Final Cut Pro 7 wishlist

[Sean Oneil]

[Alan Lacey] “Disableable background rendering”

FCP doesn’t have background rendering (I wish it did and I think it was mentioned). It has automatic rendering during idle, but you can turn that off.

Sean

[Christopher Wright]

I had a client that did that as well, and depending on the time of day or night we were editing, many times the Color Correction actually reverted back to the clips original color! I also love the clients who want to do special effects as we go, instead of getting the whole story edited in rough cut before making decisions on special effects, titling or other time consuming post production processes. We ended up spending days on sequences we didn’t even use! It was great from an hourly billing standpoint, but the client almost didn’t have enough money to finish the project due to all the “tweaking” up front!

Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
Windows XP Adobe Studio CS3, Vegas 8.0, Lightwave 9.2, Sound Forge 9, Acid Pro 6, Continuum 5, Boris Red 4, Combustion 2008, Sapphire Effects

[Tom Wolsky]

Which is what I was saying, that you often have to have grading done earlier in the process. With a dynamic link system it would substantially bog down editing, which is why rendering out the grade often works better. Clients just want to see finished look every time they look at the product, and not place holders or proxies or colors that change because it’s not been graded, or partially graded.

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”

[Alan Okey]

[Tom Wolsky] “Clients just want to see finished look every time they look at the product, and not place holders or proxies or colors that change because it’s not been graded, or partially graded. “

You’ve just hit on one of the biggest differences in workflow between film and video.

In the feature film world, directors and producers are used to working with proxies or temp tracks during editing. The last stuff to get done is the audio mixing, color grading and completed VFX shots. It’s quite common to see film trailers that have medium-quality temp VFX shots, which are ultimately replaced with much better quality completed shots in the theatrical release.

The video world is much different – turnaround times are much faster, and producers want to see everything happen in real time right in front of their eyes. Much of the time they can’t visualize something without actually seeing it in front of their face. That’s why as long as production budgets remain large enough, Smoke/Flame/Quantel suites will still be with us.

I find in my work that clients consistently overestimate what today’s technology can do. Perhaps they’ve seen too many behind-the-scenes DVD segments on visual effects, but they assume that anything can be created or fixed in post. They are almost never surprised or impressed by what can be accomplished with the latest hardware and software – instead, they usually are surprised by how long everything takes. Only the really savvy clients appreciate the time, effort and skill that goes into finishing a spot or a show. “What do you mean it has to render?” “Why can’t I see it now?” “Well how long is that going to take?” I hear that a lot more often than I hear “Wow, that’s amazing! How did you do that?”

[Baz Leffler]

#101 allow the ‘broadcast filter’ to always remain LAST in the stack of filters so it corrects for everything above.

#102 allow HDV codec in color (sorta FCP related)

#103 give us poorer nations a PAL vectorscope

(you should see my Adobe list!)

Baz

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Sean Oneil]

[Tom Wolsky] “Which is what I was saying, that you often have to have grading done earlier in the process. With a dynamic link system it would substantially bog down editing, which is why rendering out the grade often works better.”

There’s plenty of workflow situations where it makes more sense to render it out first. Nobody is suggesting they take away that option. But for for every one of those there is a situation where a dynamic link type of workflow is vastly superior. Especially if you take into account more powerful computing in the near-future. There was a time not too long ago where multi-format sequences weren’t allowed because it would bog down the editing.

Sean

[Michael Gissing]

[Baz Leffler] “#101 allow the ‘broadcast filter’ to always remain LAST in the stack of filters so it corrects for everything above.”

Only if the broadcast safe filter was fixed so it worked after render. A better option would be to have a tick box on all filters to determine which one remains last.

[Tom Wolsky]

I just don’t think Apple is in a position to implement this for Color in a reasonable time or cost framework. They have far many more things in terms of both cost effectiveness and marketability that they can and should implement in the few remaining months before they have to release a substantial upgrade.

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”

[Jon Smitherton]

[Baz Leffler] “#101 allow the ‘broadcast filter’ to always remain LAST in the stack of filters so it corrects for everything above.”

I find the easiest way to nest then put the broadcast safe on that nest last. That way if the time line is rendered, it will not have to render those effects again, and then you can play out realtime via Kona, AJA etc.

Jon

[Martin Baker]

Paul, are you saying that this is what Adobe have under the hood of CS4 today?

I’ve been saying for years that there needs to be a fundamental rethinking about the way that our tools handle media. Everything we do is media on a timeline whether it be a graphics, audio or editing application and we’ve reached the point where pretty much anything is possible in only software.

So it makes perfect sense to put a common timeline at the heart of the apps and have modules that can access that timeline and make changes to it. Essentially you end up bringing the tools to the timeline rather than the other way round, and that opens up some very interesting possibilities…plus some big challenges of how you keep track of everything.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps
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