distructive “clip collisions” which were extremely common in Legacy until we got conditioned to guarding against them.
The problem a lot of people have with X is moving on from the idea that all editing is necessarily working with discrete horizontal relationships in time. And re-imagining a system where the relative position between assets is more valued by the program than JUST their “track position” and timing.
Esssentially, this new X construct follows the X ideal of do work ONCE and leverage it over and over.
Once you build a clip arrangement , the program protects it and seeks to KEEP it intact.
Track based editing didn’t do that at all.
In legacy, we had to constantly guard against inadvertent destructive actions like putting a long music cut on an audio track and failing to notice that we’d left a SFX down the timeline. If you did, the new import could easily KILL the SFX leaving no trace of it’s prior existence. So it was easy to literally destroy elements in other parts of your timeline , precisely because the program couldn’t know any better.
Now, X keeps track of clip relationships and preserves them, even to the point of moving them to different “tracks” as necessary to avoid these kinds of destructive clip collisions.
When you get used to it it’s much easier since it’s nearly impossible to make destructive mistakes.
If you want to move an element or a stack and NOT have it magnetically link to whatever asset is before or after it in the horizontal relationship, you just have to tap the “P” key to work in “position” mode. And you can move the asset around like you could in Legacy. So you can work in Position or Magnetic as you like. Magnetic is simply the default mode, because in the stack oriented approach, it makes a whole lot more sense than pure position.
It’s honestly different thinking on a pretty fundamental level, and until you have enough experience to expect it, it’s annoying. After you do, it becomes as natural and expected as the old system.
That’s some of the basics in a nutshell. Learning the program on a reasonably thorough level typically takes the best part of a year of reasonably constant operation.
Hope that helps.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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“In legacy, we had to constantly guard against inadvertent destructive actions like putting a long music cut on an audio track and failing to notice that we’d left a SFX down the timeline. If you did, the new import could easily KILL the SFX leaving no trace of it’s prior existence. So it was easy to literally destroy elements in other parts of your timeline , precisely because the program couldn’t know any better.”
Is that really a concern for you? I don’t believe it. In over a decade of editing on FCP or similar NLEs I have never made this mistake, nor feared making it. Keep track of your tracks. It’s your job as an editor.
I’ve now taken two stabs at using FCPX and seeing if it could ever be helpful in my workflow. I downloaded a trial at home recently and gave it a go. I loathed it more than the first time.
The conclusion I came to is that it spends too much time trying to police stupidity…no offense to those that like it. To me, all of its features are geared towards making life easier for non-editors who don’t understand best practices and who don’t implement them.
Apple doesn’t care about editors who make a living off of this craft. The ad airing now where they have an Apple Genius help a passenger on a flight do an emergency video edit pretty much says it all. They want everyone to be able to edit. As a professional video editor who was educated and trained in this field, we should probably all be offended that they think so little of our profession.
Still, I could care less about that if it still had value in my workflow. I’ve tried twice now to adapt and change to FCPX. I really like to think I am able to learn and adapt to new programs and NLEs. I’ve used Avid, FCP and Premiere. FCPX just seems worthless to me. It’s iMovie Pro. Except iMovie might even suck less.
But I would love to hear/see others that feel differently. I can’t use FCP7 forever and it’s going to be time to move on soon (maybe it’s past). I, honestly, would love to hear a differing opinion and see how FCPX is working in professional (or honestly, even prosumer) environments.
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[randall wurster] “But I would love to hear/see others that feel differently. I can’t use FCP7 forever and it’s going to be time to move on soon (maybe it’s past). I, honestly, would love to hear a differing opinion and see how FCPX is working in professional (or honestly, even prosumer) environments. But I need concrete stuff, not some standard Apple apologists stuff justifying the program’s shortcomings. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, it’s simple to me: FCPX isn’t different, it’s just worse.”
Search my posts. There are quite a few other “pro’s” here as well who use X. But honestly, if you can’t let go of traditional tracks, then X probably isn’t for you.
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
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