Mark Sanger (Oscar Winner for Editing - Gravity) Trashes FCPX !!!

Oliver,

For me, this topic is about whether Apple is doing enough to promote Final Cut Pro X - whether they stand by it in the same way Adobe and Avid do their products.

@Alex4D

cseeman wrote: Apple was visible at video specific trade shows like NAB. There were a large number of FCP specific user groups Apple was supportive of. Apple marketing the Walter Murch Cold Mountain story. If memory serves me, there were ProApps Evangelists.

Apple pulled out of NAB because they were doing tech support for existing users, not gaining enough new users to justify the multi-million dollars it cost.

FCPUGs (of which I ran one for almost ten years) were not Apple's effort, they were grass roots efforts. All Apple ever did was give us a listing on their web site, which still exists. That hasn't changed. Apple never "supported" user groups outside of that listing.

There still are pro app evangelists. What are we all doing here?

Yes, big to-do about nothing. FCPX is doing just fine. Apple doesn't need to, nor will they spend money they don't really have to. No skin off my back, I have plenty of work and plenty of classes to teach. I agree with the "overly sensitive" part. No one has to "fight" for FCPX in any way, just do our work, let it speak for itself.

There always have been, and always will be, those who bash FCP, that has never, and will never change. Ignore them.

alex4D wrote: whether they stand by it in the same way Adobe and Avid do their products.
@Alex4D

I generally don't care if they do that publicly. Of greater concern is what they do behind the scenes. I've talked to plenty of developers who try to work with Adobe, Apple and others. They clearly indicate that they do not get the kind of support or even interest from Apple as they do from others. At the moment Adobe gets the best marks for willingness to tweak and fine-tune based on feedback. At least in a quantifiable way - even behind-the-scenes.

- Oliver

"At the moment Adobe gets the best marks for willingness to tweak and fine-tune based on feedback."

Based on what evidence?

BenB wrote: Based on what evidence?

Based on statements made to me by most developers I've ever spoken with. Based on the working relationship they have with competitors, like Avid. Based on comments made to me by folks involved in some of the large-scale film projects using Premiere.

It's not me saying this, but rather what they are telling me. It's not that they have a bad relationship with Apple. Rather that dealing with Apple is a black hole. They have a better line of communication with Adobe engineers at a more direct level.

I would add that a lot of the features in the CC 2014.1 release for Premiere Pro came out of direct feedback from the "Gone Girl" team back to Adobe. That's been documented in a lot of the press surrounding that film.

- Oliver

I agree with you Oliver (and many others) that this person's remarks are fairly inconsequential- especially if you take into account when they were making these decisions.

What I cannot agree with is that self promotion is either unimportant (Ben) or must come at the cost of development (Oliver).

Ben, for you to say that Apple didn't engage in promotion in the Legacy days seems to be in complete conflict with reality. A decades worth of NAB attendance and Supermeet Appearances announcing upcoming features. In Action videos showcasing relationships with industry leading directors (Fincher & Cohen Bros), and young indepenant up and comers like Miranda July. Video demos and tutorials as part of the Final Cut Pro website. All this puts a united face on Apple's goals and direction for the product. And while I personally love and use FCPX, you'll never convince me that these things are unimportant to it's perception in the Post universe, or growing it's user base.

And while I agree with you Oliver that the product itself must come first, I can't for the life of me imagine a world where the people doing the marketing we're hoping for are the same people responsible for delivering the code for an update. I'm sure it isn't that way anywhere else- so the idea that marketing vs software improvements is an either/or scenario is a little mind-boggling.

If the FCP dev team wants to be doing more engagement- and it's Apple corporate that's putting up a stone wall. That's where I have a problem.

I have to add, that although, in context, Sanger's brief comment almost makes sense, that's often not how "word of mouth" works.

For many people, they will simply hear "Sanger called FCPX consumer" and that will be the extent of it. That's the world of word of mouth, soundbite, meme, marketing.

The very fact that he called in "consumer" has a very different meaning than if he simply said, "wasn't ready or appropriate for the work I needed to do at the time."

This is why marketing people, for better or worse, craft their language carefully. Apple does nothing to craft a positive image of FCPX.

The only odd exception I've noted is that Apple (along with Avid and Adobe) always has a table at Blackmagic's "road shows," at least every one I've attended in my area.

I said on these boards years ago if Apple didn't get more engaged that it would be fighting a PR battle long after many of the technical limitations of the software were long dealt with.

FCPX is just lost in the most profitable company on the planet. The guys making the usb camera adapters for the iPad arer probably bringing in way more revenue than the ProApps team.

cseeman wrote: For many people, they will simply hear "Sanger called FCPX consumer" and that will be the extent of it. That's the world of word of mouth, soundbite, meme, marketing.

Right, but you don't need to look any farther than the title of this thread. There's not a shred of anything in his comment that indicates "trashes". Quite frankly from the standpoint of the FCP X launch, many people who were loyal FCP users up to that point said exactly the same thing about the "consumer" aspect. And many of those same people still do and have either clung to FCP 7 or moved to other NLEs. So I think we can hardly fault someone who doesn't use the software for coming to the same thought. Which, of course, gets back to the Apple PR effort.

- Oliver

I love how Avid calls FCP X users 'consumer' but if the customer is a consumer who uses Avid they are called a 'Creative Enthusiast.' Well played Avid PR. Well played.

The "Gone Girl" Adobe propaganda videos are a prime example of this. The talking point wasn't "Fincher switches to Premiere because they wanted to get in and out of After Effects easily," it was "Fincher dumps Final Cut Pro."

I would argue that "Gone Girl" would have been better off using FCP X. The assistants and the After Effects artists had to do a great deal of manual conforming work. They had to manually transcode 1/4 res ProRes LT proxies and manually relink, reconform and resize when they went back to the Red files. It's the exact same workflow used in FCP 7/Color just with better Red support.

All that work in FCP X is done when you flip that switch from proxy to original.

Render Replace was one of the main features requested by the assistant editor and it wasn't ready until after the film was finished. As Alex4D pointed out, you have always been able to replace a rendered out shot instantly in X by replacing it in the original media. It's not as slick, but it's not that much more work either.

This film was 90% edited* by the co-director and first time feature editor in his kitchen on an iMac using FCP X. itunes.apple.com/us/movie/starry-eyes/id936588095 (BTW, it's really good.)

They shot with two Red Epics (theirs were 5K, not 6) and were able to do VFX, go to Protools, and have their color grade done at Deluxe. Pretty impressive for an editing crew of one when you consider editing software doesn't care what the production budget of your film was. Red footage is still red footage.

Marcus is right, if it's not also coming from Apple, it's our word against Academy Award™ Winning Editor Mark Sanger.

*(He worked with another editor for the first week to sync and first stringout, the rest was all him all the way to handing off to color and sound.)

Darren Roark wrote: I love how Avid calls FCP X users 'consumer' but if the customer is a consumer who uses Avid they are called a 'Creative Enthusiast.' Well played Avid PR. Well played.

It's an Avid video, but in fairness, the comment was in response to an audience question. And this is NOT how Avid presented the video. But ultimately, how is this any different in terms of PR damage, than Walter Murch saying (paraphrasing) that Apple likes us but do they love us?

Darren Roark wrote: The "Gone Girl" Adobe propaganda videos are a prime example of this. The talking point wasn't "Fincher switches to Premiere because they wanted to get in and out of After Effects easily," it was "Fincher dumps Final Cut Pro."

Really. That's not in anything I've seen said by Adobe or the Fincher team or the editors.

Darren Roark wrote: I would argue that "Gone Girl" would have been better off using FCP X. The assistants and the After Effects artists had to do a great deal of manual conforming work.

I'm not so sure that's true. Everything went through AE for stabilization and other basic effects. And no, FCP X stabilization is not up to par. There was an established pipeline based on the past films. I think they were comfortable with that and it made great sense for them. It also enabled them to use the fastest machine and GPU cards on the market by going Windows, except for Kirk.

- Oliver

I really enjoy reading your blog entries Oliver, they are actually 'fair and balanced' and educational.

The context of the "Fincher dumps FCP" has more to do with the blog posts and forum headlines from a year ago, it was not specific to that video. In cases where an editor is comfortable using FCP 7 and they have a cinema DNG workflow ahead of them, the pros of using Premiere outweigh the cons. (Barely..) Premiere is what I recommend in those cases.

Using Xto7 to get into AE would have only added one extra step getting out of PP to AE as dynamic link slowed things down too much on Kirk's machine. My point was that at the time, they were in the same boat as they were using FCP 7 manually overlaying a rendered shot over the edit. Now that render replace exists, the AE round trip is pretty amazing.

I don't fault Avid or Adobe at all for generating good PR, I just wish Apple would do the same. The argument that FCP X is for consumers reminds me of a great "Nathan For You" episode where he made this commercial for a lame toy.




The way it affects me professionally is when the talking points are in absolutes it's really challenging for me to turn a conversation around.

Darren Roark wrote: I really enjoy reading your blog entries Oliver, they are actually 'fair and balanced' and educational.

Thanks.

Darren Roark wrote: The context of the "Fincher dumps FCP" has more to do with the blog posts and forum headlines from a year ago, it was not specific to that video.

You see, that's the problem. The offense becomes something in the mind of the recipient. It seems to me that many FCP X supporters are very thin-skinned and even the vaguest reference that isn't glowing seems to draw offense. Then it just starts to snowball from there. While I agree that Apple could do better PR around some things like FCP X, they are also often a bit heavy-handed, thus, creating its own backlash.

Ultimately kind of a no-win situation.

- Oliver

My overly long dissertation earlier in the thread that Apple may not actually be able to market the software as a product because of the SEC regulations may be why they don't do public PR. I've been to a few events where people from the FCP X team do presentations, they all start the same way, "Please turn off any cameras and recording devices".

I don't take it personally when I read the negative comments, it just makes it more difficult for me to be effective at what I do. When someone comes to me for workflow consulting, I really have to feel them out before even mentioning FCP X. A few times I mentioned it too soon, and didn't get the gig.

It's like a Chris Rock bit on hip-hop, "Love FCP X, tired of defending it."

This is a truly unique situation, no company has ever EOL'd software so widely in use and replaced it with something so drastically different, let alone ending the PR on top of that. At this point, it really is a no-win scenario.

Hopefully when the info about the post production of "Focus" comes out they will make some sort of statement. "They cut this big budget film on FCP X and nobody lost their job."

Darren Roark wrote: Apple may not actually be able to market the software as a product because of the SEC regulations may be why they don't do public PR.

I'm not sure that's the case. As I understand it, the deal with SOX is that you cannot release a free update that includes "features". These have to be bug fixes only. If you do, then you cannot realize revenue from any paid versions until the next paid version. Since Apple has shifted to the App Store model, where you buy once and never pay for an update, that circumvents the issue. This doesn't have anything to do to limit marketing of FCP X. If it did, they wouldn't be able to promote anything on the product page for their web site either.

This is one of the reasons Avid has shifted to a subscription for maintenance, which includes updates - and why Adobe and Autodesk have completely shifted to subscription.

It's simply that Apple has decided to not do any trade shows. You'll note they've basically withdrawn from all of these across the board.

- Oliver

Although I will again point out that they do presentations at the Blackmagic shows.

Apple could have their own road show if they want a completely controlled environment. A few key industry people talking about their FCPX workflows. Third party vendors showing post facility integration support.

cseeman wrote: Although I will again point out that they do presentations at the Blackmagic shows.

Are those official staff Apple employees or resellers or folks like FCPworks?

- Oliver

Oliver Peters Wrote: "Since Apple has shifted to the App Store model, where you buy once and never pay for an update, that circumvents the issue."

This is a very complicated issue for me to get my head around. (Thanks ENRON!) What is the difference between buying an app from a developer and having them give out free updates than if I buy it on the app store?

They do go to NAB and throw a nice private dog and pony show in a suite, but again, it's invite only which doesn't help shake the 'black hole' impression as you called it.

If they can market the software legally but choose to adhere to a company wide policy of not marketing their software, then I think they should change that.

Oliver Peters wrote:

cseeman wrote: Although I will again point out that they do presentations at the Blackmagic shows.

Are those official staff Apple employees or resellers or folks like FCPworks?

- Oliver

Steve Bayes himself two shows back in NYC.
Luke Tristram, Product Manager for ProApps division at the show earlier this year in NYC.