FCPX or Not…

[Richard Herd]

[Walter Soyka] “Doesn’t that make both Tony West and Andy Field correct?”

Argh! And such is the problem with commensurablility and construal.

[Jim Giberti]

[Walter Soyka] “Why not compare FCPX to mature apps? The market must. FCPX is not competing against FCP1. It’s competing against PrP CS5.5, MC6, and FCP7.
“

This is the only valid comparison Walter.

We’re talking professional use, the community that’s been based largely around FCP and whether they’ll stay with Apple or move to another program.

That’s the debate.

Not to beat a dead horse, but if they allowed for demagnetization, a simple track grid and mixer (you know that old fashioned proven stuff) FCPX could be a great program.

Right now it’s half a great program and half a not great program.

[Richard Herd]

Someone has to be the Astros.

[Andy Field]

yes – we’ve all tried cutting with FCPX —

we WANTED it to be great and move forward with what it does well. The point is – the no tracks no preview monitor – no mixer – no drop shadow? Really …this was in Premier version.0000 more than a decade ago (yes there are ad ons..but why is this necessary?)

Folks who must deliver deadline broadcast and film aren’t sitting around playing with something only to make their work more difficult.

Jim Giberti’s statement above is spot on —

Listen to your users…and you’ll see the folks in broadcast and film back on board

Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852

[Craig Seeman]

[Jim Giberti] “Right now it’s half a great program and half a not great program.”

But for each of us we weigh what is great vs what is not great differently. That’s why some find it an improvement compared to other professional NLEs in some areas that are important to us and, others not.

[Richard Herd]

Did you play with it, or did you really cut and deliver something?

I’m almost done with a project (did not DL 10.0.3 thankfully); it’s a non-deadline project by the way. The actual cutting of a story is superior. I’ve also simultaneously been using Legacy and PP for other stuff, both of which “feel” like steps backward in terms of actually cutting a story, and we all know we do a lot more than just cut. I downloaded Media Composer trial, but sheesh I still dislike it, haven’t used it since 2003.

By “preview monitor,” do you mean a color grade monitor thing? Or do you mean the skimmer tool? The color correction window is pretty decent–better than PP, IMO– but I miss my curves from Color. As far as color grading goes I hear, but haven’t used, the XML to da vinci work very well.

[Andy Field] “Folks who must deliver deadline broadcast and film aren’t sitting around playing with something only to make their work more difficult”

In fact they are just “playing” with X, because they are too busy hopefully to actually learn X. And make no mistake about it: there is a learning curve. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I had to read the manual so often to simply begin a project and wrap my imagination around the nomenclature that this first project has taken easily three times longer than it should have. Knowing this, I offered a discount to the producer. But now that I know the stuff I know the actual cutting is much quicker, more accurate, more flexible.

But I know there’s no way to learn something without doing it. In any case, one must blow away the notion that one can sit down in any app and then know it after playing with it once or twice. Why do that if you have a customer sitting next to you? Could you imagine: “Sorry I need to close the app and restart it.” And “sorry I need to duplicate the project every now and again and store it on a hidden .dmg in case the project gets corrupt.”

I can’t imagine anyone is still reading, but if so: I do 99% of my title in AE, anyway, but I find myself using the titler in X — better than legacy. My next real learning is audio. Whew. Wish me luck. The best part is the FX are all from Logic and they really work awesome-ly.

[Andy Field]

Richard – it’s maddening having others try to discern what other editors are doing. (Did you just “play with it?”) It’s working for you? – great! —

But you make my point when you say you can’t have a client sitting next to you and say – sorry have to reboot or hide events or whatever else FCP X makes you do to get to where we were before X.

And no we didn’t “play” with it. We actually cut real projects on it …and it’s lacking in so many ways with the flexibility, mixing etc we need (eyeline matching and action matching with a preview and a record monitor that virtually every other editing set up on the planet offers)

The skimming thumbnails (more like pinky nails on some machines) just doesn’t cut it. And no tracks is a deal breaker – period. the kludge work around to get audio in and out is just that – a kludge… Apple could and can fix all of this and grab back the base it lost. In the meantime – the rest of us have work to accomplish with tools that do what we need.

Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852

[Sandy Shapiro]

Let me ask you all this: Why? Why introduce FCPX and discontinue a perfectly working wheel – FCP7? The latter was starting to dominate the field!

I understand opening up your market share. But why lose most of your professional base?

My gut says it’s strictly numbers for Apple. Which is another reason why I don’t trust them. I trust Avid as they make editing and audio systems and have been for years.

Believe me, I’ve chosen FCP Studio over Avid in years past, only working with Avid for some projects (and that number was dwindling). But now, I’ve been totally thrown around by Apple. They’re going after the prosumer and consumer market trying to duplicate the splash they made in the same market with the iphone and ipad. As far as $ signs, I get it. And that’s fine. But they just don’t care for past users, and that’s the problem.

I am completely interested in learning new and faster ways of editing. But FCPX just isn’t it. And my lack of trust over this new move has driven me away from Apple. Why should i worry about this happening again? Avid and Premiere are tried and true.

And the fact that Apple does not offer a discount or incentive to FCP Studio owners is a slap in the face. Avid and Premier offered half off their products to FCP users who could provide a serial #. Thus proving a company’s ability to offer discounts. Apple just doesn’t care for their loyal users.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Craig Seeman] “But for each of us we weigh what is great vs what is not great differently. That’s why some find it an improvement compared to other professional NLEs in some areas that are important to us and, others not.”

Completely.

The Event side of the program, in my opinion, is awesome and represents true innovation.

It has taken those bunches of clips or media that we get, that really have no tangible asset, and allow us to to assign tangible elements to them, completely abstracted from where they are on some huge hard drive, in a meaningful way that is important to us as the content creator. It also allows instantaneous rearranging or reordering without destroying anything that we have already done. Lately, our projects have been changing very fast. We go in and shoot with one idea, and over the course if the project, that idea will change, and in my opinion, X is really suited for that with the Event structures in an easier and more powerful way than other NLEs. Again, it’s not perfect, but it does present a level of control and power that other NLEs don’t have.

I also like some of the media management side of things. The ability to create high resolution and proxy copies of footage with a click of a button is great, and it allows you to keep working while the process is happening. Also, the media is stored in a tidy little folder, something that third party apps have created to FCP7 (putting capture scratch/media folders in one place on a per project basis). Yes, the render files can get unruly pretty quick, but FCPX allows quick deletion of those if necessary. I would also like to see some better native format support without having to rewrap everything to .mov. There are times when this is great, there are times when this is unnecessary. We should have the choice. We also need a few more, or perhaps enhanced, consolidation tools.

The Project side needs some help, as well as performance/stability. That’s A#1. Without reliability, you have nothing in a professional workspace.

I am not worried about interchange so much. It has been proven that it can be done. Is it perfect yet? No. It still needs enhancement and hard work. I know David L said that X’s timelines are incompatible with any other NLE, I would beg to differ. No offense, David, just pointing it out. Yes, sometimes it requires 3rd party support, sometimes it doesn’t, but that doesn’t bother me. I use a lot of third party materials in FCP7 so it’s not a new venture, personally, and I don’t mind paying for something that help me get the job done.

I know we were talking about Pro vs High End. With the release of RCX Pro beta 11, it now supports FCPX round trip, so if you consider Red to be “high-end” then it’s obvious there are people that think FCPX might be worth their time in “high-end” workflows. It would also allow conforming of Red material to almost any other NLE from FCPX, and conforming FROM other NLEs to FCPX. It’s not impossible, and it’s not incompatible.

The biggest thing that will stall FCPX completely (in my opinion) is not the Project or timeline or native format interfaces, but rather performance and reliability. People will find ways to work around any quirks, but if the program is crashing or in the one case we’ve heard about, corrupting beyond easy repair, then it will never get picked up by the late swath of professional editors, and I mean that in whatever pro space you work in. It needs more time in the oven.

Jeremy

[Steve Connor]

[sandy shapiro] “And the fact that Apple does not offer a discount or incentive to FCP Studio owners is a slap in the face. Avid and Premier offered half off their products to FCP users who could provide a serial #. Thus proving a company’s ability to offer discounts. Apple just doesn’t care for their loyal users.
“

Discount? Have you seen how little it costs?

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television