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FCP X and Education
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[Steven Gonzales] “Insane sounds a little extreme”
“Insane” sounds about right for making sweeping long-term predictions of success or failure in specific markets a week after release. People have completely lost all sense of perspective here.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “I feel like a broken record here, but this is basically an insane thing to say a little over a week after FCP X’s release.”
Why insane? We can see instantly that the app doesn’t do what many professionals require. Forget the missing features that apparently only a few percent use…forget that multicam is coming (they say)…the interface doesn’t do what we need. Tracks are important, magnetic timeline farks things up, no dupe detection, no notice that you are out of sync. One Viewer…fine. But the skimmer is far from precise. The high end pro market, and corporate market, see the writing on the wall. This app doesn’t do what we need in order to get things done. Schools see this too…so they won’t go there.
It doesn’t matter if we look at this app for a month…the tools aren’t there. Next year…we’ll see if they listened to us and how sales went. But it is VERY clear that they are not aiming at the professional market. and schools teach future professionals.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I forgot it’s a 4 year school now. So you can delve deeper into the craft. If you want to prepare students for the world of professional editing you’d be better off teaching them Avid. The fact is, most students will not be able to get a job out of college working on an Avid. FCPX doesn’t work in my companies current infrastructure either since SAN isn’t supported, but I suspect that will eventually change. No reason to jump ship right away. FCP7 will still be widely in use for another 2-3 years I suspect. I have not found any places I’ve ever worked that use Premiere.
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Even just considering this thread’s topic, these kids are coming in August to learn feature editing, and they cannot learn that with FCP X.
The “let’s give Apple more time” argument is insufficient to refute the statement that this software cannot be used to teach the post production process for features shot and/or finished on film.
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[Shane Ross] “Why insane? We can see instantly that the app doesn’t do what many professionals require.”
And you can also see that it never will?
[Shane Ross] “the interface doesn’t do what we need. Tracks are important, magnetic timeline farks things up, no dupe detection, no notice that you are out of sync. One Viewer…fine. But the skimmer is far from precise. The high end pro market, and corporate market, see the writing on the wall. This app doesn’t do what we need in order to get things done. Schools see this too…so they won’t go there.”
In order:
I understand all the things that tracks presently used for. I don’t see that tracks are necessarily the only solution to that set of problems.
The magnetic timeline is badly misunderstood, largely as a consequence of people approaching it with a track-oriented mindset.
It’s much harder to throw clips out of sync in the first place with the new UI, and anyway sync indications and dupe detection are minor missing features, not major unfixable architectural flaws.
The skimmer is not the only way to select footage. JKL and the keyboard commands for setting in and out points still work just fine. And personally, I’ve found the skipper, with the browser in filmstrip mode, to be much more efficient for scanning lots of footage than any other interface I’ve used.
This is all exactly like people writing off the iPhone in the enterprise market in 2007 because it didn’t have a hardware keyboard, Exchange support, or centralized management features.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[MIke Guidotti] “Most schools have shared edit bays which require multiple user logins as well as SAN storage. That basically rules iMovie X out. oh, sorry FCP X.”
This is completely my point. this is probably why NYU doesn’t want to try and support FCPX the infastucture isn’t there. and the app doesn’t support key issues. and i’m not talking to major compaints we are hearing ad nausum. (EDL, Multi cam) instead of have 100s of students coming in with problems that they can’t address yet. its better to say hold off and wait.
Mike Jeffs
Video Coordinator
BYU-Idaho -
@ Chris – you seem like a level headed, clear minded person who is diligently taking the time to try and right the ship on every wrong turn people are taking about FCPx.
I applaud you for that.
…but for the sake of your own sanity, stop wasting your time explaining the features (or lack of the “lack of” features..) and stick with the FCPX Techniques forum. Your wisdom is much more appreciated there…
Writer/Radio host/Community Media Advocate
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I just want to cut this 35MM negative correctly, and get these Sound Devices .WAV sound dailies conformed to full resolution 24 bit at the post sound house.
Got any advice on getting that done with the only FCP version on the market?
I’d love to wait for the new paradigm to align itself, but we have a release date to meet.
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Both Avid and Adobe will offer your students great prices on their software, and they are both enterprise-friendly.
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[Chris Kenny] “And you can also see that it never will?”
I do. This new version shows that they didn’t get any input from professional editors. Or if they did, they ignored it completely. They set loose a guy who designed iMovie and said “hey, make this more robust and with more features so we can sell it as a higher end “pro app.”” And he did. But he left out EVERYTHING that professionals need in order to do their job. Including upgrade older projects. The list of things missing is long. And the promise to restore a couple falls way short.
[Chris Kenny] “I understand all the things that tracks presently used for. I don’t see that tracks are necessarily the only solution to that set of problems.”
You obviously don’t deliver shows for broadcast…nor do you cut promos. We need split track audio, with all the elements separate. Both to deliver, and to take in. And in order to do that, I need to keep my tracks separate…VO on 1 and 2, sound on tape on 3-8, sound effects on 9-12, music on 13-16. And I need the ability to export files, or to tape, all those separate tracks. Currently I cannot do that. And the magnetic timeline pushing things down as to not chop off the audio…throws everything out of what. Professionals need finesse…and full control of everyting. FCP X makes wrong assumptions about what we are doing. Wrong on many levels.
[Chris Kenny] “The magnetic timeline is badly misunderstood, largely as a consequence of people approaching it with a track-oriented mindset.”
Because we are required to in order to deliver the video to the client with the proper specifications. Avid does this, Premiere does this, FCP 7 does this, Edius does this. It is a professional option that was removed, and without remorse it seems.
[Chris Kenny] “It’s much harder to throw clips out of sync in the first place with the new UI, and anyway sync indications and dupe detection are minor missing features, not major unfixable architectural flaws.”
But you can unlock audio from video. And when you do, if you move out of sync, there is no indication that you have…much less by how much. When I make adjustments to video and audio, I do it separately primarily. L cuts, J cuts. I turn off the LINKED option…and when I need it, I use a key modifier to adjust both. The new methodolgy is wrong for my needs. Wrong for many needs. Which is why the pro market is in such an uproar over this. Features were changed to non-pro…not left out to come back later…changed. Because the designer has zero clue about what professionals need.
[Chris Kenny] “This is all exactly like people writing off the iPhone in the enterprise market in 2007 because it didn’t have a hardware keyboard, Exchange support, or centralized management features.”
But it had a keyboard. Not a funky weird one where the keys were in all different places. And it didn’t leave out the texting option, the ability to make a call AND surf the web at the same time. It didn’t take out google maps because “we’ll let third party people give you a map.” It wasn’t a toy phone. FCP X is a toy app. The VAST majority of professionals see this. You are in the minority.
Look for blogs that praise FCP X…news articles (well, besides the David Pogue one…he’s not a professional editor). I am hard pressed to find people that like it. All the blogs I read are against it. Only a handful of people like it…a vast majority. People are slamming it on the app store…getting refunds. This is a disaster of major proportions. Only NEW COKE was worse. Same reason…the formula was changed. Trying to improve something by completely changing it.
At the LAFCPUG meeting…sold out crowd of 325 people. When polled who bought it already…less than 30 people raised their hands. When asked who would buy it…4 people.
Oops.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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