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Why FCPX?
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[Herb Sevush] “Except they did just that when in reaction to the furor, weeks after the release, they published a white paper outlining their plans for future development of X over the following year, which in marketing terms is called “closing the barn door after the horses got out.””
Why “furor” at all. What was that about, actually?
A few weeks after the release, I, and everyone else I was starting to chat with was still virtually clueless about how X worked. Remember, there was little to no institutional expertise extant in how X worked outside some Ripple Training and Larry Jordan early stuff – that I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts no “Professional” editor would have even imagined needing that stuff. (I’m a pro – I can surely figure this out for myself – wait – that doesn’t work! Why are these clips jumping around! I can’t even drag a damn clip diwn a couple of seconds without it FIGHTING me!!!- This thing is consumer crap. Where’s my AVID…)
Right? I thought the big hit from guys like YOU was X was crap because Apple had gone all “Consumer-ish” – as a video company.
Well, what kinda “consumer” reads freaking “white papers?”
Still you’re admitting within “weeks” they had taken steps with that very white paper to communicate their thinking to interested professionals.
So might the ACTUAL issue in play have been that you and others had hardened their internal feelings of being “disrespected” so much in those early days that you were totally unwilling to listen to Apple AT ALL. No matter WHAT the new program was actually capable of?
Apple simply had hurt your feelings, too much.
Sorry about that, I guess.
You know, I got MY choice of preferred NLE EOLed too.
Same as everyone else.
At the same time.
I just moved on faster to a happier place.And so it … went.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis]”It was NOT “indifference” – it was hate.”
So you keep saying but the lie often told is still not the truth. Besides you are avoiding the point of my post that Apple damaged its perception as a trusted provider of software and hardware and that is a perfectly valid reason to look elsewhere as many have. And the main point is that often they have found a better result for their particular preferences and workflows. You love to think that others have and always will hate X. It might give you a smug sense of superiority but it’s just boring garbage.
[Bill Davis]”Wow, they came and took YOUR copy of FCP 7 away?”
Honestly why do you say such nonsense? Do you really think people who have differing and perfectly valid views to you need to be spoken to like children. It really says a lot about you Bill and not in a good way.
[Bill Davis]”Oops – clearly you’re correct. Of course EVERYONE “got” X out of the gate. How silly of me to think otherwise.”
Really?? Try reading and answering my posts like an adult not a petulant child.
EDIT: Actually Bill just do me a favor and block me or don’t respond.
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[Bill Davis] “Why “furor” at all. What was that about, actually?”
It was about the EOL of the fastest growing NLE on the market without any warning, what-so-ever. It was about offering as a replacement an NLE that was 9 months away from being useful in any broadcast or high end workflow. It was about doing all this in a vacuum of information about what the future would hold.
[Bill Davis] “Still you’re admitting within “weeks” they had taken steps with that very white paper to communicate their thinking to interested professionals.”
And those weeks of are still costing them.
Let’s imagine a different scenario.
After the “NAB” sneak Apple starts pumping the bold new change that’s coming, explaining that “X” – whatever that will be, is going to blow everyone’s mind, but because it’s not fully developed yet, it’s going to co-exist with FCP Legacy. They explain all it’s great features and publish the white paper before it’s released, letting everyone know that there is still much more to come in it’s development. They assure everyone that FCP7 will still be sold and supported for the foreseeable future, that it will be made to work with any new upgrades to OSX, although they will no longer be adding new features.
Try imagining that for a bit – no anger over missing features in X, no hysteria over the EOL. Controversy and some anger yes, but no confusion and hysteria.
Yes, it turned out that Legacy continued to work through 6 years of OSX upgrades, but on June 21 there was no way to know that. Apple stopped all sales which scared the hell out of a lot of companies. It’s my belief that the incredibly inept way the EOL was initially handled caused a lot of anger that was simply turned on X as a handy target.
[Bill Davis] “So might the ACTUAL issue in play have been that you and others had hardened their internal feelings of being “disrespected” so much in those early days that you were totally unwilling to listen to Apple AT ALL. No matter WHAT the new program was actually capable of?”
Yes, absolutely correct. Although disrespect is not the right word – fear is the right word. Apple frightened the shit out of a lot of people and the fact that it took them weeks to even begin to address it was a colossal boo boo.
See my earlier remark that you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.
[Bill Davis] “You know, I got MY choice of preferred NLE EOLed too.
Same as everyone else. “True, but since you were not doing broadcast work and you were a one man shop, you were among the least affected.
Has it still not penetrated your consciousness that for anyone in the broadcast field X was incapable of handling their needs for over 6 months after it’s release.
Try putting yourself in the position of someone with multiple seats of Legacy doing broadcast work – needing Multicam and all sorts of OMF and EDL output to finish and with plans to add 3 more seats to handle a new series, only to find out one morning that he can’t get those new seats, he won’t be seeing any upgrades, and he has no idea how long his old seats will continue to work with new OSX upgrades. How happy is that person to find out that X can’t handle any of that. By the time of the white paper that person had probably already switched to either Avid or Ppro and was in no mood to hear anything Apple had to say.
Fortunately for Apple this happened in an arena that means little to them financially, although I’m sure being made fun of on the Tonite show didn’t go down so well.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
While the lamenting of the FCPX rollout seems to never cease to be a topic of conversation here, the confusing aspect to me is why there’s so much nostalgia for FCP7. It certainly made its mark on the industry and I worked on it for years but I possess zero nostalgia for it. As soon as Premiere stepped in to take the lead, I dropped FCP. And now it’s been so many years It’s hard to even recall what was good about it.
I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles -
[Herb Sevush] “Try putting yourself in the position of someone with multiple seats of Legacy doing broadcast work – needing Multicam and all sorts of OMF and EDL output to finish and with plans to add 3 more seats to handle a new series, only to find out one morning that he can’t get those new seats, he won’t be seeing any upgrades, and he has no idea how long his old seats will continue to work with new OSX upgrades. How happy is that person to find out that X can’t handle any of that. By the time of the white paper that person had probably already switched to either Avid or Ppro and was in no mood to hear anything Apple had to say.”
That sums it up very well Herb, not very difficult for anyone to understand how much of in issue the launch was. Of course those who are keen to reversion the past will completely ignore it!
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[Bill Davis] “Will that sweet US gig go to a local US editor who currently CANNOT swing fluidly with FCP X – or will it just go to a talented editor from the Dominican Republic or Spain or Denmark – who are FCP X wizards – and for whom the client could care less – where they are sitting?”
I see no reason why our industry wouldn’t migrate towards a more global workforce. The Hollywood special effects industry has been a global workforce for years.
But you’re also throwing out the idea that post facilities or producers would be hiring these FCPX editors to create content and that doesn’t make much sense since FCPX has not made much progress in becoming the NLE of choice within the industry.
Whether there’s a “ton” of FCPX editors out there on a global scale is somewhat irrelevant if there aren’t a “ton” of FCPX post houses or FCPX minded producers.
I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles -
[Bill Davis] “Totally.
See the widely published benchmarks for getting video work turned around on Macs running X
compared to PC hardware running — anything.
(Well, in fairness, maybe Resolve is in the running now?)But apparently only recently.”
Got a link?
If by faster – there talking about importing, exporting, and rendering and stuff like that..that really means nothing to me.
I dont import, export, and haven’t had to render something in a long time.
It takes me about the same time to cut a spot in X as it does in Avid .
In X I use keywords – In Avid I use stringout/ and or subclips with commented markers. IMO pretty much the same thing and takes the same amount to setup. X gets a slight edge because for common things (broll,dialogue,etc) you can map a keyword to a key, where in Avid I type in the comment field what the clip is or what a person is saying but once I get the first one its just as simple as copying and pasting. Then with the searchable bins – i just filter down to broll or whatever I’m looking for. Same as in X.
Once I get down to the timeline – things are virtually the same EXCEPT when I have to move big chunks of clips around, then X gets the nod there.
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[Bill Davis] “See the widely published benchmarks for getting video work turned around on Macs running X
compared to PC hardware running — anything. “Bill, if you have FCPX benchmarks that differ dramatically from the benchmark tests done in this obvious marketing video between a trashcan mac and a Z Workstation when using Premiere I’d be very interested to see those. The missing info in the video (overall specs, etc) doesn’t make it necessarily an objective piece but there’s plenty of benchmark tests out there that confirm this video’s test results. I know the optimized processing helps streamline FCPX overall but I’m not aware of benchmark tests that show a dramatically improved overall workflow speed difference with FCPX. I’m also curious to know how one would quantify the overall workflow speed.
I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles -
[Bill Davis] “Often the smartest path is to take a small efficiency hit today – in order to gain a larger and on-going efficiency boost later.”
Bill, I agree, but this is much easier said than done. For a freelance editor, the decision to adopt a new NLE is pretty straightforward. For a team with multiple interdependencies, it’s much harder. Every decision on a team has ripple effects, so changing a single piece of the workflow or slowing down a specific step for retraining may have broad ramifications (positive or negative). Optimizing a system is very different than optimizing its components.
Also, the question of which efficiency boosts to chase is deceptively complex. Every major software solution in the world has a nice pile of case studies that shows how it’s more “efficient” than its competitors. How do I know whether I’ll see the best efficiency boost from FCPX, or Creative Cloud, or Resolve/Fusion, or Flame, without actually putting in all the training and real-world production tests to find out? How much risk should I tolerate to find out?
Again, I’m with you. I’d rather disrupt myself than have someone else disrupt me. I just think that the real cost of switching is higher than the price tag suggests. (My opinion here has changed in the six years since I wrote the articles I linked above!)
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “For a team with multiple interdependencies, it’s much harder. Every decision on a team has ripple effects, so changing a single piece of the workflow or slowing down a specific step for retraining may have broad ramifications (positive or negative).”
What gets overlooked is that NLEs are no longer operating in a standalone mode at many places. It’s part of a larger workflow pipeline and in more cases than not, the driver is After Effects and not the NLE. I have worked in the past and currently work with a number of younger editors where the heavy lifting is all in AE. The NLE is just the place to start and end with.
To place FCPX into this workflow actually lowers efficiency, not improve it. And no, Motion is not an option. To make that move involves a lot of training in multiple disciplines, plus rethinking the whole pipeline. And it locks you into Apple hardware.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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