[Jim Giberti]

[Craig Shamwell] “In my opinion…like it or not…its the single worst major program I have ever used.”

Hey Craig, your opinion is obviously more than welcome. I neither like it or don’t like it. It’s an opinion.

FWIW, if I felt that FCPX was the worst program I ever used, then I would definitely drop it like a hot potato and get back to producing in a happy environment.

I thought you were looking for advice which is the only reason I commented on your original post. But if you just want to rant, then rant on brother, this is the place. You’re in fine company but you’ll have to get a lot more colorful if you want to even move the rant needle on this forum .

When I was on the fence a few months ago I spent some time with the new PP and I think you might find it a great move forward from what your saying. Dennis R from Adobe frequents this forum and is a great resource for all things PP.

[Jim Giberti]

[Craig Shamwell] “You obviously are vested in FCPX and/or Apple and like the other post, suggest that I somehow have not done my homework. I went as far as going to my local Apple Store and doing a test there. Same things happened when things got complicated. And had you read my reply, you would know that I have taken many tutorials. When things work…it is fast…but when its not, you lose all the time you gained before.
I still in fact use FCP7, more than FCPX in fact. Did you tell all the other people who you said have already posted about all the things I am talking about that they too need to take some tutorials so they can know what they are doing? Is this the standard response from editors who love Apple more than anything??… Take tutorials?”

Craig, I can’t do much other than tell you honestly about my experience and try and point you to something I thought would help you.

[Craig Shamwell] “I find it hard to believe as you suggest, that FCPX works just fine for you and not everyone else.”

I’m sure I didn’t say anything like that Craig. I explained how it was working for my company and how you could spend some time and read about the many other users on this forum that are working with it successfully and the ones that aren’t and decide whether it was worth it for you.

I also suggested a good alternative in Premiere Pro if you decide you can’t or don’t want to work with it.

FCPX does work fine for me and for many others. It doesn’t sound like you’re doing a level of work that is somehow more demanding than the work we’re producing for broadcast and film so I don’t know what else to offer you than the help that I did.

Again, good luck with your decision.

[Jim Giberti]

He did do a great job with them didn’t he Aindreas (Blackheart)

[Jim Giberti]

Craig you’re about three months late with this. Virtually everything you’re asking/frustrating about has been discussed over and over here so you’ll understand why your post isn’t exciting a lot of interest.

If you want to get up to speed on how folks are working with X and/or commiserate with those that decided they didn’t or couldn’t work with it, grab some coffee and spend a few hours reading.

Many of us are turning out a lot of work with X. For instance, I’ve got several 30 second spots and a short film in different stages of production in X, no issues either with rendering, crashing or anything else. Just put two other spots on air and it went wonderfully.

There are a of of great things about this program and some real issues that need to be resolved – but right now, in real time, it’s a very useful, fast, powerful editing program that’s a lot of fun to use once you understand how to use it.

I spent a good deal of time learning the new paradigm before I ever committed my company and clients work to it, and as I’ve written in a few threads, I’m glad I did as the work is looking great, and coming together faster than it would in FCP 7.

Much of the current work involves heavy design and compositing and we find X to handle that very well.

You seem very frustrated (lots of ??? and !!!) in your posts.
No need to be. I recommend you take a little time, download some of the many tutorials available, for a few bucks you can get Edgar Rothermich’s nicely presented visual tutes at https://www.dingdingmusic.com/DingDing/Manuals.html

It might be a good place for you to start with the “How it Works” and the “The Details” to understand the concepts better before going back to it.

If you can’t deal with it or don’t like how it works then Premiere Pro is a good alternative to the FCP legacy approach.

Good luck.

[Jim Giberti]

[Walter Soyka] “What would you do when the mix is right on the reference speakers, but wrong on the cheap ones?
“

We’d do different mixes for the given media. For instance for a piece of music that’s going direct to radio you know that they’re going to have lock box limiting at the stations, so you don’t master with the same dynamic range that you will for the same piece going to CD.

You want to get the hottest level that reflects your musical intent rather than let the stations squash it and hear it literally pump and breath. I remember when I sold my first piece of original music, the engineer that mixed/mastered it was the same studio owner that had produced my first album demos. I ended up hiring him as my first engineer.

When we’d get close to a mix that we liked on a commercial cut, he’d burn a test cassette, we’d go out to his Volvo and take a drive, with the windows down “you have to assume that they’re listening in the summer and it’s 90 out” kind of thing and listen at different levels and conditions.

Engineers are anal. The best ones.
We’d take notes and then go back to the studio and make tweaks to the mix.

I’m a firm believer in the “no one views or hears anything in the ideal, professional environment in which it was produced” kind of nihilist producer. In my personal studio I have a 27″ Apple, 42″ HDMI, JVC CRT and a $400 Sony desk top monitors, NS10’s, JBL Studio 12’s, Auratones, a Sony 5.1 surround system, expensive and cheap headphones…and a Volvo parked behind my chair.

[Jim Giberti]

[Daniel Frome] ”
If I might ask a further question: If a computer without FCPX watches your h264 outputs, is the color still properly calibrated for them? I ask this because I found that many quicktime movies actually did contain the proper color information — it was quicktime that seemingly didn’t interpret it properly. “

Hey Daniel, I’ll give it my best. For one, finally using a native 2.2 gamma gets us all in the same relative space – Mac PC monitor wise. So while our work will always be subject to the vagaries of individual monitor quality and calibration (or lack thereof) it’s just nice to have the issues reduced with native gamma. What’s great about X and what shocked me when I put out our first masters just a few weeks ago, was how accurate the movie was and honestly how much better the image looked on the same Apple 27″ monitor.

Just a quick caveat. Our workflow is to export from X as Pro Res master and then use that to drop on compressor for .h264 480, 720 and 1080 for a typical project.

[Daniel Frome] “For example, we could watch a 1080p quicktime movie in VLC player and get a more accurate view than if we viewed it in Quicktime 7. This indicated to me that the problem wasn’t necessary the exported file, but the “player.”
“

No doubt about it, Apple lost it with FCP and Quick Time. And for some unfathomable reason it got worse with QT 10.

I remember when I was in my first recording studio session, I couldn’t understand why the producer/engineer kept listening to these tiny little 4’x4″ cubes when there was a wall of really expensive monitors in the control room.

That was my first lesson in mixing for the “common denominator” or at least that’s what I call it. Those little Auratones, that I then saw in studio after studio as I grew, were the way to make sure that your final output would sound great even on the cheapest speakers in the worst aural environments…and retain the bass. That’s why we all have them…and NS10’s (really sonically deficient speakers, but they are in every studio, so we all have reference).

That’s when I realized how subjective all of what we produced was and how to compensate for it as best as possible.

Sorry to digress but it’s how I immediately perceived monitoring for film and video when I became a producer in this world.

So the whole QT gamma mess threw any reliable “absolute” reference out the window. Worse for me in the last few years was the growing importance (now pretty much exclusive) of delivering compressed broadcast files.

[Daniel Frome] ”
My question is ‘how did they fix it’ I suppose: since it seems like the weak link is equally the quicktime playback engine… which would still inherit these issues on the client machine? Hopefully I’m asking this clearly enoug”

I’m not smart enough to speak to the technology, just that ColorSync is something that I’m familiar with as a designer, but that has meant nothing with FCP until X. Now it manages the content within your workflow and keeps it beautifully consistent right through multiple variations of Compressor output.

And again, working with a native 2.2 gamma makes it much likelier to look the way you want on web based content as well.

The combination of the two has made all the work we’ve done in X much easier.

[Jim Giberti]

That’s strange Oliver.

The change is ground breaking on this end.

[Jim Giberti]

[Walter Soyka] “Of course, it wouldn’t help with judging field issues.
“

This really is the 800 lb gorilla Walter.

I’m increasingly frustrated (not quite the language I used yesterday) delivering SD content of all our HD content.

I know we’re lucky in relative terms that we’re at a point where virtually all our work is captured HD, and we can maintain that throughout. Even a corporate piece we’re just finishing, that would have been bumped down to DVD, is now going out on thumb drives. I’m loving living in an all QT environment now that I can trust it.

I know I’m spoiled. Some of the stations we deal with (typical in local network affiliates) even though they broadcast in HD, still haven’t upgraded their local output, so we send that work 480 letter boxed, and field issues still rear their ugly heads.

It’s a whole new world and evolving station/group at a time. Some trusted stations will take our straight 1080p work and handle the 480 transfer for the SD affiliates for us.

I can’t wait till things get standardized.

Yeah.
Sure.

[Jim Giberti]

[Shane Ross] “monitors,”

How do you know? Because FCX doesn’t allow for external broadcast monitoring. So how do you know what you see in FCX is what you see on your broadcast monitor? If it does match…that’s cool! Neat trick. I guess I need to know how you are comparing the shots in order for my head to wrap around it.
“

I seem to not be explaining myself to you clearly Shane.

I own the creative agency and the production studios, I have a media dept and AE’s that work with the different network and cable/satellite providers that control broadcast schedules. So I know when new work is airing on what shows and we monitor our work on air as part of our job.
We have relationships with the engineers that handle our material to insure it looks good to them on their end. I insist on that for every spot that goes to air.

I have carefully calibrated monitors with years of experience with how they match my average broadcast output (ie the phosphors on a perfectly calibrated JVC 17″ CRT always shifts slightly green compared to the connected, correctly calibrated 30″ Apple screen).
I have a lot of experience with a lot of gear in a lot of studios. that’s how I know what my work looks like and how I can tell the difference between the train wreck of FCP legacy and Quick Time and FCP X and ColorSync.

That’s pretty important when all of our work, whether it’s NBC or local cable, is delivered as .h264s

[Jim Giberti]

[Shane Ross] “And the QT export doesn’t shift gamma? Because that is what the issue was, wasn’t it? I mean, what I saw in my FCP Canvas was better looking than the QT export…the QT export looked washed out. Have they fixed that? So if I have FCP 7 in Lion, the QT and the FCP interface will look different, but FCX and QT will look right? Does it make FCX look bad, to match the QT? Or make QT look better? Because we always had to check FCP COLOR COMPATIBILITY with the QT export in order to get it to look right”

No offense Shane but can I assume that you have no experience with FCP X except on the forum?

I assumed you would understand the value of correct color management had you experienced it in X. versus the lack of such with all previous versions of FCP.

As I said in my original post, what I see in my studio, in my viewer, is what I see on broadcast monitors, is what I see when I see our work on network TV, is what I see on clients websites – of course allowing for given variables.

It’s totally different from what you experience in FCP 7, hence the title of my thread.