FCP X - Six months on

Six months on and I still don't see the light at the end of the FCP X tunnel. Here are two interesting blog posts that look at the ongoing situation from slightly different points of view, which I thought would be worth sharing (if you haven't seen them already):

http://www.artguglielmo.com/blog/2011/12/24/think-for-yourself.html

http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2011/12/why-do-production-pressures-favor-final-cut-pro-x/

After reading those blogs I find myself coming down on Art Guglielmo's side to a larger degree. Although I can see what Philip Hodgetts is getting at, from my point of view - working mostly in the corporate production arena - I don't see those pressures being so much of an issue. We certainly have budget and time pressures, but we in the corporate sector often have the luxury (and it is a luxury) of being able to exert a little more influence over our clients' decisions, and the workflow is more adaptive. By the very nature of their jobs, corporate clients don't have as much experience as broadcast producers. And nor should they have - that's why they come to us - and we can therefore guide them down the best path available for a particular project.

I wonder where this whole mess will be in another six months...

In the meantime I am enjoying continuing to work with FCP 7 and dipping my toes occasionally in the calm waters of the pool of Premiere.

Steve Jobs: Thank you and goodnight

Since I heard the sad news about the passing of Steve Jobs I have been wanting to say something about how that man's vision and genius impacted upon my life. It's taken a few days, but the following sort of sums up my feelings. In 1988 I sat at a computer for the first time: some sort of PC running something called MS-DOS. I hated it. I'm a visual person - a right brainer - who is pretty much dyscalculic, and being faced with incomprehensible lines of code made me feel uncomfortable, inadequate and sick. At that time, aged 28, I thought that was it. I thought "If this is what computers are all about I'll stick with pencil and paper, thank you very much". Then in 1990 I was introduced to the Mac. Everything changed overnight. Suddenly the future wasn't so bleak - there was definitely sun behind those clouds. The Mac (and Apple) have changed my life in so many ways. I can't imagine my life without having had Apple around. The biggest single impact that Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, has had is bringing the way we work out of the studio and onto the desktop. Desktop publishing (DTP) with programmes such as PageMaker and later QuarkXPress, both originally launched exclusively for the Mac; desktop drawing and design with Canvas, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (launched in 1990 - again exclusively for the Mac - was an epiphany); and of course desktop video with Adobe Premiere and After Effects, Media 100 and, later, of course, Final Cut Pro. Of course there were other players in the marketplace, some using different platforms but, for me (and many others), Apple led the way, quickly becoming the dominant leader, with the others following their lead. One practical example of how this impacted on my workday stands out in my memory because it was the first time that impact had really hit home. I was working in the conference industry as a software producer (i.e. producing the visual and audio content for a show), in the late eighties/early nineties. At that time, if you looked closely and paid attention, you could definitely see the first shoots of the digital age and what was coming. We were just beginning to use computers to produce slides for presentations, and the computers of choice were - naturally - Macs.

We used a great programme called Aldus Persuasion, later to become Adobe Persuasion before it subsequently and sadly got knocked off its perch by the almighty Microsoft's  PowerPoint. This was the workflow: all the layout work was done on the Mac, then you copied your files to a floppy disc. That disc was then delivered to a processing house where the files would be processed onto 35mm film and then mounted as individual slides. All a bit long-winded and time-consuming compared to today's standards I know, but at the time it was a revelation. Prior to this we were physically doing the slide artwork at a desk using either Letraset dry-transfer lettering or pre-set type - literally "cut and paste" (where this now-familiar term derives from) - and then sticking the artwork under a rostrum camera to be shot onto 35mm film and then processed into slides. As my grandma used to say: what a palaver! To give some sense of scale as to the size of job it was producing a major presentation in those days: we would often have a bank of 36 (or more) rack-mounted slide projectors, each holding 80 slides in a carousel tray and there would often be a "tray change" or two during the show (from whence the term "slide-show"). That was a lot of slides and a heck of a lot of work. So to be able to produce these slides sitting at the Mac was a massive step.

I started editing video in the late eighties and first toyed with non-linear desktop editing with Adobe Premiere 2.0 on the Mac for a while during the early nineties but without much success - the technology was not yet there. Then in 1995 my employer invested in a Power Mac 9500 edit suite running Media 100.  If I remember correctly we had an external RAID of 72Gb - which at the time seemed a huge amount of storage - and at around £3000, quite costly too. But that was the turning point for me. I have not looked back. It's how I've earned my living from that point on. When Final Cut Pro launched in 1999 I was quick to jump aboard and despite the detractors in the early days, have done pretty well on it and have had the time of my life. Like so many others, I have built a career from working on Macs and will always be thankful that Steve Jobs happened along and feel lucky that I was around to benefit from this great man's unbounded genius. He was a genius but he was also a showman. I'm sure we all looked forward to his keynote speeches with some excitment. It was like watching a magician - you never knew quite what he was going to pull out of the hat. But whatever it was, it was always a bit of a wow moment. I shall miss that now that the curtain has dropped for the last time.

Photo: acaben via Flikr

Thank you Steve. May you rest in peace.
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FCP X - an update

So Apple has finally relented and succumbed to public pressure and the concerns of the pro user base ...a bit.

Not only have they released an update to v10.0.1 of FCP X, but are now offering a FREE 30-DAY TRIAL of the software! Since when have Apple ever offered anything free? That pressure must have weighed heavy.

This is what the App Store tells us:

"The update improves overall stability and performance and adds the following features: 

• Export audio and video stems as a single multitrack QuickTime movie or as separate files using Roles
• Import and export XML to support third-party workflows
• Place Projects and Events on Xsan to improve collaboration between editors
• Set custom starting timecode for projects
• Add transitions to connected clips in a single step
• Enable full-screen view in OSX Lion
• Speed up delivery with GPU-accelerated export"

What's more, Apple are promising multicam editing and broadcast-quality video monitoring are coming early in 2012. Things are definitely looking up.

The Loop goes into further details of the update here.

So this is all pretty good news, especially for those of us who had all but given up only a matter of weeks ago. That said, FCP X is still a long way from being where it ought to be. I think FCP 7 user will be sticking to what they're used to for a while yet - I certainly will be, while at the same time working my Premiere skills - as I mentioned in an earlier post.

More on that soon.
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