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With Great Sadness……
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Well Don, thanks a lot for writing my post for me – seriously.
Mine was going to be titled, “X eats it’s own children”When I got some sleep and recovered from my latest X disaster I was going to write what you did, almost verbatim – except “past my bedtime” actually meant almost 72 hours with no sleep.
Through it’s endless stream of bugs and crashes (remember I went for about 4 months without X crashing once before 1.0.3.) I dreamed of FCP7…sh*t I was dreaming of a circa 1980, linear, cable access facility.
Anyway, for the second project in the last three weeks, the “X Factor” (my new expression for the consideration one must have before risking serious work in this program) corrupted my projects, media and drive.
I have a project that’s been in edit for 4 months that is so corrupt that apparently anything associated with it is also wrecked.
It’s almost impossible to imagine how often and how many things will crash this turd, and then the impossible things that it does to your work and files.We got the film and two part TV campaign out through the worst professional/technical situation I’ve ever had to work through – and I’ve been in this business for a long time and could write a horror novel on just those types of stories.
I’ve never encountered, even in the earliest pioneer days of NLEs, the kind of bugs, corruption, lack of responsiveness of this mess of a program.
It literally chokes on simple titles over a properly resed photo. At times, it would take 15 minutes to render a 12 frame dissolve. And none of that begins to describe what it did to our work.Randy would not have wanted to be at Imagination Farm this weekend.
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[Steve Connor] “I’m not saying give Apple a break at all,I’m just saying that as a professional I know that any software that is 100% new code is not going to be reliable straight out of the gate, whether it’s Apple or any other Developer, “
Except, to Lance’s point, they called it version 10.
I hadn’t thought it before Lance brought it up, but when Premiere Pro rebooted from Premiere, they called it version 1. The previous version of Premiere was 6.5. It took another 11 years to get BACK to the soon-arriving version 6.
When Avid rebooted Media Composer with Adrenaline, that’s what they called it. The previous version of Media Composer was 11. The current version of the new code is, coincidentally enough v.6, ten years AFTER version 11.
This is how “any other developer” handles it — if it’s brand new, they call it brand new. Why shouldn’t they? New stuff is good news, right?
So if you want the consideration that should quite reasonably be given to version 1.0 software, name it 1.0. Otherwise, you set up a quite reasonably higher expectation. But Apple doesn’t want you to think of it like 1.0. Move the decimal place. They want you to think of it as 10. Says so in plain sight.
Another example of a problem Apple created for themselves. If they had spent as much time talking about it as we just have here, they could have avoided it.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine -
[Tim Wilson] “Except, to Lance’s point, they called it version 10. “
They called Quicktime X, version 10, too, and look where that got us, in that case, at least they left version 7 behind and kept updating it. (Weird little tangental there).
[Tim Wilson] “This is how “any other developer” handles it — if it’s brand new, they call it brand new. Why shouldn’t they? New stuff is good news, right?”
I agree. Back on June 21st many of us thought it shouldn’t be called Final Cut Pro, but something new entirely. It does fit in to their OSX scheme, though. I don’t know.
It would be weird to have two final cut v1. At least Premiere changed to Premiere Pro.
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[Tim Wilson] “So if you want the consideration that should quite reasonably be given to version 1.0 software, name it 1.0. Otherwise, you set up a quite reasonably higher expectation. But Apple doesn’t want you to think of it like 1.0. Move the decimal place. They want you to think of it as 10. Says so in plain sight.
Another example of a problem Apple created for themselves. If they had spent as much time talking about it as we just have here, they could have avoided it.”
Absolutely true, Apple’s second biggest mistake after dumping FCS3 was calling it Final Cut Pro 10, but what I’m trying to say is that despite what the marketing schmucks decided to call it, the fact is that it’s well known that it’s a version 1.0 software then you are at best naive if you think that it would be anything but buggy in it’s early stages of life. Especially so if you lived through the early years of FCP
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
[Jim Giberti] “Anyway, for the second project in the last three weeks, the “X Factor” (my new expression for the consideration one must have before risking serious work in this program) corrupted my projects, media and drive.”
Blimey that’s serious! Did it corrupt the backup’s to?
Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor -
[Michael Sanders] “Blimey that’s serious! Did it corrupt the backup’s to?
“Well by the time I realized how bad it was I wasn’t able to work with any version that had al of the graphics and CCing and mastered audio.
It was a mess. I’m just now, having seen the project make it to the airport and with some sleep, about to drag one of the versions of the film project back into the project folder and see if there’s anything I can do with it.
Here’s how bad it was.
Everything, the whole edit and all finishing was done in a lovely organized Primary and a few neatly organized Compound Clips.
All that needed to be done was to add a stack of names in order to customize the film for different dealers around the country.
The promotional film, TV campaign, radio campaign and magazine campaign were all going on branded thumb drives to be given out after the showing at the big dealer conference.That was it – the last piece of months of work from our shop, all we needed was to output lot’s of versions of a 2:30 second promotional film for their showrooms and websites. It was a dealer name and url on a PS graphic. Two freaking layers over Pro Res footage.
If I try and open any version of the project now, with just those 5 seconds of graphics at the back, it will open fine, but the moment you try and click anywhere in the “timeline” the program freezes and crashes.
Say what you will, but I’ve never experienced this level of damage or instability from any version of any program we’ve ever run.
If it were a drug, the FDA would pull it from the shelves.
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Hey Jim Giberti I had a similar problem with a project. I discover it was a some type of corrupt graphic element at the end of the edit. So I simply removed it and recreate it and everything worked fine.
Here’s one successful story out all the frustrating stories. A feature I’m working on that I transferred to X from 7. Just Won Best Feature Film at Uptown Film Festival. The crazy thing is I did a crazy reorder scene edits, scene trims, and some sound work 3 days before the screening. Moving scenes around like flash card. X with it’s compound clips worked wonderfully. I don’t think I would have completed that tasks of edits on 7 as fast. Of course, I needed to sleep afterwards.
Again I may have just been lucky on my FCPX journey so far. I’m sure I’ll be back to bitch about X as soon as I run into a wall.
Happy editing all!
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Jim,
I am so sorry…… You were one of the most positive advocates for X just a few short months ago. I was very encouraged reading your posts about the program.
The bottom line is this….. and I will use a dreaded analogy. I want X to succeed. I like it; I want my daughter to learn to drive, and I am teaching her. She’s not ready for Interstate 30, and X is not ready to be trusted to the big projects. I am looking forward to both the daughter driving and the software to fly.
(I am also waiting with baited breath to see what Premiere 6 looks like!)
don walker
texarkana, texasJohn 3:16
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[Don Walker] “You were one of the most positive advocates for X just a few short months ago. I was very encouraged reading your posts about the program.”
When the program works it has some great features, but it’s glaringly unrefined.
I’m actually stunned by how slow it is in almost every way since the “upgrade.
I can’t open a project or move to the open program without the mandatory beachball greeting.The program itself must be corrupt at this point because I’m not exaggerating when I say 15 minutes to render a 12 frame dissolve.
It was fun learning it but it’s been a disaster professionally speaking.
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[Don Walker] “(I am also waiting with baited breath to see what Premiere 6 looks like!)
“At this point they have my undivided attention.
And from a production standpoint, it couldn’t possibly interface with Motion worse than fcpx, so nothing lost there.
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