A Tale of Two Softwares

I was there at NAB when Apple unveiled FCPX.  I was downloading it the second the first tweet broke and I have been dabbling with it now and again since.  But I am not an editor, I am just someone who edits.  In fact I am slap bang in Mr Jobs’ target market if the initial functionality is anything to go by.  I can afford a certain degree of detachment because its not my day job.

LAFCPUG Supermeet NAB 2011

My day job is as a Business Intelligence Consultant.  However, it just so happens that the main software I rely on is also going through a generational change.  In its way it is the same level of paradigm shift that FCP is enduring.  The software in question is called Business Objects, now part of SAP.  In truth, its really a vast suite of interconnected products but, for short, it has become known as BI4.

The outgoing version is called XIR3 and has been around about 3 years.  It was a mature product but one that was carrying a lot of baggage due to acquisitions.  The basic idea in the centre had been around since the early 90s and had been very successful but was showing its age.  Some of the acquired modules were based on a different premise and functionality overlapped between them.  SAP made the difficult call to rewrite that central idea within the product.  Is any of this sounding familiar?  One thing BI4 does not share with FCPX is that it is not consumer oriented - one of the organisations that I work with has 11000 licences.

SAP ASUG Sapphire Conference Orlando 2011

So, like FCPX, BI4 is 64bit.  One of its most popular tools has been canned despite there still being a huge legacy of projects using it.  The central way of working has been completely changed and existing developers will have a lot to learn but all the remaining tools now integrate much better.

So how does SAP deal with its customers and its release compared to Apple?

Roadmap

A software roadmap is an expectation for Enterprise software.  Big businesses are like supertankers - it takes a huge amount of energy to change their course.  If you need to make a course correction you are going to need to know in good time. Most enterprise software consists of multiple platform layers and each of these has its own life cycle.  SAP share their roadmap with customers and major customers may be involved at a very early stage in the development.  SAP like to talk to there customers and you will be bombarded with material once they know your name.

Legacy Support

SAP will normally try and support about 2 versions back for migration at a platform level.  Where things won’t migrate, they provide conversion tools.  However, its not unknown for some functionality to go entirely.  Support for old releases dies off over time, the first stage is that updates and patches will stop followed later by telephone support.  However, this is years after the release of the new version.  If SAP think it may be controversial they will normally extend this period.

Soft Release

This has come in only during SAP ownership of Business Objects.  I have been going to launch events since February but technically BI4 is not for sale.  It is currently in “Ramp Up”.  This is like a limbo between beta and release.  Only selected customers have the software, the rest of us are waiting for SAP to declare general availability.  This date has been creeping backwards.

Completeness

Despite “Ramp up” the software will be missing some functionality at general availability.  Some functionality is promised for BI4.1 and the roadmap puts that before the end of the year.

So in summary:

• SAP likes to engage its customers and keep them informed of new developments whereas Apple has a cult of secrecy.  
• Apple is used to having customers who are not significant in their overall volume where as SAP customers tend to be a more significant proportion of revenue.  SAP has maintenance whereas Apple has upgrades.  If you are paying for upgrades up front you would feel more entitled to know what you were going to get.
• SAP gives customers plenty of help to migrate where Apple has made hardly any concessions
• Apple is pretty good at hitting dates once it divulges them, SAP not so much.
• Both Companies are prepared to make the tough calls when they think architectural changes are required.
• SAP are prepared to put out software that is functionally incomplete but they limit who it is available to whereas Apple have fully released FCPX.  There are several orders of magnitude difference in price though.
• Despite mutterings about the lateness of BI4 to general availability, I have not heard the term "debacle" used at all about BI4.

So whilst there are some similarities in the situation surrounding FCPX and BI4, the vendors could hardly be more different in approach to their launch. I don’t want to just Apple-bash because I am a huge fan.  I love their clarity of vision but I think they need to temper their own corporate culture when they are dealing with people livelihoods rather than just their lifestyles. 

Aperture and FCPX

One of the things which struck me as odd is that despite the media browser section having access to Aperture’s library, there was no sign of any video clips in the browser.  This seemed to me like a massive missed opportunity from Apple but it seems I may have been a bit harsh.  This looks like it is a bug not a missing feature as video is mentioned in the FCPX help.  As such, I hope it gets fixed soon.

You can find the knowledge base article here 

The help is a little unclear so here is what my experiments have shown:

• You have to drag the image, multi-selection or Aperture project and drop it on the FCPX’s Event title in the Event Library not into the panel that where the assets or import options are.  You should see a + or a file count where it is valid.
• If you have done a version copy in Aperture it will see that as a different  the file in Aperture then FCPX will only see the trimmed portion.
• It won’t let you use drag in smart albums but you can still use them to preselect what you want to copy.
• Can’t see any evidence of Aperture key words being carried over.

... and your point is?

If you are someone who shoots mixed stills and video on DSLRs like I do then Aperture is often your first point of call for capture.  I have already written about my workflow here.  If you are using Aperture then both stills and video are ingested and you are already making decisions about organisation.  Whilst Aperture can’t currently modify video images the way it can with stills, you still have the ability to trim, grade (stars and flags) and key word.  It also has a robust library with the vault backup option.  With no log and capture anymore, Aperture can fill some of the gap.

Even when Apple fixes the bugs, I still think they could go further with the integration.  It would be nice not to have to duplicate the primary assets and it seems a shame to lose any effort you may have put into key wording in Aperture.

Initial take on Final Cut Pro X

Its been a crazy time since the launch of FCPX last week - a regular supernova in the twitterverse.  I hit go on the App Store the moment it popped up in the UK.  I was there for the debut at NAB, I remember the buzz by the end of that fateful Supermeet.  The very first impression was not a functional one but a financial one.  The days of cut $ and replace £ seemed to have ended with the App Store.  So the price that got the Supermeet crowd on their feet was still present for a UK audience.  As expected the price wasn't quite like for like with FCP7 due to the unbundling, but the ancillary apps were less than I expected both in terms of number and cost.

Unfortunately, the excitement of the launch soon turned to howls of protests.  Have the iMovie Pro protagonists been vindicated?  Have the Pro community been left out in the cold?  I haven’t deep dived into the software myself.  I did enough playing to decide that I needed to pull back and have a good look at this new paradigm and decide how best to engage in it or whether to engage at all!

I have read a lot of the comments and listened to the arguments for and against and I think I am finally in a position to have a draft opinion.  Not a final one, because that is going to need me to have a lot more direct use of using the software myself.

Is it Pro?

“No, it isn’t” is the most obvious answer but you have to be very careful how you define “Pro”.  FCPX is a Non Linear Editing tool and so the profession or craft you would associate that with is Editors - be that for films or television.  As a collaborative tool it is severely limited.  A situation compounded by Apple both failing to provide a transitional route and killing off FCP7 with almost indecent haste.  Although I don’t fit in this user category myself, I understand their frustration.

However, within the admittedly high walls that limit its functionality, the software is certainly capable of producing professional results.  The ground-up rebuild does mean that the software is capable of professional output in a shorter space of time with less recourse to additional programs or plugins than its predecessor.  With so few plug-ins available thats just as well but that was always going to be the case when 64bit arrived.  I’ll concede that some of that new functionality maybe a bit too “black box” for the purist but there are some exciting things both in FCPX and in Motion 5.

Is it the NLE for the rest of us?

Well, Apple will tell you that is iMovie still.  FCPX is still a step up from there but an easier step than FCP7 used to be.  For someone like myself who is an enthusiast who aspires to professional results then its a very good fit functionally and financially.  I can also see it suiting creative professionals who are not dedicated editors.  

The demand for video content is growing almost exponentially but much of this growth lies outside the realms of traditional post houses.  I think this is the market Apple is gunning for and, if it exceeds, could be very lucrative.  Would Apple forsake the high-end customers for this market.  I think they would...I think they have.  I think they will gamble that the high-end will move or someone else will fill the gap even if they don’t.  I do expect to see FCPX change quite quickly though.  Its the App Store way of doing things.

Choosing a different path

Why bother learning a new paradigm, isn’t it easier just to jump ship and go to Premiere?  I have been using Premiere more over the last year than FCP7.  There have been a couple of reasons for this.  The first is I have been shooting nearly everything on DSLR and Premiere handles DSLR footage much better than FCP7.  I have a Mac Pro with 8 cores, 12GB RAM and a Quadro 4000 and FCP7 runs pretty much the same as it does on the older iMac it replaced.  Only in Premiere did my Mac Pro really fly.  I have been trying to learn After Effects and the integration via Dynamic Link is really cool.  If you are a big user of Photoshop and After Effects then its sort a no brainer.  The major downside is cost.  Most people will buy the Production Premium pack and that is a big chunk of change.  The full version is an order of magnitude more expensive and even the upgrade from 5.0 to 5.5 is dearer.  Even the month-by-month subscription cost is close to the outright cost of FCPX.

My First and Last Shuttle Launch

I am a child of the space age.  I arrived in the world just days before the first Saturn rocket tests.  At the tender age of five I was woken and brought downstairs in the middle of the night to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.  As a teenager in 1978, I visited the United States for the first time and went to Kennedy Space centre.  The mighty Apollo Saturn V still lived outside back then and NASA was busy trying to get the shuttle program operational.  As if that wasn’t enough to turn me into a space nerd then I had the combined efforts of Messrs Lucas, Spielberg, Roddenberry and Anderson to help me along.

Despite many trips to Florida since then, I had never been during a launch.  With just the final few Shuttle launches to go, I never expected that opportunity to arrive.  A few weeks back I was jealously watching tweets from Stu Maschwitz and Trey Ratcliff as they waited for the take-off of STS-134.  I was looking at the mission specs and wondering whether I might be in Florida in time for the landing.  Unfortunately for Stu and Trey, a combination of weather and technical issues delayed the launch a couple of weeks.  This meant I would be in the right place at the right time for the launch - a rare combination for me.  So rare in fact, that I was pretty sure that something would come along and send my plans pear-shaped.

The first small problem was that the launch happened to coincide with the key note at SapphireNow, the conference I was actually in Orlando to attend.  To be honest, I didn’t struggle with that dilemma anywhere near as much as I should have done.  My father was going to come along for the trip.  He had tried to get to a launch many years ago and got stuck on the toll road.  So an early start was in order to travel the 50 miles or so to Titusville.

No vantage point is wasted 

Launch day dawned and the NASA website still said it was a go for launch.  We stuck our selected viewing site into the sat nav and headed off.  This trip was not designed to be a photo-oriented trip so I was pretty lightly armed camera-wise.  I had only taken my Olympus XZ-1 with me which maxes out at 112mm.  So I had borrowed my Dad’s Lumix TZ7 for a bit of extra reach whilst he had his Panny palmcorder.  The worries over traffic turned out to be unfounded and we reached Titusville in good time.  Parking was another matter.  Most of the public parking was already taken, which left enterprising souls renting out spots on private ground for $20-30.  Whether they had any title to that land is a moot point but after 3 laps of the one way system we were ready to take that chance.

Space View Park

Space View Park was already pretty crowded as we walked in.  Whilst the weather was no issue for take-off, it was not brilliant for spectating.  There was a layer of low cloud which meant the viewing opportunities were going to be short.  This was not helped by us not being exactly sure where on the peninsula opposite we were supposed to be looking.  We could see the VAB through the haze but not the shuttle itself.  There didn’t seem to be a consensus of direction amongst those with more elaborate gear on which way to point.

The Vehicle Assembly Building

As the countdown continued the crowd’s anticipation grew.  On the jetty opposite there was a relayed PA from the Space Centre but we were to far from it to hear details.  It was more felt through the increasing buzz from the crowd radiating out.  To get a clear view above the crowds my Dad was using a convenient lamppost as a support with his display angled down.  I was using his shoulder to get the TZ7 high enough and could see virtually nothing on its fixed display.  Suddenly there was a roar from the crowd.  It turned out the launch position was slightly behind a palm bush from our position.  I struggled to find it on the Lumix.  I squeezed off a few speculative shots and then decided to just watch the final couple of seconds as the giant torch supported by a thick column of steam speared its way through that inconveniently low cloud barrier.  One of the problems with being of a photographic persuasion is that you often only see events secondhand.  Sometimes you have to overcome your urge to record and just leave it to your eyes and your brain. 

One of my speculative shots paid off

Just as we thought the show was over the noise arrived.  The source of the aural assault that surrounded us had already departed from view.  The only trace of its progress being the stripe across the clouds, the shadow cast by its vertical ascent across the top of the cloud layer.

The plume shadowNASA Footage of the Launch, see more on NASA TV

Travel, Blogging and Paranoid Data Wrangling

When I set-off on my trip to NAB in Las Vegas followed by a whirlwind tour round the Southwest USA I had it in my mind that I would be blogging as I went.  Each day I would recount my adventure for the benefit of the internet in word, picture and occasional video.  What actually happened was that...I didn't.  This was not me being lazy or a fit of pique that the Internet did not seem to be paying attention.  It was more a case of lack of time and just being plain knackered.

Generally most days would be filled with shooting or driving or both.  Usually both, because I had my GoPro set filming even when I was driving. So at the end of the day it was likely I would have about 4-5 cards in a mixture of CF and ND to upload.  This is the most paranoid I have been to date about footage so I will share what I did.  I took with me 2 Firewire bus powered drives.  One was Seagate and one WD but that was just what I had.  I also had a 320Gb NexTo Drive.  The Nexto stays in my camera bag in case I have to off-load during the day but I regard this as a last resort and I try to have enough cards not to have do that.  The other drives get split between my 2 suitcases.  I also have a 2011 Macbook Pro 13" and a UDMA FW800 CF reader.

So the cards go into the Nexto first which has a 1 button copy operation.  Next I will pop the CF into the FW reader or SDs go in the Macbook's own SD slot.  I had the Seagate drive plugged in.  One pain is that these drives don't daisy chain and neither does the reader so I have to use USB with CFs for the drive which slows things down.

I use Aperture and this will find all the Stills and Videos on the card.  If your laptop is a secondary machine and you will be moving them when you get home it probably a good idea to create a library just for this trip.  I leave it at the default check all and create a project for that day.  I also create a folder on the Seagate to select as a secondary backup location.  As the GoPro was doing 3D I needed to keep the left and right camera footage separate too.  

So by the time Aperture finishes I should have three copies of the footage.  I then vault the library which was copy #4.  I then used the WD drive along with the backup software it ships with to backup the Laptop HDD.  This includes the vault so that means I now have 6 copies.  With what energy I had left I would now look through the still and choose my favorites and use a plug-in to upload these to Smugmug.  Technically this is even more copies but hotel internet tends to be so slow that I could only send half-res jpgs.  Ideally it would have been nice to get everything into the cloud but it just ain't gonna happen at 100Kbps.

So, the actual travel blogging is going to have to wait a bit. I have started the process of going back through my stills selects and refining the images and their selection.  The video is going to have to wait a while longer.  I think I might make it my first FCP-X project if Apple deliver on their timelines.