[Herb Sevush]

“Name them. Did they include third party hardware support? If so, who wrote the drivers?”

EMC2 – proprietary capture card,
*edit – both pinnacle and matrox cards
Media 100 – wasn’t my system, don’t know about drivers and cards.
PPro – used it only as a firewire editor, Adobe wrote the drivers, I think
Avid – well, you know.
FCP – blackmagic card

Your point being what, that blackmagic’s drivers are at fault? Don’t know what your getting at.

“Seriously? So that window that opens in FCP can’t be looked at as a whole ‘nother interface? What if a capture system plugged right in to FCPX? You choose it from an FCPX menu and it opens a capture utility? Wouldn’t it be the same thing?”

As you already quoted me as saying “if they create a third party digitizing plug-in I’d feel much more comfortable with it.” So yes, as I already said, I would be quite happy with a third party system that plugged into FCPx – that’s what a plug-in means, unless I’m having a hard time understanding English.

As for the AJA capture system, first off I didn’t see where it says it will open from within a FCPx Menu. Second, being a Blackmagic card owner, i don’t know that it applies. I also don’t like the idea that different systems will have different capture utilities based on the I/O card your currently using. Again, that might be a misplaced anxiety, but I’d prefer a program to have a unified capture module no matter what card I happened to be using.

But more importantly I’d just be happy to have any system that actually worked across time code breaks properly and that could handle batch-recaptures from the project I was working on.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“I was just going off Rafael’s example of a word doc to simple text. A modern timeline to EDL does not fit that analogy, and just like you said, you don’t do it without some major work first.”

I thought his point was that once the editor has done his prep, it should be as basic as .doc to .txt. An EDL is still a viable tool in certain situations and the fact is, alone amongst Mac NLE’s, FCPx can’t make one or import one (yet.)

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Of course you might want to ask why creating a capture module was so daunting for Apple, since every other NLE I ever worked with could manage this quite well.

I also simply don’t like having to deal with digitizing as something outside of the basic program – if they create a third party digitizing plug-in I’d feel much more comfortable with it. This might be irrational, but it still makes me feel like I’m buying a car without a carburetor and they tell me to go buy one at AutoZone.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

I’m a multi-cam editor at least 90% of the time, so trying out the current FCPx is pointless for me.

Because the nature of multi-cam lends itself so well to metadata, and because of the excellence of the FCPc multi-cam feature I have high expectations for the next FCPx update. If it lives up to my expectations I then have to figure if dealing with the rest of X’s behavior will make it worth the effort. That’s my reason for starting this thread, to see if there are any other dealbreaker’s out there, beyond the basic magnetic timeline stuff.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“How do you express a compound clip in an EDL? It is not a word for word translation.”

The same way you would express a complex sequence to an EDL in FCP7 – you didn’t.

It was understood that you had to clean up your timeline to prepare an EDL when you needed one, and of course with FCPc (Classic) it was easy enough to do. Are you saying FCPx is more limited and can’t be cleaned up for EDL prep?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

“I might well start looking elsewhere or think about a different way of making a living. Maybe one that doesn’t require electricity.”

I’ve been trying to figure out how to edit via steam for years. After all, it’s mostly hot air we’re dealing with.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Oliver –

Thanks for all your comments, and especially for the original article that started this thread.

I think the time has come for a thread like this. I think it is important to know what are the limitations and problems faced by editors who like and use FCPx in order to properly evaluate it.

Every NLE has it’s plus and minuses, even to it’s most enthusiastic users, and getting a sense of where the problems lie is important to anyone trying to evaluate it. It’s one thing to hear about pitfalls from those who don’t like it, and that information is valuable, but the criticism from those who do like it and use it is, if anything, more necessary when trying to gauge it. Seeing how Apple addresses those issues in upcoming releases will be a crucial part of that process.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Ben –

Thanks for the input. I have a few questions?

“in fact why not proper bussing of tracks its what is needed”

Hoe can you bus tracks when their are no tracks?

“also grading is really let down by the fact that there is no way to copy paste effects properly, this will make fcpx drag behind and not work for broadcast work and is a major priority

out of sync is a joke, this is a priority”

Am I correct in thinking these are the 2 biggest things you need fixed?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Ken –

I’m not faulting you on this, but the point of this thread was NOT to bash FCPx. I literally wanted to hear from those editors who like and use FCPx and find out what they thought of Oliver’s list.

It doesn’t surprise me that editors who have already decided not to use FCPx will agree with Oliver’s post, but I would like to learn from those editors who are using it everyday if they agree with any of the issues that Oliver brings up; and if so how do they work around these issues, what they think the future will bring, and whether or not they think these issues are very important to their workflow and on how they decide on which NLE to use.

I’ll be very happy to start a separate bashing thread and I’ll invite you and Aindreas to start it off.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Capture now is an absolute and total piece of s**t. If you’ve never captured with either Avid or *edit or any other NLE that can capture, and then batch re-capture over time code breaks seamlessly, with no waste of time, no hunting for in points, no 50/50 chance of making a corrupted clip, then you have my condolences. Let me assure you, FCP is the absolute worst program I’ve ever used for this purpose. I envy Avid users this ability, if no other.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions