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The one good thing about FCP_X
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It’s incredibly tedious time and time again to say something and watch while the same people shoehorn it over and over again into their preconceptions of what i must have meant.
Please stop it.
Everyone here already has a perfectly acceptable video editing solution in hand called Final Cut Pro. It’s working fully and flawlessly for the bulk of the worlds editing needs. (The 2 million paid seats are still functioning just fine, including yours and mine.
So the ENTIRE discussion is predicated on where things are going in the future.
So viewing everything said here in the sole context of what it means right now misses the entire point, IMO.
It is in that context alone that this discussion is taking place. Yes, people like the OP in this thread are seeing things they don’t like and diving out to other tools. There is NOTHING wrong with that. They will either be short sighted or visionary, they will save their money now and have more later, or they will save it now and come to realized it would have been wiser to take a long term investment view.
Thus has it ever been.
I simply believe that it’s more than possible to convert a short term view into a LOUSY long term strategy. So I believe that there should be voices on BOTH sides that take the other to task if one thinks the discussion is revolving around a view that has rational alternatives.
My views are predicated on my history. I started with FCP in May of 1999, two weeks after it’s release. At that time it was derided, dismissed, and openly laughed at by the wider editing world. But for every on-line skirmish it lost, it won new converts from outside the mainstream – and eventually it triumphed.
I have NO CLUE about whether FCP X will do the same.
I just know that when things happen in my life I pay attention and try to get smarter. That’s the point of experience.
David Lawrence posted a thoughtful message below. I think the article he posted has it largely WRONG.
I’ll write my thoughts in that thread.
As always, feel free to ignore them. These are opinions only. Everyone here has strong opinions. I try to post the WHY behind what I opine. Take it or leave it.
Simple as that.
“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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David,
Interesting read – but I couldn’t disagree with the author more.
This smacks to me of the kind of modern “wall street” thinking that views every decision through the lense of “what’s in it for me right now.”
That drives short term profits – and if that’s all you care about – it’s an excellent strategy. But it’s also led to the kind of thinking that gave us the real estate bubble and crash, and that’s led to the banking crisis. It elevates results NOW over investing in a long term sustainable business model that can drive higher profits – but over a longer period.
I’m quite pleased that Apple, In my estimation, continues to look at where the industry is likely to be going in the long run, rather then ONLY where it will be next year or next month – or even what *I* as a current 10year plus FCP editor might think I want right now.
Hell, 80% of what they built into the new software I’d never even CONSIDERED as a possible feature in an NLE. That’s the BEST part of it in my estimation.
They forced me out of my pre-conceptions and to consider new ideas. I absolutely get that some people saw that exclusively as “destroying” the software. They should absolutely look elsewhere. It’s the only rational thing to do. For those of us who see the change as a new opportunity, all we want is for people to stop spending so much time and energy trying to convince us that we’re too stupid to understand how horrible it is. It’s all been said before. Endlessly. For the OP, if that’s your mantra, you and countless other like you have made your point. It’s time for you to move on to something else.
But some of us simply see something else here. I absolutely think FCP-X is a long tail play. We won’t know the full payoff for years.
Without that understanding I agree it doesn’t make much sense. An no company gets to where Apple is today by willfully making decisions that don’t make sense.
Nearly EVERY voice complaining here has the same central theme. “It’s not what I want *right now*.
Yes, it’s not. So to focus the debate entirely on “now verses when” PUSHES the poll. What it is now is exciting and interesting and flexible and new. And toxic to some ways of thinking, primarily the “it doesn’t do what it MUST do for me” crowd. You folks are correct. So simply change software.
I totally understand that thinking. Heck, I’ve raised a teenager so I’ve been watching it for the last 10 years! – (Stop right there — I’m NOT AT ALL saying that anyone who hates FCP is exhibiting teenage thinking, because I believe there are VERY rational reasons for finding it lacking in a whole WORLD of upper end mission critical editing workflows – exactly like many of the vested pros here must support. I’m saying that while it falls very much short of what some, even many editors need, expect and desire – theres another group of editors for whom it will be an EXCELLENT solution for workflows and tasks that I can see becoming more and more important on the horizon. And for most of the editors who need it to be something different from X, they still have 7 running just fine, thank you very much.
What does it mean to ME is always an important question. But it requires us to understand that ME is variable in the great world of editing.
The dumpers, haters, and doom sayers have had all the platform they could have possibly wished for over the past months.
I see something different in the same set of facts. Everyone gets to decide for themselves who’s vision they wish to subscribe to – – but you can ONLY do that when you’re willing to hear from both sides.
So when I see a post like the OP post here. I just want to say “there’s another way to see things.”
We’ll let the market place sort out who gets it right.
Personally, I’m fine with that.
“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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The marketplace does not now nor has it ever sorted out who gets anything right. It sorts out which product sold the most. And that can happen for a variety of reasons including, but most certainly not limited to, what product is the best at serving its particular need.
bigpine
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bigpipe.
No quarrel with that statement.
But the larger concept is where the INDUSTRY of editing is going. Once upon a time, editing meant one thing and one thing only. You HAD to go to a dedicated editing suite in order to secure access to the tools of professional video content editing. No individual could afford to own and maintain a rack of multi-thousand dollar decks, a Grass Valley switcher, an ADO system, the engineering team necessary to maintain it and the precision educated editors necessary to operate it.
Now, the common laptop does EVERYTHING that that system did. And much, much more. In addition, the software has made most of the base video editing functions so easy that a fifth grader can “cut” stuff. (saying nothing here about talent or judgement – which I honor – but merely about functionality and toolset access)
So like it or not, this surely bleeds off the need for the traditional business model and dedicated suite.
You simply can’t avoid that truth.
That model will likely hold on at the highest echelons, because it drives the FINEST results – but the world isn’t always asking for the finest results. The world is clamoring for choice and access and personal vision empowerment via images in motion that often (but not always) include a video component.
So FCP-X wins if it provides THAT. Not if it provides a cheaper path to the old suite-centric view of editing.
I’m meeting weekly with a group of editors who are all exploring FCP-X and at last nights session we got into a discussion of “round tripping” between FCP X and Motion. It took us about a half hour of discussion to realize that “round tripping” as a concept is GONE in FCP X. Not because they didn’t build the capabilities in – but because, once again, they changed the entire paradigm. When the lightbulb finally went on we all realized that round tripping is “gone” because they functionally built a subset of Motion directly INTO FCP X – and simply used that code as the FCP-X titler. So when you “go out” to the standalone Motion app (really, just load up the additional code), you’re just extending the capabilities of the built in titler – not actually going anywhere DIFFERENT. So once again, the old thinking is useless. Seen in that light, Motion works more akin to Acrobat vs Acrobat Pro. With the “free” version built into X you get a good chunk of the capabilities right inside the software. If you want more flexibility or control, the dedicated software launch EXTENDS the control range and gives you more choice. But the base capabilities of both are EXACTLY the same. There’s no longer a reason to exit one “program” and work in another when large chunks of the same code is in both places and the you can simply “hook into” the larger capabilities of the dedicated app and get the extended capabilities in the same workspace you’re already in. It’s a SMARTER way to work. No exit, No re-entrance. You’re always THERE, merely utilizing the subset or the full compliment of code as you like.
This is a good example of why FCP-X was so baffling to so many for so long. It takes a lot of time and exploration to start to reveal the WHY behind the WHAT they did.
Once you do, it makes a whole lot of sense. And explains how and why Motion went from a another bloated, huge standalone app, to a $49 app store add on. It absolutely is not the tool it used to be. Peter Jackson will NOT be using Motion for the next LOTR like mega-movie. But hundreds of thousands of FCP-X editors WILL be using it to extend their capabilities, make amazing titles and motion graphics INSIDE the editorial process and do very cool stuff that no other NLE package will allow them to do with as much agility or ease.
Thats a pretty compelling concept, if you ask me.
For what it’s worth.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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I for one have never been baffled by FCP X. If you stick to the confines of how it wants you to work it is actually quite simple. And I also find that the integration with Motion to by one of the the very positive things about FCP X. However the fact remains that it is at present a very buggy piece of software and one that cannot meet my delivery needs at this time. And I have serious doubts that it is much of a priority at Apple to make it do so. I could be wrong and kind of hope I am.
As a side note I read in one of your previous posts something to the effect that FCP 7 “still works flawlessly.” For the record it never did. If it did I would not have to worry about my project size ballooning and the project file possibly possibly becoming corrupt due to the simple act of placing all my sequences together in one bin. Nor would I have to constantly create new projects for long-form work again to ward off the possibility of corrupt project files. And Soundtrack Pro has never worked for anything over a couple of minutes long. No NLE works flawlessly (all you need is one trip around Avid’s attic to know that) but FCP has more that its share of peccadilloes.
bigpine
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As a guy that owns a communications firm I have to ask, why the !*$# do they not take the time to explain that type of radical yet positive change as part of the process of introducing you countless users to your new paradigm?
Why should the people who pay (some of) your bills have to scratch their heads and have lights come on after lengthy use and discussion, when a simple explanation of key changes and their value would be so simple by the people who decided to make them?
Regardless of how x sugars out, Apple should be embarrassed at their horrid communication and PR regarding it.
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I do hope I am wrong about this but I honestly don’t believe we are not the folks they are aiming at. If we were then I think there might’ve been a bit more information forthcoming from Apple at this point. My bottom line is that if they make a better box at a competitive price that will run the software I need to run then I will buy it. My sole loyalty to the Mac platform has always been FCP. It’s not without fault but it does a number of things better (IMO) than the other NLE’s out there. If it is truly gone for us the I will miss it. And I will be heartily angry at a company that cultivated me for 10+ years and then dropped me like a hot stone for revenue that – in relative terms – would not buy them a hot cup of coffee.
bigpine
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[Bill Davis] “The world is clamoring for choice and access and personal vision empowerment via images in motion that often (but not always) include a video component. “
Bill, with the greatest respect, what in the holy hell at all does that statement mean?
seriously – who are you arguing for and what exactly does it mean?
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
I’ll give equal respect to your question and try to answer it as clearly as possible.
Once upon a time thousands edited video.
Today, millions do.
The vast majority of them are NOT suite based professional editors.
I suspect that if any of us could somehow draw a magic circle around where we sit and edit and expand until it encompassed 10,000 other people who have paid seats at which they sit and edit with FCP – we’d all discover that those 10,000 seats are often in corporate offices, ad agencies, small businesses, and yes, in the bedrooms of teenagers who got an educational copy and liked the tool so they’ve stayed with it in hopes that someday they can edit their great digital movie.
This is happening not just in America, but globally. The Supermeet in Amsterdam at IBC draws a crowd just like the one at NAB.
So video editing remains a rapidly spreading global phenomenon.
The FCP that developed from V1 to V7 evolved from a simple tool, to a massive, robust, feature laden suite. And many of those here have come to depend on it for high-dollar, high-stress work under merciless business deadlines. And, represented by many voices here, many of those pros are angry, pissed, and deeply upset by the direction that Apple took with it’s professional editing tool. They sincerely hoped it would continue on the same path of incremental evolution, adding capabilities to the code without losing anything they’d invested in learning.
Apple did something entirely different. They looked around and noticed that that type of editing workflow is diminishing as a share of the market. Whether it’s consolidation, market evolution, or simple smaller budgets and tighter constraints on time and resources, they saw that for every feature, or high end Madison Avenue commercial or Hollywood release that needs a broad and tightly integrated team of editors, colorists, sound designers and post professionals, there are probably a THOUSAND projects designed to feed the web, iPad screens, and smaller digital devices that don’t follow the massive monolithic team requirements.
THAT is what my sentence was trying to imply.
I was in a presentation day before yesterday where the speaker pointed out that the most popular “search engine” on the planet is still Google – but number two is not Bing, or Ask, or Yahoo – it’s YouTube, for heaven’s sake.
Those hundreds of thousands of videos are where people go to get info about anything from the local dry cleaner to how to bake a lemon pie.
Do you think that change in viewing habits ESCAPED Apple’s research teams?
People here are largely pissed because they expected X to be a simple evolutionary upgrade of the capabilities they had in 7.
We now know that it wasn’t that AT ALL. It was a rebuild designed to be something totally different and more attuned to what video (AND non-video based motion content) is rapidly evolving into. And for those who MUST toil in TV, or feature movies, I get that FCP X will likely not meet their needs today and may NEVER meet their needs.
But I’ve come to suspect that FCP-X just might be an even BETTER tool for the kind of work that the world is increasingly consuming.
Remember all the angst about how it’s harder cut to a fixed length in X? Guess what? There’s NO default fixed length requirement on the web, or on a file to send to a client to promote your business, or to load on your iPad to show someone at point of sale.
Apple “got that” way before I did.
Have you watched any of the very successful web videos that are largely just motion graphics with narration? Not a frame of video, but they communicate incredibly well. And with the new Motion/FCP-X integration, they’re likely going to be easier to create in FCP-X.
Does that help explain what I was talking about?
If you see something different happening, if you think that the biggest, richest, most “playable” game will continue to be Broadcast TV, Feature length movies that require large team workflows, or even monster dollar national commercial work – then by all means grab one of the other tools and join the smaller but perhaps richer group that will make their living working with traditional editing tools in the traditional editing style. The programs that do those well will also do lots of other kinds of work well.
But FCP X is designed to do a particular type of agile, revisable, compelling, short form eye catching work incredibly efficiently. It has tools not just for video editing, but for outstanding titling, quite robust “real world basic” audio handling and solid, non-confusing encoding and web delivery capabilities built in at a fraction of the cost of the offerings of it’s competitors. All that built around a database driven structure is designed to let you build a large persistent library of assets and meta-data that you can flexibly log, track, search, sort, and re-combine at levels only constrained by your ability to figure out the keywords you want to pull out whatever you imagine you need.
I’m trying to talk here about what I’ve seen of what it can do right now. And how that might evolve. And to put that into context about what I see happening in the wider world of IT, communications design, and shifting market needs.
I’m not a pro in any of these except modestly in video and how to communicate with it – something I’ve been doing for the past 30 years plus.
But I keep seeing signs in FCP-X that what was done to it was done with PURPOSE.
How that vision plays out in the market only time will tell.
Hopefully that makes things clearer.
Sorry I’m always so long to explain things.
To mangle Blaise Pascal’s timeless thinking, if I’d had more time, I would certainly have written a shorter post here.
Hope that helps.
“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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I’m starting the Bill Davis fan club.
Two of us are now using X to finish videos. The more I learn, the better the software works … amazing! Did most only give the software a few minutes/hours before passing judgement? I am having to force this old dog to rethink NLE editing. Yes, I have given my screen the middle finger a few times, but the errors were mostly my fault. We are finding that we can say yes to more projects do to the speed of FCP X.
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