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Re: After a year has perception of FCPX changed?
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[Clint Wardlow] “It’s not the basic stuff that worries me. It is the complex layers of image and audio that I use so often, that worries me.”
Understood.
But it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t really know if X is going to meet all of your present expectations – fail to meet one or more critical ones – or (and here’s the real challenge) if your expectations will functionally change given access to new tools that might call all, some, or maybe none of your current standards into question.
Change is afoot. Big change. X is part of that.
It’s totally fine if you don’t want to change anything in how you do your work.
It’s also totally fine if you start walking down the change road like I did – and start to see new and really interesting things that have caused me to question how my entire workflow might change to take advantages of new opportunities that X makes it easier to explore.
In my view, change is often attended by opportunity.
For others, change is often just a big, nasty hassle.
It’s up to you to determine which is true for you in relation to this particular tool.
My 2 cents, 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 Davis]Well, a Steenbeck wasn’t actually designed with “complex editing in mind” but that didn’t stop legions of editors from cutting very complex projects on it. So i guess I’m just clueless about what you mean by “complex.” Probably just me.
[Bill Davis]Now this just baffles me. How is elevating a relational database to near parity with the editing interface an example of “aren’t designed with the busy editor or facility in mind?” It seems me that X in time is likely to outstrip most current editorial platforms in media management simply because they designed the database and editorial functions to function totally in tandem. But we must just see this very differently as well.
[Bill Davis]To me, it’s almost completely “mindful.” It appears to me that massive amounts of careful though and consideration went into the construction of the X interface. Primary evidence of that is that it would have been MASSIVELY easier just to do “tweaked” versions of the same workflow approaches that every other software package had done before.
The changes in X might not resonate for you – and that’s all well and good – but to apply a word like mindless is to argue that they are NOT changes – just accidents. And like it or not, the change in X is far from “accidental” – the definitional opposite of “mindless” no?
[Bill Davis]Interesting. Can’t recall who it was and whether or not it was here, but I was reading something yesterday from someone who was commenting about how he didn’t like Events or Projects at first either – but as his work and database got more complex, he appeared to reconsider that initial opinion. IIRC, in the face of increasing workflow complexity – those concepts started to make a whole lot more sense than that did to him when he viewed every “project” as it was in Legacy editors – separate, discrete, “cut off” constructs rather than entries in a “stream” of accessible projects – one of the foundational thinking changes I think that X has made. After all, if you’re still working “one project at a time” – then the entire Event Library makes little sense. OTOH, if you see your work as a series of discrete events – shoots, sound recordings, photo creations, downloads, whatever, that are all brought together into an initial key wording, coloring, and perfecting space (the event browser) – and you’d like access to all of not only that projects assets but ALL your projects assets to be accessible, then the Event idea starts to make huge amounts of sense.
[Bill Davis]Well, you had me seriously engaged up to this.
This is just, IMO, undeserved snarkiness. It implies that X is some kind of empty”all sizzle and no steak” tool and implies that everyone here who’ve spent the past year exploring it are all just clueless fools – and that our year of discussion is based on us being too dense to understand how clever Mr. Ubillos snuck one over on us rubes.
The other view, of course, is that the guy responsible for empowering more professional editors than any other single software designer on the planet, just felt that there might be better long-term ways to assemble media in the modern era – and that those might be worth codifying into a new type of editing tool.
Perhaps you are correct, and all of us who find editing in X to be faster, more flexible, and more interesting than we felt editing was after our years editing in Legacy are just delusional.
But I suppose I’m content in my delusions. And far too polite to publicly say anything your comment above about whoever wrote the current version of Premier or AVID or Vegas – since those folks are all likely worlds smarter about NLE design than I am.
Thanks for expounding on your views, anyway. I personally see them as being largely based on “feelings” rather than “facts” so I remain far from convinced the the arguments – but I certainly appreciate your taking the time to try to explain your point of view.
Thanks.”
Wow Bill, so many words, so much hysteria and so little reason.
Too many points to pick you up on, so I’ll just pick a few. As someone who used to work on Steenbeck I’m well placed to disagree with opening point. A flatbed, a trim bin and a good assistant were indeed designed for complex editing. It would just take a while and a lot of effort. On a modern NLE I can edit in hours what would take weeks on Steenbeck. That’s a fact in case you think it’s a feeling.
On your second point about my use of the word “mindless”. I’m not suggesting they didn’t think about what they were doing, more that the changes they made to the timeline were inferior to the existing one. I’m sure the tech to enable the magnetic timeline/connected clips etc is very clever, though to me it doesn’t enhance the editing process. Change for the sake of change is pointless. No?
As for my barb about Randy’s powerpoint, well I think you are being over dramatic about this and to suggest it somehow diminishes those people that have spent the last year working on FCPX is plain silly. I’m one of those who downloaded it it on day one and have used it since day one alongside other NLEs!! My point was simple, the things that are good in FCPX aren’t necessarily the things that make editors smile, they are things that will make software engineers smile – things like “elevating a relational database to near parity with the editing interface”…
Liam Hall
Director/DoP/Editor
http://www.liamhall.net -
[Jeremy Garchow] “So while it’s not perfect, the starting infrastructure is actually pretty interesting, even if all the pieces aren’t quite there”
I agree Jeremy. That is why I’m still running it alongside my other NLEs. FCPX is promising, but Apple need to deliver on those promises. More importantly if they want to change peoples’ perception about FCPX and be taken seriously again, they need improve their communication with pro users. I think we can all agree on that…
Liam Hall
Director/DoP/Editor
http://www.liamhall.net -
“Change for the sake of change is pointless”
Absolutely correct! But FCPx timeline is far from “for the sake of it”
It actually addresses all the shortcomings of a track based timeline in a genius way 🙂
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[Steve Connor] “Shhhhh! you’ll start the PIOP debate all over again!
I now use the “F” key and it bothers me much less than it used to”
How well is that “F” key working for you in the timeline, Steve?
Ok, I’ll go back outside now. 😉
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
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[David Lawrence] “How well is that “F” key working for you in the timeline, Steve? “
I’m not totally sure I get the joke, David. Is it because if you switch timelines with an i/o selected and come back to the original time line, the i/o selection is gone? That’s sort of annoying I guess, but you could always blade tool your i/o and then trim them as you wanted – then overwrite or insert.
I’m still new at it, but there’s probably a way to use the i/o to make the selection a standalone clip on the primary storyline. Just trying to figure out what would cause you grief by the loss of i/o in the timeline aside from the obviousness of having to reset them.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[Bill Davis] “What else could Apple have done given the reality of the situation surrounding FCP?”
They could have ported FCP7 to 64bit, using the redesign to optimize performance, clean out the bugs, organize the menu’s etc.
They could have brought out something like FCPX, called it something else, while continuing support for and even updating Legacy, announcing that X would be the future but they weren’t throwing out the work flows of their current users.
They could have spun-off / sold off Legacy while throwing their energy into X.
They could have done a lot of things. They had plenty of options, many of which would have made both you and me happy. As is their right, they chose a path that didn’t. I don’t have to still kiss their ring for doing so do I?
And while you make a good argument for why Apple did what they did, you make no allowances for why many of their users felt screwed by them for doing so. I’m not sympathetic to Apple’s reasons when they are at cross purposes to my needs.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Bill Davis] “Well, a Steenbeck wasn’t actually designed with “complex editing in mind” but that didn’t stop legions of editors from cutting very complex projects on it. “
You know not whereof you speak.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Liam Hall] “The timeline isn’t designed with complex editing in mind.”
[Liam Hall] “And the trackless timeline, with its roles/stems, connected clips and storylines… …well, that’s all simply mindless…
“I’d strongly disagree. Rather than a “track” based system that forces tracks into the cross and often competing purposes of compositing and organization, I can layer with connected clips and secondary story lines while Roles is used for organizing. Granted Roles needs a bit more feature development I don’t see this as an impediment to complex editing. It’s certainly not “mindless.” In fact it allows very sharp focus to the task at hand, putting together clips that tell a story.
[Liam Hall] “Among other things, I find “Events” and “Projects” ill-conceived,”
You don’t seem to understand FCPX at all. Events and Projects are probably more well thought out than the organizational structure in most other NLEs I’ve experienced (at least Avid and FCP7). Keyword and Smart Collections are more flexible than bins because clips and portions of clips can exist in multiple Collections at the same time. This allows for very complex multipurpose organizing and, yet, very easy to implement.
Events and Projects show the incredible flexibility of the relational database underlying it. Events are repositories of Media. Projects of Stories. A Project can draw media from any number of Events. While many people mistakenly believe there is only one Project per Event, that is likely because when you first create a Project it must be tied to one Event, establishing an initial relationship in the database. Ultimately a Project can draw from many events.
Add that you can create Compound Clips as “workspaces” in Events which can then be dropped into any number of Projects and you have far more flexibility and complexity than in most other NLEs (IMHO).
The Project Library itself allows me to look at any number of Projects complete with Skimming or Playback without have to open one after another in a timeline. Within the Project Library I can create folders to organize my Projects independent of the Events. Select any Project and you can see in the Inspector all the Events a given Project may Reference (use media from). Which also means that any Event can have media used in any number of Projects. In short, you can have very complex relationships between numbers of Events and numbers of Projects.
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F key. Not only don’t they disappear when making them Favorites, you can have multiple Favorites (in and out points) per clip.
Granted the bother is remembering to hit the F key before you click on something else. I do wish it tagged a Range (in and out) as a Favorite automatically when you clicked on something else.
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