Excellent blog on FCP X workflow shortcomings

[Oliver Peters]

[Brett Sherman] “I’m still not convinced Avid’s media management for my purposes (where I have to retain and reuse media over 10 years time) is efficient.”

I wasn’t saying that it was. Merely that Apple copied a good idea that was already established in concept. They may or may not have improved upon that. Time will tell. Quicktime is no longer part of Apple’s media architecture; so, while what you are doing works today, there’s no guarantee that it will work tomorrow and even less that it will maintain cross-platform compatibility down the road.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[John Heagy]

[Oliver Peters] “Quicktime is no longer part of Apple’s media architecture;”

Yes and no. The Quicktime file format – no. Apple seems committed to .mov. The Quicktime API – yes, and will eventually be fully replaced with AVFoudantion on Macs. There is currently no substitute on the horizon that will replace QT on Windows which Apple doesn’t seem to understand the importance of.

John

[Oliver Peters]

[John Heagy] “The Quicktime file format – no. Apple seems committed to .mov. The Quicktime API – yes, and will eventually be fully replaced with AVFoudantion on Macs.”

Not eventually. It has been in FCP X. FCP “legacy” operated as a front end application that lived on top of the Quicktime engine under the hood. FCP X lives on top of AV Foundation. QT is a 32-bit architecture, which FCP X does not use, other than to be able to read QT files and to wrap ingested/optimized files (for now). So the format as a container (.mov) lives on, and a media player called Quicktime continues to exist, but it is no longer a meaningful part of the application. You’ll note that render files – even though they use the ProRes codec – are a completely opaque, proprietary file format.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “They were tired of answering stupid support calls from users who messed things up ;-)”

This actually made me laugh out loud.

Then when I stopped chuckling, I realized that it was probably spot on accurate as well.

The eternal battle of whether you enable just the professionals who have lots of paid time to learn the tricks of file management and structure – or you think that it’s better for the video editing industry to distribute more power for more classes of users.

Sure it makes the “pro editor” classification fuzzier. But it also broadens the bast of those who have an interest in the topic, and I think there’s more progress in any industry that has a broader base, compared to one that keeps it’s “priesthood” narrowly cosseted.

Here we all are. We don’t want the amateurs taking away OUR editing jobs. But when we need to re-touch a photo, sweeten an audio track, tweak the titles, or manage our personal or business contacts and correspondence, we would be LIVID if w couldn’t get our hands of effective software that lets us do all that – even if we aren’t fully “professional” in all those areas.

Cognitive dissidence much?

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