[John Godwin]

I went and reviewed those links (I had read them already, when they were posted) and have seen the light.

Okay, you win. You’re right and everyone else is wrong. FCP X sux and will never amount to anything, and Apple clearly erred in producing a new version of FCP that was not exactly what you wanted. Everyone who argues against you twists facts, lies repeatedly, is ignorant, and possibly immoral.

You know, at some point I just give up and listen to Robert A. Heinlein:

“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

“Actually if you read the hover text in the forums list, this forum is for support and discussion. The other forum says tips and techniques, just like the forums actual name. It was created at the specific request of people like yourself so they could go and talk about X, without having to wade through all the discussion type posts. But it’s all good, post what you want, get on the soap box. Not trying to censor your speech, just pointing out there is a forum for X users with a more positive trend.”

Discussion is good. Rehashing the same negative points over and over and over isn’t much contribution to a discussion. Maybe the solution is to create a FCP X SUX forum, since this one is ever so gradually trending toward less bitterness and more dealing with the new reality.

“As far as jilted lovers, I think apples behavior is more akin to an unfaithful mistress who can’t be trusted.”

Mistresses, too, can jilt their lovers.

“On counting on negative posts, all I can say is “what goes around, comes around”. The Pollyanna’s have done more than their fair share of jumping in on people who dare to complain about X or apple’s un-businesslike behavior.”

In my reading of this forum I saw a lot of angst and handwringing and a few people pointing out that the world hasn’t ended. I’ve had a couple of edit systems EOLed and I wasn’t happy about it, but I picked out which way to go next and moved on. Evidently a number of people of done that. They made their complaints known, decided which way to go, and are more or less gone. I think deciding what you need and what works for you is a practical and pragmatic way to deal with changed circumstances.

“The big mystery there is why does it matter to them? I speculated on their motives here:https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/6427 on June 26th.”

I read that. I can’t speak to their motives, mine are simply that this change does matter to me. I’ve been a shooter/editor all my longer-than-I-would-have-expected life. I came to the Mac side only in the last roughly 3 years, so I’m hardly a fanboy or apologist. I simply think Apple made some business and technical decisions and is highly unlikely to throw them out, so I want to constructively learn the new product and see if the promised improvements materialize. Actually, I’ll probably pick up CS 5.5 while it’s on sale and have my options covered.

“Despite the time and effort it takes to put up the amount of posts the apologists have put up trying to defend apple, as of today they haven’t put up one to defend themselves, or answer that question of their motivation. *sound of crickets*”

And why exactly should they have to state their motives to you? I would expect most people on here to take EVERYTHING that isn’t a simple statement of fact with a grain of salt, because I have respect for other people’s intelligence.

“And most of what the apple apologist post is often fact-less, laced with inflammatory rhetoric, hypocritical, or at least full of oxymorons, usually to the tune of “I agree that they probably shouldn’t have yanked FCS3 without notice, but isn’t apple the best billion dollar corporation ever and if you can’t see that then you’re a bloody Luddite!”. I’m paraphrasing a bit there for the sake of brevity, but we’ve all read it and know what I’m referring to.”

Well, the irony of your last statement speaks for itself. First of all, the word “apologist” is loaded. Some of us are just pragmatic. And what is remotely hypocritical about thinking Apple made a mistake by yanking FCS3 while recognizing things have changed? Those aren’t mutually contradictory concepts.

I hope to contribute to this forum and others in a useful and productive way. Rehashing the same points isn’t particularly productive in my view.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

Ok, I figured one out:

1 Click on the little symbol on the upper left of a clip.

2. Open Video Animation.

3. Use the little blue checkboxs and turn off the effects out don’t want to copy

4. Option-Apple-C

5. Select the clip you want to paste to and Option-Apple-P. It pastes only the effects that are turned on.

There may be a better way, but that just worked.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

I’m sorry, I thought this was the FCP X forum, not the FCP X JILTED LOVERS forum. It’s funny how you can count on a negative reply when anyone posts anything positive.

But I still really, really like the Red Adair quote.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

And to note that Chris Kenny compiled the statements Apple made to people the week after the release and repeatedly used those to calmly respond to other people’s concerns in many posts. He got a fair amount of grief for that, but I think pretty much all those responses were confirmed in the Apple FAQ. Sometimes even a modicum of patience goes a long way.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

FWIW, I was playing with a greenscreen shot last night, and just dropped the keying effect on it and the key was perfect. The shot was done right, so that surely helped, but I was really happy with that key. I don’t happen to have any badly shot greenscreen around so I don’t know how it would work if the shot itself needed a lot of cleanup.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

On a related note, I just managed to make a storyline / timeline with an animated background, a layer to appear behind the talent on the background, and the top layer is the talent on greenscreen. The key, btw, dropped right in and made a perfect key, as far as I can tell.

I’m not sure if I constructed this in the easiest or best way. I started with a middle layer, a video shot, then added the greenscreen layer over that, and evidently made a compound clip, which I could then place over the animated background. It all works and I can go in and do things (add titles, some effects and color correction – this is all for experimentation, not yet an actual piece) but in FCP 7 I’d start with the top layer, the greenscreen shot, and then add below it. Anyone have suggestions on how to best build something like this?

As an aside, I’m testing this on a MacBook Pro 2.6 core 2 duo with 4 gb of ram, and everything works, but it is stressing the machine and the fans are working like I’ve never heard them work. But it’s all working, no crashes.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

FAST ended Video Machine, or so they said the the time, because they felt they needed to redesign everything from the ground up, and did, with what became Liquid. The big sticking point for me, at the time, was no machine control, other than one machine for in and out. No ABC control. And the cost of hard drives at that point was horrendous – I remember paying over a thousand dollars for a 9 gb SCSI.

But I continued to run my VM for a couple of years, making money off of it, and added a Liguid Silver setup and everything worked out fine for some years.

At this point I have made full clones of my two systems – 3, if you count the MacBook Pro – on both internal and external drives for each, essentially freezing them in a working state for FCP 7. I’ve installed FCP X on the systems and so far had no conflicts. So I can continue to plug along with FCP 7 for a while regardless and also explore FCP X. I am seriously considering getting CS while the special is on to have that as a ready option.

Point being, none of this was cheap and easy when VM was cancelled. Today there are a lot of options, and they don’t necessarily involve having to switch OS and buy new machines and hardware. And they are relatively cheap and easy.

Like almost everyone from what I’ve read, I think Apple should keep selling FCP CS 3 with some support to make this easier for everyone for a while. Maybe they have pulled the rug out from under us to some extent, but the replacement rugs are readily available, and relatively cheap.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

It’s running on my 3 year old MacBook Pro. If you want to come over and play with it a bit that’d be great.

Best,
John

[John Godwin]

I don’t disagree, and you may have inside info I don’t, but when Avid bought Pinnacle they quickly cut the high end products, the ones with dedicated hardware and real pro I/O and acceleration, and kept the software only version with a small RCA/FireWire breakout box. Then eventually what was the software, I think, ended up migrating into what had been Pinnacle Studio and is now Avid Studio. At least at the time there was some deal about the underlying code being put into Studio.

In any case, you’re surely right about the long run. The saying “adapt or die” has always applied to this business. Some adapt by moving to a different platform, some by accepting the new, some by a combination, and some by suffering a massive snit. I expect to adapt with a combination of FCP X and whatever platform(s) my clients want.

Best,
John