Welcome Final Cut X

[Les Kaye]

[Chris Conlee] “Yeah, I’d call BS on this. About 95% of all big budget features are cut on Avid.”

Since it appears that at least 5 of the Academy Award Best Picture nominees were cut on FCP (with the FCP edited The Social Network winning), you might want to revise this number as well.

http://www.leskaye.net

[Mark Palmos]

[Erik Lindahl] “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):”

Hello all and good morning…

Thanks for the list Erik, it’s good to see in one list like that, and yes, there are several of those that make me grin with pleasure…

If all those new features were there AND we were not losing ANY of the functionality we have with Motion, Compressor, DVDSP, Color, Soundtrack, I would be reasonably pleased, though I desperately want improvements to Motion too.

Most tellingly about last night IMO is that Apple (usually masters of selling up their products) made ZERO mention of the Studio, not so much as a wink and smug “…and that is not all…”

IF there was ANY more, do you not think Apple of all people would have taken this huge opportunity to create EVEN MORE buzz by dropping just ONE hint?

Dang!

I would love to see how beziers in the timeline would do all and more than what Motion currently does. I have deep doubts about that one.

Mark.

[Marcus Samuel-gaskin]

From Larry’s blog “After the presentation, I spoke with Richard Townhill, Director of Pro Video Product Marketing for Apple (who served as the host for Apple’s presentation) who told me that “the purpose of today is to focus exclusively on Final Cut Pro, highlight some of the new features, and give people a chance to see and comment on the new interface. We will have much more to say about both Final Cut and our other applications in the future.”

Larry continues This does not mean these other applications are dead – simply that Apple is not talking about them… yet.”

source: Larry’s Blog @ larryjordan.biz

[Mark Palmos]

[Marcus Samuel-Gaskin] “Larry continues This does not mean these other applications are dead – simply that Apple is not talking about them… yet.””

Hi Marcus,

That sounds promising… I do wonder why no mention was made of it last night in public though, it would have caused positive enthusiasm instead of the present instability and doubt.

tx
Mark

[Rafael Amador]

Now I know that I have FC for at least another 10 years.
I don’t understand so much concern around.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Erik Lindahl]

Reading Larry’s blog I actually get less worried:

The new Final Cut Pro is a bold move – a totally redesigned interface, 64-bit memory addressing, multi-processor support, tight integration of metadata in the project file with metadata stored in the clip not just in the project, heavy use of automation to simplify tedious tasks, and a rethinking of the entire concept of what it means to edit.

Metadata stored in the clip means QuickTime is getting an internal “face lift”. It also, potentially, means Apple is serious about “pro applications” in terms of work flow. Meta-data stored in the media is a very good move and should if anything make FCP talk better with other applications. Potentially features like white-balance / auto color correction can be store in the meta-data.

* Sample rate precision in scrolling an audio clip

This is a huge change for me. I often to presisson audio edits and feel it’s crazy I have to send it to a protools system (or STP).

* Pitch corrected audio scrolling in slow motion

Brilliant. Just shot a music-video this weekend with a mixture of 25p and 50p. I do however ask the question “how will mixed formats and frame-rates be handled, can I for example work in a 25p time-line and get real slowmotion from 50p content?”.

* Displaying waveforms at a size big enough to see what they look like
* Displaying audio levels within the waveform that are approaching clipping (as one engineer near me remarked, “And THAT took us a LONG while to figure out.”)
* Displaying audio peaks for the entire mix that are approaching clipping
* Improved audio cleanup controls, which can be applied or ignored by the user (these look to be borrowed from Soundtrack Pro)

All brilliant auditions. I wonder if they’ve added loudness monitoring as well. I also wonder how they handle these real “pro” features – scopes, wave-form monitors etc.

I think Larry sums it up in the end: The devil is ALWAYS in the details. Even with all these new features there are 100 unknowns. It also boils down to the fact that the above features work as advertised and that’s not always the case.

————————
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Steve Connor]

Personally I am very happy about the announcement, lots of great stuff and a new code base to build even more into it. I’m looking forward to trying it out in June, meanwhile here’s a good quality shot of the new interface.

Cue speculation on what all the new buttons do!

https://cdn.macrumors.com/article/2011/04/13/014726-fcpscreen.jpg

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Mark Palmos]

[Erik Lindahl] “I think Larry sums it up in the end: The devil is ALWAYS in the details. Even with all these new features there are 100 unknowns. It also boils down to the fact that the above features work as advertised and that’s not always the case.”

Hi Erik,

Also a big question is how many existing features will have been removed due to “not enough time to implement the entire feature set due to a rewrite of the code”. This is what happened to Premiere Pro when it was re-written twice (if my memory serves me, I think it was 6.5>CS1 as well as from CS2>CS3)

Anyhoo, we will all have 20-20 vision in about two months…

Cheers,
Mark.

[Erik Lindahl]

This is exactly what happened to Premier and it’s a risk one takes when doing this type of transition. Apple has to be very proactive and addressing people’s needs in future updates. I was surprised to see some “new features” in Premier from CS4 > CS5 and even now in CS5.5 that I have been taking for granted in FCP for years.

There is also a risk in making a product more “broad” given it can be good as well. However, if you have 1 million users complaining about “The share to facebook feature is broken” or “The face-detection system isn’t working” and Apple puts focus on cra.. features like that, it might lose focus on the “pro issues” with what ever that can be (conforming of more complex projects, addressing i/o or format issues, making a rock-solid round-tripping to external applicaiton etc).

But all this is speculation so we can’t really say ANYTHING until Apple reveals something more. I wouldn’t mind either if FCPX requires MacOSX Lion and that we there is a / the massive over-haul to QuickTime we’ve needed for years.

————————
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se

[Erik Lindahl]

These are my concerns as well given.. An app like Shake can be replaced (After Effect to a degree or Nuke). I gather FCP can be tighter integrated than an app like Shake but I really don’t think Apple would kill that eco-system. That would ruin the application for higher-end markets.

I don’t see why they can’t make a scaleable app. It sounds like it but we still have many unknowns.

————————
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se