FCPX – Happy 2nd Birthday

[David Eaks]

Happy Birthday FCPX! (Just, nobody sing the song… Yet?)

Man, I remember the first paid job I decided to do in FCPX on 10.0.1 or 10.0.2, what a nightmare. It was already a fairly complicated edit due to unexpected situations during the shoot… Plus I don’t know how to use my crazy new software!? Well, I stuck it out. Needless to say the client got a little anxious waiting for their final product and I went back to a nice comfy FCP 7 for a few months afterward.

Now I’m more comfortable in FCPX than I was in 7 and I can just fly through the fairly simple and monotonous tasks I do regularly. Anything more creative, sometimes with a little help from Motion, is better than anything I ever did with Legacy. And it’s all just more enjoyable to do.

Mark, out of curiosity. On average, throughout all the times FCPX crashed or you force quit a sinning beach ball, how many “unsaved” edit operations do you think you lost per crash? In my experience, upon returning from a crash my last edit was usually completed and saved before crashing. I took to the “no saving” pretty quickly, to the point of just hitting control-option-command-eject right from the timeline, to shutdown at the end of a late night edit session. Everything is always right as I left it in the morning

Cheers! To the future, with a hopefully decent priced New Mac Pro and a killer FCPX update to go with it! (and maybe Motion X… With… 3D?)

[Craig Seeman]

Two years they said they were “betting everything” on FCPX. So they’ve posted a 2nd year birthday followup.
https://www.crumplepop.com/blog/?p=632

What I found interesting is the incredible amount of vitriol in the Blog Comments. At this point it’s sadly laughable when people say it’s not “Pro.” Certainly some may have good cause not to like FCPX or even Apple but to call it not pro, is itself, a sign that person is truly amateur.

[Gary Huff]

Today, just two short years after FCP X shipped, there is an entire plugin ecosystem around FCP X. This is to the enormous benefit of editors, and we are proud to have played a role in it. To my knowledge, it is unique among NLE platforms.

That seems to be stretching it. Lots of plugins for AVID/Premiere/Vegas/etc. as well. What IS unique is, obviously, publishing through Motion for plugins, but this “ecosystem” also includes a lot of stuff that is of dubious benefit, or things that already exist in NLEs, but need the Motion architecture workaround to get it in FCPX.

At the June 2013 WWDC keynote, Apple announced a new Mac Pro, and specifically called out support for video editors and FCP X. With that announcement, we can now officially conclude the “Is FCP X pro?” discussion.

I fail to see how having a computationally powerful desktop concludes that discussion. What features does the Mac Pro add to FCPX in and of itself? Answer: none.

Two years ago, I predicted that within a year, FCP X would be the platform used by most professional video editors. Is that true? It’s impossible to say, because “professional video editor” is a concept that is being redefined as I write this.

That’s a “no” if I ever heard one.

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “I fail to see how having a computationally powerful desktop concludes that discussion. What features does the Mac Pro add to FCPX in and of itself? Answer: none.”

You can’t answer that and, given Apple’s announcement that they’ll be an upgrade for the new MacPro, I’d suspect there’ll be features and enhancements that take advantage of the two GPUs.

I can only speculate what those are at this point… but you may not be open to that speculation.

For Apple to tie an upgrade to the new MacPro in their marketing means there’s likely going to be a clear feature enhancement tie in.

[Mark Dobson]

[David Eaks] “Mark, out of curiosity. On average, throughout all the times FCPX crashed or you force quit a sinning beach ball, how many “unsaved” edit operations do you think you lost per crash? In my experience, upon returning from a crash my last edit was usually completed and saved before crashing. I took to the “no saving” pretty quickly, to the point of just hitting control-option-command-eject right from the timeline, to shutdown at the end of a late night edit session. Everything is always right as I left it in the morning”

Strangely enough I don’t think I’ve ever actually lost anything. And spinning balls seem to be a thing of the past – is this because the software is sorted or is because I splashed out and bought the new 27″ iMac? I’ll never know.

I have to admit that I still sometimes find myself hitting cmd S after an edit.

[Bret Williams]

For me 10.0.3 was a rock on my 2011 iMac. But now, 10.0.8 on 2012 iMac is a crashing, buggy, nightmare. It’s the experience people described with 10.0.1.

I still have the 2011 and will have to run a side by side comparison. Thinking of rebuilding the whole 2012 iMac system, only months after getting it.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Mark Dobson] “I have to admit that I still sometimes find myself hitting cmd S after an edit.”

And you get the warning “boop”.

Then you hit cmd s many times in rapid succession with just as many boops, just to remind yourself that cms s is vacant.

At least that’s what I do, and it’s oddly satisfying.

[Mark Dobson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “And you get the warning “boop”.”

Yes – its quite loud and I definitely feel told off.

[Bret Williams] “For me 10.0.3 was a rock on my 2011 iMac. But now, 10.0.8 on 2012 iMac is a crashing, buggy, nightmare. It’s the experience people described with 10.0.1. “

How strange – exactly the opposite to my experience but illustrates the fact that FCPX problems seem to be very specific to individual Mac and set-ups. I spent a fair amount of money trying to get my 2008 MacPro running FCPX properly and neither the new 5770 graphics card or 22GBs of Ram seemed to have much positive affect. And others had no problems with the same set-up.

[Brett Sherman]

I don’t know how many hours I’ve saved just in the last 6 months I’ve been using X. Not having to redo edits because of FCP 7 crashes has saved me at least 15 hours in and of itself. Not to mention fewer dents in the wall when I chuck the mouse in anger.

It’s also interesting to recall the negative reaction of some plug-in developers like CoreMelt to the original release of FCP X. I can say that Lock and Load never worked in FCP 7 reliably – period. It was so bad I stopped using it. Well, it works like a charm in FCP X.

Unfortunately there remains a lot of vitriol against X. For some, workflows complaints are legitimate. But, I think a lot is people just like to hold onto their anger. As far as market share, sure I would like to see it gain market share at the Pro level. But, I don’t really care that much. There is robust development around X and it is not going away. I feel more secure in X’s future than I would in Avid’s.

[Charlie Austin]

[Bret Williams] “But now, 10.0.8 on 2012 iMac is a crashing, buggy, nightmare. It’s the experience people described with 10.0.1. “

That’s a bummer. FWIW, I’m running 10.0.8 on a maxed out new 27″ iMac and it runs fine. I’ve also got 7 Pr, MC and a slew of other crazy video and audio apps, it’s by no means a “clean” system…. :knock wood: 🙂

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~