FCP X can’t do “pro” is officially vaporized.

[Tim Wilson]

[Mike Warmels] “I meant: “I see the CHARM of FCPX…””

I thought “see the HARM” of it was one the best things I’ve read. LOL

[Michael Gissing]

[Mike Warmels] “I meant: “I see the CHARM of FCPX…””

[Tim Wilson]I thought “see the HARM” of it was one the best things I’ve read. LOL

I see there is still a reason to visit this forum from time to time. So glad that FCP X can’t do “pro” is now officiously vaporized.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Michael Gissing] “So glad that FCP X can’t do “pro” is now officiously vaporized.”

So does that mean we can call it Final Cut Finally Pro? 😉

[Bill Davis]

>Quote: So no… I work on it every day. But it means looking at beach balls a lot. And a lot of editors I work >complain about its slowness>

So in your reconnning, all the rest of us are having an experience like yours and are just being silent because What? … We’re willing to live with beach balls and have things not work or be unresponsive
and that’s OK because we’re all just too inexperienced to know better? The folks at Warner Bros and Paramount, and at RTS and the BBC are all in a grand conspiracy to keep silent about X’s massive flaws? Is that it? – because again What?
Yes individuals have problems with software builds and particular installations. That has never and likely will never change. But if the overall industry is telling you that X is capable of fast, efficient workflows. And you aren’t experiencing that – the likelihood is that there’s something WRONG with your system or how you are using it.

It’s as simple as that.

If there are 3 million users of something (guessing here) and most of the reports are of smoothe workflows – and yours isn’t smooth- then the smart money HAS to be on something wrong in YOUR shop.

I’d get in the phone to somebody like Bob Zelin and pay him to figure out whats wrong.

Life’s too short to work with sub standard systems. And the vetted case studies say X – configured and operated properly – is far from sub-standard. Period.

My 2 cents.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Robin S. Kurz] “Well, I can only relay what I was told and what I experienced myself. Mind you, they have massive amounts of external hardware as well. So this is not about just installing an app or two. Meaning all kinds of drivers, cards and what not need to work along side as well. That’s where it gets tricky. “

Yeah, the more components in a system the more places for failure or conflict.

In a previous post you mentioned you hadn’t touched MC since v6, is the lab question on v6? That might account for some of the issues (Avid changed a lot in 6 but seemed to get everything much more solid in 6.5). It’s neither here nor there but I’m just curious.

[Bill Davis]

Just noting once again my absolute satisfaction that while the industry dithered about its “professionalism and sought comfort in those “proven workflows” – some of us had four years to study and adapt to X. Which has been AMAZING.

I’m currently deep into my keyword strategy design for my 6 day shoot with dozens of primary, secondary and tertiary interview subjects including district admins, teachers, students, parents and coaches – classroom walkthroughs, debriefs and hours and hours of classroom b-roll coverage where I have to manage things like a small subset of students who’s parents didn’t file their releases on time – and trust me, I KNOW the internal X range-based database is going to drive MASSIVE complexity OUT of my work over the next month.

And it will because I’ve had 4 years to study show to best use it.

It’s nowhere near as big a job to unwind complexity, when you have a superb tool designed to do precisely that!

Fun? Yes. This project will be fun. And X will solve hundreds of real problems for me as a Videomaker every day I’m working in it. Making my work faster and easier.

All for $300 bucks – once – 4 years ago.

Single smartest purchase I have EVER made, if you ask me.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “Life’s too short to work with sub standard systems. And the vetted case studies say X – configured and operated properly – is far from sub-standard. Period.”

The amazing thing about this post Bill is its versatility. Just change “X” to “Avid” and you came up with the solution for Robin Kurz’s problem too! 😉

[Ronny Courtens]

Hey Mike,

The projects you describe are relatively simple compared with what they do at RTS, or even what we do on a daily basis. And we don’t see any of the issues you describe. So either you are using a completely different FCP X than the rest of us, or there is something wrong with your setup or your workflows. If you send me an e-mail with your system specs, OS version and FCP X version, I will be very happy to help you solve the issues you say you are experiencing: ronnycourtens@mac.com

– Ronny

[Mike Warmels]

You are right, Ronny. The projects ARE very simple. That’s why I am so disappointed with it.

And my system is pretty simple: late 2013 Mac Pro trashcan, 6 core, D700 video graphics card. I use AJA T-tap to feed video to my Flanders broadcast monitor and I use Thunderbolt 4T La Cie external hard drives. Libraries and cache are on the internal hard drive. All the footage is HD Apple Pro Res. I don’t import media into the library, I leave everything where it is.

But again, when working on projects with little footage and few projects (or duplicates of projects) it generally runs fine. But when more footage (20 hours plus is relatively normal for a short reportage like series) is being used, I get the feeling all that all the application is doing is generating wave forms… endlessly. I think that is what is causing the delays.

A simple thing like PLAY or PLAY AROUND… it usually takes almost a second before it actually plays. It’s not instant. But that is the least of the problems. After a few hours of editing, everything gets slow.

I am a director and I cut his shows into rough cuts, working a lot with exchanging projects and media (not at the same time), but the 20+ editors I work with battle with these issues everyday in a different facility working with SAN. So it’s not just me.

There must be some trick to make FCPX work like a charm, because a lot of you are happy with it. I’ve basically followed every advice I got on this forum, but the improvements are slight. To me there’s nothing intuitive about waiting for beach balls to spin before my eyes. Or trying to figure out why sometimes clips mysteriously go offline, or only half of a clip can be viewed in the browser while it’s fine when viewed in Finder, or why synchronised audio gets mysteriously compressed into one track… I have to keep Inspector open to check all audio that is synchronised, but keeping it open, makes FCPX even slower (wave forms!!!).

So I fight my way through these edits, it has nothing to do with the interface, it’s certainly not all bad. But the full speed, hammering away, undelayed cutting and chopping like I can do on AVID, nope… that’s not happening in FCPX.

[Mike Warmels]

I didn’t say that, Bill.

I have been coming here, hoping for some resolutions for these issues that we’re having. And I have taken aboard all the advice you gave me so far. A lot of it was very good, but in the end the net result wasn’t huge.

I spent well over $6000 on a MacPro trashcan and another $1000 on external Thunderbolt hard discs. It’s nice and easy to say it’s mediocre stuff. But I don’t think it is: it’s Apple’s fastest computer, it’s Apple own editing system. I use media and FCPX set up everything exactly the way you (and many others here) advised me to do on this very forum. But performance wise it’s just not great. And I can’t find what the problem is.
Now I can keep pouring money into it, buy another MacPro for $12,000 with 12 Cores (although generally it’s only using one) but I doubt that will solve the problems.

Maybe, just maybe and that’s just a though I had, FCPX is at it’s heart not designed to work on PAL. I set up this reportage show by putting up titles for every clip with the exact required length, so I wouldn’t get confused what item to cut next. Every clip was at a rounded number of minutes, it’s total was 35 minutes. But when I selected all the title blocks FCPX gave a total of 34 minutes, 59 seconds and 23 frames… TWO FRAMES missing! That is bizarre. Of course, it has no impact on the actual editing but it did make think there’s something wrong with FCPX’s calculating skills features. Maybe it doesn’t work well on PAL…

Again, just a thought. I’m not blaming you or anything. I just wish that after a year of getting dozens and dozens of consultations here and from editors in my country, it’s just not up to par. And with some advice, I just can’t work, like this one I got from a company selling and installing FCPX systems: “you should disconnect your AJA T-tap and work without your broadcast monitor…” At moments like that I can’t stop thinking: “WTF… what’s Pro about that?”

Comparing that to a much more complex NLE like AVID… it works like a charm on my set… always! And I keep wondering, why can’t I get FCPX to work that way, while so many of you can…