[Bill Davis]

OK Tim,

I’ll stand corrected.

It’s doomed.

Only those who didn’t have a clue missed that the FCP-X release was the end of FCP as a workable editing tool for human beings. ; )

But you know, I still have that pesky feeling that this is going to be just like DV-25, Digital audio, DSLR’s, H4n’s and SURELY FCP 1.0 where the “it’s just toy stuff” evolved UP into daily working tools used by people making a lot of money in video production.

It’s gonna take a few years, but I’m still betting that big and monolithic is going to eventually fall to smaller and more agile.

Happened with music playback, telephones, and computers – and it’s GOING to happen with video production at all but the highest end. It’s inevitable.

And I think the NAB folks cheering at the release understood that completely.

And if the ADOBE clan (who, BTW were the ones pre-empted at the eleventh hour that night) ended up a bit pissed and that gave them any extra impetus look gleefully on any narrative that FCP-X is deeply flawed OVERALL rather than in a very narrow range at the top end of the user base – well, it’s a competitive world – and that’s how business has always been played at a certain level.

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]

Whenever you want to give it a whirl, drop me a line.

You can reach me at my “day to day” email address.

Slightly munged to keep the spambots at bay it’s: new (opposite of old) video (withoutanyspaces) AT fastq (fast plus a lower case Q) DOT COM.

I’d be happy to help if I can.

Bill

“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 entire NAB SuperMeet thing was an incredibly stupid blunder that put Apple in a hugely defensive position from day 1. Making a last-second grab at NAB with all the histrionics and drama they drummed-up for their vapid 45-minute sneak was completely unnecessary, likely ego driven, and very foolish. And then springing the EOL of FCS3 on everyone two months later without any warning was just the icing on the cake that made the whole mess unpalatable.

If Apple truly had a hard time imagining their set of choices, they could have and should have waited.”

I’m sorry David but what you wrote above is almost totally revisionist history.

Were you even at the Supermeet? You couldn’t have been – unless you had some kind of terrible cold that made you functionally blind and deaf.

I was one of the guys helping Michael Horton and Dan Berube run the SuperMeet and your description is so disconnected from reality as to be LAUGHABLE.

I was the guy managing the admission line, I was tstanding with the team from Apple and the Security guard who finally took down the rope and let people in. I don’t work for Apple, I’m just one of the guys who helped Mike start the LAFCPUG at their first meeting.

The attendees applauded, gasped, and even CHEERED regularly throughout the meeting as feature after feature was unveiled.

It was only AFTER THE FACT when the “pros” started picking at it days later in forums like this one that the “story” started to focus on what it lacked rather than what it what it was at that introduction.

And above, sorry, but in my view you’re continuinga history of SPIN in the face of FACTS.

What everyone there saw was Randy unveil feature after feature. The Magnetic Timeline, Clip Collisions, etc. etc, etc, and the crowd LOVED every darn second of it.

Don’t believe me? Go search out the Video Clips of the meeting. They’re on the web.

VAPID? Not by any stretch of the human imagination.

I’d welcome anyone else who was actually in the audience to weigh in here.

But let’s keep things real. OK?

“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]

Totally concur. But as I’ve noted before here, somewhere in my studio is the last blank Ampex 456 audio tape I ever bought. The last Hi8 multitrack audio tape, The last 1″ type C videotape, Beta SP tape and even the last VHS client dub tape.

This time around I’d kinda like to NOT to have another partial box of doorstop media as a reminder of the inevitable day I suddenly stopped needing them for good.

(Fingers crossed)

“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 hallmark of great change is, in a word – disruption.

We’re in yet another era where fundamental disruption is everywhere.
Heck the whole idea of a “virtual community” like this one is largely disruptive in and of itself. Just ask the trade mags who’ve seen their ad revenue disappear toward the banners over there on the sides of this screen!

FCP-X is also disruption writ large.

Some here have little tolerance for disruption, others embrace it. (as it has ever been throughout human history)

So David, to directly address your question, the tumult wasn’t just necessary – it was inevitable. Without regular disruption things remain the same. And in a rapidly transformational world – staying the same Is actually falling behind.

That Apple video that famously started “Here’s to the crazy one’s…” was a pretty good clue to the company’s appetite for disruption.

That anyone was truly surprised by FCP-X was just an indication that we’d forgotton to listen for a while to what they were saying all along.

“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]

Sure,

Study teaching.

It’s been a profession nearly as long as people have been learning.

There’s a huge wealth of accumulated knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in an instructional setting. It requires a lot of structured preparation. A basic understanding of how different kinds of people best learn. And then the same as any other skill, practice, practice, practice.

Good luck.

“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]

alexandra,

You’re concentrating on frame rate – which is good.

But also be mindful of the sampling rate of your original audio files.

Whether they are 44.1khz or 48khz (or even 32khz) won’t bother FCP on initial import since it will re-sample on the fly to import as necessary – but when you’re outputting those same files for ingest into AE or something else, sometimes you get links to the original sampled audio files and that can “lock-in sample rate conflicts.

I’d use QTPro or some other audio editor to lock your audio at a standard audio-for-video sample rate (typically 48khz) at the point of original audio ingest. Then maintain that so that none of your interim steps have to re-transcode your audio to anything else.

At least then your audio won’t drift verses the video – and you can concentrate on getting the video to lock against consistent audio.

Just a suggestion.

“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]

I’m seeing people having trouble even finding tape stock these days.

I saw an audio guy on the net about 6 months ago pleading for a source for used Ampex audio multi-track stock, to no response. Then just two weeks ago, a producer I work with had to buy SD DVCAM tape stock and mentioned that we’re down to a single physical tape vendor in Arizona – and they don’t stock much.

How important will “print to tape” remain when there’s no tape to be had outside a few specialists in LA and NY?

Just asking.

“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] “I agree that FCPX is still under development and that there’s more to come, but getting back to Simon’s iMovie/FCPX discussion from another thread, they’ve had more than 4 years, and probably closer to 5 or 6, to think about how their new timeline data model can work with the rest of the world. I’m drawing the conclusion that interchange is a very low priority for Apple, since a lot of other development has advanced dramatically in that time — and interchange hasn’t.

Openness wins, and I find it disconcerting that Apple doesn’t seem to be valuing it more highly.”

Walter,

I actually don’t think this is accurate. They had 4-5 years, yes. But most of that time was in parallel development with not only the video centric core technologies like CoreVideo and OpenCL – but while simultaneously devoting huge resources to iOS.

It stands to reason that any development team likely had to pause and wait for the plumbing to finalize before they could move on installing the fixtures.

I also think that’s why everyone is so frustrated with interchange. As Phil Hodgetts noted to me recently, “none of the third party developers could really get going until the primary code base was locked.” And that didn’t take place until just shy of 4 months ago.

If X doesn’t have useful and interesting additions in it’s first year on the streets – that’s one thing and worthy of remark. That people are still dinging it for not having a full blown 3rd party ecosystem in place in that short a period is pretty sketchy, IMO.

It’s working pretty darn well now for me as a 1.0.

Only time will tell which of those limitations will fall away, in what order, and how soon.

One thing Apple has said, crystal clearly is that this is their editing platform for the next decade. They know ALL the editing spaces from beginner to hollywood moviemaking awfully well. So I think that has to be seen as representing a pretty clear long term commitment to the product.

Finally, on the “openness” concept. Maybe. We all recall that the Mac itself, ITunes and iOS have been about as closed a set of systems as is possible in the modern era. They all succeeded quite nicely – not because they were necessarily “open” but rather because they identified a problem (sometimes that people didn’t even recognize that they had) and solved them in a fashion that lowered barriers to both ease of use and user satisfaction.

All of those initiatives are now vastly more profitable for Apple than video editing. But I think they also understand the long time Apple lesson that cutting edge software that solves real problems for lots of people still drives hardware sales.

FCP-X maximizes today’s hardware. That includes a de-emphasis on “big iron” desktop systems and more emphasis on laptops and likely iOS devices in the future. Mirroring precisely what the largest group of people in the marketplace are voting to purchase.

I don’t know if professionals will be editing video in 10 years on 30″ iPad-like touch screens and using Siri 5.0 to whisper “cut clip – move to end – and paste” but it’s certainly easy enough to envision.

Just not with any other software platform outside Apples — that I can see right now.

Yours for an interesting future…

; )

“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]

Mikael,

Send me the script if you like and I’ll be glad to do a free VO for you.

(I’ve done more than a 500 professional VO’s in my career)

Or, if you’d like to keep the computer voice, it’s kind of cool in a 2001, a Space Odyssey kinda way!

You’re call.

Thanks for your hard work

Bill Davis

“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