Final Cut Pro
Deja Vu or a Glimpse of
a Brighter Future?
Final Cut Pro & FilmLogic Seminar Draws
Capacity Crowd
by Rainer
Standke
On February 13, the Guild helped host a seminar called "Final Cut Pro and Film Logic in the Hot Seat" at the Apple Marketing Center in Santa Monica. Interest in the event was very high; despite torrential rains, the room was filled to capacity.
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Craig Yanagi, Randy Ubillos and Larry Jordan. |
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Final Cut & Film Overview
Assistant editor Dan Fort began by recounting his experiences on the Showtime movie 'Bojangles', which was cut using Final Cut Pro. He summarized their process and also touched on some work that he’s done on the bleeding edge of Final Cut Pro applications.
Dailies were synced in telecine and loaded into an iMac via FireWire. Dan felt that DV quality was so good that Showtime could have considered using the FCP output for mastering, had there not been a continuous burn-in on it. Dailies were transferred to the editor’s G4 by moving a FireWire drive from one system to the other. All the media was then compressed onto a 46 gig FireWire drive, which was used on the iMac and which also allowed editing to continue on the editor’s laptop, if needed. This setup – iMac for the assistant, G4 for the editor and duplicated media – is becoming common. Good media networking is just now becoming available, but it is expensive.
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Dan described two ways to work at true 24-fps with Final Cut. FilmLogic can remove the 3:2 pulldown from DV in a render-like process, which takes about quadruple running time. The video will then match the film and Final Cut will handle it without problems. However, the program won’t count in feet and frames and won’t show key numbers or ink numbers. To make a cut list, you still need FilmLogic. Alternatively you can use the Aurora Igniter, a new video card that digitizes only the true film frames, like the Film Composer. Working at 24-fps means that change lists are possible, but for now there’s no software to do the job.
Dan also showed a custom effect he created that adds a foot and frame counter to any output using Final Cut’s ‘FXBuilder’ scripting tool, which permits someone with the requisite skills to make a counter that will do just about anything. Unfortunately, it must be rendered. Dan is making it available at www.2-pop.com/library/links/scripts.
Presentations from the Panel
The second part of the evening was devoted to a panel discussion with some of the key members of the West Coast Final Cut Pro community: Randy Ubillos, FCP’s lead software designer and the original designer of Adobe Premiere, Loran Kary, the developer of FilmLogic, Ramy Katrib, of DVFilm Tree, who helped organize the evening (www.dvfilmtree.com), Shawn Paper who recently finished cutting an independent feature with FCP, Larry Jordan, editor and founder of 2-pop.com, an important FCP web site (www.2-pop.com), and Craig Yanagi, Sony’s marketing manager for DV Cam products. Also on hand were Walter Shires, Final Cut Pro product manager, Ralph Fairweather, who runs 2-Pop, Lowell Kay from Dr. Rawstock, a sales, rental, training and support center (www.drrawstock.com), Erin Lauten who manages EditorsNet (www.editorsnet.com), Linda White, Sony’s Western Region Sales Manager for Professional Products and Phil Hodgetts who moderates the FCP discussion group at the World Wide User Group (www.wwug.com).
Each panelist spoke briefly. Ramy Katrib introduced everyone and pointed out how important it was that so many key people had gathered to share information. Loran Kary indicated that he was strongly considering the addition of a change list capability to FilmLogic. Craig Yanagi demonstrated a new Sony DV Cam deck, the DSR 1500, a small, medium-priced deck that offers firewire, SDI and component I/O. Shawn Paper briefly described his experiences with FCP by saying, "It actually works!" He mentioned some shortcomings, but said that he was able to work around them. Larry Jordan offered a more sober view, indicating that FCP was not ready for major feature filmmaking because of the lack of film support, trim weaknesses and other problems.
Randy Ubillos stressed that Final Cut Pro is not meant to be an Avid clone. He doesn’t want to imitate the Avid – he wants to do better. He acknowledged the need for further development, particularly in the areas of media management, trim mode, interfacing with audio editing software (e.g. Pro Tools) and shared media storage, but he indicated that Apple did not want to introduce any new features until they were working flawlessly.
Town Meeting
Following the initial presentations, the seminar turned to questions from the audience. Many people expressed resentment toward Avid. There was a brief discussion of Avid’s history and how they came to dominate our world. Steve Cohen and Patrick Gregston were on hand and both indicated that Avid had won on its own merits, because it had done a better job than the competition. Gregston added, "We are a very demanding crowd, we want it better, we want it cheap and we want it now." Audience members pointed out that success in Hollywood would make Final Cut Pro a lot more attractive to the broad editing market, as had been the case with Avid.
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Final Cut Pro 2. The update offers a host of new features including real-time, 2-stream effects with appropriate video boards, OMF export, a 30% speed improvement, a new media management tool and additional capabilities via bundled software, including Peak DV, Commotion DV and Boris Script LTD. |
Tech support appears to be a big issue for FCP because there is little formal assistance available, especially regarding film. Apple provides phone support, but not on the level that Guild members need. All who had used the program said that much of the help they received came from word-of-mouth or online discussion groups.
There was hope expressed that, because of its affordability, Final Cut Pro might help democratize filmmaking (Showtime is supposedly buying systems for about $11,000 each, including monitors and a deck). With costs going down, assistants might once again have a useful system at their disposal. But some were concerned that working with cheaper equipment might mean that editors would command less respect.
All told, it was an amazing evening. Most of the key Los Angeles-based FCP people got together in the same room. A hundred Guild members gathered to learn more about Final Cut Pro and by implication, indicated how much interest there is in using it. Designers of the program, most notably Randy Ubillos, were there, and they listened. I was reminded of the early days of the Avid. Final Cut Pro still has many limitations, but there was a palpable sense of excitement about the possibility that something new would be available to us soon. Already, Final Cut Pro looks very tempting, and it has the attention of a lot of people.
Rainer Standke is a Guild member & an Avid Certified Instructor.
Board member Sharon Smith Holley for helping to organize
the evening and to Apple for providing the space.
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine
Vol. 22, No. 2 - May/June 2001
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