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So what is happening with NLE’s in your area
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[Walter Soyka] “Apple is pretty well absent in CG and compositing. The CPU performance gap is widening, and with next-generation single-CPU Mac Pro being half as fast for these apps versus dual-CPU PC workstations, I don’t see this changing.”
I don’t think it’s going to be a computational powerhouse for ray-tracing stuff. I’m torn on the single CPU thing, and at some point we might even see it change, but within the same/similar form factor. It seems like Apple’s intention is to have the artists working in OSX on a Mac Pro, and sending to a Linux farm for render.
[Walter Soyka] “I’m not saying you can’t do great work with FCPX or on Macs — of course you can — but look at feature sets for systems like Baselight, Flame, Mistika, or Pablo. FCPX has a long way to go before it reaches “the highest level.””
I don’t think it will every reach those levels, same for Premiere and Media Composer. I do think we’ll see better round tripping support throughout though, but that is mostly up to the other developers adding support, not Apple.
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FCP X Certified Pro, Level Two
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[Herb Sevush] “FCPX has a very long way to go to match Avid in collaborative editing,”
True.
[Herb Sevush] “many broadcasters still need tape delivery”
Also true, but it’s trivially easy to spit out 4444 or uncompressed files and master to tape using something like BMD Media XPress or other similar apps. I always thought FCP7’s edit to tape function kinda sucked anyway, but that’s obviously just my opinion. Plenty of folks like it…
[Herb Sevush] “and having to go thru FCP7 for OMF is a joke.”
Absolutely but… using X2Pro to make audio aaf’s is freaking brilliant. As a former mixer, I always spent a fair amount of time prepping tracks from 7 or whatever for mix. When I cut, the timeline is kind of a mess because I need to work quickly. I could care less if everything’s all nicely separated, I just want t to fit in the window so I can see it. So… prior to finish, I’d split everything out nicely. This can take a little time when what you end up with takes up to 24 or more – sometimes a lot more – tracks. You know the drill. In X using X2Pro, I essentially just push a button and it’s done. It’s awesome.
[Herb Sevush] “All of the high end features they added back were added back in the first year, I don’t see any great development pace over the past 12 months.”
Again, true. But what we also know is that there is a “new” version coming out soon. My guess is that the app got “forked” around the time .06 came out. the .0x version got maintenance, bug fixes, and a couple random features. Meanwhile all the new goodness is going into .1 or whatever it is. Time will tell. 😉
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Nicholas Zimmerman] “Case in point, the kid that got Battlefield 3 running maxed out on a MacBook Air using Thunderbolt.”
Some people need multiple CPUs and even more GPUs than Apple is offering. Not many, but some. And there is nothing that Thunderbolt can do to help them. If you think that Battlefield 3 defines the high end, I will say no more.
[Nicholas Zimmerman] ” I think CES and NAB will be chock full of Thunderbolt versions of what were once PCIe cards.”
I went with my wife to the Apple store the other day to get her an external drive for her new laptop. There was only 1 Thunderbolt drive and it cost more than twice as much as any other external drive, and this is more than 2 years after Tbolt was introduced. Needless to say I was not impressed with the speed with which Tbolt is being implemented by third parties.
[Nicholas Zimmerman] “I recently had a chance to tour CBS’s west coast studio and check out their control room. The guys complained about how they were transitioning to file based for everything. Tape deliver is dieing very quickly, and if you need it just use your I/O card’s software. I’ve found Black Magics offering MUCH better than the wonky print/edit to tape in FCP7. “
But I thought tape was dead 2 years ago, when X first came out. So now it’s 2 years later and apparently still alive. Yes it will be phased out, but no, it’s death certificate is still on hold. As for third party tape-out, do you have any idea what a PITA it is to have to output a file before printing, especially if your trying to just insert a fix. Yes it’s possible, but nobody whose job depends on it would choose to work in that way. I expect improvements from new software, not ridiculous third party work arounds.
[Nicholas Zimmerman] “OMF isn’t dieing, it’s good as dead.”
In your world, maybe. Just like tape is as good as dead, in your world. But in the rest of the “not you” world neither of those statements is true. And in that other, not you world, X is a step backwards, and using Xto7 to generate OMFs is a silly hack.
[Nicholas Zimmerman] “Look at OSX, it’s new features are very power user heavy, things like dual display improvements. That doesn’t benefit the average consumer, but is deeply beneficial to power users and professionals.”
I’m not arguing that, I’m arguing that your definition of top seems to have the same ceiling that Apple’s does, while a higher ceiling does in fact exist.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Charlie Austin] ” I always thought FCP7’s edit to tape function kinda sucked anyway, but that’s obviously just my opinion. Plenty of folks like it…”
It does suck, I had waited long in vain for Apple to fix both tape ingest and export, not realizing they were waiting to simply kill it off. Still suck as it might, it’s better than having to output a master file every time you want to do a tape layoff. The ease of printing from the timeline is not to be underestimated, especially when your playing around with fixing inserts.
[Charlie Austin] “My guess is that the app got “forked” around the time .06 came out. the .0x version got maintenance, bug fixes, and a couple random features. Meanwhile all the new goodness is going into .1 or whatever it is. Time will tell”
The one thing the X-bomb taught me is that guessing on what Apple is planning to do is a fools errand.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “If you think that Battlefield 3 defines the high end”
Nah. Just a proof of concept on the tech.
[Herb Sevush] “In your world, maybe. Just like tape is as good as dead, in your world. But in the rest of the “not you” world neither of those statements is true. And in that other, not you world, X is a step backwards, and using Xto7 to generate OMFs is a silly hack.”
Avid itself has urged people to switch to AAF, and I can’t think of any reason not to. There might be a good reason, I’ve just never been informed of it.
[Herb Sevush] “I’m not arguing that, I’m arguing that your definition of top seems to have the same ceiling that Apple’s does, while a higher ceiling does in fact exist.”
I highly doubt you’ll ever see OMF or Print to Tape return. Apple seems to be focusing on the future of the high end, instead of the past, which OMF and Tape are both in the past column. They still exist for fringe sectors, but workarounds also exist. They’re not always fun, but neither was transcoding every piece of footage before you could edit different formats. It was just a few years ago that we’d get an error in FCP5 every time we tried to mix anything that was even the slightest bit off. As far as exporting a master file before printing tape, it’s much faster to take that step in FCPX.
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FCP X Certified Pro, Level Two
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Nicholas –
For me, part of being a professional is the ability to deliver whatever my clients want. I’m not arguing for the supremacy of Tape out or OMF, I’m arguing that the inability to do either as easily and quickly as I do now is a step backwards. I don’t care if OMFs aren’t as good as AAF, if I have one client who asks for it, for whatever reason, I want to be able to deliver it. Being restricted, even if it’s to a better way, is not an advance. MC7, PPro7(or cloud or whatever the hell they’re calling it),Edius 7 and even LIghtworks can export to tape and deliver OMFs while handling multiple codecs without transcoding, so the bit about Apple being focused on the future is just a load.
Apple has made choices about the market it wants to serve, and it’s leaving a portion of it’s former market to its competitors.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] ” With the release of the R2MacPro it’s fair to say that Apple has not abandoned the pro film/video market, although they have re-defined it for themselves. “
I feel like Apple has always defined their own market, and from 2001 – 2011 Apple’s path just happened to line up with many of our own paths. Apple helped usher in the era(s) of desktop editing, publishing, DVD authoring (even color correction), etc., at times when ‘off the rack’ computers weren’t deemed up to snuff for professional use.
Back in the day I remember one facility I worked at using an SGI Octane to run Smoke. These days I’d say most Smoke installs are probably on affordable, off the shelf computers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple considered full size towers today to be akin to ‘big iron’ machines from 10-15 years ago. It’s a pretty niche market they weren’t interested in back then and still aren’t interested in today.
I think the new Mac Pro will be good enough for the vast majority of users just like the older Mac Pros were. There will be faster machines out there (always have been) but the higher cost (and loss of Mac-centric workflow) will keep most users with Apple (even if they grumble some while handing over their credit card).
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[Herb Sevush] “The ease of printing from the timeline is not to be underestimated, especially when your playing around with fixing inserts.”
Oh, for sure. But it can be done with external apps, though it’s not as easy. That’s not to say it’s not a need, but I can see why Apple might not want to bother with it. We virtually never see tape anymore, but for those who do, it’s a bit of a PITA…
[Herb Sevush] “The one thing the X-bomb taught me is that guessing on what Apple is planning to do is a fools errand.”
LOL.. agreed, though in this situation I think it’s a pretty safe bet based on smoke signals I’ve been seeing… 🙂 We’ll see soon enough…
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
I’m learning a stack from this thread and from the comments I’m reading. It seems that most of the applications are actually pretty good, but perhaps taking a few too many steps to fast (Adobe CC excluding ‘Encore’ is another classic example)… the confusion seems to be that they are trying to take hold of every post production market, in the present and future, when it may not actually be possible?
Also reading the convo on audio technicalities the other interesting idea (for me anyway) is that most good ‘editors’ are really more than just editors, they are sound designers, color graders, motion graphic artists etc… so on this front, Adobe’s idea of having one place where they develop specific software for specific needs, Audition, After Effects etc, seems to be the simplest way forward. Smoke looks interesting with its integration of multiple tools, but that must be a mission trying to combine all those tools into one app.
[Herb Sevush] “For me, part of being a professional is the ability to deliver whatever my clients want.”
This is what hits home for me too, the real question is… who are the clients and what do they want? That should steer the future development. A lot of people want to make films, but reality is, for the majority it is pretty hard to crack, and hard to make a living off unless your in the top end.By the way, I would be super appreciative if you could help me get some data on all this at https://www.thedigitalslice.com (beta) -aiming for clarity.
Filmmaker // Motion Graphic Artist
http://www.saltmedia.nethttp://www.thedigitalslice.com (beta) – Seeking clarity in digital post production.
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I don’t want AAFs and prefer OMFs. The reasoning is brutally clear. OMFs being long dead EOL is absolutely stable and predictable. AAFs contain a whole lot of extra info that I don’t want like EQ and dynamic levels. I usually remove all clip gain adjustment and ask editors to remove all split edits anyway so all the extra goodies of AAF are not required. Sorry if I don’t want to hear the editors brilliant EQ or great fade. They all have to be redone anyway once proper sub frame editing, track reorganising, bussing and sub grouping with dynamics processing has been applied.
All your clip fades muck up undipped stem requirements. The sub bus needs to be dipped not the clips. Finally AAF requires a license fee so I am not prepared to pay extra for features that are not wanted and for a format that is still being developed.
The inability of a professional NLE to output such basic deliverables like OMF and EDL and relies totally on third parties to find how to export on Apple’s behalf has always concerned me. It doesn’t appear to concern too many on the edit side but the buck always stops with me. I have to make the workflow reliable, stable and simple. OMFs and EDLs are an everyday reality.
To the greater question of what NLE, Legacy is still king in my area with some small shifts to Pr & AVID. I now know two editors using X but so far haven’t had a broadcast doco cut on X delivered to me yet. I expect it will happen but so far not one enquiry.
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