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Welcome Final Cut X
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I think you’re making a fundamentally wrong assumption. Although we’ve only seen a small piece, I think FCP will be very much a PROFESSIONAL app. It’s scalable to the user’s experience/capabilities. Thunderbolt is NOT going to be in demand for most consumers. A well designed editing app has a lot to do with making difficult work easier. That’s not less professional at all. It’s certainly not when there’s more power and flexibility added as well. Assuming Apple has not committed any faux pas with features not yet revealed, I think this will be a big hit in the higher end markets.
I’m old enough to remember people thinking Avid was a toy in 1989 because it cost much less than a multi million dollar linear edit room and the ABVB images were so bad as to be nearly unusable for accurate editing. Heck there was nothing in there to replace an ADO really either.
FCP was a nice consumer toy in 1999. No match for an Avid Media Composer at all.
Apple is creating another pivotal point in post production workflow. This ain’t going to be no toy even if it’s at the very early stages of the transition.
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When’s the next Editor’s Lounge Terry? I wouldn’t want to miss it… That one should be really exciting.
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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The new interface had me reaching for my barf bag. Still lots of very unanswered questions. If I was a FCP only shop looking at this demo I’d be VERY nervous right now about the money I have invested in a FCP pipeline. Shake anyone?
What of TRIM? What about a COLLABORATIVE PROJECT ENVIRONMENT? SERVER BASED TECHNOLOGY? And MEDIA MANAGEMENT? Weakest parts of FCP I can tell you first hand, the lack of media management in FCP is an assistant’s nightmare. I’m dealing with it on a daily basis.
Oh but it will sync the sound for you. Have you seen what it can do with iChat and this magnetic timeline?
So lame but we’ve come to expect consumer products now from Apple. I hope Avid is paying attention. They are more than long overdue on their own full re-write.
-K
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While re-inventing the wheel I just hope Apple doens’t forget what was good with the first wheel they created. As a long-term FCP editor (start with the first PAL-verison of FCP 1.2 was it?) I love they’ve made a try at re-writing the whole application. I think however an issue FCP or rather Final Cut Studio has is the simple facts it’s become very fragmented due to having not one but 5-6 apps in the suite. Who should receive some love in the coming upgrade?
At the moment I have more questions / concerns than feeling “wow, this is awesome!”. If FCPX is anything near the later versions of iMovie Apple really needs to think twice at what they are doing. Anyhow, a few concerns are:
– i/o options (i.e. working to / from tape or digital files)
– monitoring options (i.e. working with videocards)
– GUI flexibility (where is the source-window, where are the scopes, can you use mulitple timelines, how does the app work in different workspaces with multiple screens, where do we edit clip parameters etc)
– Effects and animation architecture (how has the out-dated effects / animation engine changed? how will third-party add-ons work?)
– Project format, in / exporting (is XML still there? how does FCP play with other apps?)
– Currently lacking features (TC-handling, project management and conforming issues, support for image sequence formats, old buggy graphics engine etc)..and the list goes on. Personally I’m not so worried about loosing Motion or Soundtrack Pro – or Color for that matter with the recent update of Reslove. However, a lot of people are using these apps on a daily basis (Color is still my grading app of choice!) and I really hope these stay around. I think the issue is, FCP is being used by everything from “the Blogger” (which can range from very professional to non-professional) to TV-commercial editing or feature film editing. It’s used for “offline” or creative editing and “online” or finishing editing – the later largely in conjunction with other applications like Color, Resolve and After Effects. This is one of FCP’s and QuickTime’s strength but this is also an area the can be improved in. What parts have Apple kept and what have they said “we’ll just wait and see what the crowd says”.
Premier Pro is now a re-written app since something like 8 years back. It’s still in some regards playing catch-up with FCP in terms of features but it’s also innovated in areas where FCP is lacking. Will FCPX see this “slowly growing” future now that they’ve start from a blank slate? So many questions, so few answers.
I guess in the end we do have a lot of options.. Sort of. Avid Media Composer for $995 is an interesting option. Sadly they are still a bit I have to say anal in regards to what monitoring hardware you can use. Premier Pro is getting there for sure and it’s more in line with FCP in terms of hardware support. Then you also have Smoke for OSX. Well that’s a different beast all together (and sadly it requires different hardware then Resolve to run). With FCPX being a new cat on the block I really hope Apple has done their homework and haven’t forgotten about the true video professionals. What they did with QuickTime X and iMovie makes me really, really worry though..
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
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Every time Apple “reinvents” a product, it has to leave out a lot of features that existed in previous versions or competitors versions. When OS X was released, it couldn’t even play DVD movies. When the iPhone was released, it had no bloody ToDo list, MMS, etc. etc. When the “reinvented” iMovie was released, it lost a ton of effects, audio tools, etc. When QuickTime X was launched in Snow Leopard, it lost all those great editing features I had used for years in QuickTIme Pro.
So….
What will Apple leave out of this newly reinvented Final Cut Pro?? I bet it will leave out a fair amount of non-glitzy-but-still-very-useful-and-mature features, and it will take a good couple of years to get it all back. That’s dangerous territory for a product that has already languished for the last few years, with competitors like Avid and Adobe updating their products at a fast pace.
For me, this new FInal Cut hardly puts to rest my concerns for the app’s long-term viability…
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Documentary Camera
http://www.varicaminla.com -
[Craig Harris] “Lightworks is now free and used on more big budget features than any other offline editing suite (King’s Speech – recent film).”
Uh, care to document this, or should it just be considered hyperbole?
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I must admit. I was caught up in the whole Apple presentation. Flashy, fast, and impressive. Many of the new features got overwhelming cheers from me as well. but after letting it all settle for a while, it seems there are more questions now than during the entire run of the rumors. I understand that this was only a demo, but I am not in agreement with the select few who have seen the demo before tonight. well actually I am. For $299 it is amaizing.
Victor
http://www.editvictor.com
http://www.hbhm.tv
http://www.itvisus.com -
Yeah, I’d call BS on this. About 95% of all big budget features are cut on Avid.
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My impressions are that Terrence has been right, much to my dismay. It seems Apple is making a very user friendly tool for “in the box” work – in one system and back out in final format – all from one editor/colorist/sound designer… And there is certainly a huge potential for that.
And all of the new timeline tools they showed tonight looked great – but if that comes at the expense of NOT being friendly in a pro environment, where different people perform different tasks – handing off audio to a soudn mixer, EDL/XML export, etc… – then this new product will not work for many people.
maybe they will have to go back to Avid, and maybe the price points will make that business model impossible to maintain.
FOP X might get laughed off as a toy, just like the first one did – and it certainly revolutionized the lower & middle tiers of the industry, but it wasn’t until they added pro features that it was used by features and broadcast environments. Maybe those environments are dead in the long term, and maybe Apple really is going “where the puck will be” – but if all of that interaction support is not there, we’ll be right back where we were with FCP 1 – great tool for hobbyists, and ‘finish in the box’ pros, but not for the higher end workflows.
Anyone want to bet if there will be any Oscar nominated films cut with FCP X this year or next?
Why not take 30 seconds to open the red clip and show the access to the raw color data? Why not drop a bone or two to the high end crowd to show you’re not abandoning them? And no mention at all of any other parts of the suite? Not even a “more to come later” tease…?
Overall, I’m very disappointed in the entire event – why take over the whole night for a 45 minute tease? Why not just do that in the 2nd half of the show?
David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR -
Well if they have support for “4K workflows” I’d be very surpriced if they forgot to have / keep an open architecture for A/V workflow to and from FCP.
– OMF or AAF
– XML and EDLNever the less I found these bullets on a site I presume is a recap from the show (might be correct, might be an interpretation of what was said):
– 64 bit
– Unlimited menory
– Uses Open CLI and Grand Central Dispatch
– Color fully managed with ColorSync
– Resolution independent playback system up to 4K
– Mix & match all content in timeline without transcoding
– No rendering, it does it in the background using every available CPU cycle
– Can plug into cameras and edit whilst ingesting
– Non destructive color balance on ingest
– Stabilisation on ingest
– Audio cleanup on ingest
– People and shot detection
– Range based keywording – metadata attached to part of a clip
– Smart collections – like smart folders
– Clip connections, primary and secondary media locking together
– Magnetic timeline -moves audio out of the way to avoid collisions.
– Single keystroke nesting
– Compound clips – collapse clips into a single clip
– Inline precision editor – simplifies trimming of clips
– Auditioning – sampling of different versions of edits
– ‘Skimming’ media previews when you move the cursor over
– iMovie like filmstrip view
– Timeline Index- an index of all the clips in the timeline
– Sync clips with Plural Eyes style featue (Not Plural Eyes)
– Automatic control of number of tracks – add and go when needed
– Pitch corrected audio skimming
– Waveforms show levels in realtime
– Retiming in the timeline
– One click to match color between clips
– New advanced color correction
– Improved keyframing, bezier paths and curve display in the timeline
– Color & Soundtrack now in FCPXTo me this sounds very good all in all. It also sounds like we’re moving to a focus on metadata and a “smart” application. This should if anything enhance the options for external i/o with other apps, but this is still a huge unknown. Being a what is it.. 12-13 year editor in FCP I do get a little worried as it’s always been my editor of choice. I’ve also moved from the “spare time / short-flicks editor” to working as a full time online operator. So over the years I’ve used FCP in a variety of ways and in it’s current shape it’s very flexible. That said, all of the above are major improvements.
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Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se
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