[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “Except it’s solid in all other NLEs on the same system. Sometimes the media gets sluggish, but never like this. The real issue I have with X is very inconsistent performance. Sometimes it’s great and that lulls me into using it more. Then other times, like this, I get burned.”

Nothing but sympathy for those sorts of inconsistencies. I’ve had eras where stuff was rock-solid for months – then suddenly got unstable. Might be a system change, a new aspect of the program installed during an update, or something as hard to figure as a corrupt font or graphics.

These are complex systems and crash causing bugs are a BANE on everyone.

I hope you get it sorted, Oliver. That’s totally no fun.

But it can’t be very common – because Apple just announced that X grew by a solid 20% since last years NAB and Apple is saying there’s 2.5 million seats now.

20% year over year owner growth just wouldn’t be happening if the largest adopters were facing a constantly crashing and an overall buggy experience.

Of course, that doesn’t lessen the pain when the person facing those crashes is YOU. But it’s a pretty good indication that it’s not so widespread that it’s hurting the software’s uptake.

FWIW.

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

[Bill Davis]

And like connected clips – your CAPTIONS can now be attached to the sound bites they refer to – so as you re-arrange clips – your captioning work stays connected.

Think of the implications for folks who version a lot. You don’t have to re-caption everything all the time.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Steve Connor] “”Widely viewed”? doesn’t seem very long since you were saying how sad you were that this place wasn’t as active as all the other FCPX forums :)”

It’s pretty simple to understand.

There’s an “active discussion” landscape. And a “searchable archive” landscape.
It’s the latter that is MOST likely to come through this corner of the inter webs, because of the Google Indexing of websites like the Cow.

It’s pretty much the internet version of audience fragmentation we’re seeing across the board.

Some go to the movies. Others prefer to watch TV at home. Others (particularly the young) prefer to consume content on their devices or smartphones.

This place will long be active for the SEARCH crowd. Not nearly as much for the daily “ride the data stream” crowds.

So both are true, IMO, depending on which groups you’re interested in addressing.

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

[Bill Davis]

The amount of interest Apple has demonstrated in controlling their own chipsets makes this sorta inevitable, I’d think.

The iPad Pro (and the new little one!) seem to be just fine with those A-series chips, so those devices do a LOT of computing and I/O functions without a big traditional outside CPU.

I noted years ago that with the whole “modular” approach could lead to someday our just buying and hanging “sub-boxes” off the main buss to take care of boosting performance.

Imagine a future A-15 or A-20 strong enough to run the full blown MacOS. Then maybe the user just piles the GPUs up in order to scale raw computing power for stuff like we need?

Somebody needs a monster CPU for some reason? Hang one on the system and let any program that needs it use it.

I kinda imagined that’s what the Grand Central idea was for.

Playing traffic cop for all sorts of I/O stuff?

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

[Bill Davis]

If this forum was just for it’s regulars, I’d agree.

However, as one of the Google Indexed sites that shows up in searches for FCP X – this would be fresh news for anyone interested in X who finds their way here looking for info about it.

Also trying to keep this widely viewed Cow board popular helps the Cow brand overall.

My 2 cents.

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

[Bill Davis]

Think of it this way.

No matter the size or shape of the diffusion your goal is lighting an object (say a 6′ tall person) from head to toe.

Say you only have ONE light. If you position that light in the middle, the strongest photons are coming from the brightest middle area of the diffusion and spreading up and down onto the subject. If you move that light UP to the top of the diffusion, the strongest photons come at the subject from higher up – (and as critically, there is now much more distance that those photons have to travel to reach the model’s feet. So the inverse square principle tells you that his or her feet, will have a lower illumination level than their hair.

See how it works? The position of the illuminating instrument STILL effects which parts of the subject gets the most light even with diffusion in between. The key is the distance the photons have to travel since the inverse square principal dictates that they lose a lot of their energy over distance.

If you want to control the apparent brightness of areas of the subject, just adjust the position of the light sources relative to the subject.

If you want a brighter top, then light up the top of the diffusion with one light, and fill the middle and lower zones with the second source.

Hope that helps.

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

[Bill Davis]

[greg janza] “So do I understand that you’re more interested in walled off access to your account info than getting the most for your money on your technology investments? “

Absolutely.

If I fail to save $1500 by needing to buy a new GPU card with a different interface – I won’t like that, but I can easily weather it. It’s a short term investment for a long term gain.

If some data access breach lets some asshat access my digital content repository and rip off ALL my content and start to peddle it cheaply in overseas – that’s a MUCH bigger financial vulnerability in the long run.

One messes up a business day, or week, or maybe even month. The other can bring a whole business down.

I’m thinking of Frame.io right now. When they secured that big financing round last summer, I recall them noting that a BIG chunk of it was going into Data Security.

Apple is apparently doing EXACTLY the same with its Business Chat System. Plumbing in extra data security by default in ways that require the user to do nothing further to achieve the gains.

It’s kind of the overall Apple product strategy, after all. Charge once, iterate thereafter without additional burden to the user.

The digital content universe is increasingly the primary global economic playing field – and it’s ALL big data networks now.

And data safety and security will likely win out over time.

That would be my bet anyway.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Sara Hopkins] “For me, making a final decision is the most difficult part in deciding for a business strategy. Thinking if that decision lands me in the right spot. And if it would help me in getting any profit. I have searched for platforms to help in decision making like Ethelo. Anyone else consider it a hurdle in starting a business?”

Sara,

Just some thoughts from a guy who’s been self-employed for a long, long time.

First, the worst trait possible in any decision maker is decision stasis.

If you can’t get past the “decision point” and MAKE the call – and live with the results – good or bad – you can’t play. Period.

Not making decisions because you’re concerned you’re not making the “correct” one – is much more dangerous than making wrong decisions. (this can get out of hand, certainly, but if you have the intelligence to parse out the results of your choices, you can course-correct the ones that don’t go as you imagined.

The key is to assess risk sensibly – and relish the fact that as you make more and more judgements – you are inevitably going to get better at making judgements.

That’s just how this stuff works.

So don’t let it get you down.

Be bold. Do your best. Relish your victories, certainly, but also relish your defeats – particularly if you can come away from a mess with a better idea of what NOT to do next time.

But be careful with even that. Don’t get too scared by hour bad calls. Sometimes, choosing A over B won’t work THIS time – but even in similar circumstances A over B might work great next time.

What needs to improve over time is really just your experience. Not your innate capabilities.

Good luck.

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

[Bill Davis]

There’s also the economic effects of the “digitization” of labor in this era.

It was at least 4 years ago, I was reading about how an editor friend in LA, works till 5pm, then his files go up to the cloud and are accessed by the sound team in Spain, who do the audio work – and send them back ready for the editor the next AM.

That started me paying attaching to global workforce issues.

And yep, I can start a gig on my 8 hours in the Mountain Time Zone, pass it off to a colleague in England who puts in his 8 hours – on to one in Australia who puts in the next 8 hours – and it returns to me having had 24 straight hours of progress with nobody having to work any overtime.

If anyone can explain to me how this doesn’t make business sense, please let me know.

And YES, the tendency will be for whoever has oversight control over this process offer the lowest reasonable wages required to get decently qualified global workers in a scenario like this.

This isn’t theoretical, it’s the REALITY we’re living in.

Each of us will eventually be competing with ANYONE, ANYWHERE that has similar skills and high speed internet access. Unskilled labor will go to the robots. The rest to knowledge workers. And knowledge is cheaper and more accessible than ever.

That’s why we’re likely going to lose out in the US if things continue to go like they’re going.

Not because we don’t have some kind of silly wall keeping BODIES out – but because we haven’t shifted government thinking to prepare for this coming tectonic economic shift.

We’ve already utterly wasted at least two decades of planning time screwing around with bombing peasants and not making high speed internet cheap and available to everyone so that our best and brightest kids can build global connections and reputation capacity.

My wife is a former large school district instructional specialist and her part time gig economy hustle is NOT training US citizens for the coming digital era – she’s contract teaching English to little kids in Beijing via telepresence.

Some nights I wake up worrying that the US is rushing headlong into the new DIGITAL DARK AGES.

My current Cox high-speed internet (plus TV) package runs me $300 or so a month. I consider it a necessary business expense, but it’s now MORE than I pay for my electricity.

We’re moving to SoCal in a few months and if I want to just keep even in the data access space, housing costs that are ridiculous because I’d have to live where the fast internet gods will allow me to live – not where I might want – unless I can live with a significant data access downgrade.

That’s just STUPID in a nation trying to complete globally.

I freaking MISS Al Gore.

At least he had his eye on the REAL ball 20 years ago, when this should have actually been effectively addressed.

Sigh.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “1. If you’re using a 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2016 or later, always plug eGPUs and other high-performance devices into the left-hand ports for maximum data throughput.”

For more detailed information:

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/macbook-pro-tb3-reduced-pci-express-bandwidth/

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