Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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[andy patterson] “There are movies cut on Avid MC and Premiere Pro but the users of Premiere Pro and Avid don’t make movies about it (Off The Tracks) and have get togethers about it like the FCPX users do.”
It’s probably true that those programs have “users” while FCP X has a significant number of global users who can be fairly described as “enthusiasts.”
Since Apple spends effectively ZERO to fund or promote that – you might ask why this has happened.
It couldn’t be because the time and effort that Apple’s NLE team put into really considering how to make improvements in the software during the Legacy to X transition has real-world value that organically resonates with lots of editors?
Naw, It must be because we’re all just identically deluded. ????
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Neil Goodman] “As far as having to go out of your way to see content produced in Avid or Ppro that’s kind of a crazy statement to make.”
Not if you understand what I’m saying.
I’m not implying that people in general have trouble seeing examples of work cut in Premiere or AVID (or X for that matter since most programming doesn’t come with a “cut on…) label. That’s silly.
My point is that nearly everyone’s information feeds today are pre filtered by virtue of what you search for and consume most often. If you looked at my information feeds, you’d see that there’s a ton of X related news and content in it. That’s because it’s a specific interest of mine and Google, et al – understand that and feed me more. It’s no different than a couple having a baby – starting to search for baby stuff – and finding their feeds full of cribs and formula coupons. It’s how the whole internet works now.
If you read about Premiere or AVID or Resolve – you get fed MORE Premiere or AVID or Resolve stories. So much so that it can make you think that the products you prefer are the ones that most others prefer as well, even in cases where that might not be an accurate view of the actual market.
I thought everyone already understood this stuff.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Neil Goodman] “When’s the shoe going to drop ?”
Perhaps you’re just monitoring sources pre filtered by your bias?
For example: The project that David Tillman cut entirely on X nearly two years ago for Chuck Braverman’s OJ Simpson, The Lost Tapes project – Just snagged a couple of Emmy nominations a couple of weeks ago.
In the X community we’ve been discussing projects like that and a LOT more for years.
But in case you haven’t noticed it – media access has become largely “Balkanized” with people (wittingly or not) increasingly walled off from anything their Google use patterns say they won’t act on as readily. So the information street you see gets narrower and narrower.
It’s how information access works now.
As an X editor – I see TONS of X content from all over the world.
In order to see stuff on Premiere or AVID – I have to actively seek it out via effort.
That’s just the new normal.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
My opinion only.
I see a ton of this type of cross promotion in very large companies because it’s orders of magnitude more efficient to do strategic partnerships than to try to manage new product and marketing chains for all the bespoke products you need to manage to satisfy diverse customer constituencies.
My kid had friends over and we did bulk cheap pizza for the first time in a long while. Pizza Huts desert cookie comes branded as Hershey now.
If you’re already running a huge company – outsourcing via strategic partnerships just makes everything easier.
Three small teams from Red, Apple and Sigma can create a bundle that takes TONS of friction out of a purchase decision for their customers. At least for purchasers that have a $15,000 credit card line available – and tons of small business entreprenures do. Heck, even if you add another $4000 for a speedy laptop the total is about a third the cost of my first financed SD video production system twenty years ago.
And so it goes.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
And I’d argue that you are WAY underselling what Apple created by exposing so much of the database to the user by way of its implementation in X.
It’s systematic in a way no other NLE is – at least as I understand it.
Or can you call up something like the Keyword HUD and get instant confirmation of the attached metadata tags applied to any frame in Premiere? Can you concatenate collections via search terms rules (ala Smart collections) and recall those new pre-curated assets instantly for single keystroke deployment Into your edit without anything destructive happening in Davinci? Can you apply momentary temp search strings – apply an ascii graphic like a red diamond to the collection then use that as an editorial team communications flag?
I’m honestly asking since I don’t use those programs.
Not being familiar with the other programs, perhaps you can – but I’ve yet read of stUff like that touted in ANY but X workflows.
Re-arranging the same traditional approaches via pancaking and stringout management is about the extent of what I’ve read about from the other NLE camps.
If innovative stuff like this is happening in the other NLEs please describe it for me.
I’d love to be educated about how the Premiere or AVID editing operations are improving and evolving.
In my morning reading I came across a snippet on Digg about the announced demise of Flash in a few years.
Matthew Olsen wrote:
“This is just another step in the long, slow death of the old internet — each retiring bit of technology puts countless creative works at risk of vanishing. Some of these will be dutifully archived by way of conversion or emulation, but many will just cease to be.”
A version, perhaps, of “evolve or die?”
So how is your NLE of choice evolving? I know how mine has – and continues to.
Anyone want to school me in this?
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “I see this statement made a lot. Just to be clear. EVERY NLE made was an NLE built on top of a database. No exceptions, except maybe traditional film cutting. Even there, editors had codebooks (database).”
Sure they all function behind the scenes using database techniques. If you expand the idea far enough a 1950s library card catalog is a “database” too – but that’s in no way germane to the discussion at hand.
A card catalogue wastes time in the modern era scale of expectations. And until you can show me another approach with a better system of user driven functionally for recalling shots instantly as you need them with absolutely minimal friction – like X does via its clip range tagging system – It’s a distinction with a huge practical difference.
Subclips – the traditional way to separate out subsets of footage in older NLEs – has a mere fraction of the power of truly integrated “right in the app” ranged based keywording.
That was my point.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “All I’m saying is not to view this through an FCPX lens. The position is within the Mac hardware team, not the Pro Apps software team.”
And all I’m saying is that if Hollywood shops (or their rent/lease integrators) want the new boxes to put AVID setups in the hands of experienced editors APPLE will surely be delighted to sell the computers, regardless.
If it turns out those same boxes run X significantly faster than they run AVID or Premiere (speculative at best but not unreasonable considering where we are seeing today) then time will tell if X qualified editors will get an increasing chunk of those seats – for no reason beyond it possibly being the most optimized tool for getting the work done.
As you and many others here have pointed out – preferences and conditioning aside – if a producer wants the team cutting on NLE A because it hits the deadlines easier with lower labor costs – that’s what usually happens.
And again as you’ve said here – X is not THAT big a jump for any qualified editor given good training and time to adapt.
The big issue is the collaborative stuff and nobody outside Apple knows what or if anything is happening there. But it IS an NLE built on top of a database after all.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Perhaps.
But there is another way to look at it is this.
In 2011, Apple tore apart the most popular and successful NLE on the market and started from scratch integrating a new approach. It jettisoned their own wildly successful technologies like QuickTime and re-scaffolded the software on new foundational blocks.
Over time, they’ve been focused on new underpinning ideas like extending the user/database exposure, re-thinking and extending the magnetic timelines capabilities and creating a new database capabilities subset for audio with Roles.
Now that the code for all those ideas (and more) are time tested and in place – they see how all that work is poised to help those customers with the largest and most complex workflows and they are starting to set up a central place in the heart of the American Media industry to help their customers leverage the new capability against the increasingly complex workflows of today.When Cannon found that their customers were using the 5Ds for video they did the same thing. Boosted the hardware with the C series video cameras and opened up a shop in Hollywood to support users there.
Seems like Apple might be doing the same thing.
As to whether it’s somehow “too late” that can only be true if two conditions are present IMO. The first is that there’s no customer base for a more refined solution than the ones already in place – and secondly if whoever is promoting better alternatives can’t get their solution noticed enough to gain traction.
Somehow I don’t think either are going to be a problem for Apple.
We’ll see.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
It’s a loss for Adobe.
I don’t really know Al personally, but I’ve been backstage at enough SuperMeets where Al has been a keynote presenter to have seen how seriously he’s taken his work demonstrating the software for large crowds.
If you’ve never given a demo in front of a couple of thousand other editors at a major trade show – you have no idea of just how difficult it is to be both entertaining and informative – to get thing scrupulously right – and to make every word count.
If you think these guys just walk up and nail it somehow – you don’t have a clue. And I’ve seen Al pacing and reversing 5 minutes before going out on stage – even tho it’s crystal clear he’s been rehearsing his presentations for weeks if not months.
It’s precisely what professionalism is made of.
And Al Mooney always did it extremely well.
Our own Tim Wilson still sits atop my personal pyramid as the best prepared and most engaging software demo guy I’ve ever had the privilege to watch work – but Al wasn’t far behind.
Like I said. He will be missed.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Sorry I was out of town and didn’t see this thread until this morning. So couldn’t play.
Nice to see that I’m at still relevant enough to generate discussion in my absence! By way of thanks, here’s an iPhone CU snap of the life size Luke Skywalker Lego figure from ComiCon. Enjoy. ????Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
