Stephen Bakopanos
Forum Replies Created
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[Jeff Kirkland] “I’m still working out my Canon DSLR workflow but right now I’m thinking I’ll convert with Grinder (adding timecode) and then import (without copying) into FCPX.”
That’s the workflow I’ve been advocating since day one. Either that or use the free E1 plugin for FCP7. Until Apple introduce proper import support for the Canon DSLRs it’s the only sensible way to go. Just make sure you keep it all on the same drive as your event and projects.
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[Marcus Pun] “Problem Apple is facing is loss of trust.”
Yep. They’ve gone and applied their consumer product release strategy to a professional product and it just doesn’t fly.
In this arena you can’t talk yourself up and not deliver – your marketing and PR is only as good as the product you release. And this product – whilst a good base to build upon – is NOT what they promised.
I WANT to see Apple and FCP X succeed, but I fear their arrogance and pig headedness may lead to their downfall.
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[David Battistella] “I really value your presence here. I am apreciating it along with all of the passionate debate flying around these days. “
Agree. David and John, amongst others, have been voices of reason in a sea of hysteria.
David is right. The problem is not necessarily the product (undercooked as it may be), but rather the way in which it was released. Apple really should have just held out until XML and OMF were included and external monitoring was supported. I think we would have been more willing to overlook the other shortfalls and give them time to implement them. Releasing it without those features was only ever going freak the “pros” out and incite the “Apple’s abandoning pro’s” and “it’s iMovie plus” type responses that we’ve seen. It’s unfortunate, because FCP X really DOES have some truly professional underpinnings, even if they’re not quite visible at first glance (or indeed, fully incorporated yet) – I would be a shame if the program died on the vine due to a botched release strategy.
Like John said (if anyone from Apple is reading this), all you really need to do is:
– Convert all FCP7 licences to volume licences
– Support FCP7 for at least 6 months or until FCPX reaches reasonable feature parity
– Issue a short OFFICIAL statement stating that you intend to restore vital pro features in a timely manner
– Apologise for creating all this unnecessary confusion and consternation (showing a little humility wouldn’t hurt your brand right now – maintaining silence will just reek of arrogance and further turn people away).
– Perhaps issue some free training material to help people make the migration across to the new workflow. -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “Kind of boiled down the comments there, and well sure if it’s working for you, well fair play to you – do you really think tho, that you can do everything with that colour corrector that you could do in Color?”
No, it can’t – but nor would I expect it to. Apple are offering a pretty decent in-app solution here for those of us who don’t have the time, need, or budget to roundtrip projects to a professional colour correction application. And let’s face it, if you’re doing PROPER colour correction, you probably shouldn’t be doing it in your NLE.
Yes, it’s a shame that Apple have dropped Color, but at the same time you can pick up a copy of DaVinci resolve (by all accounts a far superior product) for $995 or a lite version for FREE.
I’d much prefer Apple to spend their resources on developing a NLE that will improve my productivity and workflow – adding XML so that I can get my FCPX jobs to Resolve would be a good start – and leave the specialised stuff like colour correction to specialised apps and companies.
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[Matt Callac] “Yeah, and I could swear I looked it up on some compatablity chart somewhere,and 5D was on there. But it couln’t load the file directory properly.
“I remember seeing it and the 7D on the FCPX website on the day of the launch, but it disappeared a day later. I can only assume that they intended to support it, but didn’t get it done in time for the launch. It’s just one of many strange oversights, especially given that they were pushing the whole native DSSLR support angle…
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[Clayton Burkhart] “If Apple ceases to be the product of choice in the upper echelons of media creation, it will not be very long before the public moves on as well. In many ways Apple is first and foremost a design company afterall.”
I don’t mean to sound rude, but you are so wrong it isn’t funny. Perhaps what you’re saying was true 10 years ago, but it isn’t any more. No-one that I know who wants (or has) an iPhone or an iPad (snore….) gives a rats arse what NLE I use. They wouldn’t even have a clue what a NLE is. They want an Apple product because everyone else has one and because they’re expensive and therrefore “premium”. Apple have, by and large, become a fashion brand and a status symbol.
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[Nate Weaver] “The deeper I go in, the more I can figure out about how certain things are going to be fixed…like how multicam is going to be an offshoot of Synchronized Clips, most likely. Etc etc.”
It’s funny isn’t it. The more you play with it, the more frustrated you get at certain things, but at the same time you notice the professional underpinnings and can start to see where Apple might be heading with this.
It’s certainly not ready for prime time, but it’s also not the iMovie-catastrophe that a lot of editors are rashly assuming.
The whole metadata/database underpinnings have the potential to be VERY powerful and productive tools when properly harnessed.
Apple really just need to come out and reassure it’s userbase that it’s committed to developing the product. Maintaining silence might work for it’s consumer products like the iPhone, but it ain’t going to fly here.
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[Russell Lasson] “I have a slug (gap) and I can’t tell what the duration is without going to that start and end of it to see what the difference is in the timecode. And I can’t just click on the gap and choose a new duration to make it the exact length that I want it. Maybe they need the new powerful OS Lion to be able to add these processor intensive features?”
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I seem to be able to check and set the duration of slugs (or “gaps” as they’re now called) just fine. All you need to do is hit Ctrl+D and type in your desired duration. You’ll notice that the length is displayed in the timecode window in the middle of the screen. Hope this helps.
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[Tom Wolsky] “I think the application is designed to use keywords as subclips and selects.”
Yep. This is definitely how you do it now. It helps if you think of a “keyword collection” as a dynamic bin and a “smart collection” as a filtered filtered bin.
If you bring up the keyword panel, you can assign keywords to certain keystrokes, so all you really have to do is make your selection and then hit Ctrl+1 or Ctrl+2 to assign a keyword (or you can drag it to a collection).
At the end of the day, it’s far more useful and far more powerful than bins – we just have to wrap our heads around this new way of thinking. Once you work it out though, there’ll be no turning back.
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[Matt Callac] “Got it. You don’t load 5D as a camera archive…you actually just import and go into the DCIM folder”
Which seems to be an appalling oversight for a brand new NLE in this day and age. There should be full support for the flagship DSLRs (5DMII, 7D), including timecode support on import. For now, I’m going to use either Grinder or the E1 Plugin + FCP7 and then import manually (without any of the automatic copy/convert/analyse features). That’s if I decide to use FCPX over FCP7, of course…