Welcome Final Cut X

[Tombabauta]

I have an honest question for my fellow professionals in the post production world. It seems like at this point, everyone is at the mercy of Apple — from hardware to software to workflows. They say you don’t new Xserve, so they kill it just like that. They say Shake sucks, so they kill it just like that. They don’t care how many people have built an entire working ecosystem on their products, if it ceases to be profitable, then they cut it off.

Adobe has made alot of improvements over the years, and from PrePro CS3 to the venerable CS5, which has had ALOT of the FCPX features for the last year [since NAB 2010], why havent you made the shift yet? Is there something wrong with PPCS5? Is there something FCP can do that CS5 can’t? CS5 can in fact open FCP projects now [and Avid] via XML import, so thats something to consider about backward compatibility.

I personally am both a PrePro and an FCP user, and I am a bit frustrated that PrePro, in its current incarnation as CS5/5.5 doesnt get any “love” from the pros in the post-production industry. In my opinion, if the pros in the industry supported this very useful piece of software, then it would progress very fast with 3rd party plugin support, workflow enhancements, etc.

FCP got the love way back version 1.0, and look where it is now. Widely used in the industry with alot of 3rd party support to make up for its short comings — true import of image sequences, inter operability with other industry standard software, etc.

Why is CS5 getting this much resistance, especially now that it is both Mac and PC friendly, and works really well with our most loved imaging software like AFX and Photoshop?

Just an honest question.

[Paul Provost]

[Tom Babauta] “Why is CS5 getting this much resistance, especially now that it is both Mac and PC friendly, and works really well with our most loved imaging software like AFX and Photoshop?”

for us it’s because premiere doesn’t work with kona 3
but that’s solved with a new decklink card which is probably what will happen as we will need it anyway for davinci8

https://www.postandbeam.tv
grade and finish @ post + beam

[David Roth weiss]

[Tom Babauta] “Why is CS5 getting this much resistance, especially now that it is both Mac and PC friendly, and works really well with our most loved imaging software like AFX and Photoshop?”

There are many reasons for this phenomenon, but let me just give you one of the primary explanations.

Premiere had a bad spell for quite a while, not so long ago, and hat turned off a lot of users and would-be users. Keep in mind, it did not handle long-form projects well. It would only allow one open sequence at a time. And, it was known to crash a lot.

So, you may say, those are things of the past. And, that’s probably true. However, FCP has been rock solid for years. And, while Microsoft’s OS has had it’s ups and downs, Apple OS X has been chugging along mighty smoothly since day 1.

So, FCP simply became trusted by a lot of people, and the more people used it, the more people could share their projects and workflows, because so many of their peers were using it.

The fact that BM and AJA were building the best and most open video I/O devices in the market exclusively for FCP didn’t hurt either.

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

POST-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.

[Craig Seeman]

David certainly covered some of it.

A lot of us have invested in FCP/Motion plugins. Switching to something simply because one hopes that some day the equivalent plugins might happen maybe isn’t viable. It’s interesting to note how many plugins are marketed as FCP/Motion. I don’t seem to see that marketing with AfterEffects plugins working in Premiere.

All NLEs have shortcomings. One would generally have to find a shortcoming mission critical or a feature in another NLE so critical so as to overcome its perceived shortcomings to result in a switch that would be worth the hours of time needed to get to a matching level of proficiency.

Premiere was looking more promising recently, for many, given the lack of improvements in FCP but FCPX sneak peak probably put a stall or an outright stop to that. One can only guess but it may have even influenced what Apple decided to show in the sneak peak. I’d guess that, despite all the questions people still have about FCPX, bringing up background rendering and native codec support in the time line was key to causing the stall . . . since I suspect people would be making their purchasing decisions after the conclusion of NAB. Basically Apple responded to things like Avid AMA, Adobe Mercury Engine to some extent. When some SneakPeak critics say, “but other NLEs have had those features” . . . well that’s EXACTLY why Apple had to show those.