[Tim Wilson]

I’ll also add that certification tests typically target a specific failure rate. The goal is to triangulate between thoroughness of the training and the difficulty of the test in order for it to denote an actual accomplishment.

I have no idea what the target failure rate for your test was. I’ve seen the target be as high as 50%, although in that particular test, retakes were free…but they were very serious about making sure it was hard enough to be an actual barrier to be climbed.

Again, I’m not passing any judgement on either you or the setup you participated in. Maybe it’s working exactly as the training facility planned it, maybe it’s not. But if your employer hasn’t had a chat with the training facility, they definitely need to. Whatever the facility’s goals, if they weren’t clear about their alignment with your goals, that’s a problem.

I’d start by asking flat out, how many people they typically expect to see fail the test, and why, and what that means for the employer’s ability to get their money’s worth out of the proceedings.

Maybe somebody here has been through the specific training you have, and can speak to it more directly I can, but my hunch is that until your employer has had that conversation with the training center, it might be premature to blame Apple. Maybe not. But maybe.

In addition to the resources Mark mentions, please ask questions directly in the FCPX Techniques forum here at Creative COW. You’ll find some of the sharpest FCPX pros in the world there (and here of course), including some folks who do indeed train people in this stuff for a living.

I’m sorry to hear this, though, Eric. It sounds like a mighty drag. Best wishes for happier outcomes.

[Tim Wilson]

I am pleased to see my prognostication accuracy streak holds fast! LOL

[Tim Wilson]

Holy COW, I LOVE that animation. I used to go to GCC theaters just to see it. LOL Just as I went to THX theaters for the original THX opening. (None since have moved me the same way.)

I remember when Northpark was the new kid in town. 1965 I think. One of the ways they distinguished themselves was by incorporating fine art in a way that had never been done in malls before. In fact, Northpark won the American Institute of Architects Award for “Design of the Decade – 1960s.”

I don’t think Dallas gets as much credit for art as they should…at least by the time I’d left in the 70s. LOL No idea since….

…but the theater I loved the most was the Granada, a deco-inspired gem from the 40s. Classic movie palace. Once I could drive on my own, and my parents felt okay about me driving into The City, this was one of my most frequent stops.

It converted to a concert venue in 1978 I think, although I’ve heard that movies are back now too….but in the years before they concert, their thing was showing astoundingly eclectic double features. They could be anything — documentaries, silent pictures, Eraserhead, Belle et le Bete, heck, I went to an Irene Dunne double feature once. The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus double feature sounds almost cliche NOW…but do it some time. It’ll blow your mind. From the balcony of a deco movie palace in the mid-70s, I still haven’t quite gotten over it. LOL

The fact is that none of this sounds like a big deal now, but in the days of three channels, when you were lucky to get more than a couple of movies a YEAR on TV that were worth remembering, and certainly nothing foreign or obscure — Documentary? What’s that? — it was a miracle. Not that mainstream American cinema from the 70s wasn’t marvelous. It FELT like a Golden Age, even while it was happening. But there was a whole world that the Granada opened for me.

They also printed this broadsheet that had the month’s movies, with razor-sharp capsule reviews/blurbs explaining why the hell they were gonna show this movie you may never have heard of, and why you should bother showing up. I’d grab the one for the current month and the next month, and spend many, many days trying to find out everything I could about them.

I’d love to meet some of those old programmers and thank ’em. They’re as responsible as any strangers for making me the movie lover I am.

I actually went to college with the intent of becoming a teacher of film and television history, based in meaningful part on my experiences at the Granada…but, and you’re going to be shocked by this, I got distracted by any number of shiny things, and showed up to the second semester of my senior year with no major and no idea what I was going to do next. LOL I haven’t quite recovered from THAT, either. LOL

Those guys really did have a massive impact on me, and 40 years later, the Granada remains one of the pleasantest places I’ve ever parked my bottom for these reasons among others.

I’ve gone pretty far afield of your animation, though, which was awesome. Thanks for sharing that!!!

[Tim Wilson]

[Mitch Ives] “If I depended on Spotify (no slight intended to them specifically) or anything else, I’d be screwed. “

Understood…but again, a problem for which Spotify contains its own solution. Download all you can eat, any time.

[Andrew Kimery] “With Spotify, on the other hand, you are just streaming music Spotify has the rights to stream to you. If Spotify goes away so does your music. “

Of course…but you’re assuming that ownership is the most compelling way to music. The world disagrees, which is why streaming has disrupted music consumption so quickly. I never assumed I owned anything on Spotify, so the changing selection is no big deal. Certainly no deal breaker.

I assume you’re avoiding Netflix for the same reason? Because they got there first. People would rather NOT own movies and TV shows. They can, but they choose not to.

(This is another area where iTunes was disrupted too, btw. When was the last time you heard about people bingeing on iTunes shows they BOUGHT? I’m sure it happens…right? But not in any way that Apple can sustain a business on at anything resembling historic levels.)

But that’s my question for you. Do you avoid Netflix? Or even cable TV? Because it’s the exact same model as Spotify, MINUS THE DOWNLOADS. I don’t think you guys are getting the power of downloading Spotify.

My point being that you don’t own anything on cable TV, and yet you might watch anyway. Or you don’t own anything on Netflix, yet you might still watch anyway.

Or are you ONLY consuming media you buy?

I’m not being rhetorical or combative (this time). I genuinely want to know.

[Tim Wilson]

[Scott Witthaus] “Almost as bad as losing music is having to choose what music you want and what you can live without: “Live at Filmore East? Gotta have it. Quadraphenia….hmmmm…Jerry Lee…see ya…” “

Another advantage of Spotify. Save anything you want, stream if you can, download if you can’t. I no longer have to decide. It’s all there. All the time.

[John Davidson] “you can download and listen to tracks offline, no wifi needed”

This is key for me. I live at the absolute fringe of my phone data, and at the absolute end of my ISP’s hardwired network. They keep coming out to try boosting the signal, but the head-end engineers are not encouraging of our long-term connectivity prospects. If I couldn’t download Spotify music, and had to rely 100% on streaming, it would be nearly useless to me.

I really do find myself enjoying Spotify far more than any other music platform I’ve ever had….

…although vinyl is the only one of them I still miss. But if I’m being honest, a lot of it was the just the size of the media. Hell, if I could buy full-size album covers and associated goodies without the albums in them, I would.

[Tim Wilson]

[Herb Sevush] “As Tim would say, I got what I deserved from buying products from a company that lives off devouring it’s young. “

I’m not saying you deserve it. Nobody deserves being treated the way Apple treats its customers. (Well, not nobody, but not you.)

I’m just saying it’s to be expected.

I’m sorry to hear it though. There’s nothing worse than losing music. (That’s right, I said NOTHING.) It happened to me once in the physical world in a home burglary, and again in the digital age when catastrophe stuck a backup hard drive. I’d never been one for backing up backups before (oops), but now, no need to bother.

Enter Spotify.

[John Davidson] “Just get Spotify and sync your iTunes playlists to your spotify account via the desktop app, sync what you want to your iPhone and the rest will stream when you need it.

This is one area where apple was disrupted by outside forces. “

Streaming sources have passed downloads as the #1 source of music revenue. Specifically, Spotify has passed iTunes as a source for music revenue in much of the world, and about to cross in the US — hence Apple’s $3 billion investment in Beats.

Not for headphones (although I’m sure Apple is delighted with that money), but for the streaming music infrastructure that Beats had built. The Netflix-ization of music is long underway, and Apple had been nowhere near ready.

But I can’t agree more with John that Spotify is the next right move. The Beatles are a notable exception, but really, otherwise, I have access to virtually every piece of music I’ve ever bought, which is in fact my primary use of Spotify.

Of course it’s mighty cool to listen to bajillions of things that I’ve not bought..but the immediate access to virtually everything I HAVE ever bought, including on physical disks that I never got around to iTuning or Amazoning, anywhere, anytime, is priceless.

Ya gotta get the premium subscription. One thing it means is that you can “replace” virtually everything you lost, and add vastly more, for $9.95/mo. Premium provides much higher quality (often better than CDs) than the commercial-monetized free version, and you can download music to your player, not just stream. One click to download or undownload anything, so it’s incredibly easy to manage your space, or anything else while barely touching your computer.

It’s definitely easier to build complex playlists on a computer, and I build a TON of them — but there’s nothing to sync in the iTunes sense. The playlists, plus my albums, tracks, etc. are already “on” my device when I open the app.

Apple is obviously working on this, and I’m sure it will be BETTER THAN ANYTHING EVER, because EVERYTHING Apple does is BETTER THAN ANYTHING EVER….but I’m always going to recommend less dependence on Apple. Spotify works great, including on iOS.

All kidding and recommendations aside, I really do feel for your music loss, though. There’s really nothing quite like it, and I do want to acknowledge this, one passionate music lover to another.

[Tim Wilson]

[Dean Neal] “Creative Cloud – Subscription Services suck or not: The Debate”

Here ya go.

re: this forum’s name, see here (2013), here (2014), and here (2015) to catch up with the, ahem, debate.

See also every thread here that has a debate in it. The debate-oriented threads are easily identified as, without exception, the threads with the most posts on them. More debates, over a wider range, than ever before.

In any case, for a new name, the same rules apply that have always applied.

• Gotta propose a new name.
• Group’s gotta agree.

And most important:

Group’s gotta agree there’s no debate before the name Debate goes away.

These conditions have yet to be met. If you review the threads above, you’ll note that the closest to consensus the group has yet to come is the possibility of adding an “s” to denote “The Debates.” No consensus on that either, though.

Hey, maybe this time! However, history suggests that we will once again debate whether or not there’s anything to debate, once again establishing that there is in fact plenty to debate.

Nevertheless, I stand at the ready.

Best regards,

Tim Wilson, aka “Julie Your Cruise Director”
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

Ha! That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing this with us!

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “i mean you’ve got to commemorate him requesting that feature. that’s crazy.”

I agree! I appreciate you pulling this out into another thread, Aindreas. It’s among tne of the most important historical stories ever told in the COW, and among the most pivotal tales ever told anywhere. I’ve always encouraged (and practiced) veering off-topic if the conversation dictates it, but this really does demand standalone commemoration.

Adding markers with the spacebar on the fly is one of the most fundamental steps in the evolution of the NLE, maybe the VERY FIRST step in transitioning to an actual NEW MODEL of editing that was only possible with computers.

That is, there wasn’t anything especially new about NLEs. Really, other than undo, there wasn’t all that much that was all that computer-y. Once you added in the time to digitize, log, and all the rest, there wasn’t even a savings in time for many years to come.

Even complicated things that took NLEs years of iterations to achieve had been common in film for generations. Desi Arnaz even invented the first multicam editing set-ups in the 50s. What was actually new?

Here’s what was new. Using the spacebar to support editing while the playback head was in motion. Enabling creativity as fast as a reflex. Nothing like that had ever, ever, ever happened before.

So forget about paradigms and tracks and all that other nonsense. This was the first time that an EDITOR could EDIT with capabalities previously impossible.

This is a big fgjking deal. Way to go, David!

[Tim Wilson]

[John Davidson] “Something tells me that porn company isn’t terribly concerned about withholding taxes for their freelancers.”

We have a goodly number of porn editors represented at Creative COW, who understandably don’t talk about their work. Those companies are typically straight legit, because they come under extra scrutiny, for everything from AIDS to OSHA to RICO to taxes.

Not that plenty of them don’t try to cut corners on post using low budgets as the excuse, but the reports I’ve gotten don’t indicate that this is any different than anywhere else.

(Also worth noting: one of the first sectors to broadly adopt Media 100 was porn. I’d guess in the early days, very nearly 100% of the Media 100 users in Orange County were working in porn. Media 100’s customer base quickly expanded of course, but porn plays an important role for media creation no less than it does media consumption.)

[John Davidson] “By my estimation it pays about 30k more than most craigslist jobs.”

I was going to ask about this. Doesn’t craigslist imply little-to-no pay? Do any jobs with appropriate salaries get posted there? I don’t know because I’ve never looked, but the threads in the COW lamenting ridiculously low pay for editors whose experience warrants much more are almost exclusively from craigslist.

A question for the LA crowd in particular, is “non-union” a red flag for you? Again, I don’t know, and I’m certainly not asking anything broad about unions. I’m just asking in the context of, do non-union jobs tend to pay this much less.

Certainly no complaints about benefits though, and nice to have them included rather than as part of union dues…but if union dues secure higher-paying jobs….?

So, asking broadly, what do you see as the relationship between craigslist, non-union and union jobs? Is there any, or can we just summarize as “craigslist offers are miserable” and leave it at that?