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FCPX Dogs, New Names
Before I get properly started, my apologies for the delay replying to the fun started on Old Dogs thread. Other parts of my job intervened, but I’m back to the fray.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about this. Here’s where I’m at right now.
I’ve said from the beginning that I’ve never been opposed to renaming the forum. My only requirement has been that someone actually come up with a better name. Three years later, nobody has suggested a single alternative that has gotten any traction from anyone else on that thread.
BTW, this hasn’t come up as often as some folks are saying. The last time was 7 months ago. Again around the first of last year, then once the year before.
Now then, with no objection to a new name in principle, I have three bottom lines.
1. A new name has to be REALLY better.
When somebody here proposes a specific name that makes a lot of other people say “Yep, that’s the one,” that’s the first sign that we’re on the right track.
Hasn’t happened yet.
2. It’s a debate forum.
Even a statement like “the right tool for the right job” can be seen as inherently derogatory, because it implies that there are jobs for which FCPX is NOT the right tool, when in fact, in proper hands, FCPX can do anything. For some people, it’s always the best tool.
Or not.
“Not” means “not.” Nothing more, nothing less. It implies nothing about WHAT the “or” refers to, and it implies no value judgements about the reasons for choosing FCPX “or Not.”
Not means not.
Which leads to the ongoing debate over whether there’s a debate. *A* debate may have been settled for your or me personally, but again, that depends on which debate we’re talking about. This forum has never been about a single debate, not for a single second.
Maybe we just add an “s.” Apple FCPX or Not: The Debates.
3. FCPX is the one and only reason there’s any debate.
Before I begin this section, I suggest grabbing a beverage. Perhaps an adult beverage.
In the 30 days leading up to NAB 2011, Creative COW had 1.7 million visitors, and roughly 1000 posts a day. Across the web, I followed NAB hashtags and individual Twitter feeds galore. I followed Facebook posts and news at other sites. We had a couple of reporters at the show, and I listened to them.
All the way through the end of the first day, I heard not one whisper of anyone meaningfully unhappy with their current NLE or its prospects.
Certainly there was some hope that Apple would have a less pathetic showing than the last four NABs, which had seen nothing significant in either 2009 or 2007, apart from the not at all immediately obvious workflow advantages from Pro Res. Most of the very real excitement about Pro Res in later NABs came from products like AJA iO in 2009, and NOT from Apple.
Check the archives on this. The biggest Apple-related takeaway from each of the previous six NABs, all the ones since the addition of multicam in 2005, was that Apple had underwhelmed.
With absolutely ZERO sign that anybody was considering switching from FCP. ZEROOOOOOOOO.
Really, even the hubbub about Apple’s disappointing NABs went away almost immediately as people came home and got back to work on the NLE that they loved. “Love” is the only word to describe the intensity of devotion that could withstand wave after wave of disappointment.
Alternatively, love is a good word for not viewing the state of things as much of a disappointment at all. You don’t look for change from your loved ones as musch as you look for DEVOTION. Change for its own sake is more often a BAD sign. FCP is working. My workflow is flowing. Don’t mess things up.
The FCP guys were in fact the dogs not needing new tricks. I’d argue that there was no group of users LESS likely to change NLEs. In some cases, because they didn’t need or want any tricks that were all that new. In other cases, because they’d tried other NLEs, landed on FCP, and had no intention of leaving, ever. Refinements would be good, improvements, yes.
But please, no new tricks. I’ve been tricked before.
Sidebar:
The one dynamic that might have moved the needle was the increasingly compelling advantages of Premiere Pro for After Effects-intensive production. I’ve always felt that Premiere Pro was undercounted by FCP-ers obsessed with market share (Resolved: No other NLE’s users have ever talked more about market share. Debate!), and underrated by people for whom Premiere Pro was always a better choice than FCP or Media Composer anyway. They just didn’t know because they didn’t look.And why on earth would they? They didn’t because they didn’t need to. FCP dogs had no need for new tricks!
(I had a whole section here about compare/contrast with the Creative Cloud debate, but I’ll save it. And yes, I trim these posts before I post them.)
Let’s continue.
“Apple doesn’t care about pros.”
Much of the frustration with FCP’s lack of progress was with Apple’s apparent failure to reciprocate the devotion of its most passionate media professional fans. The first appearance of “Apple doesn’t care about pros” in Creative COW dates back to the point at which iPods became Apple’s biggest source of revenue, around 2003. You can see it in the archives. It’s uncanny.
And every time it has come up since then, it means the same thing: “Apple doesn’t care about pros” = “Apple doesn’t care about my needs as much as I rely on Apple to meet them.”
Mere minutes into Apple’s NAB presentation, the outrage was so immediate that we had no choice but to open a new forum to manage it. No kidding, it had so completely swamped the FCP forum that we had the new forum opened before Apple got off the stage.
There’s been a strain of revisionist debate about how chirpy the audience was at the demo, but that’s often the nature of these kinds of presentations. People start clapping when the splash screen comes up. People WANT to be pleased….but the record clearly shows that, with overwhelming vehemence across the web, there was a meaningful number of people in that room who were not pleased at all.
The fact that increasing numbers of people are pleased NOW doesn’t change anything about why, even after its growth from ugly duckling into the glorious, glowing swan of Zeus himself, FCPX is still untenable for some people, and why other people are convinced that THOSE people just “aren’t holding it right.”
THE DEBATE(S)
Coming at this another way, if FCPX had instead been an update along the lines of the steps from 5 to 6 to 7, there would be no debate, except over when Apple was ever going to get its act together and deliver what its customers wanted and needed.
So….three years later, has Apple delivered what you wanted and needed?
Three years later, are you feeling that Apple is as devoted to your needs as a media professional you are to Apple?
That’s a whole ‘nother thread, and I think it would be plenty debate-y.
CREATIVE COW’S FIRST DEBATE
In May, we celebrate 20 years of building communities for media professionals. Twenty years!
Before 2011, there had been exactly one debate in our entire history. One. Whether DV was a “professional” format OR NOT. DV or Not: The Debate.
FCP originally got sucked up into that, when it didn’t support “professional” IO. DV is not professional, ergo, FCP is not professional.
Along came SDI support, and the debate over whether FCP was “professional” faded almost immediately. The debate was never about FCP, at least in Creative COW. It was about “professional” format support.
Also note: the biggest early argument in favor of the “professional” intent and suitability of FCPX was the range of “professional” formats it supported. FCPX supports professional formats, ergo, FCPX is professional.
SO ANYWAY
An idea occurred to me a couple of nights ago as I was drafting this.
(And yes, I’ve been drafting this. I’ve also got half a dozen tabs open with posts I’ve started but not finished in this and other COW forums. And yes, I make this all harder for myself than I need to. And yes, for all the time I spend drafting and trimming, my posts should be a lot shorter and sharper.)
In keeping with my own requirement that any suggestion for a new name for the forum ACTUALLY INCLUDE A NEW NAME for consideration, here’s a suggestion:
Apple FCPX & Beyond: The Debates
I’ll be honest, I don’t at all prefer that to the current name. I think that the current name is the right one.
But, in my spirit of saying that I’ll consider changing the name to anything that has the words “FCPX” and “Debate” in it, that large numbers of other people also like, there’s my specific offering.
My favorite option is still leaving the name of the forum to keep doing its job, maybe just adding an S, The Debates.
So, refill that adult beverage, and lemme know what you’re thinking. I love a good debate.
(Note that since I first posted, I edited to make it shorter. Horrifying, I know. You may need another drink.)
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79 Replies
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Just leave it!
It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
In my mind, as I have stated, the debate about FCPX is over, if there was ever was one. You either use it or not. Hell, we could have a Avid or Not or Premiere or Not forum. It just seems silly to stick one product on the title of the forum and let everyone flail away. If we need a debate, it should be agnostic.
“Creative Editorial Tools Now and in the Future: The Debate”
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
+1 for leave it (or add the “s”)
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[Scott Witthaus] “In my mind, as I have stated, the debate about FCPX is over, if there was ever was one.”
+1
Perhaps their was one at one time… but I fail to see it’s relevance anymore.
So… I’m not an old Apple Dog (even though I’m someone else old dog). I started using FCP X after using Vegas Pro for 12 years. I never used FCP 7. I would expect a forum called “Apple FCPX or Not: The Debate” to be filled with posts about whether or not one should move from whatever NLE they are on to FCP X or not (or maybe just from FCP 7 to FCP X). Well… Look back and the recent posts and see when the last time that question was raised? The recent posts seem to have nothing to do with whether you should be using FCP X or not. Here are the last 10 post subjects:
- This quote is too long for a sig…
- FCPX on 5K iMac
- Meta: forum pagination.
- LG Thunderbolt Monitor 21:9 UHD
- Varicam 35
- Why can’t I export the timeline?
- FCPX: A Lesson in Language
- It’s Alive!!
- Why new final cut X is so RESTRICTIVE with connected clips? I DO NOT SEE ANY BENEFIT
- Eyeon Fusion now Black Magic Fusion 7.5 is out, light version free, No OS X
It’s not that some of those post didn’t whine a little (e.g., FCPX: A Lesson in Language) but as Scott pointed out, there is no longer a need for a forum to debate the merits of FCP X any more then you should start one to debate the merits of Premiere Pro, Avid, Sony Vegas, etc. Maybe it’s time to archive it and move on?
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
How about, “FCPX, The Debates”
It keeps the X-centric-ness of the forum, yet acknowledges that we’re prone to veer off onto whatever shiny object captures our attention for “debate du jour”.
“Constituo, ergo sum”
Bob Woodhead / Atlanta
CMX-Quantel-Avid-Premiere-FCPX-AFX-Crayola
“What a long strange trip it’s been….” -
I think Andrew Kimery nailed it.
FCPX and the Perpetual Debates.
When’s the album release party?
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“FCP X and other signs of the apocalypse debates”
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Are we still debating? The last few threads had nothing to do with FCS or how useful it is. And even the Adobe debate forum is dead. I mean…dead. They don’t even bring up other topics. Here, there are other topics. But not all FCX related. I’d make this a general NLE debate.
NLE? What’s to Debate?
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
In all honesty and after a great deal of thinking (head hurts like crazy), the name should remain as is.
I did think of “The Great NLE Debate” as a possible name change. Whether it is more relevant I do not know. Also, as time goes on, should the Adobe debate continue or be brought to an end? After all, that forum seems to have slowed down very much, at least from what I can see. Just my thoughts here.
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Someone please explain to me why this general thrashing-about debate forum has anything to do with “FCPX Or Not”. Maybe when it first was released and there was plenty of teeth gnashing over the EOL of Legacy, but that’s long gone now. There is simply no reason to debate FCPX over any other software.
If you were a Legacy user, it’s now “FCPX or Something Else: Get Over It”. 😉
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter
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