[Steven Gonzales]

I’ve done these tasks with every other version of FCP right after that version came out.

[Steven Gonzales]

For something being projected in a calibrated theater, a known level signal can help in setting up the project video and the house sound level.

[Steven Gonzales]

https://support.apple.com/kb/ht4664

[Steven Gonzales]

“I can also, however, imagine ways of providing this ability without having to rigidly structure audio tracks in the NLE. And I imagine Apple can as well.”

I think you’ve helped me gain clarity. The “creative thinking” approach could be better served by giving the user choices to use tracks or not to use tracks.

The software provider can think of creative innovations in the GUI of every sort, and let the user configure the environment to suit their needs.

The problems begin when the software provider reserves all interface decisions for themselves, and rules out alternatve ways of working.

Way back when, Lightworks allowed clips to just exist in the interface, and not necessarily be in a bin. Avid won out, and everything needed to be connected to a bin. In Lightworks you could put up as many viewers as you needed, in Avid you only got two. In fact, the smart folder way is really a throwback to the thinking in Lightworks with their NoteCard database GUI.

No one wants to stifle creativity. Creativity by a software designer is welcomed. Add all the features you want, just let me customized my favorite way of working with your creative GUI ideas. When the software limits the users to one way of working, then the software designer has not been as creative in their thinking as they could have been.

If the backend metadata and engine are the key, then why can’t that information be interacted with by the user in a myriad of ways?

[Steven Gonzales]

I agree: you need someone who knows how to drive the interface.

However, the interface is not the individual software application and its GUI. The interface is the workflow between real world assets and the application chain.

This is the focus FCP X doesn’t take. For metadata to be useful, it has to pass easily through the chain of applications.

I have rarely had a project that was contained in one application. If I shot DSLR with built in sound and output to web, then my interface IS the one app.

But this model, and its “cloud” based assets which operate transparently (whether the cloud is local or remote) does not work for the realities of the application chain that we must navigate for the foreseable future.

For new workflow chains to come, where perhaps the interface expert also understands and has code tools for the software development kit, I’m sure there will be great workflows created.

[Steven Gonzales]

There’s a lot of impolite dismissal of opinion on this board.

When it hits Shane Ross, I get ruffled.

He’s provided balanced and invaluable info on competitive software product, and I’ve benefited from his advice on each.

So I’ll throw one thing into the fray:

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
— Douglas Adams

[Steven Gonzales]

I just want to cut this 35MM negative correctly, and get these Sound Devices .WAV sound dailies conformed to full resolution 24 bit at the post sound house.

Got any advice on getting that done with the only FCP version on the market?

I’d love to wait for the new paradigm to align itself, but we have a release date to meet.

[Steven Gonzales]

Even just considering this thread’s topic, these kids are coming in August to learn feature editing, and they cannot learn that with FCP X.

The “let’s give Apple more time” argument is insufficient to refute the statement that this software cannot be used to teach the post production process for features shot and/or finished on film.

[Steven Gonzales]

Insane sounds a little extreme, but I need to:

import a flex file
export a cut list

And a lot of other exchanges. If you can tell me how to do those two simple things, then you can continue questioning my sanity.

[Steven Gonzales]

I worked in various roles at a film school which decided to require students to purchase final cut pro in order to learn feature film post production.

The school required computer and software purchase, so over 10 years it was on the order of 700 to 800 purchases. Even taking a low figure of $2000 per, that’s $1.4 million in revenue.

Now the only choice is Avid, and why not PC laptops to save the kids some money?

I evangelized ever since editing the first feature finished to film in 1999 on FCP 1 and Film Logic. I have nothing against Avid, but the interface has sacrificed elegance for the ability to operate nearly identically in a PC or Mac OS.

FCP has definitely lost the higher education market to Avid if feature film editing and post production are the curriculum.