Scott Shucher
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After Effects Coin
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COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Even though this post is several months old, thanks for the tips, here, Walter and Chris. I loaded up Premiere for the first time today for some R&D as an alternative to FCP. Two steps forward one step back was the order off the day, but a start, nonetheless.
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Impatience?? The impatience comes from clients, the ones who pay the $$$, so I can re-invest in all this fine Apple hardware and software as well as try to send a kid to college. Or will it have to be Avid or Adobe next time??
You can have it good, fast or cheap. Pick two.
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Whatever it was is gone now.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
OK Greg, so you are getting advice from many generations of editors here. I’m in my early fifties, and have been editing for 30 plus years, so I’d like to think I have some perspective. I’ve edited cuts only on 2 inch vtrs, A/B roll where we manually rolled the tape and dissolved with a fader arm on a switcher(nicknamed ‘poke & hope editing’) CMX/Sony BVE/and god-awful Paltex style computer controlled editing, Avid and now Final Cut.
There has always been change in the post industry and it seems there always will be. Change is what keeps us fresh.
First off I am so deeply disappointed in Apple and the direction they have headed. I am not so angry at FCPX as I am in the instant abandonment of the traditional FCP platform. FCPX is not for me. It does not fit my workflow, nor do I see any way of adapting it, in it’s current state, to my work flow. Maybe it’s works for wedding’s and Bar Mitzvahs, but for finishing higher end broadcast or non-broadcast work, it’s DOA, for reasons that have been well discussed over the past 40 or so days.
I can honestly say, that in 30 years of post production, I have never seen a company so carefully build up, not only a quality product, but a whole collaborative hardware/software workflow solution, and then in a day… blow it all up. Mind-boggling. Perhaps something in the water in Cupertino? While Apple may now have more cash on hand than the US Treasury, it’s ineptitude is on par with the US government.
But enough about Apple. My blood pressure is rising, so let’s move on.
I got my feet wet with non-linear in the early days of Avid. By 2002, I started playing around with FCP when a friend “loaned” me a copy to get my “opinion” of how it compared to Avid. I used it to cut a home movie and was very impressed. At the time Avid without storage was $80k. FCP with a ton of storage(640gbytes) was $17k. With all the $$ saved I was able to assemble an FCP suite with top notch support gear and still It was less than half the cost of a comparable Avid.
Today I cut mostly in my own FCP suite, but I do still spend some hands-on time with Avid MC and Symphony. Like some have mentioned above, Avid suffers from Legacy issues and is stuck with some cumbersome workflow issues. The reason “Hollywood” still loves Avid, is based on workflow. Much of Hollywood’s editing is cuts, dissolves, and trimming. Graphics are imported from CG files. But where FCP really shines, IMHO, is that it’s strength is in “finishing”. It is more like an Avid DS than a Media Composer. The FCP workflow for working with Photoshop graphics, text, EFX plug-ins, keyframing, multiple sequences, and sound is more intuitive in the later versions FCP.
As for Premiere Pro… I have no experience with it, but at some point I will likely experiment with it.
But, what do we do now? What do we do today? You said you’ve got at least 10 years invested in FCP, as do I. Throughout my career, I’ve found it takes about 2 years to become so fully familiar with a platform, that you can edit with your eyes closed.(Ha, ha) What I mean is: that after 2 years, you can be fully focused in on the editing nuances, and not be thinking about how you are technically going to achieve a desired look. After 2 years it’s all “muscle memory”.
I’ll tell you what I am going to do. Tomorrow…nothing. The day after…nothing. I am going to keep forging ahead with FCP Studio 3. It’s still a perfectly capable tool. However, I am going to keep my eyes open, because a pathway forward will evolve, based on Apple’s boneheaded moves. Now that Avid and Adobe see an opportunity to make some real market in-roads, I think we will see more than just 50% off deals to switch platforms. There is real incentive for both companies(Avid and Adobe) to develop and push their products to the next level, now that Apple has shown that they don’t necessarily have their finger on the pulse of every trend. Furthermore there is opportunity for other companies to be the next Avid or FCP. I hear some interesting things about “Lightworks” development, a free, open source, NLE. It’s possible that it could be the next FCP. And perhaps we will be shocked and see FCPX develop into something more useful(Although I am not going to hold my breath)
Around 1991 I took a little field trip to see Bill Warner’s new technology. On that day I got to preview a new product that I was told would revolutionize the editing industry. I liked the concept, but the video quality of that first Avid demo left me thinking that it was nowhere near ready for serious use in a professional post production workflow. Later that week , while walking on a Cape Cod beach with an old college buddy, I told him of this new Avid technology, and that someday I could see us working in businesses out of our homes. Getting video and graphics from our clients over phone lines. The technology would enable us to greatly change the landscape around which we worked.
It’s 20 years later, and what I saw then as the distant future, is now, the not too distant past.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
What a miserable week it’s been. And unproductive to boot, spending way too much time pouring over these Cow postings. Bottom line: FCPX in it’s current form will not integrate into my workflow, and there are now better options(Premiere & Avid). What really burns my butt is that for 9 years I’ve been defending FCP and promoting it as a smarter, more cost effective post production platform than Avid. And as a former Avid editor I truly believe that and still do. I believe the market share trends justified that.
Now I feel like an idiot, ultimately left to swing on the FCP gallows. Not that I feel that FCPX might someday become a usable editing tool–even though my instincts say Apple will never restore all the functionality I need in the software. (Capture from tape, Edit to tape, output to a real broadcast monitor, not a “TV”… Export to QuickTime formats without having to go through Compressor… Lack of Networked Storage)…Yadda, Yadda, Yadda.
What really has pushed me over the edge, is the decision to pull FCS3 without regard to current workflows. As if Apple says it knows our workflows better than we do. As if Apple considers FCS3 to be a toy that can be just taken from a child and replaced with a new toy, regardless of whether it’s a better toy or not. You can’t argue with need to have let FCS3 remain on the shelves as a viable production option for those heavily invested in it’s workflow, until FCPX is mature enough to use(If it will ever get there).
I was just about to pull the trigger on two new Apple 27″ displays to replace some older 23” Apple monitors. After the last week and a half, I really don’t feel like putting another penny in Apple’s pocket. Besides the Viewsonics will save me some $$.
Now, I really do need to get back to work.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
This just made my day! It can only be downhill from here.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
The sync issue is common among 29.97 timelines as well. Make sure there is slug on the timeline where you want black.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
Worked perfectly. That’s eluded me for years. Thank you.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
Just Curious. Is the Macbook pro running Snow Leopard? I have a mobile job next week and will need to access SxS cards. I have not tried accessing an SxS or opening a BPAV file it since upgrading the MacBook to FCP7 & Snow Leopard. Hoping it still works.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 4 Gbyte RAM, FCP 6.0.5, OS X.5.6
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v6.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT -
Don’t know if you ever got this straightened away, but I had a similar issue today. I was trying to Log and Transfer clips from SD Cards. Yesterday everything was fine. Today I got the red exclamation point, and an “idle” message. After much restarting, and testing, I found that renaming the clips in the L&T window (adding leading zeros to the “clip number) would solve the problem.
MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 4 Gbyte RAM, FCP 6.0.5, OS X.5.6
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v6.1), Atto FC41-ES, 8TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT