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New blog post from Philip Hodgetts. Worth the read.
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[Shane Ross] “Oh, FCX doesn’t like you doing that.”
You can use files from anywhere in FCPX.
You can also move or consolidate media very easily in FCPX.
You just have to know how to use the preferences. It’s actually pretty easy, and in most cases if you want to move a project wholesale, you just use the Finder.
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[Chris Harlan] “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.””
[Jeremy Garchow] “Ha! I’m just a rather blogless dude who edits outside of Hollywood. Don’t listen to me!!! ;-D Thank you, though.”
I’ll second Chris’s statement.
I doubt I’d still be following this forum if it weren’t for you and your contributions, Jeremy — so thanks again for sharing your perspective. It is very valuable.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I do see where Philip is coming from, and he took it directly from real working editors talking about their jobs and the newer pressures within. This idea of having less time to do more is not from Philip, but from “the industry”. I think he’s rather balanced saying that it’s not for everyone, but does seem to explain at least some of the FCPX approach.”
Unfortunately, I don’t think the time pressure the editors at Editors’ Lounge discuss in the Vimeo links can be solved only with technology. I’d encourage everyone to actually watch (or listen to) to the video series that PH linked to. I don’t think that his pro-FCPX response actually addresses the challenges that the editors raised.
Shooting ratios are up. Schedules are down. This is a terrible combination. Editors are expected to make good stories, but they have less time to review more footage. They are forced into making snap decisions about what shots to use and how to use them.
Sure, being able to skip transcode is good. Being able to tag footage so you could find it later would be good — if there were time for that in the first place, which there isn’t.
As much as I love the skimmer and metadata, even a perfectly implemented NLE will not watch your footage for you in the first place, and that’s where the time crunch is hitting.
Another issue that PH seems to think that FCPX solves is that no one knows how to watch a rough cut anyone, so editors have to waste time unnecessarily polishing a work-in-progress. Whatever temp “finishing” (again, I’d call this veneering) work is done in the rough cut will be thrown out when the cut gets to the audio department or the colorist. Every minute that a creative editor spends doing temporary and fake finishing work for the sake of the rough cut is a minute taken away from their actual job, which is building the story. Whether you’re on a compressed schedule or not, not letting the creative editor do their job is a real tragedy that reduces the quality of the final product.
I’ll spare Bill from having to remind us about how many videos will never see dedicated audio or finishing post. While I don’t disagree, I think the same problem exists here, too: if you’re on a compressed schedule and you’re doing finishing work before the piece is finished, you risk wasting time finishing pieces that will end up on the cutting room floor, and that time might have been better spent actually editing.
Back to this “FCPX is 200% to 400% faster” idea, supported by the notion that you can finish within the context of the edit, even Autodesk only claims that Smoke is 35% faster. They also actually back up the claim with some data [link].
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 -
I’ll have to believe you Jeremy. I have seen dozens of posts on people having nothing but problems with this. But, might attribute that to unfamiliarity with how the app works. Like Avid people using FCP…not knowing how FCP does things, assuming it is just like they do with Avid.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Shane Ross] “I’ll have to believe you Jeremy. I have seen dozens of posts on people having nothing but problems with this. But, might attribute that to unfamiliarity with how the app works. Like Avid people using FCP…not knowing how FCP does things, assuming it is just like they do with Avid.”
And FCPX certainly does things differently, you just have to know when things break down, just like any application. Replacing/overwriting files outside of FCPX simply doesn’t work, which is probably what you might be seeing.
Jeremy
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[David Lawrence] “Excellent point. I’ve been using OSX finder tools as part of my organizing strategy for years. One example – when I get a HD full of unfamiliar clips, the first thing I always do is view everything in the finder in coverflow view. I then use quicklook to skim anything of interest. Using this technique, even if there’s hundreds of GBs to go thru, I get a sense of the footage landscape very fast and can quickly set up my bins in a way that makes sense.
“This is exactly what I used to do until FCPX, now using the skimmer in FCPX gets this done in the same way but quicker. I can get a great overview of my clips very quickly. Just done it with 2500 clips I just received on a new project i’ve just started.
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Steve Connor] “This is exactly what I used to do until FCPX, now using the skimmer in FCPX gets this done in the same way but quicker. I can get a great overview of my clips very quickly. Just done it with 2500 clips I just received on a new project i’ve just started.”
The skimmer takes some getting used to, but it rocks. It’s my second-favorite FCPX feature (behind new floating-point RGB processing).
I think Brian alluded to this earlier, but the skimmer is a bit reminiscent of scrubbing clips on Smoke’s edit desk (though Smoke lets you scrub them right in the thumbnail, which eliminates the one-viewer limit and makes it much handier for comparing two or more shots).
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 -
Jeremy,
Have you really never negotiated on points of schedule?
Franz.
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Salesman does sales job – and quite muddled at that.
That post is so muddled, I don’t know where to start.
Fortunately (and not unexpectedly) most of the good points have already been made here by the usual suspects. So I’ll try to keep my thoughts here short.
For all the excess that Aindres exhibits here (https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/22909) it is no more ridiculous to claim, as Philip Hodgetts does, to know the psychology of Apple when he says “Apple understands the pressure that’s on production folk.”
I’ve read a little bit of his blog on relevant issues since the release of FCPX. He does like magic numbers: “200 to 400% faster”, “universally” no less, from “a lot of people” who have been “using Final Cut Pro X on a huge project”.
Of course all of this grinds down to the details: what constitutes a “huge project”, how many people are “a lot”, and most tellingly: what exactly is it faster at doing? … and faster than what?
“The present and future of post production business and technology”? – not really. He seems to be comparing certain functions of FCPX to 2 year old software from Apple (that has been neglected for longer). A more useful survey might be a comparison of how different software packages compare in terms of “the pressure that’s on production folk”. It might make it clearer why he feels FCPX is superior. (Their concerns are about having time for the edit).
But imaginary numbers aside, it’s the other bit that is more telling: what is it doing faster?
The examples he gives seem to include transcoding and “polish”. Faster transcoding is unquestoinable valuable. No transcoding is even better. Canned “polish” can be left for another discussion (already started here by others).
No one has yet invented an NLE that can make you think and feel faster.
The thing is, if he’s really onto the speed game, those “efficiencies” in time – where does he imagine think that “extra time” ends up? In the edit room? Can anyone give me an historical example of anything where efficiencies in production ended up giving the worker “more time”? That efficiency becomes standard expectation on the producing end. He might be arguing with his vague, framing comment about the “democratization of video” that the new producers-as-editors will benefit from that – I don’t know, that link isn’t clear and is also contradicted by his focus on “huge projects”. But it’s also not his summary statement at the end:
“It seems to me that if getting to a cut faster – and getting to a more finished cut while you do it – are the realities of a lot of editors lives, then Final Cut Pro X has been designed perfectly for the modern, professional edit environment.”
He muddies these waters too in the comments by stating that there are only 25,500 “film or video editor” in the U.S. according to government statistics; but that the “market” is more than that. So is he speaking to the pressures of the “professional” market (his scare quotes) or the “editing market”. If its the latter, he should adjust his rhetoric. (Shane Ross makes this exact comment).But this comment from Philip (in response to Shane) is absolutely ridiculous (and quite bold in its rhetorical acrobatics):
The “working editor” is a construct and real only to you and those like you working in the niche business that is film and TV.I’ll be frank: I would be embarrassed to say to anyone that I work with that new software has made me “200 to 400% faster” – it shows a real lack of valuing what it is that I do as an editor, by belittling it and trying to use numbers as a crutch. (Let me be clear – I don’t mind talking about faster transcoding, faster distribution, etc.)
I’ll add to the compliments to you Jeremy (and those here in general): This forum offers so much more perspective.
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“True, but still, even though PPro is designed to work in “real time” more so than AE, it doesn’t all the time.”
I don’t think I said anything about Premiere Pro, so I’m not sure what your point is here. AE uses a proxy workflow because it’s (sometimes) the only way to work with a complex composite. AE artists don’t (or shouldn’t) expect realtime playback of heavy projects at full resolution.
“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.”
Yes, I use PPro with Blackmagic capture cards for all editing projects. I haven’t worked with a lot of Red footage, but when I do, it’s a pretty smooth experience. It’s about equal to editing H.264 @ 1080 24p. I can add filters, stack graphics and audio without major playback issues. Though I must confess, I haven’t had to cut a heavy 4K RAW project yet. Then again, I’m not a Mac user so my user experiences may be different.
“Having a proxy workflow in PPro would make much more sense to me as with AE…”
You actually can use a proxy workflow in PPro, this has been possible since the Premiere 6.5 days, it’s just not “built in” the same way it is in AE.
“…everything needs to be RAM previewed anyway.”
Yup, because it’s a completely different kind of tool. With Motion Graphics/VFX work, you don’t expect to work in full resolution in real time.
Thanks,
Shawn
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If you read the article, I used the editor’s lounge comments where the editors where lamenting the lack of time, and then broadened the discussion out to considering the two pressures: lack of time (to see all footage, to contemplatively edit) and pressure for more finished rough cuts. Given those pressures are only going to increase, then the technology *is* the solution.
Producers are not going to revert to giving 3 weeks for the 3 week job, just 1 as the editors’ in the video noted. Projecting forward, the fastest system – whatever that maybe (might turn out to be lightworks) will be the one that becomes dominant. ]
I then pointed out that those who are using FCP X are reporting that it is much faster for the work they’re doing than the same work in FCP 7.
If you want practical advice on how to improve your editing today, Steve Martin or Larry Jordan would be your go to guys. If you want some clue as to where we’ll be as creative industries in 10 years, you’ll read me, Oliver Peters and a few others.
Philip
Philip Hodgetts
President, Intelligent Assistance
AssistedEditing.com Fast First Cuts, Metadata Worfklows
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Personal Blog https://philiphodgetts.com
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