[Bill Davis]

Chris,

If you’re serious about enjoying etymology, you owe it to yourself to investigate Michael Quinion’s
World Wide Words site if you haven’t already.

Every listserve distribution is an absolute delight for those of us who value language.

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]

Marvin,

My perspective is that this is another thing you have dead wrong.

“When desktop publishing came along you didn’t get an appreciable rise in the number of good designers. FCPX isn’t going to create a new market any more than iMovie has.”

I think most of the “good designers” 10 years after the fall of the Linotronic culture and the rise of the desktop era were PRECISELY those who dumped the old workflow most rapidly and adopted the new ones.

I owned a small ad agency during those years and I saw the rise, fall and obsolescence of phototype from the beginning, middle and end.

The youngsters with emerging talent took the new abilities that flexible on-screen design, PostScript, Firey RIPS and even the Laserwriter and watched as wholesale changes swept across the landscape.

Yes, talent will out. But no matter how astonishingly design talented the guy doing page layouts by cutting rubylith and pasting up physical type might have been, obsolescence was on the horizon the moment the game changed.

I totally understand your defense of Towers, RAM and big assed hard drives. But it’s going to mean NOTHING when the client EXPECTS you to show up on set and load, edit and display how shot 007b2 cuts against 009c3. If you can’t deliver on that that request because you’re stuck on the system “back in the office” heaven help you. And the moment the shooter in the field discovers that he or she can actually FINISH a cut at the client’s deskside, then they’re going to start thinking “Why do I need those guys back in the office working so hard to amortize that big iron. The work is getting done right here. I’m right here doing it. So why shouldn’t I just do it myself and forgo the hassle of the costly edit suite.”

Editing skills are moving from being centered around SHOPS to being centered around individual BRAINS. If you can’t see that, good luck with all the expensive hardware. (Suggest you look into depreciating it according to IRS Section 179 because at this rate, it’s gonna be worth ZIP faster than you can believe.

That changes everything. Period.

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]

Yes Herb.

You’ve been consistent to the point of dogmatic in your view about FCP-X.

It’s also clear that you are as hardened in your thinking as I am in the opposing view that this continues to be software that is new, interesting, and increasingly useful.

I’m more than a bit thankful that I’m on this side of the coin, because I believe that my thinking is a path to more understanding (and more fun along the path) than is yours. And I suspect you feel exactly the opposite. We’ll have to accept that.

Because we’re different people.

I am curious as to your continued coming back to a place about a topic you appear to have decided is fatally flawed and unworthy of your time. That confuses me. When I assess something as unworthy of my time, I leave it behind and go concentrate on things that I DO find worthy of my attention.

Maybe it’s just a microcosm of the current era where modern radio and the web teaches us that constant angst, confrontation, and clash is more satisfying to many than is civility and reasoned discussion from BOTH sides.

I think you and I may be stuck inside the classic “glass half full vs glass half empty” polarization.

In fact, I think you might be the the guy who used the term “Pollyanna” a while back to describe my view.

I’m totally OK with that, btw.

I kinda had a thing for Haley Mills when I was a lad and actually admired the character for coming to issues with a perspective that naturally gave new ideas and situations either a positive spin or at least the benefit of the doubt.

And I’d rather make mistakes by being too open, than make mistakes by being too closed.

You’re against FCP-X and I’m for it. I get it. As does everybody else here.

We should move 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]

Herb,

It may be difficult for you to understand this, but I think about more than one thing when I consider things.

It’s price is ONE aspect that’s important at some times. Everybody understands that. Everybody.

Particularly, I suspect, in allowing students and other beginning editors access to tools. Most people who take a moment to think beyond the level of “I must pick this guys argument apart” understand that a $200 difference (let alone a $700 one!) is significant in some circumstances — including the one I described in the original discussion – choosing a modern laptop tool to do basic prep in card-based workflows.

I was making an apples to apples comparison in response to someone saying that other tools have similar speed and features. Fine. In a targeted discussion of limited to feature performance that alleges that two products have much in the way of parity – why is noting that one of those options has a superior price point anything but useful?

If you feel the price difference is fully justified by additonal features, argue that and tlet the budget customer reading here decide if those extra features are worth the extra price.

I suspect that would be more useful than just taking me to task because I bought up the factual reality of a price differential.

“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,

If you are correct it will sputter, lag, fail to gain any market traction and fail. Because it’s an extremely competitive world out there.

If I am, it will succeed because the larger market wants something different than you do than the things you keep relentlessly complaining about in tone and particulars aren’t the core of why people and companies adopt software into their lives.

We’ll know in a couple of years, won’t we?

“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]

We were doing fine until I got to your last line.

Which to my eye, seemed to imply “those who disagree with my perceptions are merely too dumb to understand what’s good for them.”

I can’t believe that’s what you meant to say.

So I’ll ignore 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]

As to your comment:
Most other NLEs punched out way more realtime power than FCP ever did, on the exact same Mac.

The oddity is that even if all could agree that in all cases this was universally and strictly true, what was the barrier that caused it to always remain substantially less successful than FCP-Legacy in it’s market share? Was this just a re-do of the BetaMax is superior to VHS, but the market doesn’t care? Was there a differentiator like “whole movie” capacity that drove the success of one over the other? Interesting questions, but the fact remains that FCP-X was the most widely used world wide editing platform when they did the rebuild. I suspect that without the overall ascendence of Apple as a business, this risk would not have been conceivable. So thanks to Jobs betting successfully on iPods/ITMS, iPhones and iPads, the company had the luxury to take a flyer on the FCP re-invention game. And so we win with a new, if controversial choice. Good. I like more choice.

Heated responses to my posts? Yep, gotten TOTALLY used to that. Some are interesting. Many feel “knee jerk” to me, as if the respondent is still doing what I did initially – give no weight to what might be true inside what was ticking me off. But that’s how modern debate works. You pick and choose weakness and try to address that – and ignore whatever you can’t take apart and address as easily. I’m TRYING not to do that. But I suspect I’m regularly failing at it. That’s OK. Opinions that are never tested have a larger chance of being exposed as baseless over time. Those that are challenged and can be defended are the ones that stick around. I’m okay with that.

As to the idea you expressed in “if you’ve only ever known…” I understand the concept. But I dismissed trying to be the “systems analyist type” long ago. In that game you need an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of all the players. If you’re in the seat doing the work, your interest can stop at the point you find a tools that satisfies your personal needs.

I’ve had that since April of 1999. FCP. I guess I should be the first guy to be pissed that they changed it since my entire career has largely been based around it. But I’m having the time of my life learning the new thinking that X is built on. Its FASCINATING to me. And I like fascinating, challenging, and things that shake my life up (in moderation, of course.)

Like the say, YMMV.

Totally agree with your last line, however. FCP-X instantly drove savings into the Pro NLE market. Hope it lasts.

“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]

Agreed.

An in fact, if you’re making 1000 chairs a day, the proper toolset is likely going to be a big-assed compressor and a host of workers weilding penumatic brad guns.

The best tool benches feature a broad range of tool choices that the artist can pick and choose in order to scale their efforts to the scope of the tasks at hand. Something I suspect your grandfather would have understand perfectly.

I don’t have to have upholstery professionals in my family to understand that.

And to understand that there are likely more people who will benefit from a CHOICE in NLE editing platforms just as the woodworking industry benefits from not having all chair builders go to the store and be forced into a choice of BRAND of big compressor systems, rather than having a wider range of toolsets including some specialty tools that work better for particular uses.

FCP-X represents a very different choice.

That can be nothing but good for editing in general, whether it’s adopted by millions, thousands, hundreds or dozens.

“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]

Fine Herb,

That just means that I was able to use the $299 tool instead of the $999 one (499 for a limited time) to do the same work in the modern, agile style.

I’m not forced to buy a suite of tools (and pay for access to them) that I’m not likely to use.

I can live 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

[Bill Davis]

Clearly, Chris, you’ve never needed to re-upholster a chair.

A magnetic tack hammer is PRECISELY the tool you want.

Runs circles around a traditional one and prevents time lost to thumb and finger injuries in the process.

: )

“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