Why Wait For X To Evolve?

[Daniel Annefelt]

[David Cherniack] “Sounds like hedidn’t have max render quality checked on export of if he had effects on the clips, that “Render at maximum bit depth” wasn’t turned on… Or he had “Use Previews” turned on.
David
AllinOneFilms.com”

Ah! The ‘Render at maximum bit depth’ check box.
I’ve always checked that in Media Encoder but never had a clue what it does.
Nor why it should be turned off by default. Anyone care to educate me?
(I mean, it sounds cool – like Turbo Quality™ or something. Probably could charge extra for it.)

regards
.-daniel

Daniel Annefelt
Producer, Creative & Design
MTV Networks North

[Geert Van den berg]

[David Cherniack] “Sounds like hedidn’t have max render quality checked on export of if he had effects on the clips, that “Render at maximum bit depth” wasn’t turned on… Or he had “Use Previews” turned on. “

If you had carefully read my post, you’d seen that I mentioned that I had those checked!

[Geert Van den berg]

[Kevin Monahan] “I’m sorry you didn’t get your answers on the Cow’s Premiere Pro forum regarding your image quality issue. I’m not sure what happened as we have many experts and even a few Adobe staff members hanging around there. I recommend a re-post if you wish to get it solved. When I see it, I’ll be sure to draw some experts to your answer.”

I will surely do that if we get the bundles in, then I can continue testing this, as I am very fond of the titling tools in Premiere.

[James Mortner]

@Kristin Perfectly illustrates the difference between pretending to care about users and actually doing something to help them, eh ?

[Greg Burke]

“…you don’t have to do anything, It just works……”

an Apple Quote

-_-

I wear many hats.
http://www.gregburkepost.com

[Mark Morache]

I feel like we’re going in circles. It’s Groundhog day again. Every day I wake up thinking there will be new posts, and it’s the same old thing.

I’ve gone through the stages of grief with FCX. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. My problem is that once I get to acceptance, I start editing a project and go through the entire cycle all over again.

Apple did a stupid thing. Several stupid things. However, their new product is fairly amazing. In my opinion, it gets us closer to performing the “final cut” within the single app than the legacy version. FCP7 had dodgy audio effects, weak scopes and color tools. Between the powerful audio effects, the scopes and the ability to create our own looks in motion, this fairly rocks.

I’m convinced that they want this new product to be a product for pros. Does the casual user really need red support? XML export? High-end logic effects? Sub-frame audio editing? Multi-track export? Professional broadcast monitor support?

I’m also convinced that calling this Final Cut 10 is completely false advertising. This isn’t iMovie, but it’s also not FCP. This is version 1 of a brand new software that will hopefully not take 10 years to get us back to where we were with FCP7. It WILL take time to evolve. It will probably take lots of time.

After 3 months, we got back the ability to export multiple tracks, and some bug fixes, but no movement on the litany of things the pros want and need to do their jobs. I like roles, but I was hoping for so much more. Even with the bug fixes, I’m still getting crashes.

Honestly, I could be very happy working between FCP7 and FCX except for one thing. If my edit starts stalling in X, I have no way of finishing in 7 or vice versa. I never had that worry with the FCP upgrades, because they always added features, never taking them away.

I’m still using X. I love the speed of the basic editing. I really enjoy the skimmer, and even the filmstrip view. I like the keywords, and the ease of filtering the clips with the search box. I love the timeline index. I never want to go back to converting everything to prores before I edit it.

I still believe they could have added this all to FCP7 without the giant paradigm shift, and they would have left the other NLEs in the dust. As it is, I’m trying to imagine how to explain to other editors in my shop why it’s worth the headache of learning a new paradigm, if the application can’t do many of the things we need it to do without many awkward workarounds and added efforts.

Apple said they will add multicam in early 2012, along with professional broadcast monitoring. At this rate, I figure it will be 2016 before I see things get close to where they were before June 21.

Meanwhile, I’m still using FCX as well as FCP7. I purchased Creative Suite 5.5 while it’s half price, but haven’t started learning it in earnest. I expect that shortly after the price goes back up, a new version will come out, and by the time I spend the money to upgrade I’ll be close to the price of the new product.

Try X. If you like it, use it. If you don’t, keep using 7, or bite the bullet, curse Apple and start learning PP or Avid. I don’t expect Apple will ever go back and give us FCP8. They will lose lots of customers, who will spend lots of money switching over their systems. They will also continue to improve their new little monster, and probably gain alot of new customers as well.

In my opinion, Apple demonstrated contempt and disrespect with their brash dismissal of tracks and their unwillingness to speak about what they did, forcing us to worry about what to do to keep our futures safe. However, there are many things about X that delight me, and bring the fun back to my editing process. There are at least as many things that frustrate me and make me take more time to do things that were simple and straightforward in 7.

To put it bluntly: She may be a bitch, but man is she ever hot.

———
FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.

Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com