My thoughts on the FCPX FAQ

[Richard Harrington]

I don’t. The comments posted to my blog and Cow posts over last week or so has made that quite clear.

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

[Richard Harrington]

I wasn’t speculating. I was asking more questions I wanted answers to.

On my blog a few more good ones were posted by readers.

Is there a new linear, Colorboard-style vectorscope coming too? What? A linear vectorscope is ridiculous? Well give the color wheels back!

What do you do after you capture with 3rd-party utilities, make an edit, finish & archive the project, then re-visit it for an updated edit and need to batch re-capture the edit from tape? Are you stuck and have to re-capture “manually?” Will there be support for AJA/Black-Magic/Matrox to create a Log & Capture plug-in that works within Final Cut Pro X?

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

[Scott Shucher]

What a miserable week it’s been. And unproductive to boot, spending way too much time pouring over these Cow postings. Bottom line: FCPX in it’s current form will not integrate into my workflow, and there are now better options(Premiere & Avid). What really burns my butt is that for 9 years I’ve been defending FCP and promoting it as a smarter, more cost effective post production platform than Avid. And as a former Avid editor I truly believe that and still do. I believe the market share trends justified that.

Now I feel like an idiot, ultimately left to swing on the FCP gallows. Not that I feel that FCPX might someday become a usable editing tool–even though my instincts say Apple will never restore all the functionality I need in the software. (Capture from tape, Edit to tape, output to a real broadcast monitor, not a “TV”… Export to QuickTime formats without having to go through Compressor… Lack of Networked Storage)…Yadda, Yadda, Yadda.

What really has pushed me over the edge, is the decision to pull FCS3 without regard to current workflows. As if Apple says it knows our workflows better than we do. As if Apple considers FCS3 to be a toy that can be just taken from a child and replaced with a new toy, regardless of whether it’s a better toy or not. You can’t argue with need to have let FCS3 remain on the shelves as a viable production option for those heavily invested in it’s workflow, until FCPX is mature enough to use(If it will ever get there).

I was just about to pull the trigger on two new Apple 27″ displays to replace some older 23” Apple monitors. After the last week and a half, I really don’t feel like putting another penny in Apple’s pocket. Besides the Viewsonics will save me some $$.

Now, I really do need to get back to work.

MacPro 3.2ghz 8 core, 12 Gbyte RAM, FCP 7.0.1, OS X.5.8
QT7.5.5, Kona3 (v7.1), Atto FC41-ES, 12TB Custom RAID-striped RAID 3.
NVidia Geoforce 8800GT

[Tangier Clarke]

Tom I respect your comments on the cow and have for a while in my readings here, but I Chris I have to agree with you mostly.

I make my living as an editor and on FCS. Sure, I am disappointed, but really like FCP X and have seen tremendous benefits in my workflow and for my job’s near-term projects. I don’t think that Apple is abandoning the pro. In fact, I have a problem with that term as I think it’s a subjective and inconsistent in use. Perhaps Apple is reimagining what that pro (which includes prosumer) editorial space is and making the change now as it projects it’s software and hardware goals in the coming years.

As for people jumping ship – it’s going to happen without a doubt. Always does and always will as people don’t want to accept change and the methods/motives behind it. I believe Apple will make up for those it loses in grand number and FCPX will be a trojan horse app in the long run in the way the iphone and iPad have been. It’s been said that the big companies and studios and such will be the only home for pros (in paraphrase) , but as with iphones and iPads, when the vast numbers of people using FCPX and subsequent iterations, it’s vast array of third party hooks, and the hardware that people will certainly want, I think it will be the business that will have to cave in to the populous to a certain (not necessarily total) extent. We’re seeing that now. The iPhone and iPad has infiltrated business and IT departments where people thought it never would or could because they’ve become excellent personal devices and business devices. Not necessarily the best, but the preferred. FCP 1-7 had the same affect actually.

Believe me, FCPX did not meet my expectations, but in many ways it exceeded them and gave me a new way to perceive how I leverage information in my editorial workflow. Aside from learning new key commands, this version of FCP is akin to how I felt about Motion when it first came out – I could just work and not have the software in my face so much. I could play and experiment more and focus more on the creativity.

My FCP 7 still works. My Multibridge Pro 2 still works. I am not jumping ship just yet. I am admittedly hopeful and yet still wary of what my or may not come. Though with the power of computers these days, the sophistication of even simple AV and imaging tools, and general accessibility of communication tools and of course the internet, it’s increasingly hard for studios to compete with a competent person or persons with their own gear and Apple knows this. Studios of many sizes have already downsized and closed for this very reason.

I like to think that’s there’s “pros” in many spaces of content creation. As technology levels the playing field even further and will continue to do so, FCP X on it’s own doesn’t need to be everything, but it Should be accessible to all these spaces via third party hooks. Think of it like iphone/iPad apps. Who would have thought that having mega applications on our desktops that do so much would be trickle down to having simple apps that just do specific things we need done and do it well.

Part of what I love about this industry is that it’s constantly changing. That’s what makes it fun. That what keeps me learning. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been looking at that Pr icon in my production suite with an itchy finger, but just out of curiosity to see what other’s are talking about. I am having more fun learning FCPX cause it’s new and shiny and stuff!

Tangier

[Geert Van den berg]

[MIke Guidotti] “Apple killed FC Server last week along with FCS 3”

I was well aware of this, but I have a hunch we’ll see new server functionality being built in FCPX, the database framework is probably already in there, it just needs to be enabled.