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FCP-X: Thinking Differently?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “My guess is a :30 with VO and music means the VO is probably driving the pace of the edit most of the time, but it does appear there’s a few SFX “crashes” in there with some short music only breaks.”
Maybe the FCPX primary storyline’s functionality is a bit overloaded. It seems meant to both drive the story and provide the foundation in time for the rest of the edit. This is probably apt for narrative. Here, though, the VO is driving the story and the soundtrack is providing the foundation in time.
It’s not insurmountable, but it strikes me as a bit awkward. Am I really just thinking about this wrong?
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 -
[Chris Upchurch] “”The only ‘intuitive’ interface is the nipple. After that it’s all learned.””
I agree. But I would add that for me “intuitive” is something that would rely on “common knowledge,” things learned by a vast majority of the population. So from past learning you know to click with a mouse, drag and drop and so on.
A huge problem with X is it’s NOT intuitive to anyone who has ever edited on any other piece of editing software. You have to rethink, relearn and struggle to use it. It may be more intuitive to a novice, but even there I think it is a steep learning curve to acquire the deep toolset hidden from view on initial contact.
Best,
Geoff -
[Ben Scott] “Get over it
The software will get upgraded to what you are after in time”
I am over it. I’m learning Avid and Adobe.
But how are you so confident X will get upgraded to what people want? They haven’t been fixing a lot of what I needed them to fix for the 7 years I’ve been a user. Why would they start now?
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[Andrew Richards] ” Is it at all possible it was Apple’s UI designers studying how people use their software and seeking to remove barriers to common tasks?”
No it’s not. Having been on the inside, and understanding how the organization and Mr. Ubilous work, I can say that professional real-world feedback ranks very low on the priority list. Admittedly, it has been nearly 10 years since I’ve worked there, but my grapevine still tells me this is how things are done.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Robert Brown]They haven’t been fixing a lot of what I needed them to fix for the 7 years I’ve been a user. Why would they start now?
And how long will they be given to do so? Will this topic still be rolling along with the same arguments and rebuttals 6 months from now because FCPX is still essentially the same software? How about 12 months from now? How long will it take?
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[Chris Jacek] “I can say that professional real-world feedback ranks very low on the priority list.”
This came up in the iPad 2 launch. A reporter asked something about feedback from iPad 1 customers, and the reply was something along the lines of, we don’t solicit feedback, we just try to make the coolest stuff. If you think about it, that really rings true.
To their credit, they mostly get this stuff right. Even when they kind of don’t, or a product goes its own way regardless of what’s expected, the rest of the world has tended to follow soon enough.
There is nothing in Apple’s experience to suggest that there’s a better way for them to handle product design and deployment.
Not so great if you’re a customer who actually needs something specific, though.
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[Geoff Dills] “A huge problem with X is it’s NOT intuitive to anyone who has ever edited on any other piece of editing software. You have to rethink, relearn and struggle to use it. It may be more intuitive to a novice, but even there I think it is a steep learning curve to acquire the deep toolset hidden from view on initial contact.”
Very good point Geoff. This is in fact a major issue with FCP X that’s been overlooked by most, because it’s overall efficiency is typically discussed in a vacuum, without any consideration of the costs of both time and dollars retraining the huge base of existing editors to whom traditional track-based timelines are completely intuitive.
We know there were 2-million FCP 7 users, because that’s Apple’s own number. So, there are 2-million users to factor-in, in terms of time and money for retraining. And, retraining on other NLEs would actually need to be factored into the equation too, as Apple’s decision making process ultimately requires retraining for every current user of FCS 3 on one NLE or another.
The bottom line is, if FCP X is actually more efficient for newbies than those with previous training, a cost-benefit analysis would indicate an overall break even point would only be reached when approximately 2-million new users have adopted FCP X.
Will there ever be 2-million totally new users who’ll pickup FCP X more efficiently, to balance the scales, (if it is in fact more intuitive for newbies)? If not, then it naturally follows that the overall efficiency of FCP X and the ratio of its overall costs to overall benefits would be suspect.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new tutorial: Prepare for a seamless transition to FCP X and OS X Lion
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCP-10-MAC-Lion/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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[Andrew Richards] ” Likewise it is only fair that the accusations of FCPX’s timeline being “unusable” be substantiated. “
But they have been over and over again.
For me personally:
1) I can’t create deliverables by making individual audio stems, nor can I make other required combinations like M&E tracks. Nor can I build multi-track Quicktime audio files with isolated audio tracks.
2) I can’t view picture on an external broadcast monitor other than in preview.
3) I cannot interoperate with any other video or audio program, other than a one-sided 3rd party OMF export.
These aren’t opinions. These are facts. Other people have other facts to add to this. You know what many of them are because they DO get detailed. I have a number of other things I dislike about X, from its lack of window modularity and its dogmatic approach to editing to its candy-like interface and its dumbed-down tool-set. Those are opinions. And while it might seem obvious to me that having all slip and roll tools separated from each other by single keystrokes makes for faster editing once you know what you are doing, I acknowledge that that is an opinion, and will generally preface a statement like that with “I find” and/or for me. The above numbered items ARE facts.
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I forget which release it was but I recall a four or so years back Apple put out a very
buggy version of FCP. Again, as I recall, there was an update addressing many of the
those bugs within days. It’s been what 6 or so weeks since the release of X and there
has not been a peep about an update to address the bugs in X. As much as I would like
to think this is not the case, this leads me to believe that the FCP X department is just
an empty room in Cupertino.bigpine
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[Walter Soyka] “FCP’s media organization (“clips” in “bins”) is absolutely a film metaphor, and shares some important concepts with film. A clip can only exist in one bin. If you want to store the same thing in two places, you have to copy it.”
Why is this a good thing though? Why copy digital data when you can just reference it?
[Walter Soyka] “FCPX’s media organization is totally different. Metadata rules over physical arrangement.”
Yes, and that metadata makes it searchable. Spatial is quicker to locate only as long as the data set can fit in your field of view. Truly a fundamental difference, and a debate that is not at all limited to NLEs.
[Walter Soyka] “FCPX’s editorial abstractions (storylines and connected clips) don’t exist with FCP or with razor blades and splicing tape. They behave as if they were physical in the context of the FCPX timeline, but there’s no physical analog.”
True. And I think that’s why I like the abstractions. Forcing a meatspace analog onto fully digital workflow seems incongruent to me. I can understand why others hate it though.
Best,
Andy
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