FCP for news gathering

Hi, my name is Nicolas Russo I´m from Argentina, I´m Editor in chief here in Buenos Aires from a new news channel that has debut on past Monday for the first time and is broadcasted to all Latin America on the cable. The channel has a initial investment of 10 million dollars.

The workflow of the channel is a tapeless workflow based on Panasonic P2 cards and Final Cut pro. I´ve reach this forum because I would like to have feedback with anyone about a
couple of aspects of the Workflow of P2 and FCP,especially about archiving and the logging of the footage. As long as I could research nobody uses FCP as their only platform for news gathering, they used it as part of their workflow but no as we are doing that have all the bays working with it. If someone knows about a channel that works with FCP as their only support for editing, please let me know.

I leave you my mail in case someone is interested (please contact me) nrusso@c5n.com

Hi Nicolas,

There is probably quite a good reason why FCP is not often thought to be a good choice as a sole edit platform for a news channel ... its not altogether suited to news! Thats not to say that you can't cut news with FCP, of course you can, but whilst its a very strong "craft" NLE it does lack some of the functions that make for a truly fast turnaround newsgathering setup. Lets face it, news cutting is rarely art (although of course it can be), the bulk of the work has little call for the finer nuances of an edit platform like FCP.
News is all about getting from A to B as quickly as possible and that can be a pretty darn rough road as you know only too well ... to use that analogy, what you need is a trials bike. Its quick and dirty but it'll get you there on time. It may not have all the bells and whistles of a Harley Davidson, and its likely to be a far less comfortable ride, but its perfectly suited for the road conditions.

Not the response you were looking for obviously, but still, I'll drop you a mail off list.
Will be glad to help if I can.

Best
Andy

I kow KCAL here in LA uses FCP

[www.apple.com]

Not sure about a tapeless workflow though although the P2 and XDCAM are well suited for news and many are using it. Fox Sports I believe are using a lot of P2 or XDCAMs

Might want to give KCAL a call.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Andy, why do you think FCP is unsuitable for News? I reckon I could bash out a story quick enough on FCP any day. Capture footage and voicer, lay base, sweeten, colour in, out to tape or right out the router, done.

Nicolas,
CNN is now almost entirely using Final Cut for news, both in the field and in-house.

didn't say it was unsuitable Jude, only that it was not necessarily the best tool for the job
to my mind, its missing a few basic features / functions that make for a truly fast turnaround environment ... and all of them could be incorporated easily I reckon, I'm just waiting for it to happen.

couple of quick examples:
currently we can't lock the viewer as the active window when insert/overwriting to timeline
currently we can't extend edit in ripple mode

probably sounds like minor issues that can be workaround (and they can) but these functions really come to the fore when you're bashing something out under extremely tight deadlines.

of course a profficient editor will be able to use their favourite tool pretty darn quick, no doubt about it, but that very same editor would be significantly quicker if the toolset were even better designed for the specific functions they need

did note this the other day though ... p'raps I should take a look!
[safari.oreilly.com]

"currently we can't lock the viewer as the active window when insert/overwriting to timeline"

You can if you drag the the clip o the edit overlay. Or use the keyboard shortcut for the di then press Q.

"currently we can't extend edit in ripple mode"

Long standing feature request, never knew why it couldn't be implemented.

I reckon we should have a shootout - same story, same v/o, same vision on a bunch of different systems. Probably they would all come in within seconds of eachother, given competent editors.

Tom Wolsky Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "currently we can't lock the viewer as the active
> window when insert/overwriting to timeline"
>
> You can if you drag the the clip o the edit
> overlay. Or use the keyboard shortcut for the di
> then press Q.
>
> "currently we can't extend edit in ripple mode"
>
> Long standing feature request, never knew why it
> couldn't be implemented.


you're not wrong Tom, i know these workarounds and others well
i'm not knocking FCP either, its a great NLE that I love using, and I dare say I could name plenty of news outfits globally that use FCP in their news production... am just trying to illustrate a couple of reasons why FCP is rarely though the "sole" edit platform in a news outfit

Jude, I know FCP like the back of my hand and am no slouch when it comes to editing quickly when needs be, but I still reckon I can cut a news package quicker on a news oriented ... i'll have a shootout with myself later and see how I go may be heading down to Sydney for Apec unless I can get out of it, was going to suggest a shootout then but for field edits we use FCP! maybe we could just do shooters instead

Fox News and Sports here in Boston uses FCP.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:
Set Video In & Out separate from Audio with Control I & O !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

I don't think that's the reason at all. It really has very little, or next to nothing to do with the software. Editors will edit on and use the machines they're told to use.

The two primary reasons are that networks have made a large capital investment in other systems. You don't turn around big ships quickly. They're going one way, and it'll take a while for them to come around to re-equipping. That's starting to happen.

The second major reason is, and probably the most important one, is FCP's inability to work well in a large, shared environment. That's changing too.

"The second major reason is, and probably the most important one, is FCP's inability to work well in a large, shared environment. That's changing too."

Changing? Changed. Three years ago. Just takes awhile for people to notice.

mark

I'm thinking of FCP Server, and what that might bring to a shared environment.

Working still (some of the time) at ABC News I can tell you why it's not used here -- AVID UNITY SERVER -- AVID got the shared media right long before Apple addressed that market - once invested in that - hard to get them to a new system - even if it's more efficient.

ONE OTHER BIG ADVANTAGE AVID NEWSCUTTER and GRASS VALLEY edit systems have over FCP -- ingest and edit from tape to timeline on the fly. You can cue a tape and dump it right on the time line with ins and outs just as you would on a machine to machine edit - except that now it's in digital form to fix in the future.

This is a MUST HAVE for any operation that is either all tape based or needs some tape archive to dump into the system. Which means virtually every news operation on earth up until a few years ago and even today for archive stock.

That said - I've been in the field on breaking news and have turned around a 1:30 to 2:00 minute spot in under an hour using just a DV Cam or BETA and an AJA Box and my FCP on a laptop to air and out to satellite (including my live shot)

So yes it's zippy in the right hands.

ALSO BBC is becoming an all final cut shop starting with it's new BBC America program based here in DC (I know - I get calls from editor friends every day there saying - how do you do this?)

Andy Field - FieldVision productions