-
Behringer BCF2000 work with FCP????
Hi,
I’m looking at getting the Behringer BCF2000 control surface, an was researching the product compatibility in the previous posts here at the Cow.
People’s experiences seem to pretty wide-ranging and some of the
negative posts dated back to 2005, so I was wondering what the
consensus is out there today?Are any of you happy with your BCF 2000’s?
Did you have to jump through hoops to get it to work?I’m on FCP 5.1.2, but gonna be on FCP 6 very soon.
Thanks,
Wayne
-
6 Replies
-
To answer your questions in order, no and yes.
It was nothing more than a novelty for me, and at 200 bucks more like a toy, really. It was a total pain in the ass to get it going, there was a third party installer not mentioned anywhere in the documentation I could find, I lucked into a post from someone who had figured it out, otherwise it would have become a doorstop much sooner. I can dig up the info on setting it up if you like.
Then there was using it. It takes up some counter space, and with my setup I still needed a mixer, so that was a problem. It worked okay, but no better that FCP’s or Soundtrack’s mixers, which do exactly the same thing, only they don’t take up space and they don’t make noise. Yes, noise. Clients hated it, I had to turn it off because it distracted them. So I finally just booted it off the system, the resident tools are more than adequate. The control surface doesn’t bring anything to the party, not speed, or finer tuning, nothing. For me it was a total waste of money and time.
But hey, it’s fun for a while so enjoy!
-
I would have to go along with Chris for the most part. I just got one of these last month because I had a tricky sound mix I was dealing with and thought the BCF2000 would be my salvation. It works, and really did what I wanted it to do for the most part. I needed to be able to preview a bunch of different mixes in realtime and having a control surface helped a bunch. But it is noisy and a bit distracting at times. I think the Mackie Universal control would have been a better choice but at 5 times the price I think the Behringer was a bargain. You DO get what you pay for though…
The most recent version has the firmware onboard to emulate Mackie control or Logic control so no need for that 3rd party installer. You just have to hit a couple buttons on power up to get it into the correct emulation mode. I had little problem getting it set up and working.
So yeah, probably more of a toy than a genuine professional tool. But if you can put up with the noisy low resolution faders and you absolutely NEED a fader control surface, it can work in a pinch.
-
Looked at that myself (MCU as well) but the huge issue w/ the BCF2000 is that faders aren’t touch sensitive, so you can’t overwrite parts of a mix. That makes the BCF useless in my book. As for the MCU, only a fraction of the “mixing desk” actually functions in FCP; most of the knobs, etc don’t do squat. Waste of $$. I HOPE someone comes out with just a touch-based fader surface for FCP mixing, w/o the other stuff you’d use in Logic, etc. – I’d buy it in a heartbeat. MUCH rather be mixing with my fingers than a mouse.
-
Dear Chris, Brian and Bob,
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply.
I’m starting to get the picture that maybe it’s not such a great
piece of gear.Bob, can you (or anyone else) please clarify what you meant that
the faders are not ‘touch sensitive’. If you’re saying that you
can’t go back to an edit and ‘finesse’ the mix by raising or lowering
the levels/keyframes then what point are the automated faders?Wayne
-
We use a BCF2000 in our Audio post with Nuendo. I plugged it into FCP 6 and it worked straight away as an audio mixer control surface.
What would have been great was if it worked as a control surface in Color; being able to adjust multiple parameters at the same time. So now we gotta go buy a Tangent that costs $5000…. I wonder if the trackerballs work as faders in FCP?!?
Baz
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
-
BazinoZ,
Thanks for the reply – can you weigh in with what was mentioned
above:”… the faders aren’t touch sensitive, so you can’t
overwrite parts of a mix”.Are you having the same experience/problem?
Thanks,
Wayne
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up