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Final Cut Pro X – Reflecting on Six Years
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[James Sullivan] ” I have also noticed that having FCPX
manage media on a weaker computer forces content to be copied into the project, bloating the size of it, where as on a more powerful newer mac the very same media would have been left external”Huh? I have never seen this as an automatic function, except for certain media types. Maybe it just coincided with the types of machines you were using. Can you elaborate?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Bill Davis] “Can you be a bit more specific about that?
If somebody spends the money for a fully tricked out system on the PC side (what the hardware fanboys are trumpeting these days!) where can they expect the biggest real-world editing performance gains to show up?”I’ll try. I don’t work directly with too many PCs. One of my clients is running Dell towers with all media on a SAN. Performance with Premiere is comparable to a new iMac with Thunderbolt storage. When I’ve done reviews of some PC products, I’ve had more real-time with more layers than with Mac towers. This is largely due to more high-powered GPU options, specifically CUDA-enabled NVIDIA cards. Adobe is optimized for CUDA, so they get better performance here. More real time, faster rendering.
Here’s an example from 2 1/2 years ago:
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/hp-z1-g2-workstation/
Because you can still use towers, you can populate them with RAIDed SSDs and really hot-rod the system in ways that are no longer possible on the Mac side. But that does come at a cost. A fully-loaded, top-of-the-line Z-series HP tower workstation is going to cost more than a decked out trash can Mac. In short, a heavy After Effects user would be happier with the PC machine and would see a difference in render times. A Premiere Pro user is less likely to see as big of a huge difference.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Oliver,
I tried bringing in 4K from a Sony F5 on my ancient 17″ laptop and it had to copy and manage the media whereas at work where we have trash cans they just let everything sit where it is.
I also was forced to copy avchd footage for another project. Because the audio and video were separate for that camera FCPX forces the copy as I guess it has to wrap everything together for it to behave well for editing. I then went out and got Editready and made prores and ingested that instead.
I love that FCPX is up to date on all the new formats and wierd camera card folder structures as getting footage into Legacy was getting to be a major pain.
James
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Understood. Thanks for the clarification.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Sorry Oliver but you are actually incorrect. You can deduct the cost of FCP X from
your taxes just as you can deduct the cost of a subscription. It may
be done in a different place…..but you can use the section 179 deduction
to deduct the entire cost of FCP X. Directly from the IRS website.‘Essentially, Section 179 of the IRS tax code allows businesses to deduct the full purchase price of equipment and/or software purchased during the tax year. That means that if you buy a piece of equipment or software you can deduct the FULL PURCHASE PRICE.’
Now there are some restrictions. You are limited to $500,000 in Section 179 deductions
in any given year. But this notion that there is some sort of tax deduction
‘advantage’ to a subscription over a full purchase is just incorrect.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
[Oliver Peters] “A lot of folks here taught the advantages of owning (Apple) versus renting (Adobe); yet from an accounting standpoint, if you are a small production company up to a large enterprise, renting/subscription makes more sense. OTOH, if you are a single user who occasionally edits – such as a director or DP who sometimes cut their own stuff – then FCPX is likely a better choice – if they can wrap their head around the approach.”
FCPX is remarkably good value. A one off payment with substantial updates every year or so. ( However I have bought 3 new Apple computers in that period as well)
When I think back I can’t help but feel that Apple would have been better off to launch FCPX in tandem with FCP 7, rather than giving FCP 7 it’s EOL. And I also feel that the software was released too early, that we were all participants in a large beta programme. The difference in functionality in FCPX from the day it was launched to now is staggering, for me I’d like to experience less crashes and hiccups, but the whole concept now works.
I do sometimes think about switching to Adobe, their software is brilliant and I subscribe to their photographic apps, but I just couldn’t face unlearning all the techniques and workflows I’ve built up with FCPX, let alone discarding the huge investment I’ve made in plugins etc. Apple, like Sony have done with their large sensor cameras such as the FS7, have really started to listen to user / customer feedback and that, after the last 6 sometimes very painful years, is encouraging.
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Very weird… I only became aware of your post after Oliver answered to it, because somehow I’m not getting every third or so email i.e. response. Rather buggy forum apparently…
[James Sullivan] “I have also noticed that having FCPX
manage media on a weaker computer forces content to be copied into the project, bloating the size of it, where as on a more powerful newer mac the very same media would have been left external. This just bugs me. “Double-huh? For Final Cut Pro X it is completely irrelevant if the media in IN or OUT of the library. The only thing that counts towards performance is the I/O performance of the disk it resides on. As with any and every NLE on the planet.
[James Sullivan] “I tried bringing in 4K from a Sony F5 on my ancient 17” laptop and it had to copy and manage the media whereas at work where we have trash cans they just let everything sit where it is. “
I’m sorry, but Final Cut Pro X most definitely does NOT decide by the machine it’s on whether media you are importing has to be copied or not. That’s ridiculous. Whether it needs to be copied depends exclusively on where it’s coming from and in some cases what wrapper the original is in, in which case the subsequent behavior is the exact same on every single Mac, period.
[James Sullivan] “And not being forced to control where things land creates some messed up looking timelines that again when I inherit a project, makes me grumpy. “
Wait… so you’re blaming Final Cut for someone else’s shoddy work??
[James Sullivan] “The ability to cut from a compound clip and have it use the original media. “
What media exactly do you think it’s using?? I don’t get it. And then there’s always the ability to split a CC up again in the timeline. So I have no idea what you mean.
[James Sullivan] “The ability to bake a multi clip so that when it goes external it plays well.”
“When it goes external“? What is that supposed to mean?
[James Sullivan] “The ability to make very very very small proxies so that drive space can be saved.”
E.g. whittling over a TB of footage down to roughly 150GB is by far enough for me. Especially considering the ridiculously low prices for disk space nowadays…
[James Sullivan] “Exporting longform shows is faster to compress and export with the super powerful computers we have.”
Huh? How is that not a given??
[James Sullivan] “I am glad that I did not buy any thunderbolt anything until they decided to go to USB C.”
I have various TBo peripherals and now USB-C. Nothing has changed the least. Everything is still in use in the exact same way it was before. In fact I have been able to go from SIX to TWO connection to/from my computer for much less cost as with the “old” TBo. So, again, I have no idea what relevance (in a negative sense) USB-C has in that context.
[James Sullivan] “I need FCPX to be my NLE while I choose to run out to AE, Protools, Photoshop, Mocha, Cinema4D, Resolve, for all their goodness. “
Do it all the time. Is it the best possible C4D machine? Of course not. But if it were a substantial part of my work, I most definitely would get a tricked out PC for it.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Oliver Peters] “you can populate them with RAIDed SSDs and really hot-rod the system in ways that are no longer possible on the Mac side.”
So you’re saying that you can get (and of course need) MORE than the near 2TB/ps read/write that I’m getting on my “Mac side” internally (single SSD) as well as the near 3TB/ps with an external SSD RAID?
Wow. Okay.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
But then, by the looks of things, PCs and PPro actually need that additional astronomical IO to keep up, yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnapaZYD2cU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P5UWEKSUXo
????
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[Robin S. Kurz] “So you’re saying that you can get (and of course need) MORE than the near 2TB/ps read/write that I’m getting on my “Mac side” internally (single SSD)”
I avoid putting media on the internal boot drive as a general rule.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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