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What we have really lost with FCP 7
Walter Biscardi’s recent article ‘A cautionary tale for the FCP switcher’ made me rethink about the upheaval that FCPX has caused. It also brought back fond memories to me of working at Pogo Films. For the uninitiated Pogo Films was an all Final Cut Pro post house in Soho, London. (Now it does avid and Quantel too). It was the first all fcp post house in the UK (yes before UNIT), and it is where I learnt my trade.
What we did at Pogo – and what others on the Cow, blogs and youtube videos all around the world did – was to develop a body of knowledge, a shared methodology that made Final Cut the best NLE on the market.
It wasn’t just the program itself, although I do rate it highly. It was the experimentation of all these people, these ambitious post production start ups that were trying to do things for less, but at the highest possible standards. Amazing work arounds, like Walters’ own bringing in a render file on top of the original clip, so you wouldn’t have to re-render if you experimented with other effects. (a proto global render cache).
What made Final Cut awesome, was all of us, working things out like that and sharing our knowledge. Apple made the price right and invited us to have a go, but we collectively stabilised the workflow and made Final Cut truly ready for primetime.
So now we have to choose between Avid MC, Premier Pro, FCPX or perhaps even the new Lightworks. I now own all of the above (except Lightworks – waiting for the mac version), but none of these are supported by the 13 years of indie collaboration that fcp 7 had.
Now matter what the Apple, Avid, Adobe, or Editshare marketing departments say, we know that these things never work they way they should. A great example is in Walters article and Avid’s AMA not quite working right, although my personal experience has seen me redo 3 jobs in fcp 7 that I started in Premier, just to get it done right. (All due to ‘working with native files’ proving too much for the system near the end of the job, and there being no DI codec or ‘transcode project’ option to fall back on)
What we have lost is our collective experience. 13 years of insights and experiments, battle hardened in real world scenarios around the world. And with no obvious heir to the Final Cut throne, it will be a long journey indeed until we have rebuilt our shared knowledge.
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30 Replies
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The only thing it reminded me of is how lazy we as editors have become. Making sure that everyone hears our moans, we judge NLEs like a teenager holding a new smartphone. This clip (when applied to editing software) comes to mind (skip to 1:20 in):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
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[Daniel Frome] “The only thing it reminded me of is how lazy we as editors have become. “
Amen.
I’ve don’t feel as if I’ve “lost” anything. I had a great tool for 12 years. It’s still on my machine if I need it, but I actually haven’t opened it in more than 8 months now except for one instance 30 days ago where I had to open an old edit to 7toX it.
Now I have another great tool.
X has freed me to work in more places, more quickly and is superb for creating, modifying and distributing short, punchy video files electronically.
Pretty much what my clients are asking for.
For me, I think change is just too fast today to risk that what worked yesterday MIGHT continue to work tomorrow.
I like the idea of fresh tools to meet the challenges of a new era.
My 2 cents, anyway.
“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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[Bill Davis] “I’ve don’t feel as if I’ve “lost” anything. I had a great tool for 12 years. It’s still on my machine if I need it, but I actually haven’t opened it in more than 8 months now except for one instance 30 days ago where I had to open an old edit to 7toX it.
Now I have another great tool.
X has freed me to work in more places, more quickly and is superb for creating, modifying and distributing short, punchy video files electronically.”
I totally agree with you Bill.
And for me I don’t recall my time with FCP being that pleasant.
It was an unforgiving piece of software if you got things wrong. To edit fluently with it required a lot of training and technical ability. For the work that I do it was vastly over complex.
I have no desire to return to editing with it and after a year have probably forgotten all my keyboard shortcuts.
Whether people like or dislike FCPX it is undoubtably a lot easier for both experienced and new editors to use.
Whilst I acknowledge that production houses will encounter severe limitations with FCPX in terms of its inter-connectivity and output options, Apple have really improved the reliability and stability of FCPX over the last 12months.
[Will Hodgson] “What we have lost is our collective experience. 13 years of insights and experiments, battle hardened in real world scenarios around the world. And with no obvious heir to the Final Cut throne, it will be a long journey indeed until we have rebuilt our shared knowledge.”
I can’t really see that that experience is lost. Surely the huge advances in file based editing over the last few years have freed the editor up to get on with what’s at the heart of the job, creating stories.
I’m just remembering the pain of digitising location tapes.
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[Mark Dobson] “FCPX it is undoubtably a lot easier for both experienced and new editors to use. Whilst I acknowledge that production houses will encounter severe limitations with FCPX …”
Mark,
I, for one, doubt it this “undoubtability”.
If software doesn’t support my workflow and approach, it is not “easier” to use – it is unusable. This is quite aside from the severe limitations you note.
Franz.
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[Will Hodgson] “What we have lost is our collective experience. 13 years of insights and experiments, battle hardened in real world scenarios around the world. And with no obvious heir to the Final Cut throne, it will be a long journey indeed until we have rebuilt our shared knowledge.”
A valid point. Not everything will be lost. Yes, there are new techniques to learn, new shortcomings to work around, new buttons to press. Final Cut Legend is ubiquitous, it’s true, but it’s not like that knowledge base that has been built is suddenly invalid, it just needs to be further built upon.
This does not mean we can’t learn again. It’s already happening on every level.
What I stand to lose the most is Apple Color.
It was so simple and easy to learn, fairly easy to use if you held its hand in just the right way, and I could always get quality results out of it.
FCPX has some decent color correction tools built in. While the color board is unconventional I find the results to be pleasing, and that’s all I can really ask for. It needs some tuning up, and perhaps a feature or two (like tracking) and it’s fairly solid as long as you don’t let the color board bother you. If I need to get out to a dedicated color grading app, FCPX, even in its infancy, allows me to get to Resolve fairly easily or even to Color with an XML translation. Other more mature applications are still struggling with that. I am sure it will get better.
NLEs will keep changing and thriving, we have already seen that, but I will miss Apple Color the most as there truly isn’t a replacement for it yet without having to buy some new hardware.
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[Will Hodgson] “So now we have to choose between Avid MC, Premier Pro, FCPX or perhaps even the new Lightworks. I now own all of the above (except Lightworks – waiting for the mac version), but none of these are supported by the 13 years of indie collaboration that fcp 7 had.”
Huh? Avid editors of all levels were collaborating since day one. The original Avid BBS was around since the early 90s. Sharing knowledge, tips, tricks and workaround has NEVER been the exclusive domain of FCP editors.
[Will Hodgson] “but we collectively stabilised the workflow and made Final Cut truly ready for primetime.”
What made FCP “ready for primetime” was the work done by folks at AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, etc. Without them taking the risk, FCP would have been stuck as a hobbyist’s DV editing tool.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “What made FCP “ready for primetime” was the work done by folks at AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, etc. Without them taking the risk, FCP would have been stuck as a hobbyist’s DV editing tool.”
Hear, hear!
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Oliver, you make two good points. It was the third party hardware vendors that enabled fcp to go prime time – not that they had a lot else to go with, Avid being hardware exclusive at the time.
However, as I’m sure you are aware, there was a lot of trial and error with these third party cards to get them playing nicely with fcp.
And this work was at least partly done by the small post houses, who shared their trials and tribulations.
I was trying to articulate why people felt so let down by the end of fcp 7, and I think this is partly down to having to start from scratch with learning all the kinks in these new programs (well new to the fcp people of old anyway).
But as Bill and Mark have stated, there is merit in learning how to tackle things in new ways too.
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[Will Hodgson] ” and I think this is partly down to having to start from scratch with learning all the kinks in these new programs (well new to the fcp people of old anyway).”
Get used to it. Since you say you’ve been editing for 13 years, I suspect you’ll do this all over again two or three times, before you retire 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Franz Bieberkopf] “Mark,
I, for one, doubt it this “undoubtability”.
If software doesn’t support my workflow and approach, it is not “easier” to use – it is unusable. This is quite aside from the severe limitations you note.
“Yes, I second that. Mark, however pleased you may be with FCPX, its pretty clear that there is abundant doubt about.
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