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Tonight’s the night
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[Michael Gissing] “Thanks John for the report and interesting observation. I think that sentence sums up the fundamental problem. Every editor that I know that has looked at X has felt the software writers simply do no understand editing and that they are required to work around a methodology not with it.”
So, what is it exactly that Apple FCPX engineers don’t understand about editing?
If FCPX does not capture the minds of editors, then admittedly, it’s a failure.
If anyone reading this is kind of interested in FCPX, but can’t figure out the magnetic timeline, I suggest editing with the position tool on all the time. With this tool, the movements of the timeline/clips start to feel more familiar. It also slows things down a bit and perhaps that’s a good thing. It’s explained here: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/344/11374
There are times when I wonder if it’s just the animated feedback of the magnetic timeline that confuses people. Editing with the position tool keeps the timeline movements localized to a clip level, and in my opinion, teaches a person how the timeline works and moves faster than working with arrow tool. Once you get a feeling for what the timeline is actually doing, you can then venture off to ripple mode if you’d like. Once you get that, then things start to fly.
Playhead replace needs to return, a temporary viewer would help with matching, and we need more audio controls. On top of all of that, we need more stability. I wish it was more stable, I would start to roll it out on projects.
There’s also a meme that FCPX isn’t keyboard editing capable. I find that to not be true. While it does need help in trimming feedback windows if you aren’t using the precision editor, keyboard editing is actually not bad at all and very fast and accurate-ish. The default keyboard shortcuts do a good job, and there’s a few that need to be assigned manually, but they are available. Extremely brief overview here: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/36871
If someone doesn’t like FCPX, that’s completely fine, I don’t like other softwares. To say that Apple doesn’t know about editing is an opinion stated as fact. The way I feel about it is that they do know design. Design has driven their culture for a long time now, and FCPX incorporates some of interface design, and it is much more
complex than iOS. It is my opinion that there is also some serious thought that went in to this program, it’s just that all of the control is not available yet. If someone can’t use it as they physically can’t get the job done, it’s understandable why you can’t use it. If you don’t agree with the choices Apple has made, that’s great, but just because FCPX doesn’t borrow Avid’s long standing method doesn’t make it any less professional or capable, it just means it’s not following that particular method.You can use layers to composite, you can use nodes. That doesn’t make any one company know more about compositing than the other, they just employ different methods. Choose your weapon and get out and fight.
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[Craig Seeman] “The problem is you really can’t get professional questions answered in an Apple store.”
I always wondered about the hiring criteria for the Apple Store. The sales staff on the floor seems pretty clueless about any kind of Apple software except at the most rudimentary level (and often about specifics of the hardware they are hawking). And the line for the tech desk is sooo long.
The nice thing is that if there is a computer open on the floor you can pretty much dink around on it with impunity.
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[Clint Wardlow] “The sales staff on the floor seems pretty clueless about any kind of Apple software”
That nails the reason why the Apple Store is currently not adequate for professional software information.
[Clint Wardlow] “The nice thing is that if there is a computer open on the floor you can pretty much dink around on it with impunity.”
And somehow I think that’s Apple’s reasoning for not attending trade shows. You can get some hardware questions answered but they don’t have Sales staff trained in their pro apps. Of course you can’t buy those apps in the store but if they expect the apps to sell hardware they have to assist in selling the software.
Apple needs to have Pro Apps Software associates/geniuses. They’ve pretty much killed the VARs so Apple has to fill the void.
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They just showed a bullet point graphic and talked about it – no details but the crowd did cheer when they mentioned adding 2nd viewer.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
I wasn’t able to read your emails Craig, but the wording was vague enough on the LAFCPUG site to make a few other websites curious about it as well.
Just to clarify what I meant by “they don’t edit how we edit”, I was talking about promo people in particular. We don’t do a ton of multi camera and with promos you’re constantly switching out sound bytes, adding transitions, revising, slipping vo around – it’s a 30 second catastrophe. Because nothing is locked in, the primary track has to be left alone. This eliminates some of the excellent trimming that can be done in primary. If we drop a transition on a clip, it makes a compound clip – then when we decide to extend the shot being transitioned we have to remove the transition, break apart the compound, extent, reapply transition, etc. We’re constantly adjusting our workflow to make these issues less annoying (like adding tranny’s at the end of the edit, etc).
I think for documentary, series, movie, and most other non-specific length editing FCPX is pretty awesome. With our specific work it just requires a few semi-clever workarounds. Let’s not fool ourselves that there weren’t hacks and workarounds with FCP7 though. When I cut home videos and stuff like that, the primary is fantastical. For us, for now, it’s at best only useful for slates in a long string out.
I think more than anything else, people who look at X now are mostly sad that in many ways we’ve gone backwards in time to around FCP4.5, when OMF’s didn’t work and FCP was good, but not great. XtoPro doesn’t work for us because it embeds the entire audio of a clip, not just the section you want with handles. Imagine a :20 spot going to mix with 7 hours of unneeded audio embedded in it. Yikes!
End of the day, we are using FCPX for broadcast spots on about 3 networks – right now. Going back to 7 for anything is no fun at all.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[Craig Seeman] “I saw Diana Weynand do an all too brief explanation of her workflow on a doc she’s producing in which she named and organized clips in Finder to take advantage of FCPX import Folders as Keyword Collections. The value of that feature is made evident by showing how she works in Finder before importing in to FCPX.”
I’d like to see that Craig.
That’s how I’ve evolved our workflow as well.
I like doing my rough selects in FInder and folders and creating appropriate collections that FCPX takes of advantage of.It also allows me to transcode only my selects at ingest, so I start with a keyworded, efficient , optimized project.
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[John Davidson] “(like adding tranny’s at the end of the edit, etc). “
I know everyone works differently, but that is certainly one way to bring a show to a close.
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[John Davidson] “Just to clarify what I meant by “they don’t edit how we edit”, I was talking about promo people in particular. We don’t do a ton of multi camera and with promos you’re constantly switching out sound bytes, adding transitions, revising, slipping vo around – it’s a 30 second catastrophe. Because nothing is locked in, the primary track has to be left alone. This eliminates some of the excellent trimming that can be done in primary. If we drop a transition on a clip, it makes a compound clip – then when we decide to extend the shot being transitioned we have to remove the transition, break apart the compound, extent, reapply transition, etc. We’re constantly adjusting our workflow to make these issues less annoying (like adding tranny’s at the end of the edit, etc). “
I know what you’re saying John.
Seriously, just add a simple LOCKED TRACK function for starters.
I, like most spot producers in many instances, start with a 30 second piece of music and start cutting to it.
It’s absurd that my only choice is to settle for compromised editing outside the Primary or keep doing what we do – create a 1 frame place holder at the top of the Primary in order to lock the music to it and have the Primary for cutting.Absolutely mind-numbingly, irresponsible to have to do anything like that.
Just add the ability to create a fixed track as needed (because really, sometimes we just need it…OK) and then everything else falls into place pretty nicely as you grow with the program.
Then address the “almost a great idea” of compound clips by giving them context within the overall edit when we need to edit within them.
I’m tired of tricking X into being a good NLE when it would take no time or effort for Apple to allow it to be.
Oh, and could we make it so simple text doesn’t choke the program?
Quickly addressing little things that are really kind of important would go a long way towards making this a great environment.
And so the love/hate relationship continues.
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[Bill Davis] “Now, hardly anyone but the clueless yells about the “magnetic timeline” unless everyone discovered you can turn it off with a trivial “P” keystroke.”
I discovered “P” keystroke after using FCPX for five minutes. After six minutes of using FCPX I discovered “P” dosen’t turn magnetic timeline off.
[Bill Davis] “Nobody understood the magnetic timeline. nobody understood the Event Browser, nobody understood the relational database, nobody understood connected clips, compound clips”
With this statement you insult too many people.
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[Craig Seeman] “I saw Diana Weynand do an all too brief explanation of her workflow on a doc she’s producing in which she named and organized clips in Finder to take advantage of FCPX import Folders as Keyword Collections. “
Nice. There was an NLE that stored reel name in the folder name and TC in file name. There is a lot more of the moronic solutions in the abandoned NLE junkyard for Apple to dig up.
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