Time for an FCPX update?

[Gary Huff]

[Steve Connor] “Isn’t it about time for an update? I know there will be one to coincide with the new MacPro but they could sneak another one through before it.”

What about all the “App Store will allow for quicker updating!” nonsense that was spewed when FCPX first came out? It’s not like there still aren’t some bugs that need quashing at least. I still have to restart occasionally because FCPX suddenly refuses to playback the timeline for instance.

[Mark Dobson]

Yes, it’s well overdue based on the pattern we are used to.

However I think the next update is going to be huge. Apart from all the under the hood modifications to make the most of the new Mac Pro I’ve got a feeling that the appearance of the windows is going to have a radical overhaul, maybe matching the ‘lovely’ new pastel shades of iOS7 and Mavericks. The burnished grey plastic look will disappear, no more bevelled edges around the windows and possibly a new font.

I also hope that they will enabled faultless round tripping to Motion and Logic Pro expand and update the color correction functions.

But for me the real excitement is waiting for the new MacPro.

[Bill Davis]

Speculative on my part, but my assumption is that Apple has likely has virtual machines in software running for months now that mirror the processes of the coming MacPros. It’s also very likely that they’ve been running virtualizations of FCP-X on those – and perhaps on early prototypes of the physical machines at this stage. That would allow the software team to “tune” their code to take maximum advantage of the coming hardware.

If my speculation is correct, the most critical tasks for the team is to make sure that the FCP-X code does the best possible job of working with the new hardware. What’t the point of spending too much time tweeking the code for the current user base, when at some point, large numbers of their users will be moving to the new systems? Yes, it’s important that users with earlier machines or software versions remain compatible – but we’re the group that’s always pushing for the fastest, most seamless experience as the Pro Users with mission critical needs.

So i’m happy if they spent ALL their time building for the new possibilities coming late this year.

Essentially, if they can fix something right now, great. But I imagine that the new horsepower coming will allow X to do more, faster and quite possibly allow new computationally heavy features that the current hardware isn’t beefy enough to allow.

Then again, I can’t even remember the last time I had an X crash. So my use patterns and the processes I do don’t appear to be stretching X to a breaking point. I’d probably feel differently if I was trying to manage a weekly TV show or needed to wrangle huge RED files or something else that put more stress on my edit system.

I’m very happy running X as it is right now and just as happy to wait for what Cupertino has on the way.

YMMV.

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[Marcus Moore]

We aren’t OVER due, but this past Thursday marks 3 months since 10.0.8 dropped (just before NAB), which is about the average interval time up to now.

Here’s the release document I keep on my notepad whenever one comes out (last part is day of the week it was released). Those in BOLD were the “Feature” releases:

10.0.0 – 2011.06.21 Tu
10.0.1 – 2011.09.20 91 DAYS Tu
10.0.2 – 2011.11.16 57 DAYS W
10.0.3 – 2012.01.31 76 DAYS Tu
10.0.4 – 2012.04.10 70 DAYS Tu
10.0.5 – 2012.06.11 62 DAYS M
10.0.6 – 2012.10.23 134 DAYS Tu
10.0.7 – 2012.12.06 44 DAYS Th
10.0.8 – 2013.03.28 112 DAYS Th

[Helge Tjelta]

To all who think the new mac will be heaven; yes it will if the softwarepeople opens up for the hardware.

OpenCL; (processing on the GPU), for all stuff that the GPU can handle we will see huge performance jump.

CPU; not much at all ( we have now 2×6 cores), the new is 1×12 cores, at really lower speed, but thanks to better stuff inside, it will properbly be a bit better than the best we have today. So CPU will give only a little speedjump.

SSD on PCI; this will give us a sick speedjump on loading the OS and programs. Media will be stored on external stuff, since the internal SSD is small. But browsing effects etc. that is stored internaly will benefit.

RAM; more is better and now it is even faster…

So it comes down to how well softwarepeople integrates the OpenCL and GrandCentralDispatch.

And, also AV-foundation will give us more…

But hardware wise, I say OpenCL(GPU), SSD on PCI, RAM and motherboardconnection/design, is what gives us the most. But OpenCL(offloading stuff to GPU) will be the winner.

/Cheers Helge, Norway

Helge

[Gary Huff]

[Marcus Moore] “We aren’t OVER due, but this past Thursday marks 3 months since 10.0.8 dropped (just before NAB), which is about the average interval time up to now.”

I’m happy enough with the current feature set for the most part, but there are most definitely bugs that should be fixed in a 10.0.9 release that should have been out last month.

[Gary Huff]

[Helge Tjelta] “To all who think the new mac will be heaven; yes it will if the softwarepeople opens up for the hardware.”

It will make the feature set faster…it won’t add features.

[Marcus Moore]

I have no idea how this type of developmental release works. I’d imagine its a game of putting together enough fixes to merit an update.

But I’d also imagine that the dev team has some sort of release schedule planed at least a year out. Whatever the next update is, 10.0.9 or 10.1, its well underway, so it might not be so simple to just push whatever is coming down the cue for the sake of inserting a maintenance update into the schedule. If those bug fixes are already tied into a big feature release- then they’re probably stuck with it for good or ill.

I dunno. Someone more knowledgeable than me may say different.

But I would say that if the next feature release is coming with the MacPro (presumably in Sept/Oct), we probably will see another maintenance update before then.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Marcus Moore] “we probably will see another maintenance update before then.”

I hope so. 10.0.8 is weird and needs to dissappear.

[Marcus Moore]

Why? What issues are you having?