[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “If you had told me when I bought my very expensive “cheese grater” Mac Pro – that in a very few years That system would be a bit of a relic and I’d be making tremendously more complex and vastly higher quality videos on my laptop – I’m not sure I’d have believed it”

There is a reason that workstation owners want upgradable design – far from a relic, my upgraded cheese grater probably exceeds your laptop in both GPU and CPU capabilities. This has little effect on the quality of your videos and I certainly can’t edit while flying between towns. However I can keep leveraging my original (2012) purchase for another few years. Can the same be said of the Trashcan?

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Steve Connor] “Is it just me or are things a little…..different?”

Bessie’s just skating to where the puck might be, reading is so over, it’s much better imagining what the content is like so that everyone always agrees with you – it’s genius!

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Tero Ahlfors] ” Try reinstalling one?”

I tried re-installing Mercalli ProDad from scratch and it was still not showing up. I then spoke to Adobe and they suggested removing the plug-in folders for CC 8 and CC 9 and try re-installing again. Bingo. Now the re-installs worked. Thank you Adobe.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “I know a guy who’s wife left him 30 years ago – and he still hasn’t gotten over it.

He’s spent the rest of his life pining for her.”

You’ve just described the central thesis of the majority of novels ever written. It’s called the human condition. I’m sure he thinks that everyone who wants him to “move on” has simply never been in love.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “I’d parse that argument as essentially this…”

Your parsing isn’t pleasing …

[Bill Davis] “If you devalue my EXPERTISE, you devalue me.”

This particular thread isn’t about me, my expertise, or my choice of deodorant. It’s about the three main things the NAB demo didn’t prepare anyone for – No compatibility with Legacy, missing features, immediate EOL of Legacy. These are facts, they fueled the anger because (unlike many of the other comments at the time) they were true and eventually Apple acted to address these concerns but they were a little late putting out the fire. Had Apple announced that Legacy sales would continue, even after development had stopped, that future versions of OSX would support Legacy and had they published the “white paper” outlining the timetable for returning missing features to FCPX on the day of the release and not a month later, the outcry would have been substantially less than it was. Legacy users who do not like the X paradigm would still have been upset, but they would have been reassured that they still had a way forward.

[Bill Davis] “If you want to play the traditional games as well as you can, have fun. But if you want to be relevant playing the games that evolve going forward – NOT changing is going to be the larger mistake. I’m more convinced of that today than ever.”

I don’t know what games you are playing Bill but I make video programming for people to watch. My work is not dependent on any particular piece of software or hardware, it is dependent on my understanding of story structure, a form that hasn’t changed much since the Illiad. My last word on this subject comes from Godard who stated that “a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] “Object to anything and everything you want to. Object to Apple pulling it off shelves. But the idea that it was EVER not available, for a single second, is simply not the case.”

When Apple announced the EOL it was not clear that this was going to be true. it was so much more than not clear, it was one of the biggest issues at the time. From our perspective NOW it is clear – but would it have been this way had Apple not done an about face, under pressure from it’s larger and more influential user’s, and re-instituted sales into the retail chain after stating that there would be –
NO
MORE
AUTHORIZED
SALES
OF
FCP7.
EVER.

Large companies with multiple seats of FCP7 that were planning on adding many more seats in the near future were freaking out. They did not want grey market under the counter versions – they wanted authorized, legal, warrantied versions – and it was not clear for over a month after the EOL that they would be able to get them.

It was also not at all clear that unsupported FCP Legacy would continue to run on subsequent versions of OSX.

From where we stand now it is clear that those fears were unfounded – but that’s why hindsight is so much better than 20/20.

So yes, it turns out to be the case that Legacy has always been available and it continues to run, year after year, on the latest OSX upgrades. However the furor about this at the time was reasonable, Apple’s initial handling of this issue was deplorable, and because of Apple’s tone deaf PR ineptness the lingering hostility to FCPX was inevitable.

Again I ask, if the X role out was so good why are we still having this discussion five years later when the product has matured to the point where it can hold it’s own against any other NLE out there?

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

[Herb Sevush]

Tim, we are going to disagree about this for eternity aren’t we. Oh well, let’s proceed.

[Tim Wilson] “People had 3 months to see what X was about”

Other than the few hundred folks in attendance at the nab event all the rest of us heard were rumors, and of all the rumors, none of us heard that Apple would be releasing a program that A) couldn’t open FCP7 files under any circumstances B) was missing a host of essential features for many workflows and C) was discontinuing all sales of FCP7 on the day of X’s release.

It is demonstrable that Apple screwed up this release because they then proceeded to “step back” from some of these problems -they began to, very quietly (almost secretly some might say) release copies of FCP7 thru the retail chain and then issued a unique (in my Apple “x”periance) white paper outlining their future plans for X (plans they would meet with great accuracy.) If the release was such a success why did they have to change their minds in mid stream? Why the white paper, something that hasn’t been matched in the following 5 years, if all was going to plan?

[Tim Wilson] “Three months warning. That’s plenty of time for anyone who’s not cruising for a fight.”

The NAB demo did not constitute a warning.

The white paper showed that Apple could, when it was in their interest, communicate with their customers. I wasn’t at the demo but did anyone there say all sales of FCP7 would end when X was released. did they explain that X was 100% incompatible with FCP7 as far as transferring timelines go? if so I must have missed that part of the discussion.

[Tim Wilson] “Which raises an interesting what if. What if Apple had done like Sony: kept the shiny new thing (FCPX), and sold the neglected old thing (FCP) to somebody else?

Who might they have sold it to? What might it have become? Discuss. :-)”

Why would Apple allow someone to offer another alternative to X? To be fair to their customers? That would be even more novel than the white paper.

A bit of history. When Autodesk/Discreet announced that they were EOLing edit* a number of the users gathered together to try to get management to sell the software so that we could still use it. Pinnacle back then was using the same i/o boards as edit* and seemed like a match, but Autodesk wouldn’t sell to a competitor. Then the users tried to initiate a user base purchase direct from Autodesk, we went so far as to contact the development team to see if they would want a stake in it, but eventually Autodesk refused to deal with us because — well, because why bother, they had already counted on writing it off their books and who give’s a rats ass about some noisy customers anyway, business is business.

As for FCP Legacy, who would be interested in taking over software development for the fastest growing NLE, with somewhere around 2 million paying users – oh I don’t know, maybe Black Magic, or some Chinese or Korean hardware company that wanted a bigger presence in the US market, or Boris, or Edit Share, or almost anyone who wanted to make a buck. It doesn’t matter who was interested, or who would be interested, because Apple had zero, none, nada interest in competing with itself.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Joe Marler] “Fortunately Adobe now sees the need for a built-in proxy mode and this will be added in a future version of Premiere.”

Future, as in the next upgrade due in a few weeks, not future as normally understood with Black Magic or Red delivery dates, or hoped for X features by users.

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

[Herb Sevush]

Tim –

I posted this before in the NAB thread but it seems more appropriate here so I’m taking the liberty of re-posting.

Just back from a quick jaunt to NAB. Not an earth shattering NAb, more incremental improvements.

Avid had the upper south hall to themselves as far as NLEs go and their booth was packed – can’t tell you why because i’m not interested, but if crowd size at NAB is any indication then this is not a dying business.

Black Magic had the lower hall prime position and plenty of action – the Ursa Mini 4K knocks me out for the money, with the caveat that I’m not a shooter. But as a fully robust studio camera for under 5K without glass, someones gonna have to explain to me why it sucks otherwise it will be in consideration for next years shoot. Also amazing how small the Micro Studio camera is – perfect for my ceiling mounted remote cam.

Tons of copter’s in the Central Hall buzzing around – obviously a growing field.

Adobe has some nice incremental improvements plus Virtual Reality editing – which I still believe is a “who cares” option. Very crowded booth, pushing a lot of Adobe Anywhere demos and Feature Film workflow demos emphasizing AE dynamic link with Ppro. Best demo was 2 kids from Austalia home brewing some fantasy you tube videos and turning it into a tv show. Very funny stuff, made for no money, 2 kids showing what can be done with a handful of actors, no money, a lot of talent and AE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nClYDL7jgj0
If you need a multiCamera live viewing option – The Decimator on the South Upper floor has some excellent options for 9 angles, or less, fully programmable, each input with a looping output, on one screen for less than 1K.

Saw a neat AE 3D tracking plug-in for those too stupid for something like Mocha (meaning me) – it’s called FayIn by Faytek. Worth a look for an editor who doesn’t have time to learn something too complex.

Didn’t try any of the VR glasses, the lines were too long at the Dell site, but they were offering free popcorn, so well worth the visit.

Saw a bunch of High Dynamic Range video, with a Korean company showing it in 8K. They had a shot of a rotating glass sculpture on black that seemed like you could reach out and touch it. Even the HD versions were impressive, but since there are no agreed upon standards for TV manufacturers and no broadcasters ready to, you know, broadcast, this is still just a pipe dream – but a beautiful pipe dream that is more impressive than 8K TV or 3D if you could ever get agreement on standards. In the meantime my wife is happy watching super compressed 8 bit on Netflix as long as she can see another episode of The Gilmore Girls.

Met up with the world renown Bob Zellin at the Maxx Digital booth – he was extolling the virtues of simple video networking using the QNAP Thunderbolt NAS as the center of it’s design, and complaining about the many booths talking about Thunderbolt 3 when nobody had it to show.

Spent some time at the ProMaxx booth to review it’s “platform” – a complete software/hardware product taking you from ingest to asset management to team editing to archiving with the ability to open in a panel in Ppro (and Avid I think) and be totally controlled from there. It has tools to lock projects to prevent overwriting while editing in teams and it was impressive.

Anyhow after a day my feet hurt too much to make it to the north hall or look any deeper at the camera’s in the central hall – huge booths for Canon, Panasonic and Sony, with Red exhibiting next to Black Magic in the lower south hall.

I would estimate that 95% of the attendees were male with the highest number of female attendee’s gathered around the various camera booths in both the South and Central halls. Take that for what it’s worth.

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

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[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] “That said, I’m floored by the Lytro. The idea of being able to set focus and shutter in post, extract keying data from depth maps, etc., strikes me as a staggering amount of science, backed by the most extensive optics innovations in years.”

I couldn’t find the Lytro on the floor – it wasn’t listed in any of the guides except for off floor demo’s. In any case I do believe the Lytro is a major innovation – the first truly “digital” camera in that it’s creating, on a frame by frame basis, a digital map of an image including z axis, as opposed to recording only the light reflecting off the image to one spot. It will take years, but I’m guessing something like this will be the future of motion pictures.

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