[David]

Oh for goodness sakes Bill,

I’m remembering why I never post on the Cow anymore. Every post is an opportunity for the same twelve cranks to whip the same dead horse. How many posts are you going to make restating the same old trope . . “old editors don’t get it, we’re stuck in amber . . we don’t want to learn anything new and that YOU, BILL DAVIS are the apothesis of the new age, fluid, open, flexible, inviting to new young guns . . really, enough, get over yourself. No one is suggesting that we need to keep the riff faff out. That door was opened long ago. (that was a joke)

I work in FCPX everyday. It has reimagined the timeline interface which many of us honestly thought wasn’t possible. It’s cool and a breakthrough and all that. But, for this old dog . . there is something off-putting about the user experience. No one can argue the designers intentionally buried elements that professional editors need (source TC anyone) to make it more inviting. . I don’t need my editing interface to be exceedingly simple to make the lowest common denominator feel welcome. . . . I just need it to fast, stable and powerful . . . which thankfully it is. That’s why I continue to use it.

[David]

Folks

Sorry to have offended anyone. (amazing how often every thread devolves into that phrase) I’ve been on FCPX from the beginning. I’m certainly not taking potshots from the sideline.

Here’s the gist of what I was saying. Despite FCPX being a singularly powerful and paradigm busting editing platform, there is something highly irritating (TO ME) about the FCP interface, from the nomenclature to the look and feel. And that’s despite the best scopes, metadata and multicam among competitors. That’s my impression after a couple of years of nearly non stop use. It’s difficult to explain exactly what it is . . but for a company (Apple) that is so utterly attuned to how software and hardware makes you “feel” there is something off the mark in its interface for this professional editor. FWIW, Resolve, especially in the grading app gives me exactly the opposite impression. It’s delight to discover more and more potential the deeper you dig.

In a world . . . (trailer music please) where the editing profession has become significantly devalued . . . FCPX reinforces the feeling that “editing” is less a craft and more of a commodity.

That’s it. Apologies for using the inflammatory “Fisher Price” metaphor.

David.

[David]

Craig,

Yep, that’s true about the waveforms. And the dynamic nature of them is cool. Love seeing them change with effects applied. As someone else pointed out, U/X is such a personal thing. I guess having spent a lot of time in Resolve lately . . I’m really taken with that software (the grading portion). Its just clever and does not feel dumbed down. It feels like software a dedicated professional would use.

By contrast, FCPX is very clever and immensely powerful too, (almost exclusively a RED workflow) but there are days (many of them) where I feel I should apologizing to my clients for the look and feel. That pisses me off. The software underneath is way more sophisticated and powerful than the interface would leave you to believe.

David

[David]

David,

That is a good question and I struggle a bit to give specifics but here are a few.

– The Library/Event/Project nonsense of course.
– The cartoonish icons for the effects and transitions. This is especially egregious . . imagine sitting with a feature director behind you trying to hide the “earthquake effect.” It’s asinine, my editing interface shouldn’t embarrass me but it does. That is galling and infuriating and we (the professional FCPX editing community) should show up with torches and pitchforks at Apple HQ. What happened to class?
– There is something about the font, but I’m not savvy enough o know what it is.
– The cheesy icons . . keys, stars, wands, etc.
– And the waveforms . . . ugh! Cartoonish.
– Locked in windows

And yet . . . I appreciate so many of the innovations . .timeline index, magnetic timeline . . amazing multicam, automated renaming of clips, metadata workflows, third party plugins . .

But the Fischer Price packaging is killing me. Bottom line, after 20 something years of non linear editing interfaces I should not be embarrassed to share my screen with my clients. How the heck do we justify our professional rates when the interface looks like it was designed for 14 year olds?

BM is doing a good job of ripping off FCPX feature for feature. Maybe Resolve 12 will be mature enough to jump ship.

David
Post Office Editorial

[David]

Thanks for the quick reply Bret, very much appreciated.

So, in my scenario . . I’ve copied an existing library with events/projects etc. over to an external drive (no media). But the media that the Library referenced was on external RAIDS (mostly). So, if I’m reading you correctly, you’re saying when I “consolidate into” my external drive,(i.e., select library on external drive and say “consolidate” FCPX only copies the media from the RAIDS to the external drive, essentially filling in the symlinks with real media which sure does make sense.

Did I read you right? And . . . are you pretty sure?

Thanks Bret.

David

[David]

Von,

I’m experiencing the same problem you describe here. Did you get it resolved?

Thanks for any help you can share.

David

Post Office Editorial
postoffice@15elm.com

[David]

Tim, thanks for these suggestions but still not quite there. I don’t mind logging with markers in the bin but its incredibly frustrating that playback stops when you option m to add a marker. Really slows things down. You should be able to add a marker and modify it as you listen to the interview. Otherwise you have to tail slate (marker) everything. Effective, but very unusual.

David

[David]

Jonathan,

I see this all the time too. Only started recently. Haven’t figured it out . . but you’re not alone!

David

[David]

Pat,

How did the HVX perform for green screen shooting? I have a series of interviews that I’ll be shooting next month (24P DVCPROHD) and I suspect that it’ll be fine but I haven’t received my camera yet to do a test. Any tips you can pass along, or is it just as straight forward as shooting with a “normal” camera?

David

[David]

Hi Special Case,

Thanks for the reply. That leaves me a bit puzzled because . . .

I can render out this 16000 x 10000 pixel wide image in FCP and achieve exactly the look I’m trying to get (not surprisingly, its just a very simple, very long pull from a single image) and it renders correctly) However, I’m alittle limited by the keyframe interpolation in FCP. In Motion, I get the keyframe interpolation I want but it all renders as blurry. Perhaps there is another reason it renders as all soft? (The move is a scale change from about 4% to 100% on the enormous image)

David