Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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[Brett Sherman] “Personally I’d love to know about the production workflow of AJ+ or Attn: or any of the other Facebook media creators. Those could also be interesting reads, but I’ve never seen one on Creative Cow. “
Well…
That time a couple of years back I tried to bring a leading young editor doing things differently into the forum, inside a day he got so much pushback from the entrenched thinkers here he basically exited with a “why bother?”
Forums are like neighborhoods. Some are welcoming and make newcomers feel like the regular residents are interested in what the newcomers bring to the conversation. Other neighborhoods kinda make you feel like if you don’t speak the proper language fluently or prepare your meals in the proper way – you’re not really all that welcome.
This place can be a bit like the Hyde Park speakers corner – or maybe more like the scene of the Eminem rap battle in 8 mile. Most folks just lurk because it’s safer that way?
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “FCP legacy would never have become the force it was without professional, marquee users.”
That was true in the late 1990s when editing was a mysterious process done in TV stations and carpeted suites.
But it just hasn’t been that way for decades now.
Video production, even high level production is largly a pretty routine commodity now.
A friend, Don Rumsey cutting on X in Wyoming recently linked me to this public facing piece he worked on.
https://youtu.be/tSf2TV4nrM4Not that long ago, nothing less than a huge corporation could do stuff like this that has what amounts to helicopter shots (now drones) and Hollywood style camera moves throughout. Now it’s pretty commonplace stuff everywhere on the planet from Wyoming to Zimbabwe.
These are the majority of gigs of the future IMO. Not the relative handful of feature films being rolled out yearly. Not if you want to make a realistic living in a world awash in content.
It seems like EVERYBODY understands the basics of using a computer to assemble image streams today. And millions, not thousands, now own and understand the means of production. That’s also why YouTube is what it is, not to mention the juggernot that the “Lets Play” kids have created totally on-line.
They usually could care less about being “moviemaker famous” when their peers are spending vastly more money and time on alternate forms of leisure time stuff. And as Hollywood and the film industry turns more and more to “tent pole” thinking, the opportunities for editorial employment in big scale filmmaking are going to contract, not expand, IMO.
What is going to expand are individuals with a story to tell, looking for video literate people to help them do it. Some in large teams, yes, but many, many, many multiples more in modest or very small groups – and even, often, as solo practitioners.
And there’s a place for them all.
If software “focuses totally on the top” (ala AVID) I think it’s in trouble.
To the extent it focuses on growing from the middle out rather than from the top down, I think it will succeed. And when that means jettisoning the older thinking that things are done one way just because it’s how a legacy class of users expect them to be done, so be it.
I was noticing (on one hand) how much simpler X has become via workspaces when you just want to focus on a specific task – while adding even more possibilities for doing more complex work via things like the expansion of Roles.
Middle out stuff everywhere.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
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I get the halo effect and all, but the movie biz is numerically small potatos when it comes to an NLEs development and worldwide adoption.
You’re probably going to sell 10,000 seats into just corporate video users for every 1 for a film editor. And probably 1000 seats for general video communicators for every corporate seat.
I’ve come to see that lumbing in capabilities for those top end users is great, because many times those same capabilities end up greatly enhancing the software for the masses.
Roles in X being a good example. I don’t need to do complex turnovers, but I’m starting to use it to isolate timeline sections that I want to treat as as ad hock groups, and it’s excellent to have the tool even if I never use it the same way the movie folks will.
Identify bottlenecks and problems that can be helped/solved – build that capability into the code – then let me adapt it to my specific needs.
Good pathway into the future.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Well, one could also argue that for most instances where Apple raises a software price for one transaction – Adobe does it for 12 transactions a year – forever.
(Insert your favorite wink ???? emoji here)
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Shawn Miller] “What if a low cost, DIY machine rendered your animations out 20% faster? That seems like a pretty good cost savings over the life of that computer. ☺ “
If it was 10 hours vs 8 hours probably.
But if it’s 10 seconds vs 8 seconds, Meh.
Rendering is now something I almost never think about.
My timeline works flawlessly without it, and when it’s time to finally do it, 95% of the time, I discover my background rendering has done it while I wasn’t thinking about it.Computing in 2017 is quite a bit different than it was in 1997. YMMV.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Dominic Deacon] “It honestly takes about half an hour to an hour to put a pc together. It’s kind of fun and it’s kind of cool cause you know what’s in there and what to do if things go wrong.”
Sorry, but you’re going to be hard pressed to tell me that doing the research and comparison to know that all the stuff on the left in this picture, is precisely what’s BEST for your DYI rig config is going to get done in 30 minutes.
I totally get the satisfaction of spending those hours, days, weeks or months to educate yourself about how many Megahertz are best and which power supply is beefy enough to handle the RAM load. But you’re never going to convince me that’s a 3o minute gig.
It’s a lifetime gig. And if you’re comfortable acting as both editor AND systems integrator – the approach is PERFECT for you. It’s just honestly a NIGHTMARE for many of us.
Especially knowing I can pickup what’s on the right in one hour from a standing start anywhere in the US – and know exactly what its going to do. Everything is engineered to work precisely with everything else.
Custom building made sense to me back in the day when without optimizing every single component, you couldn’t get the job done. But those days are gone. I’ll totally admit you can get more “bang for the buck” with the DIY rig. The thing is, I’m not even close to convinced that I need anymore “bang” at all. I can run buckets of work through my practice without blinking. The hardware I use, a MacBook Pro actually – (lame as it may be to others) is orders of magnitude faster and more fluid than any other system I’ve ever cut on for the past 20 years. And I paid my bills for ALL those years. So I’m delighted to trade the former time spent reading component specs and figuring out which card is the best for the next 6 months – for more time playing with the dog.
That I can edit anywhere and leave the desk behind, is just extra goodness.
My 2 cents, YMMV.
(BTW, I lifted the “component group pic” and the (iMac pic) from a quick Google Search to make the point.
If I need take them down, somebody just let me know.)
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Old school cool: American Rebel Big Iron!
New school cool: German Engineering?
And the yes, a much bolder Budweiser spot – born from Belgium/Brazil based InBev
I wonder if the Apple Logic Pro team – also based in Germany – is amused?
Welcome to our much changed, MUCH smaller world.
Oh well.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “I would point out that based on my own work, IMHO no other NLE (with the possible exception of Smoke) holds a candle to the quality of Resolve when it comes to software up-conversions. X is good, but not as good as Resolve. Plus there you get several settings variations from softer to crisper. Likewise, I also feel that After Effects’ up-conversion is better than what FCPX and/or Compressor are doing. The Apple results tend to be softer than other choices.”
Fair enough..
I’ll just note that when I was in the heart of my SD to digital content conversions some years back, Resolve was a grading tool that barely edited – and of course I’m still firmly against the Adobe rental thing. So I’m glad to have a tool that still does it perfectly well, that I don’t have to pay monthly to use – and for which the learning curve is LONG in my past.
Good enough for A&E HD broadcast is generally plenty good enough for me.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “What do you mean? We did that well before X with previous NLEs including “legacy”. Would you clarify?”
Sure. My presumption (once upon a time) was that if you start with a low quality master like VHS – the high-end boxes would add some mojo (beyond something like a good TBC or similar frame shaker) – to enhance the result.
Turns out not so.
The quality of the X direct digitizations was plenty to maximize the result.
I had (nor have) a clue about if the other NLEs do exactly the same thing. I was only concerned with my own workflow at the time.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Robin S. Kurz] “As with homeopathy. ????”
That you somehow equate the color temperature of light which is an observable difference to nearly anyone’s naked eye – with quackery related to diluting active agents into parts per million and selling that as an effective agent – then sure.
But I still think theres’ a vast difference.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
