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FCP X and the Future of Editing
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[Oliver Peters] “The truth of the matter is that the core design and most of the organization and editing features were in place at FCP 1 or 2. The rest were feature additions, codecs and stability fixes. By that measure, what we see today is about where FCP X will sit for a while. Maybe some additional features, like a mixer, but don’t expect to see huge changes from what’s there now.”
Time out.
I have nothing but respect for what you do Oliver, but this is a gross oversimplification don’t you think?
First, Legend had a lot tacked on to it over the years, XML being one of them that is used (or at least I used) for organization, and in X’s short life span the interface has already changed a bunch.
Why should we not expect further progress with more time?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “First, Legend had a lot tacked on to it over the years, XML being one of them that is used (or at least I used) for organization, and in X’s short life span the interface has already changed a bunch”
I’m talking about file/folder structure in the browser and how you edit clips in the timeline. Also keyframing, blend modes, the whole After Effects-style of adjusting effects. That was there in the beginning. XML as an I/O method was added later, but it didn’t change how you edited inside FCP. It only extended its ability to interact with the outside world. The point is that the core operation inside the application was in place from the start and so I believe the same is true for X at this point.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “I personally have absolutely no idea how apple see the world I am editing wage dependent on- and that is a really interesting, unfriendly mystery.”
I hear you, can’t speak for them I just watch them, and one thing I have seen is them snuggle up to the top cameras.
You may have seen the post on Red Raw and I saw a clip of the f 55 working with X (not even out yet)
They already had Alexa in their release video. Sync ready DSLR, what’s left?
They are ready for the top cameras in the world.
That tells me they want to do top stuff.
Only top end productions use Red. They clearly want those independent film makers and they are starting to get them.
Last time I was on Kickstarter I saw teasers with recognizable X graphics.
I didn’t expect houses like yours to switch this year or maybe next.
It’s going to be out there long haul. Too much power for too little of a price with too many people feeling like it’s fun to work with to be ignored.
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[Walter Soyka] “Bill, I’m curious what you’d think of David Lawrence’s multiple primaries idea. If you didn’t use them, FCPX would work just the way it does now — just the way you like it. If someone like David or me was pining for tracks, we could use them, too — but we could even have local (virtually intratrack) magnetism. “
Walter,
Would multiple primaries be useful and welcome? Probably. What I worry about is what developmental pathways get shoved aside in order for the dev team to work on this concept – which while “nice” is also largely unnecessary for many people working with the software day to day right now.
So what gets pushed back in the queue in order to make the software “somewhat” better for a class of users for whom a single primary and multiple secondaries don’t get the job done? This clearly isn’t a “stopper” since people are doing all manner of work with the program as it is now, so it’s a fair question to ask what class of users “requires” multiple primaries? Is is JUST people who can’t let go of the “track” paradigm? Or is there something truly exceptional that it would allow for the general user that they don’t have right now? If so, someone needs to make the case that it would go beyond “nice” and elevate the change to being “important.”
Essentially, I’d want someone to outline clearly for me the real-world issues that a multiple primaries construct would solve for the majority of the programs users – not just the class of “those who like tracks and are unhappy that they are no longer available” – because that’s just too small a class to take the dev teams eye off the ball of improving X for everyone.
Personally, if they spent the next year robustly “interconnecting” the Event Browser to the outside world via agile and robust import/export – I think that would make X a massively more useful tool than simply adding “more primaries” to the mix.
But I’m willing to listen to folks who’d argue that multiple primaries would make the software better – particularly if they could tie it to specific editorial tasks that “most” editors need to do every day.
FWIW.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Walter Soyka] “That’s why I’ve proposed SIOPs (stored in and out points). “
Somehow when I came upon your SIOP acronym – I mentally decoded it as “Situational In and Out Points”
Which is perhaps cooler (or maybe just scarier!) as a concept.
Does make you wonder if IOPS in the EVENT browser might conceivably work differently then IOPS in a Storyline – or a range selection on, for example, a graphic or audio clip.
Something to cogitate on a bit, perhaps….
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Jason Porthouse] “X is non existent in their world. Much as you might wish it otherwise, in the circles Aindreas and I work in it just ain’t happening yet. “
Jason,
I don’t argue anything the contrary. I KNOW that X has not made huge waves in the “major suite” world as yet.
Secretly, this is one of the things making me happiest right now – since that takes pressure off for Apple to try to bend X’s feature sets and capabilities in a direction that’s mostly oriented towards the specific needs of large shop users. I’ve come to believe this would be a mistake since trying to satisfy this group would mean that the small wonderful ideas in X that appeal to the general editor but don’t particularly satisfy the large scale industrial users would be shunted aside in priority.
Look, they baked in VIMEO sharing rather than DG Fastchannel settings under the hood, elevating the needs of the individual over the needs of the facility user. That’s by design at this point. Do you really think that as X evolves, it’s going to be hard to implement direct out to other services if it’s still required?
Right now the focus of X is on evolving into the finest “personal” editing program it can be – NOT the finest “facility” editor it can be. I firmly believe more enterprise capabilities will follow (precisely as they did in Legacy) but I’m delighted the Apple Dev Team appears focused on individual empowerment at this stage, rather than the enterprise class user.
Get the individual stuff reinvented to solve real editorial and modernized personal workflow issues – and the enterprise (which is really just a whole bunch of individuals working for the same concern) will surely be dragged along in time.
Your view isn’t wrong at all. It’s just coming from a type of editing seat that is still important, but less and less the “average” one any longer.
FWIW.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Oliver Peters] “The point is that the core operation inside the application was in place from the start and so I believe the same is true for X at this point.”
Agreed. None of the updates to date have changed the basic editorial model and there’s no reason believe future ones will. Significant updates like multi-cam, were in development from the beginning and would have been included at launch if they were ready at the time. That’s not to say there isn’t room for future improvement with the current UI, it can and will get better. But the basic editorial mechanics seem pretty firmly in place.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Lawrence] “None of the updates to date have changed the basic editorial model and there’s no reason believe future ones will.”
That’s not true at all. Even discounting multi-cam because “it was in development before”, the Event Viewer, Roles, and Audio Component Editing are all major changes to the editorial model of FCPX. You can even make a strong case for compound clip behavior in 10.0.6.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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[Oliver Peters] “The point is that the core operation inside the application was in place from the start and so I believe the same is true for X at this point.”
Multichannel QT output/mixing was added later, renaming clips from filenames vice-versa was added later, log and transfer was added later, fit to fill and more enhanced retiming capabilities were added later, text tools were added later, auto-select buttons were added later, the entire fx architecture was added later, as a matter of fact two architectures were added, timecode overlays were added later, paste attributes was added later, dynamic/asymmetrical trimming was added later, keyboard customization was added later, ganging came later, merged clips came later, dupe detection came later, etc. All of these little bits and bobs are small, but they help the day to day workload and they weren’t in v1 or 2 (if memory serves).
With X, there has been many interface updates, and even some of the “core” behaviors have changed a lot, a whole lot, really. My sense is that they aren’t done, and aren’t afraid to change how things work, let’s hope most of it is for the better.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “(if memory serves)”
I don’t believe it does. A lot of what you list was in there a lot earlier than you seem to think. But it’s irrelevant. The core functions of how you construct an edit on the timeline, how you trim, how you keyframe audio and effects, etc. The FxScript effects architecture. All there by at least 2.12.
My point is that the basic structure of X is locked into place and any pining for track-like behavior (among other things) is pointless, because Apple isn’t going to put it in. I go back to the same mantra. Deal with the application that you have today, not the one you believe it might become at some point in the future. All these pie-in-the-sky discussions of databases that go outside of the Event and fancy work with roles and more – it’s all just blue sky wishful thinking.
Sorry to be so “glass half empty”, but I’m tired of working with an app that feels very sloppy when going from clips in the Event browser to the timeline (half the time it hangs up and has to be “fiddled with” to wake it up), that corrupts my renders, that fails to render some effects, that doesn’t allow mixing on-the-fly, that offsets my primary storyline when I trim or delete transitions, that re-arranges the vertical order of connected clips at will, yada yada yada…
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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