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FCPX is Ready for prime time
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Feature length can be cut with X without a problem, like in Avid and Premiere, I just don’t see the issue. yes, there still are workflow issues with shared storage that need resolving, but there seem to be enough companies making it work, when they want to make the move.
Here in Germany, there is still very little high end work going on with X, but the few that are doing it, like Knut Hake with the show Danny Lowinski. ok, its the only example i can know of right now in Germany, but still, someone is making it work, and likes it.
I make my money in TV, internet, commercials, but my background is film, i still shoot low budget shorts, get called to help out starting filmakers, who can’t pay, shooting 2 hour long plays in multicam or work on projects with friends, like the 60 minute experimental i finished last year. Its nothing out of the ordinary, very, very low budget, but its full of fx, fast edits, lots of recorded audio and fcp sound fx library stuff, mixed footage, very badly recorded location sound. of course the director is a painter, its experimental so the filmcrowd avoids it, even I rarely watch art videos or films perhaps some Matthew Barney or Bill Viola once in a while. But on this particular project i was able to work much faster than 7, even though it was more work than the previous experimental 45 min and 60 min we edited on 7.
A long timeline is a long timeline, whats the difference if its low budget or high end? isn’t the issue what computer and storage solution I use to get the software working smoothly with whatever footage i use, at times it requires third party software, but hasn’t that always been the case to a certain degree, especially when new formats come out?
I’ve worked and played with X almost every day for the last two years, I still freelance as an Avid and FCP7 editor, currently i have to use Avid and FCP7, and it looks like I’ll be making more money on Legacy than X for some time to come, i use what I get hired for. I still prefer X, and I’ve actually used it.
When someone tries X a few times and doesn’t like it it really seems to be a matter of taste, at least in the discussions I’ve had at work. And i still hear the not good for features or Apple is leaving the promarket, when i ask for specifics its usually silence and turns into an it looks like imovie argument.
In most cases editors don’t need to change, so there’s no point in learning it if nobody is going to use it for a while, and most editors get hired for their editing skills primarily, the using software skill is secondary. Its important to know how to edit certain formats or styles.
As a freelancer its always good to know more than one NLE.
“Always look on the bright side of life” – Monty Python
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[Bill Davis] “Nope. Unless it was a literal typo, I’ve never, ever done that.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but:
“OK, here you go. Both AVOID and PPro can’t “satisfy” my now required “deliverable” of a NLE that leaves your work connected to an on-line output file so I don’t have to waste endless time doing “work-arounds” in order to refresh a public copy of a newly produced video directly from the NLE ”
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/57447
I can’t see how that’s a typo, but I’ll grant that that might be a Freudian slip.
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[Bill Davis] “Really, I’m not saying it’s ideal, just wondering what it needs to do that it doesn’t do?
“From what I see, it comes down to two primary features that make X excel at other things.
First, its timeline does not present as a good a map of the project as other NLEs. The timeline stores layers of material, both audio and visual, related to each shot in an easily indexable, understandable way–a way that is highly visual to everyone working on that area of project. It functions not only as a timeline, but also as a chart or map to the project. The fluidity with which X is able to move chunks of material is gained by sacrificing elements of this chart/map aspect.
Second, while the metadata indexing elements of X are terrific, there is a point–especially with shared media–where traditional binning is preferable for organization and control. Dividing up bins to share work–for both security and clarity–is, from the perspective of the project, arbitrary. The metadata does not need to know that Bob has access to this but not to that, and that Sally can see all of those clips but not alter them, and that this section of the timeline is temporarily being removed to another machine. Traditional binning becomes a manageable record of those things, especially when you are assigning temporary attributes that might be reversed the very next week or day.
Now, there may be a time when metadata usage and coordination is so slick that both of the above situations can be better managed by something like X–where updated metadata can be externally charted and permissions can be granted with the granularity of something like Active Directory, but were not there yet. Personally I would find that very exciting–to have an editing tool as agile as X that was also able to create complex charting and gatekeeping, and I think that’s where we are going, whether with X or something else.
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[Bill Davis] “What is it about the way X works that makes it either incapable or even more difficult for feature work?”
I’ll answer that in broad strokes, since I’m in the middle of tweaking the cut on a feature in X. At this stage I’m working on the whole film (by reels) with everything in one master event. All clips are synced using Sync-N-Link-X, which embeds the audio into the clip and is not an FCP X Synchronized Clip. I am working with ProRes Proxies created in RedCine X Pro from RED camera files. I have about 2,000 source clips to deal with.
I like the fact that I am dealing with 5-7 source mic tracks on all clips and they are collapsed into the clip. Easier to deal with on the timeline than any other NLE. Unfortunately harder to deal with if you want to break those apart and move them around. As a result, I am simply avoiding nearly everything to do with temp audio mixing and will pass this along to the ProTools sound designer/editor/mixer. Working with split edits/sound overlaps is very easy and X is one of the better NLEs in that sense, except that standard trimming features are sub-par. For example, no trim-window display with keyboard trimming. No asymmetrical trimming. (Forget the precision editor – it’s a toy.)
Part of the stage I’m in is quickly finding and reviewing alternates and making client-supervised changes. Match-frame is a joke, because you cannot match to any clip where you have detached audio. The event library filtering is very fast and works well. When you do match-frame, you can’t do it inside a collection. The app bounces you out to the full event, so instead of looking through a handful of clips, you now have 2,000 to wade through. Whenever you open the full event or the project library (now with many versions) it takes a long time to load – as in ‘get a cup of coffee’ long.
The collection structure is inadequate for working on large projects, because you can never fully avoid going out to the full event at some point, thus you slow down the process. All browser sorting is single-column, so if you sort on the scene column, the takes are often out of order. You are limited to one notes column for entries, so you end up cheating by using other columns for user info.
Now, I’m sure the reply will have to do with multiple PIOPs (pure junk), smart collections (not worth the effort) and favorites (sometimes useful). I get that, but it just doesn’t really work well when you try to apply it in this situation. Then there’s the inherent double-edged sword of the application itself. In order to make skimming work, a lot of info has to buffer into RAM and that takes a lot of time, hangs up the application frequently and slows you down a lot of times. Usually, when you start in the morning, if you give it time to load everything, then it tends to behave for several hours. Then it’s best to quit and restart to clean out the brain of the app.
On the plus side (I work in the list view with dual screens), it’s nice to quickly toggle up or down through the event list and quickly see the context of that clip in the filmstrip and identify whether it’s the shot I want. No need to load it into any viewer and scrub through like other NLEs. The downside is that there is no way to zoom into that source clip, if I want to zero in on a single word to make in/out points. It’s geared to the editor slamming it coarsely to the timeline and then fine-tuning.
Comparable-sized (and larger) Media Composer and FCP “legacy” projects I’ve cut (on lesser machines, BTW), have never caused these sorts of issues for me. YMMV. OTOH, skimming is nice along with other benefits, so it’s a trade-off and each editor simply has to pick their poison. Nevertheless, seeing what I see on this project with 2,000 clips that are merely ProRes Proxy, I would be reluctant to double or triple the load and do it with high-res media.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “I think this article is apropos about now 😉
https://provideocoalition.com/kmcauliffe/story/do-the-professionals-care-abo...”
The guy who wrote that obviously doesn’t like and use FCPX, but it’s no excuse for such a misinformed and biased piece.
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[Oliver Peters] “Match-frame is a joke, because you cannot match to any clip where you have detached audio. “
Seriously?!
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[Ty Vann] “The guy who wrote that obviously doesn’t like and use FCPX, but it’s no excuse for such a misinformed and biased piece.”
He is addressing what he sees regarding the adoption by established facilities in Toronto. I believe that part is accurate and echoes the experience of others outside of Toronto.
Actually I’m not sure what you consider inaccurate. He is largely taking to task the Supermeet presentation by Larry Jordan, which has received tons of criticism in this forum as well.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Chris Harlan] “Seriously?!”
Yes. At least as it pertains to these clips with embedded double-system audio.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Yes. At least as it pertains to these clips with embedded double-system audio.
– Oliver”
That has not been my experience, and I use, and detach audio, from master clips with embedded multichannel audio in pretty mu ch everything I do. What are these clips?
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “That has not been my experience, and I use, and detach audio, from master clips with embedded multichannel audio in pretty mu ch everything I do. What are these clips?”
Beats me. Hasn’t worked right from day one on this project. These are master clips with embedded double-system sound. The embedding is done either manually (open in timeline) or via Sync-N-Link X. When I detach the audio on a connected clip and try to match frame it just makes an error noise.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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