Douglas K. dempsey
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry for the derailing of your question, Jason. I believe Rick Lang has provided a highly specific answer to your technical query.
However, don’t insult Bill Davis and me for our “arbitrary” exchange on Pro.
This forum was not established as a technical how-to for FCP users; those threads are elsewhere on COW.
This forum started when the new FCPX came out, and has been concerned with both the technical implications of FCPX versus legacy and other NLEs… AND the entire question of how “pro” exactly IS the new Final Cut Pro X?
So our exchange was not arbitrary. Just off-topic for your tech query.
🙂
Doug D
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Bill, I think I understand your comments about the relativistic aspects of “pro” as it applies to users. If I AM understanding you, I would agree. My point I think is a corollary to your larger view.
Simply put, my contention is that “pro” as used in marketing, has in the past been weighted toward a kind of warning to the amateur: “Beware. This product is designed for professional users and may be too complex, involved, obscure, obtuse or otherwise difficult to use without large investment of time and learning curve.” Like that.
Whereas Apple as much as any company in recent memory has flogged the opposite meaning, admittedly not new or unique: “Buy this Pro product and join the pros. Get professional results. We put Pro in your hands, at the push of a button.” i.e. Pro should not be exclusionary.
In some sense they are right; you can pick up a good camera and shoot near-perfect images in Auto mode. You can ingest, assemble and output high-quality movies in either iMovie or FCPX, almost intuitively…
In that sense, the mystique of “pro” is being stripped away. Francis Coppola was big on this topic 20 years ago, noting that it was only technology that kept young kids from demonstrating innate and innovative storytelling skills. He was celebrating the advent of easy to use handycams and predicting a whole generation of filmmakers about to be unleashed. This has indeed happened. I have no problem with that. In the arts the “enlightened amateur” has always been an appealing alternative to the slick and cynical “pro.”
Fine.
But product-wise, the erosion or perhaps you would say the “redefining” of the term comes in insisting that products are “pro” while removing all the formerly “pro” options, like manual controls. The poster’s point about a Display preference panel that does not even list pixel counts, instead using thumbnail buttons for “Larger Text” is really all I am talking about.
The meaning of “pro” has changed from “has the capacity to be manipulated by advanced users” to “has the ability to deliver a professional-looking result, at the touch of a button.”
That’s all I am saying.
🙂
Doug D
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Yes, this is in fact part of the reason for this forum, the Apple use of the term “pro” as a consumer attractor, not necessarily an indicator of flexible, adjustable and manually controllable professional products. Some on the forum feel that by turning everyone into a high-quality-output user, we are democratically making everyone a little bit “pro.”
The opposite opinion is this is a form of erosion that will make the term “pro” meaningless.
In any case, we will have to wait for bench-testers to hand-count the pixels and tell us what the selectable settings are for scaling on the Retina “pro.”
Doug D
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That effect sounds cool; can we see it on YouTube or Vimeo in a sample?
You indeed have a real concern. Pixel doubling and scaling always calls into question the WYSIWYG workflow.
Frankly, I have unintentional artifacts constantly, due to playback limits when editing HDV footage in FCP7 on MBP 17″ i7 from mid-2011.
And then when I compress and post to Vimeo, I have more artifacts due to bandwidth problems at my house.
Are you doing a good output to broadcast monitor to make sure your video and glitch effects are perfect — e.g. so the Retina will be the only kink in your workflow?
Doug D
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They should start a spin-off company, selling their EOL products with a new graphic badge, “Legacy” — promising no support, no upgrades, but that retro-legacy experience.
Doug D
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It sounds like you are getting two different answers here. One says “wait because new MBP will drop soon, and if you don’t like it, the current models will drop in price a bit.”
The other says new MBP may not arrive until next year, and in any case it may take awhile for PP or Avid to offer updates that optimize their use.
I constantly face this issue, and try to watch the rumor sites and guess timeframes. But for everyone who has been waiting for “iPhone 5”, which now looks like it may arrive a YEAR beyond original rumors, waiting can be simply watching your life pass by.
My advice; if you cannot trade up the Dell as per advice on Mercury Engine support, if you want a Mac, then wait until June. If no announcements are imminent, and you MUST begin a job in FCPX, then you gotta pull the trigger.
Doug D
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LOL re “don’t say Shake”
Doug D
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Right, isn’t the idea to work in whatever native codec you shot, and then output according to deliverable: uncompressed, h.264 etc etc?
Doug D
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Agree with most of the above. If FCP4 had arrived, our forum would be about new features, and lots of Avid & PPro users showing up, asking if they should convert to FSC4.
HOWEVER, if as you fantasize, FCPX indeed did arrive as iMovie Pro, replacing the unweilding “not FCP” $300 app, Final Cut Express…
THEN we would probably still have a rollicking discussion. Because the $300 FCPX is basically the software version of the DSLR revolution. It’s super cheap, anyone can do it…but as you start to use it in pro situations, you start buying expensive add-ons to bring it SORT OF up to the task accomplished by real pro products. With the DSLR, it’s trying to get pro audio, dealing with timecode, shutter roll, native codec (highly compressed AVCHD) vs out to uncompressed, trying to follow focus and aperture with still lenses that are hopelessly bad ergonomically for cinema shooting. And in FCPX, you are doing all the work-arounds, clever new workflows and add ons. As Craig Seeman likes to point out, you may be building your Mac that way soon as well: no one-stop pro Mac, just a cheap consumer-friendly iMac or Mini with Thunderbolt and an array of hardware per your particular needs. Just like Avid with all the breakout boxes back in the ’90s!
Doug D
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Actually Tom, I believe the track/timeline is a metaphor for running a series of tracks — film and magnetic — through a synchonizer block (and a Moviescope viewer). Even when an editor would cut on an upright Moviola, an assistant would be at the bench, pulling multiple video and audio tracks in sync from left to right, the footage representing time in the way we now look at timecode. He/she would move clips in and out of sync (by inserting filler, a metaphor some like in the way magnetic timeline works BTW) and basically assemble the multi-track movie according to directions from the editor.
I said this many months ago: the legacy NLEs are all a crazy mixed metaphor, taking the best interface elements from older technologies: the Source/Record monitors are from tape editing. The Timeline is from film. And the Browsers and Bins are a combination of physical film organization and the Mac/Windows Finder/Desktop.
Doug D