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On being rude to Randy Ubillos
One of the posters below there after the apple FAQ announcement, acting somewhat in – everything is fine here now, lets move on with FCPX – mode said
“But PLEASE – stop the personal attacks on the designer, and keep it civil. I don’t think much of what has been said here is fair or respectful. Would you have said the same to their face? I doubt it.”
I’ve got… one more rant in me.. so here goes: I’m one of the people being a bit scathing of Randy Ubillos. I don’t know about rude tho. that implies sort of the opposite of being polite and respectful of our betters or something. And yes, God knows, if given the opportunity, I would say what I’ve said here to his face.
hands up who here would like to ask randy some questions in a town hall setting?Anyway – I would actually argue that I’m being derisory of Randy, and actually not of Randy Ubillos the man, although I have had imaginary famous people call him names, but rather I have been derisory of of the hubris implicit in Randy’s approach to updating a key piece of software for the professional video editing market.
FCPX, whatever else you think of it – is, I would argue, not particularly great software, purely as software I’m not sure at all how good it is: there seem to be tons of little finnicky mistakes in it, piles of people have attested to its bugginess, it’s media management is ridiculous, and it’s missing so many fundamental features its kind of amazing that apple are looking for cash for it, while they inform us that someone else will figure out the pro features for Final Cut Pro, at a future point, charging us unknown amounts of cash, but that this will all happen after apple finalise the API architecture for the product they they just sold me. So that’s great.But that’s not my real bugbear – I’ve been venting spleen non-stop for so long that, rather than type something new, let me just reach back into the sludge of my previous invective and paste a paragraph in – its in a reply to a guy saying that NLE’s had remained largely unchanged in their approach for too long:
“…well yes, that is precisely correct. editing software has remained largely the same, 3D software, when you think about it, has remained much the same both in how it exposes functionality – four up view – transform and manipulation tools – and the degree of functionality it exposes – a lot.
Saying – looks the same as in the 1990s – side steps an inescapable point – the software looks the same because the professional editing environment, no more than the professional 3D environment, or indeed the professional print environment, have complex requirements, exposing functionality for the artist to deliver across multiple markets and output mediums in a high pressure environment – that is what maintains the complexity of the software and the tried and tested conceptual underpinnings of the software it self: multiple tracks, a source, a viewer, all of these things have real world counterparts, and they predate the editing software itself. Placed within the software, they are the distillation of hard won thought.”
See – I believe in that statement – you might disagree with it, but I think that statement is fundamentally true. Complex tasks are complex. High performance professional software functioning in truly complex environments, be it post production, 3D, or broadcast, engenders necessary complexity by exposing a swathe of different functions to the artist. But he or she will have internalised all those functions and options over their years of training, they understand the craft toolset as represented by the professional software and so he or she is perfectly comfortable with that. Right? We all get this OK? Photoshop/3DSMax/FCP7/Flame, expose a broad range of functionality at the surface – it looks fine to me, I need all that functionality, but if I had no idea what photoshop or 3DSMax was for – their interfaces would confuse me.
And so to my issue with Randy and what he has done with the upgrade to the software I have been using professionally for about the past nine years:
This is what I would argue Randy has done – he has taken the multitrack editor and boiled it down into a few digestible parables and adverbs, primary and secondary storylines, noises off (thats the name for nat sound tags in a future release) he has done this to make iMovie Pro an easily digested upgrade for a person coming from a very particular piece of software – iMovie – my problem with this is that I, the professional customer waiting so long for this upgrade, do not need the parable of the primary storyline, I do not need the handholding of V2 auto-linking to V1, I already fully understand the functions and practices of editing made available to me by a true multitrack editor – I don’t need randy to boil it down for me – I already get it. I need all the true functionality underlying and driving his simplified metaphors. All of it. But you see, Randy wasn’t talking to me, or to you, or to anyone of us as professional editors – he completely knows we get it, he was talking to people who’s wallets apple haven’t really been able to get at – prosumers. It’s a potentially large market. Randy has decided, or has been told, that his conversations, now and in the future, are to be had with them, not me or you. And in case we are confused, Apple are doing this for entirely financial motives. 75 billion in the bank just is not enough.
And so as an editing professional working in the creative industries, the direction Apple have taken with this application really really really really annoys me. They are, he said, finally getting the bile right into his mouth, denigrating professional craft by deeming this professional software.
Its not a new way to think of editing, its a prosumer way to think of editing.
See? it rhymes, so it must be true.
Famous quote from every professional editor who ever lived in all the known galaxies of the universe:
“randy ubillos, you, who’s name will go down in infamy: FCP7 wasn’t a multitrack editor, ediiting is a multitrack operation, editing software is meant to be a powerfully versatile expression of that simple truth, not some pat boiled down collection of grossly simplified metaphors designed to draw in the prosumer crowd at the expense of the fifty percent of the professional video editing community you successfully wooed and bound to your ship before merrily throwing them back into the sea.”http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
42 Replies
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You don’t get it
And you’re just griping…
That should cover about 25% of the responses.
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “…and bound to your ship before merrily throwing them back into the sea.”
Well, if I have a ship, then I might just keel-haul those behind this debacle!
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comI have a system, it has stuff in it, and stuff hooked to it. I have a camera, it can record stuff. I read the manuals, and know how to use this stuff and lots of other stuff too.
You should be suitably impressed…“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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When this mess with FCPX happened I tried to figure out who is the problem. Was it Steve Jobs? Tim Cook? Apple culture in general?
Eventually after searching the net you find this one guy, Randy Ubillos. He was the ‘mastermind’ behind screwing up iMovie 08 – a fiasco similar to this one. It reads like a script for what just happened to us. Only with iMovie 08 it wasn’t people whose livings depended on the software.
At one time, long ago, he did work on interfaces for editing software. Now he didn’t invent the paradigm, there were other systems in existence. He just translated what was out their into some basic front ends. The analogy is he came up with another word processor after word processors existed, he followed the same rules – he did not do anything that special.
But Randy is lauded as this pioneer. I think it has gone to his head and I think he has powerful friends in Apple. And his ego made FCPX – a disaster for most of us. It was his ego that made this awful new paradigm, just so he could have some milestone – well no one asked for the new paradigm – I certainly never heard anyone say timelines sucked, ever.
If you find him on the net, he is all interested in how to get his vacation footage onto a mac for editing. Seriously, that’s what the articles state. Not that he wanted to make a very complex documentary, or a feature film, or a TV show. Nope – he wanted to get his vacation videos onto the Mac in a better way. WTF?
So this is the guy who decided that FCPX was a better way to edit his vacation videos. It’s mind boggling.
The sad part is that this madman can damage so many productive lives.
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The media management is great, and the software is amazing, Yes, it has major things missing at this point, and yes, they totally botched the launch, but I think there is a very vocal minority here. In the long run, FCPX will be an amazing piece of software. I look forward to the day when I come back to the Cow and not have to sift through pages of whining and complaining. I understand the complaints, there were many oversights, but they had to move on sometime, FCP 7 was a dinosaur.
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[Chad Nickle] “FCP 7 was a dinosaur”
So is the ol’ “whining and complaining” meme being attempted *still* after the stench of problems of Randy’s holiday “event” video software released a week ago…
Not even trying to wrap it in plaster of paris can keep that meme going….sorry bud. FCP7 wasn’t a dinosaur, it was the revolution of multitrack editing…
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FCPX is the first of the Relational Database driven NLEs, leaving behind the old SpreadSheet model. Apple is the first but they wont be the only and, as time passes, may not even be the best. But the model they are using will be what other NLEs eventually move to. Apple doing this first means that, even if it takes time, they have a good chance of eventually leading as facilities see the need for the Relational model and expediting workflow.
Some people love spreadsheets and they still exist but there’s no way that a spreadsheet is equal to or more powerful than a relational database. Again that doesn’t mean other databases will be better executed but it does mean Randy Ubillos and those around him at Apple saw this first.
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Hi Chad, or is that Randy?
Chad Nickle
Member Since:
June 27th 2011 -
Hear, hear, to Mr Gallagher’s focus on the critical importance of interface (GUI) of editing software and the process of making movies. There’s a good reason why the mainstream editing applications basically emulate all each other, it’s tried, true, tested and proven. It’s not mere tradition, it’s not old fashioned, “it just works”. (now, where have we heard that before?)
FCPX gives the middle finger to all of this. And the astonishing thing is it was sold to the post-production industry as an upgrade to FC Studio 3. Truly amazing.
I concur also with Mr Hussar’s thoughts on this being the work of an out of control ego. FCPX and the way it was promoted and launched has all the world-conquering hallmarks of immense hubris. And if it really was intended for professional working editors then it’s demented to release it in such an incomplete state. Apart from anything else it’s a colossally poor business decision.
I tried to write a message to Apple’s feedback address voicing my opinion, but there is no feedback category for FCPX! So I sent my thoughts on Apple and Mr Steve Jobs to the FCP address instead. Not that I expect any one at the other end to read it.
Hamdani Milas
Independent producer, director, cinematographer, writer, editor
Milas Film Productions, Hong Kong
http://www.milasfilm.com -
I kind of wonder about the ship at cupertino myself, some posters have made oblique reference to an awful lot of internal cupertino turf wars in the production of this software – with wildly diverging opinions on what this software was supposed to be. Which would explain its chimera qualities. They haven’t even gotten VAT receipts together for the EU market, or proper tax receipts for Australia, according to a poster below – barring anything else I think this software release feels like an executional fiasco, because it is a fiasco.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
I think the thing is that some people have the project in their head and want to arrange it the way they want. I don’t mind meta data organization. But I want the option to turn it off.
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