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Why one user Switched to FCPX
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[Paul Golden] ”
Nonsense. Have you looked at Motion? It can play back footage in real-time at speed without pre-caching. This is not inherent to NLE vs compositing software. Besides, what’s really the difference between a timeline based comp software and and a timeline based NLE? They just have different feature sets, but they’re all capable of compositing to a large extent. Yes, AE has a more robust tool set for comping, but the basic nature of playback should be similar for things that don’t have tons of layers.”
AFAIK, Motion also caches frames before and after the playhead, like other applications. Maybe someone smarter than me (Like Simon Ubsdell) can correct me if I’m wrong. High end compositors also get real time performance by caching, they just use beefy hardware and better background processing to get there.
[Paul Golden] ” Besides, what’s really the difference between a timeline based comp software and and a timeline based NLE? “
That’s a good question, Paul… there is a lot of overlap between the two different application types in terms of capability, but the differences are pretty important (real time playback vs access to deep color information being at the top of the list). It’s a bit like saying that vector drawing applications and bitmap editors are really the same thing because they can handle the same file types.
[Paul Golden] ” …but the basic nature of playback should be similar for things that don’t have tons of layers.”
Try compositing two 4k, half float, OpenEXR sequences in Motion and then try it in your NLE of choice… then tell me what the results are – I don’t think it’s as simple as anything that can play video can do it in real time. ☺ Come to think of it… even Nuke Studio’s preferred format is 16Bit DPX sequences, that’s if you want real time playback with their recommended hardware.
Shawn
Shawn
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[Paul Golden] ” Premiere feels like FCP7.5 at this point.”
totally agree. Least fav of the big 3 but FCPX runs like poo on this cheesgrater, not that Premiere works any better.
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Good for you, Steve!
Saw the article this early this morning when I woke up – but I had 40 clips going up to Frame.io today – and in the free time I between things – was discussing it mostly in other places.
It certainly is nice to see the burgeoning acceptance of X by this new generation of video professionals.
The long term success of this software isn’t going to rest on guys like me. It’s going to be determined by dudes like this guy – doing today’s work in today’s style.
What blows my mind is that he made the initial mental switch in 24 hours! (from the video inserts, 24 obviously frustrating hours!)
It was a hoot watching all the initial “just show me what I’m USED TO DOING but in THIS software” stuff.
SO typical.
I’d LOVE to chat with him a year from now when he’s WAY farther into the depth of the software. That would be VERY interesting.
And so it goes.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Have you updated your graphics card lately? Some of the new 4gb+ cards will make things quite a bit more zippy if you’re looking for a bit more life out your aging MacPro. FCPX is all about the GPU.
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Re Philip Bloom’s statement about smug FCPX and Resolve users who “never have issues”, I personally have never used any NLE which never crashed. I’ve had FCPX crash a lot, although it seems to crash *less* than Premiere.
NLEs have a difficult challenge. The combination of myriad code paths and codecs, stringent real-time latency windows, when combined with complex workloads form a murky multi-dimensional space where software load paths intersect with features, hardware and user actions.
Lurking in there are hidden “islands of instability”. A certain combination of user actions, hardware, codec and system state can cause repeated crashes. Another user doing almost the same action on almost the same hardware may never experience that.
From the standpoint of software development and testing, it is a grinding, tedious job to ferret out all those problem areas. Maybe Apple does a better job, or maybe they have an advantage because of fewer total test permutations via less hardware variation. OTOH it seems Avid (which also runs on Mac and Windows) has a better reputation for reliability.
It’s very difficult to objectively measure software reliability across products. However since Mac users can opt to send application crash data to Apple, this would include both Premiere and FCPX crashes. Adobe being only an app vendor wouldn’t have that data. I wonder if the Apple system people forwarded this data to the Pro Apps development team.
That said, in the book “Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro”, by Charles Koppelman, Murch was asked was he scared of FCP crashing or losing data. He response was Avid crashed and corrupted data so much (at least back then) that FCP could not possibly be any worse, and he figured they could afford more workstations so at least a few would be up and running.
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[Paul Golden] “Have you updated your graphics card lately? Some of the new 4gb+ cards will make things quite a bit more zippy if you’re looking for a bit more life out your aging MacPro. FCPX is all about the GPU.
“Wish I could – Its my rig at work. 50 something bays all stuck in 2010.
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[Neil Goodman] “50 something bays all stuck in 2010.”
You might enlighten the crowd here how your set-up works (or doesn’t) with Premiere Pro. Shared storage? Media formats?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Paul Golden] ” I have a new iMac Pro and I’m still underwhelmed by AE or Premiere performance.”
Again, much like the original post, your inefficiency relates back to your particular setup and not the Adobe software. Many Adobe users, including myself, have no latency issues and the software works as advertised.
I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles -
[Joe Marler] ” I personally have never used any NLE which never crashed. I’ve had FCPX crash a lot, although it seems to crash *less* than Premiere.”
I have. I’m a bit out of the loop with where the software is at these days but I edited a couple feature films a few corporate videos on Edius over a few years back and from memory I don’t think it crashed once.
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Interesting video. A couple thing stood out to me:
What this guy and video does illustrates just part of the huge and growing visual storytelling market out there. Is he a pro? Hell yes he is a “professional” because he is making money at his trade. So when people make comments stating that “pro’s” are limited to Hollywood and broadcast, it is absolutely false. Perhaps Apple understands this and is targeting this market first over the Hollywood and broadcast niche (because of course you need a $1k iPhoneX to shoot 4k video with and edit in FCPX).
It was fun to watch his “ah-ha” moment on the system. I recently finished teaching 45 students the basics of X, some who had experience on Premiere, but the majority were totally new to NLE’s. I promised all of them would be editors by the end of that 2-hour class. Much to their surprise, they were importing, editing, adding music and effects (yes, some found the cheesey iMovie effects like “boogie-lights” text effect) all within that 2 hours. And the next week they shot and finished an assignment on their own without sending me one panicky email over the weekend like I used to get. I say it every year that Apple did something very right with this software to allow the learning process to be so much faster than when I taught Legacy. The Premiere students spent the first half hour being frustrated trying to force X to work like Premiere. After I coached them off of that ledge, they caught up with the rest of the class with several saying they just might switch over.
His comments about still doing docs on Premiere was interesting and I will be curious to see if he changes his mind going forward. I am halfway through and hour long doc and I feel I am way ahead of where I would be using a more traditional NLE. Now, maybe I will hit the wall on X in the future, but with 20 minutes or so left to cut, I don’t see that wall on the horizon. In fact we (my producer and I) just finished cutting a trailer for fundraising where I did some CC in X (color board. Still on 10.3.4 and won’t upgrade until we are done) and the producer liked it so much, he was musing if we could do the CC in X and how much that would pare the budget. I told him to slow down….
Anyway, thanks for sharing the video and now I realize I need to say “dude” more and wear a heavy winter jacket inside… 😉
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Visual Storyteller
https://vimeo.com/channels/1322525
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter
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