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One year later…
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[Michael Gissing] “Again wishful thinking and observational bias. Just today on this forum issues like keyframing, auto saves, opening multiple sequence, copying file attributes were mentioned. For me I add lack of machine control, the fact that the output via SDI is still not video and audio synced. Yes I can work around these things but why should I?
The only reason why specifics are not being mentioned is because many here have just grown tired of reminding the forum of what is still missing. Great that our list is getting smaller. “
It used to be the case that there were big, critical headline features missing, that made FCP X fundamentally unusable in certain workflows. A tool that couldn’t put an image on a broadcast display and couldn’t move a sequence to Resolve was totally useless to the projects I work on, for instance.
The kind of omissions/annoyances that remain today are not like this. They’re more like the sort of gripes people used to a particular app routinely have with alternative apps. Should there be selective copying of clip attributes? Sure. But let’s say this transition were working in reverse — that you’d been editing on FCP X for years and were moving to FCP 7. I suspect you’d find all sorts of feature omissions of similar or larger scale in FCP 7. Yet FCP 7 was (and still is) widely used for high-end editorial.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “editors in our world choose software they enjoy using (because they’re going to be cutting with it for months)”
agree 100% and that is our goal. We will not please everyone, but we are making significant progress to that goal.
[Chris Kenny] “everything is going to end up getting fed into some color grading system that isn’t part of Adobe’s ecosystem in the end anyway.”
Have you heard about Speedgrade?
https://success.adobe.com/assets/en/downloads/guides/SG_CS6_Intro_Reveal.pdfhttps://tv.adobe.com/watch/no-stupid-questions-with-colin-smith/introduction-to-speedgrade/
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[Dennis Radeke] “Have you heard about Speedgrade?
https://success.adobe.com/assets/en/downloads/guides/SG_CS6_Intro_Reveal.pdf
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/no-stupid-questions-with-colin-smith/introduction...”
Yes, but again, a lot of production workflows aren’t the sort of end-to-end-under-one-roof affairs that make this kind of integration work. Often when an indie feature starts cutting, nobody on the production has any clue what facility will be grading the project or what software they’ll be using, and the offline editor wouldn’t pick a particular NLE just to make things easier for the online facility even if they did know.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “FCP was not flexible, it was Mac only, and you needed to be immensely tied to quicktime which made sense when everything was on tape, but outside of that and in this digital age? FCP7 is not very flexible.”
I guess its how you define flexible. By your definition nothing was flexible. The few NLEs that weren’t confined to a single operating system were confined to proprietary hardware. And, if it wasn’t tied to Quicktime, that simply meant that it was tied to AVIs.
For the record, and from an editorial point of view, FCP 2-7 was one of the most flexible NLEs I had ever seen, and that IS why I eventually chose it over many other now forgotten rivals. It could approach any given editorial question from so many different directions that its flexibility often amazed me. At that point, I had worked on so many different NLEs with so many truly different metaphors–each with their strengths and weaknesses–that finding one that embraced most of the strengths was astounding. I could treat timelines like bins, have multiple timelines open and operating on different monitors, could cut and paste, drag and drop, insert and over right, slide clips around, lasso chunks. It had great compositing features and unlimited video tracks. You could make transitions on the same track or you could build them in a stack. It just goes on and on.
And, it wasn’t the only relatively cheep NLE out there. There were many. People forget this. Or just aren’t old enough to remember it. So, for the record–I chose (and changed platforms for) FCP BECAUSE of its extreme flexibility. That was my number one reason for choosing it.
[Jeremy Garchow] “[Walter Soyka] “I was saying that a director of photography chooses a specific camera or lens for what it will contribute to the project or even the shot at hand.”
It’s a different model, and that was my point. You can’t rent NLE’s”
Of course you can.
[Jeremy Garchow] “My point is, I have heard over and over to throw it in the tool box. I won’t be buying everything, I will make a decision, just as Mark has. I just happen to be one of the ones who hasn’t moved on quite yet as the answer is not that obvious.
“I can’t afford that luxury, though it is always tempting to try. I think of it more like a good musician does. Through the course of my career I find myself able to play a whole variety of instruments, learning and enjoying them as I go, but I’ll only be a virtuoso on one or two.
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[Chris Kenny] “everything is going to end up getting fed into some color grading system that isn’t part of Adobe’s ecosystem in the end anyway.”
[Chris Kenny] ”
Yes, but again, a lot of production workflows aren’t the sort of end-to-end-under-one-roof affairs that make this kind of integration work. Often when an indie feature starts cutting, nobody on the production has any clue what facility will be grading the project or what software they’ll be using, and the offline editor wouldn’t pick a particular NLE just to make things easier for the online facility even if they did know.”My point was to correct a potential thought that Adobe does not have color grading as a part of our ecosystem. Indeed we DO have a color grading application. That was all. I get your point about not necessarily having dedicated workflows in types of production and I will not debate the correctness of it. 😉
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[Andrew Richards] “This sentiment puzzles me. Had they waited to release FCP X in January, 2012 instead of in June, 2011, it would mean they care about professionals?”
If they had released FCX with all the features 10.0.3 had, the reaction would have been less..outrage. We would have seen that broadcast monitoring was still on their minds, and that multicam was important. God…with how good multicam is in FCP 10.0.3, we might have overlooked a few things.
But it still has the problem of not believing that tape, other than HDV, exists. Yes, it works with BMD and AJA and Matrox…but output only. MONITORING only. For tape capture, you need to use the utilities provided by the card makers….and for many workflows, that is unacceptable. Tape output…fine, that works fine. Can’t update projects from FCP 7? Apple didn’t care to do that themselves. Yes, third party apps do that…but the fact that those were made so quickly, requiring little effort, begs the question, why didn’t APPLE do it? Because they didn’t want to.
And I still wouldn’t use it due to the magnetic timeline. Roles be damned…I organize things on the timeline, so I know what is where. FCX just has things loosey goosey on the timeline and that makes finding things a bit more difficult.
FCX is great for many people. It is solid software. But it isn’t for me. And Apple’s new attitude towards the professionals, that it used to cater to and rely on just angers me. So, I won’t use it. Just like how Avid did a lot of stuff I did, until their attitude towards us was arrogant and dismissive, and they did not fix things that needed fixing.
I talked to a guy who teaches editing. He teaches FCP for a few weeks, then FCX…then editing practices and theory. He says the new students pick up FCX in a snap, and are still confused by FCP 7. He doesn’t teach Avid or Adobe, so no comparison there. So that tells you a great deal about the future of the app. It will go places.
I just won’t use it. I have no need for it, I have other options. But I won’t scoff at those that do use it. If they can deliver what is required with this software…that’s all that really matters.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Chris Harlan] “For the record, and from an editorial point of view, FCP 2-7 was one of the most flexible NLEs I had ever seen, and that IS why I eventually chose it over many other now forgotten rivals.”
Of course you’re right Chris, it’s the most flexible NLE ever, with a zillion ways to do anything. This is why it’s missed by so many in spite of its age and imperfections.
[Jeremy Garchow] “FCP was not flexible, it was Mac only, and you needed to be immensely tied to quicktime which made sense when everything was on tape, but outside of that and in this digital age? FCP7 is not very flexible.”
Come on Jeremy. Your definition of flexible is so incredibly limited above. The ability to work with all I/O cards and devices on the market made FCP more flexible than AVID or Adobe or any other NLE. Are you forgetting that AVID’s new open interoperability is just that, “new.” And, are you forgetting that the drivers for all I/O devices on the Windows side, going way back to CS4, were always “iffy” and always months or years behind those delivered for FCP?
Then there’s collaborative workflows that made it flexible, and the zillion ways to do things I mentioned above.
Gosh, how quickly we seem to forget… The question I want to know is, why are you still using FCP7?
David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.com
http://www.ProMax.com
Sales | Integration | SupportDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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[Chris Harlan] “I guess its how you define flexible. “
Absolutely.
Don’t get me wrong, fcp7 became very popular for a reason, but it’s dated.
Even M100 had multiple open sequences and could do much better things with nests/bins, had real time alpha channels, had far better audio mixing and filters, had a robust codec….. In 1999.
Fcp7 barely has real time alphas today, and they didn’t arrive until fcp7.
I maintain that XML is immensely flexible, but fcp7 is not. It is time to move on. There are great things that can be done with data and today’s NLEs should reflect that. They are working on it.
[Chris Harlan] “Of course you can. “
Not like you can a lens, or camera. Come on now….
We can call and rent a lens at 10AM and be shooting by 12. It’s not the same.
Creative Cloud will change that a bit, though.
[Chris Harlan] “And, it wasn’t the only relatively cheep NLE out there. There were many. “
Where are they now?
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David-
If you read this subthread, I have answered your questions.
A zillion ways to move a clip in the timeline maybe, but there was not a zillion ways to do anything, especially as the video and computing industry around it started getting more advanced around it.
Chris is right, it’s how you define flexible. My flexible might be your limited, and vice versa.
You might hate the FCPX Event structure, I might find it one of the most powerful “next steps” shown in an NLE to date that reflects the current and future state of media. To each their own. it has nothing to do with price, it has noting to do with level of professionalism or lack there of, it has to do with usefulness.
It’s the reason Mark Raudonis chose Avid, and it’s the reason I am still waiting to test all the latest offerings. Let’s remember that CS6 and Autodesk aren’t on the market yet.
Fcp7 was flexible as long as you followed certain rules. XML was the most flexible part of fcp7 as it allowed you to control data outside of fcp and bring it back in, but FCP7 itself didn’t have those controls built in to it.
My idea of flexibility may go beyond a bin structure, which in my opinion may have had a place and time along with subsequent metaphor, but not so much to me anymore. But that’s me and how I operate and it might not apply to everyone.
Fcp7 was great in its day, it’s now time for something different. I’m not saying it’s necessarily fcpx, or cs6, or smoke, but I will know it when I see it. Fcp7 stills works for us today as well as it did on June 21st, 2011. Eventually, it won’t.
Jeremy
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[Shane Ross] “If they had released FCX with all the features 10.0.3 had, the reaction would have been less..outrage…..And I still wouldn’t use it due to the magnetic timeline….”
I agree with both, but I like the second sentence more than the first. 🙂
It was understandable to focus on the things that were missing, for reasons and specific workflows we’ve all talked about. But even in the equally understandable excitement over features coming back, I don’t see that the “solutions” that Apple provided addressed problems that people had. “If they’d just get that damn source window out of the way I could REALLY fly.” Most people just didn’t feel a need for so many basic conventions to change. For you and others, the solutions caused more problems, without answering the problems you actually had.
The irony is that, among the reasons that the other A companies are finding traction in new ways is that they kept many conventions, while also providing actual features that people had been hoping for from FCP for a very long time.
I mean, if you think about it, the last big deal in FCP for many people was ProRes in 2007, which means that the big change before that was 2005. (Which really WAS big, starting with multicam.) THAT’s why people were so “fast” to jump — after years of waiting, it was clear that Apple wasn’t going to provide what they were looking for….
Unless Apple did. And for more people than I think we acknowledge, Apple DID.
That’s why I completely agree with you, Shane, that FCPX’s long-term fate will be fine, and so will Apple’s place in the pro market. Your anecdote about students and FCPX is critical to understand. Apple — like Adobe, Avid and Autodesk — have long focused on students on the keys to their products’ long-term success. Today’s sk8trboi is tomorrow’s film school/media school graduate, and after using FCPX+ for 4 or 6 years between skateboards and mortarboards, they may well have little incentive to even consider switching, even as working film and TV pros: FCPX is clearly on the way to re-integration into distributed workflows, and tape will fade even further away.
I actually the next year will be the one that tells a more interesting tale. The dust has settled on Apple’s course. Adobe, Avid and Autodesk (to say nothing of DaVinci Resolve) have released the most elegant, robust versions of their software EVER, with insane price adjustments for Symphony and Smoke. These companies now have a different place to begin building a new heritage.
Throw in some slick new workstations from HP, Dell getting back in and now ProMax getting in the game, balance against a new MacBook Pro this summer, iMacs that work really well for some workflows (including Smoke, which was specifically optimized for them), new budget cycles rolling around — NOW I think we’re going to see some things shaking out.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou
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