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Is FCPX really worth it?
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[David Roth Weiss] “This more in line with my question, which is really asking if what FCP X offers is really in line with the drama Apple has chosen to create around it?”
Apple created software. A small group of vocal FCP users created drama around it. Most editors, producers, directors,… have barely noticed (if they have noticed at all). Some have started to use FCPX along with other editing tools, others are waiting until it develops a bit more. Same as it ever was.
Personally, I continue to follow this kind of thread because I am fascinated by the psychology of it…
But it’s starting to feel a bit pathological, like there is a need for an intervention of some kind. Have any of you considered therapy?
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[James Culbertson] “Apple created software. A small group of vocal FCP users created drama around it. Most editors, producers, directors,… have barely noticed (if they have noticed at all).”
I am kind of curious where you got this information. Did you take a survey? Though it is only anecdotal, most of the editors I personally know are talking up a storm about FCPX and its implications.
[James Culbertson] “Have any of you considered therapy?”
Nope. Have you?
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[James Culbertson] “Apple created software. A small group of vocal FCP users created drama around it.”
So, you’re suggesting that taking over the SuperMeet in Vegas at the last minute, booting out Avid and Adobe and all scheduled vendors, then waiting two months to spring the EOL of FCS on the same day as the release of FCPX, do not constitute drama created by Apple?
[James Culbertson] “Personally, I continue to follow this kind of thread because I am fascinated by the psychology of it…”
As am I, hence the reason I posed the initial question. Go back and read my initial post again and you’ll see I called this a tempest in a teapot that has become blown out of proportion, especially given what Apple actually delivered.
However, to suggest that users created the drama is just patently false. Yes, users are continuing to react to the drama Apple created, but given that many businesses have been “dramatically” impacted by Apple’s move, it’s probably to be expected that many are still discussing it around the proverbial water cooler.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “However, to suggest that users created the drama is just patently false. Yes, users are continuing to react to the drama Apple created, but given that many businesses have been “dramatically” impacted by Apple’s move,…”
We cannot always control how we are impacted by life, but we can control (if we are aware) how we respond or react to that impact. This is the root of personal responsibility and freedom.
Apple created an impact (as any major change would), but did not create any drama, because the drama you speak of is in the response of (some) users. Human response is stimulus-based not causal; otherwise we would all react the same way, and we obviously don’t.
Another major piece of this is the ability to remember history (in this case, the historical updake of new editing and graphics tools reaching back to the advent of the Moviola). To the extent that our thinking becomes a-historical, we lose perspective, and lose control over our response-ability.
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Compering DSLR to FCPX doesn’t work at all. One is production tool the other post-production tool. In production it’s what in front and who’s behind the lens that burns up the budget. Gear is nothing. Heck, Panavision will give “my budget is…” deals on camera packages. Film is cheap if one keeps ratios down to less then 10 to 1. Nowdays labs will physically kiss your arse to get the business. Want Red or Genesis, have it for free if you rent that already discounted lens package.
There is official French entry in feature drama category for upcoming Academy Awards that was all shot on 5D ( 100% ). Was it cut on Imovie. Don’t think so.
Post is a evolutionary rather then revolutionary business. By revolutionary I mean like reinvent the mouse so you can use it with your nose. Just does not work. The only good thing that happened with release of FCPX is that Avid and Adobe will most likely work a lot harder to compete for your business. I just hope they don’t screw it up.
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[Christopher Beeger] “Compering DSLR to FCPX doesn’t work at all. One is production tool the other post-production tool. In production it’s what in front and who’s behind the lens that burns up the budget. Gear is nothing. Heck, Panavision will give “my budget is…” deals on camera packages. Film is cheap if one keeps ratios down to less then 10 to 1. Nowdays labs will physically kiss your arse to get the business. Want Red or Genesis, have it for free if you rent that already discounted lens package.”
Hi Christopher, I appreciate your response. Since I brought it up, I will say it’s an analogy.
DSLRs : Full featured cameras :: FCPX : Full featured NLE
In my tiny corner of the world, gear is certainly not nothing. There are colleagues of mine where gear is 60% of their income. They very companies you have mentioned make their entire living off of gear. There’s no question that people are more expensive, but gear is not free, although it is much cheaper than it used to be, and clients know this and devalue everything as a result. Those lenses you mention, are still very expensive.
What was the French movie edited on? Probably not iMovie, but you don’t think that one day in the near future one of those movies won’t be edited on FCPX? FCPX isn’t iMovie. Really, it’s not.
[Christopher Beeger] “Post is a evolutionary rather then revolutionary business. By revolutionary I mean like reinvent the mouse so you can use it with your nose. Just does not work. The only good thing that happened with release of FCPX is that Avid and Adobe will most likely work a lot harder to compete for your business. I just hope they don’t screw it up.”
Really? So 3D modeling, digital set extension, VFX of all kinds is an evolution? Nothing you have seen over the past 10 years is a revolution or took new and modern tools to get it done?
Post, to me, is not about using a mouse. It’s about how you interact with the footage. FCPX changes what has been a common language in NLEs for decades now. I’m ok with that. DSLRs have changed the industry as well. In my mind, from a cursory analogy, they are more similar than you discount them to be.
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Honestly…
The “Supermeet” rebranding was barely on anyone’s radar at that point in time. Prior to that it was the LAFCPUG Supermeet – in which the FCP was Final Cut Pro. So that anyone would think that a hugely anticipated FCP re-write launch from Apple wasn’t what the crowd was primarily interested is seeing is again, revisionist. Mike and Dan were both understandably stressed since they knew what Apple’s last minute decisions to unveil FCP-X would mean bumping their other sponsors, but honestly, from a purely “satisfy your core audience” perspective, their hands were completely tied. Nobody among us would have seriously entertained making a different call. I’m totally confident in saying that.
At the NAB Events prior (and I helped Horton with virtually ALL of them from the very first) Apple presented right alongside demos from the other “A”s – notably the Cow’s very own Tim Wilson, who I have to say was at the very APEX of the talent pool in skilled “users group” presenters.
(For those reading who’ve never had much users group experience, I had to say that NAB booth work is one thing – dealing as it does with with large and varied crowds. But the large User Group presentation is unique in that you’re dealing with a group that typically has a their “bullshit detectors” set to stun. In this environment I’ve never seen anyone better than Tim. He did his amazing work after what must have been countless hours on his feet in the show floor booth doing demos all day – and If there’s an IRON MAN award for great demo guys – Tim Wilson should absolutely be in that hall of fame.)
My perspective anyway.
“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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Aindreas.
Fairly pointed out.
I apologize for my tone.
I was just SHOCKED to see someone characterize an event that I worked very hard to help present for the SuperMeet team characterized as something so totally ALIEN to what I remember it to be.
As I clearly mentioned, I spent the night working the event. So I didn’t have the luxury of assessing any “real time” web posting. So I had no recollection that a part of the audience was leaping to trash FCP-X since as I noted, I didn’t here a SINGLE voice express that from the crowd.
But with the benefit of hindsight, I’m still not convinced that whatever “trashing” that took place was more actual assessment of real weaknesses, or more “I don’t understand this, so I’m going to call it CRAP before everyone else does.”
People are STILL spreading the word that it’s a “failure.” And is it really? By what standard? Can’t one cut video on it? That’s FALSE, it does that quite well. Can’t one do “professional” work on it? Again, FALSE. I have and continue to. Is the “Magnetic Timeline” such a poor design that it stops people from getting their work done? Again, FALSE. It’s simply different.
People can and will argue whether these are the “best” methods of interface design. But they are functional and robust and they also, arguably, would meet the needs of the VAST majority of working video editors out there today outside the “big shop” pros.
So excuse my hyperbole.
(It’s a debate tool that both of us possibly rely on a bit overmuch, no?)
“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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[Bill Davis] “notably the Cow’s very own Tim Wilson, who I have to say was at the very APEX of the talent pool in skilled “users group” presenters. “
Thanks Bill, I really appreciate it. I took the work with deadly seriousness, performed it with absolute joy…and it nearly killed me. 🙂 On my feet nearly non-stop from 7 AM to 11 PM was common.
(I was far from alone in that, btw. If you’re playing for keeps, trade shows are brutal. I’ll observe that the softest carpet I ever felt at NAB was the year I spent working the Apple booth.)
I did a major presentation at the third-ever LAFCPUG meeting, when I was at Boris FX. The last time I asked Michael, I still hold the record for most appearances by a non-Californian. I was also the main presenter at the FIRST meeting of BOSFCPUG, and actually helped start the New York FCP group….which morphed enough times that a large-ish number of people could make the same claim….but for me it’s actually true. LOL
I can honestly say that, during the time I worked at Boris, I’m pretty sure I presented at every single FCPUG in the country, many more than once.
My FCP experience actually went back to the days when I had a disk of Macromedia Final Cut that ran on WINDOWS. (You can see a picture of it in my COW profile.)
Hey, among the reasons they hired me at Avid was my FCP expertise. My knowledge of Avid was superficial at best. Oliver Peters had to remind me how to set up my Boris demos on Symphony EVERY TIME I presented at his Avid user group in Orlando. (He and I had dinner in Vegas the Sunday night before the show started for a couple of years running, and I am happy seeing him around here these days.)
Needless to say, I developed major Avid chops, and came to genuinely love Media Composer…without changing my feelings for FCP, or the Media 100 I built my own long-running video production company around, or Premiere, where I started.
So when I do my yapping in this forum, it’s not as a full-time COW person, but as someone who spent 15 years living this stuff every hour of the day, and in way too many nightmares while I slept. I still think of myself as a video editor….even if I haven’t been for quite a long time.
Anyway, sorry for the Saturday afternoon rambling. Those years as a demo monkey really took their toll on me, and it means a lot to hear from someone who felt I was sticking the landing.
Answering the rhetorical question at the top of the thread — dude, I don’t think any of anything we live through in this business is worth it…and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
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Because, Steve the most fundamental of all the rules have now OBVIOUSLY changed.
That idea that it’s not the equipment, but the talent of the editor?
Scratch that.
We were all wrong.
Turns out the sooner you can get a better piano IS the key to becoming a better piano player. Who knew!
Simple, huh?
(sorry, couldn’t resist a tiny bit of gratuitous public snark, it’s a flaw in my character;)
“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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