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RedShark News: Opinion: Which are the best NLEs right now?
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I minored in Linguistics and have an obsession with epistemology.
[Walter Soyka] “But back to the off-topic at hand, I do actually think that both (A) and (B) are important for understanding FCP X.
Aside from the argumentum ad hominem I’ve already detailed, I believe the Luddite dinosaur argument also suffers from argumentum ad novitatem.”
I only add that (A) and (B) are necessary for all knowledge acquisition and that it’s reasonable for an editor to (A, forget what they know) and (B, use the software) and therefore also reasonably reject X. Seems like an obvious statement, but I rarely hear anyone making that argument. (So I just did.)
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[James Ewart] “I would say that the negativity I experience towards FCPX (that echoes Legacy) is irrational and has an agenda.”
If it’s irrational, than by definition it doesn’t have an agenda. And I agree that it’s not rational, it’s emotional.
[James Ewart] “As for zero market penetration. No not zero. It’s certainly not zero. Not at the BBC anyway. Okay the BBC is tiny in context but over here people watch what they do. Like Walter Murch it’s seal of approval.”
Your right, I’m guilty of a “Bill Davis” — a factual exaggeration to make a point. Very limited penetration would be more accurate.
[James Ewart] “Read the forums and read the vitriol directed at FCPX from various quarters and tell me that does not smack of threatened. If not threatened then what is it please? Why would they care?”
It sounds like a jilted lover to me.
[James Ewart] “Well that doesn’t make sense as they must have very short memories. Surely FCPX is the next most promising NLSE and if not, why not?”
Well from your point of view X might be the most promising. From my point of a view it’s a wankel rotary engine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine ) in that it’s advantages when balanced against it’s disadvantages make the price of novelty a bit high for my tastes. YMMV and it obviously does.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Jeremy Garchow] “And there it is. The rare and precious, Legend of FCP Legend.”
And when the legend becomes fact …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=363ZAmQEA84
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. BieberkopfSome contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
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[Herb Sevush] “Well from your point of view X might be the most promising. From my point of a view it’s a wankel rotary engine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine ) in that it’s advantages when balanced against it’s disadvantages make the price of novelty a bit high for my tastes. YMMV and it obviously does.”
Great to see you back Herb!
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[Bill Davis] “X is the only NLE that by default, preserves the muxed nature of the original content during editing operations. To break apart these files requires editor action. It succeeds because the default describes something that is extremely valuable to a video editor. Video that preserves SYNC sound.”
Edius does this too but in a different way. The first track in a Edius timeline is a VA track. You can stick your footage there and it locks them together or you can stick it in a conventional track that seperates the two. There’s a lot about Edius default layout that feels similar to X. VA tracks lock the audio and video together, it’s by default in tracks locked, ripple mode which has the footage dancing in a way that is very similar to the magnetic timeline. Does make me wonder if the X team had a look at it before they built their own.
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[Herb Sevush] “From my point of a view it’s a wankel rotary engine”
rather. also, the bbc thing is overstated I think. That is a city, and in a village in that city, regarding factual, certain people are being trained.
5,000 licenses of creative suite 5.5 premiere pro were bought and we all now know that meant nothing. BBC extruded those licenses as a digestive function. although BBCWW is going ppro cc as a mortal lock.
the point, if we’re going to get emotional, lies with the essential chi of FCPX, it’s reason for being, and how it breathes. Does it breathe like pages, does it breathe like aperture, does it breathe like FCP 7, does it breathe like shake or colour, or any other software adventure apple ever undertook transitioning to the most powerful corporation on earth.
asking if FCPX is going to be ok and well tended for is like asking an olympian dragon if they’re going to make it rain. Apple is that far in the sky, and they’ve been that way for a while. They are god level corporate capricious, and if you’re confused, ask yourself, as you hold your new special magnetic powers, whether the aperture people are currently left holding their own… well, finish that sentence.
gods do get bored. It’s a hallmark.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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Good to see you back Aindreas. 🙂
[Aindreas Gallagher] does it breathe like pages
If I recall correctly, Pages still exists. It’s really good and improving quickly.
[Aindreas Gallagher] does it breathe like aperture
Have you seen the replacement for Aperture? Please share details…
[Aindreas Gallagher] does it breathe like FCP 7
It’s replacement, FCP X, crushes FCP 7, whether you or anyone else like it is another story.
[Aindreas Gallagher] does it breathe like shake or colour,
Now those are dead, but parts of both still exist in current apps. In the case of Color, Apple probably decided that competing with great, free apps wasn’t worth it. But who knows…
Another one you forgot is: Does it breath like Logic?
[Aindreas Gallagher] “ask yourself, as you hold your new special magnetic powers, whether the aperture people are currently left holding their own… well, finish that sentence.
“I could just as easily claim that the new Photos app will be 100 times better than Aperture. But I have no idea, and neither do you. 😉
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “Now those are dead, but parts of both still exist in current apps. In the case of Color, Apple probably decided that competing with great, free apps wasn’t worth it. But who knows…”
Resolve Lite was announced at NAB 2011 so I’d guess Color’s fate was sealed long before that. Apple’s plans to kill Color probably go back as far as the plans to reboot FCP from the ground up. Also, Color was tossed in to the Final Cut Suite at no additional charge so it was pretty much free vs free anyway. Many FCP Legend users thought Color’s interface was byzantine so it’s not really a shocker that it wouldn’t fit into the vision Apple had for X.
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In a recent COW article, Charlie Austin writes about how wonderful the Final Cut Pro X user interface is …
https://library.creativecow.net/austin_charlie/FCPX-Timeline/1Sure. Whatever you say, Charlie.
Apologies in advance while I vent (and yes, I know, complaining about FCPX is old news) …
First, if there’s anything I say here that’s factually incorrect, especially about FCPX, I apologize most emphatically. Corrections are welcome!
I understand only about 1% of what Charlie’s talking about, and that’s after I’ve spent days trying to figure out the free, fully-functional, trial version of FCPX. I’ve actually tried to learn FCPX several times over the past several months, and each time I’ve given up after a few days. I might give up again soon.
It’s amazing to me that years after FCPX’s release, its UI still sucks as hard as it does. IMHO, it’s ridiculous!
Apparently, my using old FCP versions 1-7 (and Macromedia Director for gosh sakes!) for many, many years caused enough brain damage to impair my ability to “think different” anymore.
It’s really too bad, because FCPX does in fact have some really nice features. For example, FCPX’s “Stabilize” feature is truly amazing, as is FCPX’s built-in support for my BMPC-4K camera’s “Film” log ProRes videos. Not to mention the software costs only $300 to own outright — no subscription required. FCPX runs on almost any Mac, and even runs faster on my old MBP17 laptop than FCP7 does.
Unlike many here, I don’t need top-of-the-line, industrial-strength video editing capability. I don’t work as an editor. However, I often need to work with — review, scope, slice, dice, process, demo, etc. — the video files I shoot, especially 4K ProRes. I need a semi-industrial-strength application, but it’s got to be designed for humans, preferably humans who’ve edited video before.
Unfortunately, the more I try to learn FCPX, the more I hate it. Really and truly hate it. Especially its UI and the way it handles and relates to files on disk and clips in the timeline. Not that files and timelines are important!!!
FCPX’s idiotic new names for almost every aspect of video editing are aggressively counter-intuitive and completely, totally, unnecessary. Examples include “Libraries”?! “Events”?! “Storylines”?! And UI windows that can’t be moved/relocated/resized the way I want?! WTF?!
Timeline video editing has been around for a long time. It wasn’t broken. It didn’t need to be “fixed”! Occasionally the underlying video rendering and other processing software code needs to be rewritten to take advantage of new computer hardware. But the entire fricking UI and most of the fundamental naming conventions certainly didn’t need the “fix” provided by FCPX!
I don’t store video files and other media in “libraries” (they’re on disk volumes and in folders). My video/media files and the productions I work on are not “events” (and unlike FCPX’s default, I rarely group video/media files by date, since a single production often spans multiple days). My rough and alternate edits aren’t “storylines” or whatever gibberish Apple wishes to call them. Unlike FCPX, old FCP7 made it super-easy to work on multiple edits (projects) at the same time. I don’t want to have to do a mental translation from real-world speak to FCPX-speak each and every time I touch, or work with, a video/media file within the app!
Here’s a simple example of FCPX’s insanity: In the Mac Finder you can color-code (tag) files on disk to make them easy to prioritize and find. This is a super-useful feature, and has existed for years. Ancient FCP 7 can see the color-coding in its open file dialog box when you import a file. FCPX does not! WTF!?
And don’t get me started on FCPX’s inability to easily do audio-only cross-fades without jumping through hoops or buying additional software!
https://provideocoalition.com/mspencer/video/audio-only-cross-fades-in-final-cut-pro-xSo far I haven’t found the FCPX documentation to be very helpful, but in fairness, docs aren’t tutorials. I obviously can’t ask the docs a question, and the doc’s search feature results in an endless spaghetti rabbit hole waste of time.
Likewise the tutorials I’ve seen online haven’t helped. As with the article above, I mostly find the online tutorials confusing more than anything else. Because I can’t say “Wait! Stop! WTF are you talking about?!” to an online tutorial. Well, I can, and I do, but it doesn’t help. 🙂
Trying to learn FCPX is the weirdest technology product experience I’ve ever had, except maybe Microsoft Word, another powerful software product I absolutely loathe and only use when absolutely necessary! It’s quite a dubious achievement that Apple has managed to create software with a worse UI than Word.
Unfortunately, FCPX may be the only alternative I have going forward. Understandably, Apple isn’t likely to support the old FCP 7 software on Mac OS “11” or whatever it ends up being called. And, if you don’t update your OS, pretty soon Apple stops making internet security updates available for the old OS. And FCP7 doesn’t support 4K video well, nor take advantage of modern computer hardware.
It’s really a drag contemplating spending $300 on software I already can’t stand using!!!
I can’t consider Adobe’s subscription model, even though I’d probably enjoy using the latest version of Premiere and its more conventional UI & powerful features. But I want to own the software I use, forever.
I’ve also been trying-out Lightworks, but have decided that even though it has a much more “conventional” UI than does FCPX, and like FCPX you can buy it outright if you want, it’s missing many features that its developers say they’re not interested in adding. For example, it doesn’t include a Stabilize feature — and may never.
What about Davinci Resolve? After all, the full version of the $995 software was included with my BMPC-4K camera, and Resolve now includes video editing capabilities. Resolve fully supports 4K RAW and ProRes video. Chances are good subsequent versions of Resolve will include even more editing features, and the upgrades might be free, too, so even better, right? Well, yeah, except that I’d need to buy a new computer that costs at least $3,000 (and possibly much more than that) to run Resolve smoothly. Unfortunately, that’s not in the budget anytime soon. Remember: I don’t work as an editor for hire. I just want to be able to work with the footage I shoot.
I’ve put in a call to an editor friend who uses FCPX to see if either she or someone she knows can give me a brief, in-person tutorial so I can ask questions. Maybe if someone shows me how to get started with FCPX “the right way”, and I can ask questions in-person, then maybe I can make some progress. Maybe.
Again, apologies for venting … and for my brain damage.
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https://www.peterdv.com
Blog: https://herefortheweather.wordpress.com -
[Peter J. DeCrescenzo] “In a recent COW article, Charlie Austin writes about how wonderful the Final Cut Pro X user interface is …”
Well, that’s because it is. 😉
[Peter J. DeCrescenzo] “Apologies in advance while I vent”
That was truly epic Peter. Well done. lol (I’m really not being sarcastic, great rant!)
Seriously though, i wish I was up your way, I’d get you sorted out in about 30 minutes. I hope you can find someone to help out, it’s really not as confusing as it first seems.
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~
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