One day with Final Cut Pro X and I’m convinced…

[Jamie Franklin]

Maybe I used my analogy wrong? What I meant by the emperor has no clothes was the product itself *appeared* and was *presented* as something to get excited about, but once dropped and we got our hands on it…oh boy..

[David Roth weiss]

[Sam Cole] “What I am having trouble coming to terms with is WHY over 1000 professional editors in a room with FCPX as a ‘sneak peek’ would give a ‘standing ovation’ to something that most people NOW say is a ‘consumer product’.
“

Sam,

The pent up demand to see software that would actually run on all cores of a MacPro had been building up for years, and it had everyone giddy with excitement and completely spaced-out. They all got the munchies for any sweet thing Apple would show them at the sneak preview, and so the audience went wild.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

Don’t miss my new tutorial: Prepare for a seamless transition to FCP X and OS X Lion
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCP-10-MAC-Lion/1

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Andrew Wilson]

The standing ovation was because we thought we were being shown all these great features that would be there IN ADDITION to all the parts of the tool we professionals use everyday.

Now what I really would like to have seen was “Hey – we’ve got 64 bit editing! Background Rendering (No more progress bars)! A great new ‘magnetic’ timeline that helps keep everything in sync! Improved Nesting!

…and here are some more great features: No more multi-cam! You can’t open your old projects! We’ll make all your media management decisions for you! We’ve eliminated OMF, XML, 3rd party support, Video Output! Support for tape! Soundtrack Pro! DVD Studio Pro! Color! Isn’t that great! We’re so proud!

I wish they would have made those announcements with the pride and vigor of the rest of their tease at the SuperMeet. Believe me, the reaction would have been a lot different.

Andrew Wilson
WestView Digital Video & Design
http://www.westviewdigital.com

[Jason Levy]

re the unlinked media – Is there any way to “relink” it? or was the project dead?

[Tony Laughton]

I agree Andrew, I was there at the NAB Supermeet and was also impressed thinking that all those cool things were additional to everything you know are basic requirements. Boy we were sure sucked in badly..

[John Spirou]

Mine, crashed once or twice, but never lost anything…

And by the way, you use 10 years the old godd FCP , and trying to to do the smae things with the same way is WRONG.

You have to think different (if you want).

FCP is a mature OLd programm , that does YOUR job well.

BUT not mine… its painfully slow , FCPX is FASTER on everything.

I can import without transcode anything (many hours lost with FCP).

I can import any music, photo with a click .

I can find anything with a simple search.

I can have ALL of my media in EVERY project .

I can use or NOT magnetic timeline if i want .

I can make better adjustments in audio ( i didnt used Soundtrack PRo ever)… now i have Logic effects inside my NLE .

etc, etc….

There are more things i can do, and some i cant do…

I prefer to move on….

[Aindreas Gallagher]

there’s no longer any way to re-link media, apple “does all the work for you” if material is listed offline, there is no way to tell where that material originated, you have to just plug in drives until FCPX sees it and then it stops being offline – it doesn’t tell you the material is back online – I haven’t actually tested the last bit myself, but that’s my understanding.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[David Lawrence]

I haven’t tested this yet but a colleague tells me it’s even worse than that. He says that if you modify an asset – an animation or graphic, for example – the link breaks and there’s no way to re-link it. Even if it has the same file name and duration. He’s an animator and does this all the time. I do this constantly with graphics. Need to test but unbelievable if true!

[Chris Harlan]

There was also a lot of tension at the time because of what was missing at the demo. I wasn’t there but I watched the video of the event as soon as it was available, and there was a lot of discussion about things that were not show. My very first thought was “how do I do audio splits with that magnetic timeline.” Genuine concern was show by a number of editors I corresponded with/talked to. I even wrote Steve Jobs right after the event:

There is a great deal of fear in the professional Final Cut Pro community, after last weeks demo, that they have been abandoned. In certain circles, it is bordering on panic. I’m certain that that is not what the demo meant to engender, but, unfortunately, it has.

He, or one of his assistants, responded to me :

The feedback we are getting from the Pro customers is very positive.

That actually mollified me, and I came to believe that much of the program was still hidden. Not true.

[Alban Egger]

I think what many forget: it´s a 1.0 release of a NEW software.
i already did 2 little projects with it. Both 1080p projects and my Macbook and my Macpro finally worked as they were supposed to.

I treid several things that I need and I found almost everything somewhere in FCPx. Different and I needed the manual, but i got it doen nonetheless.

There are still missing parts: e.g I NEED a vectorscope and a waveform. Don´t want to switch between them. Stuff like that. Little stuff that annoys some more than others.
Like the dissolve on a graphic which the OP mentioned. I use CMD-V to open the keyframes and in opacity use the fade-slider like I did in the old FAST. Works, takes a bit longer than CMD-T alone though.

At the same time there is huge potential for this software. Several new shortcuts are saving lots of time, audition….monster tool, etc.

Bottom Line: Every software can do everything – almost. Heck, people made good stuff with Premiere 4. Apple will listen and will bring upgrades soon. Hang in there folks.