FIlm professionals petition seeks to bring back old Final Cut Pro

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Did anyone notice that on apple.com/finalcutpro/ there is 4 new videos which outline why they think their new method of editing is better? They features comparisons to Media Composer as well as Premiere Pro.

 

[M Most]

Jeff, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. But just to get some perspective, I'm curious as to how much longform material you've been involved with in post. I'm asking because I think some of the things you just stated are far more applicable to shorter pieces, such as commercials, music videos, and shorts, where native workflows can work reasonably well. But in my mind, they're less applicable to longform, where you have to manage very large amounts of material (especially in series television) and be able to find, move, and cut it very nimbly, not mention play it for creatives and executives that are very intolerant of any kind of playback glitches or system hangups. For that, smaller, faster transcoded files are usually a lot more appropriate and manageable.

Like I said, I'm curious...

 

[M Most]

Did anyone notice that on apple.com/finalcutpro/ there is 4 new videos which outline why they think their new method of editing is better? They features comparisons to Media Composer as well as Premiere Pro.

I watched all four.

They're interesting in the sense that there are some things in there that make sense - IF you don't happen to be an experienced editor and/or an editor working on narrative material. After viewing all the videos, it seems that most of their concentration in FCPX was spent on coming up with things that are typical of "outsiders" looking at the industry and deciding that those in it are working too hard and not taking advantage of things like database use and manipulation, and its ability to "organize" things. But what they never seem to have considered is that the film industry already has its own organizational structures, structures that have been honed over a very long period of time and which are appropriate and efficient ways of passing on information that is gathered from various points along the production path. For narrative drama, it's much more useful to know what line of dialogue and what scene in the script is covered by a particular piece of coverage than it is to be able to find all of the clips that contain Hugh Laurie's face. And it's more important to know what day something was shot than it is to be able to look for something that shows a sunset. For things like commercials, music videos, reality shows, wedding videos, personal pieces that are culled from large amounts of disorganized footage, and even documentaries, a number of the tools they talk about in these videos could have high value (although it is clear that at least at this point, they put essentially no value on collaborative workflows.... but I digress). But for scripted drama, scripted comedy, or just about anything that professional editors of television series and feature films, they are counter to the process rather than conducive to it. In fact, after watching the videos I'm more convinced that ever that this product can find a very wide audience - just not in the end of the industry that I work in. Which was probably Apple's intent in the first place.

 

[Marc Wielage]

But for scripted drama, scripted comedy, or just about anything that professional editors of television series and feature films, they are counter to the process rather than conducive to it. In fact, after watching the videos I'm more convinced that ever that this product can find a very wide audience - just not in the end of the industry that I work in. Which was probably Apple's intent in the first place.

This is also the growing opinion of many of the members of the Final Cut Pro User Group, judging by the conversations on their website and their monthly meetings.

I'm still flummoxed as to why Apple couldn't just market two separate products: a Final Cut editing system for actual pro users (maybe at $1200), and a much-simplified version for beginners and middle-market users at $300 (similar to Final Cut Express). I think the reality is, they made very little profit on the professional market, and they'd rather appeal to a wider mass-market. The professional filmmaking and TV market is just not big enough for Apple to worry about.

I do think that Apple will fix the current problems with RED compatibility, XMLs, EDLs, and so on, but I know a lot of experienced editors who are really thrown by the new interface. The more I go into the program, the more I think, "why did this need to be fixed? Why did this mode need to be called something else?" But maybe I'm an old fogey.

Still, I try never to underestimate Apple when it comes to being successful in a given market.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I'm still flummoxed as to why Apple couldn't just market two separate products: a Final Cut editing system for actual pro users (maybe at $1200), and a much-simplified version for beginners and middle-market users at $300 (similar to Final Cut Express). I think the reality is, they made very little profit on the professional market, and they'd rather appeal to a wider mass-market. The professional filmmaking and TV market is just not big enough for Apple to worry about.

It would have clashed with their goals, they don't want to create a final cut express what they want to do is make a product for actual professionals that isn't intimidating to the "Middle-market" user, or even beginners ready to take the step beyond imovie.
So far they seem to have failed in that goal however when the first update to Final Cut Pro 10 comes out we will at least know if the direction they are taking will fix that.

 

[Peter Moretti]

Yes but now Apple has added it to their editor....so we will consider it brand new, revolutionary and a million times better....:rolleyes5: ....
(sarcasm)

Well, to be fair, Media Composer's ScriptSync is very different from FCP-X's Auditioning feature.

ScriptSync enables you to import a script and have MC phonetically match the script to source clips. You can then edit from a script document and, indeed, try different takes. Apple's Audition does not have anything to do with ingesting a script or editing from a script document.

In many ways, Avid's feature is much more powerful, but Apple's can do a quick and dirty automated playback of multiple takes--which is something that Media Composer can't do. And Avid's ScriptSync is not free; it is $1K add-in for Media Composer.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Did anyone notice that on apple.com/finalcutpro/ there is 4 new videos which outline why they think their new method of editing is better? They features comparisons to Media Composer as well as Premiere Pro.

Hehe.. Not asking you directly, Craig.. But just what is so "new" about the methods here? The dynamic "magnetic" timeline approach has been available in other apps for a while. Not so much video "NLE" editing software, but other track-based editing systems for animation and audio sequencing. The FCPX keyframe system is nothing more than a clone of the "graph editor" in LightWave, which is not unique to NewTek's product anyway, there's similar tools in Modo, XSI, Maya... I guess I'm just not seeing what is so new or revolutionary here. I have watched the first of the four videos... I played with FCPX extensively for the first few days after it was released... My complaints have nothing to do with what is in the software, it's what is not in the software.

Jeff, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. But just to get some perspective, I'm curious as to how much longform material you've been involved with in post. I'm asking because I think some of the things you just stated are far more applicable to shorter pieces, such as commercials, music videos, and shorts, where native workflows can work reasonably well. But in my mind, they're less applicable to longform, where you have to manage very large amounts of material (especially in series television) and be able to find, move, and cut it very nimbly, not mention play it for creatives and executives that are very intolerant of any kind of playback glitches or system hangups. For that, smaller, faster transcoded files are usually a lot more appropriate and manageable.

Perfectly fair question. Yes, I do some long-form work, but it's a small percentage of what I do. These days, the bulk of my editing work applies to TV commercials and corporate projects. I am assisting in the edit of a documentary right now and it's shot on a mix of several cameras, some RED, mostly Sony EX and some Canon 7D shots as well as some GoPro stuff. That's definitely long-form. It's being edited entirely in Premiere CS5.5 and will be graded on Resolve. I've done two corporate projects this past year that could be considered long-form I think. One of them was entirely shot narrative style on RED ONE MX and the final edit consisted of nearly 75 minutes of finished video. It was presented as an 8 to 12 minute interactive safety video for the iPad and inter-company web delivery. A "choose your own adventure" approach, where viewers would watch and make decisions to try and get through a day in an industrial facility without meeting their doom. I worked with the client's web team to build the HTML5 framework for the interactive program. I built the iPad app portion of it myself. It was all edited in Premiere CS5, color correction was minimal and done with Color Finesse, some minor tweaks done in AE along with motion graphics, titles, and various FX stuff like pasting company logos and related artwork over other things in frame. Now that I put it that way, I guess I can't say it's a small percentage of what I do. That particular corporate project consumed the better part of my time from September '10 thru this past March or 6 months.

So yeah, I was kinda harsh on my statement above over FCP7 and I still think FCPX is a big joke -- more and more each day that passes with no SDK release or further update from Apple. But my comments were not entirely related to short-form work in any real sense. I'm using Premiere CS5.5 these days and CS5 before that. I have opened FCP7 only once or twice in the past 6 months. I also have, and occasionally use, AVID MC5.5... For most of my NLE tasks, and especially working with multiple format projects or projects, I prefer using Premiere. I used Final Cut almost exclusively for editing since early '06 when it was the best choice for editing footage from my two HVX200 cameras and the Mac G5 Quad was proving to be an awesome all-around computer. But I've moved on. Final Cut no longer offers any compelling reason for me to continue with it. I really don't see what it offers to anyone these days, in the face of other alternatives. Outside of comfort zone and the fear of learning a new NLE software (which moving from FCP to Premiere should only take about a day anyway), just name one single thing that FCP7 can do that Premiere CS5.5 can't? The only thing I can think of is that it still has a huge following, that now resembles more of a large cult than anything else.

Oddly enough, some of the points you listed above, especially the dealing with large amounts of footage and being able to nimbly cut and/or play back is a big reason I've moved AWAY from Final Cut.

FCPX just pushed me even further away... It's everything I knew iMovie could be. Although, I think I'm preaching to the choir in this thread.

 

[M Most]

Well, to be fair, Media Composer's ScriptSync is very different from FCP-X's Auditioning feature.

ScriptSync enables you to import a script and have MC phonetically match the script to source clips. You can then edit from a script document and, indeed, try different takes. Apple's Audition does not have anything to do with ingesting a script or editing from a script document.

True. But the statement was made that drama editors would like it. For drama editors, "free form editing" - which seems to me to be FCPX's stock in trade - is not the "normal" way of cutting. Things are organized based on the script. So I would argue that not only is it "different," it's more directed at the drama editor and thus more directly useful. And let's face it, underneath it all, it's the same idea - play the various takes available for any particular moment, one right after the other, in place. Both approaches do just that, but Avid's is more directly applicable to what was being talked about.

In many ways, Avid's feature is much more powerful, but Apple's can do a quick and dirty automated playback of multiple takes--which is something that Media Composer can't do. And Avid's ScriptSync is not free; it is $1K add-in for Media Composer.

Agree on the first part of the statement. And the fact that it is an add on is somewhat irrelevant, as the two programs do not really compete on price, at least not any more. Final Cut is considerably cheaper. That fact doesn't seem to be mitigating the disappointment very much, though.

 

[David Battistella]

True. But the statement was made that drama editors would like it. For drama editors, "free form editing" - which seems to me to be FCPX's stock in trade - is not the "normal" way of cutting. Things are organized based on the script. So I would argue that not only is it "different," it's more directed at the drama editor and thus more directly useful. And let's face it, underneath it all, it's the same idea - play the various takes available for any particular moment, one right after the other, in place. Both approaches do just that, but Avid's is more directly applicable to what was being talked about.

Mike,

This is what I am thinking too. It seems that between keywording, scene breakdown and then finally auditioning takes, it can be a very fast tool for editing scenes. When you are dealing with drama, which is a primary storyline with stacked up audio and not a lot of stacked up video tracks or effects I think it is really well suited to this task. (yes, I know that gettin gout of FCP right now is a problem when it comes ot conforming.

We'll have to see. I just finished a dramatic piece on FCP X and I have to say that (from an editing perspective) it was very liberating. It wasn't episodical TV, but also based on the presentation on FCP.co, you can certainly see how the software will be well suited to large enterprise editing environments (if it matures).

Apple gets an F on the rollout, but an A on what this software can be for many levels of production (especially large networked environments).

David



David

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Mike,

This is what I am thinking too. It seems that between keywording, scene breakdown and then finally auditioning takes, it can be a very fast tool for editing scenes. When you are dealing with drama, which is a primary storyline with stacked up audio and not a lot of stacked up video tracks or effects I think it is really well suited to this task. (yes, I know that gettin gout of FCP right now is a problem when it comes ot conforming.

We'll have to see. I just finished a dramatic piece on FCP X and I have to say that (from an editing perspective) it was very liberating. It wasn't episodical TV, but also based on the presentation on FCP.co, you can certainly see how the software will be well suited to large enterprise editing environments (if it matures).

Apple gets an F on the rollout, but an A on what this software can be for many levels of production (especially large networked environments).

David



David

How did you go about your workflow? Did you just have it all in a timeline or did you use compound clips? Maybe a new project per scene?

 

[Peter Moretti]

... you can certainly see how the software will be well suited to large enterprise editing environments (if it matures).

Apple gets an F on the rollout, but an A on what this software can be for many levels of production (especially large networked environments).

David



David

Added some emphasis. B/c in its current state, it's really none of these.

 

[David Battistella]

@/for Craig b/c you asked.

I am a person who works in scenes (as a sequence) and then I assemble scenes (sequences) to make assemblies. I am not a one timeline editor at all. Generally, in FCP I edit scenes and then assign a 001, 002, 003 to arrange and assemble.

In this case I created a project per scene. When I was happy with scenes I copy pasted into a new "assembly sequence and massaged it as a whole piece from there. I've put in a feedback request for a "merge project" feature where it would be easier than copy pasting a lot of scenes. You could just select three projects and merge them.

I longer projects i still work in 20 minute reels. I do this for two reasons. First I like smaller timelines, second it can easily help you identify story structure problems. So I might not work so much in projects this way. In FCP 10 it would be very easy to create scenes make compound clips, then rearrange etc right in the timeline and I will do this on the next project to see how it can handle larger sequences.

But I'd still stay in the traditional reel structure not letting projects go past 20 minutes and then assembling reels. That would be the last structure to fall. I really like working that way.

It's all possible to do in one timeline. I've just never experiencesd a "responsive" 90 minute timeline. Call me a geezer, I've been doing it that way since avid and AVR1. Or AVR2.

 

[M Most]

Mike,

This is what I am thinking too. It seems that between keywording, scene breakdown and then finally auditioning takes, it can be a very fast tool for editing scenes. When you are dealing with drama, which is a primary storyline with stacked up audio and not a lot of stacked up video tracks or effects I think it is really well suited to this task.

Uhhh.... I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was saying that Avid's script based editing is the one well suited to the task, NOT FCP X's free from approach. I was basically stating that Avid's approach embraces the organizational tools and structure that long form drama has used for a long time, and that FCP X was trying to fix something that wasn't broken by giving you organizational tools that have very little to do with the way scripted drama works.

Sorry if I used the word "it" in a way that made it sound like the "it" I was praising was FCP X's approach. That wasn't the intention.

 

[David Battistella]

Yeah,
Sorry. I read that paragraph and that sentence as though you were talking about FCP X. Either way, it doesn't change how I think about it. If anything, with tagging and keywording it can be a much more powerful, fast organizational editorial tool.

IE: instead of digitizing and logging, you import grab a bunch of clips and assign a scene number and a bin/smart collection is created. You grab all of angle A and assign a keyword. A CAMERA, B C etc. Then you can grab ranges and mark good takes. All of this while the import is happening. That, to me, is faster.


I know that AVID is firmly engrained. It's a good old hammer. It does what we want and expect it to do. I get all of that. I know that AVID culturally engrained and that any new approach to editing and repetitive tasking takes an undoing of muscle memory.

I am trying to experience where the tool can be usefull. I think that is constructive. It's good to know where it could be useful and might be useful.

the if's are:

if it further developes
if it is a better way and not just a "new" way.

I treat all technology the same way. Does is make my life easier or harder? I embrace what makes my life easier. I've spent to many hours watching an effing render bar and not having a life. If the render bar goes away and that gives me time to get to an actual BAR to have a couple of drinks with real people, then the technology has made my life better and easier.

If I spend less time on prep and more time making creative editing descisions then that is the big qualifier for me.

David

 

[Liam Hall]

For narrative drama, it's much more useful to know what line of dialogue and what scene in the script is covered by a particular piece of coverage than it is to be able to find all of the clips that contain Hugh Laurie's face. And it's more important to know what day something was shot than it is to be able to look for something that shows a sunset.

You can organise by shoot date if your footage contains metadata with the correct date and you can assign keywords to shots or parts of shots for every line in a script. It's ridiculously simple.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Walter Biscardi: Developers to get XML code from Apple in 2 weeks.
Posted on Creative Cow last week.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Walter Biscardi: Developers to get XML code from Apple in 2 weeks.
on Creative Cow

Man its like back to the grass roots again Maybe Steve and his crew just wants everyone to know what its like to be in the garage again
Please dont flame with some obvious re-thread about Avid and Adobe. Its getting tired and most of us just want to move forward.

On another note, ooking forward to a Clipfinder slash FCPX slash Resolve workflow here

 

[Nicholas Kleczewski]

This petition is idiotic. Final Cut Pro 7 works fine now and will work fine for the next few years without additional issues (than it already has, ha). Anyone who thinks Final Cut Pro X 1.0 won't be updated (and probably soon) is fairly ignorant. Third party hardware (Blackmagic and AJA specifically) XML, and OMF exports are the main things missing making Final Cut Pro X unusable to professionals. There may be design choices people don't like, but that doesn't make it unusable. I have no doubts 1.1 or 1.5 will address these issues before the end other year.

I can't believe anyone could consider moving to Premiere this quickly. Only if Apple canned final Final Cut altogether (which probably isn't out of the realm of possibility given the backlash) would I even consider recommending Premiere CS 5.5 to anyone. At least consider the Avid cross grade promotion if anything....

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

In general, adding a pile of tools meant to simplify some processes tends to do quite the opposite, by having to "process" the pile.

 

[Ivan G]

FCP7 needs to just be allowed to die in peace, with what dignity it still has left. FCPX should be buried next to it.

Haha! Just updated my quote!