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New blog post from Philip Hodgetts. Worth the read.
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[Bill Davis] “FCP-X “fits” that because I see it as an alternative we didn’t have before that’s more closely targeted towards a new world where video is just another form of data. And organizing it, searching for it, and manipulating it, may actually become as important as “editing it” a process that used to be the end of the manipulation chain, but that I think is moving more toward being one “state” of the data grouping that increasingly is expected to evolve over time.”
I don’t think FCPX is as revolutionary as you suggest here.
You can use metadata for organizing and searching in the browser, but you cannot use it for actually manipulating your media in the timeline. Magnetic timeline aside, the editorial tools available in FCPX are not data-driven. (Check out some of Philip Hodgett’s work for real data-driven editorial tools.)
And wait a minute — are you suggesting that FCPX might be better suited than other NLEs for our brave new world, and that this might confer some advantages onto its users? Weren’t you just trying to school me last week about how irrelevant the tool is when you have talent?
[Bill Davis] “Internet search used to be the province of university folk. Today it’s something grandmothers regularly do to find recipes. That’s powerful change.”
You keep talking about FCPX and “searchability” or “datafication,” and you keep talking about the big changes in content consumption, but you haven’t really been very clear about how FCPX will help you make your output more searchable or datafied (?). FCPX outputs the same unstructured data — a video file — that every other NLE does.
Further, how does a change from push to pull consumption actually change the production process? Isn’t there still value in a production process that collects raw assets, curates them, and presents them meaningfully for consumption?
[Bill Davis] “I embrace that concept since it means I may be called upon to constantly monitor and update work, rather than just delivering it and that’s the end of the process. I think that may turn out to be a better sustainable revenue model in the future for content creators – but we’ll see. It’s never really been possible to look at “deliverable work” as a fluid thing before this internet connected era. But look at how “refreshing content” streams like RSS feeds and site updating increase SEO rankings because a site is in constant change and that is reflected by the web crawlers.”
Again, I must disagree. In my opinion, almost nobody cares about updated content; it’s new content that sells.
If FCPX helps you churn out new content faster (and I do believe you when you say it’s helping you do just that), then it’s a great tool for you. I think we can both agree on that!
Since you’re seeing big benefits from FCPX for your business, I’m curious about your opinion on that 4x claim: has FCPX let you complete your work 200% to 400% faster? Can you get what used to be a two-week job done in between a half-week and a single week?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Walter’s response has hit on almost everything I was going to say, except he said it better, but I would like to add one thing.
[Bill Davis] “FCP-X “fits” that because I see it as an alternative we didn’t have before that’s more closely targeted towards a new world where video is just another form of data. And organizing it, searching for it, and manipulating it, may actually become as important as “editing it””
Video has always been just another form of data, and “searching for it, organizing it and manipulating it in time” is the definition of “editing it.” That’s what editors have done since rewinds were invented, what else is there?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
“[Bill Davis] “…towards a new world where video is just another form of data. And organizing it, searching for it, and manipulating it, may actually become as important as “editing it””
[Herb Sevush]
“… what else is there?”
Hi
GPS data, date/time data, copyright data, sticky production metadata. etc etc
YouTube type online video libraries would be far more effective resources with that type of ‘something else’ inherent in the data – to facilitate the edit, and using ‘combined/linked clips’ timeline methods to identify groups of clips and assets to keep track of any particular batch of the uncut assets.
It would certainly help Ridley Scott with his 80,000 clip/4,500hr projects, with another ongoing… 😉In the past film/video libraries required droves of librarians trained in bespoke databases (and superhuman memory feats) to service the old school ‘editing’ fraternity.
FCPX isn’t there yet, but its likely streets ahead of MC and PP in this respect.
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[Herb Sevush] “Video has always been just another form of data, and “searching for it, organizing it and manipulating it in time” is the definition of “editing it.” That’s what editors have done since rewinds were invented, what else is there?
“It’s true.
My clients don’t pay me for my project organization directly (although my organization keeps the project moving so its indirect), they pay me for the end product. The organization, and how it’s done, is for me and anyone else that has to work in fcp on the project. When you start sharing projects, organization, logical organization, becomes paramount.
I might add that fcpx’s approach to managing and parsing this data (inside the app) is right powerful.
If FCPX doesn’t make it past grade school, my hope will be that other NLE manufacturers take big notice as to how FCPX works in this regard. In my opinion, it’s an excellent approach to managing and presenting your organization right back to you, and can change just as fast as your project requirements can change, losslessly without having to completely restructure your bins. Since clips can be in multiple locations at once, it also allows multiple forms of organization for multiple people without having to restructure bins. I’m sure some will say differently, but to me as our projects are now constantly moving around to different peoples machines, this is a big difference between what fcpx offers in organization and other NLEs. Sharing, although not quite apparent, seems to be one of the underlying thoughts behind fcpx, but that’s pure speculation.
If you’re a one man org, or you are the only person that touches your projects, the maybe you don’t care about this, but think about it from the perspective of a 3 to 300 person organization. The way that fcpx handles the data allows multiple ways of thinking without rearranging the other person’s way of thinking. To me, and the way that we work, this is a pretty cool idea.
As far as metadata manipulation, it isn’t quite in FCPX. Yet. It is easy to see where it might go. Look at software like PrEdit. You can see how you’d be able to feed it a paper edit, and it assembles an edit for you. That alone will knocks DAYS off an edit. Now combine that with something like Soundbite which is analyzing phonemes, things start to get crazy, real fast.
Taking these sort of organizational duties allows editors to simultaneously watch the footage. If my computer can take a paper edit and assemble a super rough first cut, timecode it and send it to my client with minimal interaction from me? Seems pretty cool (careful what I wish for, as well). It does allow me time to review the rest of the footage while that’s happening, it does appease my clients to begin crafting their story ASAP, it does allow me to work on more creative aspects of the project while the paint is drying and I am no longer sitting around to watch it.
This, in essence, is what Philip is getting at (and please let me know if I’m wrong, Philip).
This isn’t pie on the sky stuff, this capability is almost here.
Yes, editors will still be needed, yes, our input is still crucial to the craft, yes, we will never go back to having more time.
Jeremy
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[kim krause] “glass in the left hand on the close up. then half full glass in the right hand on the wide shot. shirts open, shirts closed..it doesn’t matter what you edit on if the material is flawed. why don’t people ever bitch about that.”
Largely because the people trained to notice and catch that stuff were people with experience. And they were the “expensive” ones tossed out when the industry “suits” focused on maintaining margins in a shrinking cash flow.
BTW, only a fools fails to realize that those very “suits” are as necessary as any other group in a stable enterprise. But as with all other groups, in times of stress they tend to see the world with the narrow eyes of their discipline, rather than how their practice “fits in” to the overall health of things.
It’s going to take a long time to regroup after an era where “right-sizing” came to mean “starve the enterprise to make the bank/shareholders short-term happy.”
As Vonnegut wrote: And so it goes…
“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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[Jeremy Garchow] “As far as metadata manipulation, it isn’t quite in FCPX. Yet. It is easy to see where it might go. Look at software like PrEdit. You can see how you’d be able to feed it a paper edit, and it assembles an edit for you. That alone will knocks DAYS off an edit. Now combine that with something like Soundbite which is analyzing phonemes, things start to get crazy, real fast.”
I agree that metadata is incredibly useful. I’ve probably made the axe-sharpening analogy here a dozen times. Properly tagging footage with metadata is the editorial equivalent of sharpening the axe. It requires a long period of time upfront before you get any results, but once it’s done, the tree falls quickly and the process as a whole should be shorter.
That said, in my mind, actually assembling the footage from tagged footage and a paper edit isn’t the hard, time-consuming, or valuable part. Tagging the footage and actually creating the paper edit is.
PrEdit and First Cuts require someone to associate correct and meaningful metadata with the clips before they can return useable results. You can’t just hand them a pile of footage and hit the “Make Magic” button. (At least not in the current versions… IBM hasn’t brought Watson to Hollywood yet.)
This may save days in the edit bay, but it doesn’t save days in the context of the entire production. It kicks the can for organization and shot selection away from the editor and back toward a producer or writer; it doesn’t eliminate the need for someone actually watching and evaluating the footage.
There may be nothing wrong with that. It may save people a lot of money by letting them do things themselves they used to have to hire an editor to do.
On the other hand, you may be asking the editor to step out of the creative cut. You may not be allocating tasks to the ones best equipped to handle them. You may not be getting the best results possible in a given budget and timeframe.
I think that metadata is very valuable in post-production, but I don’t think that the metadata-driven workflow you’re describing fundamentally alters the process; it just shifts responsibilities around.
Am I missing something?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “Am I missing something?”
Nope, spot on.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[Walter Soyka] “I think that metadata is very valuable in post-production, but I don’t think that the metadata-driven workflow you’re describing fundamentally alters the process; it just shifts responsibilities around.
Am I missing something?”
No – you are entirely correct
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Herb Sevush] “Sometimes the world just sucks.
“Nothing more true that that.
But it’s equally true that some people still value dated concepts like “manners” – that social lubricant that means one tries to be cognizant of the differing sensitivities of others rather than simply operating as if “my” standards are the ones that must rule all interactions.
That was my “lesson” when I screwed up with that kid. I wasn’t trying to – but I made him feel crappy (or better by being able to vent on me, who knows!) I can give myself a free pass knowing that hurting him wasn’t my intent – or I can try to learn from the experience. It’s not so much “political correctness” as it is using life’s “feedback loop” to try to act in ways that don’t cause unintended hurt. And what is wrong with a goal like that?
FWIW.
“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] “Properly tagging footage with metadata is the editorial equivalent of sharpening the axe. It requires a long period of time upfront before you get any results, but once it’s done, the tree falls quickly and the process as a whole should be shorter.”
OK. Let me ask you this. How often do you properly organize your footage? Do you name every clip? Do you name batches of clips? Do you add scene/take? How far do you go? How did you do it in FCP7?
Now, have you done this in FCPX? What about even a cursory organization? What if you have to rename all of your clips? Or what if you want to view them by another name? These workflows aren’y even possible in FCP7. So, you say it takes a long time upfront. Does it? My argument is that it is completely faster (I don’t have an actual percentage) but it’s at least double. Then as the project moves on, I can further refine and refine that organization, make it more granular. This is where FCPx shines, as all of that granularity is obtuse (in a good way), and not permanent, so I constantly change and resort depending on what I am working on and get as fine or as dull as I want. This, to me, is compounded time saving.
Show me someone who says that FCPX isn’t faster, and I’ll show you someone who’s spent about 15 minutes with it, or is trying to make it work like other software.
FCPX is incredibly fast at organizing huge swaths of data, extremely easily. You can save those sorts for later, or not. I can’t tell you how much faster it is, I have never timed it, but from experience, it is simply faster.
[Walter Soyka] “That said, in my mind, actually assembling the footage from tagged footage and a paper edit isn’t the hard, time-consuming, or valuable part. Tagging the footage and actually creating the paper edit is.”
Really? How much do you personally have to actually do this on your projects?
FOr instance, a current project I am working on consists of about 30 hours of interviews on two camera (so double that in real time). We have to go through the 30 hours of footage when we receive a paper edit from the client. I would much rather feed it in to a system than have me go through and sort all 30 hours of material. That way, they first few days of just getting the right soundbites together can be spent going through the other 20 hours of cutaways, and further refining that part of the organization, the part that is really going to be the bulk of the piece. This piece, by the way, will be cut down to 3-4 minutes. 30 hours of interviews to 3-4 minutes. The paper edit, is the MOST valuable way to do this. Our clients are in New York, we are in Chicago. They send us new paper edits, we update them. The first paper edit was an hour and a half long. So, it’s time consuming, it’s tedious, and it’s highly valuable as it is essentially the spine of the whole piece.
[Walter Soyka] “This may save days in the edit bay, but it doesn’t save days in the context of the entire production. It kicks the can for organization and shot selection away from the editor and back toward a producer or writer; it doesn’t eliminate the need for someone actually watching and evaluating the footage.”
I think you might be misunderstanding, This isn’t shot selection. That is my argument. The shot selection comes later, which I still have to watch and organize while creating 1.5 hour paper edit assemblies from 30(60) hours of interviews. FCPX will not help you find the right shot. That is the job of the editor, but as you watch the footage and tag it, it will help you “refind” the right shot later. This time saving is then compounded across the project (which is why it makes it hard to run a stop watch and find out just how much faster it is). And THIS here is another reason why metadata is important (and makes things easier/faster).
[Walter Soyka] “I think that metadata is very valuable in post-production, but I don’t think that the metadata-driven workflow you’re describing fundamentally alters the process; it just shifts responsibilities around.
Am I missing something?”
If that also includes giving me more time to be more creative as I’m doing less monkey work, then call it what you want.
Also, as the project gets older, and more time passes (and perhaps more projects are worked in the meantime) a data search and sort becomes more and more valuable and allows me to reacquaint myself with the footage much more quickly than sorting through a ton of bins/sequences.
Look at it this way. Does tapeless acquisition save you time, or does it simply time shift the acquisition and subsequent archive of the footage? Would you rather go back to tape? Where is saving time important?
Jeremy
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