Andrew Richards
Forum Replies Created
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[Robert Brown] “Having the computer scan and organize your footage for you is a gimmick – although it may be useful at times, but there will NEVER be a replacement for seeing the footage with your own eyes.”
This is not at all what I meant. By metadata, I meant the editor tagging clips or ranges of clips as good, bad, whatever. My understanding of a selects reel is a string out of good clips to reference when looking for a shot. Such a technique is superseded by user-generated metadata marking clips as good, bad, whatever. I’m arguing selects reels are an outmoded organizational workflow in the context of FCPX or any other metadata-centric tool.
Best,
Andy -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “they’re probably going to want to look at source, selects and monitor aren’t they? Or at least, that’s what that oscar winning editor chappie said in variety – no source monitor, no dice.”
You mean this? He actually talks about having three monitors, which I guess means Viewer/Canvas/External, but the External is always mirroring whichever is active between the Viewer or Canvas, so it isn’t really three monitors if one is always mirroring another. I guess since I’m more of an engineer than an editor, I don’t fully understand the need for a persistent source monitor. Are you regularly playing back the two simultaneously, ganged? I never used that technique, and I’m interested in knowing why it is essential for feature work.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “Also another film editor made the point on this forum that on a typical duration film selects reel, the skimmer becomes completely unusable.”
Selects reel? Swimming upstream. This is what metadata is for. Unless the cam op is not stopping record on cut, the clips off the camera will be short by nature. Like I said, non-celluloid workflows are much closer to the pin.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “I think if one were a film editor one would say pretty unequivocally that FCPX is not fit for purpose.”
Today it isn’t. Saying it never will be is pretty bold. Unlikely? Fine. Never? I’ll take that bet.
Best,
Andy -
[David Battistella] “open FCP legacy”
Given that Apple has categorically stated they won’t be doing this, it is highly unlikely they’d do a 180 and deliver this feature. Certainly not in the first update.
My hunch is that Apple decided project translation into FCPX Event/Project combinations can’t be done to their own UX standards, but I don’t see any reason a third party couldn’t come up with a good-enough solution using the forthcoming AXEL XML API. Lots of assumptions would need to be made in terms of how to construct a magnetic timeline from a legacy timeline’s EDL, but I think a reasonable facsimile timeline could be extrapolated and then left to the editor to take the rest of the way to magnetic nirvana.
You might even get a range of tools that can do this, from the cheap and simple using legacy FCP XML to the expensive and complicated that can read legacy .fcp binaries and let the user define what assumptions are made in the extrapolation.
Best,
Andy -
[David Roth Weiss] “Never gonna happen.”
Never is a long time…
You’re probably right about Murch and the Coens, but some high-profile talent will use it on a major feature. Perhaps a Fincher or Jackson movie shot on EPIC, handled digitally from sensor through distribution? When you shed all the legacy celluloid requirements, the feature pipeline gets a lot more FCPX-friendly. It obviously can’t be done on 10.0, but maybe 10.1 or 10.2.
(PS, before anyone jumps on me for those version numbers thinking I mean minor updates, those are going to be how major revs are delineated, just like OS X. It says so in the EULA.)
Best,
Andy -
I could see FCPX becoming a sort of clustered MAM in and of itself. If there were a way to share Events (like on a SAN or NAS), with multiple users interacting with the keyword metadata and clip metadata, you would essentially have a sort of MAM right there. If there are XML hooks for shared events, third party software could conceivably read or even interact with that metadata in all sorts of interesting ways. All of that is pie in the sky at this point, but that is what I’m hoping happens…
Tweeted rumors from the recent London event indicated that a handful of MAM developers are already getting early access to FCPX’s hooks, whatever they may be.
Best,
Andy -
[luigi tadiotto] “you can create your custom project without wasting space from your Hard drive”
Bear in mind that disk images still consume real capacity. You are creating a virtual file system, but it still takes up space on its host.
Best,
Andy -
Tuck the backup somewhere other than the root of the drive (like in a “Backup” folder) and it shouldn’t latch onto them.
Best,
Andy -
[Bill Dawson] “Except that…Thunderbolt is a PCIe 4 lane version 1”
On copper cables, yes. But as this Anandtech article reveals, there are actually four duplex 10Gbps channels on all but the new MacBook Air, which has half as many.
The limits on a single copper TB cable are just a hair above PCIe 1.0 4x, but the controllers can handle much more, even in this first rev. I could imagine a TB breakout box that has four discrete 10Gbps ports. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Optical 100Gbps is coming, once they sort out manufacturing them economically enough to be marketable.
Best,
Andy -
The same thing they thought about floppy drives when they introduced the iMac.
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “Of course, I agree! Isn’t that the point of this thread? That Apple is more interested in offering a thinner, lighter laptop with mass market appeal than a high-spec laptop suitable only for professionals who need the power?”
I took the point of the thread to be whether we could read into a thinner MBP as disinterest in the “pro” market. I maintain Apple has always pushed the thinnest, lightest MacBook Pro/PowerBook it could produce while keeping them competitively powerful, so they aren’t changing direction by doing more of that. Maybe there is a niche market they are not entering (remember netbooks?), but I wouldn’t see that as a market abandonment (your modular G3 PowerBook notwithstanding).
But we essentially agree, so why am I still posting?? 😛
Best,
Andy