stoneinapond
Veteran
We/I get it.
X makes perfect sense from a business standpoint.
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We/I get it.
Dave ©
Well-known member
I think most people using the word intuitive are basically saying that it makes sense. For those of us who've spent years working within one paradigm, be it FCP or another NLE, the way we've been editing is intuitive in the sense that is instinctive. Our instincts are to look for a scratch disk, multiple tracks, etc. FCPX isn't instinctive for us but seems to make sense after playing with it.
I just started going through the Ripple Training. FCPX doesn't seem instinctive to me yet. But I'm encouraged to hear word from others that it starts to make more sense given a little bit of time.
Then what you're talking about is actually dumping the steel and rubber and going back to the wooden wheel because it's cheaper.
If everyone's indeed "more tolerant" of poor color, sub-par camera work, and a generally less-polished product, can't say as I would call that any kind of welcome progress.
Vultch
Well-known member
Mike Harvey
Veteran
I'm a PC guy, I'm just an interested observer, and I don't get it.
If everything Apple does is geared at driving hardware sales, I simply don't understand how FCPX is going to accomplish this. Yes, they'll sell a gazilian copies and will probably offset the losses from higher end FCP users jumping ship. But are people going to go out and buy Macs over comparable Win7 machines that are cheaper just to get FCPX? It seams to me that if you're toying with buying FCPX, you already own a Mac and have bought into the Apple way of doing things. But if I'm on hobbyist on a Win7 PC, and I'm wanting to go to the "next level", what is there to justify buying a brand new Mac? I mean, if I have a halfway decent Win7 PC, Premiere Pro, Vegas, and Edius area all under $700, are much more capable, and don't require me to buy a whole new computer (and the headaches involved with changing to another OS). Heck, I can get prosumer version of those programs for much cheaper that are more comparable to FCPX and keep the computer I'm on.
With FCP7/FCS3, you can make a great argument for jumping to a Mac, but FCPX? Which now brings up the second point... all the folks who only bought Macs for FCP/FCS, and who aren't that invested in the Mac way of doing things ("Mac Fanboys", for lack of a much better way of describing them), and who aren't happy with FCPX... they're going to have to buy a new computer sometime. Do they continue down the road of staying on a Mac, or do they buy an equally capable but much cheaper Windows PC, especially if the software they now use, be it Premiere Pro or Avid, can be used on a Win7 PC?
stoneinapond
Veteran
Not sure what logic you used to arrive at the conclusion in your first reply.
And if you read my post closely you'd see that I didn't think the present trend to "gross" entertainment is a good thing. You made a connection between requirements in the entertainment field for certain tools to produce a certain product because that's the way the old guard did it. My argument is that that doesn't hold true anymore, but not that I think it’s progress.
You're talking to a person who no longer owns a TV. Broadcast TV is a cultural desert. The old guard is dying. The new guard isn't any more exciting or innovative, it's just new. And it will have its own requirements.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Well... interesting observations, but let's look at what drives Apple now. It's not the pros and the feature films. It's everything that has "i" in it. iPad, iPhone, iMac, iPod, iLife, iWork, iTunes. That's what they sell, that's what they want to sell. And they want the whole pie. They want people to buy into the whole integrated Apple iLifeStyle. And a massive part of that business has been the iTunes store and the iPod. The iTunes store has been massively successful for them. Next up -- video. People watch video in the iNternet (okay, they haven't trademarked that one yet, but that's probably coming...)
People make videos and they upload them to the web, they share them, they watch the videos on their iPads and iMacs, and Apple wants to be part of that. FCP X is for them. That's who they are targeting. They are not concerned with the major feature films and the blockbuster television industry, or the news industry. They want people shooting video on their iPhones and distributing it through the iTunes store.Once you embrace the Apple way, they are counting on you to embrace it all the way. They don't want you going to Avid or Vegas or whatever, they want you cutting on your iMac and viewing on your iPad or iPhone, footage that's stored on the iCloud. And iMovie wasn't getting that job done, so now they have iMovie Pro, aka FCP X.
It's a strategy that's been very successful for them for a very long time. They are now bigger than Microsoft. Some people love it, they buy into it, and they really enjoy it. Others are not interested in tying themselves so tightly to a single supplier -- and, like the pro reaction to the changes in FCP X, there's good reason to be concerned about getting so deeply involved in a vision like this. It works out fine if their vision matches yours, but it's a relationship in which the other party has ALL the power.
Really, they could have made everything soooo much easier on themselves if they had called it iMovie Pro, instead of FCP. It's not FCP, it's a whole new app. If they'd just changed the name, calling it something new, and simultaneously announced that they were discontinuing the FCS package, then we'd be exactly where we are now, except everyone would understand, instead of all this confusion.
Requirement #1
To achieve a million hits on Youtube the video must include a scene of a dog making funny sounds while licking his balls.
New guard. New culture.
well, a good reason would be to continue on mac because hardware is pretty well done (up today) and premiere and avid can run on it.
for sure it is not a budget oriented decision since it like getting a mercedes or a bmw when looking for a car. For sure you could get the same power for cheaper.
But if you try to get the same level quality hardware on a pc it will cost you as much or even more.
I am on premiere since ver 1.0 and used almost every video editing software on the earth, like i have build pc for 30 years . For me they are all the same.
I don't like FCP because the choice of codec but out of that it is not different than Vegas, to take the closest product.
Vegas today (thanks to Sony) is a top product in quality and features, but still tagged for amateur.
For me a good product is well written in its main feature and open enough to let third party add the missing bits. And version N+1 must be just a significant upgrade from version N, so
you keep your marks and do not break your workflow.
For this premiere is the king, just followed by Avid (more stable but slow to keep up with new features and awfully expensive), and FCP is the last on the line. The others are usually a moving target or too young to judge. The worst on PC is Pinnacle, but that's the way pinnacle works.
(launching a new version every 6 month , full of bug).
for sure it is not a budget oriented decision since it like getting a mercedes or a bmw when looking for a car. For sure you could get the same power for cheaper.
But if you try to get the same level quality hardware on a pc it will cost you as much or even more.
I am on premiere since ver 1.0 and used almost every video editing software on the earth, like i have build pc for 30 years . For me they are all the same.
I don't like FCP because the choice of codec but out of that it is not different than Vegas, to take the closest product.
Vegas today (thanks to Sony) is a top product in quality and features, but still tagged for amateur.
For me a good product is well written in its main feature and open enough to let third party add the missing bits. And version N+1 must be just a significant upgrade from version N, so
you keep your marks and do not break your workflow.
For this premiere is the king, just followed by Avid (more stable but slow to keep up with new features and awfully expensive), and FCP is the last on the line. The others are usually a moving target or too young to judge. The worst on PC is Pinnacle, but that's the way pinnacle works.
(launching a new version every 6 month , full of bug).
You misunderstood what I said.
I was referring to the quality of the product. That was my only concern. In order to get that quality, then you do need certain tools. I don't say that because that's how it's always been done; I say it because it's what you need in order to get the quality. You can't do fine airbrush detail with a paint roller, no matter how talented you are.
But if people are becoming more tolerant of lower quality, then I don't see how that's good for anyone. I certainly don't think it should be something one should aspire to. It's got nothing to do with "pissing" or "moaning"; it simply is what it is. And what it IS is going back to making wooden wheels when there used to be steel and rubber. If that's the future, and it may well be, then it's unfortunate for everyone.
stoneinapond
Veteran
Ha ha, so true.
TimTheFoolMan
Well-known member
When the displayed image is on a monitor that doesn't always reproduce color the same way (depending on which device you're using), you become more tolerant of color differences. That's an artifact of the viewing device. People made the same assessment of TV vs movie screens. At a fairly recent point, the quality of TV color reproduction was close enough that people started treating them as equal.
The fact that a certain segment wanted to see color always reproduced the way the cinematographer intended, didn't mean we ignored TV news shows and waited for the news to hit the local theater. Different types of content have different quality demands. As I said previously, the content from Hollywood & TV is hardly what I would call "progress." What we have are accurate reproductions of the various shades of brown, but it's still a turd.
What if we find that the audience just doesn't care? What if poor color, sub-par camera work, and generally less polish doesn't matter to the audience? Will we tilt against windmills? Are we going to refuse to deliver music in MP3 format because it's inherently lossy, and all the wonderful quality from the studio mixing is lost, or are we going to accept that the listener is more concerned with portability than fidelity? - Tim
Am I the only one offended by this narrow-minded opinion?
Those are two entirely separate things.
The first part is about doing poor work, not the "fidelity" of the delivery format. Do you suggest everyone stop trying to do the best work they can?
The second part is about a compression format, not the quality of the recorded music. As far as I know, no one sets their performance or songwriting bar lower just because it's going to be heard through earbuds. Again, should they?
Not offended as much as it is non descriptive and insular.
There are categories of pro editors that require extensive collaboration and 3rd party sharing.
But my uneducated guess is that the vast majority of pro editors are not in this category.
That's been my emphasis in responding.
A professional editor isn't only defined by Disney's situation or those similar to Disney.
It's probably more defined by editors whose workflow doesn't require sharing for post, grading, or sweetening.
In its first version, FCP X isn't directed to the Disney model, and may never be. But it holds potential, as yet undefined, for the non Disney professional editing model, which I believe is the larger percentage of users.
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Mike Harvey
Veteran
No, but here's a better way defining "Pro's" and "non-Pros"....
"Pro" - anyone who makes (or is attempting to make) a decent sized portion of their income from editing. Falling in this category would be folks working in post houses, TV stations large and small, one-man-bands, independent filmmakers, wedding videographers, and the guy who does general media for the local medium sized business/non-profit/house of worship... and a whole lot of people not on the list. As well as students trying to learn how to be a "Pro". That covers a lot of ground
"Non-Pro" - hobbyists and amateurs just trying to have fun.
TimTheFoolMan
Well-known member
I suggest that if you're doing more than the intended audience demands, recognize it for that, but don't wrap it up in the robe of "professional." Call it "art" or something else, but professional work is done for hire, to the specification that the client requires.
If the difference doesn't affect the product's acceptance by the user, you're wasting time and money. If, on the other hand, those things DO make a difference, then the audience will vote with their feet, and the client will go elsewhere.
As for the second part being all about the compression format, I disagree entirely. Does it make sense to light a scene for 14 stops of exposure if I'm using an AF-100? Isn't that about the compression format, and not about the visuals of the scene I'm recording? - Tim
Wow. So many intelligent people, and so little thought and so much fundamental lack of knowledge of even the first principles of what art is. Newsflash: it is impossible for people to become "more tolerant" of poor color, sub-par camera work etc. Not unless they've become aliens or a different species with a different psychology. But as long as we are dealing with Homo Sapiens Sapiens, what people are proposing here regarding "more tolerant" is simply not biologically possible.
How does art work? In the simplest of terms - this really is art 101 - art employs a number of psychological techniques to achieve aesthetic results. These techniques can be divided into culturally dependent and culturally independent. The culturally independent, would be for example, utilizing the facts such as humans tend to watch the eyes of other humans, laws of perception, etc. which are biologically hard-wired into all of us, independent of culture. So, for example, a huge number of camera techniques great directors/DPs/CamOps use, take advantage of these biological facts. A bad/incompetent director/DP/CamOp will either not take advantage of these techniques, or botch them - the result is "sub-par camera work". But how does that translate into the impact on the viewer? Well very simply, take two identical films, identical in every way (actors, story, etc.), and if you merely alter the camera work to "sub-par", the sub par will have a worse reception *necessarily* and by definition, simply because in one case you have made maximum psychological impact (good camera work) and in the other you have attenuated or even countered the psychological impact. In no case will that "sub-par camera work" translate into a "better" viewer experience - it cannot, because we are built a certain way, as humans. For people to become "more tolerant" or prefer the worse experience would necessitate people having a different psychology from homo sapiens, sapiens - becoming something different from what a human being is, subject to these biologically hard-wired traits. So in any work of art, including film, the cream will rise to the top, and that is an iron rule you can take to the bank, because it works based on hard-wired biology.
The case is entirely different for culturally dependent artistic techniques. Those are techniques which work only because of cultural factors which are fluid and can change with time and the culture itself. And that's what's confusing people - they conflate the culturally dependent with the culturally independent. Take framing: the use of angles (f.ex. shooting up/down on a character), the use of closeups, or the use of selective focus - this is all hard-wired. This is how human perception and psychology works. If you use these techniques incorrectly, you will get worse user experience, no ifs, buts and maybes. So too for a whole shedload of techniques. On the other hand, there is a whole bunch of things done in editing or technique, such as wipes and waves (to indicate "remembering" or "dreaming"), which are simply an artifact cultural education or exposure - and when the culture or exposure changes, these become ineffective. To take a very simple example: two fabrics, one with optical illusions as patterns, another with patterns associated with culture. The optical illusions are hard-wired, and will work the same way in every culture and across the ages, but fabric patterns which reference, f.ex. wealth in one culture (gold crowns) will not work in another culture, or may stop working in time.
The problem for people has been that culturally dependent techniques change - and old folks claim that's a "decline of standards", when it's merely a change. Solution: KEEP UP WITH THE TIMES! Culturally independent techniques: STOP WORRYING, THE CREAM WILL ALWAYS RISE TO THE TOP.
Your job, Mr. Artist, is to distinguish between those which are culturally independent - and master those - and roll with the punches on the culturally dependent ones - or become obsolete.
Now that we've disposed of that nonsense, I want to get back to something productive. Various NLE's. I want to ask David Jimerson, whose opinion I value, does it make sense for me to switch to Sony Vegas, in case FCPX never grows up, or should I look at Avid? This would be for feature work - independent, low budget - with special emphasis on multilayered sound in post (which I gather is a major weakness of FCPX as it stands now). TIA!
stoneinapond
Veteran
Well there's the rub. FCP X is not a paint roller, nor is it a wooden wheel. It just doesn't play nice with anyone right now. It lives in its own universe. And it may stay there. But it is certainly capable of quality editing.
Could someone create a Transformer movie on it? No (thank goodness). Is it capable of telling a good story? Yes, with the right editor. And somebody will do it outside the money making machinery that is the current and established entertainment industry.
So let's stop putting the software down. It is a very capable tool that may grow into something very interesting. Or not.