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Is the name clouding our judgement?
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[Michael Aranyshev]How good is FCPX interface for accessing the actually useful metadata, for instance TC, reel, Scene and Take embedded in BWF files from modern production sound recorders? How bad is FCP7?
It’s a kind of “cosi cosa”.
Both of the apps do allow to search for BWAV metadata like TC, rate, Scene, Take and Note, Reel somehow – if they do exist in the source.
With X you can merge mono files into one audio file and you loose the metadata (beside the known bug that in many cases you’ll sync as well). With 7 (or below) the ‘Master Metadata’ – means the metadata of the highest clip – were kept.
But there was a nice feature with 7 – though it was a bit cumbersome and obviously not well known. Merging BWAV and Video did write the BWAV metamadata to the QT metadata as iXML for modern BWAVs. That was cool and perfectly fitted into our worflow. We could import any merged clip from anywhere and automatically got the ‘Scene, Take, Note’ as metadata beside the maybe 2 or 3 TC informations (Source TC, Source Reel; Aux TC, Aux Reel).
As QT is dying and AV Foundation is not really there this is a problem for me/us.
With X you may use the free WaveAgent to merge mono files int a poliphonic files prior to import. This will keep metadata and sync. But you have to take of roles – highly recommended to do that.Anyway, anybody else may say: it’s not a problem for me.
[Steve]Well I’m a “lover” and I’ve been collaborating with a colour grader using DaVinci and I’ve also just sent out some audio tracks, via roles export, to a sound editor. Early days for this sort of thing and I understand that it absolutely doesn’t fit into most standard collaborative workflows, but it’s getting there slowly.
I think it’s great to have both “Lover”, “Haters” and those in-between (like me) here. This does help everybody to look at whatever thing/feature in a different way.As I’m mostly involved into workflows I do have a different point of view than most of the others here.
And yes, I do see that with 10.0.3 CC interchange is much better, Audio and Roles had been improved even earlier. That’s great – but doesn’t cover the options (though mostly unknown) from before.
But on the other hand: around 10,000 people use an app of mine which allows (even using the free version) to extract titles with quite a lot of settings from FCP using XML. X doesn’t allow that any more in that way. There was a question on one of the lists whether you could share a project to work with with titles (in a worldwide environment) even if you don’t have the original media. That was easy with 7 – with X no chance.
And look at that kind of professionals who wanted to do a DCP release of their project (that even may be people who just want you go with their documentary to a festival without a real financial kind of interest). These people don’t have the option to get a full release with a few clicks any more – cause QT Codec plugins are not supported any more. New AV Foundation APIs are not available yet.
There are many more examples I can list.
So it’s a strange time.But at the end it’s still the same as I said before:
No doubt FCPX will involve – but that’s finally true for every app.
In the meantime we can spent/waste time working with the app – and learn.– Andreas
Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools -
1. FCPX did not invent metadata
2. FCP handled real production metadata as well or better than FCPX -
[Joseph W. Bourke] “I firmly believe that if they had called it Fetal Cut Pro X that people would have immediately known that this baby was not ready to go out into the world yet.”
Oh poppycock. Pure and simple.
It was “ready to go out in the world” from day one.
Because the real world is where real things grow up.
If the FCP team had waited until the software was “perfect” for movies and episodic TV and 100 seat shops it would have likely been released just in time to celebrate the out-sourcing of master control in the last local TV station on the planet.
The smart play isn’t building towards what a society is transitioning away from – but building for what it’s transitioning towards.
“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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[Rafael Amador] “Beside un intuitive, has a shit of GUI where nobody except the editor would be able to understand what’s going on over there.
With FCP, anybody could fallow and understand a sequence that somebody else has started. That do not happens with FCPX at all.
rafael”Again, I respectfully TOTALLY disagree.
After a month, I understood the GUI perfectly. Just about what I went through with Legacy back in 1999. I think you’ve just forgotten what it was like back when none of us knew how to find a Capture Scratch with both hands.
Second graph above is wrong too.
Send me any X sequence you like. I can parse it as fast as I can parse one from legacy. All it takes is understanding the conventions used. What the heck is the difference between opening someones’s sequences buried inside other sequences and opening a compound clip? Nothing, really.
What you’re arguing is the rough equivalent to saying its harder to express ideas in Itallian than it is in English. It’s only harder for someone who doesn’t speak Itallian.
All that matters, is that you learn to speak the language.
Period.
“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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[Walter Soyka] “I think that FCPX was launched in rough shape, and without consideration for industry standards. Since it didn’t interchange, it was neither a good standalone tool for rough cut, nor a good standalone tool for finishing.
In other words, if you couldn’t do your entire job on FCPX, you couldn’t do any of the job on FCPX.
If 10.0.0 had supported EDL/OMF/AAF interchange (or maybe if 10.0.3 had been the launch), we’d be having difference conversations about FCPX: we could have been talking about what it does, instead of what it doesn’t do.
With interchange, FCPX could have still satisfied everyone using it today, but wouldn’t have alienated so many editors with more complex or collaborative workflows. Instead, Apple could have positioned FCPX as a strong all-around editor for the broad middle as well as a serious offline tool for collaboration.”
But Walter, again this “presumes” that the default (and more importantly, initial) goal of every editor must be to work collaboratively.
And sorry, but it’s not.
In fact, I’d argue that very few modern editors actually start out working collaboratively. We all have to learn to edit as INDIVIDUALS before we can bring our skills to any collaborative enterprise.
Essentially we start out learning to push the buttons for ourselves, on our own. Training our brains to “think” in editing terms.
At some point, when you’ve developed higher level skills, then the market may want you to contribute them in collaboration.
Maybe Apple understood that since they were making a significant shift in overall editing concepts – concentrated on making it an “individual” tool rather than a collaborative one in the first iteration makes good sense.
I can easily imagine an internal Apple meeting where somebody debated the time, effort and money that would have to be tossed into A) maintaining backwards compatibility with Legacy. B) The hassles of maintaining support for two major editing products simultaneously. and C) looking at the growth potential signaled by a burgeoning new class of pervasive editing reuirements in society that do not greatly benefit from the highest level feature set that grew up in response to traditional workflow needs.
And somebody in a position of authority at Apple simply said “Screw it. Let’s make a clean break and leave the past behind so we can push forward. And if we’re right we may lose in the short run, but we’ll win big in the end.”
And if we win with this and have a new, more modern approach, there’s nothing to stop us from adding back all the capabilities that Legacy ever had and more – but built better, faster, and stronger because of our new approach. Isn’t that a good reflection of what we’ve just seen in 10.0.3’s Multi-Cam? Most people say that while it’s new and not totally fleshed out – what it IS is in many ways superior to what it was in Legacy.
How many more features will follow the same path and return stronger than they could have been via continued Legacy development?
We’ll see.
“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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[Michael Aranyshev]1. FCPX did not invent metadata
True[Michael Aranyshev]2. FCP handled real production metadata as well or better than FCPX
Partially true.
With FCP there had been a lot of metadata – more then most of you ever thought – but they had been hidden to the user many times. This was bad – really bad. But using a kind of 3rd app they were visible and editable. Definitively not the best way, but is was possible and doable.
With FCPX there are more limitations at the moment. As there are no real “connections” like detailed XML, 3rd party stuff can’t help at the moment.– Andreas
Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools -
[Michael Aranyshev] “How good is FCPX interface for accessing the actually useful metadata, for instance TC, reel, Scene and Take embedded in BWF files from modern production sound recorders? How bad is FCP7?”
If you see “meta-data” as something you merely “access” then perhaps there’s not a massive difference.
However, if you can instead start to see metadata as something brought directly into the user experience and given nearly equal weight in the actual editing interface – essentially elevated into something the user is “expected” to interact with, add to, manipulate and manage, then I’d say the difference is profound.
The vast majority of manipulations you do with your metadata in the Event Browser become available to ALL projects across all drives and all edits – while in Legacy, anything you do in metadata lives in a single project – walled off from everything else.
As an example, color correct a clip in the Event Browser and that color correction is still in place when you drag that same clip into as many projects as you like from that point on.
It’s a very significant fundamental difference in approach.
“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] “The vast majority of manipulations you do with your metadata in the Event Browser become available to ALL projects across all drives and all edits – while in Legacy, anything you do in metadata lives in a single project – walled off from everything else. “
There is a bit too much word acrobatics in it for my taste. When I get a picture or sound take from the set the image and audio I see and hear is data. The timecode, reel, scene, take, white balance, ISO, F-stop and lens stored in the file is metadata. When software allows me to see and manipulate this metadata but doesn’t allow to pass the changes to other software the changes it made is not metadata anymore.
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[Walter] “With interchange, FCPX could have still satisfied everyone using it today, but wouldn’t have alienated so many editors with more complex or collaborative workflows. Instead, Apple could have positioned FCPX as a strong all-around editor for the broad middle as well as a serious offline tool for collaboration.”
[Bill] But Walter, again this “presumes” that the default (and more importantly, initial) goal of every editor must be to work collaboratively.”
Whilst I totally agree with Bill that it clearly is not every editors goal or need to work collaboratively that does not make Walter’s point incorrect.
FCP7 was capable of meeting the needs of a wide range of editors skills and working environments. Those that needed to collaborate could, those that needed full broadcast HD monitoring had the option. Those that needed just simple firewire i/o and never needed to collaborate could work equally well.
FCPX was marketed and sold as a total replacement for FCP7, there is no doubt this was Apple’s intention as they removed FCP7 from the shelves the day FCPX was released. No transition no crossover just total replacement.
However the initial release could only service those that did not need to collaborate or those that did not need monitoring or to use any of the other features that were initially missing.
Whilst it may be true that Apple “concentrated on making it an “individual” tool rather than a collaborative one”
That presumption that somehow that would be OK with everyone at all levels led to a marketing and PR disaster that has seen more editors look in the direction of Avid, Adobe, PCs and any number of other bits of software and hardware.
So I would say Walters point is quite accurate.
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
[Neil Patience] “So I would say Walters point is quite accurate.”
Absolutely.
Let’s not forget those of use that need to collaborate with ourselves (like going to a dedicated grading app, or composting app for example, where I am doing all the driving).
Jeremy
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