[Marcus Moore]

There are no absolutes in this industry. Except one: “Never” never applies.

How short ARE people’s memories about the early days of FCP?

[Marcus Moore]

We shouldn’t forget that this is the second time Apple has introduced a product that was mocked by the “Pros” at well below the going rate, only to infiltrate the market from the bottom up. They’re not starting from nearly as far down this time, but they are working to re-enter the market as Judas this time, instead of a nobody.

People move on, people forget. If things stayed static in our industry, no one wouldnt’t be using anything but AVID. It took FCP 5 years to make serious inroads in the industry. It took Premier 10. There are people on AVID now that swore they’d never go back. There are people who loved Adobe until they CC and now they don’t.

Things change.

X does certain thing VERY well- as long as that list improves, its base of users will continue to grow- in numbers and sectors of the business which is can serve.

[Marcus Moore]

The mini is indeed a niche machine in it’s own right. My understanding is that it’s found great success as a mini-server for small business and retail installations. I was at a Ski resort this winter, and noticed them strapped to the back of TVs hanging from the ceiling, driving the video content.

I think the MacPro and the MacMini will continue to be the oddballs in the Mac lineup.

But at the same time, over the next 5-10 years I see the Mac lineup shrinking as product lines can be consolidated. Right how we have

MacBook Air
MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro Retina

MacMini
iMac
MacPro

For sure, the non-Retina MacBook Pros will be going away as soon as Apple can get the price premium for the screens down. Perhaps even this year with Haswell.

My question is when will the divide in performance/weight be such that there doesn’t’ need to an Air AND a Pro. Certainly laptops will only want to get SO thin before they become flimsy, so there is a conceivable bottom to the benefit of the Air, afterwhich people will will be more interested in battery life, which means you need to keep volume. And as internals keep shrinking, a machine the size of an Air will be faster and faster. So in 10 years, I could just see a single MacBook lineup.

On the desktop side, Apple has clearly made its case for external expansion. I’m not sure what Intel’s timeline is for 100Gbps Optical Thunderbolt, but I’d be surprised if its more than 5-7 years out. When you can literally hook up ANYTHING via TB expansion, including multiple high-end GPUs, then really all the “computer” is for is the CPU, RAM, and I/O. The only difference between a MacPro and an iMac will be what you can configure internally.

At that point, maybe it won’t make any sense to have both a MacMini and a MacPro, and it will just be a broader range of internal processor options from lower consumer end, to server-class Xeons. Leaving us with simply an all-in-one and a headless option on the desktop side.

Ramble ended.

[Marcus Moore]

A really great, comprehensive article by Alex Gollner on what hints Logic Pro X may give us into future FCPX development.

https://alex4d.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/logic-pro-x-n-future-fcpx/

[Marcus Moore]

If your primary job isn’t editing, I’d find it hard to justify the cost of a MacPro. A topped out iMac is certainly no slouch. I’ve been using one as a stopgap for almost 2 years while waiting for this new MacPro- and I’ve not been disappointed- though I wish it had an SSD (definitely get that).

The only issue is that an iMac refresh is probably not too far away either.

[Marcus Moore]

I’m just going to back up and agree with you that the current implementation is not adequate. Of course, I’m arguing in the abstract for an idea that doesn’t exist yet. If they don’t do something with Roles organization in the timeline I’ll be very disappointed.

But on the scope of a completed implementation, there’s no way I’d ever want to go back to Bins from the metadata tagging, Keyword Collections, and Smart Collections way of doing things. Never.

I think the attractive *idea* to me about what FCPX is doing with audio is that once relationships are set up it allows you to completely focus on the picture side of the edit only. In Legacy, cutting picture in a deep A/V structured timeline- you can get bogged down selecting audio elements involved in that picture edit. What elements are tied to the inbound shot? what’s tied to the outbound? There’s a massive amount of selecting and deselecting that goes on that gets in the way of the business of cutting. I think in this scenario, the audio side is impeding the process of editing.

The idea of Connected Clips, and Roles- should technically allow for an audio structure that takes more time up front to set up, but saves time on every edit down the line. The pure audio process suffers (if you have to translate to tracks later), but editorial is (at least in theory) improved as the number of steps to execute on a single edit goes down.

And if Roles are executed in the timeline properly, the translation to a DAW should be seamless.

[Marcus Moore]

I only disagree that visual organization is unimportant in the Timeline.

I’m cribbing from a lengthy (and long overdue) blog post about Roles here-

Right now, the Project timeline is like the Event browser, but if there were no Keyword Collections. You could tag your footage just as we do now, and you could search for clips by criteria and come up with results- but organizationally it works much better if you can see that structure at work. In the Event Browser, that’s what Keyword Collections (and Smart Collections) are; an enhanced version of Bins based on metadata rules.

If Apple took Role data and applied it the same way in the Timeline, you’d have a similarly organized but free flowing structure. A “Role Collection” if you will.

[Marcus Moore]

Hard tracks are irreconcilable with the magnetic timeline and connected clips. There’s no point in having tracks where clips need to have freedom of movement to overlap when conflicts arise- if you did this with tracks, they’d have to structural/informational meaning.

A Role is a collection of clips that you choose to group together. Right now, they’re grouped by metadata only- but if that info was applied to the Project timeline, it would allow for organization very much like Stacked Tracks. A Role would be a “track” made up of as many lanes as needed for the overlapping elements. If you need more granular control than DIALOGUE, then create sub-Roles for DIALOGUE-JOE and DIALOGUE-MARY. The important thing here is that these elements continue to be free to maintain their clip connections throughout editing.

[Marcus Moore]

I maintain Roles will be the organizational force on the FCPX side. All overlapping lanes in a Role would be a Stack Track, wouldn’t it?

[Marcus Moore]

I think the use case for iPad control is very specific. Sliders make sense. Perhaps color correction. But as many have pointed out the fastest way to work is often keyboard shortcuts.