FCPX in action

[John Davidson]

You can tell it from really simple things like cmd+, doesn’t open preferences. Standard mac shortcuts are ignored. There are conflicts with standard mac applications using the F# keys for things like easy ease in After Effects. On macs you have to choose between easy ease (F9) or muting your computer. I kept the mute on my computer as I use that more than easy ease.

There are also less Adobe supported graphics cards on macs vs pc’s. Full-Screen isn’t supported, even though that feature was available for Adobe to implement since Feb of 2011 when Lion was first released to developers.

So much about Adobe apps for mac screams “we built it for PC’s first”. I use Adobe apps and I love ’em, but when people on PC’s say their adobe stuff works great compared to Mac’s, I believe them. Some of that probably has to do with the fact that Macs (iMacs and Mac Pros) have gone so long without a meaningful update. I’m hoping that changes soon. We’re jonesing for a new iMac but I’m not buying another one right now because the current models are 500 days old.

I think (hope) Apple has some awesomeness coming soon.

[Jim Giberti]

[Gary Huff] “In your opinion. “

Of course it. This is a freaking opinion forum.

[Gary Huff]

[Bill Davis] “I respect your opinion, but it’s an increasingly uncommon one.”

Not in my world. I routinely see “Final Cut Pro experience requires (NOT X)” and hear similar things dismissive of it. I do believe it is rather unfair as FCPX has come a long way since its debut, but I still see no reason to switch back to an NLE that ties my entirely into the OSX ecosystem with little tangible benefit over my current setup with Premiere CS6.

[Bill Davis] “”take away” is that it’s possible to use FCP-X for high-level broadcast work if you’re willing and flexible enough to adapt to how it operates.”

Back to my original point, I routinely see “flexible” as involving workarounds and “tricks” in order to make FCPX “behave”. I have no interest in tricking the NLE to work the way I need it to.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot of going from FCP7 to FCPX, with no in-depth investigation of Premiere CS6 or AVID or Vegas Edius or any of the others. I guess that would make FCPX seem far more interesting than it actually is when comparing directly with FCP7. I have worked with FCP7 and Premiere since version 5 (non pro) and Vegas up to version 8 and a bit of FCPX. Premiere CS6 does what I need, and I enjoy editing in it, and nothing I’ve played with in FCPX or seen from the updates gives me any desire to switch.

[Shawn Miller]

[John Davidson] “You can tell it from really simple things like cmd+, doesn’t open preferences. Standard mac shortcuts are ignored. There are conflicts with standard mac applications using the F# keys for things like easy ease in After Effects. On macs you have to choose between easy ease (F9) or muting your computer. I kept the mute on my computer as I use that more than easy ease.”

I had no idea

[John Davidson] “There are also less Adobe supported graphics cards on macs vs pc’s.”

Isn’t this more of an Apple issue though, since they support so few video cards to begin with? Not criticizing, just wondering aloud if Apple couldn’t be a bit better about offering more graphic/display card options.

[John Davidson] “Full-Screen isn’t supported, even though that feature was available for Adobe to implement since Feb of 2011 when Lion was first released to developers.”

Just bizarre, I wonder why this is. I wouldn’t be happy about it either.

Shawn

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Bill Davis] “it’s an increasingly uncommon one. “

thats hard to buy. FCPX is still, outside of this noise chamber, and three aging cited cases on apple, a dead industry fish.
editing requires payment. and no one habitually pays for FCPX.
it is not editing software, because it does not describe editing as a means to payment by third party.

In the UK it never ever appears on production base, it is not on mandy worldwide where I have a google alert, none of the post houses are running it.

none of them bill. I’m comfortable making that statement and open to a counter.

FCPX has exactly one more big overhaul shot before it becomes about as important as vegas.

that’s it Bill. After that you are, as it were, tinkering with it in the garage.

Apple have exactly one more do over, (which I personally half think they will ignore) –

But I honestly think FCPX is aperture soon to be – and god knows aperture is a half dead prosumer mess of what it was – killed at market by adobe, and still sitting like a zombie on the appstore for thirty quid, ladled with iphoto baubles.

Apple are not a company to be trusted to produce and iterate professional market software over a five or three year horizon.

Simple as that.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[John Davidson]

The card manufacturers don’t make as many cards for macs as they do PC’s. When they do, they’re more expensive.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Jeremy Garchow]

What I find funny is that we have a story of FCPX being used in broadcast for a program airing on the BBC, yet Craig is being told how it won’t work for him because of what you read about how FCPX works, Gary.

I can tell you a bunch of things that aren’t quite right for me in Pr CS6 (I am putting work in with CS6 mind you), but I won’t fault you for editing a program and putting it on the beeb. If it works for your needs, so be it. I’d be more curious about how you got around the stumbling blocks, not lamenting about how I read about how people are using the software.

This ship is sailing, don’t you think? It might even be afloat with BBC approval no less.

Jeremy

[Bill Davis]

[Gary Huff] “and nothing I’ve played with in FCPX or seen from the updates gives me any desire to switch.”

That’s it right there in a nutshell.

If all you’ve done is “played with it” then sorry, but I believe you simply don’t understand it well enough to make an informed decision.

You’re clearly still at the stage where you want it to work like the other four NLEs you’ve spent your time coming to understand.

So you’re correct that it’s in your best interest to keep using one of those.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Apple are not a company to be trusted to produce and iterate professional market software over a five or three year horizon.

Simple as that.”

I’ll keep this simple and clear. Short words and short declarative sentences, OK.

If the future of video production turns out to be to keep doing what the industry has been doing for the past 40 years, then I accept that you will be proved correct. People will migrate to what you seem to crave. The same old tools you’ve always had – slowly revised and tuned to incrementally follow the new industry trends.

If, on the other hand, people increasingly come to understand that we’re rapidly moving toward a world where content is increasingly ephemeral and demand for it is increasingly short lived – and therefore the ability to create, keyword for search, deploy and revise dynamically – becomes a superior strategy to the “plop out and cut off a master and move on” process of the past forty years – then X will likely continue to evolve and succeed.

We shall see.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Walter Soyka]

[John Davidson] “You can tell it from really simple things like cmd+, doesn’t open preferences. Standard mac shortcuts are ignored. There are conflicts with standard mac applications using the F# keys for things like easy ease in After Effects. On macs you have to choose between easy ease (F9) or muting your computer. I kept the mute on my computer as I use that more than easy ease.”

Have you ever used an Adobe product on a PC? If not, you could. Just use your pinky on the Control key instead of your thumb on the Command key. Everything else will be the same. Adobe apps are neither properly Mac-like nor PC-like. The interface is identical, cross-platform.

I’m not sure I’d criticize After Effects for using the function keys — that’s what they were there for! It’s relatively recent that those keys have been taken over by the Mac’s OS — and even then, not all Apple keyboards in recent history have used thr same function keys for the same OS features. Apple’s own FCP7 used F9 for one of the single most important and common editorial operations. AE has been using F9 for easy ease forever, and they’ve also bound just about every other key on the keyboard to something, so switching key bindings now would break almost 20 years of muscle memory.

[John Davidson] “So much about Adobe apps for mac screams “we built it for PC’s first”. I use Adobe apps and I love ’em, but when people on PC’s say their adobe stuff works great compared to Mac’s, I believe them. Some of that probably has to do with the fact that Macs (iMacs and Mac Pros) have gone so long without a meaningful update. I’m hoping that changes soon. We’re jonesing for a new iMac but I’m not buying another one right now because the current models are 500 days old.”

I don’t think that Adobe chooses to prioritize PC development over Mac development; on the contrary, I think they’ve taken great pains to keep parity, whether Apple cares about parity or not.

I wished Apple had stayed in the performance game, and I wished Apple hadn’t dumped NVIDIA a few years back for ATI in the Mac Pro line. Now I’m over it. I’d certainly hate to see Adobe not pursuing things like GPU acceleration just because Apple doesn’t take advanced graphics seriously.

I’ve adopted PCs alongside my Macs while you’ve stayed exclusively on the Mac platform, but we’re both really doing the exact same thing: choosing our hardware based on our software needs (render power for Adobe/Maxon for me, ability to run FCPX for you). I’ll bet it’s working out pretty well for us both!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events