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Final Cut Pro 7 wishlist
What would you like to see in the next (or future) version of FCP?
For the sake of brevity, I’m restricting my wishlist to FCP and not including the other Studio apps.
1. Better text tools
I hate Boris Title3D and the FCP text tools. FCP deserves nothing less than a truly integrated text generator with realtime onscreen previewing for interactive feedback.
2. UI widget overhaul
The UI widgets in FCP are pretty long in the tooth, and were designed at a time in which huge high-res, high-ppi monitors were a rarity. As a result, many UI elements in FCP look tiny. While FCP currently allows you to save your own window layouts, the actual window elements (window buttons, tool palette objects, etc.) are not scalable. The ability to customize the UI color would also be fantastic. Compared to Motion, Soundtrack Pro or Logic Studio, FCP is way behind the curve on this.
3. Media Manager overhaul
‘Nuff said.
4. Background rendering
The ability to continue cutting while unrendered elements are processed would be an immense time saver. Smoothcam background processing is a good start, now just expand the concept.
5. Distributed rendering
Logic and Compressor take full advantage of any available CPUs in a cluster. FCP should too.
6. Masking tools
FCP should incorporate all of the masking tools available in Motion – i.e. animatable bezier or B-spline masks and motion tracking. An “8-point Garbage Matte” just doesn’t cut it anymore, nor does manually keyframing a matte to follow an object in a shot. Bring FCP into the 21st century already and integrate the new technologies already present in Motion.
7. Keyframe animation overhaul
Round-tripping to Motion just to get still pan & zooms that don’t suck is inexcusable. The motion tab should inherit Motion’s functionality.
8. Improved speed change behavior
The ability to change clip speed without altering the position of everything else that follows on the same video track would be brilliant – i.e. keep the clip in and out points in the same place on the timeline. Also, adding Shake’s optical flow technology for smooth slow motion with interpolated frames would be a much-appreciated addition to the simple frame blending that FCP currently uses.
9. Improved Browser functionality
It would be nice to have more sorting options for files and clips appearing in the browser, i.e. sort by type, sort by file size, sort by date, etc. Infinitely scalable icons would be an improvement over the stock small, medium and large presets. Right-clicking on a clip or file could offer an option to “find clip in timeline” in addition to the current options. Some type of indication whether or not a clip or file is currently being used in any sequences would also be great. DVD Studio Pro has this feature for assets, why not FCP?
Well, this is just a start. I’m sure more ideas will come to me, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling. Join in the fun!
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77 Replies
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10) Naming while capturing (Not only after)
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
http://www.santellaproductions.com -
11) ProRes 4:4:4
12) Automatic pulldown removal/cadence detection when placing pulldown footage in a 23.98/24 sequence.
13) Add 3:2 pulldown when placing 23.98 clips in a 29.97 sequence
14) Capture Now should feature stop & abort.
15) Log and Capture should also feature stop & abort so you can stop it early without losing what you already grabbed.
16) Timecode display during capture and ETT
17) Non-destructive grading via Color.
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[Sean ONeil] “17) Non-destructive grading via Color.”
What does that mean? Color does not touch the original media.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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I don’t need anything new except maybe 16-bit RGB rendering.
8-bit is completely useless/pointless imo.just make everything work as it’s supposed to damnit.
and fix quicktime while your at it as well.
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Fix Compressor. It doesn’t even on our Octo Core anymore and works sporadically on our other systems. I’m about to purchase Episode.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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is that compressor or Leopard though?
I thought it was perfect until the Leopard compatible version of final cut studio was released.
I won’t be running Leopard until thats fixed for sure.
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[walter biscardi] “What does that mean? Color does not touch the original media.”
It’s still a destructive workflow because you have no option but to render out new QT media. You can’t simply send the metadata back to FCP and relink it (like you can with Motion, Soundtrack and LiveType). The relationship to the original media (and thus the source tapes) is gone.
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No sure what you want it to do, send a Color project file to FCP like importing a Motion or LiveType project into FCP, is that what you want? Not sure that’s a great solution for this type of thing. It might make editing quite cumbersome.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop” -
1.) Update to the Find feature that allows you to search the timeline by codec.
(It’d be a God send for evidence / user submitted based programming)
2.) An Edit to Tape option that preserves the VBI
3.) 2:3 Insertion for dropping 23.976 footage in a 29.97
(It’s already been mentioned, but it bears repeating!)
4.) Lower bitrate flavor of ProRes specifically for offline work (ala Avid DnxHD 36)Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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Episode is great. Lovin’ it! Extremely fast.
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
http://www.santellaproductions.com
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