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FCP X can’t do “pro” is officially vaporized.
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[Bill Davis] “But those detractors”
Who are “those”? Oh, yes…the infamous “they”.
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But Apple may not be interested in bring that SAME functionality to X. The larger point of X is that there’s new functionality on the table. The efficiency of keywords diminishes the utility of folders. Roles diminishes (I’d say obliterates)the requirement for tracks. Time and again we’ve seen that if all you can see yourself wanting is “bin locking” grafted onto X – that’s not necessarily the path to vastly better software. I personally am happier with Apple approaching the X development effort with a “imagine what’s possible” attitude rather than a “give the client incremental improvements over the status quo” orientation. Seems like cooler stuff comes from the former more readily than the latter. 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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[Neil Goodman] “But other than the speed and reliability that their new shared storage setup brings to the table – Its still not the same functionality that an Isis/Unity brings to the table. “
For us Editors who’ve never worked on a Unity system what extra functionality does it have over this FCPX based system?
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Everybody works in the same project. No XMLing sequences or duplicating libraries or copying things from one library to another. You make one project and everyone works in it at the same time. It simplifies things, and with bin locking it protects people from saving over your work or you saving over theirs.
EXAMPLE: I’m the first to open the bin “Edits_March9_2016”, so I own it. That means I can make changes to it, I can edit the sequences in it, etc… Anybody else in the project can open it and copy stuff out of it, or open the sequences and watch them, but any changes they make will not be saved (but they will be give the open to save the bin as a copy). It’s a locked bin to them – they cannot change it. Only the owner can.
This is incredibly powerful in practice. You can have assistants syncing audio, adding production notes, marking takes, etc…, all in the original project. Meanwhile, the editor(s) are cutting away. When an assistant finishes syncing audio, setting up group clips, adding notes, marking takes, etc they just save the bin and close it. Then the editor can open it up and they have instant access to the sync clips, metadata, markers, notes, etc…. You don’t have to worry about “last to save wins” or everyone keeping their own copy of the project and having to copy from one to another. It greatly simplifies things in that regard and the bin locking helps to protect people’s work from being overwritten.
Another example – If you want to see how and edit is shaping up while the editor is working on it you just open their bin and play the sequence. You’ll see the most recently saved version. If they change the sequence and save the bin while you’re watching it you just close the bin and reopen it and you’ll see their changes. Because the bin is locked you can’t delete their sequence, change it, or accidentally (or intentionally) save over it.
It’s can be hard to understand just how powerful and efficient it is until you get a chance to see it in person or use it. And no other NLE, that I’m aware of, provides anything close to it.
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Michael Hancock
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[Greg Jones] “I think ‘Pro’ software is any software that can be used to make money, period. “
Then maybe more along the lines of “Not suited for a ‘pro’ environment/workflow!” over which has been ranted endlessly here? In which case I hope you’d agree that apps such as IMovie or Windows Movie Maker are in fact not suited for. Meaning in terms of things such as passing off for mixing on a DAW etc. as described in the article. So it’s not quite as cut’n’dry. 😉
– RK
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Excellent description of the AVID approach to collaboration. For the FCP X approach, look up the stories on how the teams on Focus, Whisky Tango Foxtrot and the coming major features done in X approach collaboration. It’s not the same as the AVID approach, but it seems to allow multiple stakeholders to access and express their ideas about an evolving edit in progress without the need to hang the core of everything on a single machine on a single desktop and require everyone to work there. It “seems” from what I’ve read to be a different path to the same place. Edits as metadata rather than edits as actual changes to a central file. But I’m not a facility editor so I may have this wrong. Anyone know more about the different approaches beyond the “we have this feature and the other guys don’t” which may or may not turn out to be the critical aspect of how some editors will prefer to work in the future.
Interesting discussion.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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[Bill Davis] “Anyone know more about the different approaches beyond the “we have this feature and the other guys don’t” which may or may not turn out to be the critical aspect of how some editors will prefer to work in the future.
Interesting discussion.”Exactly I’m keen to see what the “Big Brains” on here make of the two workflows
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I’m going to preface this by saying I haven’t had a chance to read the article yet (hoping to have time at lunch today) so apologies if I’m missing pertinent info that was covered in the FCP.co piece.
[Michael Hancock] “It’s can be hard to understand just how powerful and efficient it is until you get a chance to see it in person or use it. And no other NLE, that I’m aware of, provides anything close to it.
“To add to this, the folders and bins that make up an Avid project are just as folders and bins in Finder/Windows Explorer (as opposed to a single ‘project file’ like with other NLEs) which means you can modify Avid projects (while people are working in them) just by moving folders and/or bins around at the desktop level. Very handy if you need to share bits and pieces, of even entire projects, with other people.
For example, most shows will have a ‘mother’ project run by the AEs and that’s where all the media for all the episodes gets ingested and lives. Then a project for each individual episode gets created and populated with just the media needed for that episode (this is the project all the editors assigned to that episode will work out of). Say some new, non-episode specific media comes in like a new GFX package. All the projects need this new GFX package and instead of having to open up each episode project one by one to add the new GFX you just copy and paste a single bin, containing the GFX, from the Mother project into each episode project. It’s super quick and you don’t have to interrupt any of the editors in order to do it. Or say one editor has a ‘toolkit’ bin (some go to SFX, custom FX, transitions, light leaks, film grain, etc.,) and wants to share it with everyone else. All they have to do is copy and paste that bin from their project into all the other projects and just like that everyone gets their own copy. Sure, all the editors could do the Open Bin command, navigate to the correct bin, open it and copy out what they need but doing it at the desktop level is much quicker and easier.
This ability to work ‘behind the scenes’ at the desktop level is really what sets Avid apart from all the other NLEs and makes sharing/collaborating inherently easy. Adobe, for example, has done a lot of work to allow you to use the Media Browser in PPro to ‘step into’ other PPro projects but it’s still cumbersome in comparison and it only goes oneway. I mean, I can pull assets from PPro Project A into PPro Project B but I cannot push assets from PPro Project B into PPro Project A.
As I recently mentioned in another thread I’m currently doing some AE work on a doc in PPro and I’m splitting the load between two Macs attached to some Promax shared storage. This is about as simple a shared storage setup can get (one user, two machines) yet part of my workflow is having to keep track of what I did in Project A on Mac 1 and what I did on Project B in Mac 2 so that everything ends up back in Project A without me accidentally skipping or repeating steps (I’m ingesting, organizing, prepping, and exporting about 30 days worth of multicam shoots). If I could work in one project in PPro like I could in Avid it would certainly streamline my process.
[Bill Davis] ” but it seems to allow multiple stakeholders to access and express their ideas about an evolving edit in progress without the need to hang the core of everything on a single machine on a single desktop and require everyone to work there.”
I’m not sure I follow Bill. The whole gist of a multi-editor environment is that everything is not on a single machine… unless by single machine you mean the shared storage server that everyone is plugged into. The way Avid’s projects are structured and they way it manages media (assuming you are allowing Avid to manage the media as opposed to connecting to it via AMA) also facilitates easy of use where editors aren’t working from the same storage pool. For example, a couple years ago I worked on a doc with another editor and he worked from home while I worked at the office. We had mirrored copies of the footage and we would email bins back and fourth to share cuts, new media, etc., I was the point person at the office so when new media came in I would ingest it then (assuming it wasn’t a ton of new media) I’d upload the MXFs from Avid and a bin to the other editor via Dropbox. The only media that was a bit of a pain were stills because the stills existed outside of Avid’s media pool so if we weren’t careful we’d have to do a re-link dance sometimes.
The functional equivalent could have been achieved with other NLEs but it would have involved more steps than just dragging & dropping via the Finder.
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[Andrew Kimery] “I’m not sure I follow Bill. The whole gist of a multi-editor environment is that everything is not on a single machine… unless by single machine you mean the shared storage server that everyone is plugged into. “
I was just responding to the description that Michael posted which seemed to show a single editor owning a bin, but other editors able to access the content for review and notes.That seems to me to represent one form of collaborative editing. Obviously, since X doesn’t do that type of bin locking, the teams editing collaboratively must have developed another way to collaborate which satisfies their need to revision, review, re-edit and master their content. Because at the end of the day, the movies edited in X got turned over to post and onto the big screen the same way that AVID and Premiere Pro projects have.
So obviously it’s a matter of what you’re used to and how you “prefer” to work – not a work stopping lack on any editorial system today.
It sounds like bin locking is a great productivity enhancing system. The entire article originally referenced is also about productivity enhancement. It’s up to the facility folks to judge which approach has the option to drive the MOST productivity into the production process, and purchase accordingly.
That’s all.
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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[Bill Davis] “I was just responding to the description that Michael posted which seemed to show a single editor owning a bin, but other editors able to access the content for review and notes.That seems to me to represent one form of collaborative editing. Obviously, since X doesn’t do that type of bin locking, the teams editing collaboratively must have developed another way to collaborate which satisfies their need to revision, review, re-edit and master their content. Because at the end of the day, the movies edited in X got turned over to post and onto the big screen the same way that AVID and Premiere Pro projects have.
“Ah, thanks for the additional info Bill. I agree that there are different ways to skin the cat yet still get at the same, or similar, functional end result. I know a while back someone posted a patent from Apple that seemed to suggest possible collaboration via something similar to compound clips to allow multiple editors to edit in the same timeline at the same time. Certainly an intriguing idea. Whatever Apple, Adobe, Blackmagic, and even Avid come up with to further collaborative editing I’m all for since that is a common workflow in my neck of the woods (even on smaller projects).
[Bill Davis] “It’s up to the facility folks to judge which approach has the option to drive the MOST productivity into the production process, and purchase accordingly.”
Totally agree. A good workflow is more than the sum of its parts and the trick in each situation is to get the most amount of Pros with the least amount of Cons. To go back to my previous example of the gig I’m doing now. Do I wish PPro was more like Avid in terms of multi-user collaboration? Yes. Do I wish I was working on Avid instead of PPro on this project? No. Looking at it as a whole PPro is a better fit for this gig than Avid.
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