Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Why everyone is so painfully wrong about FCPX

Emery Wells said:
Ok, so after taking a lot of heat for my post here and spending more time with the app, I have to concede Apple has made some pretty big mistakes and I do understand why people are freaking out. I still think their biggest mistake was communication. From the very start with the steamroll into the Super Meet through now, they have not conducted this rollout with a lot of grace. If Apple continues to be so non-communicative it's really difficult to say one way or the other if their philosophy has really switched to address the needs of the YouTuber's out there or if they are still committed to those of us making a living and running a business using their software.

I still don't understand why people are dragging David Pouge over the coals for acting as Apples conduit to communicate something to all of us. Yes he made mistakes (we know he's not a Pro editor so we should cut him some slack), yes he made a terribly unfunny video (he's lovable enough so we should cut him some slack), but mostly he dispelled a lot of misinformation.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but David Pogue is old enough to know better. I'm really tired of people saying "we should cut David Pogue some slack," and "we should cut Apple some slack." David is reporting on things he doesn't know squat about, and hasn't done the research to understand. This uproar is not a consumer technology thing. And David has not done the research the subject deserves. He deserves all the flack he's getting.
 
Anybody else find it interesting that the other manufacturers are part of the online communities, commenting, providing answers, soliciting feedback, while Apple has chosen not to attend the party?

Looks as if Apple really doesn't get social media.
 
Emery Wells said:
I still don't understand why people are dragging David Pouge over the coals for acting as Apples conduit to communicate something to all of us. Yes he made mistakes (we know he's not a Pro editor so we should cut him some slack), yes he made a terribly unfunny video (he's lovable enough so we should cut him some slack), but mostly he dispelled a lot of misinformation.
Click to expand...

David created the "Missing Manual" series of books on Apple apps after writing 7 "for Dummies" books for IDG after writing "Macs for Dummies". He has over 3 million books in print. MOST of them are about Apple OSX and Apple apps. His Apple access and relationships are ... better than most. How many shares of Apple stock do you think he owns Emery?

He is NOT a guy "qualified" to write ANYTHING objective about ANYTHING Apple.

My 2 cents.
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
David created the "Missing Manual" series of books on Apple apps after writing 7 "for Dummies" books for IDG after writing "Macs for Dummies". He has over 3 million books in print. MOST of them are about Apple OSX and Apple apps. His Apple access and relationships are ... better than most. How many shares of Apple stock do you think he owns Emery?
Click to expand...

Looking at Apple's stock at the moment it's up at 326, do you honestly, honestly believe that has anything to do with David Pogue? He'd have to be pretty full of himself to think "I'm going to paint Apple in a good light no matter what because my Apple stock depends on it"
Not to mention, do you know for sure that he has apple stock? Or do you just assume he does because more often then not he has a favorable opinion of Apple products.

David has the access he has because he works at the New York Times it's that simple.
 
Craig W. Bickerstaff said:
Looking at Apple's stock at the moment it's up at 326, do you honestly, honestly believe that has anything to do with David Pogue? He'd have to be pretty full of himself to think "I'm going to paint Apple in a good light no matter what because my Apple stock depends on it"
Not to mention, do you know for sure that he has apple stock? Or do you just assume he does because more often then not he has a favorable opinion of Apple products.

David has the access he has because he works at the New York Times it's that simple.
Click to expand...

Craig - I'm only pointing out that the majority of his income comes from books he has written - not the New York Times - and the majority of his books are about Apple software products. You can connect the dots any way you like. He is NOT an objective technology journalist - anyway you slice it.
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
Craig - I'm only pointing out that the majority of his income comes from books he has written - not the New York Times - and the majority of his books are about Apple software products. You can connect the dots any way you like. He is NOT an objective technology journalist - anyway you slice it.
Click to expand...

Mark makes a very good point...
 
As far as I can recall Apple are almost diametrically opposed to Red in terms of pre-release communication. I remember when Cocoa came out and Russ Andersson of Syntheyes posted exactly why they would not be able to immediately support 64 bit in Mac OS X. Months down the line, 64-bit Syntheyes arrives and it's better than ever.

I'm not sure what everyone expected in terms of communication, SJ and Apple love the big reveal. This time it seems to have back-fired on them. I'm betting they'll recover. Something to keep in mind is that the app is now 1/3rd of the price - I'm not going to conjecture on what Apple's game-plan is, but that's a serious price drop in anyone's book.

Personally, I'm digging into FCP X any chance I get. I can't get past the performance, I have premiere 5.5 on the same system side by side and as good as it is (I LOVE the speed of Media Encoder) FCP X feels quicker, more responsive, the system-wide scrubbing is genius, the proxy handling is really sweet - though it would be great if you could tell what media (proxy or original) you were using from the main UI. The media tagging is brilliant - memories of Cubase Media Bay come to mind - criticised by many now lauded by most using it. I'm amazed that they've done those things and kept the price as low as it is.

It's much easier to use, some might think that's a bad thing. I was always baffled by the project settings, sequence settings the sheer range of options in FCP Studio, when all i needed and wanted was the project to determine the settings from the first clip added. It did this, but if you I needed to dig down further it got a bit hairy. That's just me and as ever it's horses for courses. I love the Color workflow, though it's there in spirit, it's not the same and I miss my curves.

Having said all that we have a short film project scheduled to shoot in mid-July. We will be using FCPX to edit it, but using Media Encoder to repurpose it.
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
Craig - I'm only pointing out that the majority of his income comes from books he has written - not the New York Times - and the majority of his books are about Apple software products. You can connect the dots any way you like. He is NOT an objective technology journalist - anyway you slice it.
Click to expand...

But on the other hand, can you think of anyone you would consider objective? Every article written by every tech beat writer gets torn apart by one group or another if it expresses an opinion, and sometimes even if it doesn't (remember the firestorm here when Carolyn Giardina wrote an article about 4K and didn't mention Red - even though the article wasn't about Red in the first place..).

Let's face it, this is a polarized world and industry. Whatever one says, there will be a bunch of people who want to tear them apart for saying it. I'm not saying you don't have a point in this case - you do. But perhaps we should take things that people write as simply things they write because they believe them to be reasonable expressions of the facts, regardless of anything else they've written. Not everyone is a politician, and not everyone should be held up to such scrutiny. Times change and opinions change. Someone reminded me - and not so nicely - that I'd said something here 2 years ago that I now claimed to feel differently about. Well, yes. I think we all reserve the right to think, to continually learn, and to modify our beliefs based on new experiences. I'm not claiming that's the case with Pogue, but I'm also not 100% sure that it's not. So I'm willing to cut him some slack and take his article at face value - even though I agree it's a bit misinformed - without assuming he's Apple's shill. Perhaps that's a bit naive. So be it.
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
David created the "Missing Manual" series of books on Apple apps after writing 7 "for Dummies" books for IDG after writing "Macs for Dummies". He has over 3 million books in print. MOST of them are about Apple OSX and Apple apps. His Apple access and relationships are ... better than most. How many shares of Apple stock do you think he owns Emery?

He is NOT a guy "qualified" to write ANYTHING objective about ANYTHING Apple.

My 2 cents.
Click to expand...

I did not read Pouge's article as objective. In the original article it was clear to me the information was coming from Apple and the article has since been updated to flat out say the information has come from Apple. Im not sure how anyone could be unclear about that. Pouge states he's not a Pro and that he helped his son make a 20 minute movie for an 8th grade project. Pouge's experience level and familiarity with the product is 100% clear. His answers were clearly written by someone that has a LOT of familiarity with the product (Apple) and the majority of what he wrote is TRUE. That doesn't mean FCPX doesn't have issues, it does. But people were crying foul before fully understanding the product. I went back and read this article AGAIN and there were actually only TWO technical mistakes - OMF (since been corrected) and his statement about Red Support (which could be interpreted as using Quicktime Proxies). EVERYTHING else was accurate. That doesn't mean professional editors should be happy with the answers but Pouge is the messenger and I do not believe he did one thing wrong by taking the opportunity to relay Apples answers. If everyone is upset that the information did not flow through capable hands they should be mad at Apple (not David). He was just doing his job.
 
Tico Llaurador said:
Anyone who read Pogue's review of FCPX, perhaps should also read this one... http://tinyurl.com/2cet2r

I mean, to put things in perspective.

Just sayin'...
Click to expand...

Some quotes from that article, written about iMovie 8, which had just been released at the time:

I can’t remember any software company pulling a stunt like this before: throwing away a fully developed, mature, popular program and substituting a bare-bones, differently focused program under the same name....

I can’t help thinking that Apple would have done better to call a spade a spade, and give the new program a different name. Call it FlyMovie, or ByeMovie, or WhyMovie.

But one thing’s for sure: it sure isn’t iMovie.
Click to expand...

Sound familiar? Hence what I meant about changing one's opinion over time. And one can't help but notice that the article was talking about a program that was designed by the same designer, using the same approaches that have now become Final Cut X...
 
What confuses me is...

If they can give select developers are preview of their iPhones etc. (so rumors say) and if they can give beta for their iOS and Mac OSX...

Why couldn't they do the same with FCPX and add a massive NDA to it, big companies wouldn't mess with that...

Not only that, they gave some editors a preview right? So it wouldn't be a massive leap for them to go "Hey RED" or the like, come check this out and here's a neat little SDK kit so launch day you guys might have your codec working natively, better yet, we'll help make it in the core of the system...

I'm worried to say I'd jump ship to Adobe because I'm hoping by Christmas this year they'd have added quite a bit in...

I mean when everyone gets their EPIC-X and Scarlet... what is everyones first choice of native editing going to be? I think its pretty obvious right now, I hope it won't be so obvious by the public launch time...
 
Richard Luke said:
Am I reading this wrong or do Red Giant say that they have the FCPX SDK?

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/blog/2011/06/24/final-cut-pro-x-and-red-giant/
Click to expand...

Anybody can download the FXPlug 2.0 SDK. It's on the Apple Developer site, and came out simultaneously with FCPX.

What I don't know if anybody has (with the possible exception of a privileged few) is the ability to write things which integrate more deeply with FCPX, enabling 3rd parties to write eg XML import/export without reverse engineering FCPX's underlying SQLite database.
 
Imran Farouk said:
What confuses me is...

If they can give select developers are preview of their iPhones etc. (so rumors say) and if they can give beta for their iOS and Mac OSX...

Why couldn't they do the same with FCPX and add a massive NDA to it, big companies wouldn't mess with that...

Not only that, they gave some editors a preview right? So it wouldn't be a massive leap for them to go "Hey RED" or the like, come check this out and here's a neat little SDK kit so launch day you guys might have your codec working natively, better yet, we'll help make it in the core of the system...

I'm worried to say I'd jump ship to Adobe because I'm hoping by Christmas this year they'd have added quite a bit in...

I mean when everyone gets their EPIC-X and Scarlet... what is everyones first choice of native editing going to be? I think its pretty obvious right now, I hope it won't be so obvious by the public launch time...
Click to expand...

I am not a developer and I really don't want to get into Apple hater / Apple Fanboy crap, but perhaps one reason for the awkward timing on the SDK is that Lion is also on the horizon. Is it possible that it was hard to coordinate the development of the FCPX SDK with the release of Lion so that developers were working with the code that made the most sense? Seems like it might be silly to work on connections to FCPX in Snow Leopard when Lion, and its presumably more advanced capabilities, was days away. I realize that doesn't necessarily explain everything (even keeping the discussion in the SDK arena) but it might have had an effect.
 
You do realize that developers have had access to Lion and the associated developer tools/APIs for months, right? NDA's are no problem, that's how Apple operates and they are largely successful too. It's amazing how much DOESN'T leak out via the ADC programs. If there is to be any real SDK for FCPX, then it's probably just late or not ready. In my not-so-humble opinion, there just isn't going to be one. FXPlug 2.0 isn't an FCPX SDK, no matter how much anyone wants to spin that. Yes, we can make plug-ins for the new FCP and Motion... But we can't extend the functionality of the application in a broad sense. There is no SDK to incorporate hardware such as I/O cards from BMD or AJA, for example. Apple may be sharing that info privately, we have no way to know. If there really was any SDK for FCPX, I'm sure they would have mentioned it at the Apple World-Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) that transpired 2.5 weeks ago, don't ya think? Of course, this is apple and they like to be unpredictable and fresh, but come on... This whole FCPX thing is just a joke. They steam-rolled the NAB Vegas SuperMeet to announce FCPX. They showed us some bits and pieces that made it look very intriguing. They also showed us some bits that wreaked of enhanced iMovie features, some people cheered, some jeered, some groaned. It was difficult to say what it was all about, and some of those iMovie-esque features fit in a "something for everyone" sort of way. The presentation ended and no one hung around to take questions. Not any demo beyond the canned crap they showed on stage. They left it all shrouded in mystery. Fast-forward a bit over 2 months, here it is. Terrible negative backlash. And not just from the top level pros, but scathing reviews from all levels of the industry. No official statement from Apple. None. That is a major FAIL in my book. There's the article from Mr. David Pogue that seems to be trying to make an official statement for Apple. But I'm unsure if that's really the case. Is his blog now an official Apple media outlet? WTF? I never read the guy because, as others have pointed out and as he has admitted, he's not a professional editor or post guy. Anything that comes from him is just his musings in his blog. No one is going to accept it as a serious response or even an official response from Apple. Sure, some people will on some level, but that's not how this should work. Apple needs to step up, state their intentions and make something happen. People don't want to pay $300 for a deluxe version of iMove. $300 wasn't going to be a ground-breaking price for FCPX. Not when you consider the bundle price for FCS3 was $999 and now we're still paying $300 for FCPX and another $100 for the new Motion. No new Color, no new DVDSP. No real bargain here...

The more I play with FCPX, the more I'm convinced that they did nothing more than have a handful of developers spend 4 to 6 months re-tooling iMovie by combining color controls borrowed from Color, optical-flow from Motion (borrowed from Shake), etc.. etc.. FCPX is everything I imagined iMovie would eventually become. It is not a successor to, let alone a replacement for, FCP7.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top