Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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[Oliver Peters] “Audio editing/mixing is one of worst aspects of FCP X. Fine for simple stuff. Impossible for complex tracks, especially when using sources that have multiple channels of separate audio.”
I understand the argument here, but want to make it perfectly clear that this opinion only has weight for those who are coming to X from a very particular mindset – that of the professional video editor working in a high-volume, complex workflow professional practice who is accustomed to having access to specific tools that address common problems faced at the highest level of “sound for picture” practice.
If that does NOT describe you – please don’t read this as “absolutely fact.”
For most editors doing the most common editing tasks – FCP-X has robust – and in many cases “state of the art” sound editing tools built in.
Brining in work in ENG, EFP, Event, Basic Documentary, Corporate, and many other “general” styles – will likely result in your being perfectly able to do the work you need to do right in the program. You’ll be able to delivery outstanding sonic output quality that is totally consistent with your source quality. It might even be superior, since X effectively addresses a nice range of “common” problems involving basic audio like ground loop hum, track assignment, and “shortcut” equalizing of speaking voices to bring them into more prominence in a typical mix.
FCP-X is NOT a perfect audio for video tool. It’s also not a “perfect” video editing tool.
It’s a new approach to editing that has “re-written” many of the traditional assumptions on how it might be effective to create video and other motion-based content for a new generation of editors.
In doing so, it’s focused first on the most common tasks faced by the largest group of editors – and yes, it hasn’t yet implemented many of the “top end pro” features that Legacy had developed over it’s 10+ year history in the market.
But I believe that in saying “Audio Mixing is one of the worst aspects of FCP-X” Oliver is being accurate from his particular perspective, but misleading many who’s needs are more general.
Do not come away from this thinking “FCP-X can’t do quality audio.” Because it most certainly can.
In fact, a lot of us who’s needs are more general are finding that it’s BETTER at basic audio than Legacy.
I offer in evidence X’s ability to let you “pre edit” some or all of a long audio recording session down to e “select” takes – “bake” those into sound bytes (all in the Event Browser”) and then, by dragging them as a group to a Storyline – auto assemble a nearly finished audio soundtrack in a drag and drop action.
Impossible in Legacy – trivial in X.
Since I do a lot of VO work and have to do precisely this so often, it’s been a HUGE timesaver for me – and I wouldn’t trade it for all the “high end” movie sound department friendly features on the planet!
Point is that sweeping statements about what X is “bad at” should always be taken with a grain of salt.
It may in fact be bad at what’s being discussed. But often, what’s being discussed is “common” only to a very narrow range of practice with very specific needs.
For what it’s worth.
“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
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I dunno.
I’ve always imagined, when considering the British phrase “privy council” – a group of people discussing issues of great moment … whilst, uh, simultaneously … enthroned?
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
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[Steve Connor] “It would be nice to have the odd “tease” like Adobe do at least”
Well, yes. When it’s a company like Adobe that actually ships what they promise around when they promise it.
For every company like them that has a very good track record of actually getting useful software out the door, there’s a trail of broken dreams in the wake of many companies who over promise and under deliver.
In fact, that was the primary initial hit on X. Here we are six months later, and only just now is the tide starting to turn toward a view that FCP-X is actually a pretty interesting product on a fast track – rather than just a mess. Yet 90% of the stuff in the program is exactly the same as it was the day it was released.
The timeline is the same. The event browser is the same. Magnitism is the same. Import, key wording, Motion integration via the titler, etc. etc. etc are all the same.
But now that we have multi-cam, the clear promise of increasing hooks to XML and people actually are starting to understand how it functions in actual editing situations, it’s now “worth a look” where it was once “the toy that will destroy all pro editing as we know it.”
The program itself really hasn’t changed all the much. It operates exactly like X has from day one.
I did another FCP-X “get to know the interface” for my local editing group last night in my studio. Instead of a handful of guys, the studio was packed.
The perception of X is starting to change out there. Big time. Perhaps not in the rarified air of the large shops – but at the grassroots level, things are changing a LOT. Just something to be aware of.
“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
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[Michael Gissing] “I don’t understand you Bill. You too have options. Please stop lecturing people on whether they overthink or don’t know how to adapt. “
You want to spin it as “lecturing” then fine. I consider it “offering an alternative point of view.” Nobody’s forcing you to agree – and you’re totally free to reject my thinking if you like. I thought the point of forums like this was open discussion? Is the problem that I’m not being “polite” enough in expressing my opinions? If so, then sorry. Tha’ts not my intent. For a lot of years I was a contributing editor for a national video magazine and paid to write declaratively and express a point of view. Probably too much of that has stuck with me. Sorry it bugs you.
[Michael Gissing] “Personally I have been into software and hardware innovation and testing for over 25 years. So I am not a luddite that won’t adapt. Rather I am someone who has tried these so called new technologies and found good reason like ergonomics to judge them as inferior. As I pointed out better ergonomic controllers would be vastly superior to touch screens. That point was proven in the DAW world 15 years ago.”
Then the market will point that out and they’ll fail. But the contention will NEVER be proven if the market never gets the alternative to test out.
And don’t forget that society is doing a bit of migration these days from the “office” model where a company pays lots of overhead for space, offices and facilities what are standardized for the “average” worker.
The trend towards individual empowerment, home offices, smaller scale entrepreneurial endeavor and individual expertise rising in utility compared to group dynamics might mean that somebody has their first opportunity to do things the way that THEY want, rather than how to corporation tells them to do them.
If so, what’s so wrong with letting them try out editing on a large format touch screen?
Personally, I’ve been through large corporate “efficient assortment’ exercises to determine what choices consumers are presented with in stores. I ‘m kinda laughing now that the internet has made it perfectly possible for people to circumvent that entire process and access every possible “niche” product on-line.
Why shouldn’t workspace options take a similar path?
You still get YOUR DAW the way you like it.
And so can I.
What exactly is wrong with that?
“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
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[Alex Hawkins] “Mmmm yes interesting, I get your point Bill. But seriously, you don’t think that the less the hands have to move the better?
I guess off the bat I just don’t see any advantage of it for an everyday user. Mucking about on your iPad, sure, could be fun but doing it 8 to 5 Monday to Friday, I don’t think it would be my first choice.
I’m curious, what do you see as the benefits of it?
“Well, there’s actually a whole class of people – exercise physiologists – that would probably argue that the “the less the hands have to move the better” is simply bad thinking.
There was a movement a while back where executives were putting in “standing desks” to combat the problems of becoming too sedentary.
We all know that overweight and lack of activity trends have taking a huge toll on worldwide health.
That doesn’t mean that everybody needs to do their computing while on a treadmill(!) – but it also tells us that working towards a system where movement is reduced to twitching a fingertip – comes with it’s own problems.
The point is that alternatives are usually a good thing.
Then you or I get to sit and twitch a finger. And the music video editor gets to dance while they toss stuff around on the giant touch-screen.
That works for everyone.
“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
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[Alex Hawkins] “Righto Bill give it a go. Floor it!
Let me know how you’re doin in 5 years time.
“I think I can probably tell you right now. Based on my personal experience.
About 9 years ago, I re-vamped my edit suite. I bought a nice editing desk console from Middle Atlantic.
It has a dedicated monitor bridge. (Before that my Cinema display was on my edit desk at normal desk level.)
So when I put it up on the bridge, know what happened? My neck was sore for about a week. I was using specific muscles that weren’t conditioned for that angle. Over the first few months, know what? The neck pain disappeared as I adapted.
I’ve been using this desk and similar monitors at this same angle now for nearly a decade. And have NEVER had another problem.
This does not dismiss the reality or serious of RSI (repetitive strain injuries) and I have immense sympathy for people who suffer from them.
But over my career – I’ve never encountered much of that.
People are different. What bothers one specific human can’t be easily extrapolated to the whole class of humans. And so I think the smart thing is to allow everyone to decide what’s best for themselves.
But to “presume” that a big touchscreen will be a physiological disaster before much of anyone gets to try it for themselves is kinda silly, IMO.
Simple as that.
“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
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Not wanting to hijack the thread, but I see what you’re dealing with as a subset of a larger and more important area that’s getting harder and harder to convince clients about.
The value of Project management in general.
I’ve seen more money wasted and more “quality drag down” resulting from poor project management in the past year than I’ve seen at any time over my career.
My pet theory is that so many companies responding to the economic turn-down of the past few years tried to save the largest amount by shedding the “middle and upper middle” tiler of employees – but those were the folks who had the most experience in shepherding projects from the idea stage to completion.
Now we have a lot of upper management who want to get ahead of any possible business upturn – and when they turn around to get people to manage and produce good work – all they’re seeing are the folks in the seats who know how to push the buttons and do the work- but that great middle layer of professional expertise that once was the buffer between the strategic thinkers and the workers – in short the oft-maligned “middle management” is gone.
And it’s gonna be years of strain and we’ll see a LOT of wasted effort and money while a new workforce learns how to manage projects sensibly.
I’m not surprised that Grant is hammered.
He’s built a repuration for being the guy in the chair who can turn out useful work.
The problem is that he’s got no support system in place to buffer him from having to do everything himself.
Which is a kinda dangerous place to be when the work orders start flooding in.
If they keep flowing at a high rate – you’ll eventually either start failing to deliver or burn yourself out.
Neither is a pretty sight.
My 2 cents, anyway.
“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
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Geez,
Sometimes folks around here get so amazingly stuck on what they’re used to that it baffles me. Look, if you don’t want a thing like this – fine. I promise nobody will force you to buy one presuming it ever comes out as a product.
But honestly, I remember the first MacBook I bought that had a trackpad built in. Seemed really weird for the first half-hour to have to move a cursor with my right thumb. Totally “non-intuitive.”
About a week later, the thumb pad had essentially “disappeared” from being anything but “normal” to me. Now, I switch back and forth from my desktop machine (mouse and keyboard) to my laptop (trackpad and keyboard) to my iPad (touchscreen only) and never really even think about which I’m using. They all feel perfectly “natural.”
I think most of you guys are WAY over thinking the potential distractions and muscle use issues these things will generate. You’re brain and your body will adapt. Period.
And if not, use something else.
Again, it’s just another choice. And choice are nearly always a better thing than no choice.
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
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[Michael Sanders] “Agreed they have to go somewhere, but render files don’t really need to be backup as religiously as project files.
If render files were in the events folder (and backup up with them), project files – sorry folders – could be a lot smaller, would not need to be on a fast drive, could live on the system disk and then be backed up with time machine or disk image – which would make it much easier to clone say your entire project folder to dropbox, USB etc.”
II think this works better in theory than it does in practical terms.
I just had to re-load and re-work a series of 22 interviews – about 1.3 hours of total video.
My disk images re-loaded in a snap, but since I’d used the render manager to blow out all the render files to re-capture drive space a month or so back – X had to re-create ALL the thumbnails and proxy files.
It took a couple of hours to put the project back into “live” status – not something I was expecting or had planned for.
Ii can solve this via more drive space and making sure I preserve render files and thumbnails as well as my original media, but that kinda presumes an “office” array of hard drives and backups.
And one of the charms of X is how well I can take it along on a trip and keep working via simple firewire drive.
It’s no “fatal flaw” – just another way you have to learn how FCP-X approaches things and learn what will and won’t cause delays as you develop your workflow.
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
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[Neil Patience] “”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”
So your words are “true” are they Bill ? “respectful” of other peoples experiences ? “needed” and “civil” ?
I respect your experience and can see that for you FCPX is great – however from your reply I am questioning that you are totally practicing what you preach.
best wishes
Neil
https://www.patience.tv“Yeah. Sorry.
You touched a nerve that’s been a bit raw recently. And for all I know I totally mis-interpreted your tone and intent. If so, sorry. My bad.
I’m a bit conditioned to being one of the few voices here (thankfully not the only one – or even the most persuasive) that cares about the success of this software.
I’m a bit loyal because it’s making my life a lot easier these days.
And I’d hate to see a lot of editors who could use and benefit from it falling into a sinkhole of kvetching and never finding their way out.
I’ll try to me more temperate. And again, sorry if I overreacted.
(and while i aspire to Justice O’Conners standards, unfortunately I’m perfectly capable of falling short of that sensible standard. – again, sorry.)
“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