Quite nice article summing up whats new in FCP X – looks good to me

[Jim Bushee]

Thanks for the link. I agree it looks awesome. I’m wondering what Apple is doing about the Studio bundle. We use DVD Studio Pro a lot here and sometimes Soundtrack and Motion come in handy.

Jim @ Video Express

Best Video Duplication in Boston

[Mark Suszko]

Apparently Soundtrack is now incorporated into X, I thought I read somewhere. Color is.

The better keyframing right int he timeline may mean some guys who only used Motion to have an easier time moving stuff around a screen for simple moves, might now go back to just working in the GFCP timeline. Myself, I have come to really like Motion 3 and I’m about to get Motion 4 some time this quarter. I could go learn AE I suppose, but my particular needs are wells erved currently by Motion, and so I’m hoping for more Motion, just with added awesome.

I’d also like Motion’s and LiveType’s Cg to be accessible right inthe timeline with a much easier interface.

[Ben Edwards]

In terms of Studio hopefully FCP X will integrate with existing programs or they will launch updates very soon. I would imagine the whole of studio would still be expensive – basically they may be trying to get people hooked with FCP and then hopefully people would go for the whole ecosystem.

In some ways the low pricing is quite cunning and may partially be due to them potentially making lots of money on hardware if people switch to Mac. The true cost of an editing system is SW+HW and as Apple provide both they may be able to afford to subsidise the SW.

One question I have is what will the minimum sensible spec be. I know there are quad core laptops out there so maybe it will be quad core.

The other thing I am wondering is how will dual monitor work. I tend to have bins on one monitor and everything else on the 2nd (I have a blackmagic which outputs to CRT video monitor). What would be really cool is to use the Sony Vegas model. It allows panels to be ripped off and put on the second monitor as floating windows (and docked together in tabbed sets).

—
Ben Edwards – Freelance Filmmaker
https://www.funkytwig.com

[Garrett Evans]

With the magnetic feature…will that impact multi-caming where I have one audio source and switch video against it? Currently you have to disengage the audio and only allow video to switch, but will that override the magnetic feature?

How will 64bit work with Final Cut Server 1.5?

No more transcoding, means larger files or smaller…say with AVCHD vs ProRes?

Holding out for Compressor, DVDSP upgrades…despite advances in delivery, our business model is slowly (emphasis on slowly) moving away from DVD, but not anytime soon.

MacPro OSX 10.6.6 2×2.26 QCIX 10GB 1066MHz DDR3 FCP7.0.3/FCS3
FCSvr1.5 Xsan2.2 DotHill 24TB QlogicSANbox 8GB ATTO 8GB

[Thomas Frank]

Questions over Questions,

from the sound of… editing while the source is still ingesting… tells me there is tape ingest. I hope!
I would like to know if there are more then two video tracks. Laying more then 3 tracks and doing some composite effects can be handy.

Two screens is key feature, maybe there is a dual screen layout? undestructible interface??

A Motion would be nice especially since I invested allot of time and money in to Motion. After Effect would have been a better option. But, maybe Apple was smart and finally added Shake’s key features! Node, Morphing, better Key and etc…

299 for Final Cut Pro X (lets skip 8 and 9) and 1000 for the Studio. I would buy that.
299 iMovie Pro I mean Final Cut Pro X vs free Lightworks. 😉

[Stuart Simpson]

Do we really need a new version of DVD Studio? What major features is it missing right now?

-Stuart Simpson
7 MacPros – Kona 3, Kona LH & Kona LHi
1 G5 – Kona LH
xbox360, Wii, PSP, PS3
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Garrett Evans]

I like to see the color fill for buttons or word buttons anti-aliased for one thing. Also, would be nice to easily replace a menu or track without having to re-author links, as long as the new version had all the same linking info (ie. chapters, frames). Often I catch a spelling error and have to re-author from scratch after recompressing the fixed movie.

I could take or leave Blu-Ray authoring…not sure I want to invest a lot of energy into a limited lifespan workflow.

MacPro OSX 10.6.6 2×2.26 QCIX 10GB 1066MHz DDR3 FCP7.0.3/FCS3
FCSvr1.5 Xsan2.2 DotHill 24TB QlogicSANbox 8GB ATTO 8GB

[Chris Borjis]

[Andree Franks] “I would like to know if there are more then two video tracks.”

I think I read somewhere its unlimited tracks.

I’m looking forward to using FCP X.

If they indeed integrated Shake/Motion features that will make me a happy camper. If not, I still have AE when I need it.

What I’m really eager to hear about is dvd studio pro & compressor.
Hopefully they appended Blu-Ray extensions to DVDSP. Even if it could do simple menu’s and not go so far as to include Java Menu support I’d be happy.

I do a lot of blu-ray discs, so yes I need it. 🙂

[Jeremy Neish]

I’m not on-board with the idea of optical media dying anytime soon. When it comes to movies, there are a lot of folks that want to own a physical product. I for one want highest quality video, special features and a physical backup when I buy a movie.

“Do we really need a new version of DVD Studio? What major features is it missing right now?
-Stuart Simpson”

DVD-SP is a fantastic app, but there is always room for improvement.
– HDMV Blu-ray authoring of course (don’t bother with BD-J for now, too much of a rat’s nest)
– 64 bit
– High quality integrated smart encoding. My idea for this is, you bring in all your video as QuickTime or links to live FCPX timelines, layout and author your whole disc, then you tag the encoding quality priority of all the videos (main movie feature is “A-quality”, menus are B, featurettes and music videos are C, etc. Then you have DVD-SP smartly encode it so that you use every bit possible on the disc putting more bits where they are most important)
– NO MORE GAMMA SHIFTS!
– The ability to drill down to the spec level and tweak the abstraction layer when needed.
– Figure out a way to use fewer GPRMs in the abstraction layer so that we can use them for authoring.
– Proper documentation for the jump relative function. (took me a week to figure that out the first time I needed it.)
– Build upon the jump relative idea and do even more powerful things with it.
– Dump all the pre-made template stuff. That’s what iDVD is for. (personal opinion)
– Add support for THX Media Director

[Mark Suszko]

I for one don’t believe BluRay is dead. Clouds, FTP, and storage on hard drives aside, I have a niche clientele that will always need physical copies of the Media, and BD makes an excellent self-standing shelf storage medium. It’s cheap, highly durable, and you have numerous ways to play it, from game room to board room to news room, and BD players are now in the fifty dollar range in department stores, so there erally isn’t an excuse not to have one if you want to play high def from a physical mediaum.

I’m not so interested in very sophisticated authoring of BD, but I want easy to use functionality to make simple recordings with a basic menu, without having to resort to third-party solutions.