[Andrew Kimery]

[Claude Lyneis] “From what I have read, the number of Hollywood movies has dropped from 700 a year to 350 a year in the last 10 years and this has made it difficult for independent film makers. Hopefully, their approach of cutting the number of days shooting will open up the possibilities for more films per year.”

Probably not. From a technical standpoint it probably has never been cheaper or easier to make and distribute a movie than in the past few years. The big reason the number of movies has dropped is because the studios were cranking them out at an unsustainably high rate. There is only so much free time people have and there are more movies, books, TV shows, webisodes, video games, songs, web sites, social media platforms, etc., than ever before all duking it out for those small slivers of free time.

The old adage was everyone in Hollywood had a screenplay (all you need is a typewriter). Then it changed to everyone in Hollywood has a movie (DV and desktop NLEs). Now it’s changed to everyone in Hollywood has distribution (YouTube, Netflix, etc.,). The market is supersaturated with content these days because making content (regardless of quality) is so easy. In 2000 about 3500 films were submitted to Sundance. In 2014 about 12,000 films were submitted. 300 hours (hours!) of new content is uploaded to YouTube everyone minute!

The hurdle these days isn’t getting your movie made, it’s being able to rise above the fray and successfully monetize the movie you made.

[Andrew Kimery]

Yeah, I don’t get why it’s ‘bottom up; instead of ‘top down’ either.

[Andrew Kimery]

Thanks for the link. Very interesting POV especially since in NLE-land there seems to be a lot more ‘flag planting’ in a single app where as in his work (whether at a big studio or at his home office) it appears to be more common to use a variety of specialized apps to get the job done.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Don Walker] “I sometimes wish I could have one of the more prolific FCPX editors on this forum watch me for a couple of days and show me that one little thing, that I’m missing that would bring a huge productivity boost to my workflow.”

Given the combination of knowledgable and friendly users in this form and the state technology today you might be able to find someone who is willing to virtually look over your shoulder as you work (assuming you are okay with screen sharing your computer). I’ve only dipped my toes in the X water otherwise I’d offer to do it myself.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Herb Sevush] ”
I once had a heated argument with an editor who claimed that specialized multicam features were not worth using because he could do it all by layering the angles and blade-ing between them. My argument being that there was not a single situation where this was actually faster and that he was doing his assistants a disservice by teaching them only his method.
“

Depends on the situation, IMO. When I’ve been in news-type situations with a two camera interview plus some broll and I’ve only got an hour or two from ingest to export then I would layer angles on the timeline in FCP Legend or Avid. Using the multicam tools in that scenario is overkill and not the best use of time, IMO.

With PPro (and I assume X too) it’s kinda turned into a non-issue since multicam features are much quicker to get into, as well as more robust, than with FCP Legend or Avid.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Simon Ubsdell] “it occurred to me that there were reasons to do with “comfort” and other such indefinables that meant it was probably best not to insist on a change of practice even where it seemed objectively preferable.”

There is certainly a bit of an ‘art’ to workflow development where the best plan on paper might not be the best plan in reality once you introduce the human element. One of my favorite phrases, which applies to many things including workflow development, is, “It doesn’t have to be logical to make sense.”

For many years I worked for a company where I helped create and manage the workflow pipeline from production to post to archiving and there were about 30-40 ‘end users’ w/varying skill levels (from field producers to editors) whose needs had to be met. I really learned to embrace KISS (keep it simple, stupid) because each step in the process was a chance for something to go wrong. Not only does a workflow have to be organized but it also has to be robust so that when mistakes are made (and mistakes will be made) it doesn’t bring the whole system crashing down.

[Andrew Kimery]

Throwing out general suggestions (especially if someone is asks for guidance) online can be help in a broad sense, but workflows can be so unique that without spending a good deal of time learning the ins and outs of the situation there is just only so much you can help.

Whenever I come into a situation where there are already established workflows I take the time to learn the workflows, learn why the workflows are what they are, learn what has been tried in the past (and why it didn’t catch on) and learn what hasn’t been tried yet. Then, if possible, I’ll start doing some testing/experimenting on my own and if it looks positive I’ll share with others what’ve I’ve been doing and get their feedback.

Sometimes workflow development stops because all other feasible options have been exhausted and sometimes it stops due to ‘workflow fatigue’ (you stop when you find a workflow you like because you are tired of constantly chasing something that might be better).

[Andrew Kimery]

[Ken Bennett] ” Tell me why I should go with FPC X over PP CS6?”

Because PP CS6 is nearly 4yrs old and dead as a doornail. If you want to stay PC then you can also look at Avid and possibly even Resolve and Lightworks.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “You might give a listen to Richard Taylors FCP X Radio Show this week and his interview with Nuno Bernardo who is the CEO of a company that produces a lot of TV work in Europe.

https://fcpradio.com/episode007.html

Thanks Bill, I finally had a chance to finish listening to the podcast. It does sound similar to other profiles I’ve read/heard too at places like FCP.co.

What struck me the most about it was the things they discussed were many of the same things we discuss in this forum. Everything from sought after features such as a roles based mixer to the possibility of Avid-like multi-editor support to questioning Apples commit to the ProApps (and wishing Apple did more publicity to support X). The most serendipitous comments though were about missing features in the early days (such as multicam), how useful being able to force re-link would be, and a desire for Apple to loosen the handcuffs a little bit and give editors more options for control (all things that have been talked about this week alone here in our lovely home away from home!).

It’s funny that the Nuno mentioned starting to cut home movies in X because I just did something similar recently and I have to say out of the box X has the best UI setup while using monitor (especially a small one like on a laptop). With that being said, PPro fits nicely on the 5K iMac i’m using at work right now. And I’m not meaning to insinuate that X is only good for home movies, it’s just an opportunist way for me to get my feet wet right now.

[Bill Davis] “The thing is SOMETHING has to break an editor’s resistance to X, because it’s so easy to simply “imagine” that it’s not going to do what you need it to do.”

Agreed that some disruption or break has to occur to help be a catalyst for change, though t’s not unique to users coming around to X. I saw similar things 13-14 years ago with FCP. Pretty much every Avid shop I worked at had FCP installed on a computer in the corner to mess around with and editors had it on their home systems (who could afford an Avid at home in those days?) but no one ever really considered using it for work until it got more features and something happened for them to think “well, maybe it’s worth giving a shot.”

The Mid 2000’s seemed to be the tipping point for this (at least around LA). FCP became more feature filled, people had been using it on the side and were becoming more comfortable with it, HD was becoming the norm and Avids still cost an arm and a leg. For example, Shane Ross, IIRC, talked a company into using FCP over Avid because they were shooting on P2 and FCP had a much better workflow for P2 cards. I was at a post house that used Avid but they wanted to starting finishing in HD so they bought a single FCP station for that purpose because it was so much cheaper than Avid’s offering at the time. Heck, I had always had Windows computers growing up (even built them as a hobby) but I ended up picking up a Mac just for FCP.

For a more recent catalyst, if Apple had released FCP 8 how many people that switched from 7 to MC or 7 to PPro would’ve still done so? My guess would probably be zero. FCP users would still be imagining that Avid was an ancient, overpriced piece of crap and that PPro was this thing bundled with After Effects that only alcoholic wedding videographers were forced to use because they couldn’t run FCP on their $499 Dell Windoze machine. It’s very telling of Apple’s presence in the NLE market to say that the biggest break Avid and Adobe got in the last 15yrs was Apple EOLing FCP 7.

I found it interesting that Nuno (who sounds like he has a much deeper color grading background than editing background) still prefers using Resolve for color grading. Between ingrained habits and the more nuanced tools that Resolve offers he doesn’t see grading in X as a better option.

Some obstacles are imaginary and some are real.

I used to grade a lot in FCP and Avid because I had no other options (this is before Apple Color and free Resolve) but I eventually became proficient at Apple Color and then going back to grading in an NLE felt incredibly cumbersome. I later acquired a hardware panel to use with Apple Color (a-maze-ing) and then using a keyboard and Wacom to grade in Color felt incredibly cumbersome and grading in an NLE felt downright barbaric. Maybe when I start using X more I’ll have the same feeling with regards to editing. Maybe not. Time will tell.

Though unless we get a time machine and change history (or start an alternate reality timeline) I’m always going to be fairly confident that when X launched it would not have been a good fit at my job at the time where we had a 25 seat Xsan and required things like tape I/O (not FW), quality baseband video out for color grading if using the NLE, round tripping to Color, round tripping to Soundtrack Pro, etc., Later versions of X? Sure, they could’ve been a contender. Like Nuno said, it took a few releases before X started to become really viable (heck, didn’t the Radical Media team run both Legend and X for years and they were on Apple’s In Action page).

[Andrew Kimery]

[Adam Berch] “I start it and it’s taking a very, very long time to do it. I thought making reference files were supposed to take basically no time at all?”

What codec(s) are you working in? References files can only be made with intra-frame codecs like ProRes, DVCPro HD, AVC-I, Avid DNX, Cineform, etc.,. Due to the nature of inter-frame/GOP codecs such has MPEG2, H.264, AVC you can’t make a reference movie with them so FCP will export a QT movie which is probably why it’s taking so long.