Douglas K. dempsey
Forum Replies Created
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Haha, we should definitely nominate one of “our own” and thus have an insider to implement our feature list desires!
Who will it be? Oliver, care to move from Florida to Calif?
Doug D
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John, you opening comments are basically what prompted me to invoke the Walter Murch anecdotes. For whatever reasons he doesn’t want to use FCPX, I found it ironic that from his first use of FCP v1, consulting with Apple along the way, he has massaged the way it is used, worked up a powerful database to use alongside it … to the point that, for the less technically-inclined folks like me … it almost looks like he was forcing FCP Legacy to do the things that FCPX now does out of the box, for $300! THAT alone is reason to try it out.
Doug D
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That’s my impression of PPro. When my son asked me about doing a modestly convoluted workflow, I looked at PPro and said, basically, “I’m too old to waste my time learning and untangling this interface. Even Adobe’s Help documents require a level of study (they are too verbal, no easy-to-get pictures like FCPX). I volunteered to help only if we did it in FCPX, which as I described above we did quickly and easily. In spite of certain pitfalls (see Oliver’s troubles with audio on this forum, about 4-6 months ago I think) … I still find FCPX’s methods of dealing with audio simple, easy to get and fast to use.
Doug D
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You would have to ask Walter Murch directly, or look through his various comments on why he doesn’t use FCPX. When I spoke to him during Particle Fever, it was before the xml export and sharing with other apps, e.g. send tracks to ProTools etc, had been tuned up, and before several of the third party apps had emerged. At the time, it was those complaints and the usual suspects, lack of mixer, inability to key-frame certain effects, and the lack of numbered tracks representing a film-synchronizer type interface. I don’t recall that file sharing was ever an issue with him, and in any case that has been worked out by now, as well. So why doesn’t he use it now, after all the evolution we’ve seen? I can only generalize that it still isn’t as “full-featured” as he’d like for interface with Hollywood-style post. Maybe I am wrong; maybe he just doesn’t like the way it works. Many of us who grew up cutting actual film on a bench, on an upright Moviola and then on a Steenbeck or KEM … thought FCPX was just plain “goofy” at first glance. I obviously no longer think that at all; I find it MORE logical than all the stuff I grew up with. It just required “letting go” of certain “metaphors” that most NLE’s use to re-create the look of physical film cutting. So maybe Walter is a classicist and it is as simple as that. Sorry for my half-informed generalization!
Doug D
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Haha, there is Reason #7: Bill finished his production quickly and masterfully in FCPX, and then had time for a vacation!
Doug D
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I understand the feature/TV and advertisement aversion. Everyone already knows hi-end, full-function workflows for Avid & Premiere — and even, previously, for Final Cut Pro 7 … used for example by the Coen Brothers for many of their features, which they cut themselves (presumably sending cut pix to more technically fluent post-production supervisors for audio and effects work).
Just look at one of Avid’s mini-docs on their editors doing “Gravity” or some such picture, to see the incredible depth of associated apps, custom controllers and other adaptations to pull off a “team-edited” feature. There is no need to know anything about FXPX if you do that stuff for a living.
However, for independent documentaries, web-docs and web-series, lots of other indie productions … where the editor is most likely NOT making a living by cutting, but rather is cutting their own material … FCPX is attractive because it is fun, easy, fast and … if & when you get to know it … very logical. AND with the available third-party apps, it can expand to play nice with other apps, with other pro editors.
I have just been assisting my 20-something son on a short he is making, a no-budget comedy, for his reel. He grew up using FCP 7, since my wife & I used it for documentary work. He has always been a very good cutter. BUT he is a writer/director type, not a gear head. He counts on collaborators for refinements of audio, effects, graphics and such. About the only area he insists on having absolute control is music editing, which he is also good at. He learned all of that in FCP 7.
He is now working in NYC, and has had to shift to Premiere Pro CC — because that’s what everyone in the indie and doc world is demanding that he know. The transition has been mostly logical, right down to the option of using FCP7 key commands as one of your PPro preferences!
He has worked for an indie narrative director, roughing out scenes in PPro. He is working for a serious documentary filmmaker in PPro. So now, he is cutting his short in PPro.
BUT … even so, on this short, FCPX on our iMac at home has proven a useful tool.
He shot on a Canon 70D DSLR, with additional double-system 4-tracks on a Tascam DR-70 (a pair of wireless, a Sennheiser shotgun, etc). He initially tried syncing and wrangling all the tracks in PPro … but when he asked me to help with his timeline crunch, as his “assistant” … we found it was actually faster, easier to prep all the footage in FCPX.
The syncing … especially when there was no slate … was easier. The splitting apart of all 6 or 8 recorded tracks, to eliminate empty tracks of a stereo pair, etc … the assigning of Roles (FCPX version of identifying “track” assignments) … all of it was easier. Just from a graphic interface perspective, everything was easier to look at, analyze and manipulate quickly.
We then transcoded the clips to ProRes 422, multi-track in a Quicktime wrapper, ready to import and edit in PPro.
Even when editing within PPro, we found it easier to do a difficult audio fix — finding the section on various tracks, deciding which sounded best, copying and replacing, fading, trimming etc — with the six audio tracks and video clip on a FCPX timeline. Why? Who knows? I think it is just the “object editing” mentality of FCPX makes it more like a word processor or other creative tool, less like a mechanical process (e.g. the old-school, film editing-bench metaphor of classic NLEs).
I myself am particularly attracted to this object-editing interface. Even those six-track clips can be brought into FCPX and cut as a single object on the timeline. You can expand and work on any given audio track, disabling it, key-framing it, applying filters, trimming, fading … then collapse it all, and just concentrate on cutting a sequence of clips. What you call “nesting” (compound clips?) in FCPX is just another way of saying: You don’t HAVE to see all tracks, all clips, all titles etc etc… laid out all over a bunch of tracks … during your content-editing phase, where you just want to see “this shot, that shot, the next shot” with wrangling and monitoring sync on acres of tracks & clips.
Hollywood and high-end documentary-wise, consider this: Walter Murch, editor, sound designer on features … and also editor of the recent “Particle Fever” documentary … worked for years with FCP7. He added on his own FileMaker Pro database. He showed me a track layout for Particle Fever, in FCP7, with dozens of tracks, video and audio. THEN, when it came time to review and manipulate basic are story points … he would render a collapse Quicktime movie, and lay it on top of the whole edit. He called it a “skin” — a single stream that represented his cut at that particular time, with all the actual tracks that make up his components, underneath that “skin.”
It occurs to me, he is making FCP7 work like FCPX! The newer app now has terrific, integrated database functions. And it’s basic graphic interface IS the skin. That is what you edit … only expanding to see all the pieces when you needs to slip, slide and otherwise work on those parts.
FCPX is not full-featured enough for a high-end artist like Murch … I’m just making a point, that there is a logic to working in the way FCPX works.
And for the indie filmmaker, writer, director, actor with NO ambition to make a living wrangling footage for someone else … FCPX can be a good space to work in. That doesn’t make it an “amateur” program … anymore than storyboards are “amateur” visualizations of final cinematography and editing.
You should solicit the opinion of Bill Davis on this forum, for a more forceful defense of FCPX’s capabilities and utility, for many media pros outside the small, couple-thousand-large pool of “Hollywood” and TV editors.
Doug D
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I dunno, saying “X” is kinda cool. No “FCP” at all, just … X. With drop from the OS, makes the appellation unique to FCP
Doug D
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More concerning to me is the current Tim Cook era. Meaning, Apple is so deep into being a “bling” company and their “cutting edge” efforts are along the lines of pushing single-port USB-C onto machines that won’t even run a 4K monitor except at 30f refresh … the concept of “pro” would seem to be lower and lower on the list. “Pro” is now almost a badge at Apple being applied in the same way “Deluxe” was used on products as I was growing up.
In that environment, the best things happening to FCPX would seem to be from small-volume third-party vendors who like the product and would like it to survive into the future. I am not convinced Apple-at-the-top management cares about this product at all. I love using it, but I have a queasy background free-floating anxiety that it will be yanked from under me at any moment. Just my own neurosis, maybe.
My son has been a good editor since 7th grade; he learned on FCP7. He is now in the job market in NYC, and hands down, the skill he has to carry with him, whether working for indie feature filmmakers or documentary producers … is command of PPro CC.
With the ability to move in and out of Resolve Lite as a secondary skill. After Effects is third on the list, IF you are really going to hold up the “post” end of a project, and not just be an “editor-director” who is wrangling content.
FCPX just doesn’t come up in conversation, in his world.
Doug D
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Ha ha, that statement sounds like a flashback from 2011.
Doug D
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The coolest cats call it simply “X”
Doug D