FCP X Strikes Again

[Tim Wilson]

Don’t put metal in the Science Oven.

(Coupla naughty words in here, but entirely on topic…for this off-topic meme subthread…)

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “Rather, it’s about reliability, robustness, dependability and predictability. FCP X has still got a ways to go in those departments.
“

For some users in some instances absolutely correct.

For other users in other instances absolutely not true.

Again, it’s tempting to think that the way each of us edits and the priorities that are meaningful to us is how everyone else should think about these things, but trust me, there are people out there using X right now who have NEVER “pasted attributes” even once and are perfectly happy not to need to.

And there were probably some classes of FCP Legacy users who spent their entire career never touching aspects of the program that I had to pound on every day. Heck, if someone is cutting movie trailers – and being delivered only source footage with proper color grades in place, then it’s doubtful they’d ever need to be an amateur colorist, right?

I’m not saying that every single detail of the software shouldn’t work as designed. Of course it should. I’m just saying that for the past 12 years, I’ve watched as people excoriated software for not having functions that I NEVER use. So those really don’t bother me.

Reliability? Where are the constant posts about people failing to get their work done in X? I just don’t see much. Robustness? Not even sure what that means, but I suppose its the way the software matches what you need, and again that’s an individual editor thing. Predictability? I’ve sat down in front of X for 3.5 years plus. And the only time I fail to get predictable results from the first keystroke are when they change foundational stuff at a program revision, and it takes me a few days to get up to speed.

Oliver, I really do think that all software is now following the SCORM/SCRUM/AGILE, whatever the current acronym or initialism method in vogue production plan might be – and that means you send it out “mostly baked” and let the users guide the development in the details.

And so this is really just the new normal.

Bug free is going to be more a hallmark of we’re not trying to do anything very special here, just plugging in the easy stuff.

But I might be very wrong.

Time will tell.

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.

[Paul Neumann]

You’re very wrong.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Damn. The gif is much better, but I guess gifs don’t work on the cow.

Here’s an old fashioned link:

https://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/540/662/748.gif

[Bill Davis]

[Paul Neumann] “You’re very wrong.”

Great, that’s so illuminating, Paul.

How about you step up and tell all of us WHY I’m wrong?

Cuz, you know, group advancement?

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.

[Paul Neumann]

It’s not the “new normal”, it’s really the “new unacceptable”. Apple does use Agile methdologies, but it’s foolish to let any bugs reach the consumer’s hands. The cost of fixing a bug that reaches production is generally agreed to be 10x cost to fix than what it would be to fix that bug before release. Factor in socialization/awareness factor of any bugs by the consumers (in this case Oliver) and the cost of that bug goes even higher. Agile methodology is there to prevent the very problems we’re talking about. There are “doneness” requirements of every team for every sprint or scrum. Agile demands that “doneness” include not just all dev, test and documentation, but that each team’s product (or part) COULD be released to the public with no problems.

So perhaps this is a case of what we call “scrumbut”, as in, “We did our scrum, but we didn’t cover everything.” And that’s where Product Managers get shown the door.

Apple uses Agile in their Order Management processes quite successfully. (Opinion Insert: this is obviously a VERY important part of what their development operations exist for.) Facebook, JP Morgan-Chase, AT&T, Google and yes, Adobe all use Agile and release often several times a week with no problems.

So, it’s not the “new normal”. And if you look at how Apple develops the software that fuels their actual business bottom line (Order Management), you can understand why my first response to Oliver was that this shouldn’t happen and that Apple is better than that.

[Richard Herd]

[Paul Neumann] “it’s foolish to let any bugs reach the consumer’s hands”

Maybe that was true in 1999, when all the delivery of the software was slow: packaging, shipping. But that’s not true in 2014 when the delivery of the software is fast: downloads.

Rather than spend a big effort trying to break the app with beta testers, it is more profitable to externalize to customers those costs by delivering the software and having the user base find and report bugs.

In fact, Order Management has been user tested extensively, and Apple does not bear any risk if it goes haywire; the users do via their credit cards.

Over to Adobe. Their documentation is terrible. I know they are working on it, but it is terrible; it appears they have externalized those substantial costs to the user communities, like the Cow.

[Bill Davis]

So thank you Paul.

At least this time my snarky comment achieved it’s desired ends. Instead of your dead end comment, bingo. we have DISCUSSION. And one that everyone can learn from.

See the first line, again.

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.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Richard Herd] “Over to Adobe. Their documentation is terrible. I know they are working on it, but it is terrible; it appears they have externalized those substantial costs to the user communities, like the Cow.”

Well, I think everyone’s documentation can stand some improvement but curiously, you didn’t mention that.

Yes, Adobe most definitely is working on improving our documentation and we combine both internal and external sources to help users find the answers to their questions as quickly as possible.

Our reference PDF currently clocks in at 458 pages. It may not be as good as you’d wish, but there is certainly a lot of information that will be useful to many folks.

Premiere Pro reference manual

Personally, I like user forums because there is always going to be some good information there among like-minded, passionate users. The fact that Adobe integrates that into its search results (if you wish you can turn this off), I think is a plus.

There are several great forums out there in addition to Adobe’s own. Creative Cow being one of the top ones out there.

In addition, Adobe is often active in these forums because not only is it a way to help, it is a way for us to proactively learn of issues and start to address them. Most of us who do this do it because we care and not because its a part of the job: personally, I’d get yelled at if I did a lot of this during normal hours.

Is it as ‘terrible’ as you describe? I’d like to think not, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Can it be better? Definitely. Does Adobe offer demonstrate that it cares about this in standard and non-standard ways? I hope you think so.

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Dennis Radeke] “Our reference PDF currently clocks in at 458 pages.”

I appreciate that Adobe are having a push to improve the documentation and that’s great but if there’s bragging about length of manual PDFs to be done, let’s remember that the manual for Apple Motion 5 runs to 1432 pages and is a terrific model for how to do this kind of thing.

So 458 pages doesn’t really seem that impressive.

(And of course Motion is just a toy application that no serious professional would use …)

EDIT: The FCP X manual PDF is pretty rubbish by Apple’s past standards but even that is 555 pages.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com