X makes perfect sense from a business standpoint.

TimTheFoolMan said:
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?
Click to expand...
Paraphrased: What if quality didn't matter to anyone.
The only retail store in business would be Wal-Mart.
The only restaurant would be McDonalds.
Broadband would be replaced by dial up.
Kia would be the only car available.
etc, etc, etc.

Sounds like a wonderful world.

TimTheFoolMan said:
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?
Click to expand...
Delivery and production are different parts of the post pipeline. Following your logic we should never acquire and edit anything in a high quality audio format such as Wave or AIFF. The RED camera and ARRI's Alexa should cease to exist because the audience doesn't care about quality.
I'm with David on this one, I have no desire to work with clients that have no concern over quality. If they don't care about quality the only thing they care about is price. Competing based solely on the cheapest price is a losing proposition for everyone.
 
stoneinapond said:
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.
Click to expand...

Well, I'll tell you what -- when I actually "put" any software "down," then we'll have that conversation. Not sure who you're arguing with, but considering what I wrote, it's not me.
 
Well, Walmart is one of the largest and most successful retail operations in the world. The brand name shampoo purchased there is less expensive than purchased at Safeway. Does that make Safeway's better?

And McDonalds is about the same.

Your analogy comparing broadband to dial up doesn't work.

The story telling is what matters. And to most only matters.

How many of us don't understand the computer generated "camera shake" that is supposed to indicate that the CSI "Something or The Other" is actually real?
 
OldCorpse said:
Newsflash: it is impossible for people to become "more tolerant" of poor color, sub-par camera work etc.
Click to expand...

?

People's standards drop all the time. It's astonishing that anyone would argue otherwise.


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!
Click to expand...

If you want multilayered sound for a feature, you're going to want to work with someone in Pro Tools, in which case I would not recommend Vegas. It, too, is missing the vital export options which would allow for ease of collaboration between platforms.
 
Cool. Thanks, David. (wrt. the "standards debate", I'm going to gracefully bow out, I said everything I wanted about that in the previous post, and if I was not convincing, I can't do better).
 
milksac said:
Paraphrased: What if quality didn't matter to anyone.
The only retail store in business would be Wal-Mart.
The only restaurant would be McDonalds.
Broadband would be replaced by dial up.
Kia would be the only car available.
etc, etc, etc.

Sounds like a wonderful world.
Click to expand...
This is hardly what I was suggesting, but as with many debates, paraphrasing instead of using the other person's actual words makes it easier to successfully argue your point.

I never said that quality didn't matter. What I said was, what if the audience doesn't care? The absolute resolution of film was higher than that of TV up until very recently. Did that mean that quality didn't matter to anyone? No, it meant that the value of seeing the images at lower resolution in your house exceeded the value of higher resolution in the theater, for some material.

Delivery and production are different parts of the post pipeline. Following your logic we should never acquire and edit anything in a high quality audio format such as Wave or AIFF. The RED camera and ARRI's Alexa should cease to exist because the audience doesn't care about quality.
I'm with David on this one, I have no desire to work with clients that have no concern over quality. If they don't care about quality the only thing they care about is price. Competing based solely on the cheapest price is a losing proposition for everyone.
Click to expand...
Again, this has nothing to do with not caring about quality. It has to do with understanding what the audience considers "quality."

There are bands (Pompalamoose is a classic example), now profitable, that deliver almost all their music in a compressed format. They have mixed their own music, no doubt in a manner that a "pro" mixer would find insufficient. They've done so for expediency and to save money. They couldn't afford (until the Hyundai Christmas commercials) to pay someone else, so Jack and Natalie just mixed it on their own. The audio from the video sessions IS what they deliver (they use the term "VideoSong" to describe sessions recorded this way). That puts self-imposed constraints on the "sweetening" that is possible.

If you went back to some of the original files, I have little doubt that there are artifacts of recording in the rooms they use (hardly studio settings) that would be clearly audible to trained ears. It would probably make an audio engineer sick.

The audience, so far, hasn't cared, and has been more interested in the artist's creative fingerprints being on every part of the process. In other words, the "quality" that the audience is demanding isn't necessarily the "quality" that an audio engineer or record producer might have demanded. - Tim
 
TimTheFoolMan said:
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.
Click to expand...

I don't know that I follow you. Again, are you saying that you shouldn't strive for more?

The audience never expected or demanded in any tangible way better FX than what was in the original Star Trek at the time (indeed, it was cutting edge in the late '60s), so do you suggest that it was something other than professional to try to improve upon that? A waste of time or resources?


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
Click to expand...

Then, you ARE suggesting that a singer/band purposely strive for a lesser performance or quality of songwriting just because it will often be heard through earbuds? Are you suggesting that they record to MP3 format as a master format?
 
David Jimerson said:
I don't know that I follow you. Again, are you saying that you shouldn't strive for more?

The audience never expected or demanded in any tangible way better FX than what was in the original Star Trek at the time (indeed, it was cutting edge in the late '60s), so do you suggest that it was something other than professional to try to improve upon that? A waste of time or resources?
Click to expand...
I think, given that Leonard Nimoy was out of focus in the last scene of the most recent iteration, that a lot of money was spent on effects that could have gone elsewhere.

Take a look inside the walls of a house. Are the 2x4's cut perfectly square at every joint? No. Does it affect the strength of the wall? No. Would you do it differently if you're doing it for yourself? Probably. There's this... "craftsmanship" thing that pops up in these kinds of discussions that I find interesting, but frequently irrelevant. I think if you're pushing the quality bar to the ultimate, you're probably never going to finish the project, and therefore, will go out of business.

If there are qualitative aspects of a product that you won't compromise on, which the customer doesn't care about, why are you taking such a stand? That, in my opinion, is wasted resources, because the time spent doing that could have been spent working on the next project.

Then, you ARE suggesting that a singer/band purposely strive for a lesser performance or quality of songwriting just because it will often be heard through earbuds? Are you suggesting that they record to MP3 format as a master format?
Click to expand...
Strive for? No. Allow and tolerate negative artifacts because they won't be visible/audible to the customer? Yes. - Tim
 
OK folks. It bears repeating that it's not that Apple does not care about the pro market, which is too small for Apple. Apple just cares more about selling to a bigger market, or across markets, prosumers and pros. But if the current pro users jump ship, that's hardly a dent in Apple's revenues, what's more that loss would be made up for by new FCP X users, some of them god forbid! will be come pro users some day. That was true for FCP and it's true for FCP X.

Pro users' are angry because they think Apple has abandoned them. Not true. That they were Apple's one and only priority is a misconception (or hubris, which is understandable because FCP has been so good to so many of them). The pro market has always been a side business and will remain so with the FCP X suite. Think of pro users as icing on the cake for Apple. I know it doesn't do anything to help those egos who think that amateurs shouldn't use the same tools as professionals, but it is the way Apple think.
 
David Jimerson said:
People's standards drop all the time. It's astonishing that anyone would argue otherwise.
Click to expand...

Then who's "standards" should be the norm and is acceptable?

What the "pros," whomever they are, tell us is acceptable standard, or what the eventual consumer wants?

I thought it was the story.
 
milksac said:
@ Tim Glad I could make you laugh. Now I feel like I've accomplished something today.
Click to expand...
But can you accomplish the making of your art or commerce on FCPX? :huh:


As for the sidebar discussion, perhaps it's a matter of the law of diminishing returns?

Strive for optimal quality, but obsessiveness (ie Kubrick's 70+ takes, and I say this as a Kubrick fanatic) could end up costing somewhere down the line.

Like with all things in life- balance. And right now, I'm balanced between Avid and Premiere...
 
Tim makes some excellent points. Delivering what the client wants is, in business, the paramount concern. Spending extra time polishing beyond what they want, and beyond what they will ever see, is indeed wasted effort that could probably be put towards some more profitable purpose. Surely that is obvious to everyone?

As to where we draw the line and what standards we aspire to -- I think the difference is in defining who the audience is or who the product is for. Tim is saying, basically, that if a customer comes in and orders a 16-ounce root beer, you should give him a 16-ounce root beer. You shouldn't give him a 24-ounce root beer with ice cream and a cherry, because that's not what he asked for and that's not what he's willing to pay for. If you do it because you want to, then hey, you're a nice guy -- a nice guy who's going to be out of business soon.

I think David's point is one of aspiring and climbing to be the best -- and if we do that, it's entirely possible that we could elevate our client base, thus earning clients who *do* demand more, and therefore we can charge more, give them more, and everyone's happy.

But those aren't the same thing. Striving, climbing, and aspiring aren't the same thing as filling today's orders, and it sounds to me like Tim is more talking about taking care of today's business.

As for declining standards -- standards do, by and large, decline. Years ago we had shows like The West Wing, or ER. Today's airwaves are filled with "The Real Housewives Of Atlanta" and "American Idol". Or, my most glaring example, the DSLR. When the DSLRs burst on the scene, I said "interesting concept, but the quality SUCKS." I was chased out of the village by irate villagers with flaming torches and pitchforks. Here we are three years later, and lots of people are now starting to realize -- DSLRs suck. The AF100 and the FS100 are showing people that there can be dramatically better quality, for not that much more. And many former DSLR users are now to the point where they can't believe they got away with the DSLR for so long. Will we get that way with production standards? Maybe. I hope so -- I hope that the absolute cheapo production quality we're seeing now, will be replaced with higher-quality stuff that people gravitate to because they can see and feel and hear and taste the difference.

David Saraceno pointed it out -- McDonald's has hideous food quality -- but it's cheap and it appeals to the largest customer base, and as a result they're massive (er, McDonald's is ... well, I guess their customers are too. :) ) Wal-Mart aims at the lowest common denominator and has cheaper prices; they've also been questioned about various aspects of their business practices, and they're completely massive, the #1 largest retailer in the world. FCP has apparently chosen a similar path of going after the larger market. As the title of this thread says, that is likely a good business decision for them. Whether it's good for you, is a whole different question to face.
 
What are books?

:)

On a serious note, broadcast TV is becoming, or has become, like Walmart.

Take a look at the networks during prime time.

Virtually everything is reality TV, talent contests, or similar ilk.

Low budget, shaky cameras, no script, writers, etc.

It's what people want, or will pay for.

A beautifully graded, sweetened, filmed piece will always be reduced the least quality component in the delivery chain.
 
Last edited:
David Saraceno said:
Then who's "standards" should be the norm and is acceptable?
Click to expand...

Dunno. Just seems to me that a general acceptance of lower quality isn't good for anyone, as I've said several times now.


I thought it was the story.
Click to expand...

Not usually. They're motion pictures, not motion stories. The pictures tend to win. Lower the quality of the pictures and then you have unholy grail of crappy stories with crappy pictures. Fun times ahead!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top