FCP X – food for thought

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

James,

I just teached 5 ‘teachers’ coming from fcp7, FCPX. So they can learn their students.
The first hour of my lesson I get Some resistance.

Once they see FCPX’s organisational tools, the speed of editing with the Magnetic timeline, the ‘philosophy’ (and genius) of Roles, All that resistance faded away quickly. I literally heard gasps.

I talked with a cameraman that asked me: ow you stayed with final cut? I teach Avid.
I talked with him about what you can do with X (the concept of keywords vs bins and its many benefits) and you could see the look in his eyes change. Like ‘this sounds damn interesting, maybe I should check it out”

On another forum (R-E-D), someone said he wanted to try out FCPX while not informing his client about it and ideally not have the client notice that he was using (learning…) brand new software. I paraphrase:
“Imagine my surprise when the client came after the first week and asked why this was all going so much faster! Then it clicked for me that something must have been up.”

Was is Craig Seeman (not sure anymore?) who edited the culture show on FCPX with a director who started the sessions with claiming he was sceptical of Craig using that new Final Cut Pro. And when they finished for the first time in 4 days instead of 5, the director went home praising X…

What will make people change? Once more and more of these stories of people editing faster gets out, the more people will start to take notice. In my experience, a lot of people STILL don’t know ANYTHING about the advantages of X. I’m not starting a discussion on who’s to blame for that (I think Apple could do more focused marketing but some people should stop write it of because they heard someone else writing it of based on a version 4 years ago…)

I notice, again and again, when I’m doing a demo for a full room of people, teaching my colleague, talking to a cameraman or giving a workshop of X, that almost all of them take X more seriously (a lot of them even changing a 180 degrees in opinion) once they see what it can do and see the software being used by someone who already makes use of all specific X advantages (Roles, Timeline Index, Keyword Collections, Magnetic Timeline,…)

[Bill Davis]

[Tim Wilson] “My theory remains that it doesn’t matter. People will still use X for the same reasons they always have, without respect to whether a single new feature ever arrives.
“

On this we perfectly agree.

For the users who have learned it deeply. Editing on X “as it is right now” is an unfettered joy.

Disclaimer string so as not to “trigger” certain people.
(For me. On my setup. On my type of work. On my deadlines. On my terms. With my brain.
As I’ve trained it. Today.)

In fairness, I’m kinda high on X right now due to my latest editing experience with it. First major project on my new hardware..

Talk about frictionless!

Even the one major glitch I had during editing – big imported Photoshop multilayer graphic screens from the designer that would cause X to crash – hardly slowed my work at all – because the few times that happened, the SSD would re-boot super fast and as always with X, none of my work was missing INCLUDING actions that were in process at the time of the crash! A lossless crash consuming 10 seconds? I can definitely live with that now and then.

So sue me for being a bit emotional. My current X experience has been REALLY sweet.

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.

[Gary Huff]

[David Lawrence] “What if Apple’s endgame for video looks like what they did with photography? What if the next step is a unification of iMovie and FCPX into a new app called “Movies” or “videos”?”

They’ll definitely call it “Movies”. 😀

[Jim Wiseman]

Aperture is far better at organization than Lightroom. Much more intuitive in operation. I’m trying out LR, and frankly, I’m staying with Aperture 3.6 as long as I have a machine that runs it. I find LR’s “Rooms” approach extremely cumbersome, and it’s organizational capabilities merely a reflection of the Finder. Will only move when I have to. I have purchased a perpetual license version CD of LR5 and upgraded to latest perpetual LR 6.1.1. Never would rent it, or anything else.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems

[Craig Seeman]

[Michael Phillips] “The discussion becomes interesting as well with Blackmagic – but I suspect it would be fine as well as “editing” is a growth market for them in addition to the color correction. And I don’t think EditShare is dependent on Lightworks for its other offerings that are mainly used with other NLEs and workflows. “

… and then when Blackmagic buys EditShare…

[Andrew Kimery]

[Michael Phillips] ”
Which then sort of begs a follow up hypothetical question. What if Adobe and FCPx worked equally well as Media Composer on ISIS and/or Interplay- how committed would Avid be to its own NLE? “

With the whole Avid Everywhere ecosystem they are trying to market and build I think they would still be very committed to their own NLE. I know Avid has recently touted increased compatibility with X and PPro on ISIS, but I think the edge is always going to go to Avid’s NLEs because of it’s unique project structure (bins in folders on the Finder level vs a singular, project file approach). I would be surprised if Avid became just another shared storage vendor (especially now that shared storage vendors are popping up all over the place).

I don’t think there is any real comparison to EditShare because EditShare doesn’t seem to have the resources (or motivation?) to really propel Lightworks forward to a wider audience. Many people, myself included, were excited when EditShare first announced they were taking over Lightworks but the Mac beta took forever to get out and Resovle has swooped in and taken over the low cost/free NLE sector.

-Andrew

[Oliver Peters]

Of course – a bit off topic – it’s kind of funny that neither current Jobs movie will have been cut with any form of FCP.

– Oliver

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

[Santiago Martí]

For me FCPX is more like those free to play games with in app purchases. You have a basic starting point and then you can add plugins for more specific tasks.

Santiago Martí
http://www.robotrojo.com.ar
Red Epic Dragon, Sony FS7, Sony a7S, Red Pro Primes, Adobe CC, Assimilate Scratch

[Andrew Kimery]

[Santiago Martí] “For me FCPX is more like those free to play games with in app purchases. You have a basic starting point and then you can add plugins for more specific tasks.”

I recently had a conversation on Facebook along these lines. I was talking with an X user that liked the software but wish Apple covered more bases from a first party perspective. My 2 cents was that given the $299 price point there’s only so many bases you can expect Apple to cover (and it’s by design). If you need/want specialized tools then you can most likely find them from a third party and if you don’t then you aren’t being charged ‘extra’ for features you don’t need.

There are pros/cons to this route vs more features coming directly the NLE maker but I don’t think either way is inherently better than the other. Just two ways to skin the cat.

[Jim Wiseman]

Randy Ubillos was one of the main members of the original Aperture team. One of the reasons its workflow is still the best of all of those in that space. Much better than Lightroom. Randy has never stayed on any project for more than 5 years (yes Tim). He is an innovator and is on to the next thing. My biggest gripe with Apple is not continuing support of Aperture once he moved to FCPX and other projects. I still use Aperture although it has needed some feature improvements like lens correction. Minor stuff considering how intuitive it was to work with. Apple could have continued with Aperture for pros and Photos for casual users. One of Apertures greatest strengths was its use of Libraries. Now I will be breaking them up gradually and “Folderizing” my photos ala Lightroom. Far inferior from a management standpoint. Can still use Aperture in the “by Reference” model and more easily move to Lightroom (Gack!) that uses that Finder folder model.

Nikon has abandoned Capture NX2 as well, the best RAW converter for Nikon NEFs. Refused to pay licensing to Google for the NIK U-Point technology and other code. I still use that for serious conversions from my Nikons. Unfortunately, new Nikons will not work with it. They have come up with a very lame RAW converter.

Software companies have got to come up with a way to release great software without relying on the coercion of rental and disappearing projects or the dumbing down of tools to appeal to the mass market. It is going to affect the pro market more than any other. I would be happy topay outright or buy hardware to get perpetual licenses. I certainly hope FCPX continues serious development. My guess is it will. Also trying Resolve as soon as it goes Golden Master.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems