[Shawn Larkin]

Firstly, I have used AE to do complex stuff. From version 7 onwards. Yes, there was a learning curve and yes it is powerful.

But it doesn’t have to be for doing slick lower thirds and transitions. The “because it’s not hard to use, it isn’t powerful” philosophy is a waste of time.

What Adobe did with the UI in PP CS6, is right on the mark. Show / Hide features as needed.

Same goes for Titles and basic Motion GFX. This should be easier. Why make anyone crack open and learn AE to do a simple lower thirds animation? And why make them have to manage AE projects if they just want that lower thirds to be there for them every time they open PP?

Otherwise, I completely agree with the direction that PP CS6 has gone. It is the FCP8 I never got.

[Shawn Larkin]

Hi Alex,

A couple things:

1) We are still working on FCP7. As our Macs die off — one just bit the dust — we’ll need to find a replacement NLE. We are unique in that a lot of what we get is H.264 / AAC MP4 files to work with. FCPX can handle this well without CUDA. It’s really fast to edit and export. But it is not so fast for “how” we edit since it is a total paradigm shift and is not completely developed yet.

2) I have only just started to test PP. I rarely use AE since we only need simple Motion GFX / Titles, but I can get around in it if I need to. To clarify:

You can create pieces of the Lower Thirds and save the text parts for the title creator in PP and just add it as a layer over a dynamic link AE file?

Why don’t they just make it easier? What should an editor have to dance around to do something like this?

All those other CS6 tools seem so practical, but (aside from little Open CL support) I don’t get why editing a simple text string of flashy titles = having to open AE.

[Shawn Larkin]

Nothing is working “perfectly” for us right now:

-FCPX is not developed enough to use for all our needs or to use our shared storage, but it can edit H.264, AAC and do Motion Titles / GFX very easy.

-PP CS6 looks great, but I need to know if it can cut AAC Audio +H.264 on an Open CL supported Mac

-There should be an easy way to do Motion Titles in PP CS6 by now, no?

[Shawn Larkin]

There are a host of connectors that ATTO is rolling out for Thunderbolt. I would consider using this:

https://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?cat=16&scat=32&sku=TLNT-1102-D00

…to plug a Mac Mini into your Thunderbolt RAID and a GbE switch. It uses 10GbE and Small Tree has a GbE switch with 4 ports of 10GbE for expansion.

There are plenty of other options ATTO is rolling out like a SAS RAID Thunderbolt Adaptor you don’t need a MacPro to have blazing fast SAS expansion boxes connected to your network.

[Shawn Larkin]

Hi John,

Can you confirm that you can’t have multiple users mounted to the same Xsan FCPX Event at the same time?

From what I understand, you can’t have multiple users opening the same FCPX Project at the same time. But I believe all the Events / Media are available.

If not, please correct me. We are toying with the idea of jumping on Xsan soon; we are still on FCP7, but I’m waiting for FCPX to have another major release or some critical updates before adopting it or Premiere Pro.

So confirmation of “how” you share Events / Media is a big deal.

Thanks in advance.

[Shawn Larkin]

That was all the information I needed. Much appreciated, Shane 🙂

[Shawn Larkin]

Thanks for the replies.

This is helpful and ironic.

Firstly, I do think the Mercury Playback Engine ought to be able to decode compressed audio (usually AAC) in realtime without rendering out a media file. So yes, I will defiantly put in a feature request to Adobe.

But the problem and irony is:

1) We edit media over a network using Apple’s AFP over Ethernet and share media directories across multiple projects. So having all the conform files next to the originals will not work across multiple projects on the network AND it will be tough to navigate with all those tiny files next to master media we need to pull all day long.

2) As ridiculous as FCPX is — and we are not using it — it does edit compressed audio without rendering or conforming. Go figure.

I wonder if Avid does the same thing or if their new playback engine can edit all files / codecs on the fly…

[Shawn Larkin]

From past experience, with all the updates over the course of a release, how much more space (than 21 GBs) will I need? 2 GBs more?

Thanks Again.

[Shawn Larkin]

I’m sorry, PP has a much less useful way of doing simple Motion GFX for quick Editorial. Anyone who has used the Motion to FCP Template route would agree.

This is not a knock to all the other superior features Adobe has in Production Premium.

However, we want simplicity, style, and speed. No one here knows AE except me and I don’t want to train the staff on it along with how to use PP efficiently.

Thanks for the input.

[Shawn Larkin]

It appears as if the Title Templates are for static titles (not in motion) only. They are simple bitmaps with text and opacity. From what I can tell to get anything really sexy done, you must use AE.

Knowing the workflow is:

1) Create Motion GFX Template in AE
2) Import into PP and pick your Comp
3) Edit text and any layout particulars back in AE
4) Finalize placement in PP

I hope the request I fill out with Adobe to do something more streamlined like the Motion > FCP relationship will be considered. So far this is the only major drawback I see to switching for our facility.

Thanks for the help.