iMovie Pro... WHY?

Years ago I downloaded the trail version of Adobe Premiere CS3 and used it for a job I needed to edit. I never read the user guide or looked up how to use it. My only experience was going back to the old version of Premiere. So I don't think it's going to be that hard to step into a new UI. You already know the principles of NLE.

Look at what Adobe did with AE when they went from 6.5 to 7.0. The UI got a more "professional" looking skin along the lines of Flame, Shake, DaVinci etc. Premiere followed suit at some point.

I would hope it goes along the lines of what the general professional standard is today (apps like RedCineX, Mocha, Nuke, Maya, Cinema4D) and not full of distracting eye candy and silly icons. Or maybe even have the option of various skins.

At the end of the day though, it's the features and usability that will count most for me.

There will definitely be changes. Not sure what. The implementation of thunderbolt is huge and very heartening. And that will change many things. Not sure if they will let older Mac Pros upgrade to Thunderbolt via a PCIe host card installation.

Heck, the changes have already started on the OS level- Grand Central, open CL, QuickTime X, etc. Yea, QTX is not ready, but it's implemented first at the consumer level while they fix the bugs and add new features. This beats Avid's implementation of AMA by a mile, where they launch a professional feature and heavily market it even as it contains major flaws in the workflow and bugs. I, for one is very excited, also with the impending AJA presence at NAB.

My wish list is huge- better finder level integration with metadata accessible in the finder, Faster renderer with an option to render at half float, quicktime decoding of non sequence codec footage, an answer to some of Avid and Adobe features (script sync, email render alerts, toggle record/source timeline, audio transcribing/recognition, customizable UI, etc). But I will settle for half of it done right, and released only when it's ready, not before it's ready.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
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> Not sure if they will let older Mac Pros upgrade to
> Thunderbolt via a PCIe host card installation.

They've said this won't be possible.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Apart from the ridiculous proposition of pulling ones hair out over something that hasn't happened yet and may not happen, a few points are worth discussing.

There are a lot of things that we live with day to day that could do with some cleaning up in the UI. Anytime I have trained people on FCP I mention that the toggle function of snapping and linking is denoted by a barely perceptible changing of the icon from gray to green on a gray background. But those kinds of things are minor.
I am not alone, I hope, in desiring a redo of the whole media management scenario. Not just the Media Management tool but the tenuous "linked by file name and location" paradigm at the base of FCP. This is such a weakness that it limits what complex workflows you can accomplish and leads to sketchy situations where file systems are precarious and non linear errors creep in that can only be caught and fixed by an eagle eye.

Thunderbolt means, I believe, that the next Mac Pros can be significantly different in form factor than the Cheese grater models we've had for the last while.
One could imagine a new paradigm where the I/O and GPU boards are in an external chassis and the CPU is basically a motherboard with X cores and 2-6 Thunderbolt outputs. Plenty of people use the Mac Pros for professional applications that don't need extra PCIe boards and for them that chunk of the chassis is a lot of wasted space. Laptops have too much to worry about with batteries and hinges and connected monitors that a desktop is better but an iMac is too limited. I could see a box with space for 4-6 SATA drives, plenty of Thunderbolt outputs for PCI and Display, Ethernet, Basic Audio I/O, DVI, USB and Firewire to tide us over. DVD of course (ugh, please die).
I like the idea that it could lead to a TB/PCI connection chassis where it's not always a choice between putting everything at the back or at the front. Some cards could be Express3/4 slots and Audio inputs or Firewire/USB hubs that require constant repatching pointing to the front and the others could be display and storage connection cards that you hook up, point to the back and forget until they fail.

OK I'm done. IT's Sunday and there is snow to shovel.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

> but the tenuous "linked by file name and location" paradigm at the base of FCP.

This part is interesting. I've been working on a Avid for the last month, and I have to say that despite the hype over Avid's media management system, I really longed for FCP's finder level style of media management on this project, especially as Avid didn't have a proper search function in 5.1. In FCP, I would simply do a finder level search for the media in the capture scratch. Also, some of the lag you get when you open an Avid bin is probably caused by the way Avid handles bin and media management. There is a lot of real time updating going on, and by keeping things simple, FCP is able to open a bin more efficiently.

Also, because the root of the connection is so simple, the data is extremely easy to manipulate via XML. Eg. You can relink entire edits to online media by doing a find and replace command in text wrangler.



www.strypesinpost.com

Andrew Kines Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I am not alone, I hope, in desiring a redo of
> the whole media management scenario. Not just the
> Media Management tool but the tenuous "linked by
> file name and location" paradigm at the base of
> FCP. This is such a weakness that it limits what
> complex workflows you can accomplish and leads to
> sketchy situations where file systems are
> precarious and non linear errors creep in that can
> only be caught and fixed by an eagle eye.
>


You are not alone in this regard. The practical side of me just wants two basic improvements in FCP:

1) Bug fixes.

2) Stuff that Media Composer has, the most important being a more solid, forgiving system for media management. For some I'm sure the new Premiere Pro is more an object of lust than Avid.

Now of course Apple can't market FCS 8 with; "We co-opted some tried-and-true Avid features and fixed a bunch of nagging bugs!" It's in their DNA to innovate by way of simplifying complex tasks, typically though UI innovation. While I'm not yearning for a massive shift in the accepted NLE paradigm, I'm sure Apple must be frustrated by editors clinging to a model inherited from primitive tape-to-tape systems. There's hardly anything less Apple than a CMX 3600!

- Justin Barham -

Well, I just fired up iMovie '09 for the first time ever, dropped a transition in between two clips, double clicked to open the inspector and had to pick my jaw off the floor. Instant and I mean instant feedback on any number of transitions. If its this kind of technological improvement we're going to se in the new FCP , I'm all for it.

< Well, I just fired up iMovie '09" >

Then check out iMovie 11. There's some cool stuff in there too.

64 bit, yep, that will be great. Changing the whole interface....why? Pointless IMHO. Haven't opened iMovie in I don't know how many years, do I really want to learn a whole new workflow? Nope. But right now all is just speculation anyway and we can cry later if need be. No point in seeing the negatives without knowing what they are.
Steve

steve-sharksdelight

iMovie 11 looks more like a plugin you would buy for FCP. In iMovie 11, you can do a "send to FCP", but it will only use the default transition. You can also export to Pro Res if you have an pro app that has Pro Res. I'm not sure how that works but it does.

I'm thinking Apple is going to integrate iMovie and FCP. All the transitions in iMovie will be in FCP. This way you can, "send to FCP", and any transitions you use in iMovie will work in FCP... If I was the head engineer at Apple, That's how I would do it!

I just read the "Final Thoughts" section of Ken Stone's iMovie review , and I'm convinced every one of those features will make it into FCP. And that would be a good thing.

If you're going to test out iMovie to see what it is like Make Sure you turn on the advanced tools in the Prefs and enable "Show Fine Tuning Controls" in the Browser tab of the prefs. Makes it way better.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

Interesting. Looking at that exhaustive Ken Stone piece, I find 2 things about iMovie...

1. I love the lack of rendering and the realtime effect previews, and...

2. I can't even make it through one paragraph of how editing works. If, and it's a BIG if, this type of paradigm ends up in the new Final Cut (without an option to turn it off, which there won't be), then FCP will lose 80% of it's market share overnight. I simply don't have the patience to try and learn a whole new way of thinking, especially when it appears to double the amount of effort and mouseclicks to do any given thing.

Sometimes "thinking different" is a synonym for "insanity".

I think that new feature in FCP 8 and FCS 4 that allows 4x realtime reframing and refocusing of existing shots in 5 dimensional non-Euclidean string space is really going to shake up the industry. Even though it hasn't been announced or invented or even conceived of yet (the previous sentence exists only in the 6th Dimensional Hyperspace) I feel like it's really going to make it into the next version.

The predictive edit feature (rumor has Apple has already patented the process and trademarked the name "Predixt", the one that chooses the next likely frame to edit on and selects your next most likely shot to edit in is also something that has me thinking about buying more Apple stock 'cause that's really gonna get them excited over at Low Overhead Inc. I would buy that stock in a second but all my money is tied up in down payments on the STILL undelivered RED MONSTRO, the 10 petabyte, 32:32:32:32 holographic polaroid Tyme:Zonehyft(tm) camera.

BUT and this is a big but, if they take away my ability to see clips go out of sync without warning and no longer force me to render to a self contained quicktime just to get a reliable output to tape then I am packing my last 4 versions of FCP manuals up into my trusty-rusty U-Haul trailer and going to Adobe town. I have said goodbye to Gates and I can say Goodbye to Jobs. I could eventually end up saying Goodbye to whomever it is over at Adobe that makes those wacky decisions to redesign their dock icons every two years.

I am so mad about this potentially non occurring event that I had a pre-emptive tantrum about it and put my foot through a wall and broke a toe on the concrete encased body of Jimmy Hoffa which had been hidden there by the previous owners. Damn you Steve Jobs!

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Ha ha, point taken...

However, I think it is VERY important to give voice to what people want, and do not want in software that is (supposedly) still in the development process. It CAN affect the product.

Example: Canon's recent enabling of 24p in the 5DmkII was brought about by a groundswell of requests from the community through blogs like Philip Bloom, etc. The community spoke, and the giant corporation adjusted accordingly.

>4x realtime reframing and refocusing of existing shots in 5 dimensional non-Euclidean string space<

I was asked to be on the Beta team for that, but the side effects for the drugs you had to take to work in it were just a bit too long-term for my liking. I try to avoid anything that includes the term 'half-life'. I find it a good general rule.

PS. String space? Can anyone do me a 'less than three lifetimes to understand' version? I've tried and tried and all I can figure is that it means there could be A LOT of dimensions. And that it's long and thin.

Mike writes-
[Nothing much has changed since Avid came out with their UI and Premiere and FCP and all other NLEs have pretty much copied it in one form or another. What's wrong with a radical new approach?]

Everything. It's the content in the timeline that should change, not the timeline. Randy may have forgotten that Leave the friggin' paradigm alone so we can get right to work. Change those things needing change-- like the ability to cut and paste a clip with its transition properly attached to a new neighbor, which has never worked and slows us down. Avid nailed it recently.

Marcus writes-
[Well, I just fired up iMovie '09 for the first time ever, dropped a transition in between two clips, double clicked to open the inspector and had to pick my jaw off the floor.]

If I were mousing transitions all day I'd have to pick my wrist off the floor. We select cuts with V and add a transition with Command-T. Or select a range of edits on active tracks with In-Out and press Command-T. Presto.

So put all that in yer iMovie pipe and smoke it... won't find me slumming down there.

Oh, and that "Ken Burns effect" garbage- it's the FRAME SHOP effect, the moves on still photos done for Burns over two decades came from Frame Shop, Newton Mass (now in Watertown).

Jude writes-
[Can anyone do me a 'less than three lifetimes to understand' version?]

Yeah, really tiny resonating vibrating strings control us. We are all puppets, and the puppetmaster lives in 11 dimensions... what's so hard about that?

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Play from Playhead to Out Mark with Shift-P !

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

The first time I encountered a NLE system was on a feature film. They were using Lightworks, and the primary control was designed to mimic what a film editor would use on a Steenbeck. The editor, who is now a director, had never edited with film. He learned in a completely video and non-linear world.

I still handle film, and there is much in today's NLEs that borrow from that paradigm, since that is what they were originally designed to emulate. A lot of video-specific elements, like jog/shuttle, are there, but unless someone has worked professionally with either film or video or they have been working with NLEs for a long time, FCP can be quite confusing.

I'd be interested in seeing some numbers, if anyone could track such things, of how many people in the world use iMovie vs. how many use FCP or FCE. With all new Macs shipping with a copy of iMovie and iMovie being available on iOS for $5, I would imagine that the number is growing at a much faster rate than all of the NLEs combined. How many of those users would feel comfortable moving up to FCE or FCP? They are learning video and audio editing with a completely different interface. I would think that Apple would incorporate much of what they've developed in iMovie, Garage Band, and Quicktime X into a new version of FCP. I don't think it will completely break the paradigms that we're used to, but I could certainly envision it being quite different from a UI perspective. They certainly can't go the Quicktime X route and strip away features, or nobody will take them seriously.

I really hope that they make the interface design and functionality consistent among all the FCS Applications. It's very frustrating to switch between Soundtrack, Motion, and Final Cut and have to pause to think which one you're in before you do something, having to remember the idiosyncratic differences that can trip you up.

James-
[FCP can be quite confusing. ]

Well, the Moviola upright green monster was confusing to me when I first encountered it in the mid '60's! But I trained with experienced pro's and learned its motor pedal and handbrake controls and working rhythms, and years later cut my first 35mm feature on a classic dual upright Moviola system-- even though i'd moved completely to flatbed Steenbecks for 16mm editing.

When nonlinear systems cropped up in the late 80's I was all over them. I guess the earlier you jump on new tech, the less victimized you feel by it, because you grow with it, as many of us did.

Take it piece by piece, operation by operation, and you will move into it gracefully. Digital editing is merely the electronic abstraction of the traditional process, with the added power of scene processing-- like word processing. A lot of film lore went into Avid, for instance, down to bin icons and two thumbs holding a selected region of a clip-- represented by two curving icons for In and Out.

And the lousy diet of most film editors represented by things like the Hamburger menu.

But really, whether Lightworks, EMC2, Premiere, Avid, FCP, the paradigm is borrowed from the intermediate technology of video: the "four corners" of almost all NLE's until Randy decided to reinvent the wheel in iMovie 8, are the Source viewer, Program window, Timeline and a Project Browser or Inspector of some sort where clips are listed and organized. There you go.

Everything else is just application-specific bugs, capabilities, and different keyboard shortcuts! You pick up those pretty much on the fly. If you're not facile at present, take training.

If you've enjoyed revising a script or any essay in a text app, you approach the fun of revising motion picture in products like FCE and FCP. iMovie used to have some of that, and made a nice bridge to FC Express and Pro. I was able to climb into earlier versions of iMovie, but lost interest when the interface changed. I think somebody mentioned the classic timeline is still available, but I may be wrong and it's all mouse-driven drag and drop for kids and non-filmmaker parents.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Play from Playhead to Out Mark with Shift-P !

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