Re: New blog post from Philip Hodgetts. Worth the read.

[Walter Soyka] "And wait a minute -- are you suggesting that FCPX might be better suited than other NLEs for our brave new world, and that this might confer some advantages onto its users? Weren't you just trying to school me last week about how irrelevant the tool is when you have talent?"

Yeah, I actually think that right now, it is. It was the first of the "majors" to strip down the code to what's needed for the largest common group of editing functions. Unlike the folks here who keep asking "how will it let me work with the sound department, it acknowledges that the vast majority of editors don't HAVE a sound department. Or a dedicated color correction professional. Or a compression team. They just want quality tools to get their day to day projects done to a solid, professional standard - which in most cases means a quality picture, clear sound, and engaging graphics - the tools for the creation of which are solidly built into X right now.

As to "schooling you" that's never my intent, Walter. You clearly don't need "schooling" from anyone. All I can do here is raise my small ruckus (they make wonderful pets) and tweak those who are hide-bound in their belief that the highway is the sole existing alternative to "their way."

And the tool is "irrelevant" only so far as you have access to a choice of tools. I've never argued that something ancillary to function - like form factor and portability - can't be a significant advantages to deployment and use. If that wasn't true, we would have seen generations of harmonica players lugging pipe organs to concerts. The point is that X as it stands is a very sweet combo of tight code (making the app store deployment reasonable), solid capability, and laptop-friendly performance. There are other similar tools, but I'm comfortable with it's place in the editing choice firmament - and am enjoying it's use. Simple as that.

[Walter Soyka] "Further, how does a change from push to pull consumption actually change the production process? Isn't there still value in a production process that collects raw assets, curates them, and presents them meaningfully for consumption?"

Yes, but that's one of the places my thinking is evolving. I'm considering that "an edit" might not be the same as I've considered it throughout my career. It's always been a thing with a "finished state" like a painting on the wall. But we're all seeing the "screenification" of the physical world. Where bars, galleries, offices and yes, connected people toting smart phones and iPads are increasing in numbers. Right now, most of the content they consume is "fixed" at the point they purchase and consume it. I'm just dreaming of some possible "drift" towards a world where, like an RSS feed, a news channel loop, or the constantly updating screen at the information desk where it might be beneficial if you could "curate" conent over time more easily than finishing, publishing a file, and then serving that as a packetized fixed resource for update. I see some potential for that in X, outside the traditional video screen drivers like Watchout or it's brethren. That intrigues me. And I do think that X has some tools - represented by the Project Library and it's dynamic connection to whatever changes are made in the Primary Storyline that might cause it to become useful for tasks like that over time. They're not fully formed right now. But I think the pipes are in place. That simple ability to "scrub" through projects in the Project Library is a fine example. It's a new kind of "quick display link" right into the timeline. A single button "refresh to Vimeo" macro with email notification is about all it would take to turn that into something that updates a cadre of clients with one click. Tha'ts probably not transformative. But it is interesting in a product with such a modest entry point.


[Walter Soyka] "Since you're seeing big benefits from FCPX for your business, I'm curious about your opinion on that 4x claim: has FCPX let you complete your work 200% to 400% faster? Can you get what used to be a two-week job done in between a half-week and a single week?"

Maybe. I'm not totally comfortable quantifying it in that way - tho I certainly understand why Phillip noted that. In my experience, the change from Legacy to X has mostly enabled me to dive more fully into the editorial process quickly. Where before I was always waiting for composited assets to render (the big weakness in Legacy) X stripped that away. I think I noted the visceral annoyance I felt after I used X for a couple of projects than went back to Legacy. It was truly annoying. And I didn't expect that. Since then, i think I've maybe launched Legacy twice to look at older projects. I've found NO reason to go back to it for a project so far. But I know that's just me. Other people with other project profiles will surely find plenty of reasons to do that. Folks already working in Premier or other "background rendering capable" apps might not notice such a big change. But for me, it was palpable. Also, I have to say that because it turned out to be so "laptop capable" it changed my work habits literally overnight. I seldom did rough cuts or worked out ideas in the field even tho I had Legacy on my laptop for years. Capture scratch management was a part of that, as doing "reconnect media" and "proxy" work wasn't particularly satisfying to me on the road.

The X process with disk images seems to me much more slick and psychologically penalty-free since it feels like I'm working with full-rez files on the road and the work I'm doing there is "finalizable" in a way that my workflow wan't in Legacy.

But that might just be a reflection of the fact that I developed my workflows starting in 1999 with FCP-Version 1 back when it could barely handle DV and drive storage and firewire 400 were seriously limiting factors in a laptop world. So i'm not any kind of test case for a FCP "power user." It's never represented more than perhaps a fifth of my work since as primarily as a producer with full project responsibility for so many years, editing came to be ONE thing I did - not the main thing.

All I know is that the convergence of my i7 MacBook Pro - Installation of X - and having put in the better part of two years trasnitioning from shooting big Sony Shoulder Form cameras to shooting a 5d - was a pretty powerful convergence all at one time - and one that still seems to be paying off for me in increased image quality and low equipment overhead - while providing me the ability to produce finished project results that my clients seem to appreciate.

I know that many folks here are exclusively "editors" but, I've been doing my "end to end" production for close to 20 years now. From writing scripts to delivering finished programs. And FCP-X is part of my current tool package for precisely the same reason I relied on Sony Cameras for the first 15 years of my work. They just work well every day with few hassles. I consider FCP-X to be in the same class. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was trying to edit TV shows on deadline. But I'm not. And I think my type of work is likely more typical of the 2 million FCP legacy seats than the guys upset because they can't interchange properly with an outside color correction team.

Simple as that.

"Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions."-Justice O'Connor