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New blog post from Philip Hodgetts. Worth the read.
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[Oliver Peters] “It will evolve. Hopefully the bugginess will go away and it will be better optimized.”
That’s at the heart of it really. That it will evolve and that one hopes it will become more more stable and usable.
I really can’t talk about speed, right at the moment projects take longer to complete with FCP X than they did with FCP7.
But I couldn’t go backwards or sideways (to another NLE system) at the moment.
I can’t invest anymore learning time into FCP7, it’s been EOL’d, I’ve no desire of it anymore.
The large investment in learning time that I’ve put into FCPX is starting to pay off, I’m now understanding the app (I know as many keyboard shortcuts as I did with FCP7) and I’ve learnt how to get around most of the problems I come across.
But it is not faster. However I can only edit as fast as I can think anyway. So right at the moment the buggy present iteration of FCPX and myself are on a level par.
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[Bill Davis] ” I was reminded of once when I did precisely the same thing, carelessly describing a young persons behavior as “psychotic” only to be pulled aside by a very upset 14-year old schoolmate of my sons who was upset because his father had, in fact, just been diagnosed as precisely that — and it was tearing their family to shreds.)”
Fortunately there are not too many 14 year olds on this forum, at least not chronologically. Just how PC do we have to be here? Can we no longer say something is “sick” because someone might have a family member with an illness, I can’t call something “idiotic” because someone’s dead Dad was an idiot and it brings up bad feelings – wait I can’t mention dead Dads then either, can I?
Bill, your post is crazier than Andreas’s and at least he had the advantage of being drunk when he wrote it. As for your situation with your son’s friend – the problem wasn’t that you used the word “psychotic,” the problem is that the kid’s dad was ill. Nothing you said caused it, nothing you don’t say will make him feel better. Sometimes the world just sucks.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “[John Joyce] “Where are the mavens going to come from for FCPX?”
Doesn’t Bill Davis qualify?”
🙂
FWIW -
Two key quotes
“Let’s assume that it’s only twice as fast as Final Cut Pro 7. Some of that is simply because of a modern foundation that drops any requirement for transcoding or rendering effects, and that’s shared with other modern NLEs like Premiere Pro, Vegas, Media Composer and Edius. But some is because of the way the interface has been redesigned.”
Much of this whole concept about faster compares FCPX to Legacy and that is a straw man analogy. The comparison needs to be to either something like Avid 6 or FCP8, the 64 bti version that could have, and in many opinions, should have been written.
Any time saving due to ability to natively edit with tapeless codecs is moot, since ALL modern NLE’s can do that. By all accounts FCPX lags behind PPro in that capacity still.
What’s up for discussion is how the new interface speeds editing, and on that I see no consensus. Since I have never touched FCPX I have no opinion in that area, but I have yet to see a compelling explanation as to how the FCPX timeline speeds up work in “most instances.”
Statements like “it speeds up my work by half” is interesting, but not compelling without the how; and the work done needs to represent reasonably complex work or it won’t apply to many here; obviously the theory being if it can do complex work, it can do simple work but the reverse is not necessarily true.
“The thing is, if we have one NLE that’s noticeably faster in use, that word will get out to producers and, guess what? Producers and executives like things done faster because that’s the direction they’ve been pushing. (Oh, and faster is usually cheaper.) If a two week job can be done in one, if a one week job can be done in three days, then whoever is doing it will adopt the tool that lets it be done in three days, or they’ll be looking for other work.”
This of course will be the final evidence. If it’s faster in complex workflows, then everyone here will shut up and use it.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Oliver Peters] “I think it’s pretty silly to project psychological motives onto any corporate entity. Successful companies work towards two goals: make good products and make money to continue the process.”
It isn’t that silly when a certain corporate entity is surrounded with a golden aura of wholeness and it’s fiercely backed up by its customers as if it was a sort of religion that drives them blindly towards its products and far away of the “others”. The way that Apple is progressively promoting itself, as a complete solution capable of re-inventing our lives, is becoming eerily close to a cult, and that of course is only achieved because of the reactions that Apple is able to gather around itself coming from its widening “fan base”. Sociopathic behavior is often understood as “antisocial”, but in Apple’s case, I would call it “antiothers”. And that’s typical of a cult filosofy.
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[Herb Sevush] “Any time saving due to ability to natively edit with tapeless codecs is moot, since ALL modern NLE’s can do that. By all accounts FCPX lags behind PPro in that capacity still.”
I wouldn’t discount this. Yes, FCPX still has work to do in this regard as far a native support (not codec, but container. We are talking about it here: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/22730 ). What it does have is background proxy creation while you edit, it can also make higher quality ProRes transcodes in the background as well. This is a pretty sweet feature if you ask me. It’s a preference change to go from Proxy to high quality transcodes.
Avid has something similar (I think) where you can make DNxHD MXF files of the AMA files, but from what I understand, this isn’t done in the background. Someone correct me if I am wrong there.
PPro, at least with CS5.5, makes some sort of cache files that you have zero control over, and sometimes don’t really help (they seem to be audio related). And if you want to make proxy files, how do you do it? You’d have to do it through third party apps. FCPXs workflow in this regard has a leg up, it also wholly depends on your source footage as well. Not all workflows need proxy creation.
[Herb Sevush] “What’s up for discussion is how the new interface speeds editing, and on that I see no consensus. Since I have never touched FCPX I have no opinion in that area, but I have yet to see a compelling explanation as to how the FCPX timeline speeds up work in “most instances.” “
Then you have to try it to make an informed decision. In my opinion, there are things that go much faster. Organization, viewing footage, some aspects of trimming go much faster, even importing footage. While footage is importing, you can keep working and start keywording/tagging footage. When FCPX is done with the transcode, it simply connects to the transcoded footage without me having to touch anything. It’s very nice and efficient. When you don’t have transcoded footage, you have to wait for that footage to render/transcode upon export (See PPro). As has been mentioned, you are going to have to render at some stage of the game. What is weird is that After Effects has a proxy generator.
I do find that the earlier on in the edit FCPX is faster (the 80% of the work) but once finesse and nuance starts to come in, that’s when FCPX slows down a bit, mostly in the audio controls, and fine tune control in general. Legacy has some of the same issues.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “PPro, at least with CS5.5, makes some sort of cache files that you have zero control over, and sometimes don’t really help (they seem to be audio related). And if you want to make proxy files, how do you do it?”
In PPro why would you want to make proxy files? (not being argumentative, just trying to understand.) What’s the advantage of Proxies if you can edit natively?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Christian Schumacher] “It isn’t that silly when a certain corporate entity is surrounded with a golden aura of wholeness and it’s fiercely backed up by its customers as if it was a sort of religion”
Sure, you’ve got as point. I think it’s silly in both directions, whether coming from customers (pro and con) or whether it’s coming from internal marketing spin (aka “the reality distortion field”).
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Avid has something similar (I think) where you can make DNxHD MXF files of the AMA files, but from what I understand”
Correct. As yet, Avid doesn’t have background functions. But, neither does FCP X. Its “background” functions are really “idle time” functions.
However, AMA files do not necessarily require any transcoding into MXF. Many of the formats work natively as linked files due to the AMA plug-in architecture. As such, they are immediately available at full resolution. You can edit a project from XDCAM or AVC-Intra and output to tape without ever transcoding.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Jeremy, I’m certainly not trying to debate that FCP X is not faster or better for some things. I have no doubt that it is. Sorry if you took it that way. My concern is mostly that PH is making statements about Industry work, and that the example he gives–access to SFX libraries, for instance– can all been done as quickly and easily in FCP 7. But, hey–I’ll answer your questions:
[Jeremy Garchow] “How much have you played with FCPX at this point? How about PPro or any other NLE?
“FCP X? Only a little at this point, and just out of curiosity. I just can’t justify the time until someone makes a good argument about how it will fit successfully into my work flow. I’m also not convinced of its future, yet. When I am, I will either pretty much split from this forum, or will spend a whole lot more time on the techniques forum.
[Jeremy Garchow] ” How about PPro or any other NLE?”
Not PPro. But I’ve been a paid editor on almost all other NLEs. Some still exist. Some do not.
[Jeremy Garchow] “let’s be realistic, fcp7 is not a very fast NLE, “
I know that others seem to feel that way, but I don’t understand it, at least from my perspective. I find it relatively responsive on my laptop, and very responsive on my 8 Core. Just for reference, the CODECs and flavors I use most often are ProRes HQ @1080 (in all fps), uncompressed 10 bit in SD, and sometimes DVCpro HD. I do occasional Sizzle reels that mix everything from AVI files to ProRes HQ.
One thing I should say is that I do use long developed editorial practices and procedures–for instance, turning bugs or certain filters off while editing, or leaving items I’m not working on un-rendered–but from what I’m reading in the the Techniques forum, background rendering and gfx creep seem to be adding their own bug-a-boos to FCP X.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Sure, if you have a few supported .movs to import, that’s one thing.
But tens of hours of tapeless formats that must be transcoded is another. “
I agree completely. And this is definitely one of the areas–that if I were working in–I would be much more interested in either FCP X and/or Premiere right now. My work generally does come to me taplessly–I don’t think I’ve had to capture for over two years now–but they are in the relatively few supported formats I mentioned above.
[Jeremy Garchow] “There are certain areas in which FCPX falls flat on its face (which all stem mostly around interchnage), but as a self contained editor where you don’t need much interaction with the outside world, it is much much faster than legacy feature for feature. “
Jeremy, that may be true for you–and many others–but it certainly isn’t true for everybody. If I’m working on a trailer with a heavy deadline, I can cut from locked picture off of an Avid dump on DVCproHD, and than easily replace it with final picture using almost every other existing NLE, except FCP X.
And you say it is “much, much faster… feature for feature”–what on earth does that mean? You might find it so, but a lot of people don’t. The very fact that it lacks tracks, bins to organize, no way to have multiple sequences open make it much, much slower for many people.
Here’s the thing, man. I’m happy if it is faster for you. If it ever turns out to be faster for me, I’ll be happy too.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Just curious Chris, but do you ever start from zero on any projects? Meaning, you are given a hard drive of 500GBs of raw footage and audio that you need to prep and organize?”
Yes, I do. All the time. If you mean from absolute scratch, then:
Not as often as I like, because I seem to have become niched and highly specialized, which has its rewards but also its distinct drawbacks. I’ve got a documentary I’m working on right now–right now being a relative term, in that it is a long process–about NC, Andrew, and Jaimie Wyeth. I also start occasional film promos from dailies or dumps of dailies.
Of course scratch can mean something else, as well:
My current promo project takes up a little under 3 TB in source, not including access to my SFX library (made up of four other full libraries). I expect this to get a bit larger, though not by much–maybe another TB at most. There are only about 400-500 source files in the project–not including SFX–so the number is small, but 40-50 of those files are 42+ Min long, and need to be prepped by removing unnecessary audio channels and then converted into multiple selects timelines that act as bins. So, what I lose in sheer number, I make up for in time and attention.
So, the answer is yes in both respects.
Again, Jeremy, I do not doubt that FCP X has its advantages. I don’t doubt that there are many people for whom it is the best choice. I only take exception because PH seemed to be arguing that FCP X was a better solution for the world I work in, and–to me–that is clearly not the case.
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