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Why the urgency to jump to Avid/Adobe RIGHT NOW?
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Gareth,
I’ve posted something similar in another post, but I think it bears repeating with added clarity:
In truth, editors have not chosen to “jump”, “abandon”, or “switch”. Apple announced that FCP is a dead software – meaning no further support or development.
Editors who are faced with the question of whether or not FCP7 will suffice for all their needs, forever, must likely choose and learn a new piece of software.
Leading contenders seem to be Adobe, Avid, and some are considering (amongst others) a new piece of software called FCPX. However, in feature comparison FCPX is very weak.
Rational (and sometimes irrational) decisions ensue …
Franz.
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[Walter Soyka] “To this, I’d add that ColorSync (hardware-measured software calibration) on a standard 8-bit monitor does not offer the same accuracy that hardware calibration on a wider gamut monitor would.”
I have no idea if Apple’s current utilization of ColorSync is up to the task, but better computer displays commonly have a wider gamut than Rec. 709 these days. There is no fundamental technical reason they cannot display accurate video color.
That said… I’m not sure why so much time has been spent discussing FCP X’s lack of ‘real’ video output, when there is good reason to believe this feature will be added.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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With the sudden unannounced EOL of any system, there is an urgency to talk about alternatives. This is just business common sense. You seem to imply urgency is akin to panic. It isn’t.
At my end of the business, I need to take locked off edits and then grade, online finish and sound post for broadcast mastering (still to tape – go figure). This is how I make a living and so it matters where the industry is going.
I chose FCP because that was what the majority of editors were using. Now the choice is to jump to AVID, CS5.5 or FCP X because there is no upgrade path with FCS3 and FCP X is the least compatible of the alternatives with FCS3. So we all have to make a commercial decision and in my case, the sooner editors sort out what is best, the sooner I can decide where my money needs to go.
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One thing that is seems is a result of the app store distribution is that there is longer an “investment” in FCP licenses for freelancers/end-users.
It’s $299 for this version. It will be something in the ballpark for the next (probably) and there will be no “upgrade” path – as we’ve seen with all the Apple “app stores.”
So, if Apple does get features added to FCPX that makes it interesting for those who either a) weren’t using FCP to begin with (possible the current case for a lot of FCPX target users) b) people using competing products (probably not the case with 1.0) c) people who were using FCS but did not upgrade – it’s not like anyone looses by waiting.
As for Premiere as an option, if it’s not one now, it will become one.
Should part of one’s workflow involves Photoshop Extended, Illustrator and After Effects, it’s like you get Premiere and Encore for free. That’s how we got it, and that’s how we started experimenting with it. We were pleasantly surprised.
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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger -
[Chris Kenny] “I’m not sure why so much time has been spent discussing FCP X’s lack of ‘real’ video output, when there is good reason to believe this feature will be added.”
Of course.
Honestly. Stop. People are taking pot shots at a software company and its product…you’re relentlessly taking pot shots at people…yes, why are they wasting everyones time talking about a missing feature that honestly should have been vocalized “we won’t be adding this feature until Lion” before release, but wasn’t… to which they would still complain of course: why release it before Lion…to which you would respond with another endless round of posts saying it was their strategy to release it before the transition so people can run it on both and yadda yadda yadda excuse excuse and we “don’t get it” and buy stock in ebay 😉
Good god
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[Chris Kenny] “I have no idea if Apple’s current utilization of ColorSync is up to the task, but better computer displays commonly have a wider gamut than Rec. 709 these days.”
I specifically said in the post you responded to that hardware-calibrated wide gamut monitors would offer better accuracy than soft-calibrated 8-bit displays.
[Chris Kenny] “There is no fundamental technical reason they cannot display accurate video color.”
Black levels vary wildly on standard computer displays. This is a fundamental technical reason why they may not accurately display video color. It’s inherent in the panel, and you can’t fix it with color management.
But unless you have appropriate lighting and environment color, this is all moot anyway.
[Chris Kenny] “I’m not sure why so much time has been spent discussing FCP X’s lack of ‘real’ video output, when there is good reason to believe this feature will be added.”
Because it’s not here now, we don’t know when it’s coming, and Matrox has said the hooks don’t exist. Color issues aside, until proper video monitoring is here, how can you monitor for field issues or use external scopes?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “I specifically said in the post you responded to that hardware-calibrated wide gamut monitors would offer better accuracy than soft-calibrated 8-bit displays.”
Err… it sounded like the “wide gamut monitors” you were referring to were something other than ColorSync-calibrated computer displays. Reading it again, I’m still not entirely sure I understand your position.
[Walter Soyka] “Black levels vary wildly on standard computer displays. This is a fundamental technical reason why they may not accurately display video color. It’s inherent in the panel, and you can’t fix it with color management.”
If by “black levels” you mean the physical luminance of full black, this varies widely across displays and projectors in general, even professional gear, especially across different device types. I don’t see this being a major problem.
[Walter Soyka] “Because it’s not here now, we don’t know when it’s coming, and Matrox has said the hooks don’t exist.”
Any hooks would be in AV Foundation, not FCP X itself, and AV Foundation was private in Snow Leopard, so of course the hooks didn’t exist. We’ll probably find out in the next week or two if Lion has changed that, or if Apple is still working on this aspect of AV Foundation.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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A big thing is if you make a living as a free lance FCP editor then you know as soon as Apple made the announcement that the clock is ticking for how long that will be a valuable skill and that you’d better at least start taking a look and figure out what direction you are going to go.
Apple defined FCPX very clearly as a MAYBE. It already had been one for the last couple of years with it’s shortcomings becoming more and more clear but we had hope that with the new release we could all relax as the new FCP would fix all of that and give FCP years more as a dominant player. They couldn’t have gone more in the opposite direction of what many people had wanted. For myself I wanted the old FCP timeline but with the performance of PPro.
But sure I will still do work in FCP as long as people pay me to but the clock is definitely ticking. And I have spoken to some pretty big management types in broadcast and they already are not seeing FCPX as part of their future plans and are also looking at the alternatives. Now’s not the time to wait.
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Nobody’s stopping you from playing with your new keyboard but your analogy kind of says FCPX is innovation when in reality it’s experimentation as it’s a new theory about how editing should be done and it is laregly unknown as to how well it will do or stick. To bet that FCPX will succeed if you are a freelance editor and so not bother brushing up on other software would be an extremely risky thing to do.
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Chris, I’m following you into the woods again. Color management is a good thing, but it cannot replace traditional monitoring in all workflows (see my comments below).
But this is all off-topic. The question is, why is there a sense of urgency around the transition?
FCP7 was getting dated. Some editors were only staying with FCP7 because they believed FCP8 would work for them.
Then we got FCPX, and it’s not FCP8. It doesn’t do everything that FCP7 did, and video monitoring is one of the biggies for some editors (including one of the parents of our posts here). Other NLEs have monitoring today, so that makes them better candidates for those workflows.
FCP7 is EOL, and Apple has not provided a migration path. Every FCP user must migrate if they want to move forward. Considering all available options is the prudent thing to do.
FCPX has some great new features which you have been rightly calling attention to, but it’s clearly not right for everyone. It works for some workflows, and it doesn’t work for others. Some people will wait with FCP7, some will jump immediately on FCPX, some will migrate away to another platform and not come back, and some will migrate away and then return when/if FCPX becomes suitable for their workflows.
Why do you care so much how people feel about FCPX to the point where you try to push it on people that it’s clearly inappropriate for, or insist they hold fast on FCP7? If Premiere/MPE or Avid/AMA is a better option for them today than FCP7 is, let them go. As FCPX evolves, they’ll come back if it becomes better suited to their workflows, or if the market mandates them to.
My off-topic thoughts on color and color management follow below.
[Chris Kenny] “Err… it sounded like the “wide gamut monitors” you were referring to were something other than ColorSync-calibrated computer displays. Reading it again, I’m still not entirely sure I understand your position.”
My position is that ColorSync may be better than nothing, but it’s not as good as hardware calibration in the monitor. I’d further suggest that a well-calibrated monitor like an FSI fed by HD-SDI is far simpler solution for many applications.
Have you ever actually tried ColorSync for soft-proofing video? I have. I’ve seen it work well, and I’ve seen it fail. I saw banding in soft proofs on a calibrated monitor in color-managed apps that didn’t exist on the reference monitor. I’m not sure if this was a limitation or failure of the calibrators, the panels, or ColorSync, but the discrepancy was very noticeable. If I had believed the managed computer monitor and introduced some noise to dither the banding, I would have needlessly trashed the real image.
[Chris Kenny] “If by “black levels” you mean the physical luminance of full black, this varies widely across displays and projectors in general, even professional gear, especially across different device types. I don’t see this being a major problem.”
This variation is the reason that reference monitoring exists.
Even if you don’t care about having truer blacks, how about other physical attributes of the display which ColorSync cannot compensate for, like viewing angle color variation and backlight uniformity? Panels and displays that minimize these problems which affect color are expensive.
I love color management, and I think it’s one of the most under-appreciated new features in FCPX — but it will not make $200 monitor perform like a $5000 monitor, it will not allow external signal evaluation, and it does not meet the “FCP has no video output” objection.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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