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The one good thing about FCP_X
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[shawn Bockoven] “Did most only give the software a few minutes/hours before passing judgement?”
Not exactly. Some of us have been trying to use it since it was released.
You might want to read Mark Morache’s excellent article describing how he cut a piece for broadcast on FCPX.
Then read some of his conclusions about the workaround issues in this thread.
The problems are very real.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
You seem to apply that FCPX is the ONLY program that has this vision of the future. I would say that the democratization that you are claiming is so visionary has been afoot since NLE’s came about. The fact is, video editing was becoming more accessible long before FCPX came out. The fact that it seems it is purpose built to “simply” the process, thereby making it more widely accessible is nothing new at all.
The real question at this point is…
Will this current interpretation of the future be successful?
I say it’s already been proposed by Apple in the form of iMovie. A much broader range of people have access to iMovie than FCS and as a consequence the current explosion of youtube is, at least in part, being fueled by this fact. Perhaps a slightly better version of iMovie will bring a rash of cliche presets to the world of youtube, but will it make those video’s any better? Historically, easier access to presets will not appreciably improved anyone’s ability, it will only make for more effects in the same mediocre videos. I am not deriding experimentation and fun with this craft, it’s one of the reason’s most of us took this as a career… it’s fun. But I would say the same number of people who will keep after it once they find out that, as much fun as it may be, it is still hard work to make something that is consequential, is still just as limited (no matter how awesome the NLE application). And FCPX doesn’t inherently improve the quality of the craft. Frankly, it is ultimately limiting in the range of what CAN be done. As long as you do it FCPX’s way, you’re fine, it you want to be be creative, or experimental with your tools, you might be better off finding a tool that allows this. FCPX is not that tool.
Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv -
David,
I haven’t heard even the most ardent supporters of the program imply that it doesn’t have problems.
Nor have I heard anyone in the positive camp say it’s appropriate for every task or industry. Clearly those who need deep and specific features – and even some who need common but not yet supported features (multi-cam and music video “sync to audio” workflows come immediately to mind) will not find this to be their preferred tool in this initial iteration.
But that’s not what the nay-sayers are constantly carping about. Many of them – based totally on their own assertions as posted right in this forum – got stuck arguing that the WHOLE of the software was fatally flawed, useless, toyish and irrelevant for EVERYONE’s use. They screamed (and are still to a certain extent) arguing only APPLE FAIL as if their superior knowledge of how video editing software MUST work in order to be useful is the right and proper view.
I just don’t think that’s true.
More and more I use FCP-X I see that there is a place for FCP-X in professional video editing. It’s just not the place the industry used to be. That does NOT imply that it will overthrow all else and become the new central core of all video editing. That’s silly. The big, monolithic, full-featured code library heavy traditional approach will have a solid place in editing for a long time.
But I believe so will a newer, more agile and task targeted software approach. And I think that’s precisely what FCP-X has been all along.
It’s Caterpillar verses Kubota in construction machinery. (at least to this casual observers view)
Once upon a time Caterpillar dominated the quality construction equipment market in the US.
Then suddenly, in the small neighborhood construction projects in the 90’s and 2000’s I saw a giant influx of Kubota equipment. They looked smaller, more fuel efficient, and easier to operate.Better tool for the jobs being done more often, because for every big plant construction job that needed the major graders, there were thousands of school playgrounds, shopping center site grades, and small scale construction projects that could benefit from a smaller, more agile, more fuel efficient version of the older, larger, less efficient tool.
Market segmentation in the classic sense.
And here we go again.
“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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Marvin,
I appreciate your view. I just disagree. I think that the FCP-X rebuild is aimed precisely at business video. How else does one explain the database underpinnings?
iMovie is for non-professionals exploring the movie making arts and making ONE isolated movie at a time. (I imagine it’s superb at that tho I’ve never used it myself)
FCP-X on the other hand, is built for the serial content producer. Assets, type treatments, database logs, – virtually everything about it is “sticky” in that once you create them, you can access and re-access them time and time again. You can sort assets, search assets, re-combine assets with amazing ease.
Why build that in if you’re just serving a market doing THIS ONE video? It makes no sense.
But it makes PERFECT sense if you’re serving a market that will be doing business videos or training videos or blog style videos or anything else that keeps you in constant communication with an audience that you wish to develop over time.
I respect that Avid, and others, have great tools to do the same thing. Plus a lot of other tools that appeal to the big show centric workflow. But the truth is for everyone sitting at a screen cutting around the world today – only a very small fraction of them will ever need to deliver into such a huge, distributed workflow that they’ll need all the tools that even FCP-7 offered. I say this with confidence because as a corporate producer working on 5 and 6 figure videos for my entire career – but largely out of my own shop and therefor in a smaller footprint operation instead of a more traditional “agency” model shop – I seldom used more than 25% of the capabilities in FCP. (although admittedly the 25% in question varied from project to project!)
Look, I’m still cutting on FCP-7 for many things I’m working on today. Why wouldn’t I since I have twelve years experience at running it and it works great. I just keep trying to learn something new about FCP-X every day and learning its differentiating capabilities so that the day I have to cut something that can leverage the things it can do that 7 can’t – I’ll be ready to go.
Knowing two languages beats knowing one. And I think a swap from FCP-7 to Premier is like feeling that you have to change from American English to British English. Little new thinking required so it’s trivial and you can listen and communicate well right away. But someday you *may* find that second language useful. Particularly if it’s the language of a new place you someday find it valuable to visit.
Seems smart to me.
“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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To expand on your analogy….
FCPX is a language that no country speaks. Perhaps it will gain widespread popularity one day, but we all learn languages fast, so why waste time on something that may, or may not be commonly spoken in 3 years?
If you enjoy working with it, great. Have fun. Does it expand your vision of the future? Awesome. I can see just as much of that future transitioning to PPro plus I get everything I need to do the job.
As for metadata… you say this;
[Bill Davis] “FCP-X on the other hand, is built for the serial content producer. Assets, type treatments, database logs, – virtually everything about it is “sticky” in that once you create them, you can access and re-access them time and time again. You can sort assets, search assets, re-combine assets with amazing ease.
Why build that in if you’re just serving a market doing THIS ONE video? It makes no sense.”
“Sticky”? Sure, in as much as you are “stuck” with it, if this is your choice to manage your metadata. If you are in a non-colabrative environment and have a limited amount of on-going work to do, the I could see it working for you. But I see some real problems with their metadata plan down the road. First, you are married to it completely. There is no portability of this metadata. You can’t take it to another application (say an SQL database) and work it. You might say that’s “coming in the future” but has it come for iPhoto or iMovie? Similar data systems that are completely closed and likely always will be.
Frankly, there are more (and better) sources to do what you describe. Better functioning in the present versions with a historical likelihood of moving toward this bright shining future that you seem only to be able to see through the FCPX prism.
As I said, if it works for you great, but I would suggest that you are putting all of your eggs in one flimsy beta-basket if you are currently building your entire meta structure around this application.
FCP7 does work today, but we (like many others) have decided it was best to migrate away from it as quickly as possible to minimize future impacts. Given the current state of FCPX we decided that it was simply not ready for the task. As you are still using FCP7 for some of your work, it would appear (through your actions) that you agree with this. Watching this unfold over the last several weeks, hearing other professionals weigh in on the matter and Apple’s near complete silence on the matter leads us to believe that there is a problem in the Cupertino Paradise. Will it be fixed? Will it be “awesome” in 3 years? Who can say.
I argue the point with you because, at the bottom of it, I want to agree with you. It’s just that you are not giving a sound enough argument to embrace the same level of enthusiasm that you seem to have for this product. I really would like to gulp down that frosty mug of koolaid you seem to enjoy so much, but given everything I’ve seen and heard so far…. our business would die (or get really, really sick).
Please, prove me wrong. Run a multi-editor, collaborative, meta-data driven, cloud driven, enterprise level broadcast business with it and show us all this bright future that you so believe it to be a harbinger of. The product you are describing is the one I was waiting for. But I’ve not seen the one you describe.
Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv -
Bill,
I was replying specifically to this quote from the poster:
[shawn Bockoven] “Did most only give the software a few minutes/hours before passing judgement?”
This is the same tired argument we’ve been hearing for months on this forum. I find it not only wrong, but also naive and presumptuous. I don’t think it helps move the dialogue forward.
That’s why I responded with links to Mark Morache’s article, as well as his conclusions that were posted in the FCPX Techniques thread.
I find Mark’s observations especially valuable because he’s put FCPX to work in a typical situation it seems optimized for (short form A/B cutting with simple FX) — and he’s actually delivering for broadcast with it. He’s outspoken about what he likes and he likes a lot. And he’s upfront about what doesn’t work. The bottom line is that he’s frustrated with the UI, like so many of us.
Please read what he has to say here. He nails it. And remember, this is someone who likes what FCPX offers. Mark’s given the software a chance, but I think many others don’t have the time or the patience, and that’s why you’ll find some of them wholly dismissing the software.
BTW, I completely agree with you about how the industry is changing. I’m a case study in that change.
I do all my work on on a laptop. I use a suped-up late 2008 unibody 15″ macbook pro. I usually have it in clamshell mode under my desk hooked up to a 24″ Cinema Display and many TB of storage. When a client needs me to work on site, I pop it in my bag and it’s a portable edit suite, with all the tools I need at my fingertips. I work exclusively in 1080p HD in various formats. Over 50% of the time, my source is DSLR. I rarely have budget to work with my favorite sound guys so 90% of the time I’m a one-man-band providing all post-production services. I never need to deliver for broadcast, my clients exclusively want video for web, PowerPoint embeds and projected presentations. In short, I should be the ideal candidate for FCPX.
But like Mark and so many others, the UI is a deal killer.
I think the underlying backend architecture of FCPX has amazing potential. H264 without transcoding? Awesome. Once I got the hang of metadata-based organizing, I really liked it. But none of the great backend and organizing tools matter if the editing paradigm is broken.
I’ve written a couple articles exploring why I think this is and I have a third I’m sitting on until after the first update. The problems have nothing to do traditional editors not groking a radical new tool designed for the needs of a mobile, decentralized work style. I think it’s much simpler. I think Apple blew it. And now they’re scrambling to figure out how to fix the damage. Read Mark’s post. He describes a UI paradigm that is conceptually flawed and deeply broken. The big question is whether it’s broken beyond repair.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
As a very smart guy told me in conversations this afternoon in Pasadena when I went to see some old friends in the FCP/DV/Editing community….
This is Version 1 after 3 months of life. The foundation is complete. The “Build out” is progressing rapidly.
We’ve gotten more additional core capabilities in this 90 day rev than FCP 1.0 got in it’s first year.
This development pace is possible because of the “stripped, cleaned, and optimized code.
If he’s right, we can expect rapid and constant progress (tho clearly never enough for the people who want this total rewrite to have sprung whole from the ashes of it’s 10 year older sibling – losing nothing and including everything that incrementally developed in the original.
If you don’t see any light at the end of this tunnel – then you’re totally free to leave the pathway.
This IS FCP-X and how it’s going to develop.
It’s brand new – and it’s totally different than anything else out there.
90 days ago we all had four versions of the same basic way to edit.
Today you have three traditional choices and one totally different one.
If you can’t see that’s BETTER than having four versions of the same basic thing – then feel free to do what many others are. Go to one of the other three.
I’m having a blast expanding my brain now that I FINALLY have a chance to use something totally different.
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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