[David Lawrence]

Great post Jeremy. Will respond with some pics when I get a free minute.

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Thanks, David. I appreciate the comments. I do enjoy these conversations as well. I think in the end, it will help make everything better, no matter what platform/NLE we end up choosing, as we have all said from the inception of this forum.”

Jeremy, you’re welcome, thank you and agreed. I can’t think of another place on the interwebs where there’s as much passion for understanding the tools we rely on everyday. Props to Ron and Tim for creating this place and keeping it going.

[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s not only in reconnection, but it’s also in project/timeline/bin sharing. While FCP7 isn’t perfect in this regard, having the ability to have multiple projects open, and copy/paste between them was pretty essential to our workflow. With Pr you can import new project to your current project, but there’s a lot of duplicity, and things tend to disappear if you delete them from the project mistakenly. So if you import a timeline via a project, it makes new master clips. If you delete those master clips from your project, the clips simply disappear from the timeline (they don’t even go offline as everything in the timeline is directly represented by something in a Pr project). So if something mistakenly gets deleted, you will go to open a timeline and it will be empty.”

Yes. This is a very big deal. For our typical workflows, about half the time it’ll work to our advantage. Like today’s scenario – I just got a hard drive in the mail with a bunch of pick-up material from last week’s shoots. These come in as new folders in the capture scratch where the AVCHD material has been log and transferred in an new project. The project just has the master clips and nothing else. When I start a new project, I might get up to ten log/transfer projects like this. What I usually do in FCP7 is open all these projects at once in tabs, then copy the clips into appropriately named bins in a new master project. I work from the master project going forward and never have to touch the log/transfer projects again. PrP will actually save me work for this scenario because it essentially does what I’m already doing manually. So I’m not worried about that.

[Jeremy Garchow] “As someone who receives offline projects and needs to finish them, this can make for some confusing moments when it comes time to finish as the rule will become, don’t delete anything, but that means you will have multiple project level (not Finder level) copies of all the same media in your project when complete.”

Yes, I absolutely agree. It’s that other 50% of our workflow that I’m concerned about. This is where we’re doing the same thing as you describe, sharing sequences back and forth throughout the editorial process. I can see the duplication getting out of hand really fast. I’m really concerned about confusion and destructive mistakes. No avoiding it, the change will be bumpy. Sigh…

[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s always a trade off in releasing something that you know isn’t quite right. I am sure Apple has heard the feedback. I don’t know what level it’s their “must-fix” list. Maybe they are fixing it, I don’t think we have that information.”

Yes. And I do believe they’re paying attention. They fixed that destructive bug where nudging a gap with the position tool would eat clips in 10.0.3 so maybe they’re looking at this too.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I still haven’t done the Apples to Apples. I plan to, though, as I would be curious if it exactly doubles.”

Cool. Curious what you’ll find.

[Jeremy Garchow] “But if you look hard enough, David, you will find weird bugs and inconsistencies in any software. It just so happens that FCPX is under the microscope at the moment, it is very new, and is not as mature as other offerings. When looking at it’s release state, and the state that it’s in now, they have done some remarkable programming in a very short time. I believe they will fix issues, but other’s might not. That’s OK. It’s a choice and preference at this point.”

True enough. PrP certainly has its share of them, that’s for sure.

I guess I’m partly holding Apple to a different standard because I’ve always considered their UI and UX design to be world class and the gold standard for usability. I think Apple’s success in the consumer space is a direct reflection of this. But lately, I’ve notice a lot of what seem like really basic UI mistakes slipping thru the cracks across the board in Apple software products. Stuff a first-year UI design student would catch. Maybe this is a result of massive growth and the pressures to build fast. Eventually things do seem to get fixed. But in the interim, I seem to be having a lot of WTF moments with Apple software these days.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I hope to post images later, and thanks for the response.”

Looking forward and thank you!

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[David Lawrence]

[Shane Ross] “The other major project I did with CS6 was 7 min. That exported to the Vimeo H.264 preset (using media encoder) in 6 min. I exported a ProRes master of that to see how long it would take…again, 6 min. “

Shane,

When you did these exports, did you have the “Use Maximum Render Quality” and/or “Use Previews” boxes checked?

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Thought this might be of interest to some of you.

As Oliver aptly said, there’s no free lunch.

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1006808

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1006471“

No free lunch, true.

But I also notice on the first link, an Adobe employee posted 24 minutes after the OP, asking for detailed steps, a screenshot, and anything else he could supply to help him reproduce bug so it could be fixed.

An Adobe employee also acknowledges the bug in the second link. It’s obviously a bug and obviously on their radar.

Apple’s comments on project bloat:

“crickets”

Just sayin’.

Nice link, btw!

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[David Lawrence]

Jeremy,

I appreciate this post. I don’t think I’ve ever addressed you as a 12-year old but for the record, I just want to be clear that I consider you among the most knowledgeable experts on this forum. I know you know what you’re doing, what you’re talking about, and I like that you back up your statements with evidence. That’s a big reason why I enjoy debating with you. I apologize if my tone came across as being dismissive of your expertise. That was not my intent.

As I said earlier, I think we’re looking at the issues in this thread with very different priorities.

I understand why file management is central to your team’s workflow and why FCPX looks very compelling in that regard. Even though I don’t have the same collaborative needs, I do experience the reconnection issues and appreciate how crucial a solution would be for a team dealing with them every day.

I’ve always thought FCPX got many things right with its event database and media organization design. It’s true Premiere Pro still has work to do in this department. It’s not a deal-breaker for me, but if it is for you, I understand.

My deal-breaker in FCPX has always been the timeline and everything associated with it.

I again brought up the bloat issue because the project database was given as the reason why PIOPs are somehow impossible. I’ve described how trivial the UI would be to implement within the existing model a couple times – It’s easy and takes absolutely nothing away from what you already have with IOF. It only adds. I can’t imagine why adding it would have any more impact on the project and event databases than adding any new feature.

If we’re gonna bring up the project database, I think the bloat issue is crucial because it’s obvious exactly what causes it and what is going on with the project database when it happens. I guess you can just avoid compound clips, but given how central they are to the FCPX editorial model, I’m actually pretty blown away that 1) this bloat behavior made it thru Q/A and 2) it’s not higher on everyone’s must fix list.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I made a 2 hour timeline of all kinds of things, compounded it, and split it up.

The Project went from 10MB to 200 MBs, it used to get in to the GBs. Once all the autosaves happened, it was running just fine.”

[Jeremy Garchow] “This was probably like 30 cuts.

Apologies for assuming it was one cut. Sometimes I need to remind myself to think, and then type.

Actually, this number makes a lot more sense. If you still have the project and can count the cuts, I predict you’ll see exactly twenty cuts. Each cut would be a full copy of the full data-size of the source compound.

That’s the behavior that’s been there since the beginning. On my older machine, it makes FCPX melt-down fast. On a newer machine, you have more headroom, but the same thing eventually happens.

I guess I’m just surprised to see a bug this major and so obvious and easy to reproduce go completely unaddressed by Pro Apps for close to a year. It just really makes me wonder why. I’ve been involved with the software industry in various ways for over 25-years and frankly, I’ve never seen a commercial software product mishandle data this badly. Usually bugs like this set off fire alarms and get fixed asap.

Finally, I guess the “it’s different, you don’t really understand how it works” card doesn’t strike me as a very strong debate argument. It’s funny how often that point seems to come up whenever there’s legitimate differences of opinion. I think it’s entirely possible to understand exactly what’s going on pretty quickly, and to make a well-reasoned design critique. PIOPs is just one area where in my opinion, there’s an easy solution that would make everyone happy.

Last year, there was a lot of debate over no source viewer. Now, we learn that’s coming in the next update. Why couldn’t PIOPs be the same?

We all agree that FCPX is new, different, and will change as it grows. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it can’t benefit from successful tools and methods we’ve used for years.

As far as the bloat, I’d feel a lot more comfortable if Apple would simple acknowledge the issue and say they’re working on it. I don’t think that’s asking too much of a professional software vendor.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Chris Harlan] “I use Continuum, which I like quite a bit. It may not quite be Sapphire, but I have three different NLEs to feed so the price difference means a lot to me.”

Be on the lookout for some great new plug-ins coming soon to the Mac from NewBlueFX. Cross-platform, GPU accelerated, and affordably priced. I’ve been playing with some betas and they’re really sweet. Titler Pro is especially nice and more than makes up for any shortcomings in the PP6 titler.

They even have a cross-zoom effect!

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Chris Harlan] “The thing is, I’m just happy now between MC 6 and Pr 6. Especially Pr 6. And I’m working through the finer details of those things right now. I’m coming to a fairly general agreement with your glowing early review.”

Glad you’re enjoying it. Here’s another early look from Scott Simmons. Check it out:

Random notes from my first “real world” Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 edit

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Chris Harlan] “Whoa!”

Try it Chris!

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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Hmm. Not me.

The bloat still happens, but it doesn’t sky rocket quite like before.”

Guess you’re lucky, because for me it’s pretty much unchanged.

[Jeremy Garchow] “These damn AVCHD and DSLR cameras rename all the files to the same thing. 0000.mts in the case of AVCHD, and 0000.mov in the case of DSLR (DSLR is a little better, but still not good). Let’s say you have 15 cards of AVCHD, that’s 15 clips of 0000.MTS, and that’s only one project.

Now, since Pr doesn’t give you a file path when reconnecting, you can really screw this up HUGELY if you happen to choose the wrong file path, or choose the wrong files accidentally.”

Yes. It’s a huge PITA and something Adobe needs to fix. We use AVCHD cameras and I’ve already come across this exact issue.

[Jeremy Garchow] “What kind of clip and how long was it? Apples to Apples.”

Apples to Apples is a good idea so I did a new test. Here’s how I set it up:

1) I exported a FCP7 project with a single ProRes 422 1080p30 sequence as XML. The project had a simple sequence ~7:00 in length with 3 video tracks and 9 audio tracks.

2) Imported the sequence into Premiere Pro to verify the XML transfer. It worked fine with the usual substitutions.

3) Used 7toX to bring the sequence into FCPX 10.0.4. It imported fine.

4) Created a new project in FCPX on my test drive.

5) Opened the compound clip created by 7toX, selected all, then pasted into the new project.

6) Quit and restarted FCPX, then opened the new project.

7) I made the FCPX window smaller so I could open a small Finder window next to it with the CurrentVersion.fcpproject in view.

Then I did the test. First, I note the size of CurrentVersion.fcpproject is 5MB. Then select all and make a compound clip. CurrentVersion.fcpproject is still 5MB. Blade tool and one cut – 10MB. Cut two – 15MB. Cut three – 20MB. Cut four – 25MB… all the way to cut twenty where CurrentVersion.fcpproject has additively bloated to 121MB.

I quit and reopened FCPX then reopened the project. Compounded the compound and made one cut. Beachball. Three minutes later, CurrentVersion.fcpproject is 242MB.

Next, the same test in Premiere Pro. Same XML project, same media, same computer. Initial project size – 3MB. First nest with twenty blade cuts – 3.2MB. Second nest of nest with twenty blade cuts – 3.3MB. Third nest of nest with twenty blade cuts – 3.4MB. Fourth nest of nest with twenty blade cuts – 3.4MB. Fifth nest of nest with twenty blade cuts – 3.5MB.

You get the picture.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I made a 2 hour timeline of all kinds of things, compounded it, and split it up.

The Project went from 10MB to 200 MBs, it used to get in to the GBs. Once all the autosaves happened, it was running just fine.”

And you’re OK with going from 10MB to 200MB with one blade cut? Try splitting it again and watch what happens to the file size. Or compound the compound and split that.

Try my test and see for yourself.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I do test this stuff, and 10.0.4 seems to be running leaner.”

I believe you when you say you’re getting better overall performance, but I would be surprised if your test results were different than mine.

Compound clips are broken.

Each cut in a compound clip duplicates the entire database content of the clip for each cut. This makes them basically unusable for anything of scale. It’s an easily repeatable, easily verifiable issue. This is the kind of bug that should have had someone in ProApps’ hair on fire a long time before FCPX ever was released. The fact that we’re four updates and close to a year past launch and still no fix should concern everyone.

[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s no question that X needs help here. I am not worried about the end of the world and the database is DOA. Are their kinks? Yep, just like any NLE, especially new ones.”

I realize many folks like yourself are using FCPX with few problems. I have an older machine so I notice the bloat effect very quickly. But if this isn’t fixed soon, I’d start getting concerned.

Not getting a file path when reconnecting is a kink. After close to a year, the bloat issue is starting to look like a deep architectural flaw in the project database design. Let’s hope it’s fixable.

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Not a great way, or an unfamiliar way?”

Not a great way. For all the reasons we discussed in the thread about DAWs.

With music, an external frame-of-reference for time is essential. Tracks give the ability to hold this external time reference for multiple channels.

This is what Jim’s template accomplishes via multiple secondaries locked to frame one. It’s very clever but it should be built into the program. Multiple primaries could achieve the same thing.

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