Apple push to win back pro editors

[David Battistella]

There is no point using a non linear editor, if you are a linear thinker. As an example, source record editing is a leftover from linear tape to tape editing.

No tool is perfect, but shitting on anyone's tools is low rent behaviour at best. It might be worse than blaming a tool for hard drive failure and saying that a reshoot is required. Come on, one copy of digital footage? Now that had me LMFAO.


david

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Keep it simple guys. Overthinking it hurts the brain.

If I posted a directory of media with a script and a few notes and told everyone to go off, edit it together and deliver a quicktime movie I would probably have no idea what any of you edited on. And quite honestly, it wouldn't matter to me. Now, if I put a deadline on it, maybe that would have an effect on some people's ability to turn something around quickly, but even that might not necessarily be NLE specific, probably just individual workflow issues. If I threw in a third criteria that you have to work with other artists such as compositors and sound designers who will be using tools specific to their industries then perhaps things get interesting, but even then I'm not convinced that someone using FCP X couldn't get something done just as well as someone using Avid or Premiere. The reason being they probably have a good grasp on the software and how to integrate it into other pipelines. Would that exercise prove anything? Not really, other than people generally find a way to get things done with the tools they have, whether it's something that's been around for 20+ years or 2 years.

We can keep falling into the trap of defending one over another but there's really only one thing that actually matters: If you have a client come to you and say "Can you get this done for me, under these set of circumstances and by this deadline?" If you can answer with a confident yes then you are using the right tools. If you can't, then you have to explore other options if you want the job. I have to think that those who have begun to use FCP X professionally know what they are doing and they know what it means for their business. Maybe others are on the fence and trying to see if it could work. Whatever the case may be, I will reiterate that it's hard to judge someone else's business from afar.

David and others who are posting workflows and current approaches, please keep doing so. Very useful info. I've been slightly diverted from my FCP X training at the moment as I've had to put on another hat lately but I plan on digging back in soon.

Positive vibes guys.

 

[Scott Crawley]

There is no point using a non linear editor, if you are a linear thinker. As an example, source record editing is a leftover from linear tape to tape editing.

No tool is perfect, but shitting on anyone's tools is low rent behaviour at best. It might be worse than blaming a tool for hard drive failure and saying that a reshoot is required. Come on, one copy of digital footage? Now that had me LMFAO.


david

Since we are sidetracked...

That was one copy of digital footy on a 7 year old drive. Seven years is pretty much the life expectancy for any drive I have had on heavy rotation in an editing system, but 7 years max has been typical forh all of the LaCie's I have ever used. Has your experience been different? Is LaCie still using all Western Digital drives?

Edit: To be fair I have one LaCie that has been sitting on a shelf for most of it's life. That one still spins up and is more than seven years old.

 

[Sergio Perez]

There is no point using a non linear editor, if you are a linear thinker. As an example, source record editing is a leftover from linear tape to tape editing.

No tool is perfect, but shitting on anyone's tools is low rent behaviour at best. It might be worse than blaming a tool for hard drive failure and saying that a reshoot is required. Come on, one copy of digital footage? Now that had me LMFAO.


david

Yes, one copy, David. Thanks for your kind words. And I already said that was my mistake. But I wasn't blaming the software for that, if you actually read my posts. Disappointing this sort of remarks from fellow redusers.

The problem was that I actually copied the project and thought I duplicated the files according to the software "duplicate project and used files". If it said "duplicate files and used files sims (or shortcuts) I would know I hadn't copied the files. I did back up the finalised project.

The fact is no other part of the software said that If I wanted to "really" copy the files I needed to "organize event media".

But, then again, we are on to a broken record. I did reshoot again. Laugh whatever you want. I hope I avoided someone else laughing (or crying) with my experience. I just shared it. No bashing at all. All this happened during this week we were discussing in this thread.

Guys like Steve, Mathieu and Scott have been providing great info and pulling this to the right direction. I have already been contacted by apple and hopefully some sort of warning or better description will be added in future versions.

As for Lacie drives. They are all now Seagate Barracuda. Seagate bought Lacie. I've only had issues now with Lacie, and I blame seagate. My lacies with Hitachis and WD disks work fine. By the way, my failure happened in a recent (2 months old) 2TB Seagate Barracuda drive Lacie.

 

[Michael Steiner]

Why would anyone with proper experience and skill in editing have to learn to adapt to a completely new style of cutting ?

Just for the sake of another perspective: i bought FCP7 when I was just a hobby-editor, was completely overtaxed and messed up Project-preferences more than once. So when I bought FCPX i was not that much into FCP7 that i had to readapt and leave my comfortzone to get things started. Now FCPX is doing fine on my paid jobs, I sold the studio-suite for more than i payed for X and am happy.
Every new editor that starts with FCPX and later takes a first look at other NLEs may say something similar to your quoted phrase, and - as time goes on - such people will grow in numbers. So i don't think your problems with FCPX are a big issue for Apple.

 

[David Battistella]

I wasn't laughing at you Sergio, nor do I wish that kind of "bad luck" on anyone. The fact that your post entered the thread is what is funny. It's the extent to which people want to blame this particular software for things.

The real fact is that moving media in avid, fcp x, fcp 7, premiere or any NLE is tricky business as each one has its specific databases and way of arranging media on the destination drive. The media management in fcp x is maybe even too strict, but each operation clearly states what it does and its just a matter of taking one extra minute to read each choice.

Your post(s) showed up and even admitting your own errors, you made every fundamental, basic error you could make to loose your data, yet things still got aimed in some way as a software labeling error.

It is good of you to share your experiences and hopefully someone else can learn from your mistakes, I was just laughing at the fact that this whole thread is actually a broken record from seven years ago when red started. I am reading al the same shit people said about red in the early years just with the words FCP X instead of RED One.

I think my posts in this thread show that I am actually trying to help people learn as well. I am sorry about your situation and I am happy you were able to resolve it.

david

 

[Sergio Perez]

The real fact is that moving media in avid, fcp x, fcp 7, premiere or any NLE is tricky business as each one has its specific databases and way of arranging media on the destination drive. The media management in fcp x is maybe even too strict, but each operation clearly states what it does and its just a matter of taking one extra minute to read each choice.

Your post(s) showed up and even admitting your own errors, you made every fundamental, basic error you could make to loose your data, yet things still got aimed in some way as a software labeling error.

david

So going into a software duplicate option and selecting "duplicate project with used files" was my mistake? I should magically know that "used files" means "used files sims"? "Where does it says I need to "Organize Media files" to duplicate the master files on the project? yes I didn't back up everything. I had my reasons. But this was something I wasn't expecting. I do blame the software for not being clear and misguided me on this backup. And since this was acknowledged by Apple and they replied to me personally, I feel that something will be done about it in the future and that's all I want. I don't have a personal agenda on anything. Always liked Apple Hardware and have worked on Apple Final Cut Pro for about 9/10 years .

Lets move on. I have a question for the FInal Cut Pro X experts here: i have some archive footage for this project that is interlaced. I'm working on a 1080p 25 timeline. What is Final Cut Pro X doing for the upscaling? Is it as good as dedicated upscaling software? How is it deinterlacing? How do you chose the fields (upper, lower) to deinterlace ? Any "Best Practices?"

Thanks in advance,

Sergio

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I'm not sure about the upscaling but the De-interlace is found in the settings view and seems to work very well.

 

[David Battistella]

I agree about moving on.

Your only real mistake was making assumptions.

David

So going into a software duplicate option and selecting "duplicate project with used files" was my mistake? I should magically know that "used files" means "used files sims"? "Where does it says I need to "Organize Media files" to duplicate the master files on the project? yes I didn't back up everything. I had my reasons. But this was something I wasn't expecting. I do blame the software for not being clear and misguided me on this backup. And since this was acknowledged by Apple and they replied to me personally, I feel that something will be done about it in the future and that's all I want. I don't have a personal agenda on anything. Always liked Apple Hardware and have worked on Apple Final Cut Pro for about 9/10 years .

Lets move on. I have a question for the FInal Cut Pro X experts here: i have some archive footage for this project that is interlaced. I'm working on a 1080p 25 timeline. What is Final Cut Pro X doing for the upscaling? Is it as good as dedicated upscaling software? How is it deinterlacing? How do you chose the fields (upper, lower) to deinterlace ? Any "Best Practices?"

Thanks in advance,

Sergio

 

[David Battistella]

I have a question for the FInal Cut Pro X experts here: i have some archive footage for this project that is interlaced. I'm working on a 1080p 25 timeline. What is Final Cut Pro X doing for the upscaling? Is it as good as dedicated upscaling software? How is it deinterlacing? How do you chose the fields (upper, lower) to deinterlace ? Any "Best Practices?"

Thanks in advance,

Sergio

You could also use compressor to do your upscaling because it uses SHAKE's optical flow engine to do this.

In that scenario I might do the following.

1. Import a short clip and do a test to go from interlaced to progressive after setting up the preset in compressor.
2. When you have the quality/speed you like batch the footage you want to work with.
3. Import the footage into you event and edit/intercut it with everything else.

This might be front end render heavy but you have to decide if you want to be held back before or later. Any intercutting and scaling in the timeline is going to slow you down. if it is a few shots, maybe let FCP X do it, if it is a lot of material I would suggest batching it.

OR

Import the few shots directly into FCP, drop the shots in the timeline and let FCP do the work, as it will do what it has to to that footage to match the sequence settings.

David

 

[Scott Crawley]

As for Lacie drives. They are all now Seagate Barracuda. Seagate bought Lacie. I've only had issues now with Lacie, and I blame seagate. My lacies with Hitachis and WD disks work fine. By the way, my failure happened in a recent (2 months old) 2TB Seagate Barracuda drive Lacie.

Interesting. Thanks

 

[John Johnson]

IMHO, the debacle of "FCX" opend up the pro-field to the point where many were forced not to even go "outside" finalc cut but outside MAC even. This, i feel, was a great thing for the industry, because FC7 wasnt "the best there is", but simple the most used and therefore ppl kept using it.
Now many tried adobe or went to the "dark side" or avid and found out that it wasnt as "hard" or "troublesome" to adapt to a new NLE (excluding those who heavily invested in plugins and stuff, for those it is was and will always be super hard/impossible to simply switch).

I do not see a reason why you'd have to stay on Final Cut, no matter how much they improve (again, if your whole workflow was build around it and you updated your hardware not too long ego OR dont have money to update, then this is different of course, but everyone else -) the world has changed in the field of NLE. Adobe is serious pro now and very innovative and Avid is . . . Avid and more and more companys go for multi-platform (plugin-coders) cuz nobody would want to put all his eggs into ONE bascet that is run by a consumer company. . . yes, apple today is 99% consumer and maybe 1% pro (assuming they got something up their sleves that they'll release soon, but why should they care for the pro market where there is little $$$ to be made compared to consumers paying 800$ US on a 200$ phone? where as adobe and avid and all the other NLEs that are "pro only" have no other way - they are pro only and can only stay "pro only". . .

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

...but why should they care for the pro market where there is little $$$ to be made compared to consumers paying $800 US on a $200 phone? ...

When ever people bring this up they forget several important factors, Mainly that the app store which is a factor in keeping their iPhone popular is dependant on pros to continue making apps and content etc. not to mention the prestige that having a Mac on the desk of every professional you see brings. There is much more here then raw dollars, it's image and that is pretty important.

 

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

yes, apple today is 99% consumer and maybe 1% pro (assuming they got something up their sleves that they'll release soon, but why should they care for the pro market where there is little $$$ to be made compared to consumers paying 800$ US on a 200$ phone? where as adobe and avid and all the other NLEs that are "pro only" have no other way - they are pro only and can only stay "pro only". . .

If you run trough the numbers, as I believe Craig Seeman did in another thread on another board, you will find that even if you only calculate Apple's software and Pro sales... They are still probably a much bigger number than anything for instance that Avid sells. This argument doesn't hold up.
And I also have to take notice with your remark: "I don't see a reason to use Final Cut, no matter how much they improve" Uh?
So you are saying: Use Adobe, because they are improving, but on the other hand you are saying: "using FCP is stupid, no matter if it improves or not"
Where's the logic?

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Positive experiences help in understanding the available potential, pointing out the drawbacks enables the creation of new potential. With a price of sometimes being unpleasant.
That "comfort zone" thing which is being repeated ever since the FCPx came out, but this time used in more productive direction than just sales direction and forcing of imposed changes.

If the intent is evolving anything and solving issues, emerging after giving up on FCP7, piling up just the pep talk and ignoring the issues is not really helping in that evolution.
Not sure how one is supposed to improve anything if the feedback is based on "it is great", "oh well, we'll just have to adapt", etc.
What also does not help in discussion is perceiving mentioned drawbacks as a negative thing with a negative intent, or taking any criticism towards any tool personally.

What is getting boring...is the "old sucks and new is better, especially if Apple says so" and similar rhetoric, plus repeating company PR coined phrases attempting to disqualify argumented claims from experienced users.
Not only is it boring, it can be dismantled quite easily with a FCPx example.

 

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Hi Hrvoje,

how much experience do you have with FCPX? I have edited about 50 pieces with it in the last year. You?

I started out with hating it, and learned and learned. And you know what? I *really* found out that a lot of what FCPX-'lovers' are saying is true: once you learn new ways of working, you love the program more and more, and a lot of it, you learn after hours and hours of working with it. Hell, I even learn new things every day with this program!
There is no comfort zone with this program, au contraire. It's all new.

And I have a LONG wish list for Apple. About 50 bullet points. I already sent them that feedback a couple of times. It is not a perfect program, and show me where people said it is. But despite some short comings (without a doubt) it still is an amazing program in a lot of ways, and a lot of it really shines trough after you re-learn stuff. Which you don't do by playing with it for a couple of hours, but by forcing yourself to finish assignments on it.
The first job? a couple of times I said: Hell to this, I'll just do it in 7!
Second job I said it a couple of times less...

Now... About 100 procent switched, except for some very specific things.

Don't forget... I started on Premiere Pro 2 (at the time), went to Final Cut Pro 6... Then 7, used that for 5 years. Then X came out. I worried. A lot. Bought Production Premium as a backup. Edited further in 7 most of the time. Gave X another chance after the 10.0.3 update. So my "switching" isn't based on "hollow PR crap" but on experience. Is your bashing based on real, troughout experience?

If it is, that's okay. FCPX isn't perfect, it doesn't work for some, for very legit reasons. But nothing in your bashing has shown really good arguments in my opinion.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

plus repeating company PR coined phrases attempting to disqualify argumented claims from experienced users.
Not only is it boring, it can be dismantled quite easily with a FCPx example.

Such as? What are these PR Coined phrases that are easily dismantled by a FCPx example, or is this another thing you appear to have pulled from your rear like the "It's based on decade old consumer software" claim which you seem to repeat over and over.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Such as? What are these PR Coined phrases that are easily dismantled by a FCPx example

Few quick ones:

"Stepping out of the comfort zone"
"Embrace the revolutionary change"
"Stay ahead"
"Fear of change"

or is this another thing you appear to have pulled from your rear like the "It's based on decade old consumer software" claim which you seem to repeat over and over.

You seem to have ignored or missed some text and links few pages back.
No point in repeating it all. Less clicks.

If this thread gets re-named "Apple win to push editors" the discussion may continue in appropriate direction.

 

[David Battistella]

You are too smart for me Hrvoje. You should hang up the editing cleats and become a writer.

David

Positive experiences help in understanding the available potential, pointing out the drawbacks enables the creation of new potential. With a price of sometimes being unpleasant.
That "comfort zone" thing which is being repeated ever since the FCPx came out, but this time used in more productive direction than just sales direction and forcing of imposed changes.

If the intent is evolving anything and solving issues, emerging after giving up on FCP7, piling up just the pep talk and ignoring the issues is not really helping in that evolution.
Not sure how one is supposed to improve anything if the feedback is based on "it is great", "oh well, we'll just have to adapt", etc.
What also does not help in discussion is perceiving mentioned drawbacks as a negative thing with a negative intent, or taking any criticism towards any tool personally.

What is getting boring...is the "old sucks and new is better, especially if Apple says so" and similar rhetoric, plus repeating company PR coined phrases attempting to disqualify argumented claims from experienced users.
Not only is it boring, it can be dismantled quite easily with a FCPx example.

 

[David Battistella]

Consider the forum you are writing these statements on. Think about what RED is about and tell me that the discussion around here has not been mostly exactly those four statements.

David

"Stepping out of the comfort zone"
"Embrace the revolutionary change"
"Stay ahead"
"Fear of change"