Larry Jordan previews FCP X features to come
Maybe Apple can make FCP X a real Pro Editing Program, but the bad word they have created with the initial release will forever taint it. Honestly they should be a doing a 64 bit Final Cut Pro 8, and put in as many new features from X as they can as additions, and that might convince people they are still going for the pro market, but FCP X in my opinion will be forever tainted.
How Apple took the Pro out of FCP
I totally agree with the conclusions and think it was one of the stupidest moves Apple has ever made, but it looks like Adobe and AVID are ready to take the slack.
Apple Updates FCP X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4
Sounds like the biggest edition is better broadcast monitor support and better Multicam performance. So mostly bug fixes, but the broadcast monitor support is certainly important.
Little Frog in High Def, 10 things will miss about FCP
Philip Hodgets getting FCP 7 to FCP x
PHYX releases Defocus for FCP, Motion and After Effects
Some Features are
- Chroma Aberration – Editors can simulate chroma aberration – the imbalance of RGB color channels that can occur with camera lenses.
- Fast Defocus – This effect can be used to simulate ‘bokeh,’ or out-of-focus lens effects. Editors can create depth of field with the use of a depth mask, rack-focus effects, and more.
- Pan / Tilt – A popular effect used in many motion pictures and music videos, users can create a tilt-shift setup for still and motion picture cameras, with smooth, defocused gradients.
- Vignette Vision – With two effects options, editors can defocus either the outer edge or the center of the image. Defocusing the outer edge simulates POV shots, vintage lenses and more. Defocusing the center of the image allows editors to censor images, create hallucinations, etc.
You can read all about it at Noise Industries Site.
FCP.co lesson 1 - 3 on FCP X Multicam
The guys at FCP.Co have posted a video from Mark Spencer and Steve Martin on Macbreak Studio on how to use the new multi-cam feature.
Part 2 of 3 has now been released.
Part 3 of 3 is now out.
Canon MXF ingest for FCP X
Apple Has Updated FCP X added Multicam, 3rd Party FCP 7 Project Import
APPLE’S RELEASE NOTES
According to the Release Notes from Apple, Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.3 adds the following features:
- Multicam editing with automatic sync and support for mixed formats, mixed frame rates, and up to 64 camera angles
- Media relink for manual reconnect of projects and Events to new media
- Ability to import and edit layered Photoshop graphics
- Advanced chroma keying with controls for color sampling, edge quality, and light wrap
- XML 1.1 with support for exporting basic primary color grades and both importing and exporting effect parameters and audio keyframes
- Multiple improvements to the Color Board, including new key commands, editable numeric fields, and adjustable parameters that act like infinite sliders when dragged
- Ability to reorder color corrections in the Inspector
- Reveal in Event Browser shows clip range in the filmstrip while in List View
- Batch offset for clip date and time
- Ability to search text added to Favorite and Reject ranges
- Automatic restore of projects and Events in case of file corruption
- Beta version of broadcast monitoring with third-party PCIe and Thunderbolt I/O devices
- Improves performance when editing text in titles
- Improves performance when applying an effect from the Effect Browser
- Improves key-framing behavior in the Inspector, with keyframes automatically added when moving to a new point in time and adjusting a parameter
- Modifies transition behavior so that all newly added transitions use available media and maintain project length
- Fixes an issue which affected audio solo while skimming
- Resolves issues related to using Synchronize Clips with media containing a silent audio channel
- Fixes an issue in which constant speed retiming was not properly applied when using the Paste Effects command
The 3rd Party FCP XML transfer apps are created by Intelligent Assistance and include 7toX and Xto7. 7toX is available for $9.99 and Xto7 is $49.99 in the App Store, and both with XML much like Premiere Pro ability to open XML files from FCP 7.
Looks like Apple is listening and has added back many of the features that are necessary for a Pro to Use this software, even Beta support for broadcast monitors, and multicam, and especially the ability to relink media to different clips. The biggest are the utilities from Intelligent Assistance, which should be free and integrated, but it is great that they are available at all.
Compressor and Motion have also been updated.
Now FCP X does become a viable editing app and successor to FCP 7, though we still don’t know for how much longer FCP 7 will run on the latest OS’s, so it is time to freeze a system to keep FCP 7 viable and be able to even export XML to be able to import into FCP X (Since it does not work with project files).
And no matter what I still think that that the basic editing techniques of FCP X is broken. The inability to have numbered tracks just would not work with the DR workflows that I cut with and make Media Composer and Premiere the real solutions available for editing with. And honestly FCP X will make more people think they are professional editors and leave the high end jobs to people who can use the other software. Sure you will still be able to make good stuff with FCP X and it does have a powerful engine with impressive features, but it’s fundamental changes to editing are not going to revolutionize the industry, but instead continue to drive people to Adobe and AVID.
I still say Apple should have released this as a new App and made a 64 bit version of FCP 7, and slowly added the new features they wanted to implement instead of this scorched Earth policy which has and will continue to alienate the high end post people.
I think the fact that the Final Cut Pro User Group is now the Creative Pro User Group says a lot. Still the updates to FCP X will mean that more people can and will use it, and I am glad Apple is actually listening to some of the complaints, but mostly I hope it means that AVID and Adobe continue to upgrade their software. After all Premiere Pro really needs to be able to do more than 4 angle multi-cam and the automatic syncing, and being able to re-sync at a later time are very cool features that it could use.
Arstechnia on why Pros are moving away from Apple
I mean my first Apple was a IIC, and then a Mac Classic and I have never looked at a Windows PC, but have been pricing them out of late, and even talked to adobe to find out the process for moving my Creative Suite license to Windows, as it is likely that Mac just won’t be around for me as a professional editor and graphics artist.
FxFactory updated to 3.0
Noise Industries has updated their Flag Ship Plugs in suite to version 3.0!
This version has new Playback Ready transitions, as well as other new updated effects for it.
Still I wish they had added Premiere Pro support, as having Final Cut Pro support is no longer so important for me (yes I still use After Effects) and Adobe Media composer support would be nice as well.
Bunim/Murray drops Final Cut Pro for AVID
Due to the large volume of media generated by our reality shows, we needed to re-evaluate our editing and storage solutions. At the same time, we were looking for a partner who would understand our long-term needs,
Basically FCP X is not good enough, and FCP 7 is old and gettiing long in the tooth, and with AVID now being 64 bit, they felt the need to make the move.
Did Apple have a completed 64 Bit Final Cut Pro 8 that they scrapped?
Harrington said in the video:
"There was a Final Cut 8 and it was 64bit and it was done and they looked at it and said 'This is not what we want to do, this is evolutionary, this is not revolutionary' and they killed it."
If this is true I am totally disgusted. If it is true, Apple should have released the 64 Bit Final Cut Pro 8, and also released Final Cut Pro X as something else, probably iMovie Pro and then done what they could to implement some of the new technology as add ons to Final Cut Pro 8. They would have had a huge hit on their hands, and could have revolutionized editing, but instead they have killed Final Cut Pro as a professional editing program and made FCP X a completely consumer program. Sure it has some great technology, but it will never become a standard even if it does have some good new ideas, because it does not work as well or efficiently as Final Cut Pro 7.
I still can’t figure out why they did this to begin with. A new program that is a revolution is fine, but you should not throw out an industry standard program because you have a new idea.
Apple has released an FCPX Bug Fix to 10.0.2
• Fixes an issue where a title may revert to the default font after restarting Final Cut Pro X
• Resolves an issue that could cause files recorded with certain third-party mobile devices to play back incorrectly
• Addresses a stability issue caused by changing the start time on a Compound Clip
No major new features, but at least they are doing bug fixes.
Automatic Duck Plugs Ins are FREE!
I honestly thought with them moving to Adobe that the old plug ins were gone for good, but it seems not as Automatic Duck has released all their old plug ins for FREE!
I already owned Pro Import AE 5.0, which allows you to import either Final Cut Pro 7 or AVID Media Composer sequences into After Effects. You use Free XML exporter for FCP and it works almost perfectly. A must have.
Pro Export FCP 5.0 is for FCP X and is to allow OMF export.
Pro Export FCP 4.0 lets you export either OMF or AAF from FCP to AVID, and I previously owned this.
And their is Pro Import FCP 2.0 which allows you to import an AVID sequence into Final Cut Pro.
And they are all FREE. So download them now. Sure they will not be updated again, but free is a huge price drop!
Walter Murch on FCP X
While Walter is encouraged by the updated FCPX version last month, he hasn’t used it on any real work yet, so he is cautiously optimistic (and still traumatized he says). “Do they love us? No…I know they like us….but they keep saying they love us??”
Actually sounds like he while he has used AVID in the past, he is going to try Premiere Pro to see where it is at, and then see if it is AVID or Premiere Pro.
Personally I am liking Premiere Pro, though it still needs some features to go on par with FCP 7 (though it does beat it in others).
DaVinci Resolve 8.1 FCPX Support
| The Provideo Coalition is reporting | that DaVinci Resolve 8.1 now has support for FCP X and conforms and roundtrips. So you can now do a full color out of FCP X, though you audio is still going to be hard to conform without tracks.
OnLineVideo.net on FCP X 10.0.1
I like what they have to say about the new feature roles:
To a degree, roles are a solution to a problem Apple created by making Final Cut Pro X trackless. For example, in Final Cut Pro 7, or Premiere Pro for that matter, you could accomplish the same thing by placing narration on one track and music on another, and enabling/disabling the track as necessary for preview or rendering.
In addition to preview, when rendering out to a QuickTime file, you can also use roles to create separate files for further editing in another program. This is shown in Figure 4. For most high-end users, however, OMF or EDL export in Final Cut Pro 7 provides the same capability, while those editing in sister programs like Soundtrack Pro or Color would simply use the direct export feature shown in Figure 2. Apple declined to include industry-standard mediums of exchange in their product, or direct access to Soundtrack Pro, and roles is a substitute. In my view, you don’t get brownie points for fixing a problem caused by your own questionable design decisions.
And in conclusion:
For me, all the glorious new features seem like solutions to problems that I don’t have, added complexity with no payoff. With Final Cut Pro 7 or Premiere Pro, there are projects, clips, and a timeline. You import your clips, organize them into folders, and drag them down into the timeline. Then you trim a bit, add some effects, maybe a transition or two, export, and you’re done.
With Final Cut Pro 10, you have Events and Projects. You have a Magnetic Timeline, Clip Connections, a Primary Storyline, Auditions, Roles, Smart Collections: all are completely new concepts that I’ve never encountered in the dozen or so editors that I’ve cut projects on in the past, and, in some cases, they’re solutions to problems caused by questionable design decisions like the trackless interface.
The result is a cluttered interface that you really can’t control and asset management with even less control. You have effects and other functions seemingly designed to prioritize being different rather than superior. Honestly, was every established editing convention, from marking clips in and out in a source window to three-wheel color correction, so tragically flawed that it wasn’t worthy of being implemented in Final Cut Pro X, if only because it was functional and familiar to all pro target users?
More importantly, within the context of my typical projects, whether a two-hour ballet or music concert, or a ten minute streaming clip or screencam, will these new concepts help me do my job faster or better? I honestly don’t think so, particularly because Final Cut Pro 7 and now Adobe Creative Suite already suit my needs so well.
Exactly, the new features do not speed up my editing, and I actually find them slowly and less efficient. And now that is seems that FCP X has lost OMF export when Automatic Duck went away, so roles is even more useless, as I need OMF much more than just exporting tracks (though I do need tracks as well)
I don’t want a new form of editing, I want new features on top of the way I already edit, and if I like them will use them, but I don’t like the new way of editing of FCP X, and I don’t think I ever will
Singular Annouces they will have FCP X Support
Mikael Lubtchansky making FCPX to AE Script
Pretty awesome that he is doing this, especially with Automatic Duck possibly out of the picture!
FCP.CO on Roles in FCP X
It is worth checking out, and makes it seem pretty useless as the exports using ROLES for audio tracks, only gives you complete mixdowns of each track that has been assigned Roles, but they are mixdowns, and not at all OMF tracks with individual audio tracks. So not all that useful. Sure you could make versions with audio on different tracks like this (if you have another program to make tapes).
My question do Roles export with Automatic Duck Pro Export 5.0 so that the clips show up in tracks? If that works, then it makes Pro Export more useful, but if not, Roles are pretty useless.
Great article at Biscardi Creative on FCP X 10.0.1
And the fact that FCP X now has XML, but it is still not, and will never be compatible with FXP 7 is a joke. If Premiere Pro can do, Apple could do it, but they won’t.
I like this part:
At one point in the article Townhill notes that Apple is responding to feedback and changing the application quickly to meet the demands of the Post community. The strange thing to me is that Apple was given much of the same feedback during the beta testing and it was roundly ignored. Pages upon pages of information was fed to Apple with pretty much everything that has been said publicly since the application was released. In all cases, Apple ignored the suggestions moving ahead with the product as they developed it. NOW that there’s a tremendous outcry, NOW Apple is “responding to the Post Production community.” Maybe if they had responded to the people who were testing the product, they could have avoided this entire fiasco.
So it looks to me like Apple’s original plan was to just release FCP X as a prosumer product that really didn’t need the full fledged Post Production community blessing because there are millions of consumers out there and only a couple hundred thousand Post Pros. If it was truly aimed at the pros, then Apple would have listened to the pros during beta testing about all the things that were badly missing from the app.
But with all the subsequent negative press on the product, Apple is desperately trying to backtrack and figure out how to add the extremely basic functions that it left out by “skating where the puck is going.” (read the article to understand)
If Apple was truly dedicated to the professional editing community they would have taken the two to three years to deliver something that built upon their 11 year legacy. I just see what they’re doing now as creating a whole box of band-aids to make the product cobble along and sort of kind of do what the product has done for the past 4 years at least. Apple is admittedly leaning heavily on third party vendors to fill in what they call gaps, what I call chasms in the software.
So true so true. Apple made FCP X on purpose, they knew they were giving up on the pro community completely and all the businesses that make a living making plug-ins and hardware for final cut pro, but they figured they would make more money by making a consumer application and banking on the name of Final Cut Pro which has come to mean something in the industry. Now they realize they may have screwed up, but it is too late. These new features could have been add ons to a true 64 bit Final Cut Pro and it would have been awesome, but this weird prosumer app they have made with some pro features and the rest decidedly consumer will never be used by Pros, and shouldn’t even have Pro in the name.
iMovie is not called a pro app because it is not, and adding some pro features to it, when it forces you to work in it’s limited way does not make it pro, and never will. And nothing Apple does will ever make this app right for professionals, Apple has ceded this market, and Adobe and AVID are going to be really happy to fill the gap.
Apple Updates FCP X to 10.0.1 Adds XML Support and Free Trial
Macworld has an article dealing with Apple’s 10.0.1 Update to FCP X which will be released today (so far I only see an update to Compressor). Anyway for features they have done 3 major things for editors, the first is to release XML in and out of both project and event information (though likely no FCP 7 integration), added XSAN integration, and allowed intelligent stem export for audio and video using tagging in a feature called Roles.
I was wondering if Apple cared at all about this software to take a solid 3 months for an update, but at least they have updated.
And now you can have tracks be made out of sound for Audio export by tagging content, and it will smart export the tracks to the proper tracks, though I still think track support would be better an easier at least their is now a solution.
Amazingly Apple is also listening and is offering a free 30 day Trial, so you can try it out before you buy it. And they will also be releasing a free PDF Booklet entitled Final Cut Pro X for Final Cut Pro 7 users, which will be available from the Final Cut Pro X website soon. This should have come out with the application, but it is a start.
The article also talks about the release of Multicam and support for video monitoring, which will not be released until 2012, and they don’t say when, making this software not at all a professional app.
I am glad they are adding in features, but to me, they should have waited to release any app called Pro until all these features were integrated, unless they were going to continue to update and support final cut pro 7 during the period!
FCP X Color Isolation tutorial
FCP.co has an article leading to some interesting tutorials from Paulus the Woodgnone.
Pretty cool if you are using FCP X.
More FCP Feedback
I doubt it will make any difference, but it sure would be nice to have FCP 8 truly 64 bit with all it’s functionality, bug fixes and new features that make it the premiere editing system out there. And Tim Cook could make that change, even if he in all likelihood wont.
Adobe has a 45% gain after Apple releases FCPX!
And if you cared, you would have released an update to FCP X by now, but obviously you have not, so your claims to caring are shown to be hollow!
FCP.co on Customizing colors in Miotion 4's Templates for FCPX
FCP X to After Effects Applescript
FilmRiot is Premiere better than FCP
Scott Simons at Studio Daily on FCP Road Blocks
Of course I agree with all, though maybe not in the same order.
It does really blow me away that there is no live timeline scrolling in FCP X. This was a feature that FCP 7 really did need, and AVID has had for a long time.
And the fact that you can set an in and out in a clip, then click on another clip, and when you go back the points are gone had better be a bug, because that is so not a usuful feature.
digitalfilms on FCP X Roadblocks
Track tool. This plays a huge part in how I edit and something I really loved in FCP over Media Composer. I use it to move clips downstream to open a space on the timeline to work. If I want to do the same in FCP X, I either have to insert a placeholder (essentially the OLD Avid way of working) or select a number of clips (also the OLD Avid way). Not very effective when you have an hour-long timeline. Another reason to use the track tool is to select all the clips to the right in order to apply common effects.
I really don’t get these people that are fervently defending FCP X.
I know I have said this before, but to me it is not just incomplete, and you can’t call it a beta( because if it was a beta they would still be supporting FCP 7, while they worked out the kinks of FCP X), it is actually broken. The basic paradigm of the timeline that you cannot organize is broken. Some of the new features could be interesting and powerful, but as additional features, not as the only features. And I never want a timeline that I cannot organize unless it is has zero graphics or overlays, and even then I like to organize my tracks.
And while I could see a usefulness to being able to scrub where the mouse head is, like the AVID timeline, it should be able to turn off and on (I know you can turn it off in FCP X, but then you can’t scrub in clips in the viewer either, which doesn’t work).
And what exactly does Apple want us to do on jobs where we need a FCP 7 license? I am on one right now? How do we get one? E-bay, they are going for much more than $1000, and you don’t even know how legal they are?!?!
FCPX.TV has a requested features article
I really agree with the scrolling timeline, and reconnect media.
FCP X Visual Manual
Biscardi Creative switches to Premiere Pro
There’s been so much talk about a “new paradigm” and “a new beginning” lately courtesy of Apple. Defenders of the “new paradigm” are quick to point out that this is an entirely new application, nothing like it has ever been done, therefore, Apple had to break with all convention to create Final Cut Pro X. It’s stripped down now, like Final Cut Pro 1, but give it time and the things we “need” will be added back over time. It has so much “potential for the future.”
The more I work with Adobe Premiere Pro the more I just don’t understand that mentality. Why wait? Premiere Pro already includes the “missing elements” of FCP X and so much more it can’t do.
He goes on to say that despite all the protesting in forums he transferred over a large project to Premiere Pro final Cut Pro 7 and it all worked perfectly, he loves all the realtime effects, and also how Adobe Media Encoder can look into Premiere Pro and After Effects projects and render individual sequences without having to open the host apps, which for him, and for me is huge! You don’t have to export a quicktime movie and you don’t have to give up the host app to to the compression. THAT IS SO COOL, AND SO USEFUL! TALK ABOUT A TIME SAVER!
Apple's Abandonement of the Pro Market
If they were planning on supporting professionals they could have done what they did with OS X. Release FCP X as a beta, while also continuing to support FCP 7 for a time, and especially keep it available. And keep adding features to X until it was at par with 7 and then kill 7, with a definite timetable. They did it with OSX, so they could have done it here, but they are aiming for Prosumers and have abandoned the pro market completely.
All the people saying how great FCP X is, well I am glad you like it, but it is not, and will never be a professional app. Sure you can edit amazing things with it, and use it’s new very powerful features to make an incredible product or movie or whatever you are editing, but you can do that with any tool, it is just not a professional editing program and from what I see, never will be.
Macgasm article on FCP X
From Eugene Ho:
By releasing a program that ought to have been a step forward from the existing app, but instead was missing many features that used to be there, Apple made it so that FCP X doesn’t “just work” for many professionals. By changing the video editing paradigm, FCP X now “gets in the way” of many pros, who will now have to spend the time to learn the “new way” of video editing.
From Paul Skidmore:
People keep asking me what I think of the new Final Cut Pro. My answer has been consistent: “It’s hands down the best editing program I’ve ever used, and when it comes time to edit my short film this fall, I won’t be using it.”
Though Paul seems to think FCP X will get there, which I don’t. I think it has some very basic flaws that will preclude it from ever being a viable pro editing program, and that is why I will be getting Media Composer for $999 before the deal runs out, and I already have Premier Pro CS5.5 and have been spending a lot of time learning it.
Studio Daily has an article in Defence of FCP X
- The article talks to people who are using FCP X and seem to think it is great, and at the very least the future of editing, but I completely don’t agree, and have to say these people are pretty insetting.
Schechtman is a little more blunt, especially when it comes to editors who have already declared their intention to abandon FCP for the competition. "If you're making a rash decision based on a product that isn't complete, you're an idiot," he says. "We all live a technical life. We all can look back at the not-so-distant past and see that we've been through this before. Don't jump ship, permanently, while someone else is rethinking the NLE for your benefit."
Insulting and ignoring much of the big picture. Like me having a 5 month job starting where we need a new Final Cut Pro editing bay because our client is a Final Cut Pro house. Well we need to buy a new system and duplicate our Black Magic setup, which is useless for AVID (at least for now) and at this point we have to buy another copy of Final Cut Studio 3 on Ebay for more than $1000, because it currently isn’t available anywhere.
And it is idiotic to say that FCP X is going to be all this and that, if it is as you say an unfinished program! What if when Adobe moved to 64 bit they made their entire suite incompatible with the previous version, and cut out most of the features people needed. People would be up in arms, as they are about Final Cut Pro X! They did not need to release an unfinished product, they had years, and could have waited to release their supposedly finished product. They released it, so it is finished, sure they may add some more features, but it is a finished product.
I spent a week learning FCP X and did not find it any faster than FCP 7 for my editing, in fact I found many features backwards, and felt I had to spend more time organizing because of the lack of ability to use tabs for folders, and organize quickly that way for easy access.
If you want to make the old paradigm better, then add to it, add the new features on top of the old, and if people like it, it will take over, but just to make their way that only way, and to require more steps to do many of the essentials features of the previous version is unacceptable!
Rob TInworth's 10 years with FCP
Rob Tinworth’s 10 years with FCP a retrospective at Filmmaker.com.
Oliver Peters at DigitalFilms has an article on FCPX
Unfortunately by releasing FCP X in the way it was done, Apple has destroyed the existing ecosystem built around FCP and all developers start at square one again. Some are happy for the new opportunities and others express concern. By ignoring legacy support and releasing a product with many gaps, Apple has alienated many high-end professionals. You can argue all you want that these users constitute an insignificant niche, but for developers, it’s these users who will pay thousands of dollars for capture cards, accessories and plug-in packages.
The danger of re-inventing the wheel
I have nearly four decades of experience in broadcast operations, production and post, with most of it in editing. I’ve gone through numerous transitions and along the way operated, reviewed or been associated with well over two dozen different edit platforms. One of the things I’ve seen in that time is that non-standard workflows and interfaces eventually return to accepted concepts. After all, editing tools are built on over 100 years of post production practices.
For me, FCP X simply is NOT faster nor easier, just DIFFERENT – precisely because Apple has radically changed the way an editor organizes the information and works in the timeline. I will freely admit that my nonlinear days started with Avid and I first disliked moving to FCP. Now, after eight years of mostly non-stop experience with Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Studio, FCP 7 has grown to be my preferred editing tool – warts and all. It’s incredibly versatile, but that level of user control was dropped from FCP X.
I use the timeline as much as a scratch pad as the location for a final assembly. Place multiple clips onto top tracks and preview them as one option versus another. Or build little sub-sequences at the back of the timeline and then copy & paste these into the place I want. Work rough and then clean things up. FCP 7 and Media Composer give me that freedom and precision. FCP X does not. Of course, some of this is handled through Audition clips in FCP X, but that requires that you know and select the possible options first and then combine them into an Audition clip, which can be cut onto the timeline for previewing. To me, this requires more work than I go through in all other NLEs.
My ideal NLE would likely be a mash-up between Final Cut Pro 7 and Avid Media Composer, augmented by the performance features of FCP X and Premiere Pro. It’s difficult to predict the future where Apple is concerned, so I don’t want to discount the possibility of FCP X picking up steam with my customers. If that’s true, then I’ll be there ahead of them; however, today, FCP X is the wrong tool for my projects and those of my clients.
Take the Precision Editor, as an example. This highly-promoted feature is little more than a toy in my view. Trimming in FCP X is much weaker than in FCP 7 and that version wasn’t anywhere close to having the trimming control of Media Composer. Asymmetrical trimming in FCP X is virtually non-existent. The basics, like trimming L-cuts, haven’t been properly implemented. For instance, split edits (L-cuts, J-cuts) are only based on trimming audio track in-points in FCP X, instead of either audio or video as in most other NLEs.
It’s these and many other little things throughout FCP X that will hinder its adoption by the upper tier of users. That has a cascading effect. In a film school, why adopt FCP X for your students, when they’ll encounter Avid Media Composer as the tool of choice out in the “real world”? If you teach a digital media curriculum, whose graduates are destined to work in the corporate and web arena, then isn’t Adobe Create Suite better suited? What Apple has in effect done – by rebooting Final Cut as FCP X – is to pull the rug out from under its own advances earned over twelve years of FCP development. They’ve handed an extraordinary gift to competitors who can better service these smaller, but still important, market segments.
Sorry, i Know that was a lot to quote, but all of that I find right on target.
Apple has new FCPX Videos Comparing it to AVID
The Edit Blog at PVC has 100 Questions answered about FCPX
In its current state I would not use FCPX in a professional, client heavy environment. At this time I don’t consider it an FCP7 replacement as it lacks so many features that I’ve come to rely on. It’s a brand new piece of software so it will take years to mature into the full featured application that FCP7 is ... that is if Apple chooses to add back a lot of the features missing from FCP7. At this point in time I don’t know when / if it could replace FCP7 (or Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro).
and
23) Do you think Apple is moving away from the Pro Video market towards the wider prosumer market with FCPX.
Most definitely.
and
51) Does your knowledge of FC7 help or get in the way of learning FC10?
That’s a great question. I’d almost say it gets in the way as FCP7 uses long established editing paradigms that work very well. In some aspects FCPX is trying to reinvent the wheel. Where there are some great things in FCPX there’s other instances where, IMHO, the wheel doesn’t really need to be reinvented because it works so well.
and
63) how does the magnetic timeline handle a music video where the main audio should be locked permanently?
My music video testing has found that I would create a synchronized clip with the master audio to place in the primary storyline and then connect all my angles to it via Connect to Primary Storyline. In theory that should keep them all in sync. Truth be told the inability to really lock a clip in place and lack of multiclips / group clips would make me look elsewhere for music video editing.
and
77) Worthwhile building new edit suite around FCPX or still shrink-wrapped FCPStudio 7… etc?
Personally I would never build an edit suite around a single NLE so I certainly don’t feel the current release of FCPX is enough to build an entire edit suite around. As one tool in that suite yes but the only tool? Not in its current form and probably not for a long while. Plus, if Apple is going to rely on 3rd parties to supply many of the pro-workflow tools that we need for FCPX then the final cost is going to end up well above $299 to run FCPX in a professional / broadcast environment.
and
83) What’s your favorite new feature, and new disappointment?
Favorite new features are the many different background processes from rendering to transcoding to media management. Auditions is another strong new feature. Disappointment is the Magnetic Timeline and single Viewer that changes between source clips and the timeline.
The rest has some interesting points, and tells how to do may good things, but these are things that really stand out to me about what is wrong with the software.
Dylan Reeve says Apple has Abanonded Pros
This is how he ends the article:
Businesses in the film and TV industry, that have to deliver a product to a strict standard within a strict deadline, can’t pin their hopes on a future upgrades or the next version while relying on an increasingly ageing product that has been EOL’ed. They need certainty and at the moment the only certainty that exists with FCP is that the current version has no future hopes and the current version isn’t suitable for their work. They have no choice but to look elsewhere.
It simply makes no financial sense for Apple – selling a $300 product that appeals, as is, to millions of people – to pursue a small market with very specific and complicated demands.
In the end Final Cut Pro X will be a success, it is a powerful and innovative application. But it will no longer be a big part of the film and TV post-production industry.
FCP X will work for a lot of the smaller people, and will eventually, with a slew of plugs in (driving it’s price right back up to what it used to be) will do even more, but it will never be the the pro app that it once was. Apple has nixed that market, and it is just too bad they don’t have the decency to rename FCP X into iMovie Pro to show that they really are going a completely new direction and instantly saying to all pros that they need to find another home, instead of doing it in such a backhanded way.
Dylan Reeve and the FCP X Disconnect
He has some excellent graphs that show what he thinks is the potential market for FCP and how Apple just doesn’t see it as an important segment of it’s market, because it is so incredibly small, and I completely agree.
Apple is going lowest common denominator, and it can even be seen in Lion. Making everything more iOS like, instead of making iOS more mac like, because iOS is great for portable devices, but too simple, but they want to make the mac more like iOS and that personally scares me.
Intelligent Assistance has a great new Event Manager for FXPX
Mathew Levie comments on the Magnetic Timeline
Which brings me back to where I was on day two: the "magnetic timeline" is cute, but it keeps me from making the sequence I want and therefore it really has to go.
It reminds me a little bit of when Apple was introducing FCP 1.0 and Steve Jobs showed us how we could take a clip from the Viewer and drop it on this beautiful transparent overlay in the Canvas to choose insert/overwrite/replace/etc. and the crowd went, "oooooooh." But who edits that way?
Maybe you'll say I didn't give it enough of a chance. That might be fair. I just played around with it for a few days. But the truth is that we have an editing paradigm that works for us in FCP 7. It's not enough to show us that if we completely rethink our workflow then we can do the same things in FCP X as we can in FCP 7 with a couple of extra steps. What can we do that's more efficient, faster, better? Yes, the infrastructure is improved; yes, the 64-bit implementation and background rendering mean things will be much faster... if we can still figure out a way to tell the stories we want to tell.
In conclusion, I think if Apple's FCP X team really is serious about wanting professionals to use this program -- and maybe they're not, and that's okay -- we will need to see it go back to a track-based editing metaphor, at least as an option. If that happens, I can't see why I wouldn't use it eventually. I don't really care about the feature set: they can always add multicam and OMF export and whatever else, and I'm sure they will. But if they add those features while retaining the current editing paradigm, it will still be very difficult to use professionally.
My biggest complaint about FXP X is that I think the basic editing paradigm is broken and much too simplistic for a professional editing program. The magnetic timeline is what the program is built around and for me it makes things harder and not easier, as Matthew points out, it actually makes many things take more steps than they did in Final Cut Pro 7.
Sure there are some cool new features, but we would have been better off having those added to a 64 bit upgrade to Final Cut Pro 7 and not this monstrosity that is Final Cut Pro X.
Apple has obviously given up on the professional editing market and done it in the most insulting way possible, and I don’t think they realized the bad press and loss of sales they will get for not taking their professional market seriously.
Larry Jordan is sticking with FCP
I personally disagree. Apple had a mature and powerful editing program that could have been updated and have had some of the great new features added to it, but instead they decided to make a new less powerful program geared at making editing ‘easier’. The thing is they are engineers and have no idea what editing is really about, and have instead made a program that I don’t think will ever be right for a professional editor. The magnetic timeline alone proves this to me, because they no longer think that organization is important, and it is one of the most important things!
Larry Jordan has a nice post on Accountability
And it really is true. No is accountable, and Apple would hold everyone accountable if things were revered. Nvidia made one mistake and look they have not been in a mac since, and we the users are punished by Apple for it (having to put our ATI cards back in for major upgrades and then re-install the NVIDIA drivers).
I am knee deep into learning Premier Pro (after trying, but giving up on FCP X) and am pretty impressed by many features (especially the XML export being able to do the whole project with all sequences), but can’t see why this was even necessary! I can see that Apple might have wanted to cement their lead in the future, but not at the expense of their entire installed user base who are going to bad mouth the hell out of their new product until they make something useful.
And why buy Color, just to kill it a few years later? Or why kill Shake? Why did they not spin off their entire pro-division like they did with FileMaker Pro? Make a business unit that is answerable to it’s base. and needs to make a product that it’s customers want!
I am left shaking my head.
Alex 4D posted a new FXP X Effect
If you are using FCP X, download it for sure.
ProVideoCoalition has a good article on FXP X
Sooo ... IF Apple loses 10% of the 200,000 high-end editors (and I think this is generous … the real number is probably near 50,000) but gains these markets, will it be an even trade? No, not at all—each of these markets is 10 times the size of the current high-end editing market. If only a small percentage buy FCPX, Apple’s installed base will double, and quickly. Almost every person I’ve talked to in these areas are excited about the new release. They don’t want or need EDLs or multicam edits, they just want to cut their story together quickly.
In the long term, the future is more fuzzy. Apple stands to gain and hold the bottom 90% of the pyramid—if they are able to develop the application effectively. This 90% will begin to put pressure on the top 10%. We’ll just have to see how committed Apple is to the future. For the many that will be entering the market with Final Cut Pro X… getting in now means that they can learn a simple application and grow with it… like many of us did with Photoshop over 20 years. It was simple when in started, really.
And I think they will lose a lot more of 10% of the provideo market, more like 90%, but yes I admit it is a small portion of the market that Apple probably could care less about. They are shooting for the other 90% and FCP X does have some great features for them, but at the cost of making a program that will not work fro the pro-editors.
And honestly they have lost our trust completely! I mean just killing Color, an Amazing HIgh End color correction program is so arrogant it is ridiculous. And sure we could move to DaVinci from Black Magic, but that is $1000 with another $1600 for the control board, and Color was included in the FCP Studio Suite!
Alex4D writes about a secret FCP X meeting in London
Personally Apple needs to come out and just say this stuff if it is true, and tell people what will be paid and what is coming, and give a timeline.
And anyway I think it may be too little too late. Apple has screwed this release completely. Any program that cannot open it’s previous versions files should not be called the same thing. If it is not iMovie code (which I don’t believe) then call it iEdit Pro,
Here are some point from the meeting:
1. FCP XML in/out is coming via 3rd party soon…no FCP 6/7 support project support coming ever it seems…
2. Ability to buy FCP7 licenses for enterprise deployments coming in the next few weeks…
3. FCPX EDL import/export coming soon…
4. FCPX AJA plugins coming soon for tape capture and layback…capture straight into FCPX bins.
5. XSAN support for FCPX coming in the next few weeks…
6. FCPX Broadcast video output via #Blackmagic & @AJAVideo coming soon…
7. Additional codec support for FCPX via 3rd Parties coming soon…
8. Customizable sequence TC in FCPX for master exports coming soon…
9. Some FCPX updates will be free some will cost…
And
conigs Do they have any kind of timeframe for “soon”? Am I safe in guessing in 2011?aPostEngineer within a few weeks for some updates i.e. XSAN up to a few months for 3rd party developers to get their heads around the API.gigarafa what about the rest of the suite? Color, dvd studio etc?aPostEngineer they have unfortunately reached their EOL and will not be developed any more..
So Color and DVD Studio are officially dead as well.
Studio Daily has an excellent review of Final Cut Pro X
iMovie on Steroids? MaybeAfter using FCPX for a few weeks I still believe what many initially thought upon first seeing FCPX back in April: This is just the first version of a new application and in this form is essentially iMovie on steroids. There are just too many things that Final Cut Pro 7 users will be missing when they really dig into FCPX. It's not that we won't be able to make cool effects and pretty video, it's just that we'll do it in a much different way without some tools that we now take for granted. Word from people who are smarter than I am say that FCPX isn't built off of current iMovie code. I still find that hard to believe, as the similarities are striking. If they aren't based on the same code then Apple made a very conscious, very clear and very targeted decision to copy an awful lot of what's in iMovie now. Some of it is actually for the better but a lot of it is for the worse.
And
•No More Dual-Monitors: Also gone is the more traditional FCP7-like Viewer/Canvas two-monitor layout. The viewing window changes to the timeline or the clip events depending on what you’re doing. In my time with the new software, I have come to really, really miss that two window layout.
And
There is the option of importing from tape, but that's only from a tape-based camera and only via FireWire. Why Apple included only FireWire camera support is perplexing. It seems downright silly to rewrite FireWire tape support for FCPX and not include something like multi-clipping, especially when it feels like you approach something close to multi-clips when you use the new Synchronize Clips feature and have it sync multiple camera angles. Sure, the resources for FireWire support might be vastly different than support for third-party I/O hardware (which isn’t supported out of the box) but FireWire support for DV and HDV? Really? When Apple, and an entire industry, is moving away from FireWire?
And
When media comes into FCPX it must be associated with an Event or dropped into a new Event created upon import. Forget about project-based media; everything here is based on Events. In fact, all the media you’ve ever imported is available all the time. This feature alone can be totally amazing and/or insanely frustrating; I experienced both feelings when using FCPX. There are definitely times I don't want media from other projects available, especially in a professional environment, where you can have hundreds of hours of media from different clients on your media drive. Conceptually, it’s an interesting idea for the right environment but in practice FCPX desperately needs some type of "Event Media Mounting Manager" to keep unrelated media from intruding on an unrelated project. You can physically move the media in the Mac Finder to hide it from FCPX but isn’t this an application for the future? That seems really antiquated.
And
This type of project setup, and the more structured way FCPX stores and tracks media, reminds me very much of Avid Media Composer. Media Composer has always been great at both media management and mixing formats. Avid's often been chastised by FCP users for it's structured, less free-flowing way of working, but Apple is doing something very similar now in FCPX.
And
The timeline has done away with video and audio tracks as we know them and therefore, it’s a very free form way of working. The magnetic timeline means clips move out of the way where clip collisions might have happened in FCP7. This new, freer way of editing will suit some; others it will not. I like quite a lot of what Apple is trying to do to make editing faster and better, but there are other things in FCPX that really don’t make the overall editing experience any faster or better. You really have to try it yourself, which makes it rather frustrating that there isn’t a free demo available.
and
My fear is this free-form timeline will lead to some real sloppy jobs coming in the door if FCPX catches on.
And summing up
The new Media management in FCPX may seem to offer more options to editors, but it actually uses a very rigid, specific way to store clips, renders and projects. If you were a sloppy editor in FCP7, then you’ll be fine in FCPX, at first. But if you don’t really understand how FCPX organizes your media you might be in for some trouble if files get moved and drives get shuffled.
I hate how there’s no real dedicated Viewer window when I skim those source clips.I hate how imprecise much of the actual editing process has become in the magnetic timeline.
And finally
How much real-world editor feedback did Apple really get before this came to market? Even though some very high profile editors got a chance to evaluate it before the release, I'm more inclined to think it was designed by a bunch of engineers who don’t actually edit for a living. Either way, it just feels unfinished. I won’t be implementing it with my paying clients as of this version, and probably not for a few versions to come. But I’ll happily bang out home movies with it.
And yes he also does have good stuff to say, but it is the negative to me that is the most telling. This is not a pro app, and the way it is built I don’t think it will ever be. Sure kids who have never edited might love it, but forcing editors to work in one way that is not proven to be better is not necessarily a better way, just different, and for this different, I am not sure I agree.
Helmut Kobler has an excellent article on being a Final Cuttter moving to Premiere Pro
Yes, well before all of Apple's recent shenanigans, I started to sense that Final Cut, along with all of Apple's professional apps and gear, was slowly being strangled to death. Here are a few of the harbingers of doom that caught my eye over recent years:
• Apple took nearly 2.5 years to upgrade Final Cut Studio from version 2 to 3 (and v.3 was only a moderate upgrade at that). Until then, updates had come at a much more aggressive pace.
Apple cancelled the popular Shake, promising to replace it with a new tool that never came.
• Apple got lazy with its Logic Pro app as well, letting development creep along with an upgrade about every two years.
• Apple stopped updating the Pro page on its web site long ago. There hasn't been a new item posted in almost two years: http://www.apple.com/pro/
Apple took more than a year to fix a glaring Final Cut 7 bug that made its Close Gap command unreliable. To break a core Timeline feature like Close Gap and not fix it for 14 months was offensive and inexcusable.
• Apple cancelled its Xserve RAID then its Xserve hardware.
• Apple started taking longer and longer to release Mac Pro workstations, and absolutely phoned in the latest upgrade last July. 511 days in the making, the newest Mac Pro was one of the most un-inspired hardware upgrades I've ever seen from Apple.
• Apple pulled out of industry trade events like NAB.
• Multiple rumors (and confirmation of rumors) of significant layoffs in the Pro Apps division.
• Multiple rumors that Apple was trying to sell off its Pro Apps division.
Take just a few of these and maybe they don't add up to anything. But take all of them together, and it's a real sign of Apple's low-to-non-existent priority for professional media. Yes, the writing has been on the wall for quite a while, and by 2010, I reluctantly began to read it. Late last year, I started to look at the two clear alternatives to Final Cut....
The rest of the article has some excellent reasons why he moved to Premiere, and documents the differences and similarities, and really gives a good idea of why to try out Premiere Pro, it really is a must read!
Techvessel has an interview with a former Avid Employee on FCP X
It’s hard to say exactly what Apple’s strategy was with their release of FCPX. Its announcement at the NAB convention seems to suggest that they were trying to get professional editors excited about FCPX, yet the lack of support and backwards compatibility with FCP7 shows either a disconnect, or outright disregard for the realities of being a professional editor.
This release feels similar to their previous iMovie reboot. In that case, I think Apple could afford to be more aggressive with abandoning the previous version of iMovie and starting from scratch. Many iMovie users probably don’t use it on a daily basis, so throwing out their previous experience with an older version and starting over really wasn’t that big of a deal.
For *professional* editors, this is an entirely different scenario. Pro editors use their software of choice all day, every day. They become masters at shortcuts and UI tricks to make them effective. If you’ve never seen a *good* professional editor at work, I can tell you it’s amazing. The speed and precision in which they work is staggering. They can do this because they’ve spent countless hours training on and mastering their tools. That’s why it’s unreasonable to expect that Pros would jump on board with FCPX on day one.
and
What happens if you’re currently on a project using FCP7, and you need to bring some new people on board to help finish the project? You’d better hope they already have a copy of the software, since now you can’t buy FCP7 any longer. I’m not sure what you do in that scenario. I think it’s these kinds of issues that show a lack of respect for the Pro editor that has gotten the community so riled up.
and
The bigger concern I would have if I were at Avid would be that it appears Apple is again trying to leapfrog their competition with a new paradigm for video editing. Avid’s interface was already showing its age, and now it’s only going to appear more antiquated in the eyes of young editors growing up on FCPX. Maybe Avid doesn’t necessarily see that as a big deal – they have their loyal users who aren’t going to switch and they know it. Remember also that Avid doesn’t make their money from the editor software alone – they also have big enterprise server systems that manage large amounts of media and also do things like big newsroom automation systems. These are things that Apple are not likely to compete with. However, in all those kinds of systems, the lynchpin is the Editor, and if none of the younger editors know how to use, or don’t care to learn Avid, that’s a big long-term problem.
As I said I don’t fully agree, as I don’t see FCP X really taking off in the condition it is in, and I believe some of it’s basic paradigms are so flawed (the magnetic timeline being one) that I don’t see this being the choice for young editors if they actually expect to work in a professional environment.
Final Cut Pro X Audio Crossfades when you put on a Dissolve
Neptune Salad has a great article on switching to Premiere Pro
But the real question anyone who edits is this: What are we going to do right now? I mean what are we actually going to do? As professionals, we don’t have the time to play around with multiple new programs until this dust settles as it could be months, and it might take Apple over a year to put FCP back on track.
And
Honestly, I’m not excited about moving to a new platform. This will be my third (Media 100, Final Cut Pro, now this – go ahead and laugh, Avid users). But the integration of AfterEffects (which is becoming a must-have item for filmmakers, see www.videocopilot.net to understand my zeal) and Photoshop make it an attractive one-two knockout punch.
Kind of how I feel, though he did not get a refund on Final Cut Pro X, and I did, but we both are making the move to Premiere Pro.
iMovie and FCPX were originally built as a companion to Final Cut Pro
Ubillos returned from vacation and found that Final Cut wasn't ideal for organizing raw footage. From that experience, First Cut was born which would let you import your raw footage and quickly skip through, organizing and building a rough edit. The intention originally was to then export to Final Cut Pro. At some point, Apple officially latched onto the project and turned it into the new iMovie '08.
No wonder so many features seem shoehorned, it was meant to just create quick rough cuts, not to be the whole editor!
Got My Refund!
I did have a disturbing thought though, is Apple doing this to remove some of the worst reviews on their site? Every refund should be one 1 star review they get rid of!
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Dear Jonah,
Thank you for contacting iTunes Store Customer Support. My name is *****
I'm sorry to hear that the application you recently purchased is not functioning as expected. I know how eager you are to get this issue resolved. I will make sure that this issue is resolved at the earliest.
Jonah, I have reversed the charges for the purchase of applications "Final Cut Pro X", "Motion 5" and "Compressor 4". In five to seven business days, a credit of $399.97 should be posted to the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase.
If you require further assistance, please feel free to reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.
Have a good day!
Sincerely,
*****
My request for a refund from Apple
I am writing you about my orders for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4. Order numbers M3NT1XYK15, M3NT1XYK7J and M3NT1XYLSB. I want to get a refund on these because the products do not function as advertised. Today you released a FAQ on Final Cut Pro X and it’s very first entry states that I cannot open Final Cut Pro 7 projects into Final Cut Pro X (it should not be named that, what if Adobe had made Photoshop CS5 not able to open any previous Photoshop docs when it became 64 bit) and as a professional editor, that is a good 75 percent of my business, working on variations of old projects and fixing projects for other people. Without this features the program is useless to me and the FAQ says it will never happen. If this FAQ had been out when the app was released I would not have purchased any of these 3 apps. Honestly I can say I am furious! I have already paid money for Ripple Training, and have also upgraded AUtomatic Duck, and since every statement after FCP X came out was that features were coming I expected that opening FCP 7 projects would be the first priority, but since it will never happen I must get an editing suite that can open FCP 7 sequences like Premiere Pro or Media Composer with Automatic Duck (which as I said I already own).
I also never saw any documentation that said that the magnetic timeline could not be turned off and that you can’t assign tracks. I work on 28:30 long infomercials often with 20 tracks of video and must put different graphics on different tracks in order to organize so that any editor can open it and understand it, with the magnetic timeline I might be able to make a sequence that looks the same visually, but it would not be organized so any editor could see it or so that I could easily turn texted on and off. This is another reason that this suite is not usefull to me.
As for Motion, I only got it to edit effects within FCP X, and to me it does not vastly improve over the previous motion. I don’t notice any major speed increases, and I see it as a downgrade since it is missing the send to features in FCP X that made it a good companion to final cut pro.
And Compressor 4 is not even 64 bit, and I am fine with having Q-master seperate, and since it won’t get video sent from Final Cut Pro 7, it is useless to me.
Please refund my money ASAP because these apps do not do as advertised, and you have only made these shortcomings aware as of today. I tried to learn and use FCP X, and did the ripple training, but found it is not at all a replacement for FCP 7, and instead feels like a consumer downgrade.
Apple released a FCP X Faq
Can I import projects from Final Cut Pro 7 into Final Cut Pro X?Final Cut Pro X includes an all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline and connected clips. In addition, Final Cut Pro X features new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools. Because of these changes, there is no way to “translate” or bring in old projects without changing or losing data. But if you’re already working with Final Cut Pro 7, you can continue to do so after installing Final Cut Pro X, and Final Cut Pro 7 will work with Mac OS X Lion. You can also import your media files from previous versions into Final Cut Pro X.
Basically being unable to open FCP 7 projects or sequences (though it can open the consumer iMovie ones) is a huge part of my business, and I would rather move to Premier Pro 5.5 or Media Composer 5.5 which can open my FCP 7 sequences via XML (Media Composer with the help of Automatic Duck, which I already own).
The FAQ did have some good answers, but this above alone was enough to send me to try to get a refund.
Does Final Cut Pro X allow you to assign audio tracks for export?Not yet. An update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize your audio clips by type and export them directly from Final Cut Pro X.
Of course this feature as well, not being able to assign tracks means my 20 video track infomercials would be so confusing it would hurt! And mixer’s will still hate the exports of audio, even if things are tagged!
So I am going to fight for a refund!
Two Articles on FCPX mirroring my thoughts
The release of Final Cut Pro X was the defining moment for many. In my line of work, I get to interface with a lot of video editors and other video professionals. I have spoken at numerous user groups and conferences. As a forum leader and podcaster for Creative COW, I have been hearing complaints for years. I also get to sit in edit suites with clients. The waiting for transcode on import as well as the 32-bit nature of Final Cut Pro 7 has caused a lot of impatient waiting in edit suites around the globe.Final Cut Pro X was supposed to fix this. At least that was the belief most held. It would be “awesome” we were told. I guess that can mean different things.People are not breaking up with Apple because of what Final Cut Pro X is. They are ending their relationship because their fears have been confirmed. I present to you a summary of the issues that have people freaked out. Please pass this list on to anyone who asks you what the big deal is. These are my 10 reasons that people are switching. These are just opinions. Opinions formed by my interactions with many and my professional experiences and connections.
This is a must read article, and all his reasons are spot on.
Richard also links to the second article from OneRiver Media on Is the Trust for Apple Gone for Good, and I would have to say that it is.
In the blink of an eye, the release of Final Cut Pro X has caused a ripple in the Matrix so huge, I’m not sure Neo could even fix this catastrophe. But it’s much more than good software gone astray, it’s deeper than infrastructure changes; it’s about the loss of trust, faith and even livelihoods.
and
But switching non-linear editing applications is only part of the problem, and in some cases, only a small problem by comparison. There are many people that have devoted the last ten years in direct relation to Final Cut Pro, and as a result of Final Cut Pro X, are going through a major life/career change. These include certified Final Cut Pro trainers, value added resellers, user group organizations, third party software/plugin developers, and many more. There are many people that are questioning their livelihood because of this radical shift that Final Cut Pro X has taken. I wonder if Apple knew they were going to directly cause such an issue, or if all they were looking at was nothing but their bottom-line. To me, it shows an enormous amount of arrogance, ignorance, and selfishness from Apple, which is not the Apple I once knew.
and finally
So all of this begs the big question, “Can Apple be trusted from here on out?” For me, I will no longer buy any kind of pro app from Apple for my facility, knowing their EOL history is very strong—even if an updated Final Cut Studio 3 (based on FCP7) was released. It amazes me that all of my favorite pro apps from Apple are all EOL’ed. Literally. For me personally, I no longer care about FCPX or even FCP7 updates. I’ve already started passing up articles on FCPX how-to’s or work-arounds, as I will not be using FCPX in my facility, and since FCP7 is EOL’ed.Because I’m switching to Avid Media Composer, all I care about at this juncture is integrating my current hardware and software with it, and what else I need to change or buy in order to make that happen. It’s a domino effect really, and all because of a 2.5-star, $299 downloadable app from the App Store. Seriously, that $299 app is costing me thousands of dollars, but luckily, none of it is going to the App Store. Just keep making powerful desktops, Apple, so I don’t cut my ties from you completely.
This is another must read article and really is much of what I have to say on the subject, though in the future i will talking more about individual features and what I do and don’t like about them.
The title of the article says it all!
And I completely agree! This app is just not for pros in any way shape or form!
FCP Producer is pushing a web petition
Apple recently introduced a completely new version of Final Cut Pro that immediately replaced the previous one. Although modern and revolutionary in many ways, this new version X lacks at least 10 main features required by any professional who uses Final Cut on TV studios, Feature Film editing, Production and Post-Production houses. In order to keep expanding the numbers of Final Cut Pro editing suites on these places we request that the Final Cut Pro 7 application should be temporally available for free as a download to all of those who bought Final Cut Pro X, while these 10 features are not addressed in the X release. They are: Add ability to import and export XML files natively;Add ability to import previous Final Cut Pro projects natively;Add ability to export OMF files natively;Add ability to change a project’s frame rate after it’s been created; Add ability to read and write projects stored on an network or SAN volumes; Add ability to switch the Final Cut Pro X layout to a more traditional 2-monitor setup; Add ability to preview true video signal, independent from the 2-monitor setup; Add support for Multicam editing; Add support from capturing and recording to tape, not only via capture now but also via batch capture and print to tape natively; Add support for importing image sequence files such as DPX and OpenEXR;
Some very true facts.
Planet 5D rings in on FCP X
Apple/Steve Jobs also realize that there will be a group of editors who leave and go to Adobe Premiere Pro or over to Avid – but they believe that the video editing market is going to be huge in the future and they have positioned iMovie to be the basic editor – and FCPX is the pro editor (which by the way imports iMovie assets – get the hint?).They will sell tons of copies of FCPX in the next 10 years and are not afraid to lose a few old fans along the way. They would have sold even more if they were to have gotten ownership from the editing community instead of taking it away. They’re going to have to go into major recovery mode or they’re going to lose a big hunk of the community – bigger than they were willing to lose in the first place.But I still believe that in the long run, in a year or so, FCPX will rock. I’m certainly using it now and will continue to explore and learn from those who have tutorials ready (more on that shortly too).
I still just don’t believe it can ever get as good as people think it will, too many fundamental problems!
It was to be a companion to FCP
From that experience, First Cut was born which would let you import your raw footage and quickly skip through, organizing and building a rough edit. The intention originally was to then export to Final Cut Pro. At some point, Apple officially latched onto the project and turned it into the new iMovie '08.
I just wish it had stayed that way!
High Definition has an article on FCP X
Which brings us on to the timeline – another massive bone-of-contention in the FCP community. The notion of tracks has completely disappeared, principally because of the new ‘magnetic timeline’. Instead of FCP 7’s old ‘Clip Collision...’ message that either drove you mad, or was a useful warning (depending on your point-of-view) clips now move themselves out of the way – essentially creating new tracks as they go. There is no track routing so, for instance, you can’t control where your audio goes when you insert a clip. This is pretty horrible – for example, if you want to mute your sound effects you need to hunt through the timeline and disable each one individually, rather than just muting the track you put them all on – you can’t even rely on them being where you last saw them, as editing in the magnetic timeline may have moved them somewhere else. I’m not sure that the benefits of losing the Clip Collision dialog outweigh the problems the magnetic timeline causes though Apple says it’s working on a solution – I suspect this may just be a way of assigning audio to output tracks which won’t solve the layout problem I’ve just described. They also claim that Automatic Duck Pro Export will allow you to create and assign output tracks as a workaround, but I’m not sure that’s true…Editing is a little weird too, if you are used to the standard 3 point edit paradigm. It sort of still exists, but only as the illegitimate offspring of iMovie and FCP.
and
It feels, somehow, like Apple have taken the iMovie code and grafted three point editing onto it. I can see the point of the magnetic timeline, and it’s arguably better than a tracked timeline, but there was no need to replace the FCP 7 three (and four) point paradigm. FCP X’s implementation isn’t better – it seems to be a bit of a mess.
and
At the moment, you can’t set the start timecode of the timeline, so the usual broadcast requirement of programme material starting at 10:00:00:00 isn’t possible. Similarly, audio track assignment is a real problem until Apple releases an update that solves the issue. You can’t use a broadcast monitor or audio PPMs until there is a professional I/O unit supported and you’ll need the Automatic Duck software to interface to ProTools/SADiE for audio work and, potentially, your finishing solution (if you don’t finish picture in FCP X)
And the final thoughts.
The funny thing is, if Apple had released this as a replacement for Final Cut Express (which has also been discontinued) then the reviews would be glowing. They could have continued to sell FCP 7, and then release a ‘Pro’ version, with all these problems solved, in a year or so. I would certainly be surprised if any of next year’s Oscar nominees will be cut on FCP X.
Personally I think I like the program less, but I do agree with most points, and the should have saved some of this tech for a true pro Final Cut Pro instead of making it completely prosumer.
Richard Harrington's Response to Dave Pogue
He really hits almost everything, so this article is a must read.
Well I guess he should know better then
What I think happened with Final Cut Pro x
Randy Ubillos created early versions of Premiere, which worked, but was too low end to do anything powerful, and never became huge like AVID. He was brought on by Apple to change iMovie, and his version was seen as a huge step backwards and Apple had to back track and re-release the previous version that had more features. People who were new to editing liked the simplicity of the new iMovie, but previous users didn't like it. Somehow that version of iMovie kept going and got more features, and Ubillos was given the task of updating final cut. I can only assume Steve Jobs liked what he did with iMovie, and got sold on his idea of making an iMovie Pro that would make it easier for everyone to edit.
The thing is, Ubillos is obviously not an editor, and didn’t consult with any professional editors in the production of Final Cut Pro X, which is really iMovie 10, made to be 64 bit, and have some new Pro features like 4K support (and yet no Native RED support?!?!?!?!?). Steve must have gotten sold on Ubillos’s ideas of how he could revolutionize editing and how they could make it ‘easy’ for anyone to edit amazing high end videos, but Ubillos has no idea what a professional editor needs, he really only knows how to make a program easy for the masses, with some high end features.
This product should have been iMovie Pro and been for the masses!
I think Ubillos convinced Steve, and they call it Final Cut Pro to cash in on the cache in the name that they had built up over the years, even editing features. Everyone has now heard of Final Cut Pro, and they would cash in on that name and make a program for the average Joe, who would now think since they could use this program that they could even edit features, of course this ignores the fact that the program is so constrictive that almost no professional editors will use it, and with this feature set, it will never be used on another feature, or TV show, but it will be used for web delivery, which seems to be all it is suited for.
If Apple really wanted to revolutionize editing they should have also consulted with a high end professional editor, Walter Murch comes to mind. He and his first assistant Editor Sean Cullen were really the first editors to start using Final Cut Pro to edit features. They know what professional editors need, and what Final Cut needed to move from Final Cut Pro 7 to a 64 Bit Final Cut Pro 8. Including how to make it have better multi-user abilities and what high end features would make their lives easier, and every professional editor’s lives easier.
Now they still would have needed a good engineer to figure out new features they could add, but those would need to be run by the big editor, like Murch, to see if it is wanted or needed.
And even better would be to get some big TV editors that use Final Cut and a few commercial editors, and concert and music video editors, and talk to them all about what they needed to make Final Cut Pro even better!
And I don’t buy their excuse that it was a 64 Bit re-write, so they had to start from scratch, because I don’t even believe they started from scratch. They obviously started from iMovie, because while it doesn’t open final cut pro projects, it opens iMovie projects! And Adobe had to completely rewrite their entire suite for use on Macintosh 64 bit as of CS5 (CS4 on Windows), and they managed to do it with almost all the features, and in fact add new features. Sure you would have to get updated plug ins to work with 64 bit, but that is a small price to pay for amazing performance gains!
Now maybe Ubillos really does believe that his way is so much better than what any other program edits, but honestly I have never met any 2 editors who edit the same way, and forcing them to do it one very limited way is not a way to create better editors, but to hamstring editors. We like to edit how we edit, and have the tools that can conform to our ways.
If there way is so easy and so great, why am a third of a way through the Ripple Training Videos and still clueless and how to get the program to do many things? It is not easier, it is just another way, that I don’t think makes for as tight an edit as easily. Honestly if you have a new way to edit, why not add it on, as an additional method, instead of replacing all other methods?
I really do think Apple was ready to sacrifice their professional market to have bigger sales with more people. We already know that they will kill huge and successful programs, they killed Shake after all, and it was literally the standard for compositing for high end features, and was what they used on the Lord of the Rings! They bought it, released 2 versions, one at a high price, one at a low price, and then killed it, stealing some tech for other programs (notable Q-Master for Compressor). Though it seems they must have either thought the professional community would just follow them, even with out all the features they needed, after all why else did they show this at the Final Cut Pro user group meeting in Vegas during NAB 2011. That was for Pros, and some one obviously though that this would work for Pros. Ubillos must think his ways are so much better than what editors are doing, that he could do what he wanted and people would just do it, but I think that their market share will drop significantly in the editing world as Pro Editors pass on FCP X, and the cache of the name Final Cut Pro loses it’s luster.
In fact it may be too late for Final Cut Pro now completely. This release has so damaged their name that basically I the program might be done, as professional editors jump ship, either back to AVID or over to Premiere Pro, which will let them continue to use their AJA or Black Magic cards. And while FCP X will continue on, and may even do OK, it will never be as big as they want, as it is too expensive for the casual editor (and honestly more expensive than the Final Cut Pro Suite Upgrade would have been for most of us, as you basically have to have Motion and Compressor to have full Functionality with Final Cut Pro X and that puts it at $399 and the upgrade price was $299).
If they don’t do something soon, professional editors will leave in droves, and the sales after this version will not be what they wanted, so to make it worth developing, they will have to drop iMovie, and make this iMovie, free on every new computer and part of iLife so it will continue on, and probably get more powerful, but professional editors will have moved on.
More on Final Cut Pro X
In FCP X, Apple got some things amazingly right. But they also got key features amazingly wrong. And if they don’t change course, this software, which has significant potential, is going to spin further and further out of control. At which point, its feature set is irrelevant, its reputation will be set. We’ll be looking at another Mac Cube.
And what they need to do immediately
1. Immediately return Final Cut Studio (3) to the market. If it is not compatible with Lion (and I don’t know whether it is or not) label it so. But put it back on store shelves so consumers have the ability to work with the existing version until FCP X is ready for prime time.2. Fund the development of a conversion utility – either at Apple or thru a 3rd-party – and announce the development with a tentative release date.3. Publicly announce a road-map for FCP X that just covers the next 3-4 months. Apple needs to be in damage control mode and the best way to defuse the situation is to communicate. Answering the question: “What features will Apple add to FCP X, and when?” will go a long way to calming people down.
And his conclusion:
This launch has been compared to Coca-Cola launching New Coke – resulting in a humiliating loss of market share.With Final Cut Pro X, however, the situation is worse — with New Coke, only our ability to sip soda was affected. With Final Cut Pro X, we are talking losing livelihoods.
Thanks for getting this out there Larry, I really appreciate you saying what needs to be said.
Final Cut Pro X
For years we have been waiting for a true 64 bit version of the program, but instead they kill the old suite including Color and Soundtrack, and released what is basically iMovie Pro.
Final Cut Pro X can’t open old Final Cut Pro sequences, only iMovie sequences.
It’s magnetic timeline doesn’t allow for any track organization. It doesn’t import or export XML so you can’t finish in anything else. The viewer window is gone, and has not been well replaced. It is not designed for dual monitors. The organization is awful. You basically have to do titles in Motion now, and it doesn’t even have a build int drop shadow!
You can do text in templates created in Motion, but have to go to Motion to do anything like you could previously.
It has no XML import and output, so you can’t leave the program to color correct, or finish in another program. In fact to get the Audio out, you have to buy a $500 Automatic Duck plug in, and you have no control over where all the clips go.
It also is not made for versioning, as it autosaves, and basically has one sequence per project, or event as they are now called, so you will have lots of Events.
The lack of Multi-Clip is insane, and sure it can sync audio to one track, but won’t work with multiple tracks.
The loss of a dedicated viewer monitor makes less room for organization, and means you see the audio waveform much smaller than you used to. Also if you want to move your Events to a second monitor, your scrubbing of the clips moves to, so it is very far away from what you are seeing in the one Viewer. This was not thought out well at all. And it really seems setup for a single monitor, sure you can move one segment to another monitor, but not how you want.
For organization, it is all geared toward keywording, which is great, but you lost so much of the old organization that you could do with tabs.
The new in Timeline Trim feature feels like old Premiere 4.2.1 where you had to A B roll clips, and is a huge step backwards.
The fact that you can’t make chapter markers for Quicktime movies and DVD’s is a huge step backwards!
The auto color matching works terribly, the clips come out looking pretty awful!
I tried it with Canon 60D raw H264 and it was as sluggish as can be, as though it can play it back it is basically a ProRES only app. Going back to AVID which converts everything, now you must convert to ProRES to get the real speed out of the program.
No drivers for AJA or Black Magic video cards!
The forced organization is not made for multiple drives.
There is no way to share projects without copying everything.
Even the Title safe is messed up, there is no centercut markers on it, and I often have to do an HD edit for 4:3 SD delivery!
Sure it is 64 bit and has some cool new features, but this program is a slap in the face.
Still, being able to scrub over effects and see them on your clip is very cool. I like the new customization, where you can set keys for even every menu control. Background rendering is cool, but the fact that while it is happening you can’t organize your project is not.
Time to move to AVID or the other 64 bit program Premiere Pro, which will work with Black Magic and AJA cards.
I don’t know what Apple was thinking, but they have completely alienated a user base they spent 10 years cultivating, and made a program that no professional editor can ever use!
So far my favorite article on this is the one by Richard Harrington which I have linked to. It really goes into much of the frustrations I feel, though not about the damn magnetic timeline.