Douglas K. dempsey
Forum Replies Created
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A terrific post. Thanks for putting in the time!
As for Apple’s “time to cut bait” choice, I personally feel, based on Apple’s attitude toward the pro apps over the last few years, that they really have blown off the professional niche.
Apple’s calling products “pro” is now simply a marketing tool, making customers feel they have graduated from being a consumer to someone with professional ambitions — in the same way high school athletes wear shoes and gear that is pro-endorsed. No self-respecting teenager wants to work with iMovie — I know because I teach film/video at a high school.
Bottom line for me is that, in pursuit of this cynical use of the word “pro,” they ruthlessly dropped FCP7 out of marketing necessity. Did they need to do it for financial reasons? Could they not afford to keep it available and supported for a transitional year or two? Of course. Even MobileMe was extended another year, FOR FREE!
But the reality is that having a Final Cut Pro 7 out there would be confusing from a marketing standpoint. Do they call it “Original Pro” or “Classic Pro?” Or do they call the new product Final Cut Prosumer X? The very customer they want to reach would be adrift in the same state of confusion that existed before FCPX’s release: “Should I use iMovie, or Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro?” Now there is no confusion: “One Pro to Rule Them All.”
No, their only clear marketing path was to have FCP7 “erased from existence” as Doc Brown used to say.
Are they going to eventually “come back” to pro status with the new product? I suppose it’s possible, but more likely is another poster’s idea of “meeting in the middle.” Add just enough functionality that 99.99% of the public decides “this IS modern pro media.”
And for the few hundred or thousand high-end pros who MUST fuss around with the extra functionality — weel, let them cobble together workflows with high-end devices and software just like Pixar had to do when it built Renderman and its huge render farms. In other words, the high-end pro goes back to being an expensive specialty market as it was until the late 1990s.
To continue paraphrasing “Lord of the Rings,” perhaps we will have to heed Gandalf’s advice to Frodo…
Frodo: “I wish [FCPX] had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such time, but that is not for them to decide. All that you have to decide is what to do with the [tool] that is given to you.”
Doug D
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Sorry Jamie, so many attitudes on so many threads, I didn’t realize your take had a sardonic edge!
YES, I have heard enough of weak defenses of Apple’s behavior. Stockholders I guess. In the spirit that these folks tell me to “get over it” I say exactly the same to the Apologists: “Get over it. Apple behaved badly, like any other mega-corp, end of story. Accept that they are at fault, and leave us to nurse our wounds, seek satisfaction, whatever we need to do. Count yourself lucky that you lost nothing.
For those that like the new app, and those working hard to discover how it works… keep posting to the “FCPX Techniques” forum. I’ll continue to accumulate an ad hoc tutorial from all the good advice.
Meanwhile, for those of us who will need to form a “Former Users Group” or FUG, to support each other and keep our FCP7 seats running, keep the faith.
Doug D
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To J Hussar and Jamie:
First, my context. I haven’t complained about what FCPX may lack as a v1.0 — in fact I posted many gripes in this Winter, mostly on Ken Stone’s forum, about the lame, tired old interface, being as it is a metaphor for Source & Record tape decks (Viewer & Canvas), film tracks ganged together in a synchronizer or on flatbed platters (the Timeline), and the FCP browser which I called a “crappy version of the Mac Finder.”
In other words, functional as FCP7 is, the “mixed metaphor” of the interface can definitely stand some reinvention. I’m ready to have FCPX rewire my habits.
And I have also said I will use FCPX to teach my high school class, as there is no reason to learn the old interface, unless you are attending a trade school and need to see the history of film editing and NLE in detail.
HOWEVER, I agree with J Hussar, and disagree with name-calling Jaime in this regard: Apple, who can certainly afford to, could have announced the eventual fade-out of FCS3 “like a man” in a public statement. And then allowed pro users to keep buying, updating or even pay a “maintenance” fee to keep current seats working through the inevitably buggy transition to Lion and whatever follows. And allowed FCS3 to be licensed for additional seats. In fact, it would have been a windfall as pro houses would have hoarded dozens and hundreds of licenses, figuring it is cheaper to keep running FCP7 for a few years, than jump to another platform and retrain, convert, etc etc.
I have been a photographer and filmmaker since 1973, and have lived through more tech evolutions and transitions than most. Don’t call me a Luddite, punk, as Clint Eastwood might say.
The point is that seldom has a transition been handled with such a sudden, peremptory pull-the-plug “eff you” to a large segment of loyal customers. Certainly not by a huge company that could afford to be more accommodating. This kind of treatment is usually the behavior of a small company that suddenly cannot pay the rent and folds over a weekend. Not a Fortune 500 leader.
So that is my complaint. If you were driving a GMC pickup on Monday, and went into the dealer for a repair on Tuesday only to learn GM has dropped the pickup line, is recalling all existing new trucks off the lot, back to the factory, and is now selling only the Chevy Volt, imperfect as it is, because “it’s awesome and it’s the future” you would be apoplectic.
That is essentially what Apple did overnight to the FCP market.
Doug D
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Sorry Michael A, my post left out the word “neg.” I used to cut 16mm negative; trying to make the point that yes, a cut show is a string of the right shots which come in and go out at the right time. And that cutting the neg is the most schematic final cut of that process, all thinking having already been done.
I was simply trying to say that you can do your “thinking” in the timeline, before committing to your trimmed, rhythmic final cut. And that FCPX interface and events organization seems to turn the process on its head, saying “don’t work with all your tools out on the table; hide ’em until you need ’em, one by one.” For me that could be a good “bad-habit breaker.”
I understand that for many, like my CBS news friend, that just sounds like extra steps to get back to a solid and transparent way of working, so why bother.
Doug D
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Sounds like TV news to me. I have a friend who has cut a lot of CBS news stories under those same circumstances.
But there ARE long-form editors working in documentaries and fiction who DO work in a manner closer to a writer shuffling his drafts, cutting and pasting and “finding” the story. The result is no more “comic book” than the universal process of “shot, when to come in, when to go out” string of clips that comprise every bit of film since its invention.
I used to cut 16mm at night when I started out, for extra money. There is the ultimate expression of your workflow: it’s all pre-determined, and you lose a frame on each end of a shot when you cement the neg, so no mistakes or “thinking” allowed.
But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an enormous amount of time spent “thinking” during the actual edit. All you’re saying is you do your edit “in your head” as you screen the footage, then put it together in one pass, working on timing alone, as the Producer leans over your shoulder wondering, “Why can’t you just push the ‘finished’ button and be done with it?”
But there are plenty of people who get to take their time and work as I describe. What do you think Walter Murch’s elaborate extracting and printing of frames from every shot and then arranging them on a wall, before he puts two shots together in the NLE is all about? Is the result a comic book movie? Contrarily, you can cut a music video precisely as you describe, double clicking shots into the Viewer, in, out, slam into the timeline on the beat, never look back.
Either way, I can imagine the FCPX interface being designed for results, not process — and it is the disappearance and/or lack of control of that process that seems to bother everyone.
The process you describe, the one that, if you depart from it, will get you “fired’, sounds like it is perfect for FCPX.
Doug D
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Chris, Re: the Finder.
Yes, and as I said about FCP7 vs FCPX after I watched the Supermeet way back when — the FCP7 Browser is really just a crappy version of the old Mac Finder. And the new interface is analogous to leaving behind System 7, System 9 et al and jumping into Tiger, Panther, Leopard, Snow.
Doug D
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Chris:
Very clear explanation; the case is probably that different people, using different parts of our brains, see “negative space” where others see shape and objects, etc. So the interface is obvious to some, a total counter-intuitive mystery to others.
The main thing is to spread the idea of the “trackless” editor; that is a technique I will use when I teach FCPX to my high school class next Fall. In fact, if we START with FCPX, I can then use our copies of FCP7 as a kind of “schematic, under-the-hood” metaphor showing them what it would look like if they “disassembled” an NLE and saw all the working parts laid out. “Okay kids? Now let’s put the hood back down and concentrate on driving.”
BTW, your “text editor” analogy is particularly apt, because in fact if you DO want to prohibit flowing text and have characters occupy a place on the page, you want a different app — a page-layout app.
So to carry the analogy forward, high-end pros are like page-layout and illustrator graphic artists, used to manipulating all the pieces. FCPX or more like “Pages” app in which you can toggle to layout, but start in a basic word processor where you think about your content first.
On the other hand, for many users, 90% of the tools go unused. Think about all the sophisticated tools that traditional NLE editing apps offer, whereby you can put a clip up in “the Viewer” and then insert, overwrite, replace or fit-to-fill into its proper place in the timeline… and then use a host of other tools that control sync and collisions as they ripple, trim, slip, slide etc…
And yet, in spite of all that, much NLE editing in practice turns out to be exactly the thing you describe, sliding shots around like tiles on a scrabble board, trying to come up with an order that works, a rhythm that makes sense.
For that kind of editing, many of us have gotten used to stacking clips up in vertical space, two or three choices in front of us at all times… and then laboriously doing what you describe, trying to slide and place, snap-to or overwrite, swap and so on.
So maybe for many of us, this new FCPX timeline will prove to be a cleaner approach, and it may discipline us to organize and focus on building the cut, instead of shuffling and fussing with “clean up” organizational moves — by using Auditioning, Secondary Storyline and Connected Clips to hide all that clutter except when we want to see it.
I sort of have a procedure that I do in FCP7 that approximates this, where I leave multiple video tracks stacked until I decide which shots I’m using, whether I will layer, dissolve or title, what part of the clip I want to use (Slide control) and so on. Finally, when I am close, I feel that the clutter is keeping me from seeing a clean visual representation of my cut and its rhythm, so I end up dragging all the vertical clips down onto the V1 track, essentially collapsing them into a single-track edit. So maybe using FCPX will train me to see that clean version of my cut most of the time, and I will ONLY see the expanded choices when I CHOOSE to show them.
In some ways, FCP7 versus the new FCPX is like comparing a messy desktop where everything is spread out everywhere, to a filing system (or database as FCPX actually IS) where you FIND things by keyword, or expand to view, instead of seeing everything laying in front of you at all times.
Doug D
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Thanks Chris. That’s the kind of thing of functionality that originally appealed to me in the Supermeet Demo, and the visual clutter issue you mention is important when I teach my video class to high school students. The KISS rule “keep it simple stupid” really applies there. If you throw too many layers, options, waveforms, keyframes and such at them too quickly, it can become soup. Which is frustrating to them because the kids are taking other art courses like photography and drawing, painting etc. The idea of a heads-up display of info superimposed over all the visual work they are doing can be depressing to some; it’s so distracting from the visceral FEEL of the visual arts.
Doug D
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Good point Jim. I meant that reference to DSLR a tiny bit cynically, in that a lot of the DSLR shooting I see going on is a kind of “good enough” available light exercise in which the sheer low-light soft focus look of the ambient light overcomes the inherent limitations of those still sensors shooting motion and the codec issues you mention.
I sure wouldn’t buy a Sony F3 and then throw together an edit with no controls as you mention.
Who is the industry standard for high-end DSLR shooting of videos, commercials etc? Vincent Floret? What does he edit in and manipulate color in?
I read a short piece in COW, I believe, about Shane Hurlbut shooting his Navy Seals show with DSLR. He said he jumped from FCP7 over to Premiere Pro at the suggestion of his post guy, so he could work native in h.264 — which he stated was better than working in ProRes transcode as the ProRes was too contrasty.
I was under the impression that a transcode to ProRes delivered a high fidelity match to the original when done with Compressor. In my own experience, converting from HDV footage to ProRes 422 via FCP, rather than through Compressor, resulted in a gamma shift that made the color and contrast look wrong. Going through Compressor the footage looked perfect.
As you can see, I can get into so much trouble, you shouldn’t even let me near DSLR shooting!
Doug D
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Craig:
I layer a lot, sometimes having 3, 4 or even half a dozen video tracks that keyframe in opacity. Think of the opening sequence in “Apocalypse Now” where you have designed layers of jungle, multiple groups of helicopters, whirling blades, napalm, then interiors with various details, all maintained as independent shots and filtered, layered.
Is there a logical way to do that kind of thing with Compound Clips and Secondary Stories, etc? Am I better off sending it to Motion where the layer concept still thrives?
Ditto with titles. Sometimes, to imitate the style of Colonial era broadsheets with their wildly varying typefaces and sizes, I will need 6-8 layers for a title, with various layers for a larger capital letter, for a word in italics, and of course the ability to fade on pieces line by line or word by word. Again, do you know or surmise that title tool via Motion the way to go in FCPX?
Doug D