Craig Alan
Forum Replies Created
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Maybe X doesn’t want you to edit on a USB drive? USB is a bad idea for editing. For some reason X likes the system drive which is also a bad idea. Get yourself a firewire drive/array or an esata array or wait for the new thunderbolt drive/arrays which blow both of those out of the water.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
Here’s my logic.
There would be huge interest in FCP 8 even if were just FCP 7’s interface/feature set with 64 bit and background rendering. It is by far the most famous NLE. FCS was the best deal in town.
As for Premiere: Why didn’t FC users switch over when FCS fell behind in terms of raw speed and modern architecture? If the Premiere suite had already surpassed FCS, then why were the vast majority of FCS users waiting for FCP 8/FCS 4 and not moving over to Adobe?
Color was a selling point for FCS considering that DaVinci was a much bigger investment until well … now. Color was free and it wasn’t specifically designed to need a control surface. But mostly, I think, it’s the need, or the perceived need, to be on an industry standard app. Premiere has not crossed that line yet. Maybe it is crossing over now.
I’m not saying I know. Maybe perception was the only reason. Maybe by version 5, Premiere’s interface had caught up. But I always got the impression that FCP users felt Premiere was catching up but hadn’t equaled FCP’s interface, even if it had passed FCP in terms of speed and native format support.
I think Apple is underestimating the influence the current crop of pros has on the upcoming generation. If future editors, producers, videographers, etc are doing anything, they are researching/thinking through decisions on-line. Can’t get much bigger than the Cow for this. If all the well-respected current gen are telling the next gen that FCP X is not for pros, then they’ll go learn whatever the pros recommend. Same with schools. They need to teach what the industry is using now.
Many more golf clubs and baseball bats are sold to weekend warriors than pro athletes. Weekend warriors want the brand the pros use. If they can afford it, the exact same equipment. A $300 app is not an impulse price point. Anyone interested is going to read about it on-line first.
FCS is used at most High School, College and professional training facilities because along with AVID it is the software that the pros use. Now the debate is to switch, at least for the time being, to either AVID or Adobe. For those who are already comfortable with AVID, it’s a no brainer. For those that aren’t, Premiere is looking attractive because it has copied much of FCP’s interface and is compatible with old FCP projects.
What started me thinking about this were posts like
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/10177
“Go try Premiere for a week. You’ll find it isn’t anything to get excited about. It’s trying to be FCP, but it’s not. I’m bewildered that the company that brings us Photoshop and AE can’t make a better editor.Try Avid, its software from a company that knows a lot about Video. But not quite so much about software usability and interface design unfortunately. But it adds to the mystique because it’s so ridiculous to learn. It too has been trying to become an FCP esque interface in 5 and 5.5 iterations. But now they just have more buttons and keystrokes to accomplish a task than ever.”
I haven’t tried the latest release of Premiere. I tried a version 3 release on a XP system and although I use XP at work I just am not comfortable on windows. I have tried AVID 3.x and I noticed how rock solid it was and fast. But I did find the interface less Mac-like. There also seems to be less support for it in terms of being a student of it. I can do a search on goggle about almost any aspect of FCP and find a ton of links at all levels of professionalism (where as AVID is really just pros).
That said, I have loaded Avid 5.5 on a Mac pro and will give myself a chance to learn it as I finish projects in FCP 7 and figure out what to do with old projects.
Considering Apple acquired FC and DVDSP and COLOR from other companies, I don’t think it is without precedent. Adobe certainly has the resources to buy FC, but I agree that there is no way Apple would sell. They have never sold anything as far as I know. They want to control the future. The engine they built might be very impressive but the FCPX interface is not being embraced.
I will be looking for a solution of what to order in my next grant proposal. I teach a lab that serves over 150 students at a time in 16-20 production teams. If the industry moves to Premiere then I will consider it along with Media Composer. That might seem superficial, but my grants depend on teaching beginners on industry standard equipment (practices).
My original post was just, for me, a fun idea. What if FCS was not dead but passed on to another player that already had AE and Photoshop? If Premiere is already there, fine with me, but I haven’t heard this from the chorus of FCP users. And if that were true, than why would anyone even care that FCS is EOL?
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
Seems stupid, but after spending hours on my laptop, when I move to my tower, I sometimes find myself reaching for the built in track pad that’s not on my Mac keyboard. I think they should add it. Not on the side where my mouse is but toward my hands like on the laptop. And sometimes I like it more than mousing. The other advantage might be the day or two you spend backing up, Installing fresh. Updating. Discovering bugs and drivers that don’t work and legacy apps that won’t work. Should be a blast.
Seriously, I’d wait for it to come out and read the feedback of folk with the same system. It might speed things up. Can’t imagine the new features will mean all that much. You most likely will need to update soon to be allowed to use some new app that won’t work without it.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
The xml exported from imovie to fcp, from what I have read, only includes basic cuts and I think some transitions. It was true that Apple added support for some camera formats in the, then, new Imovie that had not yet come to FCP. You need to find out what it was shot on. Make a copy of her project and get rid of all stuff other than basic cuts. Then try again.
Even with the mess, can’t you see in FC what format the footage is in?
It might be possible, by now, that you can start with a better codec than she did. It all depends on the original footage. Since she started adding so much detail, what is left to be done?
It is amazing how much time we are all spending with formats and software versions and making them ‘just work’.
Another option would be to get the latest Imovie, which most likely can read this file. Then export to Imovie Pro (FCP X). Should work. (Just kidding.)
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
I do follow that. But the need to render any effects ‘appear’ equally in the timeline and the canvas. And all physical connections have render times, a delay of cause to effect. You flip a switch in the dark to complete an electrical circuit. There is a delay before the light comes on. And when the light comes on, there is a delay before it reflects off the objects around you and reaches your eyes. And when it reaches your eyes, it takes time before our eyes adjust to the increase in light. And a delay before our brain takes this information and makes sense of it.
The canvas and timeline, as designed, are two parts of the same interface. We can drag a clip from the viewer or browser to either the timeline or the canvas to have them appear in both. By design, there is always this connection. And if we had FCP 8 in our hands, the rendering, at least in terms of watching the results of edits in the canvas, would be, for all practical purposes, in real time.
If we could see all changes of our edits in real time then the process would feel much more natural. It would be easier to learn. It would be easier to use. This was the hope in the next version of FC. And in a way it is here and in a big way it is not.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
[Chris Kenny] “I’m not sure why you say this makes it a non-symbolic representation.”
Because you physically move the playhead forward in frames — a one to one relationship. You move it one notch (frame) forward, it moves forward one notch in time.
And as you do so, you can see the movement in time in the canvas in real time and which tracks are visually dominant in the image because they are directly and in real time displayed in the canvas.
It’s not like you need to go to a different hidden window. The timeline is an interactive graphing of the canvas display. The part of timeline that can be seen horizontally displays X amount of time as the playhead’s point in time is displayed in the canvas.
When you use a steering wheel in your car or a zoom rocker on your camera, is it symbolic that the movement turns the wheels or zooms the lens? On some cars and some cameras it might be technically symbolic because the process is digital and not mechanical. But it behaves mechanically just the same. I turn this – it moves that.
I suppose if we had 3D monitors the layers of tracks could appear as filmstrips each in front of the next and how translucent each one is. However, twisting these filmstrips so they face us creating stacks would still be useful so that you could visually understand/manipulate what is in each layer.
The way I see it, the canvas at any given moment is just a blow up of one moment in time on the time line – all layers expressed as one image. It seems to me a pretty obvious and brilliant way of doing business. Here is our place in time; here is our moment in time.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
Come on, Chris. In FCP1-7 you scrub through the timeline as shown in the canvas and pretty perfectly wysiwyg if you play the canvas on a broadcast monitor.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
[Chris Kenny] “I don’t agree with this at all. If I arrange shots A, B, and C, what’s important about shot C is that it comes after shot B, not that it starts 316 frames into the program, or whatever. Editing is almost entirely about relationships between shots.”
It’s not about either/or; it’s both/and. The exact moment is at 316 frames into the timeline. And even with non-tape based cameras, it is still at 316 frames in that the light hit the sensor chip.
Ever been at a conference when the TALKING HEAD tells you to find the blue page and on the back look for the section in bold and look for the underlined header BORED TO DEATH? As he assumes everyone has found this, TALKING HEAD begins to read the section out loud as half the group is still fumbling through an increasingly messy stack of pages.
However, if you bind them and get rid of that stupid COMPANY LOGO SLIP COVER FOLDER and number the pages and paragraphs, and the same TALKING HEAD asks you turn to page 52 paragraph 5 sentence 3. Two seconds later, we are all on the same sentence. You can still color code em blue if you like; you can still underline em if you like. Even with PDFs on an Ipad. Type in 52. Press enter. Boom we are on the same page.
316 frames in the timeline is on page 52 Act 2 Scene 3 in the shooting script. The editor changed things up and everyone may not agree with the edits. But at least they are referencing the same point in time when ripping each other’s throats out.
From page through distribution, it’s still all about light sound and time. Now on a metaphysical level, time and space are not constant but relative. And 24 frames per second is not reality. But for our purposes, if you shoot in 24fps, it’s ‘as if’ it is.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
Other than as an anthropomorphic metaphor, software does not “understand.” It does not reason. It does not design. If a computer program is ‘intuitive’ at all, it means that it acts as we would expect it to act due to the software designer’s use of well-crafted, ergonomic, metaphoric interface. If you design media-creation-software to produce pre-patterned outcomes based on common usage/consensus, reason, and design, you have in essence dummied it down. Computer software designers are not the only ones doing this to the arts. How-to-‘write’-books have been guilty of this as well. And equally destructive to the creative process. Thus we have unnatural plot twists at predetermined IN points/marks/page numbers in order to heighten the tension in a standardized way, bring us to orgasm in a standardized way, and resolve all conflict in a predictably crowd pleasing way, and in a timely manner. A flat unexciting orgasm/resolution that satisfies a typical audience member. Not a problem – in post, you can jack the sound, quicken the rhythm, employ hypnotic quick edits that work subliminally and forcefully to get the heart pounding. Neurologically stimulating even when completely brain-dead.
More often than not, with predetermined patterns, like templates, everyone’s product will begin to feel the same. They often do anyway because fashion dictates. But in the analog world or the digital one that uses the analog as a model, a different drummer and therefore drumbeat comes to light. It’s one thing to choose a preset, or use a professionally designed template; it’s quite another to make the use of these the default and the unique a workaround. If the nuts and bolts of a system are themselves mini-templates/meta-templates, you will ease editors toward certain editorial patterns. This will assure a quicker/easier route to an acceptable product, but not necessarily the best or most creative, and certainly not the most individualized.
Pre-designing not only is a very bad model to follow in a profession application, but I would argue in an educational application as well.
I’m not predicting this will be the result of wide adoption of FCP X, but it was exactly my fear when I first looked at the new Imovie. And I do think there are more than just hints of the new Imovie in FCP X.
For FCP X to use industry standard (and even common usage) vocabulary (such as ‘project’) and have it mean something completely different than in every other NLE including FCP 1-7 is counterproductive and anti-metaphoric. Metaphor is helpful when based on historical reference. To cut ties with your own history and those of your current user base is not only counterintuitive, it is a denial of the past. If I have 10 different timelines of a show I am editing – different lengths, different endings, different formats, different compositions, I am not working on 10 different ‘projects’. If someone asks me what ‘project’ am I working on now – they mean what subject, what video, what event, what film … not what version/sequence.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A. -
Would diskwarrior or somehing like it be able to help by rebuilding the directory?
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.