[Bill Davis]

I certainly get that the ability to re-use an editors existing fast GPU Cards in a new eGPU box would have protected early adopters investments better.

MTBO (Mean Time Before Obsolescence?) is an increasingly lousy metric across all technology these days. And if I had a boatload of Nvidia cards sitting around my office, I’d be pissed too.

But this is once again, IMO about IP. AMD and Nvidia and the other card folk are playing, at least in part, a proprietary technology game. The bean counters will allow nothing less. Spending all that money on R&D then allowing everybody open access to work with it, whether or not they license that tech, just isn’t going to fly anymore. It would certainly be EXCELLENT if modern business didn’t so much work that way – but it does.

I totally get that you folks who need to operate in the cross-platform – cross software support space need to be concerned with this stuff. And I really feel for you.

But honestly, I’ve spent a good part of my morning reading about the back end of how Apples new Business Chat support system is being designed to function.

If I understand it correctly, if I’m on the phone with my vendor in order to solve a tech issue, everything OUTSIDE that narrow issue is “default walled off” from access to whomever I just gave permission to access my account. Basically, my non-related data (i.e. my Credit Card info) is security veiled to ANYONE pulling up “my account.” unless I agree to let them access THAT pile of personal info.

THAT seems a ton more important to me right now than which cards can go into a future eGPU unit.

I’m remembering all the times I’ve dealt with Banking, Telco, even the freeking Cable TV provider – and have been specifically asked “do I have permission to access your account data?” and and now with all the latest news, I’m wondering just what sort of window into my personal data history that 20-something employee in a cubicle farm actually had into my life.

If Apple slow walks enabling my access to multiple card vendors on one hand – at least at launch – but keeps me financially safer on the other – at least for TODAY – I’m totally OK with that.

I’m not trying to move the goalposts on this threads discussion, and I’m glad you guys are talking about this – because getting back to the convenience of cross-platform, cross-vendor compatibility is a noble goal.

I’m just saying that this game seems barely worthy of my time when there’s a far more critical game being currently played out that affects me much more directly.

YMMV.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Claude Lyneis] “”The music video of “Despacito,” the second biggest hit in history, was edited using Final Cut Pro X.”
That is like saying the Mona Lisa was painted with a brush.”

Nope.

It’s effectively countering the narrative that “nobody creates excellent paintings using THIS particular type of brush.” — an idea that ran rampant for a long time after X was released.

The very familiar refrain was: FCP X is just iMovie Pro – and nobody serious uses it.

This addresses that.

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

[Bill Davis]

Hey, you guys want to drip $600 a year away in monthly installments, nobody’s going to stop you.

But for me, nearly 7 years into X, that’s $4-5,000 extra I simply didn’t have to spend on software. I bet when the announced new MacPro arrives, that amount represents a serious chunk of the price.

We’ll see.

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

[Bill Davis]

Just one additional note if it helps.

Because X is designed to be “resolution independent” – it always tries to apply all its math at the highest precision possible.

When you are working with large files (like the 4K optimized media you note) – it’s quite possible to apply a simple “one click” or perhaps a “drag and drop” process – that launches a MASSIVE amount of needed calculatuons in the background.

For example, tossing noise reduction onto a cross dissolve which itself is trying to marry two high Rez rasters – might require literally billions and billions of calculations as the software calculates pixel values AND tries to look for any noise hidden in the results of such calculations.

I’m not implying that’s the problem here – but rather pointing out that “easy to do” things in the software, may trigger FAR from equally easy to do calculations.

Personally, I f I find that stuff radically slows down, I often take just a couple of seconds of my content, Isolate it. And test the processes I want to apply there.

If it took 2 seconds to process before I applied an effect – but two minutes afterwards (or worse, 20 minutes!) I can rethink my workflow.

Just a suggestion. Good luck.

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

[Bill Davis]

Hi Ann Marie.

One early realization that every X editor has to understand is that key worded ranges are very different from traditional “subclips” in this sense …

Range selections are never really “stand alone” things, but more like “windows” into the underlying source clip.

This reflects in many ways. For instance, renaming one “clip” in a set of ranges, can rename them all. This confuses new editors, but makes perfect sense when you see them as the “windows” I describe. You are renaming the underlying whole clip – so all the instances what are just virtual windows into it change too.

One really useful aspect of this is how when you insert a range selection into your storyline, you can often drag its boundaries out to the length of the underlying source clip if you like.

This makes adding transitions, for example significantly easier since most range selections arrive with natural ample pads attached.

Hope some of this helps you better conceptuslize how X functions.

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

[Bill Davis]

And, of course my list is down to…

None of the above.

I did have a month where I needed Photoshop and Lightroom to process a photo shoot.

So I bought a “Drug Store Vanilla Visa Card” to use for a one month subscription and it worked perfectly.

I put $25 on that card, paid my single month Photo Subscription out of it. And at the end of the month, since that card had no value left, it couldn’t charge it again.

I haven’t even thought of my photo subscription in the 4 months since then – but unlike the old days, I don’t see any monthly auto-charges posting. Works for me!

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

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “Of course, the real irony in the FCPX vs CC debate is that, if you poke around inside the FCPX Package Contents, some of the splash screens are Photoshop files. ☺”

Well, sure.

But if you similarly poked around in virtually every Adobe product you’d probably uncover video files that were born on Quicktime, text files born on Word, sounds born on ProTools etc, etc.

A lot of this obviously just reflects the state of the industry during the products’ developmental cycle.

To re-do work you already have in hand (that you can legally use in your own product) unnecessarily, is just going to slow down your ability to ship in a timely fashion.

Put another way, outstanding building Architecture doesn’t imply that each and every structural beam connection had to be re-invented for the building itself to be considered “innovative.”

That’s how I see it at least. YMMV.

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

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “”I charge a lot because my gear costs a lot” is a creaky position as technology changes quicker and quicker, where as “I charge a lot because my talent, experience, and knowledge will net you a great ROI” with weather changes much better.
“

I could not possibly agree more with this sentiment.

If you want to make a serious living, never sell your time. Develop and sell your expertise. Period.

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

[Bill Davis]

Perhaps.

But I produced a lot of videos on retail product supply chain management back in the day.

Ships or rail cars arriving with goods, storage warehouses across regions feeding hub distribution centers – those feeding regional and local DCs – further feeding stores with weekly re-stocks. Vast networks of trucks, drivers, and tens of thousands of workers, just to get the box onto the shelf in your neighborhood – and enable your purchase.

Now it’s one click and $299 gets exchanged for some IP, digitally.

And that ENTIRE old system is bypassed.

It’ll be hard to convince me THAT change isn’t the largest factor in this stuff.

In retail, the guys who knew, always told me controllable labor costs are the lever that controls profitability.

The largest client I worked with had more than 20,000 retail employees and likely that many again behind the scenes in admin and distribution.

Compared to a couple hundred software engineers, computer scientists and marketing folks for a popular software product?

Not even close really. I bet you could DOUBLE your fixed operational overhead in a software business many, many times over and not move the costs needle as much as giving even a small pay raise to a retail workforce like that.

That’s how I see it. But that’s just speculation. Not my game anymore.

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

[Bill Davis]

The whole point of using the Camera Archive function is to capture not just the data files, but the maximum possible upstream metadata available from the mounted card or drive source into a single, all-inclusive digital Archive.

If someone has already dragged the individual files from the camera source volume structure into folders, that process may well have broken the links to some or all of any upstream metadata on the original cards.

And if so, it’s long gone, now.

It’s so easy to work from direct camera card clones today, that when people don’t, it always shocks me.

YMMV.

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