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Thoughts on FCPX from Oliver Peters
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Perfect.
I totally respect and understand that position. I’d maybe be making similar choices if I had similar circumstances.
David
______________________________
The shortest answer is doing.
Lord Herbert
https://vimeo.com/battistella -
Oliver,
I completely appreciate that story and your feelings on the subject. I’d be pissed if that was my facility. I wonder if when the investment was made how long they saw themselves in that setup? 1.5 years no? I’m sure they were hoping for 3-5 years on that investment as a minimum to offset costs.
Id say that possibly even on lion that environment will still be a healthy editing situation for 1.5 to 3 more years.
Enterprise operations can’t be as nimble as individual users. The big problem is that this is not a transition, it’s a “cut the cord” situation and that makes those places feel ripped off and in limbo.
I have felt burnt on a lot of software or electronics purchases before. Apple never telegraphs when they are going to cancel anything. That is the company they are and those are the risks we all take.
Switching is very much based on comfort level. Adobe Premiere has evolved into a tool that looks and feels like what we are used to with small performance enhancements. Many users might have been happy with a version 8. Apple just moved in what many feel is an arrogant and agressive new direction.
That’s the same direction that let many of us set up editing shops that were cost prohibitive in the years prior. Just three months before FCP was released I was a day away from a 125k loan on an AVID system. I imagine I might have felt somewhat like that facility, with expensive hardware on my hands with a whole new way of doing things available.
It’s not a perfect analogy but the point is someone always gets caught in the crossfire.
Thanks for this healthy and civilized exchange. I appreciate the high level discussion.
______________________________
The shortest answer is doing.
Lord Herbert
https://vimeo.com/battistella -
Oliver – My pleasure, thank you for adding your voice and perspective to this conversation.
Your piece raised many issues I’ve been thinking about. Two points in particular stood out:
1) The use of the timeline as a scratchpad/open workspace.
I can’t overstate how important this kind of usage is to how I (and I’m sure many others) work. To me, this flexibility on the timeline is the core of non-linear editing. My experience to date is that the magnetic timeline simply does not support this work style. It seems to fights against it and ironically, feels like a much more linear approach to working.
As for compound clips and other suggested workarounds, I agree they’re not a substitute. The reason is because compound clips behave like nests, existing outside the context of the main sequence. Because of this context switch, compound clips are not as immediate or efficient for quick versioning or checkerboard style sequence building. It’s simply not the same thing in terms of flexibility.
What’s also ironic is that in theory, I should be an ideal customer for FCPX. I don’t cut features or need broadcast monitoring. I handle most of my freelance post work as an individual provider. These days I work almost exclusively in tapeless formats. I’m flexible and have no difficulty adapting to new tools. In fact, I thrive on change and being on the edge.
And yet…
I still hit walls with the X timeline. Even after learning the keyboard shortcuts and trying to work the way it wants to work. I can deal with it being different. But like you say, I have yet to see any proof that it’s better. Where’s the improved flexibility and efficiency? Please show me proof. I don’t think my problem is just ingrained habit or muscle memory. I think at a deeper conceptual/UI level, there are some real problems that are only become apparent in advanced usage.
2) The risk Apple is taking – Apple has earned extraordinary success through innovation, boldness and impeccable design quality. But it’s important to remember that Apple also makes mistakes. Sometimes big ones. Until Apple publicly says more about their intended product roadmap for FCPX, we can only try to understand and judge the product that’s in front of us. I wonder if Apple may have painted themselves into a corner with their UI decisions. Only time will tell as the product evolves. We’ll certainly learn much more in the coming months – in particular, I think the way they solve multicam will be revealing.
And who knows what may be possible under the hood. Discoveries like this give me hope that they can and will eventually make something for everyone. But I’m not holding my breath.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Battistella] “Id say that possibly even on lion that environment will still be a healthy editing situation for 1.5 to 3 more years.”
Probably true, but I don’t write the checks or make their decisions. Right now their reseller also feels burned, so there may be some extra help available now, which might not be there in a year or two.
[David Battistella] “Apple never telegraphs when they are going to cancel anything.”
Often that’s true, but they did warn folks when Shake, Xserve RAID and Xserve were EOL’ed.
[David Battistella] “Adobe Premiere has evolved into a tool that looks and feels like what we are used to with small performance enhancements.”
Agreed. A 64-bit FCP 8 would have been very similar to this.
[David Battistella] “Just three months before FCP was released I was a day away from a 125k loan on an AVID system.”
Yep. That’s always uncomfortable. I used to be in facility management making those types of decisions. It hurts when they are wrong. As a freelancer, I try to avoid owning too much gear of any type.
Cheers,
OiverOliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[David Lawrence] “I still hit walls with the X timeline. Even after learning the keyboard shortcuts and trying to work the way it wants to work. I can deal with it being different. But like you say, I have yet to see any proof that it’s better. Where’s the improved flexibility and efficiency?”
When I have directly challenged the “easier, faster” issue with Apple folks, I get two answers. One is that many current users of FCP 1-7 are frequently confused by timeline settings, easy set-ups, etc. and frequently get poor results. They were trying to fix this issue and not have them be constant support issues. The second is that they seem to discuss “faster” in terms of the total end-to-end session time. This means that the FCP X render strategy is part of their equation in saying FCP X is faster.
[David Lawrence] “But it’s important to remember that Apple also makes mistakes. Sometimes big ones.”
When Apple makes a colossal mistake – the kind that would severely damage any other company – it tends to get masked by the reality distortion field 😉
[David Lawrence] ” I wonder if Apple may have painted themselves into a corner with their UI decisions. Only time will tell as the product evolves.”
I think they have both by this and the way the database/Events have been structured.
The core issue is that they’ve tried to do many things to “lock the software down” with the intent of a more reliable and trouble-free user experience. This may be counter-productive for folks who benefited from FCP “classic’s” versatility.
When you really analyze what they’ve down, the UI design swaps the track metaphor for the Storyline lane metaphor. They’ve eliminated “auto-selects” and track-patching by using specific edit commands for appending to the Storyline versus a “connected clip” edit. And they’ve swapped sync-locks for the Magnetic timeline. If you look at it in these terms, the changes aren’t as major as they appear. It’s just that they don’t seem to be implemented very well in actual behavior. That may be a 1.0 issue. If so, it should be fixable in the next 6 months or so.
Cheers,
OliverOliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
“Many of us dont have the temporal luxury to “just explore” all the nle alternatives.unfortunately. Sometimes Im learning new software (i.e. Cameratracker in AE) because I have a project that needs it. With the clock ticking I need to make a decision about the best way to go (based on minimal research and gut instincts) and start learning a new system that does what I need it to do. Luckily the ducks lined right up for Adobe CS5.5 for me. I used AE for years. PrP was very similar to FCP (what FCP 8 should have been) and it was reborn with the power and capabilities I need for my work flow. AS a student or a hobbyist I might try to spend the time necessary to get familiar with other vendors. But that just isn’t going to fit into my timetable. All my energy is focused on building new muscle memory with Adobe”
This pretty much mirrors the quandary for us and the reason it looks like we’re going to put the new “muscle memory” into X and Motion. After exploring the new PrP I agree in many ways it is what I hoped FCPX would be. But in our small shop there are two of us with a lot of experience and projects designed in Motion but little to no experience in AE. We would have to put a good deal more time into AE than the new X concept.
It really is a timetable thing and I’ve changed my view regarding FCP7 in the last few weeks. I’ve always looked at all of our creative work as payed growth opportunities. You should always be investing you’re creative time into improving and enhancing skills. With this POV and the new choices X has forced, it’s hard to look backwards at a EOL’d technology for the spate of new projects coming up.
It’s not a choice I was planning to make but having made it I hope Apple validates it going forward.
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[Oliver Peters] “When I have directly challenged the “easier, faster” issue with Apple folks, I get two answers. One is that many current users of FCP 1-7 are frequently confused by timeline settings, easy set-ups, etc. and frequently get poor results. They were trying to fix this issue and not have them be constant support issues. The second is that they seem to discuss “faster” in terms of the total end-to-end session time. This means that the FCP X render strategy is part of their equation in saying FCP X is faster.”
Interesting. I’d love to have a conversation with those guys and ask them why that reasoning drove them to completely re-invent the wheel. I wonder how many of the UI decisions were actually driven by marketing i.e. the desire for sexy demos and pretty ad pictures?
[Oliver Peters] ” think they have both by this and the way the database/Events have been structured.”
Agreed. I haven’t gotten into the event/file management issues but I think they’re huge. Jeffery Harrell has some pretty strong words about it.
[Oliver Peters] “If you look at it in these terms, the changes aren’t as major as they appear. It’s just that they don’t seem to be implemented very well in actual behavior. That may be a 1.0 issue. If so, it should be fixable in the next 6 months or so.”
Agreed, tho I still think the frame-of-reference issue is big. The next 6 months will be interesting… 😉
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Lawrence] “I wonder how many of the UI decisions were actually driven by marketing i.e. the desire for sexy demos and pretty ad pictures?”
Unfortunately, when you speak with any current Apple employees they speak the company line. That’s especially true with me, since I come in under the PRESS banner. You generally get more candid, off-the-record comments from outside developers. There you learn things like part of the reason certain effects can’t work is because Apple won’t allow custom filter GUIs.
One of the things they have done is to reduce the access the user has to things like key frame interpolation. They want the effects control to be as minimal as possible. They started this with Behaviors in Motion, but there you still could call up an elaborate key frame graph editor. That’s one of the reasons they added the Rig concept in Motion 5. Build a more elaborate effect in Motion 5, but reduce the visible complexity in FCP X.
You’ll note for instance, that the Ken Burns effect uses ease-in/ease-out acceleration on the start/end key frames. There’s no place to change those. Or the fact that automatic color balancing is done in the color profile, without any way to access the values used to change the image. The general idea is to give people most of the tools they need without them having to think about it too much, in an effort to make complex software easier to use.
I think the driving goal is not to service existing FCP 1-7 users, but rather to think about new users who have never used an NLE before. The Apple folks do point to discussions with the BBC, for example, where even iMovie has been considered for use by reporters and journalists who do their own editing. I think that’s a big part of why there is iMovie project import and not FCP project import. In other words, let a journalist do a rough cut or pull selects with iMovie and then let a “craft editor” polish it with FCP X. If that truly is a driver in the design, then the Storyline metaphor would make a lot of sense. And it can certainly be argued that this is very much a “pro” user.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “There you learn things like part of the reason certain effects can’t work is because Apple won’t allow custom filter GUIs… One of the things they have done is to reduce the access the user has to things like key frame interpolation. “
Ugh, that’s the exact opposite direction I was hoping for. FCP7’s key framing interface and inability to expose 3rd-party UIs is one of it’s biggest current weaknesses.
[Oliver Peters] “…In other words, let a journalist do a rough cut or pull selects with iMovie and then let a “craft editor” polish it with FCP X. If that truly is a driver in the design, then the Storyline metaphor would make a lot of sense. And it can certainly be argued that this is very much a “pro” user.”
All very true. In fact I encountered this scenario first hand just a couple weeks ago. I was with my partners on an interview by a local KNBC team for a project we did in LA. The team was the reporter and his DP/editor. After the interview they sat in their van and cut the piece. The reporter logged quotes and the DP assembled footage. The editing gear was sad. An ancient PC laptop that took at least 7 minutes to boot. Everything in SD cut in windows.
Here in SF, the former NBC affiliate is even more bare bones. No DP, a single reporter does everything end-to-end. I think these situations are increasingly common, and certainly qualify as pro. Clearly, Apple is making a major play for this pro market segment. What remains to be seen is how big a market it turns out to be. Is it so big that Apple can disconnect from the rest of the industry and essentially redefine standard practices and language on it’s own terms? Time will tell.
_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl -
[David Lawrence] ” I think these situations are increasingly common, and certainly qualify as pro. Clearly, Apple is making a major play for this pro market segment. What remains to be seen is how big a market it turns out to be. Is it so big that Apple can disconnect from the rest of the industry and essentially redefine standard practices and language on it’s own terms? Time will tell.”
An analogy for this segment of the market comes to mind from baseball. The reporter/editors are toiling in the minor leagues. They’re certainly pro and there are many more of them than in the Majors but they’ll only move up if they have the skills, talent, determination, and luck.
There is a general rule I’ve found in software: “simple and powerful” is a rare, nearly non-existant, combination. Apple constantly aims for it and along with their innovative designs, cult marketing, and control of choice, they’ve created a perception that they achieve it more often than their competition. The truth is though, that “complex and powerful” is the usual combination of leading products of any segment of the professional software market. This is simply because any leading product has to be able to do more things.
It seems clear that at the present Apple has abandoned any attempt to play in the Big Leagues. They’ve ceded the ground to Avid the reigning king of swat, and Adobe, the triple threat aspirant to the throne, and headed off for the greener pastures where they’ve been earning the big bucks. X will be used by reporters and event videographers, higher end YouTubers, and others in the minor leagues. It won’t be used in the little leagues…or in the Majors much at all, unless Apple offers more choice and openness, something that goes against the grain of how they’ve successfully developed products.
This is a hard nut to chew if one has been an AppleThink fan for many a year…but those who criticize others for not being able to adapt to a new tool’s way of doing things are just possibly themselves not able to adapt to Apple’s new reality. If the old reality was still in place FCP-X would have been FCP8. They made a very clear choice. FCP-X is not aimed at the major leagues. At this point it remains more than a little doubtful that it aspires to even get there…despite the faith of its fans.
David
AllinOneFilms.com
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