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Interesting little series…
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “ah yes – the hidden multitude who walk silently among us.. 🙂
“I wouldn’t say Bill was exactly silent
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “Try and think about it clearly – how is that not an existential problem for this software?
“Plenty of Avid jobs around, LOTS of Post Houses using it, yet it has an existential problem as well doesn’t it? There are no Vegas jobs yet that carries on, same was true of PPro for years as well.
I know you REALLY want it to die, but it’s not going to I’m afraid.
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Chris Kenny] “Spacial organization — manual spacial organization, at least — largely falls apart as the number of items to be organized rises. “
True, and that’s why any half-decent NLE is built on top of a robust database. But these features hardly supersede or obsolete spatial organization, at least not in my workflow. Sure, I am dealing with much more material today than I did five years ago (approx three times as much, since the switch from film to digital formats), and these features are more useful than ever.
But when I am working on a specific scene, the clips I need at hand are rarely too many for a spatial approach. And to me, it’s a crucial part of the process. Diving in and getting to really know my material. Knowing where everything is, and where to look for that shot that could save a scene.
FCPX emphasizes tagging, “skimming” (i.e. browsing your footage without actually engaging with it) and “smart” collections at the expense of more spatial and tactile approaches. It seems to promote database queries instead of true familiarity with your working materials. Not sure that’s a good thing.
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[Steve Connor] “I know you REALLY want it to die, but it’s not going to I’m afraid.”
Well, no reason not to try.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Jok Daniel] “FCPX emphasizes tagging, “skimming” (i.e. browsing your footage without actually engaging with it) and “smart” collections at the expense of more spatial and tactile approaches. It seems to promote database queries instead of true familiarity with your working materials”
As a longtime user of FCPX I disagree with that assertion completely.
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Steve Connor] “As a longtime user of FCPX I disagree with that assertion completely.”
maybe expand that a fraction – what is the basis for your disagreement?
“It seems to promote database queries instead of true familiarity with your working materials. Not sure that’s a good thing.”
is this statement incorrect? Feels right to me.
Isn’t this the exact trade off with X? greater speed in appraisal, but with some associated, real, cognitive shortcuts?https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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“It seems to promote database queries instead of true familiarity with your working materials. Not sure that’s a good thing.”
is this statement incorrect? Feels right to me.
Isn’t this the exact trade off with X? greater speed in appraisal, but with some associated, real, cognitive shortcuts?I think this depends on how you like to work. If you’re used to associating footage with Bins, and that’s been your pre-cut process, then Keywords etc are a refined progression of that concept and make it very clear exactly where you’re at, if that makes sense? Add in Ranges, Favorites, and NG’s and it’s a very streamlined package.
However if you’re used to working through your selects etc in the timeline, it’s probably not as useful.
The inability to manually arrange your clips within these Collections can also be an issue if you like to storyboard your edits before you cut them in. I know lots of editors who like to this, hell when I sit on Smoke, this is how I like to operate as well. So yes, while there are some real issues that it can throw up, it seems to be, in my opinion of course, dependent to a certain degree on how you like to work.
To me, this is the one major shortcoming that Apple needs to address; the program needs to be adaptable to different modes of working.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “maybe expand that a fraction”
That I will
[Aindreas Gallagher] “”It seems to promote database queries instead of true familiarity with your working materials. Not sure that’s a good thing.”
is this statement incorrect? Feels right to me.
It’s completely incorrect, although if you read Bill’s post you might imagine the first part of the statement is true. The excellent database structure is there if you want to use it, but it doesn’t force you to in any way.
I know it may be heresy for some but I DON’T USE KEYWORDS! Well that’s not entirely true I use them in the same way as I used bins in FCP Classic, I’ll occasionally keyword the odd specific shot but that’s about it. In fact I cut a whole freaking movie that way. I’m all about immersing myself in the material I have and the skimmer gets me through it very quickly. Yes I know you can drop all your footage on a timeline and sometimes I still do that in FCPX.
I also like to be tactile on my timeline, I like throwing footage on the timeline and to play around with different assemblies until I start to “feel” the edit starting to come together, which despite the lack of tracks you can actually still do in FCPX. I can’t work edits up in the browser at all, I’m just not that organised.
So despite not actually using many of the excellent features that FCPX offers, I still think it’s the fastest NLE I’ve ever used and we’re not even at the first point revision yet.
Obviously this is just my personal experience of using it Professionally for close on two years and I can understand if it doesn’t fit other Editors style of working, but to say it hinders familiarity with your materials is completely wrong.
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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in the end – I think a footage item is an object, I think I am required at the outset to develop fundamental familiarity with the assets available – the argument proposed is that proliferating material and cheap DSLRs makes that an unsustainable proposition. I don’t think thats true.
Let me make an argument – I had to do a piece for a sports brand there nine months ago (I need to update my stuff – its not the most recent thing!), where they had shot a total of nearly 24 hours of rushes across nearly a dozen cameras at SXSW – the finished piece was a high level pitch for their engagement (they had spent a ton on brand presence) the finished piece was to be two minutes, but had to hit a million little points.
the wind up to editing was three and a half days days – so that was footage review, naming and marking in the day date camera original bins, then taking those master bins, with all the clips keyword named (with some tagged markers per clip), and then judging a whole new set of bins – crowd react day, different sport items, timelapse, different music acts, evening events – basically figuring the ideal number and nature of the final edit bins to work with -and then going through and populating all the clips into those new category bins.
then I made select sequences for all the major tasty stuff in each new category bin.
the great thing is that at the end of that – you really, really know what the hell is going on. And when the client comes back and says that the third aerial skateboard overhead is a bit meh – you have multiple redundant avenues of organization to explore – the original camera day date bins (which are all still down the bottom quietly in a master bin), the category bins that you put everything in, and the prime cut selects for each category bin.
When it come to the sharp end, having been through all those bins, and skimmed all those selects – you get a deeply, deeply trustworthy understanding of the assets.
things go a lot quicker at the end: you can move very nimbly at the most important time, and as Jok points out – you have intimate spatial understanding of where every single body is buried.
for the curious – this was the piece: https://vimeo.com/42327721
I think X’s stuff is dead smart, but there is no way it is not meant to cognitively hopscotch over initial footage analysis – superquick skimming and tagging is the order of the day.
not my own cup of tea.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “I think X’s stuff is dead smart, but there is no way it is not meant to cognitively hopscotch over initial footage analysis – superquick skimming and tagging is the order of the day.”
That’s simply down to how you use it, somehow suggesting that the software aims to limit familiarity with footage is simply ludicrous.
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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