Final Cut Pro X

[Todd Kopriva 0]

Adobe might want to jump on this chance to point out their differences.

 

You mean like the fact that Premiere Pro can import FCP 7 XML projects?

[beckmanvfx 0]

You mean like the fact that Premiere Pro can import FCP 7 XML projects?

 

funny, isn't it?

[anothername 0]

nuts to that, no XML in or out

 

Really? They removed already existing functionality from a previous version, that's absurd. So there is no way to get your edit out of FCP and into another app (except for color and motion, I guess) how are you supposed to finish a project then?

[the_Monkey 8]

I'm not sure what people thought was going to happen.

 

Quicktime 7 -> Quicktime X = Glossier interface with reduced functionality

FCP 7 -> FCP X = Glossier interface with reduced functionality

 

I'm going to be so pissed if Quicktime 7 doesn't work in Lion.

 

-m

[J Montreuil 0]

 

I'm going to be so pissed if Quicktime 7 doesn't work in Lion.

 

-m

 

I'll riot with you if that happens.

[Guest Sao_Bento]

Their own guy said it wasn't ready for professional editors (I would assume that is attributable to the lack of project I/O, as mentioned here, as well as the lack of support for third party hardware, third party plug-ins, etc.). Think of this as the public beta, which will probably meet all the needs of the hobbiest DSLR crowd.

[Duder 0]

fuck apple

[AromaKat 1]

fuck apple

 

[jayfaker 1]

Quicktime 7 -> Quicktime X = Glossier interface with reduced functionality

FCP 7 -> FCP X = Glossier interface with reduced functionality

 

Well, it is a ground-up (ish) rewrite, though, right? That's why it took so long to make. They didn't cut out features, they started from scratch and now have to add those features back in. It may be disappointing to have to wait yet more time to see if FCP X can hack it professionally, but at least Apple is trying to innovate here. They'll add the features that we want back in. At least, I hope they will.

 

I mean, we all complain about the rusty-old-bloated Adobe apps because they were written in the 90s (80s?) by companies that no longer exist, and have never truly been updated for the 21st century. Instead, Adobe just keeps piling on the features, which are nice, but do not fix some of the core issues with the software.

 

So when Apple comes along and does just that with FCP X, we complain? Maybe because we find out what it really takes to rewrite a piece of software from the ground up? It takes years? It takes a software-update hiatus? It takes everyone online questioning the company's dedication to their pro user-base? I guess it does. It sucks, but there you go.

 

I dunno, maybe it will end up being a toy. I hope not.

Edited June 21, 2011 by jayfaker

[Duder 0]

 

So when Apple comes along and does just that with FCP X, we complain? Maybe because we find out what it really takes to rewrite a piece of software from the ground up? It takes years? It takes a software-update hiatus? It takes everyone online questioning the company's dedication to their pro user-base? I guess it does. It sucks, but there you go.

 

 

I think it has to do with how long it will take to add all those features which are already available in said software. Maybe another 7 versions to get all the features back.

 

What do the end users gain? Especially editors who already know all the work arounds and can move around FCP as if they're cutting buttered bread.

 

If Apple came out with an application that was written from scratch and contained majority of the most important features of FCP7, then people wouldn't complain.

 

In any case, it takes guts to rewrite software from scratch. It's been known that Apple is slowly shifting away from pro's to consumers. It's a business in the end, so it's understandable.

[anothername 0]

I think it has to do with how long it will take to add all those features which are already available in said software. Maybe another 7 versions to get all the features back.

 

I'd be willing to give them a shot as long as they don't disable FCP and QT7 in the new OS before FCP X and QTX are ready for real work.

[kitkats 0]

I'd be willing to give them a shot as long as they don't disable FCP and QT7 in the new OS before FCP X and QTX are ready for real work.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Quicktime 7 will be in Lion, alongside QT X as it is (or at least can be) in Snow Leopard. I mean... if QT7 is completely absent from Lion I don't know what I'll do. Not upgrade for the foreseeable, I guess.

 

Wait, here we go:

 

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1172724

Edited June 21, 2011 by kitkats

[hotbuttertrucker 0]

Sounds like I should have made it to that Avid demo last week. So Apple killed their golden goose of software again. Almost dropped the coins to check it out, but there is so much negative feedback that I think I will buy $300 of beer and call it a day.

[Grundly 0]

So then, is an iMac + FCPx the new PC + Pinnacle? Albeit some years more advanced?

[C.Smith 0]

I think people are being babies about this. Here's where I'll get almost everyone against me, however I believe it to be true.

 

JayFaker had the best note so far on this. First of all, let's be real and say that FCP has always barely held onto the "Pro" label (whatever that means). For the most part it has always been a sluggish turd with horrible implementation of parameter changes, color correction, animation, etc. People love to hate on Mean old evil Avid, but most people who work in an environment that still needs bulletproof systems, are using Avids (myself included). FCP to me has Always been just an offline editor at best. It's so bad at everything else, it's just useful enough to generate an EDL or XML for a better system to take over to get any real graphics or compositing done. BUT even just offline editing has always been kind of crap because it's sluggish as shit even on top notch machines compared to say an Avid DS or media composer. When I jump over to FCP to cut up some home video or casting video or something quick I don't need to use the AVid for, I count the seconds until I can get back to a "big boy" editor where the people that made it care to keep up the speed and reliability.

 

SO, here's FCP-X. I'm actually intrigued for the first time at the prospect of Apple planning to get it right after 10 years of doing it wrong. Considering FCP has only been good at being a cut station, they are trying to up the cutting part of the package. Most importantly with the use of multiple procs, openGL, etc, etc. Making up for all the turd parts of the old FCP. AND they are managing to throw in newer cutting technologies (even though other software has already done it). They've laid the groundwork for composite containers so the new FCP will have a way to expand into something far larger than the old FCP could ever be. Plus they replaced their useless color corrector with a mini-Color so you can actually do some basic CC in the app itself without the need to take it elsewhere for tweaks or the need to install Colorista for all CC. So, yeah, it's just the shell of something new, but it is finally on the right path and all they had to do was shed all the shit parts of it anyways. Who cares. What I'm seeing is the frame work of a skyscraper where there once was a shitty house. Everyone is bitching about it being just steel beams instead of imagining what will fill out from this new foundation.And the guys that are calling it less pro because the interface is reminiscent of iMovie simply need to get their priorities straight.

 

What I'm curious about is that I setup an expansion cage with 3 Quadro 4000 cards, an ATI 5770 Card, and a Red Rocket card for my DaVinci Resolve system. In some kind of update, if FCP-X can implement the Cuda/GPU power I have from the Resolve setup to make a superfast system, I would seriously for once consider leaving Avid for real work and see if there's a way to use FCP on the front end. But until they can implement their composite containers with actual node based compositing like a smoke or Avid DS, you would still need to composite elsewhere. But for the first time, at least the cutting should be fast and pliable and smart, which it never has been before.

 

BUT if Apple leaves it as a skyscraper framework and ceases to build after adding some cement here and there then yeah, they shit on it again. Who knows.

[Duder 0]

 

BUT if Apple leaves it as a skyscraper framework and ceases to build after adding some cement here and there then yeah, they shit on it again. Who knows.

 

That's what's going to happen if these iDevice sales keep growing and growing.

 

[Marc Z 9]

Played with it for a few hours, now I get why it was so cheap. This is unfinished software, currently useless in any pipeline. All we can do is wait and see how long it takes Apple to put in all the features they left out in this version. I feel let down and a little cheated.

[gerx 0]

Not only is there no XML export (or even an EDL, which makes sense since there isn't an I/O support I suppose), but it doesn't look like there's currently a way to export an OMF or AAF, which makes it completely useless for a professional video editor. The color corrector is pretty pathetic as well. Better than the old 3 color corrector (in that you can adjust luma and sat in the lows, med's & hi's) but no secondary color correction, power windows, etc. of a real color grading solution...

 

We downloaded a license at my work to see what's what, and there's no way we'll do anything with it as is. That isn't to say that there aren't bright points about it, but my post house has 5 Avid Symphonies, 2 FCP 7s, all of which Premiere Pro on them as part of the Adobe bundle, which I'd been navigating towards lately anyways due to it's ability to handle different color spaces and codecs appropriately, and we'll be doing a full transition to Premiere from FCP for the near future...

Really? They removed already existing functionality from a previous version, that's absurd. So there is no way to get your edit out of FCP and into another app (except for color and motion, I guess) how are you supposed to finish a project then?

[Duder 0]

Someone send this thread to Apple so they do frequent updates and add the old features back from scratch.

 

http://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

 

 

Best thing to do is to vote with your wallet.

Edited June 21, 2011 by pix3l

[destro 0]

fuck apple

 

NO!!!

 

Apple are the only ones that can save us from the evil monster that is Bill Gates.

 

That sicko spends all day giving his fortune away and working for charity.

[ConstantMotion 0]

Who gives a shit, it looks pretty— all the cool kids will buy it!

[Mylenium 0]

I mean, we all complain about the rusty-old-bloated Adobe apps because they were written in the 90s (80s?) by companies that no longer exist, and have never truly been updated for the 21st century. Instead, Adobe just keeps piling on the features, which are nice, but do not fix some of the core issues with the software.

 

You are mixing up "rewriting/ re-engineering" with "re-architecting/ redesigning" which as far as software design goes are two completely different things. Software is "rewritten" and "re-engineered" all the time or else AE, Cinema 4D and so on would long have stopped working on any halfway modern operating system - they need to hook into external APIs for graphics display, file dialogs, Quicktime and whatnot, so there is always a minimum of adaptation going on with every new version in addition to bug fixing, Performance optimization, adapting the whole shebang to new hardware, changing the UI and what have you. Because of that developers may also choose to rewrite under-the-hood routines completely from the ground up as a basic form of "re-architecting". Sometimes you never notice it other than your app becoming faster, sometimes it is a pain if e.g. as in Cinema 4D a rewrite of some global matrix functions turns things very literally upside down when opening scenes from older versions.... As for fully "redesigning" - would you really want your apps to completely work differently? AE and C4D "just work", regardless of their shortcomings as do Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, MAX, Maya etc.. No matter how arthritic and crooked they may appear, once you get into them, you can perfectly adapt - in reverse, the same is of course still true for AE and C4D. So in the end, it becomes a point of perspective. On an idealistic level, radical changes may be desirable and trust me, I'd love to be product manager for AE just one day and make decisions to rip out all this legacy stuff that I never need or use, but on the other hand exactly that might make the app useless and unattractive for others. I guess that's ultimately the bitch of it that in order to sell a product you have to cater a broad audience and that means making compromises and sticking with the old. I agree, though, that the one thing Adobe needs to get straight finally is all this performance stuff and they need to get away from their rather academic approach of supporting specific formats and features - what good does it, when they support MPEG "per spec" and the rest of the world doesn't care, leaving users with files they can't import, for instance?

 

Mylenium

[Mylenium 0]

People love to hate on Mean old evil Avid, but most people who work in an environment that still needs bulletproof systems, are using Avids (myself included).

 

All too true... ;-)

 

Mylenium

[kitkats 0]

let's be real and say that FCP has always barely held onto the "Pro" label (whatever that means)

Totally agree. In the post houses I've been to it was only ever a cheap cutting station on 'the mac'. I guess a lot of small or mac-only studio's are complaining because they wanted an update to the tool they already use to make a living, and I personally will probably drop it for Premiere simply because that's effectively free in the Production Suite. The only thing that would make me buy it would be if Apple prove to bring out significant updates on a much more frequent basis than they ever have with anything else 'Pro' (unless you count iTunes), like you said.

[Beaver 1]

I can't believe I'm about to defend FCPX, being a Premiere user since before it was cool, but I think this might be Apple realizing that FCPX has a market in web video editing, and now they're zeroing in on that market. Think about how many blogs, newspapers, tv stations, etc that are producing video exclusively for web, and it seems like FCPX would be a perfect solution for those guys. I think this is an editor for journalists, writers, web designers, etc. Professional people that aren't necessarily professional editors. It's a totally different package than the last FCP for sure, maybe they should have named it iMovie Pro, but it will find it's way. If Apple is good at anything, it's identifying new markets.