[Bill Davis]

[Dean Neal] “However, some smoothing out (pardon the pun) of the Audio paradigm would be the final slam dunk for X…

Dean Neal…”

Fair enough.

I don’t edit much dialog – so I will bow to the expertise of those who do.

Happy Holidays.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Bret Williams] “I actually found the touch bar very useful in making our Xmas card photo in Afinnuty Photo. I was using the eraser tool. While using the eraser, without taking my bright hand off the track pad I was able to change the eraser softness, opacity, size etc. Even WHILE erasing.

THAT is the best example Ive found of its usefulness. As a simultaneous additional tool. Really great implementation.”

People are now starting to learn the brand new tool!
Exciting times.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

Michael G. – In my years doing video work for the National Speakers Association – one thing they drilled into the presenters was….
if the entire audience isn’t getting your message correctly – YOU need to change how you deliver it.

Yes, I too am as guilty of that as the next guy. But considering the fact that 5 years ago NOBODY took X seriously – and now all but the most “stuck in the echo chamber” editors do – I think I (and others) have done reasonably well waking up the nay-sayers. Sometimes, a whisper isn’t enough. You need at least a few folks shouting to gain attention.

Merry Christmas yourself!

FWIW.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Michael Gissing] “Nothing in the past six years has indicated to me that their interest continues. “

You Betcha.

Roles was conceived and created entirely for folks who do “my kid growing up” videos.

Got it.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “Second, just based on the video, I think I’d lose my mind trying to grade something using the TouchBar the way the person in the video is.”

Well you should CERTAINLY make up your mind based on watching somebody in an internet video whose had it for a few days. That makes perfect sense.

It’s a brand new tool. I suppose when the Piano was a brand new tool, all the experience players hated it too.

Wait, oops. There actually were NO experience players when it was a brand new tool. That’s kinda the point of it being brand new.

Nobody quite knows how it might be used – until they explore how to use it.

I watched a YouTube video the other night of Booker T Jones on the Tiny Desk Concerts series play his classic Green Onions. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh9KDzNkpSI

His Hammond B3 work is still completely AWESOME. And caused me to think about the organ and synth players who while their right hand was playing stuff, their LEFT hand could be constantly playing with the pitch wheel to bend them. Imagine that – while your right hand is doing one thing – your left hand can be SIMULTANEOUSLY making adjustments to whatever you’re keying in?

What an ABSOLUTELY CRAZY idea.

Whoops, I forget – this is the internet. So disliking something you’ve never touched and few people have ANY experience with – particularly as soon as it’s released – is how things are supposed to work.

Wouldn’t want to reserve any judgement until we see what people can do with the new thing, would we?

; )

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

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[Bill Davis]

God, I’m SO confused.

The internet told me it was a stupid gimmick – but now suddenly it’s not?

It can’t be possible, can it, that after some actual time for development – this will ACTUALLY be useful?

What if Apple is taking their time to THINK ABOUT how to best program for it – beyond even the obvious stuff like Resolve (basically a program who’s DNA is color grading – with a nice traditional track based NLE layered on top) using it for — color grading and some other perfectly obvious stuff?

It couldn’t be that Apple is taking their time conceptualizing how their own new track bar system might work within the entire X magnetic timeline concept can they?

Who takes time to do stuff like that these days? To basically think it through and try to “get it right” rather than just get it out in the market ASAP.

Crazy, I say.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

OT I thought Rogue One was great and a film the SW franchise fans all deserve – but that said, for my money the class of the field out there this Christmas is Collateral Beauty.

Incredible script – stunning performances – and if Mirren doesn’t walk away with a supporting actress Oscar – there’s simply something wrong in the universe.

Tackling tiny subjects like Love, Death and Time – and making them all totally entertaining to watch in a Christmas Movie???

That was a completely unexpected WOW for me.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

Thanks Andrew,

I’m just trying to understand how fixing this with extremely short audio only ramps results in something audibly different to the classic smoothing technique of adding just enough consistent room tone to bury any small audible anomalies beneath the background sound floor?

If I’ve got room tone available – or even just access to a believable room tone effect from my library – I can do that for my whole project with one global action that takes me just a few seconds.

And if that frees me from needing to go through a project and manually insert 100 2-frame ramps – wouldn’t it be a significantly better solution?

I’m asking here, not arguing. I’ve cut audio for video for a lot of years, but never felt the need for the type of extremely time-consuming cut by cut ramp process you’re suggesting.

Perhaps in common workflows it results in something audibly superior for the cost in production time. If so, that would be useful information.

One reason it’s even a worthwhile discussion, IMO (and it surely IS) is that I worked in eras where all sorts of switching transients were real problems that required a lot of fiddly work like this ramp stuff to fix. But I haven’t encountered them remotely as much in the past few years – so today I’m less attuned to it as a problem.

And its causing me to wonder if it’s more necessity these days – or more a “best practices” habit from the past – and nowadays there are simpler ways to fix it where you can maybe get 90% of the cure – for 10% of the effort?

Hopefully, others will weigh in.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

The overall message here is that convincing anyone to part with money for anything is ALWAYS the hardest part of any business. Because EVERYONE needs/wants to get the money. And hardly anyone wants to give theirs to somebody else. In fact, in most cases in order to get money from anyone, you have to convince them that they will get some advantage in return – that generates MORE money then they are giving you. That’s what business IS.

Bridging that gap is called SALES. And it’s hard. And as everyone with experience here is telling you – it takes relentless work and perseverance to overcome the “not interested” plateau.

You’ve got to convince people that your idea will actually make THEM money – or they have no reason to give you any of theirs to do what you want to do.

Shane’s Mark Hammil story is a HUGE lesson. Even with that level of name recognition in play – there’s still the underlying question of “can I trust this person – in this situation – to return my money – with a profit?

Nobody can escape that core reality.

One other thing that might help you is if you’re pitching yourself as a creative player – SHOW them at least a LITTLE creativity.

Here’s an example.

Decades ago, my wife and I decided to pitch our services to the growing local start up company called PetSmart. (back when they had maybe 30 stores total) I made some calls, but got nothing but “the marketing director is not in, can you leave your name and I’ll give him the message.” Probably 10 calls like that. Zilch.

Then I saw an ad in the Business Gazette that they were hiring a NEW marketing director. So we scoured for the news of their new hire and managed to get a name. Brainstorming, we decided not to just call (because we KNEW the new marketing director would get INNUNDATED with cold calls from every vendor on the planet) so my wife and I sat down to figure out a way to break through the clutter. We couldn’t think of anything seriously clever – so in frustration we decided to go to the local Hallmark store and buy a dumb little stuffed dog and attatch our pitch letter to it with a ribbon and have it delivered to the guy. We both felt it was pretty lame – but just couldn’t think of anything better.

Heard NOTHING for a couple of weeks. .

So I cold called again. Via a TOTAL accident the receptionist maybe didn’t know calls should be screened, so she actually put us through and danged if Tom (the new marketing director) didn’t pick up the call himself.

I tried to be cool and professional, but was kinda surprised to ACTUALLY be talking to him, but I’d spent a LOT of time imagining what I’d say if I even got through – so I was reasonably prepared.

Even with that, he almost blew me off as soon as I said I was a local video producer – but then suddenly he paused and said, Wait – aren’t you the guys who sent me that stuffed dog? That was cute. Nobody else did that. (long pause) Sure, come in and lets talk.

We arrived – he took the meeting – and to our absolute astonishment the REASON he took the meeting was that THAT DAY he was watching some field footage and got miffed at his legacy video vendor because they had turned in some overnight store footage shot from pretty close to the feeder crickets – and he found them to be TOO LOUD.

Understand, you cannot control the SOUND of crickets in an overnight shoot – you have to MOVE the whole feeder cricket habitat outside if you’re shooting in that area – but I was clueless about that at the time. )

Long story short: we did work for PetSmart for the next 15 years.

Here’s the thing.
A: If we’d settled for the initial rejections – we’d have lost.
B: If we hadn’t seen the new marketing director announcement in the paper – we’d have lost.
C: If we hadn’t separated ourselves from the wolf pack of vendors with the dumb STUFFED DOG – we likely would have lost.
D: If we hadn’t called on the very DAY Tom was upset about the blown footage from his current vendor – we likely would have lost.
E: If he hadn’t picked up the phone himself that day – we would likely have lost.
and F: if those FABULOUS crickets hadn’t been so loud on the very night they were filming with the old team – we likely would have lost.

This is why it’s so hard to sell. A big part of sales pitching is honestly to be politely relentless and NEVER give up. Because you never know exactly when all the A-F stars will align and give you a crack you can wedge yourself through. And you had better be DAMN WELL ready to perform when that crack opens.

You work your ass off on EVERY angle you can think of – and then restlessly think of some MORE angles – and MAYBE you get a break you can work with.

Never discovered if it was really the stuffed dog – or the crickets – that were the wedge that got us in the door.

Doesn’t really matter which.

Just a practical story.

Good luck.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

I thought the USB 3 spec was a fully compatible superset of the Thunderbolt spec and all the new ports support Thunderbolt I/O via plug-and-play adaptors. Am I mistaken about that?

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.