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Why FCPX?
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[Shawn Miller] “I’m definitely seeing more and more creatives shift away from Apple.”
It should be noted that the launch of FCPX wasn’t the first move that alienated video pros from Apple. For many, it started when they EOL’ed Xsan RAID, Xserve, Xsan and Final Cut Server. At that time Apple also closed its enterprise sales and support units, turning that function over to resellers. I personally worked with companies that then simply put out edicts that no more RFPs would be accepted if they included Apple computers. FCPX and the EOL of the whole Studio suite was simply icing on the cake. No matter how great FCPX is, it simply left video pros wondering whether Apple could be trusted in the future.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Herb Sevush] “According to you Apple’s role-out was great and the blame for the bad PR should be put on some secret conspiracy to do damage to X that was beyond anyone’s control.”
TOTALLY INCORRECT.
According to me, (and I should know) Apple’s roll-out was interesting – perhaps even exciting – but nothing more than that.
I did see things I’d never seen ANY NLE do before. Clip Collision avoidance. A magnetic timeline, etc. etc.
But I had NO context to use to determine if these new things were useful – or smoke and mirror stuff.
I’ve said before – I was sitting in the room during the rollout – and around me was applause and surprise and a ton of “WOW” moments.
It was the next day I got really shocked – when I went on line and saw the initial torrent of negativity begin.
That day – I started asking myself “About WHAT?” – What exactly is wrong with what I saw? It looks interesting. It will be exciting to have new ideas to play around with.
And that was THE ENTIRETY of my opinion at the time. Reserved optimism and HOPE that the new stuff shown might be useful.
Further than that, when I downloaded the program – I had PRECISELY the same experience most people had.
I didn’t know how to use it. I was frustrated. I didn’t “get” the magnetic thing at first. I didn’t use the Browser or keywords at ALL for the first two weeks or so – because I didn’t understand what they were.
The ONLY difference between me and everyone who started immediately crowing about how RIGHT they had been months before about how “BAD” the thing was (on day one!) – was that WHEN I encountered so much I did not understand – I found myself curious to understand it.
THAT is my point, Herb.
Most of the loudest critique at the FCP X launch started in a complete vacuum of actually knowledge and experience with it during the period between April 12th and June 21, 2011.
And I’ll stand by that – because it’s the truth of things.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “Most people didn’t need more than that to take an instant like or dislike to it. Having it in their hands didn’t really change the opinion if they didn’t like what they saw and heard at SuperMeet.
“Again we agree TOTALLY.
And this reminds me of the wonderful book David McCullough wrote about the Wright Brothers.
They flew. Then they went to the “establishment” – and the establishment TOTALLY turned their backs on them.
Local, State, Regional, National – they pounded the pavement trying to get people to listen about what they’d managed.
What they got in response was: Machines can’t fly. Period.
It wasn’t until Wilbur took their “airplane” to France and flew in front of a crowd there – that people figured out what had happened.
I’m not saying X is remotely close to as transformative as powered flight.
What I am saying is that time, and time, and time again, people have proved astonishingly resistant to change.
And that truly useful change has a history of flying over many, many peoples heads. Even very smart people.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Jeremy Garchow] ”
And if I have sync audio, and the audio recordist has kept track of mice during the shoot, the names of of the mic or character or situation is already in the audio metadata and transferred to Roles on import, making this process go much faster. At that point, I name the camera audio Role something simple like “Guide Track” or “SOT”, and the sync audio has the tracks names as recorded. It’s extremely useful, and very fast. Much faster than assigning tracks to every clip that goes in to the timeline, and much faster than mapping track to channel outputs on export.”You set up a totally different paradigm then Charlie. I am not bad mouthing roles. I am not doubting roles work great for your needs. I was simply stating I can setup alternate titles and graphics and export them real super quick without the need to create multiple sequences/timelines. If we are exporting a “one off” tracks and roles may be about the same. I can see how the roles templates would pay off if you need to do the same export over and over again.
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[Oliver Peters] “It should be noted that the launch of FCPX wasn’t the first move that alienated video pros from Apple. For many, it started when they EOL’ed Xsan RAID, Xserve, Xsan and Final Cut Server. At that time Apple also closed its enterprise sales and support units, turning that function over to resellers. I personally worked with companies that then simply put out edicts that no more RFPs would be accepted if they included Apple computers. FCPX and the EOL of the whole Studio suite was simply icing on the cake. No matter how great FCPX is, it simply left video pros wondering whether Apple could be trusted in the future.”
I can see why those folks would be so angry and hesitant to trust Apple again. I imagine some of those equipment, service and support agreements were worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Do you know if any of those companies softened over time? Or was that a complete bridge burner for some of those folks?
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “Do you know if any of those companies softened over time?”
In one specific case – a broadcast group of stations – the production/creative services/promo folks shifted from FCP to Premiere Pro and the hardware changed to Dell workstations and Promise Technology SANs (from Mac Pro towers and Xsan). The only backing down was with the graphics departments who insisted on staying with Macs and they were allowed to do so. However, software was all Adobe, as they are largely using Photoshop and AE for everything.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Oliver Peters] ”
In one specific case – a broadcast group of stations – the production/creative services/promo folks shifted from FCP to Premiere Pro and the hardware changed to Dell workstations and Promise Technology SANs (from Mac Pro towers and Xsan). The only backing down was with the graphics departments who insisted on staying with Macs and they were allowed to do so. However, software was all Adobe, as they are largely using Photoshop and AE for everything.”Really interesting stuff Oliver, thanks for sharing.
Shawn
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[Bill Davis] “Again we agree TOTALLY.”
You got me thinking… What did I actually write about FCPX around that time? So I looked it up (see links below). Quite a few things have been fixed since then, but ironically quite a few haven’t. Interesting.
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/apple-final-cut-pro-x/
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/fcp-x-road-blocks/
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/rethinking-nle-design/
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/rethinking-nle-design-ii/
In general, here are the tagged FCPX blog posts – newer posts at top.
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/tag/fcp-x/
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Herb Sevush] “They shot themselves in the foot and no one else is to blame for it. “
I have a bit of a different take on it Herb. I never read any press on X pro or con before the release. (I just wasn’t paying attention)
I remember seeing the people in the room applauding and liking what they saw.
YT is where a lot of people go these days to get up to speed on many products and I was no different.
There were all these people on Youtube giving their “reviews” before they had a chance to learn the program.
I would see one person say it couldn’t do something followed by another person actually doing what that first person said it couldn’t.
It became clear to me that I needed to use the product and find out for myself.
The other thing I remember is people mainly focused on what was missing and almost none of what it COULD do.
Yeah it was missing stuff, but it had some really cool new stuff also.
That part wasn’t completely on Apple. There was a ton of misinformation out there.
To ignore that side of it, is to not tell the whole story.
It’s actually still happening. Check out this video by Jason Vong. I think Jason is a talented young brother and I’m not picking on him because he admits in the video he is still learning and is asking for help but it’s way too early for him to be making this video not knowing so much basic information.
Looks at the views, over 60 thousand. That’s a lot of people he reached with that information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G9V3NjYfzk
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[Oliver Peters] “What did I actually write about FCPX around that time? So I looked it up (see links below).”
On my personal scale of “overly emotional FCP X haters that can’t see the forest for the trees” you have never been anywhere to be found, my friend.
If you were, I doubt I’d have spent nearly as many enjoyable hours as we have chatting about this stuff.
(But of course that doesn’t mean I don’t have a mental list of more than a few names that do fit that description!)
Oddly I just finished reading the new forum posts above from David Busse – another who apparently fled X for a long time, but has now clearly re-evaluated his position.
It made me smile when I got toward the bottom of his piece – and he was quite explicit that his biggest remaining issue has little to do with software value or operations – but is rather a lingering sense of personal emotional betrayal attached to Apple from their actions in 2011.
But hey, if someone wants to slow their work efficiency and be less productive because the folks who make the faster software hurt their feelings – I’m clueless as to how to address that.
I guess maybe I’d recommend adopting a cute dog to take care of your emotional needs – and shower attention on it with all the time you save using X to make your videos?
That’s currently working really well for me.
????
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
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