I got an advance copy of FCPX today and …

[Josh Mellicker]

iMovie ’08 indeed started out as an experiment by Randy he called “First Cut”. He originally set out to create a professional feeder app for FCP, one specifically designed to make it easy to plow through hundreds of hours of footage, organize, label and tag, and do a rough cut. After this, the editor would export XML, import into FCP and do the final cut there.

When Jobs saw it he decided it should be released as the new iMovie. The early demos of iMovie all stressed the “Export to FCP” feature… but few used iMovie ’08 in conjunction with FCP, even though this was what it was designed to do.

There may be articles very similar to this in June (search and replace “iMovie” with “FCP”):
https://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/08/14/apple_stirs_controversy_with_imovies_08_overhaul.html

However, the proof is in the pudding, and while Apple will lose some high end editors (back) to Avid, and there will be a crowd sticking with FCP7, or even asking to buy FCP7 after the release of FCPX, the world will eventually come around, the advantages of FCPX are big enough that they will unmistakably outweigh the drawbacks. Nothing perfect, but one step back, two steps forward works for me.

http://www.dvcreators.net
training and resources for DV creators

[Benjamin Reichman]

Tim, Josh,

Here’s a belated thanks for your fascinating comments. I had no idea!

I think it’s interesting that Ubillos created “First Cut” specifically to plow through many hours of footage, when a lot of people are voicing concerns about whether the filmstrip views will scale up to large quantities of media. It seems quite reassuring to hear that they were actually designed to do that.

I feel the way I did just after the initial demo: hopeful, even excited. Change is good, usually, and if it isn’t, I have a perfectly good copy of FCP 7 to see me through for quite a while if need be.