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Questions before Update
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[Bill Davis] – ” the larger market wants something different than you do”
Once again, you’re assuming the “larger market” wants to edit video. I say most are in love with the notion but are bored by the craft. The actual process of editing is VERY droll to most. The fact is, most folks are just to busy to devote the time to this endeavor unless they pursue it as a career.
Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv -
[Bill Davis] “Yes Herb.”
I’m guessing, Bill, that you are addressing me and not Herb.
[Bill Davis] “You’ve been consistent to the point of dogmatic in your view about FCP-X.
It’s also clear that you are as hardened in your thinking as I am in the opposing view that this continues to be software that is new, interesting, and increasingly useful.
“This is demonstrably untrue. While I have expressed great dissatisfaction with the loss of FCS, I have shown a fair interest in FCP X, acknowledged its potential usefulness on many occasions, and have stated numerous times that–while it would not be my main editing tool–I could find a place for it in my arsenal with a few minor adjustments, such as EDL export.
[Bill Davis] “I am curious as to your continued coming back to a place about a topic you appear to have decided is fatally flawed and unworthy of your time. That confuses me. When I assess something as unworthy of my time, I leave it behind and go concentrate on things that I DO find worthy of my attention. “
Again, if you’d bothered to pay any attention to my posts, you would see that over the last few months, I have often shown interest in FCP X’s potential. I’ve started threads about it–Roles, for instance–because I am generally curious about what advantages FCP X might offer me. When I started that serious and positive thread about Roles, all you did was belittle me for starting it. Instead of having a positive conversation, all youu did was make a series of roll/role jokes.
[Bill Davis] “In fact, I think you might be the the guy who used the term “Pollyanna” a while back to describe my view.
I’m totally OK with that, btw.
“Nope. Not me. Maybe you mean Herb, who I am also not.
[Bill Davis] “You’re against FCP-X and I’m for it. I get it. As does everybody else here.
We should move along.
“Again, wrong. There are things I don’t like about FCP X, though it may soon become useful enough for me to own. You feel free to move along. I plan to continue to examine and debate the usefulness of FCP X for some time to come.
By the way, do you ever actually talk about the specifics of the program? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that.
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Marvin,
My perspective is that this is another thing you have dead wrong.
“When desktop publishing came along you didn’t get an appreciable rise in the number of good designers. FCPX isn’t going to create a new market any more than iMovie has.”
I think most of the “good designers” 10 years after the fall of the Linotronic culture and the rise of the desktop era were PRECISELY those who dumped the old workflow most rapidly and adopted the new ones.
I owned a small ad agency during those years and I saw the rise, fall and obsolescence of phototype from the beginning, middle and end.
The youngsters with emerging talent took the new abilities that flexible on-screen design, PostScript, Firey RIPS and even the Laserwriter and watched as wholesale changes swept across the landscape.
Yes, talent will out. But no matter how astonishingly design talented the guy doing page layouts by cutting rubylith and pasting up physical type might have been, obsolescence was on the horizon the moment the game changed.
I totally understand your defense of Towers, RAM and big assed hard drives. But it’s going to mean NOTHING when the client EXPECTS you to show up on set and load, edit and display how shot 007b2 cuts against 009c3. If you can’t deliver on that that request because you’re stuck on the system “back in the office” heaven help you. And the moment the shooter in the field discovers that he or she can actually FINISH a cut at the client’s deskside, then they’re going to start thinking “Why do I need those guys back in the office working so hard to amortize that big iron. The work is getting done right here. I’m right here doing it. So why shouldn’t I just do it myself and forgo the hassle of the costly edit suite.”
Editing skills are moving from being centered around SHOPS to being centered around individual BRAINS. If you can’t see that, good luck with all the expensive hardware. (Suggest you look into depreciating it according to IRS Section 179 because at this rate, it’s gonna be worth ZIP faster than you can believe.
That changes everything. Period.
FWIW.
“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] “I totally understand your defense of Towers, RAM and big assed hard drives. But it’s going to mean NOTHING when the client EXPECTS you to show up on set and load, edit and display how shot 007b2 cuts against 009c3. If you can’t deliver on that that request because you’re stuck on the system “back in the office” heaven help you. And the moment the shooter in the field discovers that he or she can actually FINISH a cut at the client’s deskside, then they’re going to start thinking “Why do I need those guys back in the office working so hard to amortize that big iron. The work is getting done right here. I’m right here doing it. So why shouldn’t I just do it myself and forgo the hassle of the costly edit suite.”
Editing skills are moving from being centered around SHOPS to being centered around individual BRAINS. If you can’t see that, good luck with all the expensive hardware. (Suggest you look into depreciating it according to IRS Section 179 because at this rate, it’s gonna be worth ZIP faster than you can believe.
That changes everything. Period.
“There is nothing new about this. Everything you are talking about here has been happening for years. YEARS. Half a decade. I was doing the most of the stuff you are describing in 2004/5 on G4 17 with FCP, and all of the stuff by 2007. For Broadcast. Constantly. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still use towers or enjoy 4 monitors plus broadcast out. You are talking about history as if it were the future.
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“It may be difficult for you to understand this, but I think about more than one thing when I consider things.”
Nope, doesn’t surprise me at all.
“It’s price is ONE aspect that’s important at some times. Everybody understands that. Everybody.
Particularly, I suspect, in allowing students and other beginning editors access to tools”Most people in video production use Photoshop. Many use After Effects. If you use both PPro is free. So now lets throw in the cost of both Compressor and Motion, which you would need for any sort of professional workflow. Now FCPX is at $400. If you will need any of the other 3rd party apps for things like tape support, or OMF or XML interchange, in the current scheme these will now cost extra. For even a beginning professional, when taking in the cost of all the software that you will actually need to get work done, I don’t think it’s clear that FCPX is cheaper. It will be in some cases, it won’t be in many others.
As for students, Adobes Student price for PPro is 340, for the whole Production Suite it’s 445.
“I suspect that would be more useful than just taking me to task because I bought up the factual reality of a price differential.”
I wasn’t taking you to task for bringing up prices, I was merely surprised that in the middle of a discussion about the specific features that FCPX had vs the rest of the NLE world you suddenly chose to bring up price as the distinguishing feature. I can’t recall you ever mentioning it before in any of your other many postings.
But then I guess you had nothing left to say about the features argument so why not turn a corner? It’s good technique, used it often enough myself.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
Well at least we have Hayley Mills in common. Preferred The Parent Trap and That Darn Cat to Pollyanna though. And no, I’m not the one to describe your view as Pollyanna-ish.
As for why I come to this forum, it’s where many of us orphans have come to discuss where we shall go next. FCP7 is dead, we all have to migrate. Some will go Adobe & Avid, some might go FCPX, I’m hoping something comes of the Lightworks open source experiment. I’ve already eliminated Edius, Media 100 and Vegas as they are not robust enough for my work flow.
The question some might ask then is why do you come here, since you have already determined that you are not looking anywhere other than FCPX for your future? It would seem the techniques forum would be more up your alley.
But unlike some others, I would never ask that question. I would never tell a Cow poster what to say or where to say it. But that’s just me. I guess it’s because I’m so closed.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
Chris,
History informs us about the future unless we ignore it.
Everyone here knows that when you can do 80% of what it took a tower system to do 5 years ago on a modern laptop, that means that we’re compelled to re-think the value of the “desk in an office” model.
Perhaps the traditional “post house” where I cut my teeth will remain. But it certainly didn’t in the other major recent creative industry that went through the digitization process – music production.
I suspect there are still “monolithic” recording studios out there. But a fraction of the number that were in business 10 years ago. What killed that model was when everything that was needed in the audio production, editing and manipulation chain got digitized and computerized.
ProTools altered the landscape.
Now the video production industry is following the precise same path.
Heck, I’m writing this in my own production studio – purpose built in what was once the hay-barn behind my horse property in Scottsdale. I keep looking around and thinking that even THIS model – built on the desire for economic efficiency (no separate office rent) and more flexible control of billing (stripped down overhead that means I don’t have to account for every quarter hour of time a client spends here) is looking awfully long in the tooth.
I’m considering that I may need to transform my plant from a studio building to a briefcase – and where my “shop” becomes wherever space I happen to find convenient at the moment.
I do a lot of voice talent work. I started in dedicated studios and radio stations where clients had to pay for other peoples’ real estate costs and depreciation. Then I built my own studio and built a dedicated voice booth with wires leading from the mic to the “control room” where the mixer and recorders lived…
today I look into my voice booth where 80% of what I painstakingly built as an audio chain is gathering dust. Today a Neuman TLM-104 feeds a Zoom H4n. That’s IT. The entire original studio chain is collapsed to 3 components – a good mic, an XLR cable, and a sub-$400 digital recorder. And ALL of it can be tossed in a bag and taken on the road. Add the internet for distribution and I can satisfy client needs anywhere anytime with no virtually no economic overhead at all.And now video is following precisely the same path.
One bag with a 5dMkii body and lenses. The same H4n for audio. A laptop, and a modest array of grip, LED lighting and data storage gear – and we’re close to the point where my multi-hundred thousand dollar studio will fit into a couple of carryons.
All one has to add is the same thing people have always had to add to the gear to get good results.
Talent.
And the next generation of talent that will be competing with us don’t even conceive of video production as a thing done in a building. But rather as a thing done on a screen.
Pretty powerful difference.
“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, in the world I work, if you want to mix, you still need a room with adequate monitors to do so. If you want to seriously color grade, you still need a properly lit room and a properly calibrated monitor to do so on. If you are recording ADR and foley and music, you still need a stage that is quiet enough to record on. If you are working on a show with a half a dozen other editors, you still need adjacent bays and office space and a kitchenette.
I have a very portable rig built around a Macbook Pro that has decent portable monitor speakers, 2nd computer monitor, broadcast monitor, and RAIDed storage. I can set it up in 20 minutes. Or I can just use the laptop. Or I can work on my 8 Core, in a nice bay environment. Or I can work in one of the many seats around LA, when needed. As I said, Its been this way for me for a number of years. What does any of this have to do with FCP X?
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It has to do with the PERCENTAGE of overall work that is suited to each environment.
I don’t dismiss that there are all sorts of projects that benefit from or even REQUIRE the fully-equipped video suite model.
But every time they add capabilities to the simpler, more agile systems, more and more of the work can be effectively done outside the older model.
I believe that’s accelerating. As I said, there are still big, professional purpose-build recording studios where the top tier artists pay top dollar for access to the most professional gear and talent available.
Once that was the ONLY way.
Today you’ve got some of that. But you’ve also got Jimmy Buffett recording in his home studio that rivals the finest rooms on the planet.
And you’ve got bands like Owl City who do amazing work on laptops and ProTools.
Even scarier, you’ve got the YouTube stars, who make amazing sounding, rich, layered compositions in crappy conditions and with barely adequate hardware.
Here in Phoenix (a city of 2 million) I’m not sure there’s more than one or two rooms left following the old “dedicated studio” model. (And NONE like the long gone Audio Video Recorders where there was a recording space big enough to bring the Symphony in for recording!) That type of work is done exclusively via location recording today.
I suspect video will follow that path.
It’s what I’m seeing anyway.
“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, I get it. I keep trying to say to you that you are preaching to the choir. I agree with most of your observations with the caveat that in the industry town I work in things are a little different. But only a little. I’ve been one-man-banding for years now. I’m very mobile. I wear many hats. I sometimes work on HD broadcast video at Starbucks. I am the very model of a modern Major-General. What does this have to do with FCP X?
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