Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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[Michael Gissing] “Luma and gamma are the first controls graders reach for.”
Fair enough.
Then again, before X, creating a new timeline was the FIRST step I did on every single project I completed for more than a decade.
Today, I edit, keyword and prep for sometimes half of what turns out to be my entire final edit schedule before any storyline even exists – yet I get my overall work done much faster.
The point is that learning to change “the first tools…” I had previously conditioned myself to reach for – was one of the things that actually made the biggest difference in my productivity.
Maybe those kids building those films had trouble getting their luma and gamma right.
But maybe it wasn’t an issue and they somehow got their pictures on the screen with those totally decent looking grades without any sort of struggle at all.
Only thing for sure is that eventually, time will tell how these new versions of coloring manipulation tools settle in.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Michael Gissing] “If that is the reaction then Apple may have wasted a lot of development time on giving X editors a tool that they don’t really need.”
Huh?
At worst, Michael – this issue appears to effect one range within one tool in the 10.4 update.
There are dozens of other tools that aren’t effected at all. The new white picker, the innovative way you can set a color centerpoint of a range by clicking on a pixel value and effecting a boost or cut around that, all the new curves, the tools like the Hue vs Hue replacement – these are all “new to X” and work wonderfully. Including for “rudimentarily schooled in color” editors like me who never felt knowledgeable enough to do much color manipulation beyond super quickly fixing gross exposure and obvious color casts via the color board and X’s scopes before.
We’re kinda back in the realm of Cindy Crawfords mole to me. It’s a flaw if you stare at that to the exclusion of the rest. But it certainly doesn’t DEFINE the whole.
Maybe that’s why the folks at the LACPUG meeting didn’t focus on this topic much. The screen showed great looking footage. Done (including the Grading!) with 10.4.
So Ipso facto, you can get a superb product out of it as it stands – working with modern RAW footage files.
Maybe that’s all that really matters to a whole lot of next gen editors?
FWIW
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Kinda cool.
I know the main thing this group wants to know about is the Color thing. But honestly, it was barely a passing topic at the meeting. During the Stump the Gurus session, the question WAS asked. I kept my yap shut as the LEAST qualified guy on the panel regarding grading issues.
Sam Mestman (who spent part of his career doing color work) – pretty much noted that it’s a thing, but he really didn’t seem to think it was a big thing. Mike Matzdorff appeared to be at about the same place.
Apple wasn’t on stage, but obviously WAS in the front row, and nope, nobody from ProApps jumped up to deal with it like it was an active fire. It’s OBVIOUSLY on their radar. The whole thing took maybe 4 minutes – then the crowd was on to other things and it never came up again..
I’m sure people who live and breath traditional grading processes still vehemently disagree and have their concerns – but for this crowd and in this room – it was just NOT a big focus – at all.
The apple folks (there were a bunch in the house) including a wide variety of product folk mingled. Were obvious at the breaks behind or beside the iMacPros setup in the lobby area. Individuals who are dedicated colorists had ample opportunity to directly discuss any issues they had directly with the product and/or engineering folk there.
But again, I’m a color idiot and was talking to others about other things.
Overall, the night was half a modified version of what we saw at NAB – along with the fun of the “student films”- the teams Apple sponsored with loaner equipment and mentorship to enable them to make passion projects.
ALL three of the films had young women directors and they were a treat to watch.
The one that personally moved me most was the first entry – La Buena Muerte: Directed by Jean Balest, Cinematography by Elle Schneider, Produced by Manon Banta & The Mobile Film Classroom. it was based around a “dia de los muertos” theme with a daughter and her mother coming to terms with the mothers terminal cancer diagnosis. The imagery as captured by the Red loaner cameras by Ms Schneider, graded in 10.4. and shown up on the big screen – was tack sharp, properly “focus managed” via depth of field – believable and beautiful. Particularly considering there were so many black and white super high contrast face images mixed in with the super colorful stuff of the parade footage.
Sam said the theme, was basically. If you have a passion to tell a story – it’s an amazing time – with amazing tools – that can let you do that. At a pretty astonishing price considering what you used to have to spend to pull off anything remotely like these projects.
Overall a really fun evening and it was awesome to get to see so many old and new friends.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Caught up with Sven Pape (this Guy Edits) at the LA thing last night. He’s got a FCP X piece in Sundance. Know nothing beyond that.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Honestly, spending time using finder folders for asset organization is a wee bit contrary to how X is designed, IMO.
X looks for “mounted volumes” – whether those are physical drives or network connected locations – and the rest of its management and assembly tasks are exclusively database driven.
The finder locations of things really aren’t very important in a system like that.
Folders are nice – but X doesn’t care about them. It has a database to do it’s asset management work.
Literally, if you just toss ALL your video, audio and graphics assets in one big folder called “Sources” (or something similar) – located on the root level of a drive – then just exported XMLs to describe your edits in progress and emailed those back and forth as you work – X will sync things just fine.
As long as two editors have IDENTICAL drive volume structures – XML sharing works fine at a “two individual editors” collaborating level.
Lots of folders within folders within folders is a strategy I see as a remnant if older editing practices and really kinda just makes the databases job fractionally more difficult – since it makes the asset location paths more complex.
Simpler is usually gooder!
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Just for future avoidance of stuff like this – consider learning to do as much prep work as possible (like sound sync, audio track management and replacement, base color correction, etc.) in the Browser rather than in your Storylines.
Mastering X is fundamentally about mastering metadata flow.
The more you do “upstream” the more time and hassle you save downstream.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
My experience with Pixel Film Studios products has been overall pretty bad.
(The stuff about their building some of their early products on copied IP from their competitors – then doing nothing about it when challenged, aside)
When people are running into issues with system instabilities – and I find they have PFS software installed – my first suggestion is to remove the PFS apps and see if it helps.
My opinion is that from day one – they’ve focused more on making money than creating great software.
YMMV
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Jeremy Garchow] “The problem is that they work unexpectedly.”
Fair criticism. (The entire post, not just the quote, btw)
I do truly appreciate your framing in the above quote itself the way you did, Jeremy.
If the original thread had been framed thusly, I probably wouldn’t have said anything.
Of course it wasn’t.
The impression had nothing to do with “unexpected operation.”
It was framed largly in terms of: broken, flawed, – dangerous, even.
The message was: It’s a major screwup, Apple – fix this at once!!!Yet here we are, two weeks later with likely a million editors exploring and using the new tools.
And the hue and cry about it is pretty “tempest in a teapot” so far.
But maybe that will change.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
As a narrator, I find “”such is life” a more visually and rhythmically satisfying translation.
Accuracy be dammed – this is ART first – linguistics second, dammit!
????
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Neil Goodman] “There’s a difference there. Have you never publicly criticized something you bought? Something you use on the daily? You sure as hell criticized Adobe for subscriptions and Avi for being a dinosaur. Dont those companies and the people behind them deserve the same? MHO is absolutely not. You put something out there in the public and you open the floodgates, especially these days.
People on this or any forum shouldn’t have to tip toe around your personal feelings for Apple.”
Sure I’ve criticized things. But it’s not my default mode. For example, I’ve criticized the FCP X approach to key framing. I, (like many others) find it overly “fiddley” and I don’t think it’s entire interface is well designed. I don’t harp on that or make it the ONLY thing I say about X, but I’ve said it and I’m still saying it. There are dozens of other things I’ve had difficulties with in X as well – (Loss of the Project Library, The complex switch to the Library Model. The loss of the ability to work audio “above the line.” ) All annoyances to me.
But I have CHOSEN not to DEFINE my posts here by the parts of the glass that I see as less than full. Not when I can drink what I need, when I need, in such a personally satisfying fashion.
In the interim, where am I with THIS problem? Answer: Working away happily. Cranking out X projects day after day that don’t require the thing that needs fixing.
Look, I GET that if you do color work daily – this is a snafu. But ALL productive X editors didn’t have an internal way to do color beyond the color board before this – so waiting until it’s addressed is simply no MONSTER deal IMO.
At worst, it delays some of the utility of a brand new feature, while MANY other features are in place, working fine, and very useful for users.
I still feel that way.
If you don’t – then you’re free to say THAT here too.
But that it seems to make you ANGRY – isn’t about the features really, is it? It’s about seeing ALL criticism of your position as a personal attack, rather than professional critique. (And, yep, I’ll cop to that as much as the next guy.) It’s HARD not to see every thing that’s the slightest bit controversial (or even not!) I post here ripped apart by those with an alternative view.
But that’s where we are in the world now. These are contentious times in public discourse.
And there’s only two ways to deal with it, IMO. Pull back and let ONE view define the argument from day one. Or voice what I believe, even if it turns out i’m wrong 50% of the time – and let the brickbats fall where they might.
I’m still OK with that. If YOU aren’t – that’s not my problem, really. But I am sorry it makes you feel so angry, Neil.
Honestly. It must be tiring to be so upset so much. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s just what you do. I’ve certainly seen others who have the same angsty reaction in lots of situations in life. If you and I are one of those “oil and water” matchups, Ces’t la vie.We’ll both do fine regardless, I suspect.
Take care.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.