[Bill Davis]

[Christian Schumacher] “One of the things was so basic that I’m ashamed to even mention it here.
She was (and so I was) baffled that FCPX can’t perform a simple “Find Unused Clips”
But hey, let’s wait until that marvelous tagging brain eventually gets that.”

Uh, it “gets it” right now. And much, MUCH better than Legacy ever did.

You open the keyword index that displays a list of every shot in your timeline. Select them all. Temporarily mark them as REJECTED OR FAVORITES (or if you’re using those tags for something else apply a BINGO tag or whatever until you can clear one of those)- it’s only temporary. Then use “Hide rejected” or Show Favorites to display every single clip NOT used in your timeline. You’re exactly where the “show unused clips” convention was in Legacy – but it becomes just STEP ONE in being useful. Now that you’ve got the “Class” of all unused clips ID’d – you can really have fun.

You can sub-group them (maybe selects, possibles and dump) or apply sub group tags to any or all. When you’re happy with your new organization, just go back to the temporary TAG you used, delete your initial temporary REJECTED or FAVORITE tags and you’re left with all the subsequent tags in place to help you work better from that point on.

Once again, it’s not something that X “can’t do” but rather merely one of a thousand things that the database can do rapidly and easily – if you just take the time to actually learn how to use it.

Most flat file NLE databases think of USED or UNUSED as the beginning and end of clip sorting. It’s now actually just a trivial “step one” for the X database.

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]

[David Roth Weiss] “So, tagging in FCPX is nice, and it’s a very welcome addition, but it’s not nearly as revolutionary and game-changing as many are touting.
“

I’m going to disagree here David.

Air conditioning in a fully equipped Rolls or Cadillac that only a select few can afford is a feature.

AC in a 15,000 Ford or Chevy that anybody can afford “is” revolutionary. It changes the game for all drivers. It redefines what “standard equipment” has to be for car sellers

The database in X brings the power of high level DB flexibility down to software that any editor can afford. That’s game changing in my estimation.

That the teenager can learn to better manage assets in the same general way that a Hollywood Motion Picture editor might is a BIG DEAL, IMO.

“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] “Thankfully, much of the overstated hyperbole and rhetoric about FCPX has indeed tempered somewhat over the last few months. However, hugely overblown and cliched terms like “transformative” and “groundbreaking” were being bandied about here quite flippantly for months after the initial June 21st release of FCPX. “

To counter the equally overblown and cliched terms like “non-professional” ‘utter crap” and “a total disaster” that were being flung at it during round one – when none of us had the foggiest clue about the actual nature of the software.

Remember the long thread about how so many folks came away from all the applause and oohs and aahs at the SUPERMEET silently AGAST about it? Why? Turns out it was a lot more complex than anyone suspected at that point, and most of those who dissed it didn’t have much clue how it actually worked. They just reacted to what was missing and different and gave absolutely no weight to what might have been useful or even better about it.

That negative view was also “being bandied about quite flippantly” for months after the release.

If we’re to take to task the cheerleaders (holding up my hand) then shouldn’t we also take to task the blind naysayers?

Turns out this was a more complex plan than all of us suspected.

And so it goes.

“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]

[Oliver Peters] “[Bill Davis] “It’s only true if you’re stuck in defining “workflow” as the way one particular type of editor wants to edit. ”

That’s not how I define workflow. I’m talking about how you can use the NLE beyond just a cutting style within the NLE. However, even there, the point is that Apple has eliminated almost all of the versatility that was available in “legacy” simply by the GUI design itself.

That’s your point and I accept it. Mine is that everything above after the word “eliminated” is simple opinion. Nothing wrong with expressing an opinion. But everyone understands that opinions are not facts.

[Bill Davis] “I can append, overwrite, connect, etc, etc. This is the absolute antithesis of “one workflow.””

You are talking about edit commands and keystrokes, not workflow. BTW – these aren’t unique. Apple simply collapsed target selection, track patching and editing into fewer commands. A Connected Clip edit command isn’t much different than Superimpose in “legacy”.

I don’t see it that way. I superimposed clips a thousand times in Legacy. They never maintained any relationship to the clip they were imposed upon. Move the main clip and the relationship between the super and the timeline shifted. The only way to easily fix the relationship was to “sub clip” or possibly “sub-sequence” things. Maybe functional, but obscure and needlessly complex, IMO. And a process that forced you to “packetize” the project in ways that extracted it’s own penalty.

So i’m not convinced.

[Bill Davis] “The primary reality of FCP-X is that it’s a micro suite of five basic interconnected “work area” functions.”

I think you are making more out of this than is there. Every NLE software amounts to the same thing as what you’ve described.

I guess this is one of those things like when the guy asked Mr. Armstrong to explain Jazz. “Sorry, but I don’t think I can explain it to you. You either understand it or you don’t.” That’s not any kind of slam by the way. It’s just an attempt to indicated that I see things as an X user that I think require a new context to appreciate. I might well be ignorant and other software may already do everything that X can do. But if so, then I’m REALLY baffled as to what the big deal about it being so over radical that it threatens the very lifeblood of working editors planet wide.

It’s either a total departure (right or wrong) or it’s just another choice. It can’t be both, can it?

[Bill Davis] “Those are the Event Library and the new Timeline construct. ”

Apple simply copied what Avid did in 1988 – only they didn’t do as good of a job with FCP X.

Then why didn’t Avid better compete with FCP Legacy? Were they simply ahead of their time? Overpriced? Poor salespeople? If X is so derivative – nothing but a cheaper Avid approach – again, why all the hate? What’s wrong with offering what AVID did in 1988 – but for $299. Sounds like a huge win to me.

[Bill Davis] “EXTREMELY useful and fully featured”

Useful – yes. Fully featured??? Not even close.

Then explain to me what “features” that it’s lacking that the general video editor must have? This argument only works in context of specific needs of editors working in very narrow bands of the overall editing profession. I accept that it doesn’t do ALL that legacy did. But I contend that nearly ALL editors don’t need “ALL” of what legacy did. You were forced to pay for and live with all sorts of capabilities that might make you “feel good” to have waiting for use – but in a practical sense, many editors (and I was one of them) never came close o needing some of those.(For instance I’ve never had the luxury of working with an outside scoring house or a color correction professional. I know the value of that for those that need it. But I don’t need it or wish to be charged for it. What’s wrong with that?

[Bill Davis] ” it will look like a step backwards – but once you see what it really is, its just as easy to see where it might fit in a new world of rapid and agile content distribution.”

I’ll believe that when I can have 100 projects instantly accessible without the system choking.

OK. Fine. Just don’t forget that you may not be able to have that if there are 100,000 people in line ahead of you who find that having 10 or 20 concurrent projects do a fine job of meeting their needs.

[Bill Davis] “I believe this tool is better for more diverse editing than Legacy ever was.”

I simply don’t agree, because today, I can do more with FCP 7 than I can with FCP X and in many cases, than I can with Media Composer or Premiere Pro.

Yes, I understand that. But X is not legacy. Look, my Motorola V-99 phone had a great contacts list that I could sync with my computer. When they discontinued it, the new model had no software to continue the sync. So for a whole phone generation, I lost the capability. Eventually, part of the reason I went to the iPhone was because I was frustrated with that fact. If you need to change software to obtain satisfaction, feel free. I don’t find I have to. And I’m grateful for that.

[Bill Davis] “here’s a wider array of tools you can use to do things that you couldn’t do as easily before.”

I’d really like to see examples of that, because I just don’t see it. Yes, I understand the metadata methods and I see where you might see that as a wide array of new tools, but what about the rest of the app?

One tiny example. In the share menu, there’s an incredibly easy way to email low rez copes of your timeline directly to clients from inside the app. It’s a small marriage of “in the program interface” email and clip compression. It’s made my client approval dubs “insanely” easy to generate.

I also love how the Project Library allows me to glance at an array of Projects and see which version of a project has a visual change in it. That I can scrub through these and hone in on changes, different titles, or alt cuts is a treat.

I also love how simply loading up drives ” auto repopulates” the Project Library with no need to manually re-load projects or assets. If the drive is present, the project come to life. Take a drive off line, and the links go dormant, which, unlike Legacy, means I don’t have to manage huge “Capture Scratches” any more. NAS guys had this, but I didn’t. And now I do.

That’s three small touches among many. But a few “top of mind” ones that makes me enjoy using the software.

– Oliver
“

“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] “In fact, FCPX completely misses the boat in one very important area that is the subject of an article I’m currently writing.”

Great.

Knowledge being power, after all and alternate perspectives being the building blocks of good personal opinions.

I’m intrigued since whatever that “one very important area” is, it must be universally required rather than, specific to those who edit in a particular type of workflow – since you deem the feature worthy of an entire article.

Looking forward to 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]

[Daniel Frome] “I’m seriously beginning to think that you don’t actually care about FCPX at all, but have found a golden way to troll us all into useless debate. I look at this debate forum and realize the pattern… you sir, are definitely going to have the last laugh.
“

Don’t know about the last laugh bit. It’s not my intent. My intent simple. I see X differently than a lot of other people do. And I think the alternate view is deserving of a public airing. Period.

And specifically about this post, I wasn’t trolling at all. I was pointing out that the reality that “standards” for what can be considered professional tools are not set in stone – but increasingly flexible among the ultimate arbiters of business success – todays consumers.

I suspect that some here find that on-topic and useful. Or not.

Look, particularly on this board and in this forum, FCP-X has taken what I consider a grossly unfair beating.

It was never either salvation or damnation – but a narrative was developing here that painted it with a single brush – that of being “unprofessional.”

I rejected that from day one. Still do. Vigorously. That same rap is layed by some on my kids headphones. But he loves them passionately. So is he wrong? Is he ignorant because he enjoys something that don’t meet my personal standards? (Acttully, I gave them a listen and found myself really liking them – so go figure!)

Probably because my whole career has been reasonably non-traditional and the practices that have worked best for me were never the ones that depended on large institutional support – but more those that empowered me to learn and do things that stretched me as an individual.

The loudest voices damning X were those who kept saying it was “unprofessional” by defining “professional” in narrow terms of the view from their institutionl workflow or large post house seat. They weren’t “wrong” just limited in perspective. (As am I, I freely admit.)

I haven’t held a “seat” in a big corporate production structure for more than 20 years. I don’t aspire to those, nor claim to know what’t necessary for success in those. But I am an outsider that regularly gets invited into those organizations to observe (as I did in TV stations early in my career) participate as a freelancer (as I also did for much of my career) and finally, create and sell finished work for clients as a turnkey production operation concentrating largely on corporate communications.

I know what CEOs and Corporate Presidents like – what their SVPs like – and what their designated reps will approve to pay for. That’s good enough for my business model. Plus I love, love, love what I do. (tho it drives me nuts sometime.)

That I help anyone understand anything about editing from my perspective is an accident of the fact that most of the time, that’s the core of my job — looking at how stuff works and translating that for others, primarily in visual, but often in written, or even auditory form.

Honestly, this is not primarily about ME as an editor or pundit or prognosticator. It’s about my understanding of the software – which is somewhat better than most since I”ve been sitting at it for six months now – but likely no where near as good as others who have different critical thinking skills or who bring different evaluative criteria to the assessment. I can (usually) slough off comments directed at me personally. But I have a pretty low threshold for comments that badly malign the tool – when my direct experience tells me that reality is nothing like what’s being bandied about.

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]

[Oliver Peters] ” If anything, FCP X imposes one and only one workflow, which either works for you or it doesn’t.

Oliver
“

Sorry, Oliver, but I find this to be extremely faulty reasoning.

It’s only true if you’re stuck in defining “workflow” as the way one particular type of editor wants to edit.

Yes, the toolset in X is unique. But in my personal experience that toolset is wide, variable and flexible. Not “limiting” at all.

I have at least half a dozen contextual ways to get a clip into my timeline. I can append, overwrite, connect, etc, etc. This is the absolute antithesis of “one workflow.”

Concrete example: I can put anything from a traditional master shot, to a soundtrack, to a collection of discrete scenes in my primary storyline. That’s not at all “one way” – it’s truly “any way I prefer.” The key is that the editor has to learn about the new capabilities and those strengths and weaknesses of each. If, as you suggest, there is simply “one way” to edit in X. Then all the smart guys here would have figured out exactly what it can and can’t do in the first week – and this endless debate would have faded away. That we’re still talking about precisely how it works six months after introduction is prima facia evidence that it’s not a simple “one way to do things” construct at all.

The problem (and I acknowledge that this is purely my opinion, not fact) is that those who have the most problem with the way X is designed are those who are unwilling or unable to look at how the new tool’s unique capabilities can foster different approaches to their editing work. They are often stuck in a mindset built around “I want to edit how I’ve always edited, end of story.”

I can sympathize with that. For many, change is hard, risky, and possibly even threatening to their business. But that’s no reason that it should be unavailable for those who want to embrace it.

The primary reality of FCP-X is that it’s a micro suite of five basic interconnected “work area” functions. Two relatively minor ones (ingest and export) one sleeper (IMO) the project library – and two that are major and more or less transformative regards to editing possibilities.

Those are the Event Library and the new Timeline construct.

Most people who dismiss the software focus their attention and wrath nearly exclusively on the timeline. And yes, it’s changed significantly. It’s also where virtually ALL the editing was concentrated in the traditional NLE model. So I get that altering this has riled people.

But they did – so there you go. Holding on to anger or hostility is useless. It’s changed. Argue all you want but the new model is in place, and all I’m saying about it is that I find the new one EXTREMELY useful and fully featured – even if some of those features are such that people resist them or are not useful in their preferential style of editing.

That one may or may not “like” the magnetism at first is actually pretty trivial. Anyone with a brain and some experience can adapt to it. It’s really not all that radical – just different. It takes a couple of weeks, IMO before you start to comfortably expect the magnetic behavior and start to see where it helps and where you need to use Position to override it. No big deal.

But timeline issues aside (and anyone who edits for a living knows that the timeline is only ONE part of editing), this move to “modularity” enables new connections and possibilities that are amazingly useful for many common program creation and, yes, even editing tasks.

Consider just the fact that decisions made in the Event Library are retained across all projects. That’s a HUGE potential win for efficiency. It makes pre-work available not just for “this project” but or ALL subsequent projects that assets might be used in.

That the project library represents the “published state” of particular edit – also has huge potential. If its viewed only in the context of what a “timeline” used to represent in Legacy, it will look like a step backwards – but once you see what it really is, its just as easy to see where it might fit in a new world of rapid and agile content distribution.

X was totally re-imagined compared to Legacy. That re-imagining was not trivial – and it was also not arbitrary. IMO, they built X the way they did not because they didn’t “understand” editing, nor because they were focused exclusively on a tool for one particular type of editor (the iMovie graduate) – but because they completely understood the wide range of what “editing” might become in a more fully digital, more data centric era – and for a marketplace with increasingly diverse needs. (A key point since there are more “editors” now that every before – like it or not – dismiss those who aren’t in highly paid seats or not – or who do work like “I” do – or not.)

That’s fundamentally why I disagree with your assessment. I believe this tool is better for more diverse editing than Legacy ever was. Because it has more varied tools. Yes, in the initial build, they concentrated on tools that are universal (like the database) which can be used by all in very different ways, tailored to individual work styles – over tools are more “mission specific” like OMF export or multi-cam.

But the foundation is not “my way or the highway” it’s nearly totally “here’s a wider array of tools you can use to do things that you couldn’t do as easily before. – yeah we put some shiny new ones that you’re not used to (like the magnetic timeline) right up front to announce that this is not a “traditional” NLE- but if you can’t let go of your older habits yet (or just don’t want to) – just poke around a bit. That stuff is around as well.)

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]

Call me crazy, but it seems like you’re recording at 60fps in one raster size (1280×720) then transcoding BOTH the frame size AND the frame rate, then slowing THAT result down? And you’re wondering why things don’t look smooth?

I’m kinda not surprised.

If I read this correctly, you’re interpolating stuff that’s been interpolated then changing the time base of the resulting interpolation.

That’s kinda the digital equivalent of taking a nice photo, crumpling it up into a wad – flattening it out and taking a picture of it – then crumpling the print of THAT picture – then re-photographing it again and wondering why the print doesn’t look very nice.

Pick a frame size. Pick a frame rate. (both as close as humanly possible to what you originally shot – identical if possible.) Do ALL your editing and time re-mapping in that one standard. When it’s all done to your liking, then output the result to your delivery format.

If I’m misreading this sorry, but at that’s my initial impression.

“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 Lawrence] “Transcripts are way more important. Boris Soundbite solves one half of the problem. If someone could come up an auto-transcription program that really worked, it would be truly game changing.”

David,

I agree with the fundamentals of this, however, as someone who’s done a LOT of corporate interviewing over the years, I find transcripts to have their own unique limitations. They codify and subsequently expose what was said, but seldom contain a clue to how it was said.

I’ve looked up way to many quotes to discover that while the words were precisely “this is a great bottle of whiskey” when you go to look at the footage, what you actually find is “Uh…what…oh yeah, uh, this (looks at the bottle with distain) is a “great” (obviously meaning terrible as he sneers at the bottle) – long pause while he glances off camera at the PA – then sneers back at the bottle, stifles a belch – and mumbles ” bottle of whiskey.”

A transcript tells you nothing about the reality of the clip – only the words being said.

A simple keyword locking that clip into the “negative comments” collection is a whole lot more useful than any transcript.

Tho both are obviously very useful tools in many situations.

Actually, let me take this farther. If in the next line in the same interview, the guy says “Naw, I’m being harsh, this stuff – it doesn’t suck.” In X, you can label the whole thing as “negative comments.” Then range just the last three words as “positive comments.” and find each.

That’s pretty sweet.

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 true take away is simple.

X might not be what one particular “you” needs.

But one “you” is not everyone.

We all fall into the trap of thinking that how we edit is how editing always needs to be done.

Tony just showed us how one type of extremely professional – massive money on the line – workflow can make use of the tools in X to do a better job.

Herb and Shane and Chris don’t see how it helps them. And they know their workflows better than anybody else so that’s fair.

But they can’t extrapolate their particularly needs and experiences into the “holy writ” of editing any more than I can.

My needs, Tony’s needs, Herbs needs may sometimes be similar – but that doesn’t been they are the same.

And that’s the big lesson here.

I am one kind of editor that represents one market segment. X is great for me. If you need to edit like I do – medium to large company corporate video – it’s a fabulous tool. That’s all I’m saying.

“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