Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Oliver Peters] “Except there are some houses that have gone FCP7 to PPro and then to MC because of issues with PPro in a shared environment. For all it’s clunkiness, MC still rocks in large collaborative workflows. And yes, people have developed workarounds with FCPX and PPro, but it simply isn’t the same.”
Certainly if you switch to a product that doesn’t work well for you you’ll most like switch again as soon as possible. My meaning was more along the lines of people that switched and were generally happy with where they ended up.
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[Scott Witthaus] “I have always thought that Apple really didn’t care about “switchers”.”
I don’t think Apple cares about anybody. 😉
I agree that Apple obviously wasn’t shooting for the demographic of ‘dyed-in-the-wool, been editing 60hrs a week for the past 20 years’ editors, but there are a lot of people that had to edit as part of their other duties and things like FCP Legend or Avid weren’t designed with them in mind. When X came out I think many people in that situation were like “Oh, God thank you, this is so much better for me than what I have been using.”
But on the flip side there are certainly features that have been added to X that are aim more towards the ‘dyed-in-the-wool, been editing 60hrs a week for the past 20 years’ editor than the person that just edits occasionally.
All in all, in true Apple fashion they do whatever the hell they want and if you like it you buy it and if you don’t you don’t.
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[Bill Davis] “It totally does if A) what you thought you needed, turned out NOT to actually be what you needed as much in the new system – or B) if your sense of “loss” was more emotional than practical. “
And if my aunt had a penis she’d be my uncle (or my transgender aunt). 😉
We are talking about similar yet different things (actual needs vs perceived needs). Both are certainly part of the ‘problem’ though actual needs need to be addressed externally (Apple adds the functionality, a third party adds the functional, the editing situation changes and a need is no longer a need, etc.,.) while perceived needs can be addressed by the individual (they learn there is a different way to skin the cat).
[Bill Davis] “And provided those same editors a clever new, easier and more fluid way to do multicam than the industry had seen before.”
Did it? I know PPro and X’s multicam functions similarly though I don’t have the timeline for both memorized.
[Bill Davis] “The haters just moved on to some other aspect. Again, and again, and again. “
And they always will which is why I question why you keep trying to apply logic to an illogical situation and then wonder why you aren’t getting the results you think you should be getting. For many people it boils down to the mindset of “it’s *not* the product I’ve chosen to support therefore it most certainly is inferior to the product I *have* chosen to support.” Just the other day on a FB group some asked about PPro vs Avid for an upcoming project and it didn’t take long for the discussion to go the way of “Premiere sucks. It’s unfit for professional use. Just go with Avid.” The timing was unintentionally hilarious considering Deadpool and Hail, Caesar just game out (Deadpool is very entertaining BTW).
But it is what it is and, like the law of the conservation of energy, it’s just going to morph into different things but it will never go away.
[Bill Davis] “The ONLY difference, is that we became X editors because we eventually accepted the program the way it ACTUALLY was – rather than focusing all our energy on to how it COMPARED to where we were coming from.”
Same can be said for any NLE or piece of software for that matter. When I help move people to new NLEs my first piece of advice is to pretend you’ve never used an NLE before. If you bring previous NLE baggage with you it’s just going to make the switch harder. I think learning your second NLE is harder than learning your first, but after you know two learning 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever is much easier.
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[Oliver Peters] “I follow this same process in Avid, FCP “classic” and Premiere. Have for years. It’s a great way to finesse your audio.
“Me three on the adding of 2-3 frame dissolves on dialog edits. I’ve done it for as long as I can remember.
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[Bill Davis] “AND at the same time it lost those things it SIMULTANEOUSLY had introduced brand new and EXTREMELY exciting concepts – that some of us with a bit of foresight – were quite happy to temporarily trade for what was lost.”
But if it lost what you needed then it doesn’t really matter what it added. That goes directly to the comment of “well it got better over time” which means it gained back functionally that person X needed and if it would’ve launched w/said functionality the person probably would been more receptive to it. If the person had said that X sucks today as much as it did at launch *that* would’ve been a truly nonsensical, irrational statement.
In my case, when X launched I did a lot of multicam work, color grading for broadcast (meaning preview quality video-out wasn’t acceptable) and I finished shows to tape. It didn’t matter how cool I thought things like the metadata improvements or background process were because I needed multicam, baseband video out and finishing to tape for my day to day operation. X could’ve cooked me breakfast and driven me to work and it still wouldn’t have mattered because it was missing functionality that was core to my workflow at the time. As X got better so did Avid and Premiere Pro (and Resolve) and if I had to guess I’d say that people that switched from FCP 7 to Avid or PPro are less likely to switch again so soon to another NLE.
I’m totally with you about the never ending bitching (I still run across people that complain about FCP Legend) which is why I typically ignore the perpetual bitchers.
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[Mathieu Ghekiere] “I know you didn’t ask me, but as another casual user: I like Backblaze.”
Thanx Mathieu, I’m always game for real world feedback!
-Amdrew
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[Bill Davis] “It’s amusing to me that the best the early haters can now do is say that “well, it wasn’t at good then as it is now.” Which is EXACTLY the truth about EVERY NLE. Period.”
That totally misses the point and you know it. X was missing many features that had become ‘common place’ in pro NLEs when Apple launched it and that fact plus the simultaneous pulling of FCP 7 from store shelves led to much of the ire. If Apple wouldn’t have pulled FCP 7 I think people would have been more forgiving of X’s short comings or if Apple would have launched X with things like multicam, FCP Legend project importing, OMF, full quality baseband video out, Send to Motion (sorry, couldn’t resist), etc., I think people would have been less pissed about FCP 7 getting yanked.
I guess another way to look at this would be if your choice of NLE today was capped at what was available in 2011 which one(s) would you choose? I’d take FCP 7 or whatever version of Avid was around at the time. Neither X nor PPro 5.5 were at points where I would pick them for day in and day out use.
Speaking of all NLEs getting better, in the earlier days of X’s life many of its supports would say, “It’ll get better” when people pointed out missing features and my response to those supporters was similar to yours here, Bill. Of course X is going to get better. And so will Avid and Premiere and Resolve, etc.,. To me the question never was “Will X get better?” because of course it will get better (whether or not it gets good enough for person X, Y or Z is another matter). The question I had was, “Will X get better fast enough to get people to consider it over NLEs like Avid or PPro which will also continue to get better (and which people might already be using or are more predisposed to use)”?
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[Bill Davis] “The Inside Out verses Outside In thing is an Interesting way to look at it, anyway.”
I wouldn’t consider the specialist vs generalist balancing act by NLEs anything new though. For example, I think that PPro and FCP (both Legend and X) seem to have always existed in the realm of NLEs that had ‘good enough’ compositing, audio mixing, etc., to meet the needs of many editors. As opposed to Avid which sitll seems more weighted in the ‘offline’ world and Resolve and Smoke which are trying to expand beyond being online/finishing tools.
Apple obviously ditched its suite concept when it launched X (which makes sense given X’s primary demographic) but on the flip side it would be nuts for Adobe not to try to leverage connectivity between its major apps (it’s not like AE or PS is going to get killed off like Apple Color or DVD SP). With that being said, Adobe is still incorporating features from AE and Speed Grade into PPro so they are simultaneously allowing you to do more inside PPro while also increasing the connectivity it has with other Adobe applications. A caveat to what I just being that, AFAIK, there were no improvements with connectivity between PPro and SG in the 2015 version which, coupled with the enhanced color grading features added to PPro 2015, suggests that the continued development/existence of SG might be up in the air (as I’ve stated in other threads, it’s got to be exceedingly difficult for SG to gain traction when Resolve is free and already so well established).
Of course too much vs too little functionality changes on a user by user basis and that’s the difficult part of software makers. Too many features and some users will complain about bloat and feature creep and too few features and some users will complain that the software isn’t useful enough.
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[Neil Goodman] “Cant tell if Bill is being serious or not.”
This one’s for you, Neil.
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[Walter Soyka] “Good point — I was looking at this from the Backblaze user’s POV, because I’m a Backblaze user. “
Out of curiosity how do you like Backblaze? I’m on the fence between them and CrashPlan. I’m leaning towards CrashPlan because their FamilyPlan option will be cheapper annually compared to BackBlaze which doesn’t have any ‘bundle’ pricing as far as I know (I have 5 Macs I’ll need to backup). Both services seem very well reviewed and, to me, it doesn’t seem like there is really a wrong decision to make.
