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Is anyone using FCPX for movie trailers yet?
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[Chris Harlan] ” It will probably be a long while before it can service my niche properly, but I am enjoying watching all you guys use it, and am looking forward to some time to actually play with it.”
I sense that like me you quite fancy jumping in and having a go, but that the barriers to entry are currently still way too many to even contemplate it.
The other non-negligible factor, which I am sure you would have to factor in, is your clients’ reactions to discovering you were working on FCPX – it took the studios an eternity to accept that Legacy FCP was a viable tool and even now there are many technical folk at the majors that I have met who still consider it not fit for purpose.
In fact, I have noticed over here that since the launch of FCPX there has been a definite retrenchment away from FCP generally and back to AVID in the feature film world, as though a lot of people (editors as well as technical heads generally) were seeing this as an opportunity to abandon something to which they were never fully committed in the first place.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[David Powell] ” I always stayed on the keyboard in FC, and I find a lot of drag and drop Final Cut users have the hardest time learning Avid.”
You’ve hit the nail squarely on the head, a lot of FCP editors, like me, are “tactile” editors. I like to touch and sculpt the edit, that’s why I don’t get on with Avid I somehow feel slightly disconnected from the edit when using it. I understand the power of it in the right hands though.
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “fear not bud, I am barely trying. I’m still mostly strapping on a colostomy bag and refusing to move in any direction.
It is hard to see avid though, for the likes of lowly me – avid is just nuts – they just heralded the coming of tabs.
“I see you’re back on form Aindreas, sometimes it’s a joy to read your posts! I imagine you’re hoping that PPro will gain more traction in your area than Avid?
I still think you’ll eventually “get” FCPX, a lightbulb will flicker on to illuminate the darkness
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I absolutely hate all that metadata, keyword nonsense that we are meant to be getting so excited about, thought I wouldn’t dare voice that aloud around here … I just did? Oh shucks. It is of no value to me and acts only as a hindrance.”
I don’t hate it, but to be honest I’m not using it as much as I imagined I would, it’s just so damn fast to get through your source footage that I don’t feel I need to spend the time tagging. I haven’t even used it on the feature I’m cutting at the moment
[Simon Ubsdell] “The magnetic timeline however is the ultimate creative scratchpad because of the speed with which you can throw stuff around and discover the shape you want for your material. Again, it’s a reaction to the clunkiness of the Media Composer model that I long ago abandoned the source/record model of editing, preferring even in Legacy to mould stuff on the timeline, which now to me feels much more natural and intuitive.
I like slapping stuff into the timeline and moving it around and trimming it and seeing where it will go and shuffling it around, and I love using cut and paste. I don’t like prepping my shots in the source monitor unless I have to – it just feels too clunky and methodical. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the best editing gets done when you get down and dirty with the material and see what it throws up at you.
And it’s this model of editing that FCPX, even more than Legacy, lends itself to very well. The magnetic timeline is just made for this kind of working – it’s great just be be able to throw something in there without bothering about where you’re patching it and what effect it might have on the rest of the timeline. It’s especially brilliant to be able to edit music in secondary storylines – this is a huge plus for me, really huge, and music editing is a very big part of my kind of work.”
That precisely describes how I feel about working in FCPX, I think the assumption from many is that the magnetic timeline actually stops you from working like this, but as you soon find out it doesn’t.
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
[Steve Connor] “You’ve hit the nail squarely on the head, a lot of FCP editors, like me, are “tactile” editors. I like to touch and sculpt the edit, that’s why I don’t get on with Avid I somehow feel slightly disconnected from the edit when using it. I understand the power of it in the right hands though.”
I’d completely agree with this. Media Composer definitely has a clinical, clunky, disconnected feel when compared to FCP because everything is fundamentally predicated on the old source/record VT model of editing, whereas FCP was always much more like editing on a computer with intuitive things like cut and paste readily available.
OK, so you can actually now drag and drop in MC, and the Smart Tool does emulate the responsiveness of FCP quite a bit, but this is still going against the grain of how MC works, and a lot of AVID editors don’t like the Smart Tool at all (though I have to say I found it a very welcome addition).
As you say, which one you prefer editing with is going to be more than a matter of taste – it’s down to how much you think the traditional 3-point editing model is the be-all-and-end-all of the job and how much you prefer a smooth intuitive tactile interface that actually lets you set yourself free from the model if that’s what you want.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Steve Connor] “I see you’re back on form Aindreas, sometimes it’s a joy to read your posts! I imagine you’re hoping that PPro will gain more traction in your area than Avid?
I still think you’ll eventually “get” FCPX, a lightbulb will flicker on to illuminate the darkness”
I think you’re right – he’s going to have his Damascene moment very shortly, and then heaven help us!!!!
Aindreas the convert is going to infinitely more passionate than Aindreas the unbeliever – and I’m not sure the interweb will be able to handle it.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Nice answer Simon – concur 100%! But there are times I wish I didn’t have full-blown “geeky attraction disease”…
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
[Shane Ross] “[Simon Ubsdell] “I did hear that Trailer Park were among the very few beta testers – do you know if that’s true?”
Yeah, I know they tested…I know they gave a quote. But I don’t think they are using it yet.
“I sat in there for a week on a show back in October, and nobody was talking about it. Now, I never talked to anybody who wasn’t on that show. Everything was still FCS, and no plans seemed to be in effect to adjust that fact. Of course, I have no idea what was happening on other floors.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “Its not FCP7, you’re not whacking from bins into viewer, then reviewing and dragging or stamping into timeline – the three step is collapsed – I’m still a trollish toe dipper with FCPX, but that seriously aside how do you find your approach to the timeline altering?”
I thought I would answer this too although I don’t know if it’s much different than Simon’s. On Avid and FCP7, I always edited from the viewer. Meaning I chose my shots and in/out carefully there, and then assembled in the timeline. Timeline editing was minimal (aside from audio). FCPX makes editing in the viewer difficult and frustrating and was the single biggest adjustment I had to make. That said, editing in the timeline feels very natural and quick. If they develop those aspects more (two-up display for keyboard trimming, lasso multiple edit points for synchronized trimming), it’ll feel even more second-nature.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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[Shane Ross] “[Simon Ubsdell] “I did hear that Trailer Park were among the very few beta testers – do you know if that’s true?”
Yeah, I know they tested…I know they gave a quote. But I don’t think they are using it yet.
“I sat in there for a week on a show back in October, and nobody was talking about it. Now, I never talked to anybody who wasn’t on that show. Everything was still FCS, and no plans seemed to be in effect to adjust that fact. Of course, I have no idea what was happening on other floors.
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