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Murch and NLEs from IBC
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If you take anything away from reading about Murch’s workflow, it’s all about the meticulous, really meticulous logging, studying, tagging, and setting up of the raw footage, storyboarding shots all over the place. If I had to speculate, I’d say Walter would love the FCPX system for organizing and intake of the footage, because of all the metadata access. It would remind him of the thumbnail boards he used to surround himself with when working the flatbed and even the Avid. He might hate the audio functionality, but he might enjoy logging and pre-comping in FCPX before exporting to another platform for finishing. But from what I know about Avid and Premiere, this metadata organization ability isn’t something FCPX dominates alone in the market. The running joke about Avid for years was that it was a mediocre NLE, grafted onto the best filmmaking footage database system. The joke about Premiere was that it was the dongle for getting your copy of AfterEffects. The joke about FCPX is/was that it’s for young “bros” editing casual skateboard videos.
Each joke has or had a kernal of truth to it. Once. But jokes can go stale, eventually.
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I rest my case.
And not in all of four years have I ever heard anyone say that multicam was any such “response”. That doesn’t even make sense to me. I think it was a given from day one that it would and had to come.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Robin S. Kurz] “I rest my case.”
So we’ll let the Jury decide then?
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[Robin S. Kurz] “I rest my case.”
And so what’s in your feature request list?
[Robin S. Kurz] “And not in all of four years have I ever heard anyone say that multicam was any such “response””
What? I’m amazed that you say that, since it was one of the main issues discussed in the early versions.
How about this from 2011:
https://9to5mac.com/2011/06/29/apple-officially-responds-to-final-cut-pro-x-complaints-with-new-faq-website/– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “What? I’m amazed that you say that, since it was one of the main issues discussed in the early versions.”
Of course it was. And like I said, it was a given that it would come and I happen to know that it was in fact on the road map from… let’s say, very early on. The only question was when and what it would look like i.e. how it would work. Just because Apple didn’t in fact announce that it was coming until several months after release (and only oder duress), says nothing about what was already in the making. That aside from the fact that you’re essentially suggesting that they cranked out THAT multicam in a mere matter of a few months, which imho is a ludicrous notion. The testing alone takes that long.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Jeff Markgraf] “I get that many people on this forum do not and will not accept the “trackless” audio of X. OK. To each his own. But attributing such views to Walter Murch, who has not made any actual statements about the issue, is simply inaccurate.”
Yes, I think I may have watched a different interview than others on here : )
I enjoyed the piece. I have to admit that I was distracted right off the bat by the framing of the shot.
All of that wasted space over to the right and the reversed look space.1. If you have to run the camera and conduct the interview yourself, reverse your key light and the position of the subject’s chair so you can give the correct look space. Instead of him looking back across his should the way he did.
2. Tuck that mic cable behind his jacket, and position it on the side that he is looking so he is not speaking away from the mic
This of course is just the style I would use, he may have been going for the exact look he got. Just different opinions like a lot of this stuff.
I’m interested in his opinion like many here because of his talent and experience, but he admitted to not really having any experience with X
I really prefer to hear from people that have put the program through it’s paces.
When he said that Adobe listened to him and “Joel Coen” ah…………yeah………of course they listened to Joel Coen. Does he really think that Apple would not take a call from Joel Coen if he said he wanted to cut his next film with X? They listen to those guy from Focus, why wouldn’t they listen to Coen?
That made me smile.He was very honest about his learning curve even on Pr
I respect that, and him.
Congrats Jeff on those cubbies beating my Cards, brother.
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[Tony West] “Does he really think that Apple would not take a call from Joel Coen if he said he wanted to cut his next film with X? They listen to those guy from Focus, why wouldn’t they listen to Coen?”
His point was that Adobe has been integrating changes and features into Premiere Pro based on suggestions from Joel, Kirk Baxter and himself. As well as the editors of “Deadpool”, which is being cut on Premiere Pro. This is something Apple did not do with “Focus” and have never done in the past with FCP “legacy”.
The only direct assistance by Apple on-site with editors was early on when Joel was first using FCP. It’s my understanding that Apple did have a person there at that time, as the Coens were coming from a film editing background without any other computer knowledge to relate to in learning FCP.
In the case of Premiere, there are Adobe engineers involved who are studying workflows and requests and seeing how to make these changes in Premiere. It extends into media optimizations with SANs, as well. This is something not even Avid has done very much of except maybe in the early days.
From what I do know of some of the people on the inside, they do study “pain points” and try to integrate solutions into the updates, but it never seems to take the form of direct features that are trackable to a certain person’s input or request. That’s what seems quite different in the eyes of these folks with Adobe compared with the other “A” companies.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Mark Suszko] “If you take anything away from reading about Murch’s workflow, it’s all about the meticulous, really meticulous logging, studying, tagging, and setting up of the raw footage, storyboarding shots all over the place. If I had to speculate, I’d say Walter would love the FCPX system for organizing and intake of the footage, because of all the metadata access. “
I doubt that it’s relevant to him. If metadata inside an NLE was critical to him, he’d never have left Media Composer for FCP.
Here’s the thing. The sources of metadata aren’t mysterious. Some is generated by cameras, but most of it is collected by production assistants. You’d be astonished how much of it is hand written. An assistant editor then type type types all that information into fields.
But not fields in an NLE. Because you know who has the best database? A database. An actual database.
I don’t know what he’s using these days, but historically speaking, his favorite database is FileMaker Pro. There’s a terrific story about Walter’s use of FileMaker Pro on the FileMaker Pro website.
Did I mention FileMaker Pro? Because he used (and may still use) FileMaker Pro. So take a look at the story about Walter using FileMaker Pro at the FileMaker website.
There’s another coupla takeaways for you from Walter’s story, going back to Cold Mountain with FCP, The English Patient with Avid Film Composer, and many years before that with film:
1) Need a database? Use a database.
2) Gonna use a database to manage metadata? You need assistance from assistants for both collecting the metadata and managing it.
3) Not using databases and (not “or,” but “AND”) assistants? Nobody is more articulate than Walter about the inner truths of Editing than Walter, but vast swaths of his actual experience editing may not be as applicable to you as you thought.
But then again, the applicability of various analogies and examples has never slowed us down before. LOL No reason to start now.
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[Tony West] “This of course is just the style I would use, he may have been going for the exact look he got. Just different opinions like a lot of this stuff.”
I can’t imagine poor mic placement is a stylistic choice anyone pines for. 😉 I was listening to the interview while I was working so I didn’t even notice the bare mic cable flapping around or the odd body position Murch was in. I used to shoot a lot in my younger days and I probably would’ve made the same adjustments you mentioned Tony. Maybe it’s poetic license, maybe it’s an unintentional visual grammar error.
[Tony West] “I really prefer to hear from people that have put the program through it’s paces.”
I agree but unfortunately Murch was at the mercy of the questions being asked. I feel like the interviewer was hoping for a sensationalistic answer that never materialized.
[Tony West] “When he said that Adobe listened to him and “Joel Coen” ah…………yeah………of course they listened to Joel Coen. Does he really think that Apple would not take a call from Joel Coen if he said he wanted to cut his next film with X? They listen to those guy from Focus, why wouldn’t they listen to Coen?
That made me smile.”But would they do anything once the call ended? 😉 I’ve talked with people that run decent size facilities in LA and they used to have a direct line to a rep from the Pro Apps team but that ended after X came out. Now they have direct lines to the PPro team. One place, and granted it’s a big name, was even able to get a custom bug fix from Adobe to solve a show stopping issue with a third party product.
Saying “Apple doesn’t listen at all” is hyperbole but Apple doesn’t listen nearly as much as other companies do and they never have. It’s just not how they work. Murch’s comments about user feedback and ‘baby sitting pros’ are pretty much the same as what Ron Brinkmann said his experience was when Apple bought Nothing Real (maker of Shake). When Shake was made by Nothing Real there was a lot of interaction with the users and that was key in driving the software development. When Shake was made by Apple there was little interaction with users and Apple’s own idea of what Shake should be was key in driving software development.
Apple makes products following its own, internal vision and, basically, users can either take it or leave it. Even with FCP Legend, Apple was making the NLE that it wanted to make and it just happened to jive with many pros. When Apple decided that it wanted to rethink the NLE many people felt that Apple abandoned them, but Apple was never making FCP for them in the first place. It’s sorta like when Dylan went electric and many fans were upset and thought he was betraying his acoustic/folk roots. Dylan wasn’t making music for anyone but Dylan though and it was up to the audience to decide if they liked it or not.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Even with FCP Legend, Apple was making the NLE that it wanted to make and it just happened to jive with many pros. “
This ^^^^^ You and Tony are dead right. “It’s not about you.”
I still think that iMovie is where the work was being done to make the NLE that Apple REALLY wanted to make. Not to dig up the iMovie Pro argument that I’ve rejected since Day 1…but Legend always struck me as one of the least Apple-like applications to ever bear the Apple name.
(The others were Shake and Color. OOOPS.)
X, on the other hand, has Apple and nobody BUT Apple written all over it, as has the VERY Apple-like iMovie.
(It’s also always worth recalling that Apple only bought Final Cut when Adobe refused to sell Premiere to Apple, to fulfill Steve’s vision of a consumer video editing application on every iMac.)
So maybe call iMovie the skunkworks for X. Not exactly the right word, but it’s clear in retrospect that significant parts of the core development for X was “secretly” being done in the full light of day in iMovie.
Which is still not for you, me, or anyone else, except to the extent that Apple will do what they do for their own reasons, and you’ll either like it or you won’t.
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