[Jim Giberti]

“Many of us dont have the temporal luxury to “just explore” all the nle alternatives.unfortunately. Sometimes Im learning new software (i.e. Cameratracker in AE) because I have a project that needs it. With the clock ticking I need to make a decision about the best way to go (based on minimal research and gut instincts) and start learning a new system that does what I need it to do. Luckily the ducks lined right up for Adobe CS5.5 for me. I used AE for years. PrP was very similar to FCP (what FCP 8 should have been) and it was reborn with the power and capabilities I need for my work flow. AS a student or a hobbyist I might try to spend the time necessary to get familiar with other vendors. But that just isn’t going to fit into my timetable. All my energy is focused on building new muscle memory with Adobe”

This pretty much mirrors the quandary for us and the reason it looks like we’re going to put the new “muscle memory” into X and Motion. After exploring the new PrP I agree in many ways it is what I hoped FCPX would be. But in our small shop there are two of us with a lot of experience and projects designed in Motion but little to no experience in AE. We would have to put a good deal more time into AE than the new X concept.

It really is a timetable thing and I’ve changed my view regarding FCP7 in the last few weeks. I’ve always looked at all of our creative work as payed growth opportunities. You should always be investing you’re creative time into improving and enhancing skills. With this POV and the new choices X has forced, it’s hard to look backwards at a EOL’d technology for the spate of new projects coming up.

It’s not a choice I was planning to make but having made it I hope Apple validates it going forward.

[Jim Giberti]

So you’re saying they designed this for Gopher .

[Jim Giberti]

Good stuff David.

I wonder whether these essential but esoteric questions would occur to someone using FCPX as their first experience with temporal design.

For instance, many of the graphic designers in my shop over the years had virtually no grasp of these concepts – things that were common to those of us who evolved with linear film and audio tape in our g studios. I’ve had some great designers that were virtually lost when I tried to explain how we were incorporating their work into a timeline.

I’m thinking of at least a couple of senior art directors I’ve had that were masters of the layered space that they designed in but nearly dyslexic or at least phobic regarding animating or incorporating their work in time.

Just wondering if new editors, whatever their age, would quickly adopt the X paradigm, without a thought of the things being discussed here.

[Jim Giberti]

I wouldn’t be surprised if this weren’t exactly the types of apps we’ll be seeing for X on the iPad. It certainly would make Apple a lot more forward thinking than they’ve been getting credit for.

[Jim Giberti]

You mean showing my youth 🙂

Yeah we started with FCP1 and as I said in an early post, literally used two $40k Media 100 systems as doorstops when we moved into our new facilities on the mountain.
Well before that, to my knowledge, we were one of the first to adopt the first Premiere (on a Quadra 840 AV I think) to do a national project. it was an adventure and I wanted to prove a point at the time.

I’ve always had a pretty good compass with these things, from cameras to audio, design and film suites. That compass doesn’t tell me that this is a forward direction right now. Different yes, but not forward.

[Jim Giberti]

And a quick reply to myself.

As someone in the communications biz: the folks paid to communicate at Apple showed and are showing a lack of skill that would get them fired from my little shop.

And not just for arrogance and ignorance regarding their customer base and reputation but for screwing up what is probably a nice little program going forward.

An intelligent and reparative move would be to announce that, as of monday, FCP 7 was alive and well and to announce the formation of a team that was hard at work on FCP 8, with an admission of missing the mark on this. A little humility is as good for a corporation as it is for an individual.

They would show that they are both human and appreciative of their base.

I’m not a programmer and have no idea of hat it would take from that perspective, but I do know they could more than afford to do something “big” regarding this situation and a big visionary company should show that it knows how to fix a vision that they didn’t get right

Again the problem is not with X, but with abandoning a system that is so entwined and appreciated worldwide that it made no sense to kick it into the gutter.

If down the line their vision for FCP X is seen as the evolution of an industry and art then we’ll all move there as it becomes obvious, just like so many of us moved form Avids and Media 100s a decade ago.

[Jim Giberti]

Although I’ve monitored the Cow for a long time I just joined with the launch of X because I thought (and still do) that it would be the best place to engage in the process of transition.

First: I was enthusiastic about the new model as I had learned about it from the SM and Larry Jordan and said so in the few posts I wrote when it first broke.

I probably fall right into the middle of this debate and demographic. I own a small but fairly high profile creative company. We don’t have the needs of a lot of the dedicated colorists or edit houses as we do it all from our own studios. But that still means doing audio post in our audio room, working daily with the art dept with PSDs for animation and motion graphics etc. and a lot of our work is broadcast TV spots so properly calibrated broadcast monitors are a must.

At the same time we moved to all digital acquisition so we’re a prime target of the new X philosophy and I have to admit I really like the idea of not round tripping to Color as we do our own grading.

So like i said, we’re pretty much right in the middle of all of this and as the president and creative director I deal with it all.

Here’s my take after two weeks of immersion in it.
I’m just finishing about two months of non stop PS design work on our new website, sometimes 18 hours a day and haven’t seen the edit suite for all that time.
I started putting the broadcast and film reels together for the site and preparing the summers spot production. FCP7 felt like an old friend. Not a moment was lost. I was juggling footage from Olympic films from a few years ago shot in one medium, spots from another medium…you get the picture.

I simply could not have done my job as a small firm using X.
And if I could have, I really didn’t want to take the little time I have finishing the site and scrambling to produce a dozen new broadcast projects to learn an entire new paradigm.

FCP7 works really well.
What happened to the old axiom – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?
That’s a really good axiom.

A 64 bit version of FCP 8 integrating Color and real audio sweetening/mixing would have been brilliant…even game changing for Apple. Honestly, it’s what I was very hopeful of seeing.

This new paradigm is what we’ve always called a “camel” in the ad business – that is the answer to the question: “what do you call a race horse designed by committee”

Apparently it wasn’t enough for this committee to change how we all love to edit, but to audio mixing as well (I’m still seeing real potential in the internal grading approach).

Obviously I’m not touching on all the left outs that left out the entire professional post industry – I’m going to give Apple some credit that their probably scrambling like they never imagined to fix those.

But frankly, as a creative guy first who became a tech guy over the last 20 years largely following Apples lead and using hundreds of their products, I simply have to ask (and as a serious investor have a right to) – what were you people thinking?

[Jim Giberti]

Regarding Tangler Clarke – to paraphrase Burt Reynolds from Boogie Nights, “that’s a great name”.
And I agree with your general take on X.

[Jim Giberti]

More of the logical “lemonade” approach.
For the first time this week I’ve got two different versions of FC running on our systems and because we have CS5 suites on all our systems I’m going to experiment with Premiere for the first time since I cut our first film on version1 in our first digital suite.
Who knows, I might love it more than either FC.
I’m glad you’re liking the change Tom, I may well too.
Transitional periods can either be terrifying or invigorating.
I like the latter.

[Jim Giberti]

These are all good points Jamie, but the threads have largely been fueled by outrage and the people who’ve called for a little balance are the ones that have been shouted down…I’ve been there.

This is the future in many ways and as someone who runs studios in virtually every media I’ve experienced the great growing pains whether it was 24″ analog to the first digital mixers to all computer based MOTU production. Step and repeat with design, every generation of camera etc.

It’s often been very challenging and expensive and difficult while running a growing company, but it’s always been worth it and virtually every creative I’ve known that hasn’t embraced the new paradigms reached dead ends in their careers.

Is this the future of creative production in this media? Only time will tell, but the people behind the change have a pretty solid history of innovation. Those that say they don’t must be pretty dumb for continuing to use their innovations.

Having been there and having evolved my firm into all digital everything the past few years, I’m very psyched for this. I absolutely empathize with all the edit houses that are currently left out X BUT it’s not like Apple came and stole their 7 suite – just the opposite, they can continue to do exactly what they need to as Apple brings everything else online.

Logic and experience says they will and then it’s just a matter of whether people feel they need to work in the same (to me tired old way of editing) or want to embrace a new paradigm that will evolve and grow as we use it, give Apple our sane and calm feedback and continue to prosper.