Re: After a year has perception of FCPX changed?

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with mobility, but since you took the time to write all this interesting stuff out, I'll definitely take the time to reply.


[Bill Davis] "When I use X on my laptop - every single edit decision I've made previously in my event brewer - no matter which events or projects those were created for - can be instantly available to every single project I choose to create from that point on - with all my pre-edit decisions as to trimming, color correction and key wording intact.

That capability didn't exist in Legacy that I ever uncovered.

The X approach is infinitely more flexible and clearly superior in my view."

I can see how this might be useful for some folks, but it would drive me crazy. I would pay not to have that feature. I only want to have open projects that I'm working, and most definitely NOT everything I've ever done. If I need to have several projects open at the same time, great, but NOT as a default.


[Bill Davis] "And when you're out on the road with Legacy, how exactly do you handle Capture Scratch management? I don't recall a way to have a dozen projects with a dozen capture scratches associated with those projects live simultaneously - the default state of X with multiple Events available along side multiple projects as the default.
"

I really have no idea what you mean by "Capture Scratch management." Its just a folder. You can have plenty of folders open. I've been completely tapeless for two years now, and mostly tapeless for the two years before that. I use folders. My projects can get quite large and encompass many, many folders. I can have them all open. I can open folders from other projects. Defaulting to all projects open is a nightmare as far as I'm concerned. It is SO not an advantage. I can see, again, how it could be very useful for some lines of work, but I assure there are others that it is NOT a very good idea for.


[Bill Davis] "I can be editing away on one Project, realize I need footage from another project, or another event, mount a drive, and edit the new material into my timeline in seconds. No launching prior projects, no shut down and re-launching FCP legacy edits. "

Why do you think I can't do this in FCS? I can mount a drive and import whole folders or individual items without having to launch a project. I can easily preview whatever I'm looking for by using the OS X browser and then just drag the file to a bin. I do a lot of sfx this way. And I can certainly open an additional project or five without having to shut down or relaunch.


[Bill Davis] "In fact, in Legacy I couldn't even SEE the contents of a timeline when I had another one launched! I could open an exported MOVIE - but that give me NO reference to the original timeline since movies and their parent timelines were always cut off from each other. "

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. FCS allows multiple timelines to be open, whereas x does not. This something I miss quite a bit in all other NLEs. Its one of those area where FCS maintains superiority. Perhaps you mean you cannot preview a timeline in a bin. That's true. And a little scrub device would be nice, but it really isn't that big a deal to click and see what's in the timeline. I would take multiple open timelines over some sort of bin preview any day. But, that's me.

[Bill Davis] " I remember spending lots to time looking for clips by opening and closing FCP-Legacy projects until I could find the one that had the clip I was looking for if I couldn't remember the ID tag I'd used and wanted a visual reference.
"

Again, OS X provides a pretty decent preview feature these days. And, again--I do not want all my projects open at the same time. I get that this is a viable selling point for you, but it would be a royal PItA for me.


[Bill Davis] "Legacy had no visual reference other than shuffling through bins and scanning thumbnails for the open project ONLY.

Former projets were just "dumb icons" on the desktop. Unless you create and maintain some kind of clip database outside the program, each edit defaulted to a "closed book" state."

Yeah, its showing it age a little bit. I like the kind of preview features available in Pr 6, which thankfully allows me not to have everything open.

[Bill Davis] "In X, all your prior work can be open and available for visual search with a few clicks - all from within the live app.
"

And again, thank God that it is the only NLE that has gone there.

Bill, I found this conversation very interesting because it has really helped me see why you like X so much. I can see how its organization can be very attractive. I can even see why--from your POV--you might think of it as being more mobile, because I see that for you it acts as a work suitcase/filing cabinet, combined with an artist's pallet. So, I get what you are saying. But, there are a lot of other ways of looking at mobility, and claiming it as the sole property of FCP X is just not something I can agree with.