[Bill Davis]

All my work for the past six months plus (except one project that I tried in Legacy – and got so frustrated I finally re-created it in X.)

That’s amounted to about 25 overall finished projects thus far. (Projects as opposed to “videos” since I’ve had broadcast spot job tickets where I delivered 4 spots inside one overall project)

Shortest was :15 HD TV. Longest was 35 min corporate video.

I’ve delivered work out of X to six specific states, half a dozen broadcast affiliates, and via Vimeo pro to nationwide client locations for potential password access by thousands of employees in many different states.

I”ve also had to deliver work on DVDs twice to duplication facilities and each time have tried to convince them that it would be so much easier to simply make files for their laptops rather then burn DVDs for those same laptops – but change is hard out there in the real world.

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]

[Herb Sevush] “C’mon Bill, that’s too easy, you gotta make us work for it.”

OK, Herb, but if you’re gonna ding the “crazy” bell on me -how do you handle that the original link here was to yet another pro user in the field saying the same thing I’ve said over and over and over again.

Paraphasing: “I’ve taken the time to learn it via trial and error – and now that I understand how it operates – it does things in edit workflow that I simply don’t want to give up.”

Isn’t that useful for everyone to discuss?

In fact the ONLY people I can conceive of who wouldn’t want to address that idea are those with an emotional or financial ax to grind.

Criticism is the easiest thing in the world to generate. We all can find countless things to point out in the world that are not to our liking.

But when you ask people to explain why so that everyone might learn the thinking behind the criticism, in my experience, most of the time it comes down to “because I just don’t LIKE it.”

As one small example, people diss X for crashing. Which is fair. It does crash. And if that’s all someone has to say, it’s fair – but it’s also misleading. Cuz, when others note that it largely crashes “losslessly” and an average user seldom gets set back much if any from such a crash – that’s useful for someone trying to decide whether to use it.

I think it was Mark who even had it crash spectacularly and destructively. For a few days he was angry and pissed. Which we all get. And we all took it as a cautionary tale and re-doubled our guard and re-thought our workflow. But it also looks like Mark’s natural anger is abating and he’s STILL working with X.

Why, for heaven’s sake? Shouldn’t he just dump it and move on? If that “can” happen (and clearly it can) what’s the balancing positive that makes him still want to use it?

Isn’t that worth examining?

I push back a lot because it works for me. Not always, not in every case. But it presents new and exciting tools for me that have changed how I work – for the better.

I can edit faster with X than I could with Legacy – and now I understand that with every project I successfully create and archive, I am building a global database for each client that I can use in the future that will potentially improve my efficiency further.

I just got an order for new commercials for a west coast client just yesterday, and was able to save hours if not days by instantly calling up the relevant selects via keywords off the old project.

I went from idea to rough cut in 30 minutes , rather than a full day of dis-archiving their project from a year ago and re-capturing the digital tapes which would have been the process a year ago.

That’s what X has the potential to do. Uniquely in my estimation. It’s built for persistent on-line asset storage and retrieval. Not editing in a bubble cut off from sources and exports as the Legacy interface largely was for small facility editors like me.

I’ve already used features like the Share capabilities to turn client approval dubs into something that take literally seconds to generate and email, rather than the hours it took to burn DVDs and FedEx them off in the past.

The “timeline operations” module in the middle of FCP-X is all that most traditional “editors” are stuck arguing about.

(Analogy alert: look away so as not to burn your brain!)
To me that’s like arguing exclusively about the engines at a car show. Should it be part of the discussion? Absolutely. But it’s not the only discussion worth having. And the engine doesn’t adequately describe the entire car experience, does it?

Some here can’t or simply don’t want to edit with X. Fine. I can and enjoy doing so. And I feel like everyday I do it, I’m building a better editing future for myself, because much of the work I do at my edit station today – particularly in the new prep workspace – has great potential to be useful to me tomorrow.

That’s the kind of stuff that those of us who are using it are seeing as transformative. Not whether the timeline is magnetic or not. That turned out to be almost totally trivial in hindsight.

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]

The classic “sticky triangle” process used to be described step by step with photos on the Location Audio web site years back.

It might still be there.

“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]

[TImothy Auld] “And to put an even finer point on it there is nothing in this video that addresses his workflow from beginning to end. Or even from the beginning. What is it other than a house organ?

Tim”

Uh,

I didn’t realize that this was supposed to be a “workflow training product.”

It’s just the story of a working editor. Cutting a real project on real deadlines in the real world. Using a new tool that many people are interested in.

Nothing to get upset about, Tim.

(Do you tear up car brochures when you read them and decide that the model being shown doesn’t fork for your particular family situation? Must be a tough life for you if that’s your approach to all product change.)

“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]

Hi Tangier,

I think I understand what you’re trying to do and here are my thoughts. (Pardon me if it’s got it wrong.)

The old system of “reduce data to be able to store it more efficiently” is not really the main game we’re moving towards with products like FCP-X.

Storage capacity keeps growing and cheaply. So do data access and delivery speeds. So building capabilities to truncate data is less valuable than building systems that easily access more data more rapidly.

This is the world FCP-X is built for. It values the capacity to deal with more “always available” libraries, rather than designing a system that works best when it’s users “truncate” the pool of available footage to make access easier.

X is deigned to ingest clips directly into it’s centralized search and sort system (the event browser), and they’ve bolted that onto an export “back-end.” Each of these becomes MORE powerful the more data you can keep in the middle. So the game is not to have the users try to LIMIT the data stored in the middle, but to make it easier and easier for them to store and access MORE.

So what you’re dealing with is the fact that you’re concerned with how to work smart to deal with scarcity (a limited storage pool) in an industry that’s solving that problem rapidly with access to more and more cheap rapid-access storage.

I just went to the local computer store yesterday to replace a $450 portable Firewire 800 drive that I use for road editing, and bought two 750 gig drives for just over $300. They’re smaller, faster, and cheaper this year than last. And they let me easily travel with ALL my footage for ALL my projects – so that interim steps built into the program to help me cut down the “whole pool” of my footage to “travel size” simply isn’t very important to me any more.

Looked at it one way, trying to “truncate” your data pool for efficiency might be less wise than looking for ways to expand the overall data in your system to keep more of it “on line” all the time – so that a tool like FCP-X can present you with access to more choices from across all your projects if and when you want to assemble something new.

Just more of Apples “new thinking” that might look like a limitation at first, but starts to look like a better overall plan the more you consider it.

I know that doesn’t solve your particular need. Just a look at maybe “why” they didn’t make “subset export” a particular priority. It’s not consistent with the way the whole of editing may be moving – which in my thinking is to try to provide tools that let you access and work with more available data – rather than force you to think about how to work better with less.

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]

[Steven Belcher] “Unfortunately I think I’m stuck with correcting the tungsten.”

THis is trivial and minor, but might be useful as you approach this.

Don’t think in terms of “correcting” the light when you’re using gels. Always think in terms of “filtering” it.

The subtle distinction is that all gelling is subtractive by nature. You’re removing light at specific frequencies. There is no correction possible using gels without loss so the term filtering helps you keep that in mind.

The more you filter, the more light output you lose. Period.

Again, it’s just terminology – but our words define our thinking – and the only “correction” you can do with light that doesn’t involve loss is when you’re mixing active sources. So a light that mixes daylight and tungsten LEDs in a single unit can, in fact, “correct” the light as to color temp. But gels work differently. They are always first and foremost, filters.

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]

Appears he has had nearly exactly the same experience that I and others have had.

Not easy to come to grips with the changes.

Lots of annoyances that need to be overcome when you’re learning the new thinking.

Frustrations (large and small) along the way.

But once you do get comfortable with the new process – almost nobody I’ve talked to who’ve used X to deliver real work find it acceptable to considering going back to editing the way we did before we dug in and learned enough to really appreciate it’s strengths.

Either we’re all crazy – or there is something different about it that makes so many feel that once we’ve made the full transition – fully jettisoning X and going back to the way we used to edit is the one thing we simply won’t seriously consider.

Which mirrors my experience very well.

“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]

[David Roth Weiss] “The real problem with FCPX is that, as hard as you try Bill, it simply doesn’t come close to what you try to make of it. If the software was even close it would be a real win-win; FCPX would be better, and we wouldn’t have to read all of your dribble.

So many words – so little meaning. But, I guess your third grade teacher would give you an A for effort?”

As always I’m going to try to ignore Mr. Weiss’s personal attacks and see if there’s some actual meaning inside this.

Nope. It’s vague speculation and innuendo. “doesn’t even come close” is opinion unsupported by any factual content or examples. Likewise the unsupported opinion re-statement in line 2.

The “dribble” comment is self evident personal hostility. Fine.

At some point, Mr. Weiss will stop focusing on ME and focus on providing examples of why he feels my opinions are wrong. But we’ll obviously have to wait longer.

While we do. I’ll make a simple argument. If X’s construct “doesn’t come close” to what I’m making of it – then why are so many professionals still trying to come to grips with it?

Mr Weiss himself, seems to have an almost atavistic need to trash it and any supporter of it at every turn.

If it’s so trivial and flawed, and meaningless, why?

This forums popularity and Mr Weiss’s own on-going obsession with trashing the software at every turn is, in itself, de-facto proof that it’s deep, interesting, and yep, even revolutionary.

If it wasn’t, nobody would keep coming here passionately arguing about it.

It’s curious to me that there are still many here who continue to let themselves feel “personally wounded” that Apple discontinued a product where they had expertise. I suppose they’ve lost some feeling of being “valuable” by virtue of losing skills they had built on the old platform that had largely come to defined them. And while they’re wrapped up in that pain, all they can do is trash talk the new player relentlessly, yearning for a return to the old game they loved.

But alas, the old game is over.

There are plenty of new ones from, AVID, Adobe, Sony, and others. My advice, sir, is to move along to one of them. Revisiting this pain is not productive for you or for us.

This is a world of constantly evolving games. Getting stuck in an old one is a dead end. In my 20s when I was an on-air talent in radio, I could have forever defined myself as a guy content in a room full of LP’s and record players working to build an audience., and missed the changes that eventually put everyone out jogging with their iPods and little need for someone to pick their music for them.

I had to move on and release the skills I’d picked up as a DJ so I could play another game.

I did. Into TV, and Advertising, and eventually video production full time.

I don’t know if X is the future for anyone. I just know it’s more interesting to me than the past. Because it contains a raft of useful new thinking that’s stretching me.

But it’s not about me, or you. It’s about letting everyone choose for themselves after listening to the debate.

And I will keep adding my voice to it, whether or not you agree.

Take care.

“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]

[Marvin Holdman] “Apple is FAR from the first NLE to incorporate content management and metadata tracking and certainly far from the best implementation of it. “

OK, I’ll bite.

Tell me the name of the other NLEs what have such an editing interface via front end data management database access windows right up front in the editing interface.

I’d like to take a look at them.

I guess you could argue that Legacy had that, but we’re not talking about simple search here – we’re talking about a visible front end that encourages the editor to constantly work with and revise the metadata of every part of the workflow – positioned such that the editor is encouraged to interact with the data in the same way they interact with the visual content.

Legacy did NOT do that.

If other popular editors did that, I’m unaware of it – but I’m willing to be corrected.

Examples please?

“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]

Another approach is to buy a roll of Lee 207.

It combines a full stop of ND with full CTO in a single gel roll.

Applied to the windows, it’ll usually give you an interior you can light with a tungsten kit and make work if the windows aren’t southern facing to direct sunlight – and your talent can tolerate hot lights put close.

If you’ve got southern facing windows, or the sun is direct, you can keep adding layers of ND, but it’s a hassle and takes a lot of time.

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