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Interesting little series…
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “just think of me as an extremely over the top devils advocate. there are a lot of things I like about X, (sans the ludicrous auto connect timeline),
but its a grunt climb to get on board, and when you do – there are no jobs posted for it. And no houses are running it in production.”I see. Because you don’t want to (or can’t, or isn’t worth to) put the time in and grunt climb, it’s an Apple fail to the entire history of editing.
Existential indeed!
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[Charlie Austin] “And I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket by any means. Apple have said they have a 10 year plan for X and i’ve got no reason not to believe them, so I’m giving it a shot”
I think one of the biggest obstacles that FCPX will have to overcome in getting into large or mid-sized production houses in the future: the fear that apple will pull the rug out from under them.
After years of carving a place in the editing world, FCP Legacy was EOL’d after years of hard-fought acceptance with-in the editing mainstream. A lot of folks had invested time, machinary, and loads of bucks into creating FCP-based editing houses (and if you look at it, it wasn’t that big of a time window from FCP Studio to FCPX).
Once burned, twice cautious. I think that one of the big fears of such facilities is that Apple might just scrap their current editing software with a newer shinier version like FCPXX (a complete new paradigm that does not work with FCPX), and render their investment useless.
Maybe Bill is right and the future of editing is leaning towards smaller or one-man type of operation. Still, there were always be a need for the larger houses (no matter how much of their market share may decline). I think Apple has a long hill to climb to build trust with such operations. The folks at Cupertino may not think it is the worth the trouble.
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I think you misunderstand – let me make this more clear for you 🙂
it is hard to justify the time and effort when there is no professional or financial reward – there are no jobs or freelance gigs posted for it.
that is an existential problem for the software.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “I think you misunderstand – let me make this more clear for you 🙂
it is hard to justify the time and effort when there is no professional or financial reward – there are no jobs or freelance gigs posted for it.
that is an existential problem for the software.”
It’s an existential problem for your relationship with the software.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s an existential problem for your relationship with the software.”
yes exactly – for anyone’s relationship with the software jeremy – why train yourself on software that is not being used by any employers, and that is not posted for any gigs.
you understand that right? this isn’t a hobbyist pursuit, and there is a lot of software and training competing for finite time.
Why learn quite non-standard, one off organisational editing software that has no professional benefit? that no houses are using and no jobs are posted for?
Try and think about it clearly – how is that not an existential problem for this software?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “yes exactly – for anyone’s relationship with the software jeremy – why train yourself on software that is not being used by any employers, and that is not posted for any gigs.”
I mentioned that in one of my posts. For you and your needs, it might not make sense (won’t, can’t, or not worth putting in the effort).
But that does not mean that the entire editing industry a nosedive to hell as there are editors that are making money on it, perhaps just not on any “job posts”.
I get that it doesn’t make sense for you.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “Why learn quite non-standard, one off organisational editing software that has no professional benefit? that no houses are using and no jobs are posted for?”
I’m not sure why I bother, I guess I like a challenge but…
You’re probably correct when you say no houses are using it and no jobs are posted for it right now. But, and I can’t speak for London here, there are people using it here in LA. Maybe not a lot, but they’re getting paid to use it. I’m pretty confident that we’ll all be using it where I work sooner or later. And I know we’re not the only folks dipping our toes in it. So, eventually, there will be jobs calling for it. Maybe not at the “big” houses for now, but it’s gonna happen. Mark my words. Please. Copy this and tuck it away for… let’s say a year.
Anyway… A clever freelancer who knows a variety of NLE’s might also want to become proficient in X because, since everyone hates it so much and won’t learn it, that clever editor would have whatever jobs pop up all to themselves. Just saying…
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Jeremy Garchow] ” there are editors that are making money on it, perhaps just not on any “job posts”.”
ah yes – the hidden multitude who walk silently among us.. 🙂
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Clint Wardlow] “Maybe Bill is right and the future of editing is leaning towards smaller or one-man type of operation.”
But this is mis-reading my thinking. I don’t see the big change as a migration “towards smaller or one-man type operations” at all. I can see why people THINK that from my arguments, but honestly, it’s an understandable miss-reading. What I DO see is that even if you have 25 editors working on a project, they are 25 individuals who need tools that empower them EACH to be as productive as possible.
Editing itself is fundamentally NOT a group task. It’s an individual task. Somebody has to choose whether it’s better to tighten or loosen the cut. And that has to happen in ONE editors brain whether that cut is one of a hundred being generated by a team of editors – or my personal edit on my laptop.
In an ad agency environment (the one I’m most personally familiar with) It’s completely common to have more than one person doing editing. But that doesn’t mean they’re all working on the same project (or even type of project) or for the same client.
Single monolithic projects (movies or TV shows) are the exception in editing, not the norm.
For each project with that as the goal, there’s likely a thousand other projects being done this week for use next week that will NEVER see a big screen and NEVER justify a workflow where there are 50 folks in seats all working on putting out ONE project.
Empowering EACH editor to match the tool to the task is WAY more efficient than simply sayin “we’re an AVID shop, therefore you have to cut on AVID. I get why that happens. But the new reality is that for the first time in history, the best tools for content creation (both hardware and software) are so affordable that it’s no longer very necessary for the EMPLOYER to provide the tools to enable the worker to be tremendously productive.
I mean really, an NLE system is NOT like a CNC machine.
And that changes everything. Literally.
What I’m finally seeing is that X editors are actually spending as much time in the database as they are on the timeline. That’s another thing that changes the game.
Pretty soon, your facility with taxonomy might be as important to your success as an editor as your familiarity with J and L cuts.
Which is cool because it’s organizational tools like the database that makes a thing like FCP-X a more efficient tool than an NLE without as modern an approach to content search and manipulation.
(I know, I know, Harlan, OTHER software programs have fine media management tools too. That’s NOT the point here. Debating which approach is superior is a different conversation. ; )
What’s undebatable is that the industry is changing. More content, more often, more source files, and more complexity to be managed.
These are BIG changes.
So it’s NOT about “one man band” editing verses facility editing.
EVERYONE is a one man band when they have their fingers on the keyboard.
They might have a dozen or a single person directing or contributing to their work, but they’re the one with their fingers on the keyboard.
And I’ve kinda never seen anyone successfully do “team typing.”
FWIW.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “it looks, and sounds, just super clever. It’s actually, possibly, fundamentally dumb with regard to an editor’s cognitive and spatial appraisal and understanding of the various assets, but Apple themselves felt very, very clever when they decided to do this.”
Spacial organization — manual spacial organization, at least — largely falls apart as the number of items to be organized rises. This is probably why you’ve seen the spacial metaphors of the ‘Classic’ Mac OS finder fade away as well.
But perhaps Apple should look at ways to automatically create trees or clusters of clips laid out in 2D space based on metadata. Apple recently acquired a bunch of patents related to ‘axis-based user interface’ that could be relevant here.
(Although my suspicion is that their primary relevance is to some post-hierarchical file system scheme Apple is working on for iOS.)
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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