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What does FCPX teach new editors?
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Does anyone using an NLE know how to solve color framing or system timing issues? What about problems around cutting on a different field from edit to edit?
It depends on what happens with certain problems as technology progresses. Some problems are no longer common. If one NLE solves a problem that others don’t is it important to solve the problem or is it important to use the NLE that solves the problem for you.
Yet knowing how to solve problems, to troubleshoot, is important. I see many newbies who seem to have no troubleshooting skills regardless of gear they used.
My ability to align heads on a Quad machine helped me years later when I had to do something sorta similar on a D2 machine.
Knowing that one doesn’t rip the tape out of a cassette informed me that I shouldn’t rip apart the BPAV folder on XDCAM EX file . . . yet I see newbies doing that all the time and then crying for help when the files don’t import into their NLE. Some NLEs can handle the XDCAM EX .mp4 directly but what about the metadata tossed away?
Troubleshooting is an important skill that some newer folks don’t seem to be learning. The question is, as technology progresses does the specific “trouble” go away to the point were that specific problem is no longer encountered? Is it encountered because some thing that are on the market haven’t yet found a “built in” way to handle it?
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hihihi true true technology will always bring issues… tell me about newbies hihihi but again I am hear to help with the troubleshoot I know off thanks to experience!
Thank god I know ho two fix a car since I drive it everyday… only newbies will bing it to a shop. 😉
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VERY interesting discussion. (Thanks everyone for keeping the signal to noise ratio high in this.)
My contribution is to suggest a brief exercise of looking at learning FCP-X through the lens of modern education.
There’s a school of thought that the best path is to focus on the basics. Drill in reading, writing and math fundamentals. Require ever more standardized tests. Students (or programs!) that don’t meet the basic criteria FAIL.
But I happen to have a kid with a learning disability. He’s a very smart kid, but has a brain that struggles mightly with written expression. He’s an auditory learner. When I was reading him Harry Potter Book FOUR, he was correcting my recollections of Book ONE that I’d read to him 3 years previously.
Standardized tests have always been a NIGHTMARE for him – because he learns differently than the norm. A lesson plan, a test, or a piece of software – that relies on big manuals, 19th century processes, and a “do it THIS way or you’re not doing it correctly” foundation will FAIL him at every turn.
With FCP-X – we’re ALL being asked to alter our comfortable mode of past learning. The program designers and writers essentially have said – the industry has done this task in a particular fashion that’s appealed to a group of people who edit a particular way for a long time. But we think we see a better way to approach the problems we see in the future of computer based editing. We think that we can leverage the increasing capabilities of the hardware and software tools at our disposal to incorporate new ways of approaching the problem that we think will be both relevant and superior tools that will best fit the FUTURE needs of media creation.
You can easily argue that if you take my son’s reading story above literally, that the FCP-X team has designed for a small – special needs subset of the overall class of editors. And if you’re correct about that, the software will fail.
Apple, is betting, however that there’s a larger shift possible. That re-thinking the classroom model to provide a DIFFERENT kind of flexibility – moving away from the standardized tests and creating a world where tasks aren’t so shoe-horned into a traditional mindset has real value in moving the whole notion of visual content creation and manipulation into a world of more modern tools and thinking. (Kinda like how the excelling schools now ADAPT to various learning styles, rather than MAKING kids learn exclusively by a worksheet model that works for many, but utterly fails for a significant percentage as well.
It is a truth that the US system of education is in a bit of a crisis. Little innovation and LOTS of inertia, hidebound thinking and a massive desire to simply tinker around the edges rather than looking for a foundationally better way. Apple clearly believes that the software industry has gotten pretty similar. Massive entrenched approaches that produce incremental improvements at best.
Apple has the money, power and guts to take a shot at re-inventing the game.
Time will tell if it works – but at LEAST they aren’t simply accepting that the current way MUST be the right way and must be preserved at all cost.
Good for them, in my view.
Bring on the core engine database changes. Bring on some new thinking. MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE. Please. Because looking back, I can see with the wisdom of age that I’ve always learned by baby steps when I’m happy – but I stretch mightily when I’m confronted by something truly challenging (and possibly very uncomfortable!)
I suspect that for anyone embarking on FCP-X exploration – as many here are – will become MUCH better editors in the long run. Simply because they allowed themselves to be pulled and tugged into new ways of thinking. (Just like my wife and I did when helping my son navigate an educations system that was NOT working for him.)
Grow or perish.
As it’s always been.
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’Conner
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[Walter Soyka] “There are two kinds of problem solving we’re talking about so far: technical problem solving (like converting H.264 clips to ProRes for use in FCP7) and creative problem solving (like identifying and fixing a bad cut). Sometimes technical and creative problems overlap (like fixing a bad shot that’s the only right shot for the cut). In any case, problems are inevitable in the process.”
Isn’t one of the great pleasures of editing – whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing is another matter – precisely the interplay between the technical and the creative, using both sides of your brain at the same time or at least in parallel? At its most satifying one side is always distracting you from the problems you are having with the others – at its most frustrating neither side is working out!
I’m not sure where this leaves FCPX but there will always be mechanical limitations no matter how easy the editing UI and this for me has to be a good thing. I think the general point that constraints are beneficial for creativity will always hold good.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Bill Davis] “I suspect that for anyone embarking on FCP-X exploration – as many here are – will become MUCH better editors in the long run. Simply because they allowed themselves to be pulled and tugged into new ways of thinking.”
I agree with this, and it’s one of the reasons I’m trying to learn it. But the question is will starting on FCPX make someone a better editor.
-mattyc
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[Andree Franks] “Like drawing on stone wall with pencil it can be done depends on the artist.”
I think all art has technical and creative elements, and that these are separate dimensions — they’re both deeply involved in the art, but it’s not an either-or proposition.
My larger point — the McLuhan quote — is that an artist’s toolset affects the artist’s thinking. Drawing on a stone wall with a pencil introduces different biases than painting oils on a canvas with a brush. Do you disagree?
Taken a step further, the language we learn in affects how and what we learn, and influences how we think, because different languages have difference degrees of nuance around different concepts. This is the heart of my question about how FCPX will shape new editors’ approaches to editorial.
I can reflect on my own experiences to see some of the biases I learned in linear editorial, some of the biases I learned in Avid non-linear editorial, and some of the biases I learned in FCP non-linear editorial. FCPX is so strikingly different than non-linear editors which came before it that I’m curious what biases it will introduce to the next generation of editors who grow up using it as their primary NLE.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Matt Callac] “I agree with this, and it’s one of the reasons I’m trying to learn it. But the question is will starting on FCPX make someone a better editor.”
I totally agree that learning any new editing paradigm will expand your horizons as an editor and not just technically but creatively as well.
Every time you learn a new way of doing stuff you get better and more imaginative – and that’s regardless of whether the new way is better or worse than your old way. In all probability you are creating whole new neurological circuits each time you do this kind of thing and creating new avenues of possibility.
It’s limiting yourself to one little world of editing that limits what you can achieve – this will be as true of those who only ever learn FCPX as it is of those who never wanted to get beyond Media Composer.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Matt Callac] “I agree with this, and it’s one of the reasons I’m trying to learn it. But the question is will starting on FCPX make someone a better editor.”
No the same as with Avid, Premiere, media100 or Final Cut Pro 7 but the tools can help them out and save time. Isn’t that reason for all this great stuff? Save time and money? 😉
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“My questions for the forum are these: how will a new editor, just starting on FCPX, learn the craft of editing? What problems will they be “good” at solving and what problems will they be “bad” at solving, due to the design perspective of their tools?”
Admittedly, I haven’t played with FCP X for more than an hour or two (so, at this rate, the “alpha test” has only run me $150/hour…yeesh), but I have sort of a followup question regarding the direction Apple’s taken (and it doesn’t even involve OMFs or EDLs). Apologies if this has been posted. It seems I’ve been failing miserably in my forum lurking duties of late.
Even assuming Apple makes some much-needed updates to X, but the industry backlash against FCP X’s particular style of editing continues long-term, are young editors who grow up in FCP X going to find themselves overly constrained to that particular system?
As an example, my editing history goes something like this: Starting in ’95, I cut Media 100. Then moved to Velocity. Then moved to Avid MC. Then moved to Premiere Pro. Then moved to FCP. Now transitioning more of my work back to Premiere Pro. Every single one of those moves was an absolute piece of cake. Why? Because they’re all essentially the same software, behaving in essentially the same way.
FCP X, for all its good and bad points, is really nothing like any of those systems. If I have need of another body and get a hell of a demo reel from a kid who’s cutting MC, I’m confident he can transition to FCP or PP Pro pretty darn quickly.
If you grow up in Apple’s new paradigm and then decide you want to cut at a post facility using anything else, something tells me you’d better have a lights out demo for them to be willing to spend the time and effort to get you out of that paradigm.
Christopher Gildenstern
Creative/Production Director
Barnes Chase & Davis, Inc.
Advertising, Marketing, New Media(This space for rent)
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Well,
Saving time and money are excellent goals if your entire approach to creating content is business-oriented. But that’s just ONE way to view business. You can simply build a slightly better pizza stand and compete on that basis – or you can invent a new food and create a new category. Apple, Google, et al didn’t get to the top of the pyramid by simply making incremental changes – they re-structured the fundamental nature of their industries.
The most valuable and lasting art is often that which pushes so many boundries upon release that it’s reviled in it’s own time – but comes to be seen later as groundbreaking and signals a new way of thinking about the form.
I’m NOT saying FCP-X is “art.” just that it’s a pretty radical re-thinking of what editing software should be. And that’s pretty cool on it’s face.
Whether it becomes any kind of “standard” is a function of much more than it’s underlying quality OR utility.
Imagine the Venn diagrams for “pop music” and “great music” – just don’t expect too much overlap.
“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’Conner
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