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FCP X – steady as she goes.
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[Michael Gissing] “Assuming that the complaints were only by the clueless offends many skilled and experienced editors and post people who were not wrong in saying that X out of the gate wouldn’t replace Legend for the work they were doing. You really do have a problem with accepting that there was then, and remains for many, absolutely valid criticism of the X software”
I completely accepted any and ALL criticism from the very few voices that had opened the software and could rationally discuss its ACTUAL operations.
Sadly, those voices were as rare as hens teeth.
The acramony I’m addressing was born of the period when it was excoriated by people who had NEVER opened it.
And then by a much wider class that tried it MARGINALLY – saw only what they were pre-disposed to see – then put it aside and continued to trash it.
(A group I think you’ll see quite well represented in the “Off the Tracks” X Documentary, working its way through post now.)
In hindsight X was NEVER trying to merely accommodate an editors existing workflows.
And to pay fealty to their existing thinking.
It was attempting to develop and interest them in a new and bette process.
If a “professional” at the time missed that – whose fault is that? Some of us saw that and we weren’t quiet about it – were we?
I still give an ear to plenty of voices who dont use X – but who can articulate its strengths and weaknesses – Including those it embodied AT its release date.
Those are the people who were and still are worth debating.
Those that come with “well NOW it’s finally maybe OK for real work” are so late to the party as to be dismissible.
Including some still here that I try my best not to read nor respond to. If they ever do get to the point where they understand things well enough to do more than blather about what they clearly still don’t understand – that might change – but I’m not holding my breath. Cluelessness (In others AND in myself) – turns out to be damnably hard to root out. Go figure.
X had ways – good ways – to get the vast majority of the videos the vast majority of video producers might have needed to get done from DAY ONE.
I know that because I did that. First hand. No theory based on reading pundits or preachers. Personal experience. Each “lack” somebody hawked I found I could skate around and STILL make my deadlines.
And while I was doing that – I was talking to others all around the world during X’s first 2 years who were doing the same.
I’d counter that it’s YOU who had the early days problem. And that’s seeing the value ONLY of a too narrow subset of editing tools that matched your conditioned needs – and not properly valuing the broader changes that would hugely rise in importance as the software evolved. I get that. But it was an inflection point of change in the industry and if you missed it, that’s not my business. That and perhaps presuming that all the other editors out there were mostly just like you.
This does not mean it didn’t have “flaws.” – it means there were growing legions who faced those flaws and discovered them to not be the “stoppers” that others suggested – but rather mostly rapidly addressed inconveniences that paled in the face of the fun and efficiency we were enjoying as X editors.
And X Sales figures – 1million in the first few years and 2million now – indicate clearly to me those views of the actual needs of professional editors – symbolized by people willing to PAY for a pro editing app – might have been, from the start, significantly different from your definition – whatever that might have been.
Fun to discuss anyway.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Michael Gissing] “Have you, like many here, used various systems that offer alternatives like dedicated… “
Hell no. I’m a sometimes producer and nearly daily EDITOR.
I’m not and never have held myself out as a Colorist.
I think it would be HUGELY presumptous to claim I have those skills st anything resembling a professional level.
I do what a majority of modern editors do. I know enough about grading to understand when the needs of a project move beyond my level of expertise and need REAL skills.
The thing is, that’s NOT required for most stages of editorial, is it? I thought our task as editors was to fix Color issues to get our work to a viewable stage for proper client judgement and assessment without gross flaws that can take a viewer out of the viewing experience.
As such, me buying a dedicated Color Board is something I see as the equivelient of a Rich Kid in a Garage Band buying a vintage Strat.
Lame.
But that said, I don’t think that makes my opinions on the efficient operation in working with the color tools on a Laptop specifically for the types of work that most editors need to do day in and day out any less relevant.
If you’re in that fractional slice of the industry that grades for hours every day – I’m not suggesting ANYTHING about how you should work.
This isn’t a professional COLORISTS board.
It’s an EDITORS board.
If you’re an editor who does what I do every day – I most definitely AM saying you can do tons of what you will probably need done – right in X with your hands in the same place they typically rest.
Which is useful to know.
That’s all.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “I’d counter that it’s YOU who had the early days problem. And that’s seeing the value ONLY of a too narrow subset of editing tools that matched your conditioned needs ”
Of course I had a problem. But not in perception. Real problems like no round tripping to Color for grading. No way to export audio via any recognised format. It was a desert island with no lifeboats. I didn’t need to open the software and try it because it lacked so many basic features that completely broke a workflow that I needed to run a business. There was no way I was clueless because I didn’t open it and try to use it. I knew it would not work for me and anyone else who HAD TO HAVE THOSE BASIC FEATURES! (gee I hate having to capitalise but maybe you are not listening unless I do).
It’s not fun to debate with you Bill because you have no idea about workflows that you don’t use or care about. X was a dog on release and good for you because you stuck with that puppy even though it pissed on the carpet and chewed your shoes. You fell in love with it. Some of us just didn’t want the puppy. Many tried and took it back to the pound. Meanwhile the working dog got euthanased. No amount of enthusiast revisionist history will change the fact that the X software Apple released was unusable to many who actually knew what they were doing and what they needed.
You are the one that’s been conditioned to accept a narrow subset of tools. You just don’t get that other people are constantly using a variety of tools in ways that you will never understand and that includes X. So they have valid positions to argue from.
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[Michael Gissing] “You are the one that’s been conditioned to accept a narrow subset of tools. You just don’t get that other people are constantly using a variety of tools in ways that you will never understand and that includes X. So they have valid positions to argue from.
“
So much this….
If you were cutting multicam Day one – what were you to do? If you had to send out to Pro Tools Day one – what were you to do? If you needed a broadcast monitor or even an external for a client to watch and review cuts -What were you to do?
Thats why alot of us dismissed it outright. Those are real everyday needs of ALOT of editors.
Still no decent timecode solution – but yea since Bill doesnt need timecode – why should he care?
My needs as an editor are fairly simple. Offline workflow – mostly straight cuts/ dips to blacks and the majority of it really based on doing crazy audio beds and sound design, but no external monitor meant absolutely no dice and no way to send to Protools was impossible for me as well.
Sure things have changed and I’ll use X on personal stuff where I see fit, but day one – alot of us had alot to be upset about – the fact you dont care to acknowledge that speaks volumes.
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[Michael Gissing] “It’s not fun to debate with you Bill because you have no idea about workflows that you don’t use or care about.”
Yeah, it’s all my fault.
I only had 20 plus years of editing behind me at the time of X’s release – including experience in quite a few types of workflows – plus apparently something you appear NOT to have had…
Which was quite as much “prejudice” about what might constitute a viable workflow for ANY other type of editor?
Here’s a cute fact. It’s not that I didn’t see the things X didn’t do on release. It’s just that EVERY SINGLE critique about X appearing in the first year was stuff I was able to acknowledge – understand and work around.
I was doing Multicam in X BEFORE X added it. It was trivial. Just sync the camera shots as connected clips and hack away. EXACTLY as I’d been doing in FCP Legacy when the nature of my jobs dictated that approach.
You saw the glass as 80 percent empty – and bailed.
I saw it as 3/4 full – and sailed into a new era of productivity.
And here we are six years later.
I’m still excited every day to sit down and edit at a tool I can play like a piano – and that makes my editing WAY easier and more enjoyable than it’s ever been in any of my 20 years doing this.
If you don’t feel the same about your toolset. Oh well. Sorry.
I’m sure it’s just because I don’t have enough “experience” to see things your way.
Again, I’m NOT telling you how to edit – or what to use.
I’m telling you about MY DIRECT EXPERIENCE with this tool.
How it makes me feel empowered to edit faster and smarter – AND how it started making me feel that way the DAY IT WAS RELEASED.
Shit, I even enjoyed reading source books like The Accidental Taxonomist as I tried to learn more about database driven editing – struggling to evolve my understanding of keyword strategies that might make my searches work better. Something NO EDITING TOOL had EVER before encouraged me to do. And, incidently, something I now use to leverage search across the web, across commercial databases, in my own product AND in my editing with FCP X.
And X was helping me with that in my first TWO months with it.
And to this day – when I wonder if I should go OUT of X to do a particular graphic animation or reasonably complex audio fix – I pause and ask myself if I can find a way to do it in X. And about 60% of the time – I find out I can.
While you were dismissing it – I was learning it as deeply as I could. Because I keep getting signals that it was WELL worth my time.
An investment I’m now seeing pay off every day I sit down to use it.
Maybe Premiere Pro or AVID inspires you like that. I hope so.
Because it’s really, REALLY nice
That’s all.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I’d be happy to be proved wrong so I could clean up my desk and not bother with the hardware that clutters it,”
Simon,
Nobody’s suggesting that you eschew ANY tool that works for you.
And if my day was divided by large swaths of Grading as opposed to Editing – I’d probably get a control surface as well. But it’s NOT.
AND – more than that – I’m afraid from what I’m seeing – The delta between what an onboard Camera Pre-set + LUT + whatever the AI folks are creating in the labs in terms of automatic correction can do – and a dedicated colorist can achieve – is kinda shrinking.
Understand I’m NOT saying those artistic skills are in immediate jeopardy.
They will ALWAYS have value. Hopefully great value for a LONG time.
But facing the incoming FLOOD of video production, it’s fair to ask if ALL of video processing will move toward being less like the services you’ll procure from a fine art studio – and MORE like those you’d procure from – say – a hair salon?
Which is to say, ubiquitous and not nearly as rare or precious as they are now.
I’m not ADVOCATING for that. Just trying to read the tea leaves of what’s been changing across the industry.
As I’ve written before, the primary talent of my youth – that of a professional narrator and VO talent – has been GUTTED over the past decade.
And it won’t stop there.
Not with all the AI stuff percolating in the labs now.
Having the COMPUTER compute a white balance offset and correct it? Trivial. Whether you have to push a button to initiate it or now.
Having a drag and drop LUT for the RAW conversion? Same..
We are inundated with people selling LUT based “looks” that attempt to turn aesthetics into an algorithm.
Yes, hopefully, there will ALWAYS be the artists who can out-perform the machines – but the mechanics of grading and “aesthetics you can scroll through and choose” are getting closer and closer to automated.
So I just don’t think I’m going to be comfortable going forward basing my entire future resume on that type of current skill.
But maybe I’m wrong. I almost hope so.
YMMV.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “AND – more than that – I’m afraid from what I’m seeing – The delta between what an onboard Camera Pre-set + LUT + whatever the AI folks are creating in the labs in terms of automatic correction can do – and a dedicated colorist can achieve – is kinda shrinking.”
That’s not what the discussion is about though. It was a discussion about the pros/cons of different human interface devices (both physical and virtual), not one about the impact of AI, computer algorithms and automation on the industry. Of course if you want to come at from the angle that complex HIDs in general are on their way out because machines will write, shoot, edit, voice, score, grade, mix and deliver content autonomously, that’s a train of thought that hasn’t been brought up yet.
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[Scott Thomas] “Ah… I thought Quantel was reduced to just color. I see Rio is an editor as well.
I noted that eQ-iQ was gone, and I assumed that they were out of the editing game.”The full editing set is there. Plus SAM/Quantel still sells variations of this UI with their full news editing systems. Just not under that name.
Also there’s still SGO Mistika, which is a full editor, but has found a niche in color correction. And Scratch – more of an a grading system than an editor, though.
So there are a number of companies out there with full editing consoles – just not the cheap ones.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis] “PERHAPS – it’s only when you accept that the new touchscreen has the CAPABILITY of being close to or equal to that tactile input device – do you can begin to achieve equivalent mastery?”
That’s why communication these days with people who solely rely on their smart phones, sucks. Misspellings, incorrect grammar, no punctuation or capitalization. Short, inadequate responses, because they are too lazy or it’s too difficult to actually flesh out an answer on the device they are using. For everyone one of these, I often have to send a back-and-forth string of e-mails trying to figure out what they really meant.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis] “AND – more than that – I’m afraid from what I’m seeing – The delta between what an onboard Camera Pre-set + LUT + whatever the AI folks are creating in the labs in terms of automatic correction can do – and a dedicated colorist can achieve – is kinda shrinking.”
No, it’s not. Applying a LUT to a camera clip is not grading or color correcting. And I don’t see any grading AI these days that actually works. Automatic correction is not grading and in many cases, the results are the exact wrong look for the situation.
[Bill Davis] “Having the COMPUTER compute a white balance offset and correct it? Trivial. Whether you have to push a button to initiate it or now.
Having a drag and drop LUT for the RAW conversion? Same..
We are inundated with people selling LUT based “looks” that attempt to turn aesthetics into an algorithm.”Often, you do not want perfect white balance. And LUTs are often wrong. Most of what’s sold/given away on the internet as LUTs are someone’s subjective “look” and most look like crap. They typically only look good with the demo footage that company uses to market the product.
Any more these days, most productions I deal with were shot with a multitude of cameras, each with their own log, pseudo-log, or raw format/look. The only one I trust is Arri and their Log-C. Even there, you still need to tweak. Most of these require manual grading, because LUTs, AI (whatever), simply don’t work.
I expect every editor to get those clips in the ballpark before showing this to the client. While that might not require a dedicated console, it does take time and there’s nothing automatic about the process. Having a console would definitely make it go faster. Naturally there’s nothing that works with the FCPX color board, which doesn’t help matters.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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