[Brett Sherman]

Yeah but it’s Media Composer V4 that I have, so theoretically it should work. In fact it ran at one point on the exact system. But it just isn’t working. I’ve installed the OS from scratch, upgraded to the exact version of the OS required, installed the exact version of Quicktime and it just won’t load.

[Brett Sherman]

[Glenn Sakatch] ”
Odd that you can’t install the old version. Something funky going on there.”

Yeah I tried multiple 4.x versions with the required OS and Quicktime versions. Nothing worked. My guess is that MC4 was not a very solid piece of programming on the Mac at least. At that time Avid had a way of breaking the rules for programming on the Mac.

[Brett Sherman]

Wait, are you calling people dinosaurs? 🙂 I’m sure I can figure out a way that you are.

[Brett Sherman]

[Walter Soyka] “Suggesting that someone who does not share your personal preference might be an “elitist nerd” operator, not an artist, and might be “scared senseless that people will now finally find out that all they could in fact ever do was memorize buttons and knew when to push them” on the other hand… how should that be interpreted?”

Yes. I agree this particular statement is a bit out of bounds. But I don’t think this is common at all on this forum. And we’re spending WAY TOO MUCH time complaining about these posts. And I will also say that posts like this do not attack a particular person. Whereas the pushback often does attack a particular person.

I also think it’s not the same point as discussing whether or not there is resistance in giving FCP X a fair shake in the editing community because of ingrained ideas. I believe that is a true phenomenon, you may disagree. The problem is when anything like this is mentioned, that person is immediately accused of perpetuating the “dinosaur trope.”

Can we just move on? And agree to be more civil in our discussions about editors who don’t use our preferred editing programs. And not to constantly complain about “dinosaur tropes.”

[Brett Sherman]

I don’t think you’ll find much disagreement that the terminology of FCP X sucks. But it’s not much of a barrier to getting things done.

At the beginning of the FCP X release, they thought they were going to change the structure of file management for video editing. Dividing footage storage from timeline editing. So I think that’s why they came up with the Project/Event structure.

Now as it turns out that was a miserable failure for a lot of good reasons. But they sort of had to keep the nomenclature. I agree that “Project” is a terrible term. It really should be “Timeline” or “Sequence”. “Event” I’m less opinionated about. Often my usage actually is an “event” per “Event.” But sometimes not. “Bin” would probably be better.

I still think “Projects” should be able to be stored outside of the events within the library. It sort of mucks up the division between sequences and footage. But whatever.

[Brett Sherman]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Surely he didn’t say that, though.”

Fair point. I did misread his point on speed a bit. I read it as saying you could be equally fast with any editing program. Which I do not believe is true at all. So my apologies for that.

[Simon Ubsdell] “I think though there is a trend here to try and imply (if not state outright) that there is something exceptional about FCP X that sets it apart from the competition.”

Number 1. I don’t think anyone is stating this outright. Number 2, I believe the implication is in the interpretation, not in what is being said. Number 3, if that’s someone’s opinion, so what. Why are we trying to limit discussion here? There are people who post here that think Premiere is exceptional. I have no problem with them.

It’s also ironic in your post you just stated things that make Media Composer exceptional, but yet somehow are saying it’s out of bound to do the same for FCP X. The difference between saying elements of FCP X are exceptional (as you seem to agree with) versus saying the entire editing application is exceptional is sort of silly to attempt to sort out. FCP X IS exceptional with the timeline (meaning no other editing program uses the same paradigm). What is the point of hashing this out? And why is there so much sensitivity about this?

If you please tell me what I’m allowed to say it would be much easier. 🙂

[Brett Sherman]

[Andrew Kimery] ”
I think think there is a lot of confirmation bias where one side always things the other side is acting worse.”

That’s why I said “if anything”, meaning either way there is a lot more complaining about “offensive” posts than actual “offensive” posts (I’m not sure I can identify a single one.) We all just need to chill out.

[Andrew Kimery] “I assume means if you use anything other than FCP X you’re doomed to failure”

I think that’s part of the problem here. I don’t “assume” it means that at all.

[Brett Sherman]

I have to agree with you here. I just don’t get this thread. Usually I find Oliver’s posts insightful. Not this one.

I think there is a bit of market myopia here. Yes, I can see in the feature film world why it doesn’t make that much difference between the products and Avid is a very good feature film editor. I have never questioned that because I don’t know anything about feature film editing.

I’m not in that market though. I do quick turnaround, documentary-style editing. Which is very much similar to news editing. In these markets there are distinct advantages to FCP X. Could I use another editing program? Of course, and I have. Media 100. Vegas. Avid (Xpress Pro actually). FCP legacy. But I find FCP X is just the most efficient for what I do. I’m not sure why Oliver thinks otherwise.

I also think there’s a bit of a straw man here. Who exactly is saying the other programs stink? If anything, I’ve heard a lot more of the opposite. And I don’t go on Premiere or Avid forums to tell them there is absolutely nothing special about their software.

[Brett Sherman]

Also, remember that once you have the edit down, you could compound your audio into groups that would be easy to see – you could even name them things like “CR-V SFX”. If you need to tweak later on – just break apart the clips.

[Brett Sherman]

The connected clip structure of FCP X opens up a lot of possibilities if Apple chooses to pursue them. It would be possible to have different “views” of the same timeline. One for clip editing (the current one), another one for audio mixing (where visually, audio would be split off the video into tracks based on roles and with a role “mixer”), another where video keyframing would be primary. Also I’d love to be able to “explode” a compound clip within the timeline, work with it, and “implode” it once I’m done. There would also be possibilites of a Motion project basically being a special sort of compound clip where you have Motion-style arrangement of clips and can swap and trim them within the FCP X interface.

But maybe I’m a dreamer too. I’m not sure Apple is down this road or even realizes the possibilities at this point. However, it is one of the clear advantages of a linked timeline.