Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Bill Davis] “If you devalue my EXPERTISE, you devalue me. Whatever else you do – don’t devalue my expertise, because that means that going forward, I have to complete not on what I have already learned – but what I have to learn anew, and how fast I can learn it.
“That was certainly part of it, but certainly not all of it (or even most of it, IMO). When OS X first came out it was bare bones and Apple kept OS 9 around and once OS 9 went away there was OS 9 compatibility w/in OS X for years. If Apple had dropped OS 9 cold turkey there would have been hell to pay. When iMovie ’08 dropped, customers weren’t pissed because their home movie editing expertise had been devalued, they were pissed because the new version of iMovie had far few features than the existing version of iMovie (and Apple started giving the old version of iMovie away for free as a way to stem the blow back).
With the X launch, if you add up all the parts such as the cold turkey approach to pulling FCP 7 (and most of rest of the suite), the lack of features in X, the inability to go from 7 to X, the lack of a trial version, and the fundamental changes in X you get the nasty fur ball that was the launch of X. The EOLing and removal from the Mac App store of Aperture, by comparison, went smoothly. Was there grumbling? Yes. Was there hurt feelings? Sure. Did the user base go ballistic? Nope. Is anyone going to still be talking about the exact day it happened 5yrs down the road? I highly doubt it.
[Tim Wilson] “But I ESPECIALLY vigorously disagree with the contention that “Other than the few hundred folks in attendance at the nab event all the rest of us heard were rumors.” “
It’s the information that *wasn’t* in the NAB presentation that became the bomb though, Tim. The lack of some pretty standard features at launch, the lack of support for FCP projects, and lack of info that the FCP suite (plus Final Cut Server) would be pulled from store shelves the moment X was launched. Adjust any one of those three things and the X launch goes a lot smoother. It wasn’t just one thing, it was the culmination of many things.
Even Adobe going fully subscription (which obviously pissed a lot of people off) would’ve gone worse if they yanked CS6 from the store the moment they went CC only. When Avid shifted it’s business model starting with MC 8, if you bought an MC 8 license it also worked with MC 6 and MC 7. Everyone seemed to look at the X launch and said, “Well, that went poorly” and has tried to avoid that experience. Even Apple.
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[Shawn Miller] “All true David, but it’s also true that PPro still had a huge stigma attached to the name at the very moment that FCP7 was EOL’d. I actually had two editors get angry with me for even suggesting that they try Premiere Pro as a possible replacement for FCP7 at the time.”
It’s pretty crazy to think that Premiere had been crapped/seen as an ‘also ran’ for nearly 25yrs before it finally started being taken seriously on higher profile projects. I used Premiere 6.5 in the late 90’s/early 00’s and even in the no/low budget world you would get ignore unless you had FCP (or magically had access to an Avid). A big reason I moved from Windows and Premiere to FCP and a Mac is because I couldn’t find any work with Premiere.
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[Herb Sevush] “Other than the few hundred folks in attendance at the nab event all the rest of us heard were rumors, and of all the rumors, none of us heard that Apple would be releasing a program that A) couldn’t open FCP7 files under any circumstances B) was missing a host of essential features for many workflows and C) was discontinuing all sales of FCP7 on the day of X’s release.”
I agree with Herb.
The NAB preview was just sold as just that, a preview of the new features coming in the new version of FCP. It wasn’t until the launch that it was clear that the preview of new features was actually the preview of all the features and that the new, shipping version couldn’t open existing FCP projects, couldn’t do multi-cam, couldn’t do video out, etc.,. That plus FCP 7 getting yanked from the retail outlet was all part of the perfect storm that created the massive blowback Apple got from users. Why would any ‘stock up’ on FCP 7 licenses after the NAB preview when you’ve ALWAYS been able to take projects from old versions of FCP and open them up in a newer version of FCP?
Apple saw the error of their ways and later put copies of FCP 7 back into the retail channel. They also changed their Mac App store policy to allow for a trail version of X to be downloaded. And later, like I mentioned before, they gave a six month warning that Aperture was going to be EOL’d and pulled from the Mac App store. Heck, even Adobe was paying attention which is why they didn’t pull CS6 when the launched CC. Did some people with older copies of Adobe software buy CS6 instead of signing up for CC? Yeah, but that’s a short term loss which is a drop in the bucket compared to the user revolt that would’ve happened if Adobe wouldn’t pulled CS6 from store shelves when they launched CC.
Apple made a similar stumble prior to X and you’d think they would’ve learned from that. When Apple released iMovie ’08 it was a total rebuild that had a new interface and lacked many of the features of the previous version of iMovie (iMovie HD 6). It was universally panned and users were pissed (sound familiar?). Apple’s solution? They gave iMovie ’08 users a free copy of iMovie HD 6. When iMovie ’09 came out (which had restored many of the missing features) the iMovie HD 6 give way ended. I’m not saying Apple should’ve have given away FCP 7, but someone, somewhere in the company should’ve been smart enough to go, “Hey, remember when that iMovie re-boot blew up in our faces? Any ideas on how to avoid that when we launch X?”
It was a combination of decisions that resulted in a tone deaf launch by Apple which, 5yrs later, still reverberates among many long time FCP users. That it could’ve been so easily avoided is what’s always going to stick in my mind, I think.
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[Tim Wilson] “You can (and many of you do) argue that Apple could have extended its glidepath forward, but I continue to maintain that this strategy would have cratered Apple’s business for both products. Sony’s experience isn’t exactly proof, but it’s certainly a perfect case study that this strategy is unsustainable. “
Apple continuing to sell FCP Legend for a few months after the launch of X wouldn’t have harmed the uptick of X, and that’s all that people basically wanted (a heads up and a chance to grab another license of 7 if they needed it). Apple eventually let you order it via phone for a time and I think they learned their lessons which is why they gave Aperture users a warning six months in advance before they pulled the plug.
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[Bill Davis] “Basically, the camera metadata had survived all the way from ingest to editorial to share and eventual download. “
Was it at that point when you regretted using BillRox5000 in the Owner Name ID setting? 😉
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Another variable to throw on this, as if we needed another variable, is the lifespan (for lack of a better term) of the media being used. For example, on many of my projects the media has a pretty finite lifespan (once the show/documentary is delivered it rarely, if ever, gets revisited) so this keeps me inside the NLE for most of my organizational needs because after a few weeks or months it’s all going to get archived and never touched again. The cost/benefit of using an standalone MAM is very low for these types of projects.
On the other hand, I used to work at a company that covered the video game industry (sorta like ESPN but for video games) and at that place almost every piece of media was evergreen. Taking the time to tag/label and track all that media (and they generated a lot of media) had a very high cost/benefit because a clip first used in 2012 could still be very relevant to a project being cut in 2016. During my time there we tracked things using spreadsheets (kinda sucky but better than nothing) and were experimenting with Final Cut Server, but then Apple pulled the plug on that. I think the company (well, parent company) eventually either went with Fork or CatDV.
As we’ve already assessed there is no one single right answer, but there are number of right answers depending on personal need. On a related note, I have been looking for MAM solutions for my evergreen media (SFX, stock video, stock music, etc.,) but to Bill’s point I don’t want to keep jumping between my MAM and my NLE, but on the other hand I just want to organize all my evergreen media once and be done with it. On another related note, I use NeoFinder to keep scan all my internal and external drives so I have an interactive snapshot of what is where (and I store the NeoFinder database files in DropBox so I can pull them up on any machine). External drives seem to propagate like bunnies and NeoFinder helps me keep that madness under control. It’s also helpful for when I’m working offsite and the client ask “Where’s that one thing you said was on the drive?”. I can just look it up in NeoFinder and then relay the location/file path to the client.
-Andrew
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[Duke Sweden] “If you import a 4 gig video file into Premiere Pro, for example, and edit half off, is the file still 4 gigs?”
Yes. All NLEs are nondestructive which means the trimming, color correcting, cropping, etc., you do to a clip in the NLE has no impact on the actual clip that’s sitting on your hard drive. As David said, you aren’t editing the media itself that exists on your computer, you are editing a representation of that media inside your NLE. If you take a picture of your car and cut the picture in half your car still remains in one piece.
[Duke Sweden] “So, is there a way to remove the excess file size when I edit out unwanted pieces of a clip?”
Not really. The closest you can get is if you use the Project Manager in PPro you can tell it to make a copy of your project that does not contain the unwanted pieces of a clip, and then you could delete all your original media so you would just be left with what you have selected as ‘good’. I wouldn’t recommend doing that though.
[Duke Sweden] “Or is it “removed” when I encode with AME?”
When you encode something with AME you are creating a whole new, stand alone clip. You create something new, but the original pieces of media still exist on your computer untouched.
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A bit more detail about how the live Homer was pulled off.
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[Oliver Peters] “Most – many all – NLEs (other than FCP Classic) have no way to actually inject metadata into the media file itself. So while the FCPX methods are very useful, they also only live within the confines of FCPX itself.
“Haven’t had a chance to read the whole thread, but just wanted to do a quick, drive-by posting. PPro can inject metatdat into the media or it can keep the metadata attached to the project. This depends on what settings you start out with and can have unintended consequences. For example, if you are working collaboratively locally (i.e. everyone sharing the same media on a SAN) then having the metadata injected into the clip is probably the best way to go since you don’t have to share project files to share metadata. On the flip side if people are collaborating in different physical locations, but each have a copy of the footage locally, then having the metadata saved to the project file makes more sense than having it saved to the media.
[Jeremy Garchow] ” It is much more fluid and dynamic than bins, at least the way bins work in FCP7 and even Pr.”
PPro has Search Bins which will allow multiple copies of media/sequences to exist in multiple places based on keywords. I think Resolve has a similar function though I haven’t used it recently so I can’t say for sure.
[Bill Davis] “The real magic of the X approach, IMO is that it uniquely adds and manages range-based metadata as well. “
In my very limited time with X I would agree. Ranges are more elegant than sub-clipping and then tagging the sub-clips. Hopefully though there are people smarter than use that can figure out away to, say, turn a range from X into an extended marker in PPro (for example). It’s obviously not a 1:1 correlation in functionality, but it would at least keep the metadata in place.
Metadata ‘lock in’ is what keeps me more attracted to MAM’s than NLEs for thorough metadata management because my NLE usage is so variable. PPro, Avid, (I think FCP 7 has finally been laid to rest in my world), X and potentially even Resolve (as an up and comer). One large company I work with on occasion uses Fork for all incoming media and exports.
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[Tero Ahlfors] “I’ve managed to run everything but the AVCHD codecs natively. It’s a shitty codec.”
AVC-Intra isn’t AVCHD though. Intra is, as the name implies, an intra-frame codec, as opposed to AVCHD is is inter-frame, and it’s largely dealing with inter-frame/GOP codecs that results in the increased processing overhead for playback. And AVC-Intra 4:4:4 is, I believe, a 12-bit codec designed as a mastering/finishing codec so it could be too much for the iMac in question to handle, but not because it’s inherently a bad codec. I mean, ProRes 4444 is more likely to cause a machine to choke and ProRes 422, but that doesn’t mean 4444 is a bad codec.