FCPX and Pervasive Metadata

[Walter Soyka]

My apologies for coming in so late to this thread.

[Gary Huff] “On the one hand, we are told that the future is these freelancers shooting on their DSLRs and coming back to FCPX on their Mac Book Pro/iMac and churning out video that is fully “baked” inside Apple’s NLE. This implies low cost/quick turnaround video. So where does metadata fit in? With video being “cheaper”, the longer one spends per project, the less one actively makes. So why spend an hour logging all the footage when you’re shooting one project before moving on to the next and time is money? Where does metadata fit into this revolutionary new workflow? Cataloging footage in this manner comes in hand in two scenarios: 1) long-form work and 2) database footage. Outside of b-roll, the second doesn’t seem likely for these new individual shooters, and how does the second work when it’s all short-form Internet distributed material?”

I question the premises of this argument. Firstly, not all video projects are best-suited for DSLR/MBP-toting freelance shooter/editors. The one-man-band is indisputably on the rise (both in use and in capability), but many projects still require full production teams. Secondly, for many projects (for both one-man-band and production teams), some time spent upfront logging and tagging footage will pay dividends later during editorial.

A quick parable: a young lumberjack, looking to make a name for himself at the camp, challenged one of the old hands to contest to see who could fell the most trees in a single day. The older lumberjack agreed, and they began chopping. The young lumberjack worked furiously, felling one tree after another. He looked over his shoulder, and saw the old lumberjack sitting down! The young lumberjack continued chopping, certain he would win.

By sundown, though, it was clear that the old lumberjack had felled nearly twice as many trees. The young lumberjack asked him, “How did you beat me? I chopped hard all day long, and when I turned around to look at you, I saw you sitting down and doing nothing!”

“I wasn’t doing nothing,” the old lumberjack replied. “I sat down every hour to sharpen my axe.”

Creating meaningful metadata is the editorial equivalent of sharpening the axe. It’s a tool to work smarter, not harder.

For a small project that you can keep entirely in your head, logging and tagging may not be worth the time it takes. You don’t need to stop to sharpen your axe if you’re only felling a single tree. However, larger projects may merit better use of metadata. If you’re going to watch the footage anyway, why not spend an extra 15 seconds now to tag it, versus spending five minutes later to try to find it again?

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Here’s what I see happening in the industry: shooting ratios are skyrocketing, post schedules are constricting, and editors are caught in the middle. Post has to happen faster, and that means dealing with more video faster than before.

People are not good at sifting through mountains of data, but they are very good at understanding content. Computers are very good at sifting through mountains of data, but they have no capacity for understanding content. In editorial, metadata is the bridge that we can build from one side of this divide to the other, to let people use computers to sift through mountains of content.

I haven’t met an FCP7 editor who doesn’t use metadata — but most do it with bins and clip names. If you’ve ever renamed a clip in the browser something like “CU Gary Interview – Questions Usefulness of Metadata,” you have created useful metadata which encodes the shot type, the subject of the shot, the category of footage, and a quick note about the content to help you find it later.

Speaking generally, bins are metadata-lite. Everything that can be done with bins can be done with metadata, but not everything that can be done with metadata can be done with bins. Bins are a physical metaphor from film editorial; if we’re going to take a more abstract view of our media, bins impose unnecessary limitations. They don’t scale well for large on-going projects, and they don’t scale well for teams of editors.

You can make arguments both ways for whether clip library data belongs inside the project (as it was with FC7) or outside the project (as it is with FCPX), but the way FCPX separates the clip library from the project actually makes their metadata system more powerful. You can buy an NLE for $299 and get a fully integrated digital asset management system for free.

Apple brought color grading to the masses a few years ago by integrating Color into Final Cut Studio. Now, I think they’re bringing DAM to the masses by building it right into their NLE.

When I said that “pervasive metadata is absolutely the way of the future,” I wasn’t referring specifically to FCPX’s implementation — although I do think it’s quite good! Rather, I meant that while NLEs have very sophisticated toolsets for actually editing video, the toolsets for managing our ever-growing piles of assets are just in their infancy.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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