[Bill Davis]

Walter,

I’ve found you one of the MOST reasonable and open-minded voices around here. Period.

The “forward looking projections” comment is completely fair as well. So fair that it was echoed by at least one guy I talked to this week who actually does have some invitational access to the FCP-X development thinking. (and who was VERY careful with making sure he spoke only in broad generalities because of that.) I got the “this is the foundation, there’s a LOT more to come” and the “the team was empowered to start to dump any and everything in order to re-consider what was possible and beneficial in the light of where editing is most likely to be going for the greatest possible number of real-world broad spectrum editing tasks (my language interpretations exclusively, not what he SPECIFICALLY said, because as I noted, he clearly took his ND responsibilities very seriously)

The above is not NEWS. Just a veiled distant glance at what is probably going on in Cupertino. And is nothing more than can be seen in the features and the approach in the reality of the FCP-X by anyone who wants to look at it rationally.

So if this “early building blocks” idea i is correct what might it mean?

It appears that the 90 day rapid delivery of XML, STEMS, ROLLS, and new camera SDKs might be an indication that with cleaner base code, there are fewer software interactions to screw up when the code goes in to enable new features – and that may just empower more rapid revision and improvement.

I’m still cutting in FCP-Legacy most days. But my home town studio group is back in session tonight to explore FCP-X – and since the 1.01 rev, I’ve had responses from nearly twice as many people as last time who want to attend.

Momentum for the product? Only time will tell.

“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]

You telling me that Premier is now calling Core Audio and AV foundation for it’s processing?

If so I’m impressed.

I freely admit I don’t know the other pacakges very well. That’s why I try to stick as close as possible to trying to discuss that features I work with and understand.

If Adobe (or Avid’s) re-builds have put them on a feature or speed equivelence, of if they provide features that FCP-X does not, then you’ll never hear me say that someone shouldn’t follow that reasoning and switch.

The reasoning I do take issue with is the drone of “it’s not professional and you can’t do good work with it because it doesn’t do what I want the way I want to do it.” That’s absolutely correct. It doesn’t. It does a lot differently. So what?

Apples pricing for X seems to have caused at least Adobe to cut their entry price in half to woo new users – so good for the guys who want to switch!

I’m just not one of them. 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

[Bill Davis]

big,

You are correct. My language went a bit too far.

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

[Bill Davis]

I appreciate all you said.

In the end you asked a specific question, so I’ll answer it.

Here the the features I believe will win the day in the long run.

The code base of X appears to be significantly tighter and more modern. They had already re-envisioned the OS with AV Foundation supplanting Quicktime, Core Audio, Core VIdeo, Core Graphics, et al. It’s rudimentary to understand the engineers to want to rebuild the flagship programs to take advantage of these foundational technologies that were’t around when the foundation of FCP was conceived.

It’s precisely that core re-alighment that lets it be so agile. And that means the new “lean and mean” build makes it less dependent on towers maxed out with ram and HD arrays, and more adaptable to laptops, tablets, and smart phones.

You and I both know that laptops today run circles around desktops of just a few years ago. It’s a crystal clear trend. FCP-X is in conformance with that trend.

Continuing, Unlike FCP-Legacy, it “speaks” file based storage natively. FCP-legacy was designed “ground up” in an era when video meant TAPE -= and video editors with talent were trained to think of a piece of moving tape as the fundamental concept of how images were stored and played back.

But they no longer were. And that gave Apple the chance to do what it does best. Think Different.

(Yes, I know, many of you immediately will get hostile and think “but it wasn’t broken.” And you’re right, it wasn’t. But history is full of examples of people who re-invented stuff that worked just fine, when they believed they could see a way to make them work better. Jury’s still definitely out on that in this particular case, but I’m comfortable that the new way is likely to be superior to the old way in the long run – while appreciating the absolute right of anyone else to see things differently.

My continuing enthusiasm (and I’ll admit that that describes exactly what it is) for FCP-X is based on what it’s doing well for me. Here’s an example. Right now, we’re working on about 30 interviews shot over 3 days of production in San Diego. With FCP-7 I would have had to Log and Transfer those cards and wait until everything was transcoded to ProRes before I could start editing. FCP-X allows me to open the Disc Images of the card files (6 cards in this case) into RAM and all the virtual footage is available INSTANTLY to start editing with. Hours and hours of prep saved. For all I know, other NLE’s might have had that before, but FCP-7 did not. Big efficiency win for me in this particular case.

I also think FCP-X’s “less timeline centric” orientation is going to win. The timeline itself comes from an era when nearly all professional deliverables were destined to be sold by time increments. That’s TV shows and commercials. (Theatrical movies were always less length dependent within reasonable limits) For the modern editor who may NEVER have to deliver a 30 sec spots or a 44-45 minute cut for a network TV slot – then the “work to rigid time specs” that were once critical in the vast majority of projects- aren’t so much any more..

Part of the FCP-X bet is clearly that in the future less video will be consumed on TV and via plastic discs, and more as pure data on laptops, ipads, smart phones and thumb drives.

I believe they are correct. The missions are changing, so the tools must adapt as well.

They also appear to see that while large organizational team approaches have to still be supported (and said as much with the XML and Stems inclusion in 1.01) they also understand that modern video content creation is rapidly skewing more toward the efforts of a single person in a seat than a building full of role-players. After saying that, if you can build a video editing tool that is agile, useful, modern, more processer and OS efficient AND allows add features that make it ALSO useful in workgroup situations – that just adds icing to the cake and makes it a better tools at little incremental development cost.

In sum, the “gut and rebuild” of the software is exactly the same as gutting and rebuilding ANYTHING else.

A company does it because they’re dissatisfied with the existing foundational construction.

It’s a PITA to gut to the core. Much more efficient, easier and less costly to renovate than to scrape, dig out the old foundation and re-build from scratch.

The only reason to do it, is that you think foundations THEMSELVES have evolved and the ones being constructed and installed today are BETTER than the ones installed yesterday.

In the first big paragraph of this I mentioned half a dozen technologies that are in play today that didn’t even EXIST when the code base of FCP-legacy was being developed.

I simply think the BEST software talent isn’t put to best use when you make them constantly work to keep compatibility with code and calls and even features that were mission critical 10 years ago, but might NOT be so important now. (I doubt FCP-X can link to anything over an RS-232 port, but so what!)

So since you asked, that’s my view.

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

[Bill Davis]

>Bill, you’ve been presenting FCPX as a “take it or leave it” scenario. You also imply that the complaints >against FCPX are all illegitimate, and that Apple is the only one thinking about the future.

I disagree with your view above. It’s not “take it or leave it” – it’s look at it rationally, or look at it emotionally. You simply can’t recast what has passed for the the FCP-X discussion to date as other than “emotion trumps reason.” This does not imply there’s not room for disagreement. We’ve seen quite a bit of reasonable questioning. But we’ve also seen a whole lot of “scandalized” emotional writing that has totally missed core realities.

I’ve been trying to present an opposing view based on my experience – which is unique to me – but is also long and mostly successful in knowing where to bet my professional video editing capital in order to make my living.

There are still large numbers of of loud voices who are simply damming the software – many of them on sketchy information, or based on their view of parochial issues that don’t affect the lions share of editors.

So since I see things differently, I’m going to keep saying so.

I do NOT think that “Apple is the only one thinking about the future”, Walter. Not at all. That would be a stupid opinion, in my view. I have at least one long time friend at Adobe who I just ran into and spent an hour talking with at the EXPO, so I’m not an Adobe or AVID hater in any way. I admire both companies and respect their operations including the people who are charged with figuring out what the market eventually will want.

What I’ve actually said is closer to “Apple is the only company who has taken the big risk of tearing down their flagship editing suite in order to modernize it’s code for better performance in the future.”

They are FIRST out of the gate with a modern NLE gut and re-build. We’ll see whether the other major players see that and follow suit, or keep going with the older code base they have.

As I’ve said here in other posts. We had 4 similar professional NLE choices 90 days ago. Now we have 3 similar ones, and one radically different one.

Some find that horrible. I find it excellent. Now I have MORE choice, and so will you. This debate should focus on that and value facts over angst.

FACT: I stuck my head in all the “training session” doors at the DVExpo yesterday. In nearly all the free ones, attendence was kinda anemic. The only one that was chock full? Diana Weiland’s 3 day FCP-X Certification Class that cost upwards of $800.

And yes, I KNOW there are plenty of expensive training program seats that have been filled with people learning AVID and Premier too. That’s self evident for anyone who thinks about it.

The point is that if everyone universally agreed with the “FCP-X is a loser” meme that so many here are relentlessly propounding, those seats would NOT have been in such high demand.

Or maybe I’m wrong and absolutely everyone who decides to learn and support FCP-X at this point are wannabees or sheeplike drones who can’t understand “real” editing – if so, I still commend those folks for the initiative to gather together to risk their hard-eanred cash in order to engage in what they clearly see as self-improvement.

We’ll see, 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]

As a very smart guy told me in conversations this afternoon in Pasadena when I went to see some old friends in the FCP/DV/Editing community….

This is Version 1 after 3 months of life. The foundation is complete. The “Build out” is progressing rapidly.

We’ve gotten more additional core capabilities in this 90 day rev than FCP 1.0 got in it’s first year.

This development pace is possible because of the “stripped, cleaned, and optimized code.

If he’s right, we can expect rapid and constant progress (tho clearly never enough for the people who want this total rewrite to have sprung whole from the ashes of it’s 10 year older sibling – losing nothing and including everything that incrementally developed in the original.

If you don’t see any light at the end of this tunnel – then you’re totally free to leave the pathway.

This IS FCP-X and how it’s going to develop.

It’s brand new – and it’s totally different than anything else out there.

90 days ago we all had four versions of the same basic way to edit.

Today you have three traditional choices and one totally different one.

If you can’t see that’s BETTER than having four versions of the same basic thing – then feel free to do what many others are. Go to one of the other three.

I’m having a blast expanding my brain now that I FINALLY have a chance to use something totally different.

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

[Bill Davis]

I just got back from California and the DV Expo where I dropped in to see a bunch of old friends – most of whom were giving the presentations that the attendees were there to learn from.

I came away totally energized by the conversations I had.

One guy told me that the way he sees it, FCP-7, Premier, Vegas, and Avid represent the best of what digital video editing has been for the past 10 years.

But FCP-X represents what it will be for the NEXT 10 years.

It’s a long play. We’re in phase one.
Over and over the same idea from people in a position to know. This is the beginning of something designed to grow and grow and grow.

One guy reminded me that we’re looking at FCP-X after merely 3 months of life. And one very smart guy reminded me that the 90 day revisions just rolled out this week have already added more useful new capabilities than the original FCP added in it’s entire first year.

From that perspective, we can only imagine what it will look like in 2 more years.

Come for the ride or not. Your choice.

“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]

Stefan,

If you have existing “older” Motion files, your question makes sense.

But the fundamental relationship between the two programs has undergone a pretty substantial change.

My explorations have indicated that a chunk of the code that makes up Motion 5 is already “embedded” in FCP-X. It’s the program’s titler. When you do text work inside FCP-X you’re using Motion’s code. Period. This changes the fundamental relationship between what we used to think of as two separate programs. They aren’t really so “separate” any more. When you go “outside” to Motion, you’re actually just opening up additional capabilities on top of the subset that lives in FCP-X.

This means the old thinking about “round tripping” is kinda obsolete.

It’s probably not strictly accurate, but I think of the relationship as having “Motion light” built into FCP-X – and when I launch Motion 5, the extra capabilities “enhance” the control and add new abilities. But many of the tools and code are exactly the same. So there’s not really two different programs at work. Just one seamless “text and graphics” environment that expands or contracts as the user sees fit.

This makes it a whole lot easier to operate, since no matter where you start, or how you change things – what you do in one area will be reflected in the other because there’s only ONE file in play. Not two that are being merged.

Put another way, there’s no penalty to roughing out titles in FCP-X, since a simple option click will “open” them inside Motion 5 and let you further refine them with all of Motion 5’s tools.

The very concept of having to “round trip” is un-necessary – because it’s all coming from a single code base, so what you do in motion doesn’t just “reflect” back to a file in FCP-X – it IS the file in FCP-X.

Does that make sense?

“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]

Sorry,

You are not allowed to do nice work with FCP-X because everybody knows it’ s not a professional tool.

Please stop immediately.

(and please don’t tell anybody that I really, really liked what you did and that this is coming from a guy that used to be a partner in an advertising agency)

“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]

It’s freekin brilliant.

When you’re working on drug industry exposes ya tag them as Poppy Seed Roles.
For automotive spots Roles Royce
When you’re working on ragtime music documentaries they become Jelly Roles

What could be simpler?

“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