Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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[Juan Morales] “If you want to look at it that way, then the only thing I posted about the “project” was an outline of the story without giving away the ending. What is wrong with that? No one is leaking illegal made copies here of the project.”
If you don’t understand the concept of intellectual property then you will never understand the issue of what you posted and why it gets pulled.
Consider this – Why do companies go to such great lengths to have ironclad NDAs for beta testers? Because they don’t want the info out there yet – it’s their product, they release when they want. The only difference here is that you had unauthorized access to information that is otherwise under NDA because Avid made a mistake. It doesn’t make the property yours to disseminate.
There’s a big user group meeting in Boston next week and there’s supposed to be a surprise. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the announcement and demo of MC6, but I could be wrong. If it’s not, we continue to wait.
Since when is patience not a virtue?
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Juan Morales] “Well, it took them some 20+ years before their editing software became “open” to other hardware vendors and use their code. How can you say that’s “new, but not too much”?!?!”
Because they already said that was coming at their “Committed to the Professional” event in Burbank a couple months ago. The new interface was teased, 3rd party hardware was teased, they definitely said that MC6 was going to be 64-bit, etc… So yes, it’s a new approach for Avid, but it’s not new news at this point. It’s expected in MC6 – your post just confirmed it, but I haven’t talked to anyone that actually doubted it. Hence the “new, but not too much”. Most of the new stuff is about 3D.
[Juan Morales] “Try to put this announcement into perspective and understand what it means to most FCP users out there: a couple of months ago their hardware was made obsolete thanks to Apple. Yes, they can still use FCP7, but for how long really (new codecs, changing formats, etc.)? What to do with their Aja and BMD cards? “
I used FCP7 now. I can switch to Adobe tomorrow and my hardware still works. Now that Avid will support it, it’s a double win. Everyone who’s been paying attention outside of this forum should already know that Avid is opening up to 3rd party hardware. It was just a matter of when, and exactly which hardware (hopefully all of it).
[Juan Morales] “Why would you want to deny the readers of the Cow this news?”
The news will come when Avid is ready to officially share it. They’ve already said as much as they can at their previous event. Remember, they’re a publicly traded company so they have certain rules they have to follow. Your post was an infringement on their IP and it was pulled. That’s not denying readers on the Cow the news – it’s respecting IP and delivering the news when it comes from Avid, at the time they want it out.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
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Michael Hancock
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[Juan Morales] “I wonder though… if I would’ve shown stills from the “new” FCPX interface somewhere back in March or April; how would the people reacted then? Answers please in this thread ;)”
If it’s wasn’t officially released by Apple it would have been pulled then too. I’d go even further, though, and say that if you posted copyrighted, not yet officially released versions of Apple products you might also have their lawyers tracking you down and the police kicking in your door and confiscating your computer.
Remember when someone found the iPhone 3 or 4 and posted it all over the web? That didn’t end well for them at all.
The point is, Avid’s web team made a mistake and you caught it. Good for you, but that doesn’t mean you should post it all over the internet then get offended when a site like CreativeCow pulls it down. It’s not censorship, it’s respect for intellectual property – and for all we know, Avid’s legal team contacted the Cow and asked them to pull it. Only Ron et. al know and they aren’t talking (and I wouldn’t expect them to).
Besides, if you have ProRes on your Mac (via FCP install) you can encode to it from any app that encodes to Quicktime, and Avid has already said future support for 3rd party cards is coming. They’ve stated that MC6 is 64-bit, improvements will be made via AMA, etc… There’s definitely some new stuff in there, but not too much. Avid will release it when they want to – otherwise, expect unofficial screenshots to be pulled.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Awesome. Glad I remembered the setting right and it worked out for you!
Another tip – select the Grid setting in your settings panel and hit Ctrl+D (PC) or CMD+D (Mac) and duplicate it, then change the duplicate to match the project. That way you can just switch over to your settings panel and check the other one when you need to go back to the standard white overlay, or save a separate 4:3 in 16:9, etc…
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Michael Hancock
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There’s a setting you can change but I can’t remember where it is and don’t have access to an Avid right now. EDIT: Look for the Grid setting. I think it’s in there.
Poke around your settings and you’ll can find them. Once you find them you’ll see that you can also set them to be 4:3 in a 16:9 frame, change the percent of title safe, turn grids on and off – lots of fun stuff, including changing the color of them.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Gerald Baria] “But Apple, with their billions of dollars in profit is the most stable company with an NLE than any other company that exists.”
Apple, with their billions of dollars, released FCPX and immediately ended sales of FCS3. FCPX is not a replacement for FCS3, so they proved that despite their money they are the least stable of all the NLE producers. They killed Color, Soundtrack and DVDSP overnight and offered no replacement. They proved that pro apps aren’t important to their bottom line, so trusting that they’ll make the greatest NLE and stick with it in the long run is naively optimistic.
[Gerald Baria] “Sometrimes they do it so fast that we are initially caught stunned for some period but eventually realize that its the most awesome thing ever. It happend over and over again from the iMac G3, the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad…Everybody cried foul and doomed it to fail but meh, it ruled the world. Do you really think FCPX is any different.”
Those are consumer products, not professional level apps.
FCP became very popular but was far from the best NLE in the market, as your statement implies. Apple markets well. FCP was woefully lacking in many ways compared to Avid and Adobe and Media 100 and Edius (think camera support, media management, and realtime playback). But people love Apple and are very, very loyal to them. Well, Apple killed a ton of that loyalty with the release of FCPX, hence the popularity of this forum.
Just because it’s made by Apple doesn’t mean it’s the future way of editing, and it certainly doesn’t mean they can regain the ground they’ve lost in the pro market. I would never build an entire business around them – they’re not a dependable supplier for the work we do. Use some of their products? Sure, but not rely on them for everything hardware and software.
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Michael Hancock
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Tim had a . included in the link. I think this is what he was linking to:
https://www.avid.com/US/resources/Academic-Eligibility
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Michael Hancock
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Interesting, but hand him Media Composer and Premiere and have him come back in three days and evaluate how well he made the transition. That will tell you more about whether people who learn on FCPX can transition away from it easily or if it’s too dissimilar in its methodologies. That’s the crux of the issue.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Kris Petersen] “I miss the ability to cut with a key rather than click.”
Control V will add a cut to every track that has autoselect enabled.
[Kris Petersen] “I also miss the ability to trim with the keyboard using JKL and m,./ Is mouse-trimming the only way to trim in FCP?”
FCP’s trim is nowhere near as nice as Avid’s, but you can use the keyboard to trim once you have your edit points selected. , will trim one frame left and . will trim one frame right. Shift+, and Shift+. will trim 5 frames, I believe.
One thing to point out to your students, if they’re used to Avid, is that FCP’s tracks work kind of the opposite to Avid. In Avid you activate the tracks you want to effect in the record side of the patch panel, whereas in FCP you deactivate or lock tracks you don’t want to effect. Otherwise you have clip collisions and the software will actually prevent you from making the trim or moving the piece of media you want to move. The only way to get around it is to lock every track you don’t want to effect, trim, then unlock in. That’s kind of general and vague, I know, but once I wrapped my head around it I got a lot more comfortable and proficient in FCP.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
Have you played with Lightworks? If so, what are your thoughts on it?
I downloaded the beta the day it went up and it crashed constantly so I haven’t tried it again – I assume it’s made some improvements though. When I worked at a TV station that had one the guys that ran it loved it. They were fast with it too. It died before I had a chance to give it a go.
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Michael Hancock
Editor