FCP-X “Lightroom for video”

[Bill Davis]

[Michael Griggs] “To Bill’s original point/question, is FCPX akin to LR….I think it’s a definite NO.

You could say any program that is non-destructive/database oriented is comparative to X’s metadata-tagging etc approach. But isn’t that really just oversimplifying any app that uses a computer’s strengths?”

I don’t disagree with this. I’m just trying to clarify my understanding,

At one level, the major functional change that happened between FCP Legacy and X was two fold. First, the database functions were massively enhanced and given equal weight in the interface. And second, there was both and stripping down and re-imagining of what the most needed editorial and project handling functions should be to get the results that Apple felt that the largest number of modern editors (at MOST levels of daily editing, not just the upper end of the professional class) would want.

So you get an emphasis on rapid workflow. High quality results, but in more limited areas of focus. Robust import and export for fast project creation and agile project sharing. And a connected workflow that encourages revision and versioning export.

There was a lot of what I saw in the Lightroom demo that seemed to have the a similar overall philosophy.

I’m not saying they have the same goals or the same intents. Just similar approaches to looking at what ‘some” classes of real world users might need – and designing a tool specifically to do those functions – rather than continuing to try to complete with a single monolithic tool that tries to do everything for everyone.

Essentially, Lightroom is a tool for a class of photo producers that covers territory that Photoshop does not – by adding robust database functions to a limited but also pretty robust suite of tools necessary for most day to day photographic work.

Doing this, it seeks to solve particular workflow problems that are increasingly part of a working photographers daily reality.

Arguably, FCP-X was designed to do something very similar in video.

But I acknowledge the analogy is far from perfect.

At best that comparing them can do is point out that across the digital production realms – there are needs for new tools for the way people work today and may work in the future – compared to how we all used to work yesterday.

Lightroom is doing well in photography because it seems to have well focused on serving the real world needs of its core audience.

Whether X will do the same is an unfolding story.

Nothing more than that.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Walter Soyka]

[Michael Griggs] “You could say any program that is non-destructive/database oriented is comparative to X’s metadata-tagging etc approach. But isn’t that really just oversimplifying any app that uses a computer’s strengths?”

I think that database-driven media stores and non-destructive media manipulation are fundamental to all NLEs. This is not new with FCPX.

What is new with FCPX are a bunch of evolutionary improvements to that database, especially on the UI and search/retrieval side. I don’t think of these as the revolutionary improvements one in terms of structure or impact beyond the scope of editorial that some people have discussed here. (I’ve also found that a lot of people here look at all the exposed power of the media’s relational database in the events browser and assume that projects are similarly database-driven, when in fact they seem to be very hierarchical.)

In other words, I think that FCPX offers some notable interior improvements for many editors, but I don’t see how FCPX changes an entire discipline’s workflow in the way that Lightroom does.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Michael Griggs]

[Bill Davis] “High quality results, but in more limited areas of focus.”

A.K.A. – Apple in a nutshell…..

[David Lawrence]

[Michael Griggs] “A.K.A. – Apple in a nutshell…..”

AKA FCPX in a nutshell… 😉

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[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] ” Lightroom is interesting here in that it shows that you can still have a fully managed catalog (media database) and have direct Finder/Explorer-level access to your file structure.”

But Walter, in any photographic app – all pointers necessarily lead to single, monolithic fixed original file – the original state of which doesn’t ever change over time. Whereas with video in general – and with X in particular – the goal is to tag “ranges” of original items that are changing over time.

This seems to me the because any photo database can impose a “source file is THIS and always will be” approach that makes it much simpler to manage at a finder level than a video system where the Source file is defined by multiple ranges of a clip that the user is free to designate, remove, and/or re-define at will.

(formal analogy warning!)
It’s pull toy (single connection) verses spider web (interconnectedness) that makes one task relatively easy and the other orders of magnitude more complex?

I’d be intersted in hearing from others who know about competitive editorial systems here.

Are there any other hybrids out there that are more like X (and Lightroom, to keep the thread on topic) in the sense of each being apparently designed to seamlessly mesh both database and editorial functions into a single interface.

I know Adobe has it’s much loved “dynamic linking.” Do I read it correctly that this is a bit like my beloved Filemaker Pro – essentially flat file database – but with “quasi-relational” features via lookup and linking – which keeps it less complex to use and manage, but also provides a taste of “interconnectedness?”

Again, I appreciate the discussion from all.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[David Lawrence] “[Michael Griggs] “A.K.A. – Apple in a nutshell…..”

AKA FCPX in a nutshell… ;)”

With a nod to Blaise Pascal, of course. (paraphrasing) “I would have written you a shorter letter – if I had more time.”

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Walter Soyka]

[Bill Davis] “But Walter, in any photographic app – all pointers necessarily lead to single, monolithic fixed original file – the original state of which doesn’t ever change over time. Whereas with video in general – and with X in particular – the goal is to tag “ranges” of original items that are changing over time. This seems to me the because any photo database can impose a “source file is THIS and always will be” approach that makes it much simpler to manage at a finder level than a video system where the Source file is defined by multiple ranges of a clip that the user is free to designate, remove, and/or re-define at will. “

I’m not sure I follow. A source file is a source file, whether it’s a still or a movie. The range within the source file is a separate bit of metadata defining a selection relative to that source, whether it’s crop region in a photo or an in-to-out temporal range in a video.

I don’t mean to pick a fight about managed vs. referenced media stores. They each have strengths and weaknesses. I was just noting that a good number of photographers I know wanted the same degree of control over the storage of RAW files as they did their negatives.

[Bill Davis] “Are there any other hybrids out there that are more like X (and Lightroom, to keep the thread on topic) in the sense of each being apparently designed to seamlessly mesh both database and editorial functions into a single interface.”

To be pedantic, I’m not sure you can implement an NLE without also implementing a database.

I am not trying to take away anything from the advances that FCPX has made here, but there was a lot of database goodness to be had with Legend, too. I used subclips like ranges and the “Good” checkbox like a favorite marker in FCP Legend all the time. I set custom thumbnails for icon view. I stuffed all kinds of metadata into the name, description, scene, shot, and angle columns. I used browser sorts and finds all the time to sift through footage.

FCPX does this better — no argument from me there — but a lot of these metadata and database-driven benefits have been readily available to editors as long as NLEs have been on the desktop.

All that said, I certainly agree with your general contention that given the increasing volume of data and the increasing velocity with which we generate it, putting more tools in front of the user to help them manage it all is a very good thing.

[Bill Davis] “I know Adobe has it’s much loved “dynamic linking.” Do I read it correctly that this is a bit like my beloved Filemaker Pro – essentially flat file database – but with “quasi-relational” features via lookup and linking – which keeps it less complex to use and manage, but also provides a taste of “interconnectedness?””

Dynamic link is a pipe that lets you connect the output of one app to the input of another in order to eliminate disconnected intermediate renders (I do love this phrase which you have coined, by the way!)

Basically, you can drag and drop an After Effects composition (analogous to a Motion project’s timeline) into Premiere, and it will work in Premiere as if it were any other video clip. Make a change in Ae, it reflects automatically in Pr, without any rendering required.

It’s really got nothing to do with databases, other than the data that defines the connection is stored in one. It’s more about reducing friction between the member apps of the suite.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Aindreas Gallagher]

late jumping in, sorry if this has been covered – so think of prelude like first cut say?

…if we want to get really meta about the choice steve made when ubillos showed him first cut – the original architecture for what became the imovie/fcpx architecture.

it is documented that Ubillos originally envisioned a lightroom style pre-stage to FCP (that being photoshop), which is what he presented – hence the non-narrative cascading bunching of clips that drove the imovie users of the time mad – but steve jobs decided the insights presented by Ubillos were broader in application.

god knows jobs could leap into puddles though right? but in the long and the short – that presentation, which I would argue was proper on ubillos’s part and a fundamental error on Jobs’s part – lead to a pre-stage organising mechanism being imploded directly into the creative main stage of the editing ground space.

If we want proof of this we need look no further than the fact that ubillos, when deriving all of the main elements – drive libraries, tagging, filmstrips within a single viewer, which are all on record as the elements of the first cut demo that Jobs re-directed into imovie – when ubillos devised all this architecture, he never intended it to be a mainstage FCP editing area. Let alone imovie.

I rather feel this point is overlooked. Ubillos walked in with one thing, and via Jobs – we all, over time and inertia, got another.

it is a continuous elbow twitch for me with FCPX – its beautifully put together, in a certain sense, it has colour correction capabilities in the area of masking that makes lumps out of every other editing system out there, and bar tracking, matches every high end colour correction system out there without exception (ok b-splines but whatever) –
the responsiveness of the masking and effects architecture on consumer hardware at 1080P is outright surreal – still – in the upper left hand corner I have a headache of compaction, where I am presented with OS level drives, twirl down menus to see the tags, filmstrips, and sweet god knows what else – it is simply too much noise up there.

that pre-stage, exactly as adobe has it with prelude…

….has instead become the final intellectual collapse of Ubiloss’s first cut?
a ludicrously cramped area comprising events, OS drives, tags, favourite viewer, filmstrips – a single bin viewer mess – and this mashed potato mess is actually supposed to be the composed editing staging area for your determined FCPX timeline?

that aside – don’t get me started on the everliving joke that is the mangled, 3D whacky style filmstrip view A/B trimming, auto-linking, auto rippling mess that is that idiot’s preferred idiot of all time timeline.

——————————–

*better vendor message*

in other news – hey! – adobe are quietly posting (themselves) a nice third party hack to fractionally reduce the onscreen GUI size of their excellent timeline trimming tools.

I’m not joking, they really did. I swear – they are an editor’s editor as a vendor.

Prelude is really rather nice, and very trustworthy. it certifies a transcode, which I half love. Adobe PPro 6 is, with flaws, (would you like to import that other project?) an excellent, highly focused editing system, developing at warp speed. Adobe want this very much.

And in Adobe’s case the “this” is unequivocally monetarily focused on the professional user.

Adobe do not sell phones.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “so think of prelude like first cut say? “

You have to be overly generous with the word “cut” when using Prelude. It’s more of an assemly than a cut. Most of the “cutting” is done through markers. You add a marker with an in and out, and you can add that marker range to the timeline, you can’t “Cut” a clip. You can also add a clip in it’s entirelty, and you can roughly rearrange the clips, but it’s not a cut. I liken it more to a marker assembly or string out.

[Aindreas Gallagher] “that pre-stage, exactly as adobe has it with prelude…

….has instead become the final intellectual collapse of Ubiloss’s first cut – a ludicrously cramped area comprising events, OS drives, tags, favourite viewer, filmstrips – a single bin viewer mess – and this mashed potato mess is actually the composed editing staging area for your FCPX timeline.”

Maybe. I think Prelude is designed for non editors to give a rough idea to editors (or a news producer that was there during the shoot to give to an editor back at the ranch) as well as handle any transcodes and card dumps. As an editor, the actual “Rough Cut” portion of Prelude drives me sorta nutty, and organization is actually better in Pr because you can have all sorts of bins. I also don’t like the one way communication of Prelude being the first, everything else after it, and how XMP seems to a forgotten stepchild of Adobe. Prelude could stand to serve as a middle man, but Prelude is very young yet and needs more experience. However, I do appreciate that Adobe is taking non native workflows seriously. I wish AVCHD would get blown off the planet never to return.

[David Lawrence]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “in other news – hey! – adobe are quietly posting (themselves) a nice third party hack to fractionally reduce the onscreen GUI size of their excellent timeline trimming tools.”

Link please?!

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David Lawrence
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