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Predictions for FCPX in 2013
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I don’t know about predictions, but I can do feature requests!
FCPX-specific:
Scrolling timeline.
Better keyframing.
Window layout tools.
A slightly flatter object model — removing limitations around transitions or connected clips attaching to secondaries.
Some kind of XML interchange ability on the events side.
More metadata awareness in the timeline itself. It’d be really cool to have alternate views of the timeline (visually sorting the timeline to represent the edit trackishly based on metadata or roles).
Things I’d like to see other apps learn from FCPX:
Publishing/rigging, and/or common rendering pipeline across editorial/effects
Skimmer
To do markers
Timeline index
Industry-wide:
Open, cross-platform mezzanine codecs and containers.
Digital asset management for the rest of us (more than FCPX Events, less than Final Cut Server).
Portable metadata.
More emphasis on collaboration.
Deeper integration of editorial and effects.
More smart rendering (copying rendered frames from one container to another without decompression/recompression cycles).
Less dumb rendering (not everything can be real-time, so let’s all have speculative renders like Nucleo Pro used to do in Ae, plus comprehensive intelligent caches like Ae CS6 or Avid DS).
Background everything (so my life need no longer be defined by progress bars).
More pen-oriented UIs.
More control surface support.
Continued adoption of GPGPU/co-processing technologies.
Clustering.
Crazy entirely new features:
Render/performance profiling. Figuring out where a system bottlenecks today requires understanding how the software and hardware actually work. Applications should report on their usage of system resources so that users can more easily identify bottlenecks (be they imposed by system resources or user choices like codec or effects) and understand how to upgrade their systems or change their workflows.
Meta-creative tools. I’d love to see time management or reporting tools built into our creative tools, like being able to measure how much time you’re editing, trimming, auditioning, coloring, effecting, etc. This could take other interesting forms. It might be cool to have a heat map timeline, color-coding clips based on the number of interactions the user has made against them.
Happy New Year to all my friends here at the COW!
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 -
Ben is not correct. Final Cut Pro X’s Events and Projects are based on Core Data with an SQLite database underneath. FCXvr was based on a different database. There is NOTHING of final Cut server in Final Cut Pro X, nor any of FCP 1-7.
That it is core data based was confirmed by Jud Coplan on June 13, 2011 in my initial briefing. It’s not in doubt.
Philip Hodgetts
President, Intelligent Assistance
AssistedEditing.com Fast First Cuts, Metadata Worfklows
Big Brains for Rent bigbrainsforrent.com
The New Now – Grow your business – ProAppsTips.com
Personal Blog https://philiphodgetts.com -
Rather than battle a point that’s not mine, I just asked Philip Hodgetts for his take.
He seems fairly confident that the database IS based on CoreData/SQLite. And I’d think he’d know.
I have no clue what possibilities or limitations this means, but I thought I’d try to set the record straight.
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Thanks, Philip and Marcus.
Any Wikipedians [link] among us?
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “I am happy to be corrected here, but wasn’t FCSvr was Postgres, while FCPX is CoreData/SQLite?”
You are correct and that is one big barrier to making FCP X Events/Projects shared via reading the same event out of a san location on shared storage. SQLite is one user at a time. To get multiple people reading – not even reading and writing – just reading – from the same exact event at the same time on shared storage, you’ll need a new database type under the hood or an external server with a check in/out scenario or permission controls, or a little of both even. SQLite is the only cocoa compliant db I’m aware of, so you are talking not only about a big overhaul but also about going off the reservation if you want to do it “in app”. I doubt that would be how it happens.
So if it happens, will it be through an external server control or, through a peer to peer check out/check in share process tracked in app? How does it work from a user standpoint?
I could imagine an app to app method through the share menu. You send someone an invite to share a section (compound clip) of your project or an event for example. When both inviter and invitee are on line, the exchange of db data could happen as a background event. When the invitee returns the share, you’d also need processes for accepting, rejecting or merging returns. I could see auditions being extremely powerful in this scenario. It gets complicated if it is a remote share process where proxy media is involved and then offline/online processes are needed as well.
No matter the method, here are some of my wish list items for collaboration/sharing:
1. Live updated master/slave event sharing and project/compound clip check out/in process.
2. Share of timeline and events not only to peers, but also to render machines for background rendering, exporting and analysis. If you are going to share the stuff, why not share it to machines available for processing?
3. Live updates to shared events so that new data can be read in real time (for growing file type applications).
4. APIs for pushing shared event data back out to a MAM
5. Background “Share” transfer and updates of databases to the peer or control server. Unobtrusive notifications in the app.It seems like they have a good base to create a great collaborative tool. From our standpoint we’d love to see it happen.
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[Keith Koby] “So if it happens, will it be through an external server control or, through a peer to peer check out/check in share process tracked in app?”
I’ve been wondering the same thing. Client/server is the traditional model, but could peer-to-peer be viable? Could it be scalable?
Is collaboration even something Apple would be interested in, or is it too niche-within-a-niche? Maybe better collaboration through some kind of file-based interchange is more likely?
[Keith Koby] “How does it work from a user standpoint?”
I think this the hardest part of multi-user collaboration. Multiple users banging on the same database is an easy technical problem. Making sure that one user’s work doesn’t step on another’s without being overly restrictive on what they can do — that’s hard.
Accepting/rejecting/merging changes is an interesting question from a UI standpoint, too. It’s easy in a Word doc, and very straightforward to visualize, but it’s a bit more complicated and potentially mind-bending in FCPX.
An interesting area for thought is how the magnetic timeline parent/child data structure of FCPX projects may affect conflict resolution. It will create dependencies; some child-level changes will be dependent on parent-level changes. I think that this (plus the deep undo that suggests some kind of transactional tracking would be doable) could make for a very powerful conflict resolution system.
[Keith Koby] “No matter the method, here are some of my wish list items for collaboration/sharing:
1. Live updated master/slave event sharing and project/compound clip check out/in process.
2. Share of timeline and events not only to peers, but also to render machines for background rendering, exporting and analysis. If you are going to share the stuff, why not share it to machines available for processing?
3. Live updates to shared events so that new data can be read in real time (for growing file type applications).
4. APIs for pushing shared event data back out to a MAM
5. Background “Share” transfer and updates of databases to the peer or control server. Unobtrusive notifications in the app.”Keith, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on Adobe Anywhere.
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 -
[Craig Seeman] “Although I think the grousing will escalate once it’s released. Some people will hate it because it’s not a tower. Even if it has 16 core Xeons with an nVidia Quadro K5000, people will complain because there’s no internal HDD expansion nor 4x PCIe slots. That you can rack mount it or more easily transport it than the current 40+lbs current behemoth will have no comprehensible value. Sorry if I’m being a bit sarcastic but I think there’s at least a “half truth” in that.”
It all depends on what you actually want to do with this system. Another possibility is that the machine stays the same size, and then people complain it’s not smaller.
I travel a lot for work, and I’d love to have a powerful system that I can fit in a Pelican case that in turn fits in an overhead compartment. I do see the value in a smaller system, but I also see value in internal expansion. In a perfect world, there’d be both form factors to choose from, so you could get the machine that best suited your needs.
But on the rack-mount thing — Apple could have made the G5/Mac Pro rackable any time they wanted over the last decade by tweaking the industrial design one inch (or designed it to be the right size in the first place). Why they never did this is beyond me. The Z820 has a rack-mount kit, and it has more comfortable carrying handles, fits one extra drive bay, fits three extra expansion slots, and fits eight more RAM slots than the Mac Pro.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “Keith, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on Adobe Anywhere.”
I really don’t know much about it. I’ve only seen the mutton chop video on their website. They don’t explain how it really works in that video, but it looks like you need an array of servers to do the crunching to whatever proprietary format they would use for streaming. Then all the rendering happens back in the datacenter.
I’m curious how much it costs and if you can use their streamed video to go out to an external monitor at the remote site. Also what happens when the remote editor goes to grab his/her favorite plugin but it isn’t installed on the server back in the data center. Or for that matter is their favorite font available?
I know of several editors who would be really into working from home.
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yes please – especially for when doing a rough audio mixdown!
Your imagination is the limitation.
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[Walter Soyka] “Portable metadata.”
Curious what you mean by portable?
Side car files or embedded into the media?
Apple seems to be embracing embedded with the Quicktime extended metadata model. Take the standard “Reel” field in FCPX. That is populated if there’s a com.apple.proapps.reel entry in a movie. Most of the metadata fields in FCPX can be populated similarly with embedded metadata. One can even add custom fields in FCPX, and with Digital Rebellions’s QT Edit embed matching data.
This would allow external MAMs to send metadata to FCPX via xml or embed the data in the movie so merely importing brings in all the data.
I like that you mentioned AvidDS. That did so many things right!
John
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