Chris Kenny
Forum Replies Created
-
[Joseph Owens] “To deliverable tape?”
Tape output is trivial to do from a third-party app, once you’ve got a file that meets the right specs. Blackmagic is already stepping up and adding features to their Media Express deck control app. I don’t think lack of built-in serial deck control is going to end up being a big problem.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Devin Crane] “Is there anyway to view the original TC of the clip in the main storyline or timeline?”
The clip’s start and end timecode show up in the Info tab of the inspector. If you need to get the timecode for a specific frame, use the “Open in Timeline” command. This will open the clip in its own sequence, where the main timecode viewer will show clip-based timecode.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Michael Garber] “i understand how the connections work. it just seems odd that it would work while slipping on the bottom layer. i guess that’s just one of my “old school” fcp ways of thinking ;)”
This makes perfect sense to me. Say you’re editing a fascinating new documentary about parking. You’ve got some interview footage in your primary storyline. The guy starts talking about the history of parallel parking. You cut away (via a connected clip) to a pan over a photo of John T. Parallel, the inventor of parallel parking. You timed that cutaway relative to what the interviewee was saying, right? So if you slip the clip of him talking, you want the cutaway to move to match.
This is, in my opinion where the magnetic timeline really shines. There’s just no convenient way to do this in FCP 7. You’d have to slip the underlying clip, remember how far you went, and then manually move the cutaway by the same amount.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Gary Pollard] “Although, unlike some, I like what Final Cut Pro X offers in terms of actually cutting sound and picture, I just don’t see how they can make any changes that will allow assignable tracks in the context of the magnetic timeline. I wish there was some evidence that they could.
Without any such evidence I just don’t see how ANY improvement they will make will resolve these problems despite all the protestations of adding in “pro” features again. “
From the FAQ:
“An update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize your audio clips by type and export them directly from Final Cut Pro X.”
Tagging audio clips and then mapping them to tracks based on those tags when exporting seems like it should work.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Walter Soyka] “Chris, let’s say you were opening a boutique digital cinema production company that acquired on RED today. Would you choose FCPX as your editorial platform? Would it offer you everything you need to do your job if you were opening your doors today?”
I like what Apple is doing. I believe they have the most compelling long-term vision in this market. But there are critical features missing.
I guess my approach, if I were getting started today, would be to buy Creative Suite, because we’d need Photoshop/Illustrator/AfterEffects/Encore anyway, and use Premiere until Apple added the necessary features to FCP X. But as it is, we’re just going to stick with FCP 7 until then.
We actually don’t need multicam for our indie feature work, so the truth is, if FCP X supports (according to Apple’s timeline) XML exporting in a few weeks, audio track assignment by the end of the summer, and ‘real’ video output somewhere in that time frame, we might only be two or three months from being able to integrate it into our Red pipeline. Even if Resolve doesn’t add support for the new XML format right away, I could probably write a script to bridge that gap. I’ve certainly written enough to fill in gaps in FCP 7’s functionality over the years.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Jeremy Whaley] “YES – Maybe you are correct that they have a new foundation, but my point is it’s a NEW SOFTWARE. Change the name, continue support for FCP7 and Apple would have been seen as a genius. Instead they’re trying to stop a social media outcry!”
I agree they should have left FCS3 on sale. But I still don’t think a name change was really necessary. Or, rather, it got a name change. It’s not FCP anymore, it’s FCP X. Yes, I know the X is theoretically the version number, but a) that version number is fictitious (it’s a 1.0 release of a new app) and b) as with OS X they’re going to leave the X there basically forever and just increment the decimal (this is already spelled out in the section of the license agreement dealing with minor/major updates). The X is really part of the name, and is clearly intended to signal the same kind of radical transition as Mac OS X.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Jim Glickert] “Thank you very much, Jeremy, for your post. It was extremely well-written and on-target. I have not commented on the Cow regarding the FCP X debacle, but I’ve been wanting to. My post would have been very much like yours, particularly the idea of naming the new software something other than Final Cut Pro. “
Giving it a different name wouldn’t have made much sense. First, the app is, in fact, targeted at the median Final Cut Pro user. Folks doing feature film or broadcast work, like most of us on this forum, just have a very unclear picture or who the median FCP user is.
Second, having shipped an app that targets the median user, Apple is immediately proceeding to fill in feature gaps necessary for our niche markets as well.
Apple should have come out and said, explicitly, from the first day “For this first release we were focusing on foundational issues; we’re working on adding support for film/broadcast users now”. It would have saved a lot of trouble. But it is now fairly clear that this is what Apple is doing despite the lack of such an explicit statement. And there’s nothing especially objectionable about this approach.
[Jim Glickert] “What’s been eating at me in recent years is Apple’s growing arrogance. I don’t know if it’s a consequence of growing so fast in so few years, or a corporate culture change. It’s the perceived attitude of, “We know what product features you should have, so don’t bothering telling us what you want.” That attitude may work for consumer products like iPods and iPads, but not for professional software products. “
Apple is very good at understanding what features are necessary for an initial release, and what features can be left for later minor/major releases. They often make very aggressive decisions about what features to leave out of initial releases, and it’s not uncommon for them to take harsh criticism as a consequence, and then go on to huge success anyway. In fact, it this happens with virtually every new Apple product release these days. You say this market is different, but that is not at all clear to me.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Jeremy Whaley] “The truth about FCPx, as I see it, is probably that this is a great software that will help a lot of wanna be video producers have a lot of fun doing videos and take their videos to the next level. Eventually it may even be an amazing pro application. BUT IT’S NOT FINAL CUT! Where Apple went wrong here, and why the outrage is so intense, is they promised “an amazing new Final Cut Pro”. And like some many have said, what they delivered is the end of their actual FCP application that could do something powerful, and replaced it with imovie deluxe. “
They did not. They replaced it with an application that is, in broad strokes, a very worthy successor to FCP 7… but that is, in its first iteration, missing a handful of features film/broadcast folks need. Some of those folks, as a consequence of those missing features, some superficial similarities with the iMovie interface, and a whole lot of preexisting paranoia, have completely freaked out.
What people need to understand is that developers have different priorities at different stages in an app’s lifecycle. Apple’s priority with the initial release of FCP X was to get a solid foundation in place, and deliver a feature set sufficient to make the app useful to the median FCP user (who is not a film/broadcast editor). They have done this. This required a huge amount of work: creating a new media framework and rendering engine, working through all the details of the new metadata-based footage organization system and connection-oritend timeline, etc.
Now they can turn their attention to adding features for the film/broadcast market (what everyone keeps calling the “pro” market, though it’s only a small fraction of the people who get paid to edit video). And the FAQ, while light on details, indicates that they’re doing precisely this.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Julian Bowman] “Multicam (shoot 6 camera live sessions too). Ability to put my rushes and render files somewhere different from my project files, and wherever I need/want. Open FCP7 projects. Capture from tape. Plugins. The ability to create little bits of my edit further along my timeline without it being sucked into the main edit as it is the way i like to do things. Multiple sequences in one project, rather than multiple projects just to have multiple sequences. Call me old fashioned (and please do) but a manual save option. The keyboard strokes to be the same as they are in 7.”
Aside from multicam, which will probably be there in a year, you’re largely asking for things to work the way they used to. I assure, none of that will take two years to show up. Because it will never show up. If your primarily objection to FCP X is that it works very differently (which seems to be the case), then leave. Because while all of the stuff about Apple not caring about pros is essentially misdirection based on screwy market definitions, it is the case that Apple legitimately does not care about people who’s primary focus is on legacy approaches and legacy compatibility.
Personally, though, I find it rather absurd for you to demand that FCP X be modified to work like FCP 7 when you haven’t actually invested any effort to figure out whether the way FCP X works might have its own benefits.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Francis Robertson] “Great, thanks, what are those little grey arrows pointing at each other sitting on your cuts?”
Transitions.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.