[Herb Sevush]

[Robert d'Alexis] ” see if you agree this is the answer to an editor’s dream.”

An editors dream is a capable director, a smart producer, and a reasonable schedule.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Walter Soyka] “I’d say that traditional NLEs encode time directly and rely on the editor to understand relationships, while FCPX encodes relationships directly (and derives time). “

Lovely.

But I would add this – relationships come and go, time, at least in the Newtonian world in which I work, is absolute. Basing your editing foundation on the fickleness of non-enduring relationships is like building your house on a foundation of mud – it can be done (see the city of Chicago), but why would you want to?

Above all, to paraphrase Bill, it seems the magnetic timeline prizes the maintenance of original editing decisions. But is that a good thing – I spend the majority of my time revising, redefining and often obliterating those decisions in favor of later ones.

As a cutter of PBS broadcast shows my absolute is 26:46:00, and to work in an environment that doesn’t prioritize that would be, for me, absurd.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

I watched the Mindhunter piece and I was so let down. What’s with all those big monitors? Nobody was editing on a laptop, pad or cell phone. How can you expect me to take this stuff seriously?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Why “furor” at all. What was that about, actually?”

It was about the EOL of the fastest growing NLE on the market without any warning, what-so-ever. It was about offering as a replacement an NLE that was 9 months away from being useful in any broadcast or high end workflow. It was about doing all this in a vacuum of information about what the future would hold.

[Bill Davis] “Still you’re admitting within “weeks” they had taken steps with that very white paper to communicate their thinking to interested professionals.”

And those weeks of are still costing them.

Let’s imagine a different scenario.

After the “NAB” sneak Apple starts pumping the bold new change that’s coming, explaining that “X” – whatever that will be, is going to blow everyone’s mind, but because it’s not fully developed yet, it’s going to co-exist with FCP Legacy. They explain all it’s great features and publish the white paper before it’s released, letting everyone know that there is still much more to come in it’s development. They assure everyone that FCP7 will still be sold and supported for the foreseeable future, that it will be made to work with any new upgrades to OSX, although they will no longer be adding new features.

Try imagining that for a bit – no anger over missing features in X, no hysteria over the EOL. Controversy and some anger yes, but no confusion and hysteria.

Yes, it turned out that Legacy continued to work through 6 years of OSX upgrades, but on June 21 there was no way to know that. Apple stopped all sales which scared the hell out of a lot of companies. It’s my belief that the incredibly inept way the EOL was initially handled caused a lot of anger that was simply turned on X as a handy target.

[Bill Davis] “So might the ACTUAL issue in play have been that you and others had hardened their internal feelings of being “disrespected” so much in those early days that you were totally unwilling to listen to Apple AT ALL. No matter WHAT the new program was actually capable of?”

Yes, absolutely correct. Although disrespect is not the right word – fear is the right word. Apple frightened the shit out of a lot of people and the fact that it took them weeks to even begin to address it was a colossal boo boo.

See my earlier remark that you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.

[Bill Davis] “You know, I got MY choice of preferred NLE EOLed too.
Same as everyone else. “

True, but since you were not doing broadcast work and you were a one man shop, you were among the least affected.

Has it still not penetrated your consciousness that for anyone in the broadcast field X was incapable of handling their needs for over 6 months after it’s release.

Try putting yourself in the position of someone with multiple seats of Legacy doing broadcast work – needing Multicam and all sorts of OMF and EDL output to finish and with plans to add 3 more seats to handle a new series, only to find out one morning that he can’t get those new seats, he won’t be seeing any upgrades, and he has no idea how long his old seats will continue to work with new OSX upgrades. How happy is that person to find out that X can’t handle any of that. By the time of the white paper that person had probably already switched to either Avid or Ppro and was in no mood to hear anything Apple had to say.

Fortunately for Apple this happened in an arena that means little to them financially, although I’m sure being made fun of on the Tonite show didn’t go down so well.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Wait, are you suggesting the FCP X team should have hauled out Job’s old Pirate Flag and broke off from the EXPLICIT policy of Apple NEVER to speak about any Apple products in development?

What planet were you on, Herb.”

Except they did just that when in reaction to the furor, weeks after the release, they published a white paper outlining their plans for future development of X over the following year, which in marketing terms is called “closing the barn door after the horses got out.”

“Apple never does this” and “Apple always does that” is one sad ass’d excuse for screwing the pooch.

The planet I’m on doesn’t make excuses for screwing up – not “oh don’t pick on him cause he’s dead” nor “but that’s the way they always do that.” How about a simple acknowledgement that for a multiplicity of reasons Apple messed up on one of the oldest truths in business “you only get one chance to make a good first impression” and they have been playing PR catch up ever since.

And yes I know they have sold millions of seats, and this has nothing to do with the actual quality of X, but you’re the one that’s all “Curious” with a capital “C” about the negativity to your beloved NLE, and if it bothers you that much then you might want to come out of your Apple “bubble” to understand why.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “According to my family tradition – we kinda give a pass to issues “fault” when they are attached to people who were actively dying during the circumstances being discussed.”

Oh give me a break, what was he, your uncle or something? And, for the record, it was Randy’s observation, not mine, so go lay your guilt trip on him.

Oh the hollowed dead … let’s just say you would have been laughed out of my family’s dining room with that one. How’s that for tradition.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Walter Soyka] “With FCPX, you can set the role once upfront, then forget about. No matter what edits you make, the correct role will persist.
“

As always, every weakness is also a strength. In my case I often change “the role” of a piece of audio as I edit. The same piece of audio will change from Sync, VO, or to EFX and back again. In Ppro the track defines the general audio settings and all I have to do is move a clip to a different track to change it’s EQ, Compression and Level.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Herb Sevush] “Now the outcry after June 21 was mostly ill-informed and quasi hysterical, but again I say “who’s fault was that?””

Apparently the fault was Steve Jobs, at least according to Randy U.

“to Randy’s credit, he personally told Steve Jobs that he thought FCP X should have been rolled out in a way that would have kept more users happy. The poor release of FCP X is mostly in Steve Job’s hands)”

This from an interview featured in the thread above.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-gave-fcp-x-another-chance-liked-featuring-interview-david-busse/

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Tony West] “That part wasn’t completely on Apple. There was a ton of misinformation out there.”

While my experience was pretty much the same as yours back then, this is where I disagree with you.

Misinformation always happens in a vacuum. Apple does a public reveal of X in April and then says nothing and does nothing for months. What did they think would happen? If guys were posting misinformation on YouTube why didn’t Apple’s marketing department post solid information to counter that on both their web site and social media?

This is a text book case of marketing failure, which is all the more interesting coming from a company that’s brilliant in consumer marketing. Apple had months to educate, inform, and excite their extremely loyal base about a radical change in direction and instead all the info you could get came from some YouTube wackados. And to top it off they announce the EOL of Legacy alongside the product announcement. I cannot emphasize how much I think that single action has colored this whole dialogue.

I repeat, what happened since the launch was both predictable and mostly the fault of Apple’s mismanagement. And little of the enmity has anything to do with the product itself, which while I don’t think is all things to all people, is clearly extremely capable and a best choice for many workflows.

Just not mine, but that’s a different story.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “TOTALLY INCORRECT.

According to me, (and I should know) Apple’s roll-out was interesting – perhaps even exciting – but nothing more than that.
“

Ahhh, we’ve run into a bit of semantic confusion.

For me “role-out” is a marketing term and denotes all the things a company does to pump up sales for a new product. I didn’t consider the Supermeet “reveal” as part of the roll-out since Apple said nothing and did nothing after that event to educate, inform or in any way “stoke the fire” for the upcoming release. I used the term “roll-out” to mean everything they did after the product launch, when they actually presented their finished product to the public, hence our misunderstanding. Given your definition, I apologize for misconstruing your statement.

[Bill Davis] “Most of the loudest critique at the FCP X launch started in a complete vacuum of actually knowledge and experience with it during the period between April 12th and June 21, 2011.

And I’ll stand by that – because it’s the truth of things.
“

Well I disagree a little bit here. As someone who missed the “reveal” I was aware of something new being worked on, I heard a mix of both good and bad things about it, but mostly I heard silence from Apple and confusion from most everyone else. Many people believed that the upcoming product release would combine both the new and the old and that what was revealed at NAB was very much a work-in-progress. I didn’t hear any massive outcry about X until after June 21.

And I’ll stand by that, because that is my truth of things.

Now the outcry after June 21 was mostly ill-informed and quasi hysterical, but again I say “who’s fault was that?”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf