Re: FCPX from an Editor who used it on Iditarod 2012 (long again!, sorry!)

[Herb Sevush] "C'mon Bill, that's too easy, you gotta make us work for it."

OK, Herb, but if you're gonna ding the "crazy" bell on me -how do you handle that the original link here was to yet another pro user in the field saying the same thing I've said over and over and over again.

Paraphasing: "I've taken the time to learn it via trial and error - and now that I understand how it operates - it does things in edit workflow that I simply don't want to give up."

Isn't that useful for everyone to discuss?

In fact the ONLY people I can conceive of who wouldn't want to address that idea are those with an emotional or financial ax to grind.

Criticism is the easiest thing in the world to generate. We all can find countless things to point out in the world that are not to our liking.

But when you ask people to explain why so that everyone might learn the thinking behind the criticism, in my experience, most of the time it comes down to "because I just don't LIKE it."

As one small example, people diss X for crashing. Which is fair. It does crash. And if that's all someone has to say, it's fair - but it's also misleading. Cuz, when others note that it largely crashes "losslessly" and an average user seldom gets set back much if any from such a crash - that's useful for someone trying to decide whether to use it.

I think it was Mark who even had it crash spectacularly and destructively. For a few days he was angry and pissed. Which we all get. And we all took it as a cautionary tale and re-doubled our guard and re-thought our workflow. But it also looks like Mark's natural anger is abating and he's STILL working with X.

Why, for heaven's sake? Shouldn't he just dump it and move on? If that "can" happen (and clearly it can) what's the balancing positive that makes him still want to use it?

Isn't that worth examining?

I push back a lot because it works for me. Not always, not in every case. But it presents new and exciting tools for me that have changed how I work - for the better.

I can edit faster with X than I could with Legacy - and now I understand that with every project I successfully create and archive, I am building a global database for each client that I can use in the future that will potentially improve my efficiency further.

I just got an order for new commercials for a west coast client just yesterday, and was able to save hours if not days by instantly calling up the relevant selects via keywords off the old project.

I went from idea to rough cut in 30 minutes , rather than a full day of dis-archiving their project from a year ago and re-capturing the digital tapes which would have been the process a year ago.

That's what X has the potential to do. Uniquely in my estimation. It's built for persistent on-line asset storage and retrieval. Not editing in a bubble cut off from sources and exports as the Legacy interface largely was for small facility editors like me.

I've already used features like the Share capabilities to turn client approval dubs into something that take literally seconds to generate and email, rather than the hours it took to burn DVDs and FedEx them off in the past.

The "timeline operations" module in the middle of FCP-X is all that most traditional "editors" are stuck arguing about.

(Analogy alert: look away so as not to burn your brain!)
To me that's like arguing exclusively about the engines at a car show. Should it be part of the discussion? Absolutely. But it's not the only discussion worth having. And the engine doesn't adequately describe the entire car experience, does it?

Some here can't or simply don't want to edit with X. Fine. I can and enjoy doing so. And I feel like everyday I do it, I'm building a better editing future for myself, because much of the work I do at my edit station today - particularly in the new prep workspace - has great potential to be useful to me tomorrow.

That's the kind of stuff that those of us who are using it are seeing as transformative. Not whether the timeline is magnetic or not. That turned out to be almost totally trivial in hindsight.

FWIW.

"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