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FCPX: A Lesson in Language
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[Shawn Miller] ” I believe that Vegas used the term project in the usual sense (a container for everything you might put on the timeline).”
It’s both. A project has a single timeline. You can open multiple instances of Vegas, each with a single timeline. I think their rationale is from the DAW world. So a timeline is basically analogous to a “track sheet”.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I used to tease my father by saying the sure sign of getting old was complaining that language was deteriorating not evolving. To counter he would point out that forced change, common in advertising and politics was designed to obfuscate and was not evolution but subversive and undesirable.
He had a point. A forced change to language that reduces effective communication should fail to survive the evolution of language. As someone who works in collaboration with editors, directors and producers clear definitions matter and gratuitous change of meaning muddies things. So far the relatively minor uptake of X in my area of post has been by other dinosaurs who can translate when we talk about basics like projects and sequences.
And given that dinosaur is a word that means terrible lizard and my colleagues are not terrible or reptiles I am evoking the Bill Davis common usage definition. The fact that most actual dinosaurs were neither terrible nor reptilian means the word is no longer useful as an accurate descriptor to science and can be happily appropriated.
Like Bill I wish to reserve OARFUL to mean satisfied full feeling when rowing against the tide.
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[Oliver Peters] “[Shawn Miller] ” I believe that Vegas used the term project in the usual sense (a container for everything you might put on the timeline).”
It’s both. A project has a single timeline. You can open multiple instances of Vegas, each with a single timeline. I think their rationale is from the DAW world. So a timeline is basically analogous to a “track sheet”.
– Oliver”
Yes, you’re right. I think I was confusing Vegas with Encore. It all seems to blend together after a while. 🙂
Shawn
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Pre Libraries, Event and Project didn’t make much sense, and it seemed like a half hearted attempt to bring together certain aspects of other Apple applications where the Event term is used.
Now with Libraries, it makes much more sense, but you have to take in to account the way that FCPX works.
If you use Snapshots in X, it could be argued that there’s really no reason to ever change the name of the current *clears throat* Project you are working on. I think that’s the big difference. X assumes that you are going to make multiple videos from each set of media (or Library) and each video is it’s own project. FCP7 and other NLE’s assume the the project is the over arching definition of all the media inside of it. I think with films, the project term makes sense, but when you look at news or new media, commercials, and reality television, a library is actually a more apt name, and certain Projects come out of the different Library of media.
So the Library contains all of the elements (Footage, sequences, sync stuff, etc), the Event contains sub directories of that stuff for further organization, and from there, you have Projects. Each Library, or even each Event can have different Projects (or you can have an Event full of Projects which is what I usually do).
Many times, we cut different versions from the same material. Instead of “ThisVersion_v1…ThisVersion_v100” I keep the Projects as “ThisVersion” and then snapshot along the way to save any different versions that I may need to go back and revisit. Then I start a new Project for “ThatVersion” and snapshot that one.
I then keyword Projects to the most recent (or keyword other important snapshot versions) and then I keyword all the old Projects as “zOld Projects” and delete them out of the “recent” keyword.
I rather like the nomenclature, but you do have accept the terms as they are, and not what they were, and that may not feel necessary.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “X assumes that you are going to make multiple videos from each set of media (or Library) and each video is it’s own project.”
Righto! The databasey stuff! Many databases that can be shared. There is an old thread around here somewhere, wherein the entire thing was discussed.
Apple used language to refer to the new stuff with new terms because the databasey was new.
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[Richard Herd] “There is an old thread around here somewhere, wherein the entire thing was discussed. “
Just one old thread? Craziness!
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I think I remember around the time Apple bought Final Cut from Macromedia Avid made a statement about how similar the interface was and that the naming of projects and timelines were a copyright infringement. They didn’t end up suing.
Macromedia chose the terms used in FCP, so it may have been difficult to sue Apple for something they didn’t do themselves. Is it possible that they had to rename everything in FCP X as to not violate the copyright as this is the version that is completely Apple created?
Now I must watch Sleepy Hollow..
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[Darren Roark] “Is it possible that they had to rename everything in FCP X as to not violate the copyright as this is the version that is completely Apple created? “
No. I don’t believe it’s either copyrighted or trademarked. I had this discussion with Avid when Adobe released Premiere 5 (1st one) way back when, since it used the same style of interface and nomenclature. At the time the Avid folks told me that was an oversight on their part. Even so, I’m not sure they could have if they’d tried, since the concepts were and are so universal.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
My guess: they sat in a conference room with a whiteboard and said, “What would we do if we were designing this thing from scratch? We don’t owe anybody anything, so ignore what anybody else has done. Including us. What’s the Apple-iest way we could do it?
That’s what Mac was, after all. Torching Apple’s position as market leader with Apple II, a position they never regained. Compatibility with anyone else, including ourselves? No idea what you’re talking about.
In fact, Apple as a Mac sales business is a middling success at best. They hovered on the brink of disaster for years. As late as 2003 (or 4?), their stock never reached double digits.
Being a Mac maniac in the 90s was exhausting, let me tell you. Init conflicts, System 7 (again with the incompatibilities!), EOL’d product lines — printers, scanners, cameras (what? You didn’t have an Apple QuickTake? I had TWO). We still loved what we loved, mind you, but we wondered when it was going to be fun again.
What changed Apple’s fortunes, and ours, was when Apple stopped acting like a computer company trying to be compatible with everyone. The turning point was iTunes on Windows, allowing Apple to sell iPods to the whole world. (Check it out. The stock started climbing nearly that very day.)
All of which Apple did while still choosing a path of their own making, with little regard for industry conventions. ANY industry’s conventions, whether music players, phones, or computer software and hardware interfaces.
NOW we’re talking fun.
The fact is that FCPZ (aka, FCP Zombie) was conventional, ie, very much in keeping with industry conventions. Even ProRes was Avid DNxHD, four years after Avid did it.
As a result, FCPZ was one of least Apple-y monstrosities ever unleashed on the faithful.
And FCPX is one of the Apple-iest. Which it was never going to be if it adhered to any meaningful convention.
So I don’t think that they had any interest in what Avid or Macromedia or Apple itself had ever done. I don’t think they intentionally TRIED to do something different either. I just don’t think they cared.
Of course the guys doing this thinking came from this world, and stories are still being told similarly enough over time that they couldn’t burn EVERYTHING to the ground, but again, burning EVERYTHING to the ground on purpose requires them to have paid closer attention to the past than I think they did.
Or to coin a phrase, rather than think “compatible” or “conventional,” they decided to think “different.”
Arguably, in this area, for the very first time.
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[Tim Wilson] “Or to coin a phrase, rather than think “compatible” or “conventional,” they decided to think “different.”
Arguably, in this area, for the very first time.”Or in a nutshell, it’s Randy saying, “What do I really need to cut my vacation scuba diving videos?”
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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