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Range-based keywording: unique to FCP X?
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[Bill Davis] “When legacy was born, storage was expensive and computers were slower. Today, storage is cheap and computers and networks are ever faster. X is building toward that future. All your past editing decisions – preserved – constantly on – and available to you to use or modify as you like.
For some people yes, for other people no. SD used to be a chore to handle, then it became common place. Then HD came out and it was a chore to handle and now it’s pretty common place. Now 4k and 3D are coming down the pipe and they will be a chore to handle.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo probably has one of the most cutting edge workflows and the amount storage they needed for finishing the film was 55TB. That’s just space for the locked edit, VFX shots, mixing, color correction, etc.,. Lord knows how much storage they needed for the full rez (5k) dailies. For RT playback they had to build a disk array that could handle 1.1gigs a second (for 1 stream). For offline I think they cut w/ProRes LT proxies. Extreme example? Maybe today, but I think it will become a fairly common workflow for Hollywood movies very soon. The David Fincher film Zodiac shot on the Viper, recorded 444 RGB and required 144TB to hold all the dailies.
The faster our machines get the more we ask of them so I think the net result is pretty much the same. Sure, any modern computer today could handle an SD workflow like a hot knife through butter, but how many of us are still doing SD-only workflows?
-Andrew
2.9 GHz 8-core (4,1), FCP 7.0.3, 10.6.6
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (7.9.5) -
[Walter Soyka] “I think this is true, but Apple needs to push very, very hard to make sure that the tools they’re providing for data handling are as suitable to the task as the tools for image manipulation.
If metadata is going to be a true advantage for Apple and for FCPX in ongoing projects versus one-offs, they must really innovate that toolset.”
As is often the case, Walter – this is another area where we largely agree.
I truly appreciate your orientation. It’s important for all of us coming from “ground up” use profiles (as opposed to large shop experience) to come to better understand this stuff.
But it’s also critical, IMO, that Apple not spend so much initial time getting the plumbing perfected that they ignore the editing engine itself in the process.
So far, the bulk of the early development work in X has been split. Roles was largely data centric – while multicam leaned toward editorial – even if both were fundamentally just more metadata capabilities like everything in X.
I don’t want them to stop development of editorial to make better systems for the large scope data needs of the few – before they get more and better capabilities in the primary functions.
It’s a delicate balance for any developer – providing features for multiple constituencies.
Hey, are you going to NAB? If so, I’d love to try to shoe horn in time for a sit down drink. I’ve enjoyed our discussions so much that I feel I own you at least one!
Let me know.
“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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[Jeremy Garchow] “Right now, you can’t get it OUT of there as the XML doesn’t carry most of that information.”
Jeremy,
Is it still true that FCPX doesn’t take in camera meta-data? or has this changed? Would this function be beholden to the same changes that meta-data out will require?
It seems there are walls that keep the meta-data isolated on both sides (in and out).
Franz.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Now 4k and 3D are coming down the pipe and they will be a chore to handle.
“I’m the contrarian here often, but I’m not convinced that 3D is ever going to be much more than a solution looking for a problem in the reasonable future.
Some day it may well rock in fascinating areas like viraual surgical training and absolutely in immersive gaming. But as a passive entertainment medium I have my doubts. It’s just not that much “more” satisfying than the current state of 2D TV quality for most users in most cases.
4k makes sense in the same way DSLRs make sense for photography because if you’re going to all the hassle and expense of producing content, why not capture more data and future proof your content by capturing “retina display” friendly rasters now.
But 3D?
Not really interested at this time and a bit worried that it might well be the “quadraphonic sound” of this generation.
But I could be totally wrong here, and a part of me hopes I am.
“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 don’t want them to stop development of editorial to make better systems for the large scope data needs of the few – before they get more and better capabilities in the primary functions. It’s a delicate balance for any developer – providing features for multiple constituencies.”
My question is this: to what degree do the features we see today give us a window into FCPX’s underlying architecture? If you over-engineer, your product will be flexible but will never ship. If you under-engineer, you can ship faster, but you’ll tie your hands for future development.
I have no idea where on that spectrum FCPX lies. Maybe it’ll be relatively simple for Apple to add the functionality we’re all looking for. On the other hand, maybe they never intended FCPX to be suited for some of those “big” needs and would need to seriously rework the internals to accommodate them. A third option: maybe it would be easy to add features, but will offer Apple too little ROI on the development. I guess we’ll find out eventually, right?
[Bill Davis] “Hey, are you going to NAB? If so, I’d love to try to shoe horn in time for a sit down drink. I’ve enjoyed our discussions so much that I feel I own you at least one!”
I’ll be there. Maybe we can get an FCPX or Not forum mini-meet going? Anybody else going and interested?
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 -
[Bill Davis] “I’m the contrarian here often, but I’m not convinced that 3D is ever going to be much more than a solution looking for a problem in the reasonable future.”
I pretty much agree about 3D. I just tossed it in there as an example of how our media-crunching needs keep expanding alongside our media-crunching abilities. It’s the same w/computer games. The faster the hardware gets the more hardware demanding the games become.
-Andrew
2.9 GHz 8-core (4,1), FCP 7.0.3, 10.6.6
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (7.9.5) -
[Franz Bieberkopf] “Is it still true that FCPX doesn’t take in camera meta-data? or has this changed? Would this function be beholden to the same changes that meta-data out will require?
It seems there are walls that keep the meta-data isolated on both sides (in and out).”
Kinda?
It’s seems to be there in the sense that if I bring in a p2 clip (which has an XML) via the new log and transfer function, the metadata comes in. It’s not mappable and only some of it is adjustable/searchable (the fields that you can edit/type are searchable within X). So a format like p2 that has very decent “built in” metadata that’s close to a standard via Panasonic’s recommendations works, but it’s not perfect.
A format like Arri Alexa also has XMLs but FCPX doesn’t read that XML file and there’s currently not an easy “mechanism” to import that style of XML. The guts do seem to be there, fortunately.
This will probably take major updates to AVFoundation and FCPXML to get this to where fcp7 sits in it’s current state, is my educated guess.
So, yes, I think it is rather limited in scope today, but some of it is working provided you have the material that X understands (like p2).
The announcement from the MXF4mac folks alludes to a “Pro” version of VirtualMXF that maps 7 metadata to X, which seems to bode very well for upcoming possibilities without the log and transfer mechanism.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “A format like Arri Alexa also has XMLs but FCPX doesn’t read that XML file and there’s currently not an easy “mechanism” to import that style of XML. The guts do seem to be there, fortunately. “
FCP X also doesn’t read embedded metadata inside a QT file. For example, no reel ID numbers in ALEXA files or QT movies altered by FCP 7 or an app like QtChange. FCP 7 reads these.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “FCP X also doesn’t read embedded metadata inside a QT file. For example, no reel ID numbers in ALEXA files or QT movies altered by FCP 7 or an app like QtChange. FCP 7 reads these.”
This is where updates to AVFoundation come in, or if a more generic XML import becomes available so that the reel gets mapped to X’s reel field.
As I said, it works with formats that are logged and transferred so there’s some of it in there, it’s just not complete.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “This is where updates to AVFoundation come in, or if a more generic XML import becomes available so that the reel gets mapped to X’s reel field. “
I understand, but I really don’t care why it doesn’t work (that’s not directed at you). I’m sure ARRI what just as surprised as the rest of us! Makes it really hard to develop workflows around something you can’t rely on.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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