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FCPX on MBP Retina Display – WOW
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[Charlie Austin] “I don’t think it’d take 6 months, it took me about a week to get my head around the interface, a little longer to learn the important keyboard shortcuts and figure out a workflow that I could deal with”
I wouldn’t expect it to take six months either. I just threw out that number because I was pontificated at once that I had no right to criticize X unless I’d put that kind of time in.
[Charlie Austin] “And honestly, at the end of the day I’m gonna need to get the rest of the editors where I work on board. It’s not a done deal”
LOL. Among my guys, I’m the one that has something nice to say about X.
[Charlie Austin] “Chris Harlan] I’m certainly open to it in the future. Three things might get me to hand my brain in for 6 months of trial and error–a mixer, color-coded roles (so that I can get a strong visual of where things sit on my timeline), and the ability to manually save both backups and alternate versions. Oh, four–add the ability to export a range.”
Well, I.m betting that’s all coming,”
If it does, I’ll probably give it a shot.
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[Bill Davis] “Ainderes says it’s crap and can’t do pro work. Now someone else says different. Aindreas served, Mr. Austin volleyed – and the point goes to Mr. Austin in my book. As to whether this is an exhibition game or the first match in a new era of our sport is anyone’s guess. “
Bummer. I thought I was supposed to be skating to where the puck was going. Let me change my shoes and I’ll meet you on the courts in ten. 🙂
I think Aindreas and Charlie are making different points. If Aindreas will permit me to put words in his mouth while he’s off cutting Olympics footage on FCP Legend, his point seems reasonable: “Show me the money.” If FCPX is so big with such huge sales and is so ready for professional editorial, why are there zero freelance gigs in London that require it?
My interpretation of Charlie’s point (and please do correct me if I’m wrong) was that FCPX may not yet be accepted, but it is right on the cusp of readiness for broadcast.
It strikes me as a difference in perspective. Aindreas, in his position, must apparently work on whichever system is used in-house by his clients. Charlie, in his, can apparently choose the system he wants to work with. As such, Aindreas and Charlie may experience vastly different outcomes for using the same commercially unpopular tool in their respective markets. They can have different opinions and both still be right.
But that’s not the interesting part of the thread for me.
This is:
[Aindreas Gallagher] “straw in the wind here – but premiere just got two london hits this week on mandy worldwide mail list for editing – and the one the week before. there has not been a single FCPX posting in this entire time, world wide, on this weekly list since the launch of FCPX.”
[Chris Harlan] “I just talked with another cable Network that’s going all Premiere for promos.”
Proof that Premiere Pro is winning marketshare from FCP Legend?
Premiere Pro has gone from being considered a joke in some circles (when it was considered at all) to becoming a viable first choice in NLEs for broadcast promos. That’s a big deal.
This doesn’t take anything away from FCPX, but I think it does show how divergent workflow requirements are driving divergent NLE choices.
I joked the other day about FCP Legend being the editorial Pax Romana; maybe the analogy was more apt than I realized. The Pax Romana was pretty good for the general population, it was preserved through showmanship and propaganda, it was disrupted from within, and followed by a power struggle and shifting loyalties. Sounds familiar…
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “The Pax Romana was pretty good for the general population, it was preserved through showmanship and propaganda, “
This part of the analogy is a rather bizarre reading of history. I originally wrote a much longer note but I’m trying not to be a bigger A-hole than normal.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Chris Harlan] “If I did multicam, for instance, I’d be thinking about it.”
Not until they built some sort of timecode sync indicator window you wouldn’t.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “This part of the analogy is a rather bizarre reading of history. I originally wrote a much longer note but I’m trying not to be a bigger A-hole than normal.”
Which part of history — Roman or editorial? I’d gladly welcome your correction on either! But let’s be real. I glibly compared niche software choice to 200 years without war. This is a massive, massive stretch, and it’s bound to be dreadfully shallow!
Nonetheless, here’s what I was thinking:
From Wikipedia [link] (what else?): “Augustus’ challenge was to persuade Romans that the prosperity they could achieve in the absence of warfare was better for the Empire than the potential wealth and honor acquired when fighting a risky war. Augustus succeeded by means of skillful propaganda. Subsequent emperors followed his lead, sometimes producing lavish ceremonies to close the Gates of Janus, issuing coins with Pax on the reverse, and patronizing literature extolling the benefits of the Pax Romana.[4]”
Mass adoption of FCP offered the industry the stability of working on a single system (prosperity in the absence of warfare), but as FCP aged, revealed the opportunity costs vis-a-vis other NLEs in specific workflows (the potential wealth and honor acquired when fighting a risky war).
FCP Legend, for all the things it does do beautifully, was looking pretty creaky compared to its competitors on things like tapeless workflow, and people might have done well to look elsewhere, but Jobs said the next release would be “awesome” (an emperor issuing patronizing literature) so no one even bothered evaluating their alternatives until after the EOL of FCP Legend and the launch of FCPX (Commodus’s assassination).
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “Which part of history — Roman or editorial?”
Roman. But now that I see that you are talking about the Pax as seen from the Roman side, as opposed to how the Pax was seen by the non-roman members of the empire your statement make more sense. Although like the end of the Pax, the end of FCP Legend is not so simply explained (Commodus’s assassination was a symptom, not a cause)nor is the end point of the empire easy to point out – when you consider that the eastern empire, (like Legend?)lasted for another millennium.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
jesus. yes, right ok – exhibition – one day cricket.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Herb Sevush] “[Chris Harlan] “If I did multicam, for instance, I’d be thinking about it.”
Not until they built some sort of timecode sync indicator window you wouldn’t.
“Ah. See? I didn’t think about that because I’m not thinking about it. If I’d been thinking about it, I would have thought about that, and realized that I should stop thinking about it.
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[Walter Soyka] “My interpretation of Charlie’s point (and please do correct me if I’m wrong) was that FCPX may not yet be accepted, but it is right on the cusp of readiness for broadcast.”
Correctamundo. 🙂 Really the only thing keeping me from going all in is that I need to be able to deliver finishing elements (EDL, AAF etc) that the most finicky of post houses can deal with. It’s real close.
[Walter Soyka] It strikes me as a difference in perspective. Aindreas, in his position, must apparently work on whichever system is used in-house by his clients. Charlie, in his, can apparently choose the system he wants to work with. As such, Aindreas and Charlie may experience vastly different outcomes for using the same commercially unpopular tool in their respective markets. They can have different opinions and both still be right.”
Also true, the only caveat being what I noted above. I don’t know if X will ever be able to do proper edit to tape/machine control, so if that’s a big part of ones workflow then it’s probably not gonna work. But for us, 90 percent of the elements we get from the studios now are HD files on drives, and we havent layer anything off to tape in at least a year, so that’s a non issue. For us. Anyway… my point has always been that from a purely editorial perspective, I prefer X over 7 or Pr or MC. No question about that at all.
What drives me nuts are 2 things. First being the whole “it’s a toy” train of thought. It’s not. I can do things in X that I really can’t do in 7. And I can cut faster in it, composite giant piles of video just like any other NLE, easily move those piles around the timeline, and do much finer audio adjustments than are possible in 7. I’m a former mixer and I’m tellin’ ya… roles make tracks totally unnecessary – and they are still in their infancy. Of course I’m just some random guy saying so, but I wish i could sit down with Herb and Chris and others and show them why I think so.
That brings me to the other thing that drives me nuts. When people say “I work this way in 7 and I can’t in X so I can’t use it and it isn’t a viable choice.” And honestly, for folks like Aindreas who need to work on client systems, or have technical needs that X doesn’t meet, that’s a valid point – though I don’t think it’s reason enough to write it off just yet… That’s just me though. 😉 No, what drives me to keep blathering on here is that – as an editor who’s’ been cutting all day, every day for 15 years, first on Avid and then on FCP, I felt exactly the same way when I first tried to use FCP X. Hated it. Even after I used it a few times I hated it. So I totally understand where folks are coming from and I wish i could reach out through the inter tubes and show people what changed my mind, and why maybe they should change theirs. X isn’t the fastest NLE on earth. X isn’t throwing out 100 years of editing conventions. X still drives me nuts at times, but it’s pretty damn good. And it’s gonna get better.
Well, in my ‘some random guy on the internet’ opinion anyway… 😉
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
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[Herb Sevush] “the end of FCP Legend is not so simply explained (Commodus’s assassination was a symptom, not a cause)nor is the end point of the empire easy to point out – when you consider that the eastern empire, (like Legend?)lasted for another millennium.”
So, since you bring up the question of lasting over time… don’t forget that the Romans also attemped to export their “centralized monolithic operating system” – particularly to the British Isles – for a significant chunk of history. But in the end, times changed. And the Romans left. Perhaps because maintaining a huge infastructure so far from the needs of their base population proved impractical. And lthe hassles foisted upon them by those plucky Caledonian, Voltadini et al tribes up north who wanted to do things their own dammed way successfully resisted assimilation to the end.
If you’re arguing that the present high end suite-centric edit solution will remain a dominant way content is assembled and distributed across the broad spectrum of the whole video industry as it has in the past, for the top class of production – I suspect you’re correct.
But for every one of those, there will be a hundred or possibly a thousand circumstances where a tool that can achieve the same quality of video and audio, inside a less complex production scope – will continually bleed off some of the market for the “editorial battleship” solutions.
And the problem is that so long as it succeeds and earns a place for the company that delivers smaller quicker and more efficient solutions – it will grow and develop because it will earn it’s development resources.
Battleships are a superb tool – when you need a battleship. But it’s one solution among many for winning wars. But if ALL you have is battleships for your defense, you’re horribly vulnerable.
Come-sit-edit-master post has been around a LONG time and will remain..
Go-shoot-edit-upload post is pretty darn new but is a better process for a lot of modern content. Not all – but a LOT.
If you can’t see the advantages of knowing how to do both – that’s where you’re going to have problems in the future, IMO.
And sorry, but while I know from reading here that other NLEs do “go-shoot-edit” perfectly well – X does it better than it’s competition, IMO because that’s consistent with were Apple obviously sees the computer industry going (mobile, decentralized, personal) – and if the resulting work is indistinguishable from studio work for someone who knows how to use the tools properly that’s gonna keep a lot of pressure on legacy solutions. All of them.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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