[Patrick Murphy]

No question. I’ve run some tests and renamed just the clips. No lightening bolts arrived and they behaved nicely on the timeline. Unfortunately they had no time code, which for the material we shot ISO makes that strategy worthless. I wonder if anyone has created an application that allows some basic types of manipulation of these native files that also updates their support files. I don’t need to convert the data to a different format, I just want to organize my shots on a medium to large project.

[Patrick Murphy]

First, yes, I’ve somewhat over estimated the price advantage of W7 systems vs. Mac Pros. I build my own systems, so I don’t check high end PC’s all that frequently. But after posting, I went and looked more carefully. It was educational. For instance, the feature set of the Dell Alienware Area 51 ALX compare quite favorably with an comparably priced Mac ($3.5k). The Dell CPU is definitely competitive with the Mac, it sports 2 video cards vs. the Mac’s 1, and it comes with an onboard 2TB Raid 0 drive. Meanwhile at HP I was able to build a i7 Sandy Bridge with 12 GB RAM, a 120 GB SSD, and a Nvida GTX 550 video for $1900. Definitely an HD edit-worthy box for a whole lot less than the cheapest Mac Pro.

The real question here is which system makes the most sense for editors in a post-FCP7 world. I don’t see why the Pro would be the platform of choice for Avid and Adobe installations. FCPX will run great on a well dressed iMac (and seems almost designed for it frankly).

But at the end of the day, the decision on the MacPro’s future lies in Apple’s hands. From where I sit it doesn’t look like a hardware platform with much of a user base, save for hard core loyalists. Given the rather unsentimental behavior of the Commissariat in Cupertino, I’d say it’s living on borrowed time.

[Patrick Murphy]

I think your reporters are exactly the people Apple had in mind with FCPX. The web has caused a dramatic increase in the demand for video content. But the budget for this content is far below what the average post house would charge to assemble and deliver. So the burden (or opportunity I think) for creating this content is landing on the desks of dual-role people. The majority of people who will use FCPX professionally will be communications professionals, reporters, writers, web content providers, who need to develop content, but who have relatively little experience with the tools or techniques of the trade. FCPX is designed for them, not for any other market. That said, it’s a big market, and it’s growing.

If you think about it for a minute, isn’t this what the original FCP did? It attacked a creative monopoly that Avid enjoyed in non-linear editing. In retrospect, mainly due to Avid’s stupidity, and corporate myopia, Apple completely triumphed. Looked at it in context, FCP was a major blow to what would be called the “post production” industry. It greatly democratized the sophisticated editing of video on a budget. It broke the dominance of Avid, and allowed a wide number of new, more modestly endowed providers to offer services competitive to Avid houses.

Meanwhile the needless confusion, angst, and controversy stimulated by Apple this week should be a cautionary tale to anyone falling for the corporate myth that is Apple. There are a lot of ways the roll out of this software could have been handled. The way it was done is destined to become a textbook example of how to not innovate on an existing software platform. Apple’s history of disregard for customers is long and well established. Their secrecy and insularity reminds one of either the Vatican or the Kremlin, take your choice. They are a very successful company, but they are a bad partner if you rely upon them for your daily bread. They don’t talk, they don’t share, they have their own agenda, and unless it’s serves their plan, they don’t seem to listen. Apple’s customers, particularly it’s professional customers, deserve better than this.

The question you ask in this post, (are professional editors dinosaurs?) is not easy to answer quickly because the role of the “video editor” is such a complex and multi-dimensional task. The shortest most succinct answer is “of course not, it’s merely growing beyond the current accepted boundaries”. But for most of the readers of this forum, that’s not very functional.

My view, and I’ve been in the business for a few decades, is that Adobe offers the most serious alternative. The quality of their product, in general, has been consistently high for the last 15 years.
I don’t think Apple is a good choice, even given future tweaks to FCPX, because I don’t see the Mac Pro line still around in a year or two. You can hang on to them if you wish, but after this recent episode, don’t expect any sympathy when they leave you in the lurch. Adobe on the other hand is not platform specific, and in the more recent incarnations of Premiere Pro, it has established itself and a worthy rival.

Overall, if there’s anything to be learned by all this “sturm und drang” is that blind allegiance to any platform, software, or singular approach is deeply unwise. I believe that computer companies, and software/hardware companies should serve us, the producers, who are task with creating a usable product. The primary relationship here is between us and our clients. Apple, Avid, Adobe, etc. are toolmakers, and they should make the tools we need to do our job. As long as they fulfill their obligations, they deserve our allegiance and respect. But if they fail, then it’s our obligation to ourselves, and our clients, to find a better solution. To me, that’s what being a “video professional” means.

[Patrick Murphy]

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

I’m not all that experienced working with SDI, the EX3 manual seems to specify a SDI reference signal input to the camera’s genlock port. But if my reading of Atticus’s response is correct, an old fashioned analog black burst will do the job. So we will definitely try this approach.