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Thank you Apple – and don’t change course. Please
Always great to come back here and read all the things people are passionate about. Only downside is sometimes this nasty ‘my way or the highway’ crap..
Now I would like to voice my OPINION ( I wrote this in capitals to stress the fact that it is an opinion and not the almighty truth 🙂
First I encourage everybody (if you haven’t done already) to read the following paper from Apple: https://images.apple.com/finalcutpro/docs/Final_Cut_Pro_X_for_Final_Cut_Pro_7_Editors.pdf
This is the closest we’ll get to hear from the developers to why they did it the way they did. Not conclusive but I did find some really interesting bits in there which for me cleared things up a little.Now why the subject line? Because I honestly think that FCPx is a great story telling tool! No it’s not the super app that does your multi million dollar VFX as well. Nor is it the DAW that has unlimited tracks and buses etc. And thank god it is not!!! And I hope it’ll never be! And I can’t stress this enough.
Why do I say this? Because my prime work is to tell a story. I have the odd super or still graphic to include and I do a little audio sweetening for rough or fine cut presentation or if I need to put something on the net. Same goes for CC. FCPx can exactly do that for me and do it in a very clever and easy to understand way, and without a hundred menus and buttons I will never use.
Same as everybody else I was struggling at first with the new concept of FCPx. It took me a while to get to this conclusion, but the main breakthrough came after spending some time with FCPx and trying to understand it, I did go back to edit a project on FCP7. And I finally understood why the timeline in FCPx is the way it is. Sure you can do everything you want in FCP7 but all the steps I needed to do when tracks were colliding or the gabs I needed to create to shuffle things around are just not necessary in FCPx. And the only downside I can see right now is that you maybe loose the visual (and it’s visual only because all audio clips still play the same) organisational structure a track system gives you where e.g music is always on your bottom tracks. Again this is from a story teller point of view not from the VFX or DAW point of view. So in my opinion (the word again) Apple clearly did make it better, not just different.
A lot of discussion here is also about native format support. I understand if you have fast turnarounds you like the fact that nothing needs to be transcoded initially (eventually it will). When you work for month on a single project I couldn’t care less about a few nights the computer humming away to get footage transcoded. Again exactly what FCPx does best. Ingest fast to get going and transcode in background. So mercury engine is cool but not necessary.
Do I need Autodesk. God forbid. There are much smarter people than me out there that specialise in VFX. Nobody needs another I can do this too now, but it’ll look really crap. Same goes for Audio.So for me the main tool I need is the editing tool. It needs to be simple and not get in my way. And I think Apple actually advanced this part dramatically.
And that is why I hope Apple will not buckle under the pressure from the crowd (meant here in the nicest possible way 🙂 and stick to its principles regarding FCPx. Keep it simple (though fix the bugs of course) and provide the hooks to pass on my work to others where I need to.
PS same actually goes for the MacPro discussion. I totally understand if you are heavily in VFX you might need the biggest, beefiest beast out there and you want to get it for as little as you can find. I do not need this. And I like the idea that by using thunderbolt I can separate the CPU from the GPU from the i/o and can easily carry things around, swap componends etc.
So even though Apple confused me in the beginning, they ultimately again delivered the goods. And that’s why I stick with them. Nope, not all is perfect, but from my point of view a heck lot better than the alternatives. (I just love their attention to detail. I still get exited whenever I swap the power plug on an Apple power supply. Simple and solid, same solution for direct to plug or with cord extension, same on all power supplies. Just masterful design)
That is my story. What is yours?
Cheers
Carsten -
131 Replies
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Now that much of the import and export hooks are in the system and third parties are making it possible, I have far less to worry about with FCPX. For my work it doesn’t fit in but it doesn’t matter. I can’t use it as a finishing tool the way I did with FCS3 but at least I can now advise editors that there is a two way bridge to the island.
I am definitely moving on to CS6 and possibly Smoke with da Vinci as primary grading system and going to Win 7 and building my own boxes to get best grunt and value.
I am happy for Apple to continue on, it just means we part company after eight years. In a way I am happy that this whole matter has fired up credible opposition and also widened the hardware choices. Ultimately I want editors to have the best tools for them to create and also be able to deliver down the pipeline so I can do the finishing without convoluted workflows that cost money and translate poorly. I still think Apple should take greater responsibility for exporting standard formats like EDL, AAF and OMF.
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Apple should have continued developing the track-based FCPX shown in that image that was floating around before, then added a magnetic timeline “mode” on top of it. Then people could work whicever way they prefer and ease into the new way of thinking.
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“THAT’S our fail-safe point. Up until here, we still have enough track to stop the locomotive before it plunges into the ravine… But after this windmill it’s the future or bust.” -
[Carsten Orlt] “That is my story. What is yours?
“Very well said! I don’t think you need to worry about FCP X changing direction too much, because it very much IS what it is, and any change aimed at making it more in line with traditional NLEs would have to be much more than cosmetic.
I’ve pretty much accepted that it isn’t for me as my tier one NLE, but I can easily see using it for certain kinds of things, and I can imagine projects where it would be the best choice, though they are not the kind of projects I generally work on.
Hopefully, the changes that do get made will be more reflective of the kind of things YOU need, and not as an attempt to win people like me over. Things like a better back-up system and a slightly better way to handle and split apart audio. I’ll never be completely happy with it without tracks, but I agree with you, and don’t think it should be mercilessly mutated into something that appeases me but takes the ease of use away from you.
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[Carsten Orlt] “That is my story. What is yours?
“My story has a different ending.
In my world (The Real World), there are many people all contributing to the story. It’s as if everyone in Starbucks is all working on the same screenplay on their laptops at the same time! The key is collaboration, and so far, “X” has NOT demonstrated this as a priority. FCP 7 is a proven entity in this area. Does”X” even work in a shared storage, workgroup environment, with multiple editors all working on the same material?
So, say all you want about simplicity and “stay the course”, but for me, and anyone else in a similar situation, “X” is not currently up to the task.
Mark
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[Mark Raudonis] “In my world (The Real World)”
What do you mean by ‘The Real World Mark?
Cheers
Carsten -
It’s the show your working on.
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Literally, “The Real World” on MTV.
Mari
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Carsten Orlt A lot of discussion here is also about native format support. I understand if you have fast turnarounds you like the fact that nothing needs to be transcoded initially (eventually it will). When you work for month on a single project I couldn’t care less about a few nights the computer humming away to get footage transcoded. Again exactly what FCPx does best. Ingest fast to get going and transcode in background. So mercury engine is cool but not necessary.
The Mercury Engine isn’t what allows Premiere to edit natively. Premiere has had native support for DVCProHD since CS3. The purpose of the Mercury Engine is to accelerate playback performance- which does improve playback of highly-compressed footage, but also allows for things like real-time chroma keying, which are pretty useful.
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“THAT’S our fail-safe point. Up until here, we still have enough track to stop the locomotive before it plunges into the ravine… But after this windmill it’s the future or bust.” -
[Mark Raudonis] “Literally, “The Real World” on MTV.”
Mark is the Senior Vice President of Post Production at Bunim/Murray, the reality TV production giants that created and produce The Real World, Project Runway, Keeping Up With the Khardassians, and others. With more than 100 seats, working on 10 shows with staggering amounts of footage, collaboration and other aspects of hard-core workflow are pretty big deals.
He wrote a great article about his year-long quest to map out Bunim/Murray’s next steps after FCP for Creative COW Magazine, called “‘Real World’ Editing: From Avid to FCP and Back Again.” Highly recommended reading for a unique perspective from a careful, considerate guy who is anything but a knee-jerk hatah. And, as you might expect, he’s a terrific storyteller too.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Carsten Orlt] “Now why the subject line? Because I honestly think that FCPx is a great story telling tool! No it’s not the super app that does your multi million dollar VFX as well. Nor is it the DAW that has unlimited tracks and buses etc. And thank god it is not!!! And I hope it’ll never be! And I can’t stress this enough.
Why do I say this? Because my prime work is to tell a story. I have the odd super or still graphic to include and I do a little audio sweetening for rough or fine cut presentation or if I need to put something on the net. Same goes for CC. FCPx can exactly do that for me and do it in a very clever and easy to understand way, and without a hundred menus and buttons I will never use.”
The whole “storyteller” and “artist” paradigm is getting overplayed, and tired. It’s straight out of the ‘Stereotypes R Us’ catalog. Do you wear a beret when you edit?
From that couple of paragraphs, I can only imagine you are either 80 years old, and with so few years left you don’t think your career will advance beyond your current needs before you assume room temp…
Or
Your career path is pretty much YT, or Vimeo art/hobby pieces, and you don’t see a future where anything other than the basics, or any type of collaborative effort will be required. Sort of like a video version of Lomography.[Carsten Orlt] ” Sure you can do everything you want in FCP7…”
Well that is not necessarily true. While you can do a lot with FCS, it’s pretty easy to max it out. If you want to native edit with footage that is over 4k in frame size, you will have to go somewhere else. If you need more than 99 audio, or video tracks, you will ether have to bake or use a different app. Lots of editors have FCS, AE, ProTools and Smoke on their machines. I like Final Cut, but it really isn’t all that difficult, or high end. Try learning Maya, Lightwave or Blender.[Carsten Orlt] “No it’s not the super app that does your multi million dollar VFX as well. Nor is it the DAW that has unlimited tracks and buses etc. And thank god it is not!!! And I hope it’ll never be! And I can’t stress this enough.”
[Carsten Orlt] “Always great to come back here and read all the things people are passionate about. Only downside is sometimes this nasty ‘my way or the highway’ crap..”
These two statements seem to be in direct conflict. You desire that X should never be anything other than some generic, entry level type tool because that’s your speed, so does that me everyone else has to suffer?
I’m glad that X meets all your current, and future needs. What does that say? Think about that. X hasn’t even been out for a year.
I guess it must be hard for you to understand that there are those of us out there that need, want, and can handle a lot more horsepower than X will ever deliver. And that we have some pretty big investments tied to the apple brand, in both hardware and software, and in that respect apple has let us down, and failed to meet our expectations. This is why we are passionate about this. As a someone that uses FCS, I don’t give a rats ass about X, iMovie, or even Express. Had apple continued with FCS, and simply introduced X into the mix, there wouldn’t be an issue.
Where you, and others like you make your big mistake is acting like those of us that were expecting FCP8, or FCS4 and didn’t get it, want to take your toys away. I’ve never understood this. No one said anything like that. This is a straw man created by fanboys to defend, the undefendable.
Long before movie hero came along there was FC Express, and iMovie. A couple of aps that didn’t have “hundred menus and buttons I will never use”, to use your words. These were perfectly suited for the dilettantes, or hobbyists that wanted to play TV. In all the hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of posts where working editors were pining for this and that to be included in the next version of FCP, you will not find ANY where those that need a full blown editing tool wished to take away choices from those that don’t need anything more than iMovie, or Express.
But therein lies the difference.
Where once there were three choices (iMovie, Express and FCP) for editing in the apple world, now there is one. And apple says, if that doesn’t suit you, too bad, so sad.
And for this you’re thankful? I don’t get that. So you’re perfectly happy to support and defend apple, after it has told the folks that helped get them to where they’re at (sales and development wise), we don’t need you, are not going to support you anymore, and you no longer have a choice.
Apple says jump, and the only question the fanboys ask is “how high”? But there are a few of us that refuse to be cattle driven off the edge of the cliff.
IMO, if anything sounds like “nasty my way, or the highway crap”, it is the no notice EOL of FCP, and Express by your beloved apple, leaving the users with X and iMovie being the only choices, other than to migrate. That is ironic.
As I said before, no one in this, or any other forum ever once suggested taking away your storytelling tools, but you seem to be perfectly OK with the loss of ours. After all, your subject line says “Thank you Apple – and don’t change course. Please”.
So we bitched about the loss of our tools, the loss of choice, lack of notice, and get zero support from folks like yourself. Besides being perplexed by this attitude, I find it quite distasteful how so many fans of X are not just unsympathetic to the situation other editors and business owners find themselves in, but that they seem to be quite happy about it.
What the heck? As long as you have what you want, who cares about the rest of us? Right?
There are lots of reasons why you should care, but I’ll just pick one.
Past performance is the best indicator of future behavior. They killed Final Cut Server, Shake, Final Cut Express, and of course Final Cut Studio. Some day they’ll kill X too, and leave all the X users high and dry. And they will probably do it without any notice, and when it’s the least convenient for you. And when it happens, you’ll probably have to migrate to not only a new NLE, but a new OS and new hardware. And by then, maybe you’ll have some legacy projects you might need to open, and can’t. Or the codec that all your material is in, won’t run on your new system, etc…
That is the day you will see when this stuff happens to you, why it’s not very lulzy. And when that day comes, I bet you won’t be posting any ‘thank you apple’ notices either.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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