Apple push to win back pro editors

[Robert Ruffo New]

All this is why FCPx is not for pro use. Pro use is multiple editors and assistant editors that all share and pass projects between many different machines, and then being able to send parts of the project to other programs.

FCPX is great if you want to do everything on one machine. It's an amazing one man band tool.

However, most of FCPX anger is not because the program is inferior, it's because all copies of FCP7 were pulled off the shelf the day Apple released a very incomplete FCPX. So if you were planning on adding a few more machines you were SOL. Apple left EVERY SINGLE FCP7 user hanging out to dry.

It's like you were cheated on by your spouse. Sure you can forgive and go back to Apple, but you don't really know if they will abandon you again.

I learned FCPX - gave it a chance, and I would disagree - as a one man band but doing careful work with lots of finessing and versioning based on client feedback - it's useless junk. If I were doing low-end corporates or wedding videos on 24hr deadlines maybe I'd like it better.

 

[Alexander Thomson]

Problem is, not super reliable, and super easy to break with any OSX update.

Simply untrue, the build I'm running is just as stable as a Apple-built machine. I've updated from 10.8 all the way through to 10.8.3 and I've had no hiccups throughout the process. I have backups in place in case something catastrophic happens but I've never had to resort to that. I can't speak for other hack users but my experience has been pleasant. A Hack Pro that benches 17755 on Geekbench for under $1,600. It's not for everyone, but it's an option. Just wanted to clear up some FUD.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Not saying you can't but "can't" and "won't" end up in pretty much the same place. :devil:

In the world I inhabit, being a generalist is more likely to yield efficiencies and cost savings - and the difference between a project working or not. Being a narrowly focused specialist is overkill. Being a generalists doesn't have to mean being "mediocre" any more than being a specialist assures "genius."

I'd be willing to pose the question as to whether the world of the generalist - given the sophistication of tools available now, and those coming - will growth and broaden until it mostly swallows the world of the specialist. How many TV shows will be produced that can afford a whole team of specialists when it has to be satisfied with a smaller audience (and commensurate revenues). How much room is there for specialty talents on Hollywood films that account for 15-20% of the annual seats sold in theaters.

Don't worry, there's still time to adapt as the paradigm won't change overnight, but how long will it take? Paraphrasing the immortal words of Dirty Harry, "Do you feel lucky..." :smiley:

Actually the figure is more like 85% of seats in Europe, and 95% in the USA/Canada. Most people have zero interest in low-budget indies. In home video, (VOD, blu-ray) there is more indy interest, but only in genre fiilms with budgets of 1 million or more - which are not one-man band affairs either. The editor and the colorist are most often not the same person.

You're talking about no-budget long-tail doco shows or whatever - these are an awful way to make a living.

 

[Mike Halper]

Neil, that Eizo monitor is not 4K, and Eizo doesn't even have a 4K monitor, so you may want to revise your post and the website for your training. It may accept a 4K signal, but that doesn't make it a 4K monitor.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

With the way media is going, I would freak if I didn't know a little bit about everything. My shooting and color grading skills are definitely sharper than my editing skills but I don't have to be a union editor working on an expensive "professional" Avid or Creative Suite system to know how to cut a film together.

For the type of work i'm doing, the company is focused on turnaround time and speed to market, and FCP X helps me get than done. When I complete a project, I move the event into the project folder and back the whole project up to a second drive and Backblaze. This eliminates the problem Paul brings up about having to see every project you've worked on. Of course that's a crappy idea/concept, so I re-worked the workflow and ended up with a better solution. Now, if for some reason I need to revisit the project, I can drop the project file back onto the "Final Cut Projects" folder on my Raid 0 and drop the associated event back into the "Final Cut Events" folder and get back up and running. In fact, I can put the project and event into ANY machine running FCPX and it'll open up just as if it were my own machine. One of the benefits of having a standardized media management system.

Yes, Apple abandoned ship when so many people had been onboard. Yes, FCPX is a completely different program than 7. And yes, Apple lost a substantial amount of users making the jump from Final Cut 7 to CS and Avid (and even Vegas)... Still, FCPX is absolutely a capable editing program. It is not for everyone. Then again, nothing is for everyone. I work with a 3 person team. But I usually shoot/post/edit all of my own work. So for what I do to pay the bills, this gets it done. I would never edit a full-blown movie with FCPX. It just doesn't have the creative flexibility that specialist programs have.

Every now and then one of these threads pops up on RU and I can't help but just sit back and watch the hate parade ... but it's getting to the point where we're coming up on two years and eight updates later and people can't help but beat the shit out of a long dead horse. I don't mind if you dislike Final Cut Pro X, but to say the people who use it are mediocre is below the belt.
:rant::beatdeadhorse5:

I think it's sad to be based on turn-around and speed to market - you didn't even mention quality, refinement of vision, perfection - all the things that make we want to go to work in the morning. Just speed. I'm glad I don't work where you work.

 

[Neil W. Smith]

FCP X Webinar - April 23rd, 2013 11:30 AM PST to 1:00 PM PST

FCP X Webinar - April 23rd, 2013 11:30 AM PST to 1:00 PM PST

If by Bay Area you mean Montana, absolutely! But seriously, that seems like a great seminar to attend and I'm eager to see the write-ups.

Ian, if you can rustle up forty editors and get them off their horses and into a barn with a laptop each we'll head up North and give you guys a demo

But seriously, if you can't make it down to sunny LA, Sam is doing a Webinar with Michael Horton (of LAFCPUG and SuperMeet fame) on April 23rd, 2013 11:30 AM PST to 1:00 PM PST on the Moviola Training Channel:

http://moviola.com/webinars/final-cut-pro-x-red-feature-film-workflows/#.UW81qb8tZeU

Sam will be covering some of the things he'll be going over on the 4K Training Day on the 27th in West Hollywood but obviously not in quite as much detail.

If you get a chance to listen in, let us know what you think of the approach.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

while all this talking is happening there are a bunch of people turning into Fcp x power users. Using the application, giving feedback and cracking out some work. Kinda like red one users were for current epic and scarlet users.

The Redone was not perfect, but people used it, gave feedback and helped create what it's becoming now.

its all a matter of choice, of course, of whether one wants to be part of the "destruction gang" or the "construction crew"

since its release its just gotten better.

david

[video]http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=TwF9J1_aYzI&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTwF 9J1_aYzI[/video]

i liek chatting on here sometimes, to take a break, but I am doing work very happily on Avid and Premiere, no issues. I don;t feel the need to be part of a construction crew for tools not at all suited to what I do and how I do it . I have better ways to spend my time than joining some "FCPX "crew".

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Simply untrue, the build I'm running is just as stable as a Apple-built machine. I've updated from 10.8 all the way through to 10.8.3 and I've had no hiccups throughout the process. I have backups in place in case something catastrophic happens but I've never had to resort to that. I can't speak for other hack users but my experience has been pleasant. A Hack Pro that benches 17755 on Geekbench for under $1,600. It's not for everyone, but it's an option. Just wanted to clear up some FUD.

My perception is that a Hackintosh was a huge time hog - I'd rather just spend the money and get a 12 core. Are hackintoshes really faster than Mac Pro 12 cores? if someone sold reliable Hackintoshes, I'd buy them, I just knwo no such vendors - only websites that tell you how to build them, and are very time-consuming and complex. I'd rather just pay my money and get my box and not worry.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

So, RRN, why do you feel the need to come here and piss on someone else's tree. There are clearly serious professional editors using FCP-X so how can you be so pompous as to declare it to be unusable and not suited for professionals? Use whatever flips your skirt but why the shit talk? It's just so much whining about something you don't seem to have much of a reason to even care about. Is it your mission to scare others off of trying something new? :huh:

 

[Neil W. Smith]

Neil, that Eizo monitor is not 4K, and Eizo doesn't even have a 4K monitor, so you may want to revise your post and the website for your training. It may accept a 4K signal, but that doesn't make it a 4K monitor.

Technically, you're correct Mike ... the CG 276 takes a 4K x 2K signal of 4096 x 2160 and 3840 x 2160 resolutions at up to 30 frames/second via the DisplayPort input and then downscales it to its native resolution of 2560 x 1440. ... at the moment it's the most cost-effective way ($2700) to get a 10 bit color accurate monitor with 4K signal input ... it's great to be able to grade 5K EPIC footage at that resolution in an accurate 10 bit color space.

And actually EIZO does have a 4K monitor - the RX840 is a true 8 Megapixel Super-High-Resolution Display ... it has a 36 inch screen size and is capable of displaying 8 megapixels - 4096 x 2160 native resolution ... it's a beautiful display, weighs a ton and costs a little bit more than the CG 276 :-(

The RX840 only runs under Windows at the moment (Mac driver issue) so we'll be demoing it running DaVinci Resolve on Windows ... at NAB, we had a SuperMicro PC with three NVIDIA TITANS in a PCIe expansion chassis color correcting 4K DPX files in real time ... now, that's a beast of a grading machine!

Neil

 

[Alexander Thomson]

I think it's sad to be based on turn-around and speed to market - you didn't even mention quality, refinement of vision, perfection - all the things that make we want to go to work in the morning. Just speed. I'm glad I don't work where you work.

I work for the creative team for the Bay Area's largest dealership group. Between the three of us who work in the video department, we produce over 3,000 videos per year. About 75% of them are customer testimonials, people who actually loved buying a car so much they wanted to get on camera and talk about it. They're not very fancy, but they help us get 1.1M video views per year. In the corporate world, it's all about VSEO, and having thousands of videos online certainly helps in that regard.

We also advertise on broadcast television for the local SF Bay Area market, so we have about 2 to 4 "legit" TV spots to do, per month, on top of our usual workload of web content. Of course there is nothing but the highest standards of quality for our work, but it's not like we have weeks to spend editing these videos. FCPX's automation tools help us sort through and edit the 25 terabytes of footage we shoot every year. So maybe I'm not a film professional. I dont work on big budget music videos. But my company uses FCPX and I don't mind it. It works. The job pays my student loans. That's professional enough for me. Be glad you don't work where I work, because we LOVE Final Cut PRO X.

PS. Of course you're not going to find vendors selling hackintoshes. They are HACKintoshes after all...

 

[Joseph Coleman]

Was apple even at NAB?

 

[Alexander Thomson]

Officially, they haven't been there for years: http://www.t-gaap.com/2013/4/12/apple-and-nab-what-we-learned#.UW9GJ7-Ab8s

But supposedly the engineers working on the new mac pro and FCPX 10.1 were there meeting with "key people in the industry"... whatever that means.

 

[Mike Halper]

Technically, you're correct Mike ... the CG 276 takes a 4K x 2K signal of 4096 x 2160 and 3840 x 2160 resolutions at up to 30 frames/second via the DisplayPort input and then downscales it to its native resolution of 2560 x 1440. ... at the moment it's the most cost-effective way ($2700) to get a 10 bit color accurate monitor with 4K signal input ... it's great to be able to grade 5K EPIC footage at that resolution in an accurate 10 bit color space.

And actually EIZO does have a 4K monitor - the RX840 is a true 8 Megapixel Super-High-Resolution Display ... it has a 36 inch screen size and is capable of displaying 8 megapixels - 4096 x 2160 native resolution ... it's a beautiful display, weighs a ton and costs a little bit more than the CG 276 :-(

The RX840 only runs under Windows at the moment (Mac driver issue) so we'll be demoing it running DaVinci Resolve on Windows ... at NAB, we had a SuperMicro PC with three NVIDIA TITANS in a PCIe expansion chassis color correcting 4K DPX files in real time ... now, that's a beast of a grading machine!

Neil

Well I stand corrected on Eizo not having a 4K monitor. Thanks for letting me know about that. However, I think it's important to note that it's part of their medical series and not a color grading monitor like their ColorEdge series that has the built-in 16-bit 3D LUT and Color Navigator software for proper calibration. But I do look forward to them bringing that panel over to the ColorEdge series. I'm sure the prices and weight will come down in time.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I recommend we start a new thread that focuses entirely on information as it pertains to using FCP X. Perhaps the first few posts can have space for specific topics such as:

- Optimal configurations
- Editing tips and techniques
- RED Workflow
- Training resources

Even if it's a place to gather links, seems like it would be useful. And if someone is willing to manage it, maybe they can organize the information from subsequent posts that come through into the topic posts. Or maybe there's a better space to do that than Reduser, but seems to me it would be a whole lot more useful for those who are trying to get into it and see if it might work for them. I'm considering it for some future projects that might be able to take advantage of some of the things it seems to do very well.

Very easy to turn this into a positive exercise that helps not only those who are interested in experimenting with FCP X but also those who may not have had a chance to try it since their first impressions at the beginning. It's all about helping each other get better. Right?

 

[Neil W. Smith]

I recommend we start a new thread that focuses entirely on information as it pertains to using FCP X. Perhaps the first few posts can have space for specific topics such as:

- Optimal configurations
- Editing tips and techniques
- RED Workflow
- Training resources

Even if it's a place to gather links, seems like it would be useful. And if someone is willing to manage it, maybe they can organize the information from subsequent posts that come through into the topic posts. Or maybe there's a better space to do that than Reduser, but seems to me it would be a whole lot more useful for those who are trying to get into it and see if it might work for them. I'm considering it for some future projects that might be able to take advantage of some of the things it seems to do very well.

Very easy to turn this into a positive exercise that helps not only those who are interested in experimenting with FCP X but also those who may not have had a chance to try it since their first impressions at the beginning. It's all about helping each other get better. Right?

Thank you, Steve ... as ever the calm Voice of Reason.

Sam Mestman already has a thread going in the Workflow Folder which includes links to his three in-depth articles on FCP X workflow ... might be a good place to continue the discussion ... even the Apple guys who came to our NAB booth learned a thing or two about how to use FCP X in a 4K finishing pipeline:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...-Workflow-All-3-parts-now-up-(and-at-NAB-too)

Also, I have to say, there's only one person sensible enough to keep the thread on track ... Mr. Sherrick - you da man!

Neil

 

[Sergio Perez]

I recommend we start a new thread that focuses entirely on information as it pertains to using FCP X. Perhaps the first few posts can have space for specific topics such as:

- Optimal configurations
- Editing tips and techniques
- RED Workflow
- Training resources

Even if it's a place to gather links, seems like it would be useful. And if someone is willing to manage it, maybe they can organize the information from subsequent posts that come through into the topic posts. Or maybe there's a better space to do that than Reduser, but seems to me it would be a whole lot more useful for those who are trying to get into it and see if it might work for them. I'm considering it for some future projects that might be able to take advantage of some of the things it seems to do very well.

Very easy to turn this into a positive exercise that helps not only those who are interested in experimenting with FCP X but also those who may not have had a chance to try it since their first impressions at the beginning. It's all about helping each other get better. Right?

I agree with this. Good to hear the engineers where at NAB. I never was a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, but seems like X swears by them.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Thank you, Steve ... as ever the calm Voice of Reason.

Sam Mestman already has a thread going in the Workflow Folder which includes links to his three in-depth articles on FCP X workflow ... might be a good place to continue the discussion ... even the Apple guys who came to our NAB booth learned a thing or two about how to use FCP X in a 4K finishing pipeline:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...-Workflow-All-3-parts-now-up-(and-at-NAB-too)

Also, I have to say, there's only one person sensible enough to keep the thread on track ... Mr. Sherrick - you da man!

Neil

Thanks for the link Neil. That's definitely the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Always amazed that people are able to take time out of their busy schedules to provide resources like this.

Between the Ripple training, Lynda.com, and Sam's stuff there's certainly a nice set of learning tools out there to get everybody up to speed. I just need more hours in the day.

 

[Mike Dreesman]

Ian, if you can rustle up forty editors and get them off their horses and into a barn with a laptop each we'll head up North and give you guys a demo

Only thirty-eight Montanans to go

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Actually the figure is more like 85% of seats in Europe, and 95% in the USA/Canada. Most people have zero interest in low-budget indies. In home video, (VOD, blu-ray) there is more indy interest, but only in genre fiilms with budgets of 1 million or more - which are not one-man band affairs either. The editor and the colorist are most often not the same person.

You're talking about no-budget long-tail doco shows or whatever - these are an awful way to make a living.

Robert - the stats I posted are out of context here and you have contributed to a complete misrepresentation. I believe I said in an earlier thread - if not I'll be clear here - that 85% of the seats in theaters (in the US) go UNFILLED. On an annual basis, theaters are mostly EMPTY. Yes, its true that most of the seats that are filled are filled by Hollywood films, but that is little comfort to the theater owner who has pretty much topped out with that category; more Hollywood films aren't necessarily going to fill those empty seats.

So my point is that there is huge opportunity for other types of films to make their way into theatrical showings. If you don't think offerings like Odemax will contribute to that, I believe you will be mistaken.

Personally, I have absolutely no interest (zero, nada, zilch, zip) in working on a Hollywood feature. And, Hollywood features can only absorb how many professionals? A few thousand? Your disdain for webisodes and online distribution aside, there are a lot of emerging opportunities for smaller crews to produce great films. It's happening all around you. That represents the most exciting opportunity to me. So, talented generalists with powerful tools that leverage their capabilities will have a place at the table.

BTW - "indie" doesn't have to mean "no budget" either. There are changes afoot in financing, marketing and delivery of digital content. Tune in.

EDIT: And, believe it or not, there are film crew sizes bigger then "one man bands" but still smaller than 100 person Hollywood crews. Will wonders never cease?!