[Andy Lewis]

“Integration between PPPro and After Effects is terrific – just like the Motion to Final Cut Pro 7 integration worked way back when – you make a change over there – it shows up here”

Is this an accurate description of dynamic link? I’m not sure why but I always found FCP7’s integration with Motion to be slightly unnerving and… unsatisfying. Perhaps that’s just my own psychological problem, or maybe I had (now forgotten) problems in the past. On recent projects I’ve rendered stuff out of Motion and imported it.

Given that people have been raving about dynamic link, I assumed it was a different (and better) beast. Is it?

[Andy Lewis]

Come on Adobe!
I want a timeline as good as FCP7’s and trimming as good as MC6.

[Andy Lewis]

I think those saying “It’s version 1, remember how buggy the enigma machine was in 1942 etc..” are seriously misrepresenting just how flaky FCPX is.

Software has got steadily better and more reliable over the last 30 years and our standards have risen. It’s still true for me though that FCPX is the buggiest software that I have ever used, by the standards of any era since 1983. That’s pretty amazing.

Admittedly, I haven’t used it since 10.02 but the latest update sounds worse if anything.

On my last job with FCPX, the software slowed to a crawl and had to be restarted every 5 minutes and the titles were all reformatted on every restart.

[Andy Lewis]

The Color interface wasn’t difficult it just looked it, or too many people said it was difficult and spooked the nervous. In my experience, it was an absolute pleasure to use. It was a good example of how an interface can make complex, multistage operations seem simple and intuitive. As a measure of that, I reckon I could have taken over someone else’s long-form Color project halfway through and been able to figure out in 10 minutes what they had done and where they were heading. I couldn’t say the same about FCP7.

My favourite thing about FCP8 is that the full interface of Color (with a few tweaks) is now available as a mode – FCP tools slide out and the Color interface slides in but the timeline stays the same.

Aahhh I can dream, can’t I?

[Andy Lewis]

Thanks Kevin that’s useful stuff.

A practical question for FCPX users:

In FCPX can you do the following without picking up the mouse?:

Select clips in the browser and insert into the timeline (or whatever those things are called now)
….then select edit points and do ripple and roll edits.

[Andy Lewis]

Well I’m trying out Premiere Pro. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about that decision, I have to say. Of all the options, it seemed like the most sensible and least exciting. I thought I knew what was coming – similar to FCP7 but clunkier and faster.

And it is exactly that. What I underestimated was just how wonderful it is to have all kinds in the timeline without having to render. It’s… beautiful.

Sadly, after the initial honeymoon I’m back on the clunky side of town. And yes, keyboard shortcuts…

To pick just 2 examples:

Selecting a clip in FCP7:
“X” to place in and out points at start and end of clip
“option-A” to select clip

and

“V” to select nearest edit point

If there are PPro equivalents to these, please let me know cos I can’t find them. Selection is pretty fundamental to any NLE and these core functions appear to be mouse only.

I know the usual advice for learning new software amounts to “stop thinking in the old language and learn the new one.” I’d normally agree, but I really don’t think I want to go back to a way of working that involves moving my hands between the mouse and the keyboard every 10 seconds.

I’m seriously considering having another go at FCPX just for this reason. It’s a Spanish building site at the moment but maybe it will be lovely when it’s finished and the pool’s been filled up.

Are anyone’s fingers flying with joy through the FCPX interface? Or is anyone making better progress with PPro than I am?

[Andy Lewis]

Is high-end (avid) post mostly on mac hardware?

If so, this suggests a different way of looking at FCPX (at least to me, maybe I’m slow).

Either way apple have the high end pretty much sown up in terms of income. They are only vulnerable from the consumer end of the market ie. someone developing a nice, cheap, easy-to-use NLE on windows that completely bypasses the established pro sector and takes over as the industry fragments.

It’s actually struck me before that there don’t seem to be any great options for enthusiastic amateurs on the windows side of things. Vegas? I don’t think so. Maybe just one good piece of software in this area could spread very rapidly and become a standard, and apple are aware of this.

Just brainstormin’

[Andy Lewis]

So Avid is more mouse-driven than FCPX?

[Andy Lewis]

So that’s three better alternatives suggested in a handful of forum posts:

1. A “rooms” model, with a specialised toolset and UI for each task.
2. Better use of space in a single-screen app, with colour wheels instead of the… whatever it is.
3. Full interoperability between software so using Resolve or anything else would be completely painless (admittedly this one is not within apple’s power to solve alone).

My order of preference: 3,1,2

[Andy Lewis]

SPOILER ALERT

“9 mach_msg_server + 539 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff84a7”