Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
[Andy Neil] “the capabilities and results of FCPX’s color correction are better than FCP 7 in my opinion”
I’d agree – I think we are seeing the benefits of floating point here from the look of the results.
[Andy Neil] “What if FCPX had a coloring workspace?”
Quite – in the early days of FCPX before we actually knew what it was going to look and feel like, there was a fairly common presumption that as they were supposedly bundling color grading and audio sweetening (aka Color and Soundtrack Pro) into the single app, that we would have “Rooms” that would switch the UI to something fully appropriate to the job in hand.
It’s a shame that what we currently have is, as you say, so very badly organized in terms of screen real estate – in fact, nothing actually feels like it’s got the space it needs. I really don’t feel that enough care was put into designing a space-efficient UI this time around, especially when it’s meant to be able to function as a single screen environment.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Andrew Richards] “Risk is certainly there, but then HP could decide to get out of the PC business, Microsoft could completely reskin Windows, and a tsunami could wipe out SR delivery.”
Fair point – it sure ain’t a risk-free business … or a risk free world, especially these days.
But for my money Apple are taking easily avoidable risks by getting third parties to take care of really basic stuff like OMF that they could soooooooo easily have built into the app themselves. Why they didn’t is quite simply beyond me. Any ideas?
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Andrew Richards] ” Others hate the idea of third parties being responsible for features essential to their particular workflows, but I’m OK with it.”
Surely the fact that Automatic Duck OMF export was something you could buy at the start of this week and now no longer can says quite a lot about how fragile the third party support model actually is – especially since AD is/was about the only third party solution yet available.
This is not to say that Automatic Duck won’t be back to business as usual next week but it’s not a good precedent.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
A huge issue for me is that the “Color Board” ignores a fundamental principle of grading which is that luma and chroma are inter-related – adjust the luminance and you need to adjust the chroma to compensate. Hence the performance-enhancing value of a hardware interface where you can make both adjustments at the same time with trackballs.
In the FCP7 3-way CC, for all its limitations, you could adjust lift/gamma/gain and saturation from the same pane (unlike the hideous Media Composer “Color Corrector”). FCPX requires you to tab between Color, Saturation and Exposure panes, greatly hampering the workflow.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “I find Apple’s communication to such developers in many ways crucial to a useful FCPX so that is a concern.”
It’s pretty obvious that Apple’s commuincation with a third party was woefully inadequate in this case – they would hardly have touted AD so heavily in the fabled FAQ is they’d had any idea this was going to happen. So I’d say they were exposing a weakness here.
It’s hardly the same case as their broader business model where the precise nature of the 100,000 individual apps matters not one jot – here you’re talking about a third party product that is crucial to the success of FCPX in the professional market. Indeed, FCPX is simply unusable at the top end of that market without OMF support …
[Craig Seeman] “It may mean limiting the extensibility of FCPX and what I suspect will be an interesting ecosystem.”
I don’t really understand this argument – are you saying that incorporating OMF/AAF support into FCPX would hobble the ecosystem? It’s a very big deal for people like me, but in the broader scheme of things it’s an issue that is utterly nugatory. I don’t see how a implementing a “basic” feature like this (and everything we have come to know about NLE’s tells us it is indeed basic) would have any implications for anything else, but I’m probably missing your point …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Steve Connor] ” Perhaps Apple will finally go ahead and buy Adobe instead :)”
What I can’t understand is why Apple didn’t buy Automatic Duck with just a little of the small change that fell down the back of the sofa 😉
Would have made far more sense …
As it is, Adobe have made them look just a little foolish – and I can’t help feeling amused at this point.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Craig Seeman] “I’ve been wondering if there’s about to be low cost alternatives specific to FCPXML support”
Let’s hope that’s the case – better still if Apple realize they should have bundled it into FCPX in the first place 😉
I do find it curious that they have put all their eggs into the third party basket and haven’t countenanced the possibility that third parties might let them down – if that is indeed what is happening here.
At the very least it is hard to imagine Adobe wanting to do a great deal to help support FCPX in the long term, philanthropic as they no doubt are.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
There is speculation in this article from fcp.co that Automatic Duck have been “bought out” by Adobe as a spoiling tactic to damage FCPX:
Here’s a quote from it:
There are two ways of looking at this. The first is as per the website post:
“we will finally be able to offer the same best-in-class quality translation interface for Premiere Pro as we have offered in the past for other video editing products”
Doesn’t that happen already? Walter Biscardi has been repeatedly banging on about how good the XML import function is in Premiere and of course the movement of media from PPro to After Effects isn’t a problem. Do they mean Avid?
The second way to look at this is to think that Adobe are trying to mop up all the peripheral vendors and software that could possibly assist FCPX users. Why remove all the products from the website? Surely if they wanted to be open about everything and allow media exchange between all formats they would have kept the sales going.
Alarmist? Or not? Probably the former, but for now it does make me satisfied with my decision not to go rushing out to buy Automatic Duck at the first suggestion of those nice folks at Apple.
I guess we need to keep watching this space – at the very least the future is uncertain …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Yup, that’s how Media Composer works with Collapsed clips – they open up in the timeline. Not that I’m a big fan of layering in MC – always thought it was very nasty.
And of course the lack of Blend Modes was always a major issue.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Yes, this does appear to be broken in some third party effects.
I created a four-point mask in my “Gradient Filter with OSC Effect” and this still works, but I notice some of the other parameters don’t work quite as they used to.
Not sure what the answer is but thanks for pointing this out.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com