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Questions before Update
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[Mitch Ives] “They’ve also committed to the professional… wow… that’s new. IMO, none of this would be happening without this forum.”
The COW saves the day!!!
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Mitch Ives] “On the positive side, Apple’s been forced to change the way they communicate. Their website lists features coming in 2012… wow… that’s new. They’ve also committed to the professional… wow… that’s new. IMO, none of this would be happening without this forum. That “pollyanna” delivery at NAB probably won’t happen again either… all because of the dialogue on this forum. Ron and Tim deserve a lot of credit for not caving to advertisers, etc. and keeping this forum up…”
[Steve Connor] “The COW saves the day!!!”
As our man Elvis would say, Thankyouverymuch!
We’ve talked about the value of this forum to the COW as a whole, and to the people who are able to participate in a way that doesn’t drive them crazy, but yes, we’re well aware of its importance to the web at large.
For all that this has been a full-contact forum, threads like this show that it can be done without losing a well-considered, professional focus. These issues matter, and they’re going to matter more in the future, not less.
re: advertisers, a note that, per our Terms of Service, we’ll step in to prevent unwarranted or personal attacks on sponsors. But the Terms are equally clear, if vendors step in it with a poor release, substandard service that’s not being addressed, etc., they’re going to have to clean it up themselves. We invite you to read that policy yourselves — we really do feel strongly enough about it to make a public declaration about it. We’re not aware of any other website that has made this promise to its members and readers.
Having said that, we give all the credit in the world to the many sponsors who have taken the heat and kept communicating. They’re showing that this is how it should be done in every industry.
You’re right to point out that Apple has taken an unprecedented step forward in this regard, Mitch. For all that there are other things to criticize Apple for, it’s fair to give them credit for good citizenship when it occurs.
Thanks again, guys.
Tim
COW -
>Bill, you’ve been presenting FCPX as a “take it or leave it” scenario. You also imply that the complaints >against FCPX are all illegitimate, and that Apple is the only one thinking about the future.
I disagree with your view above. It’s not “take it or leave it” – it’s look at it rationally, or look at it emotionally. You simply can’t recast what has passed for the the FCP-X discussion to date as other than “emotion trumps reason.” This does not imply there’s not room for disagreement. We’ve seen quite a bit of reasonable questioning. But we’ve also seen a whole lot of “scandalized” emotional writing that has totally missed core realities.
I’ve been trying to present an opposing view based on my experience – which is unique to me – but is also long and mostly successful in knowing where to bet my professional video editing capital in order to make my living.
There are still large numbers of of loud voices who are simply damming the software – many of them on sketchy information, or based on their view of parochial issues that don’t affect the lions share of editors.
So since I see things differently, I’m going to keep saying so.
I do NOT think that “Apple is the only one thinking about the future”, Walter. Not at all. That would be a stupid opinion, in my view. I have at least one long time friend at Adobe who I just ran into and spent an hour talking with at the EXPO, so I’m not an Adobe or AVID hater in any way. I admire both companies and respect their operations including the people who are charged with figuring out what the market eventually will want.
What I’ve actually said is closer to “Apple is the only company who has taken the big risk of tearing down their flagship editing suite in order to modernize it’s code for better performance in the future.”
They are FIRST out of the gate with a modern NLE gut and re-build. We’ll see whether the other major players see that and follow suit, or keep going with the older code base they have.
As I’ve said here in other posts. We had 4 similar professional NLE choices 90 days ago. Now we have 3 similar ones, and one radically different one.
Some find that horrible. I find it excellent. Now I have MORE choice, and so will you. This debate should focus on that and value facts over angst.
FACT: I stuck my head in all the “training session” doors at the DVExpo yesterday. In nearly all the free ones, attendence was kinda anemic. The only one that was chock full? Diana Weiland’s 3 day FCP-X Certification Class that cost upwards of $800.
And yes, I KNOW there are plenty of expensive training program seats that have been filled with people learning AVID and Premier too. That’s self evident for anyone who thinks about it.
The point is that if everyone universally agreed with the “FCP-X is a loser” meme that so many here are relentlessly propounding, those seats would NOT have been in such high demand.
Or maybe I’m wrong and absolutely everyone who decides to learn and support FCP-X at this point are wannabees or sheeplike drones who can’t understand “real” editing – if so, I still commend those folks for the initiative to gather together to risk their hard-eanred cash in order to engage in what they clearly see as self-improvement.
We’ll see, won’t we.
“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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[Bill Davis] – “Apple is the only company who has taken the big risk of tearing down their flagship editing suite in order to modernize it’s code for better performance in the future.”
But to what end? If FCPX added capabilities beyond anything that competing NLE’s already offer, then I might agree with this statement. It would appear that Apple changed it more to conform to their existing applications versus where they assumed the industry might be heading. Frankly, I think it has a lot more to do with how they envision these types of applications to end up being sold in the future, which is via an app store with a great many 3rd party add-ons, all of which Apple can collect a bit on without having to be involved in R&D and support. That being said, I think many (including myself) were attracted to FCS because of the tighter integration between OS, hardware and application. The direction they seem to be taking is quite far from “revolutionary”. In fact, I would say it appears a bit “de-evolutionary” for the sake of profit. Do I begrudge that? No. But to say this is going to be better is a bit of a leap, in my opinion.
[Bill Davis] – “They are FIRST out of the gate with a modern NLE gut and re-build. We’ll see whether the other major players see that and follow suit, or keep going with the older code base they have.”
I would agree that they are the first of the NLE’s to completely gut a successful program in favor of what they hope the future might be. It really all comes back to the very rational question, “why?”. Why would they feel the need to re-write the nom-clamature of an industry? Again, the only reason I can see is they are hoping to create a convergence of their product lines. While I can see this logic flourishing in a board room, I don’t really see it coming to fruition in a world where everyone else still calls a timeline a timeline. Other NLE’s have managed to evolve their code to 64-bit without the need to throw away all the hard work they’ve done before. As a consumer, I can’t really see why I would consider throwing away a decade or projects and experience in favor of a very sloppily released beta-version of Apple’s vision of the future. While I am happy to see and hear the outcome of this weeks round of updates, I don’t see them as earth shaking. Frankly, they were pretty much expected. Unfortunately, they only go to confirm what many have already pointed out… it’s going to be many, many months before Apple can restore functionality to anything near it’s EOL’d predecessor.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you’re “first out of the gate” with a product that doesn’t work.
[Bill Davis] – “Or maybe I’m wrong and absolutely everyone who decides to learn and support FCP-X at this point are wannabees or sheeplike drones who can’t understand “real” editing – if so, I still commend those folks for the initiative to gather together to risk their hard-eanred cash in order to engage in what they clearly see as self-improvement. ”
I think you are marginalizing those you don’t agree with in a statement like this. What most of the more experienced on here have pointed out is that the vocal majority in favor of this “new way” of thinking lack a solid background to make many of the pronouncements of how “awesome” this application really is. For those with the time and inclination, this is a great way to work with video. There needs to be a balanced understanding that it can only take you so far. At this point that is a two-fold statement. It will only take you so far editing, because if it’s inherent limitations. Most here acknowledge that while projects may be easy to start with FCPX, at some point you will run up against it’s rigid structure and limited communications with other programs and devices. The second, more esoteric limitation is just how far this program might take you in “the biz”. With it’s radically different way of describing structure and metadata, it will not do very much to prepare someone new to this business for the more consistent way things are described in the rest of the NLE’s of the world.
The notion that those who have been around and are voicing these concerns are somehow belittling anyone who might try is, on the whole, untrue. Most of the cow herd are simply pointing out the short-comings of this program as it exist, and by all indications, will grow. To the new adopters who might think this is their ticket to the future, you will most likely be hitchhiking. That’s the cautionary message that seems to be lost in the personal subterfuge.
[Bill Davis] – “The point is that if everyone universally agreed with the “FCP-X is a loser” meme that so many here are relentlessly propounding, those seats would NOT have been in such high demand.”
Obviously, there is no universal agreement on this, or you wouldn’t be here. It is a new product, which is cheaper than the others and accessible to a larger group of people. The fact that it is filling seats at the DVexpo is not a big surprise. The real test is not filling the seats, but how many of those certified will actually to on to use this application and how many will use this as a springboard to other NLE’s. I expect at least some of those seats were “evaluating” the feasibility of the product at some corporate benefactors expense. Not everyone will come to the cow and dig for such insight.
As has been ask of you before….
Exactly what specific features do you see FCPX having that no other NLE has? Give us a list. Please.
Marvin Holdman
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Bill Davis -“You simply can’t recast what has passed for the the FCP-X discussion to date as other than “emotion trumps reason.”
When you make a statement like that you are not just implying but saying outright that there is no room for disagreement with you on that particular subject. I can and will recast it is something other than emotion. It doesn’t work for me in my world. It doesn’t work for many other people in theirs. I don’t care who calls it the future. When it does what I need it to do I’ll consider it. That is empirical, not emotional.
bigpine
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[Bill Davis] “They are FIRST out of the gate with a modern NLE gut and re-build. “
What does this mean? Premiere has undergone two compete rebuilds recently, with the most recent being CS5, if I remember correctly. When they did it, though, they didn’t present a reinvention of the editing timeline and change all the terminology. But they definitely rewrote their application to handle modern video and audio formats a while ago – and they still handle more file formats natively than FCPX.
Or do you mean Apple are the first to throw everything away and present a new way to hammer the proverbial nail?
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Bill, my apologies if I’ve mistakenly read the tone of your posts, but you’ve been writing quite a bit about how FCPX is the future of editorial, and that’s what I’m trying to understand. There are certainly some important advancements in FCPX, but taking the package as a whole, I don’t think they’re currently worth the tradeoffs.
I agree with you that there have been many emotional critiques of FCPX (though I like to think I’ve made some pretty reasonable critiques of both the feature set and the user experience design choices!).
On the flip side, though, how many of the pro-FCPX arguments (some of which I have made myself!) are forward-looking projections, guesses, and wishes from people like you and me with no idea what’s actually going on in Cupertino?
In my mind, “FCPX is a great platform for future development” does not make FCPX the NLE of the future. Nor does the “FCPX is built on a database” claim. Nor does the “third parties will add needed functionality” claim.
What specifically do you see in FCPX today that makes you think it is the future?
[Bill Davis] “What I’ve actually said is closer to “Apple is the only company who has taken the big risk of tearing down their flagship editing suite in order to modernize it’s code for better performance in the future.” They are FIRST out of the gate with a modern NLE gut and re-build. We’ll see whether the other major players see that and follow suit, or keep going with the older code base they have.”
Well, Adobe rewrote AE and Premiere Pro for CS5 [link], and MC6 will be 64-bit [link] so FCPX isn’t the only NLE built on a modern platform for future development.
Updating the code to take advantage of modern technology is necessary. Removing useful features, alienating your third-party developer ecosystem, ignoring industry standards, and forcing all your existing users to migrate and retrain — that’s optional.
[Bill Davis] “As I’ve said here in other posts. We had 4 similar professional NLE choices 90 days ago. Now we have 3 similar ones, and one radically different one. Some find that horrible. I find it excellent. Now I have MORE choice, and so will you. This debate should focus on that and value facts over angst.”
The difference between FCPX and the other NLEs is a two-edged sword, though — that’s what horrifies people. 90 days ago, we had 4 NLE choices with proper video monitoring and some sort of edit decision import from other systems. Today we have 3. Some workflows have fewer choices than they had before; that’s a fact, not angst.
I’m very interested in fact-based debate on this. With FCPX, Apple threw out decades’ worth of conventional wisdom about what editing should be and what an NLE should do, and ignored many legitimate workflow needs. I think the burden is on them to show why their new way is better.
Pervasive metadata? I love it. Auditions? Great idea. Faster media skimming? Worth a shot. All of these could be implemented in a conventional NLE.
No persistent source monitor? The self-collapsing, trackless timeline? A magnetic timeline, based relationally to the primary storyline instead of to time? I’ve written about why I don’t like these, and about how I think conventional tracked systems could be improved to take advantage of interesting concepts like clip connections — but I haven’t seen anyone describe how the new storyline metaphor or UI that goes with it actually improves editing.
I don’t think that newer is automatically better. If FCPX is better, what’s better about it? Was it worth the loss of other features and workflow?
[Bill Davis] “Or maybe I’m wrong and absolutely everyone who decides to learn and support FCP-X at this point are wannabees or sheeplike drones who can’t understand “real” editing – if so, I still commend those folks for the initiative to gather together to risk their hard-eanred cash in order to engage in what they clearly see as self-improvement. “
A couple paragraphs above, you talked about arguing the facts, not the emotions — and this bit represents neither my thinking nor any reasoned critique of FCPX.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[TImothy Auld] “Bill Davis -“You simply can’t recast what has passed for the the FCP-X discussion to date as other than “emotion trumps reason.”
When you make a statement like that you are not just implying but saying outright that there is no room for disagreement with you on that particular subject. “
I second that. There have been many passionate, but well-resoned statements made about the program. I would say they far outweigh those of blind anger. I feel very comfortable, in fact, making the statement that, given the degree of change FCP has undergone between versions, what has passed on this forum over the last few months is actually a triumph of reason over emotion.
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[Michael Hancock] “Or do you mean Apple are the first to throw everything away and present a new way to hammer the proverbial nail?”
Yeah, but it is a magnetic hammer.
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I appreciate all you said.
In the end you asked a specific question, so I’ll answer it.
Here the the features I believe will win the day in the long run.
The code base of X appears to be significantly tighter and more modern. They had already re-envisioned the OS with AV Foundation supplanting Quicktime, Core Audio, Core VIdeo, Core Graphics, et al. It’s rudimentary to understand the engineers to want to rebuild the flagship programs to take advantage of these foundational technologies that were’t around when the foundation of FCP was conceived.
It’s precisely that core re-alighment that lets it be so agile. And that means the new “lean and mean” build makes it less dependent on towers maxed out with ram and HD arrays, and more adaptable to laptops, tablets, and smart phones.
You and I both know that laptops today run circles around desktops of just a few years ago. It’s a crystal clear trend. FCP-X is in conformance with that trend.
Continuing, Unlike FCP-Legacy, it “speaks” file based storage natively. FCP-legacy was designed “ground up” in an era when video meant TAPE -= and video editors with talent were trained to think of a piece of moving tape as the fundamental concept of how images were stored and played back.
But they no longer were. And that gave Apple the chance to do what it does best. Think Different.
(Yes, I know, many of you immediately will get hostile and think “but it wasn’t broken.” And you’re right, it wasn’t. But history is full of examples of people who re-invented stuff that worked just fine, when they believed they could see a way to make them work better. Jury’s still definitely out on that in this particular case, but I’m comfortable that the new way is likely to be superior to the old way in the long run – while appreciating the absolute right of anyone else to see things differently.
My continuing enthusiasm (and I’ll admit that that describes exactly what it is) for FCP-X is based on what it’s doing well for me. Here’s an example. Right now, we’re working on about 30 interviews shot over 3 days of production in San Diego. With FCP-7 I would have had to Log and Transfer those cards and wait until everything was transcoded to ProRes before I could start editing. FCP-X allows me to open the Disc Images of the card files (6 cards in this case) into RAM and all the virtual footage is available INSTANTLY to start editing with. Hours and hours of prep saved. For all I know, other NLE’s might have had that before, but FCP-7 did not. Big efficiency win for me in this particular case.
I also think FCP-X’s “less timeline centric” orientation is going to win. The timeline itself comes from an era when nearly all professional deliverables were destined to be sold by time increments. That’s TV shows and commercials. (Theatrical movies were always less length dependent within reasonable limits) For the modern editor who may NEVER have to deliver a 30 sec spots or a 44-45 minute cut for a network TV slot – then the “work to rigid time specs” that were once critical in the vast majority of projects- aren’t so much any more..
Part of the FCP-X bet is clearly that in the future less video will be consumed on TV and via plastic discs, and more as pure data on laptops, ipads, smart phones and thumb drives.
I believe they are correct. The missions are changing, so the tools must adapt as well.
They also appear to see that while large organizational team approaches have to still be supported (and said as much with the XML and Stems inclusion in 1.01) they also understand that modern video content creation is rapidly skewing more toward the efforts of a single person in a seat than a building full of role-players. After saying that, if you can build a video editing tool that is agile, useful, modern, more processer and OS efficient AND allows add features that make it ALSO useful in workgroup situations – that just adds icing to the cake and makes it a better tools at little incremental development cost.
In sum, the “gut and rebuild” of the software is exactly the same as gutting and rebuilding ANYTHING else.
A company does it because they’re dissatisfied with the existing foundational construction.
It’s a PITA to gut to the core. Much more efficient, easier and less costly to renovate than to scrape, dig out the old foundation and re-build from scratch.
The only reason to do it, is that you think foundations THEMSELVES have evolved and the ones being constructed and installed today are BETTER than the ones installed yesterday.
In the first big paragraph of this I mentioned half a dozen technologies that are in play today that didn’t even EXIST when the code base of FCP-legacy was being developed.
I simply think the BEST software talent isn’t put to best use when you make them constantly work to keep compatibility with code and calls and even features that were mission critical 10 years ago, but might NOT be so important now. (I doubt FCP-X can link to anything over an RS-232 port, but so what!)
So since you asked, that’s my view.
For what it’s worth.
“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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