[Bill Davis]

[Herb Sevush] “On the other hand people praise X for it’s speed. I don’t see how continuous crashing helps your overall cutting speed, even with lossless reboots, but hey, that’s just me.”

It’s because it’s not actually “continuous crashing” at all. It’s more like “situational crashing” – in some circumstances where the database processes get confused because they don’t have time to do their work before the user moves on – you can get into loops where crashes become more common until the software gets its organization sorted out.

When things are properly stored and rendered and where X expects them to be – I can editing contentedly for DAYS without a hint of a crash – moving between projects and versions with speed.

Then I’ll get into something complex, and forget that the engine is chugging away in the background and I’ll keep asking it to keep up with more and more commands until it gets angry with me and demands my attention with a “soft crash.” (I label it that because 99 times out of 100 on re-boot I end up right where i left off.)

So you can call that “continuous crashing” if you like. But if you use the software as much as I do for daily work – you start to get feel for when to keep pushing and when to back off and let X do it’s behind the scenes stuff – and that process alone seems to reduce crashes to a minimum.

Again, it’s a different beast than Legacy. And I suspect there’s a LOT going on in the code behind the scenes that make it work this way.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “I figured all the time you saved using FCPX is why you can crank out some of those near-novella posts, Bill. 🙂
“

(grin)

(Nodding to the eternal cloud in the direction of Mrs. Johnson, my high school “office machines” teacher – who clearly had no clue that she was helping create such a monster when she set up all those typing drills for yet another mediocre, largely disinterested student.)

And with apologies for never being able to edit, spell check, or otherwise clean up this copy. You’ll all have to suffer through “quantity over quality” since I don’t have the wit or time to pursue both.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] “One-click upload doesn’t impress me, because the manual process isn’t daunting at all. Native no-transcode editing doesn’t impress me, because both PrP and MC (to an extent) can do it. Portable editorial doesn’t impress me, because you could do it with FCP1 on a PowerBook G3 twelve years ago.

Once we look over these, I think there are many real cases where FCPX can win because of a specific advantage no one else has. I’m sure you have some of those stories to tell yourself. Those are the ones I’d love to hear about and learn from.”

Walter,

I get your perspective. But in this, your view and mine simply don’t dovetail. I wrote for so long for a general video editing audience, so I tend to try to “universalize” what I post. While I know it’s going to be read and critiqued by you and many other working professionals here, it’s also going to be read by a large audience that isn’t working at the top level of production.

My writing orientation has always been not to get so caught up in my interest in the “high level features” that I forget that others might not know as much about the software’s more basic capabilities as you and I.

And if other packages have similar capabilities so what? Does that make a discussion of how they’re implemented in X less useful in a forum where the Software’s name is right up front?

Let’s not forget that these basic capabilities are often precisely the ones that make a particular software approach more productive for a particular user.

X is a program for a LOT of different kinds of editors. And for every one of you who is only marginally interested in Share – I bet there are a large number of people reading here who knew very little about that particular capability in X before my post – and will be a bit more able to see if the tool might appeal to them if they can better understand what X offers in this area.

I get that you and others here are at a level where “share” represents a lot of duplication of what you already do in your sophisticated workflows. And if “top level pros” was the exclusive target audience for X, I’d agree with you. But its not. Just like Legacy, X has, from the beginning, been promoted by Apple as a “general purpose” professional video editing tool for the modern editing era. Not one exclusively built for large shops with traditional model workflows.

I suspect that as many come here to explore what FCP-X can do as continue to come here exclusively to crow about what it can’t. And particularly, since this forum seems to keep getting almost weekly “promotional announcements” about it’s competitors capabilities, I think providing the audience with discussions about what it can is every bit as germane to these discussions.

So that I took the time to post about some of the areas where it’s designers built-in some “non-traditional” workflow enhancements purpose built for the new connected era – and that’s worth noting.

Fair is fair, after all.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Michael Belanger] “I am just speechless. It is the best video editing ever.”

Yes, of course.

And Fox news is the best journalism ever.
And the 700 club is the best manifestation of religion, ever.
And real Coke is the best drink ever.
And my baby is the best looking baby ever.

Now I get it.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Exactly as all of the above have noted.

I used to write on deadline for a national magazine until I had to resign to peruse a gig based on developing a commercial product that provided a conflict with my position as a contributing editor there.

So I just miss writing, sometimes. And there’s that old “use it or lose it” meme.

Also being self-employed for more than 25 years in what everyone above has noted is an often solitary creative environment, it’s nice to interact with others – even when they’re implying that you’re a blathering idiot for what you’ve just posted!

; )

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Michael Hancock] ” am curious, can you set up your own template to compress to a particular file type then immediately upload it to an FTP site? I’ve played with FCPX some but I haven’t messed with the publish features. Are they customizable, and if so to what degree?”

As with most Apple software designs, you’re given basic capabilities inside the program that fit the most common export profiles – particularly if those are satisfied by technologies that Apple owns and don’t have to license from outside.

I suspect that the X designers felt that FTP will be dying out since there are so many more “user friendly” choices every day ala YouSendIt and Dropbox – the kind of services I see creative pros using today instead of the somewhat arcane FTP utilities.

So inside X, you get a menu of sixteen primary choices.

The first 4 are Media Browser, Apple Devices, DVD, and BlueRay.

(the Media Browser, btw, is very interesting to me – as it allows you to “publish” your video in various Apple friendly sizes (iPod to “Mac and PC” that are accessible to you regardless of whether the source media is present. It’s a “published final” state. truncated from the original file, if that’s what you need – very much like an “export” in Legacy – but one that the program indexes and manages from an internal media browser, rather than just randomly plopping it wherever you have the finder currently saving things.

Ignoring the podcast producer (since I don’t do that), you arrive at email, this is a single choice interface that combines significant compression, and a message creation interface so you can shoot out approval copies via email simply and easily from within the program.

The major services block comes next. YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and CNN’s iReport. These all allow you to store your account settings and do one click publishing to sites you choose with your account settings and passwords stored and auto-inserted to make recurring “publishing” easier.

Next is the big one, IMO. It’s Export Media and lets you do limited customization of a standalone output file. Admittedly it’s pretty Apple Centric centered on ProRes and H-264 – but that makes sense since these are all codec choices that Apple has the rights to use without further licensing arrangements. This is also where you can use Roles to create audio and video stems for some forms of collaborative work.

Exporting from Export Media is also the gateway to creating files that I pull into Episode if I need to transcode to something like WMV, FLV or SWF for older style corporate servers, etc.

There are also images sequence options for animation work, HTTP streaming, etc.

All in all, its a pretty modern array of choices centered around Apple’s licenses that reflects their view of how people will generate and share work in the “connected” future.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Fred Jodry] “I’ve been looking for a simple scene with dialogue that includes a master shot and a couple different angles and perhaps some cutaways. Most of the footage I find packaged for this purpose is not narrative (i.e. the Premiere classroom in a book dvd contains mostly stock footage and a single interview). Does anyone have a source for something like this, either online for download, youtube or dvd’s? Dailies, uncut raw footage from any source, special features, multicamera files, etc…

Thanks.
“

Again, yes.

My SEN program has precisely this The program has more than 100 separate video clips all rights cleared and we even have a Classroom Workshop Edition that includes curriculum notes, enrichment exercises and a variety of other professionally produced teaching tools.

It’s also constructed in a unique “multi-track movie” format where each interior scene has alternate choices so that a class or student editors can all take different paths through the stories.

It includes a full 2-camera scene between two main characters in a restaurant setting with ample opportunities for teaching dialog editing.

https://www.starteditingnow.com

We’re in dozens of schools nationwide.

FWIW.

end of all “commercials” thanks for reading.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Herb Sevush] “The traffic on this forum is in no way a proof of any intrinsic merit to X, merely to the dominance of Legacy in the NLE market.”

If that’s true Herb, then we should have seen all the traffic here migrate to the Premier and Vegas, and AVID boards.

Legacy EOL has been a fact for the best part of a year. Plenty of time for people to have left it for another program.

There’s absolutely no reason for them to come here to discuss X if it’s such a dog.

People who hang here are a lot of things, but stupid isn’t typically one of them.

And you’re implying that they are so dumb that they want to hang around and discuss “dead” software or simply re-live the great X mistake – rather than getting along with their lives and their new choices.

Sorry, but that view is pure BS.

If you look back carefully on the posts here. it’s about half a dozen folks who keep trashing it. And about the same number of us who regularly praise it. We’re not getting legions of new commenters. NOR are we loosing much steam.

I’d argue that the health of this board is ABSOLUTE proof of the “intrinsic” merit of X. It’s sparked and generated the largest on-going on-line debate of NLE design, structure and use that any of us have ever seen. Some of us argue. Most just watch.

And quietly, X keeps gaining new users every day according to the sales stats.

Another rev or two (if they are as useful as the last ones) and the program continues to grow in functions and stability – and then we have a whole new game.

And consider this, as important new hardware and OS improvements are released in the Apple world – the FCP-X development team – being on the INSIDE after all, will be able to take advantage of those before the software teams from other vendors.

So unless you want to make a bet that Windows 8 (the other teams future bet) will debut with a version of Premier or Vegas or AVID that meets all your pro needs – it might be smart to keep an eye on the team that’s recently significantly “future proofed” their NLE approach with all that shiny new code.

If five years from now, we’re all on smaller, tablet based OS devices, I’m willing to bet that Apple has better touch screen video editing than Redmond.

But these are just guesses – nobody I know has an actual functioning crystal ball.

But it will be fun to watch it all unfold.

Maybe I’ll see you at NAB.

If so I’ll buy the first round.

Peace.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Chris Harlan] “I’ve been doing that for years, as well. I don’t get the hullabaloo, either.”

Not out of FCP-legacy you didn’t. Unless you spit out a standalone file, opened up an email app, used the finder to navigate to that file. attached it to the email , and sent it on it’s way. then navigated back to FCP.

Now al that is in a simple menu directly inside the X interface. And along with email, you get a nice choice of other “publishing” options including easy access to YouTube and Vimeo – complete with the ability to tag your output with search terms for basic search engine optimization.

Since YouTube is now the second most visited “search” facility on the planet after Google – that small accommodation will likely help scores of people develop new content publishing approaches along with live website updating, visual cataloging and other interesting new capabilities as X matures.

Remember the entire video world is no longer limited to what’s on TV and in the Movies.

Times are changing. And my explorations tell me that X was built for that kind of foreseeable future.

YMMV.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how uploading files for client approval or keeping files online so you don’t have to batch capture from tape are workflows exclusive to FCPX. One place I worked at was emailng MPEG1’s for approval in ’01 and at another they started media managing the FCP projects archival purpose. As you can imagine, it made revisiting old projects significantly easier (especially when many times the changes were just a new logo there and update the date here).”

Andrew,

I freely acknowledge that large TV operations and post houses have had capabilities like this for a long time. At the cost of building out zillion dollar infrastructures and maintaining teams of engineers to keep it all running.

Now anyone can have the same basic capabilities for $299 and the cost of a MacBook Pro.

That’s a significant change in paradigm, IMO.

FCP X is clearly not designed to replace a broadcast play out system… at least at this point in it’s development!

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor