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To jump or not
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[Bill Davis] “This is consistent with the INSIDE OUT view I’ve written about before. The X focus has always been to keep the editors focus INSIDE the editing app, and allow him or her to bolt-on advanced capabilities as needed. “
Doesn’t this generally apply to all professional NLEs though? Off the top of my head I can’t think of an NLE that is purely edit-only (no audio mixing, no grading, no compositing, no motion effects, etc.,.). The 1st party tools will get you so far, plugins are available to add addition, specialized functionality to get you further and if that’s still not enough then you have to leave the NLE for another app (Pro Tools, Resolve, After Effects, Motion, Compressor, etc.,) and hopefully the round trip doesn’t suck.
With regards to staying inside the app for color grading I don’t think that conversation can be had without talking about Avid. Symphony is MC with better grading tools and the Baselight plugin works within Avid and, if need be, all the grading info can be sent from the Avid to Baselight system (so one could do an initial grade in Avid and then send all that work to the Baselight colorist w/o having to bake-in any of the grades).
On a related note, before BM bought Fusion there was a plugin from Eyeon that worked kinda like Adobe’s Dynamic Link. The plugin gave you some Fusion features inside Avid, but if you needed more then you could send your work to Fusion and what you did in Fusion would automatically appear in your Avid timeline. A few years ago at a LAFCPUG meeting Alan Bell (Amazing Spider-man, Hunger Games) talked about using this approach a lot in his editing.
FCP Legend and PPro have similar histories of being able to do a lot more than just cut. What it sounds like users really want are fairly robust tools w/in the NLE (either first party or via plugins) *and* a robust way to round trip between other apps as well.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Doesn’t this generally apply to all professional NLEs though? Off the top of my head I can’t think of an NLE that is purely edit-only (no audio mixing, no grading, no compositing, no motion effects, etc.,.).”
Definitely nobody is an “Edit Only” app that I know of but Adobe has the the best integration of an entire suite. Basically all of their creative apps almost function as one with seamless integration across the entire suite. Even with all the capabilities inside PPro with every third party plug-in on the planet, it’s nowhere near as powerful and useful as the entire suite.
I think the point that X tries to keep everything self contained within the one application, especially with the wealth of plug-ins and tools, is a valid one. That’s an excellent option for many editors who don’t want to deal with multiple apps and it does a great job of being an all-in-one tool.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
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I think it’s a matter of design intent.
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but in the Adobe suite, when you change modules, aren’t you in a distinct interface? You leave the premiere layout to work in Speedgrade, for instance? Same with AE, Audition, whatever. Basically, you are moving one program to another. They interchange well, but they each must be learned separately.
I suppose Apple does a very limited version of the same thing with Motion and Compressor. But those can be seen as special-ist tools because many of their capabilities are already available to editors inside X itself.
That’s the distinction in my thinking.
X is built to keep the editor “at home” in a single unified interface, where the Adobe approach is a large connected web of individual programs where you are expected to work in and know the peculiarities of the distinctive and different tools to accomplish your regular work.
Described this way, Isn’t it unteresting that Resolve basically splits the difference? The color cirrection suite as a thing apart – bolted onto a somewhat X-like NLE (without the database, magnetism and trackless/roles stuff that actually makes X what it is.
Interesting design thinking.
Or am I misinformed in thinking this?
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It’s a very nice product, let me say that right up front, but I had to smile at that example he used in the demo with that blue footage.
Come on now, who is out there shooting footage that poorly and getting paid to do it?
I’m old enough to remember B and W viewfinders and folks would get in a hurry and not want to take a 9 inch with them, forget to balance and bring back something like that.
No excuse these days to bring back anything that looks like that.
Yes, he is trying to show an extreme example, but the standards have really gone down.
On this level, at best you should be slightly adjusting.
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[Tony West] “Come on now, who is out there shooting footage that poorly and getting paid to do it?”
If you watched any of the Planet Earth series when it aired on BBC / Discovery a few years back there was a lot of footage that was miraculously color graded in post. Just because of the changing conditions where they were and the changes in lighting on the fly. In particular, there is a polar bear fight in one of the episodes that’s 20 shades of blue in the original. I would loved to have sat in on the color grading of that series.
So yes, footage does come back that bad sometimes and yes, it’s very experienced photographers bringing it back. Don’t even get me started on color grading “Good Eats.” I still cringe every time I see those stupid red lights over AB’s table…….
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaCraft and Career Advice & Training from real Working Creative Professionals
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What about slice X with color finale? If you have slice X and color finale it adds a special slice X enabled mocha powered mask to color finale. IOW cf is only applied to the mask.
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[walter biscardi] “I think the point that X tries to keep everything self contained within the one application, especially with the wealth of plug-ins and tools, is a valid one. That’s an excellent option for many editors who don’t want to deal with multiple apps and it does a great job of being an all-in-one tool.”
I agree, but I don’t think it’s a concept unique to X. For example, my first NLE was Avid (which very much has its roots in offline editing) and I remember trying Premiere (not PPro) and FCP back at the the turn of the century (I love saying that) and being surprised at how much more you could do inside of those NLEs (compositing, key framing, gfx/still manipulation) out of the box than you could in Avid. And when FCP got the 3-way Color Correction in FCP 3 (or was it 4?) holy crap that was amazing.
[Bill Davis] “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but in the Adobe suite, when you change modules, aren’t you in a distinct interface? You leave the premiere layout to work in Speedgrade, for instance? Same with AE, Audition, whatever. Basically, you are moving one program to another. They interchange well, but they each must be learned separately.”
If you go to AE or SpeedGrade, yes, the UI is different since you are in a different program, but Adobe has been cherry picking tech/functionality from AE and SpeedGrade and putting it directly into PPro for years now. Adobe is expanding the functionality of PPro while at the same time making it easier to roundtrip between apps in their suite. It’s not an either/or situation for them.
When Apple launched X I seem to remember them saying they saw X more as platform which I took to mean that Apple would supply base/broad spectrum functionality and then leave it up to third parties to fill in the niches, and I think we are certainly seeing that play out. For example, getting FCP 7 projects into X was solved by a third party as was getting better connectivity between X and Motion. When Apple added 3D Text I was kinda like ‘meh’ but then when third parties got a hold of it they started doing some cool things with that functionality. In the NLE space I think leaving so much up to third parties is unique to X and it is working out for them.
One reason the plugin space for X is so vibrant is because plugin makers don’t really have worry about their plugins being made obsolete by Apple introducing the a similar feature. For example, 7toX is always going to have its place because Apple isn’t going to add that functionality to X. The color grading tools in X probably aren’t going to get improved either so it’s safe for third parties to spend time/money in making better grading tools for X.
On the flip side, in PPro 2015 Adobe really improved the color grading tools inside PPro so that kinda puts them at odds with the grading plugins Red Giant offers. This might be why X upgrades from Apple will be fewer and further between because first party tools aren’t as inherent to the software’s usability since it, by design, has such a robust plugin community supporting it. That, AFAIK, is certainly a unique path to take in the NLE space.
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[Andrew Kimery] “On the flip side, in PPro 2015 Adobe really improved the color grading tools inside PPro so that kinda puts them at odds with the grading plugins Red Giant offers. This might be why X upgrades from Apple will be fewer and further between because first party tools aren’t as inherent to the software’s usability since it, by design, has such a robust plugin community supporting it. That, AFAIK, is certainly a unique path to take in the NLE space.”
A fair and interesting assessment, Walter.
It remains to be seen if considering X as it is now as a “platform” means that the X we think about today will be the X we work in tomorrow. Witness the announcement of SAP for the iPad just days ago? Wow! That could potentially be a huge puzzle piece just now slipping into place in how data will eventually get processed and distributed, including video data.
I do a large part of my work in the corporate training space.
Back when I was starting out in the video dark ages, my clients had to ship hundreds and hundreds of VHS tapes to client stores. AND we were effectively locked out of delivering any video of note via the IT department, because their stuff was was always tied up with “mission critical” data polling for sales results and the like. Today, the data pipes are increasingly bi-directional. And so the idea of maybe someday serving corporate video directly out of X via Share to tens of thousands of iPads inside a corporately approved SAP implementation – is almost intoxicating.
I’m sure Premiere Pro will (or perhaps already has?) accomplish(ed) their own implementation of the Share destinations thinking that X unveiled along with X back in 2011.
Now they just need something similar to what Charlie Austin demo’d at NAB where X’s ROLES lets you pre-target affinity group for customized exports inside a unified export system.
Things are changing so fast! It’s cool.
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[Claude Lyneis] “Hope they work out the crashing though, I still get some crashes on the current version.”
I’ve been using 12.5 pretty heavily over the last couple of weeks and the only crashes I’ve had have been due to media storage that isn’t fast enough. Could it be that?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
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[walter biscardi] “Planet Earth series”
That’s a pretty extreme show, the far majority of shoots that most people work on are not anywhere near running from giant snakes : )
I don’t care what job you are on, you need to white balance the camera. That’s gonna get you in the neighborhood.
Then it just comes down to exposure. Pick the right amount of ND to get close. I would be curious how much they ran in auto iris for something like that.
They used the Varicam mostly.
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