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New blog post from Philip Hodgetts. Worth the read.
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[Shawn Miller] “Well, maybe it’s not so strange… considering that AE isn’t designed to work in real time…”
True, but still, even though PPro is designed to work in “real time” more so than AE, it doesn’t all the time. Have you tried PPro with a capture card yet? Adding filters and effects to 4k or 4k raw footage isn’t exactly real time, unless you have CUDA, which doesn’t work very well with capture cards on a Mac. So it’s not all roses and pancakes. Having a proxy workflow in PPro would make much more sense to me as with AE, everything needs to be RAM previewed anyway.
Jeremy
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Jeremy – “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.”
I wouldn’t exactly call proxy creation a “leg up”. While it’s true, CS5.5 DOES create cache files, they are very small pointers that don’t have to be archived with the project. The problem most folks over look in this with the FCPX implementation is the fact that is DOUBLES YOUR VIDEO DATA. Yes, it is just a re-wrap of the footage and it is quick, but now you have twice the physical data on your system. At this point you have a few choices; 1. Keep all of that data, both raw footage and re-wraps and archive it. That’s going to become cumbersome really quickly if you have more than one person in your shop. 2. Get rid of your raw data and store ONLY the re-wraps. Several problems here such as meta-data from the RAW files not completely being transferred, sharing re-wraps across platforms (anyone know if sending these to PC’s is feasible? Historically hasn’t been) and what if you need to send the data back to the camera for some reason? (lining up shots for direct matching is one example).
The point is, native does NOT mean re-wrapping raw data. FCPX loses to CS5.5 hugely on this one. Don’t see how you can really say otherwise.
Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
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[Herb Sevush] “Doesn’t Bill Davis qualify?”
Absolutely not.
I’m not as good an editor as many here. And I’m not even as familiar with X as many here – from whom I learn much in these discussions regularly.
The only thing I bring to the party is an almost pathological intolerance for one-sidedness.
I hate it because it stifles thinking. It narrows options. And it dumbs down discourse.
That is precisely what I saw happening here almost from day one. People so gleefully ready to trash something that they (at the time) had astonishingly little understanding about. (I actually had as little understanding myself, I just didn’t feel as threatened and felt that Apple’s long string of successes that have helped my business grow had earned them some time to show me why they did what they did – something I”m extremely happy that happened, because X has become a very useful tool in my editing toolkit – something that would not have happened if I’d listened to the half-dozen voices here that just couldn’t see it in any context beyond “the end of everything good in the world.”
The voices that question FCP-X and espouse rational reasons and keep open minds I respect. And can usually learn from them.
The ones who keep trashing it like it’s some lurking child molester and they’re babysitting a room full of cute kids – they deserve to be called out occasionally. And sorry, but drunk or not, Aindreas went there in public, so I’m comfortable with my criticism of his post.
I’d probably enjoy a pint with him if our paths ever cross. But for those who come hear to get some semblance of a balanced view of the programs capabilities (and weaknesses) I stand behind what I wrote.
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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Philip Hodgetts: “I haven’t been using Final Cut Pro X on a huge project (yet, check back with me late next year) but I follow a lot of people who are and they universally comment that Final Cut Pro X is “200 to 400% faster” for them. As near as I can tell these people are doing the same sort of work on Final Cut Pro X as they were on Final Cut Pro 7 and finding that they get to a result from twice as fast to four times as fast.”
What does 2x – 4x faster than FCP7 mean? Is it saving people 5 to 7.5 hours over a 10-hour day? For those using FCPX full-time now, would you say that you were wasting 50% to 75% of your day before?
I got the impression that the editors PH was responding were lamenting tightening schedules not leaving them enough time to properly familiarize themselves with their footage so they can craft a story.
Philip Hodgetts: “What’s interesting is it parallels what seems like a design philosophy behind Final Cut Pro X. From what I’ve done in Final Cut Pro X, it seems to me to encourage a much more polished project along the way. It’s as easy to add an animated, high production value title as it would be to add a placeholder to remind you to do it later, as I’ve always (previously) done.”
I have to flatly disagree with this, because actually creating an animated, high production value title still takes time. Adding a pre-existing asset is pretty fast in any NLE.
Philip Hodgetts: “I consider that to be a core strength with Final Cut Pro X – the ability to polish as you edit is much more fluid than in other NLEs of my experience. When you already have a searchable database of music cues and fx sounds, ready access to an Aperture photo library (or iPhoto), and hundreds of pre-programmed titles and looks, it’s much easier to approach finishing-as-you-go, and therefore fill that demand of modern production situations.”
In my mind, this is not the definition of finishing. This is a high-gloss veneer.
One of the things that disappointed me the most about FCPX was that I hoped to use it as a finishing tool, but at least for the moment, it’s not well-suited for that.
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 -
[Marvin Holdman] “The problem most folks over look in this with the FCPX implementation is the fact that is DOUBLES YOUR VIDEO DATA”
Depends on how you use it, and this is nothing new to a FCP workflow.
If just creating proxy files and you do not bring in the original footage to the event, it does not double your data. It does add to the data, yes, but depending on your chosen X workflow, it doesn’t necessarily double it.
[Marvin Holdman] “The point is, native does NOT mean re-wrapping raw data. FCPX loses to CS5.5 hugely on this one. Don’t see how you can really say otherwise.”
I didn’t. I said proxy workflow, not native workflow, in which X has a leg up as PPro does not offer a proxy workflow. In our case, since this footage from my recent example needs to live on 3 different machines that aren’t connected to the SAN, having lightweight proxy files is much easier than trying to shuffle around a bunch of R3Ds and 444 ProRes files, but that’s just me. When using a proxy workflow, the original files don’t move around with the proxy files.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Chris Harlan] “Not PPro. But I’ve been a paid editor on almost all other NLEs. Some still exist. Some do not.”
But have you taken a look around recently or has it been all FCP7 all the time? Just wondering, not judging. I work with FCP7 most of the time, too. FCPX is still in testing for us at this point, but I do try and kick the tires every day if I can. I just added PPro to the list as well, alas there’s only so much time in the day!
“No. Media Composer every now-and-then. And now, I’m beefing up my skills there so that I can transition to that more exclusively over the next couple of years. FWIW, I’d be interested in PPro if agencies ever take it to heart. Also, if the brightest projections for FCP X do come about, I could see moving back that way. I’d probably be interested in Smoke, if it weren’t unjustifiable overkill for what I do. But, if the right project comes…
[Jeremy Garchow] “Yes, but it’s much much better than FCP7. FCP7 without effects/text is fine, once you start adding even the little effects, things get much slower. FCPX offers much more real time support, and I might get some flak for this, but sometimes it feels like sketching. Also, green screen work is pretty damn sweet in FCPX, even if it’s just for an offline. Doing this in FCP7 is a chore. Straight editing in FCP7 with ProRes files is fine, though.
“Definitely, effects can slow things on the Macbook Pro. The MacPro, however, seems to be pretty agile at sweating the small stuff. I hear green screen is great. I always do mine in Motion, so–yeah–that would be slower.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Chris Harlan] “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. ”
Well, it certainly works differently. It does take some getting used to, no question. There are ways to do everything you mentioned here, but there are no bins or tabbed sequences, yet there are functions to mimic those very things. I am not saying it’s perfect or works the same, but you can’t expect FCPX to work like FCP7 because it doesn’t. I can understand if people don’t want to get used to that fact. It’s a big point of contention, and some people like the new UI, some don’t.
In my younger days, people used to say that M100 works “the way I think” when compared to FCP the younger (version 2 and 3). Well, in certain ways, FCPX does this for me, especially in the organizational phase. Of course, it won’t work for everyone that way, and Philip Hodgetts says that X is not for everyone either.
“Pretty much agreed. Frankly, Jeremy, I generally find your tempered assessment of FCP X’s virtues far more insightful and useful than PH’s. No disrespect to PH; I just think he’s gotten himself caught up in a whirlwind as an evangelist/apologist, and it is perhaps difficult for him to get perspective.
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Exactly, Walter. Well said!
Also, I don’t understand why PH doesn’t think I don’t have equally “instant” access to photos and sfx through the OS X file system. I often build sfx bins dragging and dropping from outside FCP. I can easily preview gunshots in finder from gun folders and dropped them into a bin.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “THEY need to change…not us.”
I wish it were that easy. For some reason, I just don’t see things going back to the way they once were.”
Then they will get crap from us. If they don’t give us time, they get crap. They want better, they need to give us time. If they want to throw 80 hours of every format under the sun at us and expect a polished rough cut (meaning full audio pass) in a week, there is something wrong with them. And if they keep pushing, I won’t work for them. I work for people who are realistic, and won’t push me, the editor, to working 12 hour days and weekends. Sorry, I like my family.
And really…this “budgets getting smaller” thing is getting out of hand. They aren’t getting THAT much smaller. Companies just have a lot of overhead…the producers don’t want to take pay cuts even though they are hiring editors for less and less. And more often they are pouring most of the budget into production (Shoot RED! Shoot ALEXA! Get a huge grip truck!) leaving post with peanuts…so we are asked to do the same value in less time.
And if they do that…those many formats…I’ll use Premiere Pro. Because it handles them, and still works like a professional editing app. The basics of making an edit are there.
And just because FCX is faster, doesn’t mean that it is the right tool. It still cannot do a lot of what I need done. Yeah yeah…wait until the next major version. Whatever. The editing paradigm in employs doesn’t work for me. They broke something that worked.
If they keep pushing for faster, they are going to just keep getting “good enough” or crap. And I am not going there.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Chris Harlan] “There aren’t that many Corps. that get away with “you’re holding it wrong,” and have the faithful respond with, “oh, pardon me.””
Why does this make me laugh thinking of the slick music video I saw where the star rapper was singing into the END of a Neumann U87.
(for the music gear unfamiliar, the U87 is a very expensive German side-address mic. So singing into the end of it is the precise musical equivalent of “you’re holding it wrong.”)
Also, since the whole, “you’re holing it wrong” meme was born from the iPhone 4 antenna field tests – it I guess it makes people feel superior to riff on that – but if the way you hold something actually tests out to diminish it’s function (and for those who don’t recall, it was the crazy Apple fanboy crew at Consumer Reports who withheld their recommendation because of it (IIRC) and brought the whole stink to light — shouldn’t that be relevant? Most of us who owned iPhones at that time, just yawned, bought a case so we didn’t inadvertently short the tiny antenna gap on the frame – whether or not it was a “real” issue – and got back to life.
That the overall phone design delighted legions and it sold zillions was trivial, I guess, in the face of the superior thinking of the haters.
I can personally attest that there’s nothing quite so annoying as stumbling over actual facts along the path to one’s smugness.
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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[Chris Harlan] ” No disrespect to PH; I just think he’s gotten himself caught up in a whirlwind as an evangelist/apologist, and it is perhaps difficult for him to get perspective.”
Philip can certainly defend himself, but in my discussions with him, Philip is a great believer in the power of metadata, as his Assisted Editing products attest. I think that’s where he sees the speed – Smart Collections, Keywords, etc. IOW the automatic tagging versus manual entry of data. If you don’t use those functions in any NLE, then I think a lot of the speed advantage is negated. FCP X is faster ONLY if you do things that are inherently slower in FCP 7 or MC.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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