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Why does Panic and Paranoia Rule some “Pros”?
I have been working in film photography and video since the 70’s.
Lots of changes over this time span.
I used compter controlled A/B editing in the early 90’s, this was a huge step, remember decks spooling up to match frames to make assembly edits, all the manual frame buffered boards, some with built in keyers and titlers.
Any way I have gone through Radius Telecast, Premier and them M100, still my favourite. Now I have M100 FCP3 suite and Adobe CS5 Production bundle, mostly for AE. I only use FCP on a few projects I dont really like it, but I love Color and DVDSP.
I have gone through NUBUS cards to PCI to PCIe and latest is MX02 with Thunderbolt.
Every time there is a new OS update or NLE update. I wait 6 months or so on all my production suites. I have a couple experimental Macs I play with the new stuff (or just extra HDs with other systems and programs/drivers), but mostly I wait and read about what other bleeding edgers run into. Once things seem stable I then upgrade or sometimes skip the upgrade.
I still have a 1999 M100 SD suite that works really well OS 10.4 with M100 PCI cards (3 in total as I remember). I dont use it much but it still works perfectly with its SCSI RAID. It is all real time by the way no rendering static titles or A/B dissolves, and the M100 interface is very similar to the current M100 HD interface. Just not HD. It still outputs to my BetaSP deck perfectly.
So my question is why all this panic. I am playing with FCPX and I really think Apple has its hand on the future of editing. And I bet in 6 months or a year it will work really well with lots of tweaks. Like all other major changes.
M100 just put out their Suite 2.0, upgraded from 1.6, I have tried it but it has bugs preventing me from using it for some of my legacy projects. I am sure those bugs will be fixed soon like they always have been. So I am still mostly using the 1.6 version. But I am just completing a project in the 2.0 version and it is working fine on the new project.
Apples move this time is bold like OSX and PowerPC to Intel just to mention two huge changes that took a while to really work but are now completely accepted.
I have a couple small projects that I will try on FCPX, if it does not work out I will just recreate them in M100/AE and finish there. But I think these project will be perfect for FCPX testing. They are KIOSK videos with a lot of stills and HD and SD footage composited for display on a 70″ monitor in a visitors center. I can actually use the real monitor hooked to my MP with an HDMI adapter. The finished product will be looping from a BM solid state player.
Even if this does not work out in v1 of FCPX, it does not mean I will ban all Apple products forever from my facility and immediately switch to something else. I just don’t get the hysteria. Panic does not seem “professional” to me.
Any way just a few thoughts and I don’t mean to insult anyone. I just think things are about to change big time and once again Apple is leading the way. So far they have been right on in their big changes in my opinion any way.
And by the way I will probably keep a suite in the latest working config to run Color and DVDSP for a decade or so if nothing better comes out. I have a Robot set up on an 8core MP that authors/burns BluRays and CD/DVDs and prints them, for short runs. I bet that suite will still be set up for at least 5-10 years for legacy work. Some people still use DVDs. I still deliver a lot of commercials on BetaSP.
Things change but they also stay the same.
Olof Ekbergh
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86 Replies
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As far as I can tell, most of the panic has not been about what Apple has done, but about what people have decided it implies about Apple’s motivations, and therefore Apple’s future actions. Essentially, people have convinced themselves that Apple no longer cares about high-end users, and will not deliver software suitable for them in the future.
Many people are now simply treating this as an established fact, but the evidence for it is fairly weak, and every new release of information seems to undermine it further. Humans are, however, extremely prone to fitting the data to the model, when they should be doing the reverse. There’s also a well-documented phenomenon where people are much less likely to change their positions based on new information if they’ve previously stated those positions publicly. Someone is probably going to have to cut a studio feature on FCP X before some folks can be convinced to change their minds at this point.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Cut a feature on FCPX?! Bwha, ha, ha, ha, thats the funniest post I’ve heard in awhile. Let me shoot even a commercial on a Arri Alexa and then try to see what happens in FCPX. Sorry, tried FCPX and want no part of it, I’ll stick with AVID and Adobe.
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[Chris Baker] “Cut a feature on FCPX?! Bwha, ha, ha, ha, thats the funniest post I’ve heard in awhile. Let me shoot even a commercial on a Arri Alexa and then try to see what happens in FCPX. Sorry, tried FCPX and want no part of it, I’ll stick with AVID and Adobe.”
Huh? FCP X supports ProRes 422 HQ and 4444 footage just fine. I’m not seeing any huge obstacles to cutting an Alexa project in it.
Again, I really think people are overstating what’s missing. There are only three critical features that prevent FCP X from being used today a cut a feature film:
1) XML export.
2) The ability to map audio to specific tracks for export.
3) Real video monitoring.1) is confirmed to be showing up “in a few weeks”. It might take a little longer for the new XML variant to be supported, but some vendors will probably be fairly quick about it.
2) is confirmed for “summer”.
3) was reportedly confirmed to be coming “soon” at last night’s London briefing.
There’s a lot of FUD floating around about how “The magnetic timeline is not suitable for long-form projects” and so forth, but nobody actually appears to be able to support such statements.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Chris, your list is incomplete: we need film tracking, and shared workflow for assistants and additional editors. Taken together, that’s a pretty substantial list of missing elements.
Chris Conlee
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[Chris Kenny] “Again, I really think people are overstating what’s missing. There are only three critical features that prevent FCP X from being used today a cut a feature film:
1) XML export.
2) The ability to map audio to specific tracks for export.
3) Real video monitoring.”I agree. I’d add that with XML export, you wouldn’t even need real video monitoring for offline editorial, since you could give the film a proper finish elsewhere.
The lack of Cinema Tools could also be a bummer.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[Chris Conlee] “Chris, your list is incomplete: we need film tracking, and shared workflow for assistants and additional editors. Taken together, that’s a pretty substantial list of missing elements.”
Film tracking is entirely unnecessary with many modern feature workflows, and another tidbit from the London briefing was that Apple has been working closely with several companies that plan to offer media asset management tools for FCP X. Depending on what kind of API access Apple delivers (and there are hints of something pretty interesting), FCP X could soon over shared workflows much more powerful than what FCP 7 offered.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Walter Soyka] “The lack of Cinema Tools could also be a bummer.”
Not really an issue with digital acquisition, though, which is now entirely viable across all levels of production. So, possibly the lack of Cinema Tools might prevent cutting certain specific features in FCP X, but it doesn’t make it generally impossible to cut a feature in FCP X.
Also, it occurs to me that if Apple opens up third-party access to FCP X’s metadata storage via an API (which I think is quite likely at some point in the future), it wouldn’t be hard for third-parties to replicate and even improve on Cinema Tools functionality.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Um, yeah. Implied an upgrade to FCP7 and delivered something completely different. I don’t understand what all the panic is about either. Who would ever need to open an old project? Or buy any more seats for FCP7? Or need little things like XML? Silly “Pro’s”. What do they know anyway? Eh?
Marvin Holdman
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[Chris Kenny] “it wouldn’t be hard for third-parties to replicate and even improve on Cinema Tools functionality.”
Cinema Tools started as third party tool (Focal Point Systems’ FilmLogic), and it will be replaced by a third party as well.
One of the other silly assumptions being treated as fact around here is the idea that third parties wouldn’t think of building support or tools to work with FCPX just because a bunch of people are complaining on the Internet…
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Andy -
Relax Marvin.
As Chris Kenny says (over an over again), this will be fixed when Apple releases their API. Companies from around the globe will rush in and fix all the problems in a matter of weeks.
If you decide to hold your breath waiting for this to happen I would suggest you take a really big breath.
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