The FCP X Problem; University level

[Charlie Towers]

Even though Im for learning FCPX, I think at this point I would take advantage of going the Avid route and not the Adobe (since you have that option installed). However I've been using all three for many years in so many different iterations and I find Avid the most cumbersome of them all for learning in a production environment. I cant even imagine how one with no access to resources (home consumer) would learn such an app. Thats my opinion of course.

I tend to agree! - I stumble along with Avid, I don't find the icon-driven layout easy to pickup (or remember) luckily we have two other members of staff who are Avid devotees, leading to the usual intra-departmental Avid Vs FCP arguments which up until now I've been able to win!

However I have the rest of the summer (6 weeks) to learn (and prepare resources for) FCP X, Media Composer 5, Premiere 5.5 and Autodesk Maya. I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

 

[nigelsmith]

Been using and teaching Avid in a University environment for more than 12 years now, with no real problems.
Students, who often already 'know' FCP [ie self taught with poor organisational skills, few keyboard shortcuts etc] have always appreciated learning another package.
Especially one that is the overwhelming preference of people in the film industry, where they hope to work [look at ACE etc].
Educational pricing has always made it cheaper than FCS too, and there's no shortage of video tutorials on the Avid forums and Youtube.
Learning curve is steeper than a compeditor and Steenbeck, but hey...

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Avid seems harder for FCP devotees because you use keyboard commands together with the mouse instead of relying on the mouse most of the time. When you learn the commands, mapping your own personal use of them, you will be a lot faster then with just mouse based editing.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Dont get me wrong, Avid does the job. I started on Avid before FCP and before that Media 100 (well actually before that Premiere 2.0...ughh).
I teach FCP (and now FCPX) at local college in the evenings and Ive had a few students from the broadcast world that come from Avid.
We all agreed that its not for beginners and require a lot of patience.
Heck I come from the 3D/Motion Design world, I have patience...well some
From the colleges pov (I told them to contact Avid for educational pricing not sure what happened there) they want the students to concentrate on creativity.
I've been teaching at this college for a decade and honestly the NLE part is just for the students to get their demo in order.
The students have asked for an advanced NLE course but budgets prevent that.
I would have honestly (even years ago) pushed for Avid since they already have FCP seats.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Avid seems harder for FCP devotees because you use keyboard commands together with the mouse instead of relying on the mouse most of the time. When you learn the commands, mapping your own personal use of them, you will be a lot faster then with just mouse based editing.

Im super @nal when it comes to FCP (or any apps). I love keyboard commands (Maya driven) and push for that at all times in class and with co-workers.
I play guitar and like to remind users that you dont want carpal period.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Editors who doesn't make use of mapping their keyboard to their own needs and also use it will be slow and loose interest on the market, mark my words on that.
Speed is something that becomes more and more important. Most commercials I have worked on didn't force me but put me in a position where I needed to be lightning fast with the editing to be able to give time for other things like VFX mockups, a temporary grade and graphics (the grade and graph made by me as well). My biggest point of success is that I have been able to do the work in one day instead of two... and still getting the job done well and with time for creativity and thought. There have been times I've been sitting in a room of both an offline and an online (!) where the editor in front of me just use the mouse or a pen. Being used to keyboards and shortcuts the feeling of ants crawling around on me in that slow environment made me run out doing something else for a while...

Good or bad, speed is something that is going to become such a huge part of the business. And I'm not talking about speeding up creativity, I'm talking about the time going from thought to finished product. With tweets from Japan going faster then the Tsunami warnings after the earthquake, we are in a real time business. Time for concept to on air is getting shorter and shorter.

So, if anyone thinks that mouse based improvements is a good thing... you can't physically move your arm around all the commands you can do with a press of a button, whatever any company says to you about speed improvements to mouse based work. I also think that touch screens is a joke to speed. It's not that I don't think it's cool, it's just that you only get the response signals from one of your senses. You se the result of the command, not the feeling of making it. It's a slow latency driven way of working. With a button, much like writing with a keyboard instead of an Ipad, you feel the keys and you feel if you press the wrong one before you even registered it with your eyes. It's like going back to a 1-core computer after working with a dual core, why? There's no coincident that gimmicks for consumers use touch screens while professional gear as grading tool command tools have buttons that you feel pressing down.

Yes, Red has it's touch screen display, but it's not that kind of work. Doing thousands of commands a day, you don't want to work with just 1 sense, you want both visual, sound and touch. People get so wind up with gimmicks they forget basic human psychology. Very funny.

 

[dillont]

SOLVED!

SOLVED!

Wanted to share this tidbit - network logins WILL work, but with a couple tweaks.

The outstanding issue is this: FCX will not allow network logins to create the first initial project/event (1st time FCX launches) because it is looking to create the first project on the Local/user/movies folder, which doesn't exist for network logins. It WILL, however, allow a network login to create additional projects/events, if one already exists. This is bizarre, and I have to assume this is a design flaw.

The work around involves the disk image technique described in other threads. A default disk image with a default event / project needs to already be set up before the network login can use it. And this disk image has to be created on a local hard drive (using a local login). Once the directory structure is created in the disk image, then network login can mount the disk image on their desktop, and use that to create their events / projects.

I don't understand why Apple decided this, but this is the way it is.

I'm tickled pink that this works. We're going to deploy to our labs. I've been testing all after noon, and I'm astonished at how easy media management is now. Now I'm understanding why others are saying this is perhaps a superior way of working. If I decide to share a project with another user, I can simply give them a copy of the project sans media, or copy the project with references to events, or copy off a project with only the media.

But all of this involves using disk images in a network environment. Once its set up, it's ridiculously easy to use (easier than FCP 7 media / scratch disks).

Dillon