Andrew Richards
Forum Replies Created
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Attempt at Drawing Parallels
Events are kind of like global bins, since the media lives inside them (logically, if not physically). The big difference is that media is sub-organized entirely by metadata filtered lists instead of spatially by placing media in bins.
Projects in FCPX are a lot like Sequences in legacy FCP. There is essentially one timeline per FCPX Project. Projects must be associated to a default Event to exist at all, but any media from any Event can be used in any Project. The closest analog to legacy FCP I can think of would be to think of FCPX’s Project Library as being like an always-open master project in legacy FCP that you store all your sequences in.
Instead of bins, Events contain Keyword Collections and Smart Collections. With bins in legacy FCP, if you drag a clip into a bin it moved into the bin. In FCPX, when you add a Keyword to a clip, the clip is listed in the corresponding Keyword Collection, but it can also be in other Keyword Collections and still appears at the root of the Event. If you use Gmail and organize your email with Labels, this is much the same principal. Smart Collections let you define a filter that will dynamically fill the Smart Collection with any clip matching the filter. If you’ve ever used Smart Folders in the Finder or Smart Playlists in iTunes, Smart Collections are much the same concept.
You can make Folders in both the Project and Event Libraries. In the case of the Project Library, you are able to create folder trees to organize your Projects much as you would in the Finder. Event Folders can only be used to organize Keyword Collections and Smart Collections. You can’t put media in an Event Folder like you could in a Bin with legacy FCP (cue jeers).
Keywords can tag pieces of a clip, and this essentially replaces subclips.
The Motion tab of the Viewer in legacy FCP is essentially replaced by the Inspector in FCPX. The Inspector is more universal though, and its contents changes contextually depending on what is highlighted. The legacy Filters tab is also replaced with the Inspector for certain contexts.
The Effects tab in the legacy FCP Browser is replaced by the Effects Browser drawer in FCPX. There are dedicated drawers for Titles, Generators, Themes, Transitions, Music & Sound, and Photos. Music & Sound and Photos catch flak for referencing iTunes and iPhoto by default, but the Music & Sound Browser has a pulldown that you can sue to point it at any stock audio library you have on your Mac with search and preview right in the drawer. The Photo Browser also plays with Aperture Libraries.
There is dual monitor support, but no tear-away tabs. You can send either the Event Library or the Viewer to a second display. Everything else is married to the main window.
Speaking of the Viewer, there is only one instead of the old Viewer/Canvas two headed layout. There is a two-up view available when trimming, but it is highly contextual.
Some Relevant Opinions
My chief concern is that a serious workstation will accumulate a lot of Events and Projects and having the system always showing them all the time seems like it could eventually overwhelm the application. But I haven’t seen this happen, and it probably would depend a lot on how much RAM the host Mac has and how fast the storage is. Regardless, I submitted a feedback requesting a way to hide Projects and Events in a more elegant manner than the current workaround.
I don’t think a dedicated Viewer/Canvas is essential (many around here vehemently disagree with me). I do say Apple needs to be more liberal with the two-up view available for trimming operations and expand it to be available any time the Precision Editor is engaged. I have submitted this as a Feedback request as well.
There ought to be a way to turn off GUI animations, some of them are quite gratuitous.
I like how dragging Projects and Events from drive to drive within FCPX facilitates passing work among multiple computers or editors. Now they just need to enable shared Event and Project Libraries on shared storage…
I like how color correction is not a filter, but rather a core adjustment for any clip (like scale or opacity).
In general, I like the idea of a GUI that morphs to suit the context of the work being done at any given time.
Best,
Andy -
[Chris Jacek] “Well, I think that’s the point. Their bread is no longer buttered with FCP, or even their keyboard-based computers any more. I think you can argue that their handheld devices have given Apple more success than any of their “computers,” even the Macintosh. So it only makes sense that the bulk of their R&D go to their biggest money-makers. FCP is probably more of a “hobby” to pull a Steve Jobs phrase from the past. “
FCP, like all OS X apps Apple produces, exists to sell Macs. Nothing else. And Apple is selling a lot of Macs. FCP and the rest of the Pro Apps products were never acquired/created/maintained for any other reason. To borrow your idiom, FCP is the butter, along with Aperture, iLife, etc. The Mac has always been the bread, and that hasn’t changed.
Even in the good old days of FCP5/6 (2005-2008), the iPod was at least as big a business for Apple as the Mac.
Best,
Andy -
No, there is no authoring tools in FCPX for DVD or BD. You can burn off simple pop’n’play discs but nothing more. Adobe Encore is an alternative. I’ve never used it so I can’t offer an opinion on it.
Best,
Andy -
If you are timing clips to music, put the music on the Primary Storyline and attach the video to the audio. You can make a Secondary Storyline out of those video clips to be able to deal with transitions.
Best,
Andy -
That might work for certain workflows with certain cameras, but iMovie doesn’t have as broad codec support as FCPX and also doesn’t handle timecode (AFAIK). Maybe iMovie will inherit some new features like that via AVFoundation whenever it goes 64 bit (iMovie ’12?).
Best,
Andy -
Or you could read about how the genesis of iMovie ’08 was as a logging tool called First Cut.
Best,
Andy -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “Jobs looked at the touchscreen tests and simply said – ‘this can be a phone’.
That’s gone. that was the last jobs insight.
Tim Cook is a manager, phil schiller is phil schiller, and Jony Ives is running out of braun. apple is running out of steam. Once Steve Jobs disengages we’re going to see a very weird repeat of the middle management clawing its way to the top and realising that there’s nothing there – there is only the room where Steve Jobs used to be. “I understand your argument to be that this whole FCP debacle would never happen with Steve Jobs fully engaged. I say:
Either the conventional wisdom around here about Apple not caring about the pro market because they don’t need it in the face of massive iOS device sales is true, and that goes all the way to the top, or it isn’t. Apple started down the path to gutting FCP at least as far back as 2008, and if Jobs gets credit for all of the iPhone and iPad’s success during that same time, he is also behind FCP’s sea change.
Apple has had a rocky 12 months when it comes to PR (Antenna-gate, Location-gate, this whole mess). But what hasn’t happened is suffering sales. There is still a shipping delay on iPad 2 orders since they can’t keep them in stock. The 3G iPhone 4 is over a year old and is still the top selling smartphone in a 4G world. If Apple is showing signs of losing its rudder, it isn’t showing up where it counts yet.
Either this whole FCP apocalypse is a direct outcome of Apple no longer needing or caring about the pro market and everything is going according to plan, or this is a taste of what Apple will look like post-Jobs. It can’t be both. If this outcome is intentional and anticipated (and I say it is), it was ultimately Steve’s decision.
Best,
Andy -
Oops, you’re right. Import is limited, rendering is selectable per Project.
Best,
Andy -
This is a presales opportunity as much as a support opportunity. I often look up user manuals prior to buying products to dig deeper than the marketing often goes.
Best,
Andy -
I stand corrected! Good to know.
Best,
Andy