Let get one thing striaght…

[Craig Seeman]

[Herb Sevush] “Why? What about AV Foundation makes a Viewer window so difficult?”

Actually a Viewer window is one of the things I’d like as well. My brain really wants to see out of one shot and in on another. I’m not wedded to it though. I’ve gone through enough changes with gear and software over the 30 years in video to know that I can change my way of thinking given the some total of the parts.

My main concern is trimming and despite using FCP for 10 years and Avid MC 10 years before that, FCP2009 still couldn’t match Avid 2000 IMHO. It looks like FCPX may have gotten trimming right even though it’s new a different in some of its approach towards it. If I can trim with keyboard commands and see a 2-up that would work. I don’t want to have to trim with a mouse to get the 2-up.

[Herb Sevush] “Yes, faster and easier. Like for children. You do that by limiting options, removing customization, avoiding complications like choices.”

I don’t see most of the options as limited. Unlimited secondaries for Color grading is not limited. From what I’ve seen of the trimming that’s an improvement over FCP7 although I need to poke more heavily. Titling seems to be improved as does the hooks into Motion. BTW with all the FCPX criticism going on I’d note that Motion 5 is at 4 stars in the App store and 53 of the 89 reviews are giving it 5 stars.

Keep in mind that unlike FCP, which was built on old Macromedia code, went through OS9, OSX, PPC, Intel, Motion had a much more recent birth and wasn’t buried in ancient code. That Apple decided to toss FCP and start from scratch is the right idea I think. Time will tell but if you look at Motion, think of where FCPX might be once Apple settles some things.

Pros like ease of use too as long as there’s deep and accessible power and I think FCPX is headed in that direction. They did it with Motion after all IMHO.

[Douglas K. dempsey]

A practical question: if I decide to install my FCP7 on a different computer, say I want to work on my iMac 27″ instead of my laptop, I will have to install FCS2 and then my FCS3 upgrade on top of that.

But how do I get from FCP v7.0 to v7.0.3, which in the past I did by using Software Update, which would tell me there is a ProApps update for my software?

Has anyone tried this? Am I stuck migrating or cloning my MBP internal drive in perpetuity as I go from one machine to the next?

Looks like my “Mac Museum” may have another dedicated machine, a 2010 MBP 17″ running OS 10.6.7, FCP 7.0.3 until it dies.

I am even nervous about updating to OSX 10.6.8 now…

[Greg Penetrante]

[Douglas K. Dempsey] ” But how do I get from FCP v7.0 to v7.0.3, which in the past I did by using Software Update, which would tell me there is a ProApps update for my software?”

The updates to 7.0 -> 7.03 are still there tonight. I know somebody else must have hoarded the ProApps 2010-2 update somewhere…

-Greg

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Thanks, Greg. Yes, it will be an FCP7 “Community Support Network” to keep the old NLE working for enough time to adjust.

In my case, I have many sequences that are constantly re-used, updated, modified etc. It would be a huge inconvenience to re-create these from raw media in another app. So regardless of what I create in the future in FCPX, I need to keep my FCP7 projects alive until they can be converted to FCPX or PPro, MC etc.

A perfect example is a 3-camera shoot of a weekend-long conference that I did for a client. The multi-cam project is all built, sorted, selects have been binned, and audio “from the board” has been synced up with the 3 cameras’ independent audio. Whenever the Client’s budget allows it, we go back into the multi-cam sequences and create new releases of material. This will go on over the course of a couple years.

If a job is big enough, I would just freeze the computer, hard drives, Snow Leopard and FCP7.0.3 and dip into it when needed.