Gabriel Spaulding
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My guess is that the next major FCP X update, likely timed with the Mac Pro release or the FCPX Creative Summit, will have Braw support and an updated Color pane in the Inspector with Raw controls.
FCP X and Resolve play pretty nicely with each other, which means Apple and Blackmagic Design have a somewhat healthy relationship (the Blackmagic eGPU on the Apple Store being one example). It seems odd to me that Apple would open up ProRes Raw to other parties while not allowing Braw in its own apps.
I presently have two cameras that record Braw and while I have zero interest in cutting in Resolve many who capture Braw will choose to stick with Resolve, leading to lost FCP X editors. Seems like bad business not to enable Braw in FCP X.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Cinematographer | Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
It was a brand new machine that virtually no one had access to at that point, meaning there were very few real world tests. The machine was faster at some tasks, but at the end of the day it wasn’t the performance that caused me to return it (both machines) it was the constant system crashes. I couldn’t run iStat Menus without the entire machine shutting down immediately. It’s fine on every other Mac I have ever owned. KeyFlow Pro also caused system crashes —an app that is also fine on every other Mac I have owned. Final Cut Pro X and Motion causes complete system crashes as well, sometimes just when moving a clip one frame in the timeline. Apple could not fix the issue. Even with a new user account, only Pro Apps installed, and all peripherals disconnected the crashes continued.
“Huh? Wha?”
You can’t install the SoftRAID for OWC’s Thunderbay 4 drives with the T2 security chip fully enabled, so I had to disable it —rendering it pointless. x
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Cinematographer | Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
Those are all solid points. Most of the time I am cutting Sony Fs7 and Panasonic GH5 footage, which is clearly benefitting from Quick Sync.
Of course I wanted the iMac Pro to work for me. It’s a beautiful machine, and wonderfully quiet, and I do miss the extra I/O ports, but apart from that I just found no advantage to using it with the type of media I typically work with. That, and of course the constant system crashes and the T2 security chip preventing the install of certain apps.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Cinematographer | Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
I posted a few times (above) comparing my 10-core iMac Pro to my late 2013 iMac. Since then, however, my 10-core iMac Pro had significant hardware issues Apple was unable to fix, then I upgraded to an 18-core iMac Pro that had the exact same problems. I returned that and now have a maxed out 5k iMac, and in nearly every case it is outperforming the 18-core iMac Pro. Multicam editing is smoother, playback is smoother, Motion render times are more or less identical, and while both iMac Pros would spontaneously shut down multiple times a day the 5k iMac has never done this.
In fact, before I returned the 18-core machine I compared it to my late 2013 iMac: the 18-core with directly attached OWC Thunderbay 4 drives was MUCH slower at playback and export than the late 2013 iMac accessing media on the same drive… over a network. Working with those iMac Pros for a good 6 months (when they weren’t in for repair), and having compared them to two different iMacs, I have to say that I do not see any benefit to the iMac Pro over a modern 5k iMac, at least using the Pro Apps —unless you are working with 8k footage or 360 video, that’s where that machine will shine.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Cinematographer | Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
That’s interesting. For the past few years roughly every 2 weeks I bring in about 1TB of footage (20+ hours of mixed format 4k) that I edit into a multicam clip and trim down to a 10-hour timeline, multiple layers of color corrections applied to all of the clips (frequently with color masks), several hundred edits in the timeline, multiple audio channels, and I haven’t had any problems on a late 2013 iMac and iMac Pro, using either the native files or proxy media. Sure, FCP X will crash on occasion (not even every project), but when I relaunch everything is fine. I’m sorry to hear you haven’t been having a positive experience with it.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Cinematographer | Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
Freelancers using the video editing software must be able to:
Cut video clips and quicken pace
Use transitions
Integrate background music
Employ the latest techniques to captivate audience attention with cuts and motions
Edit scenes using multiple anglesThis is a really odd article. Apart from this incredibly generic description (above) and near entry level hourly rate, freelancers can use ANY NLE to do those tasks. I mean, you can use iMovie to “use transitions” ???? and create “cuts and motions” ???? As a FCP X user I don’t even like seeing FCP X mentioned next to a description like that. Sad!
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Cinematographer | Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
HULLFISH: FCP-X is very into this metadata model of finding stuff.
BELL: You’ve lost me there. This is a visual medium. If I was a word processor and a writer maybe. But I’m cutting images and sounds and affecting those images and sounds and I’m a visual beast. What I need are tools that support that. For me personally.
He has some cool ideas that if implemented would improve any NLE, though neither Avid nor Adobe have chosen to implement his feature requests. FCP X is not exactly what he is looking for, but being the sole NLE that breaks away from bins, and arguably the most fluid and dynamic at organization, you’d think a bit more curiosity than “you’ve lost me there” would be warranted. At least give it a good go before you so casually disregard it.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Cinematographer | Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
Between the rough cut at the FCP X Creative Summit and yesterday’s release I’ve now seen the film three times. At no point does it feel like marketing. It’s storytelling. All of the things the above commenters talk about are addressed in the film, because all of those things are part of the story, the history of FCP X.
The film was not paid for or sponsored by Apple and the filmmaker does not work for Apple. I continue to find it interesting (and baffling) that anyone who shines a positive light on FCP X is seen as suspicious —even when they make an effort to point out the speed bumps along the way. The filmmaker saw a much bigger picture that extends beyond the boundaries of the software that inspired it, and it is relevant to our entire industry.
Most people on this planet refuse to alter their views no matter what new evidence presents itself, so I wouldn’t expect this film alone to change anyone’s unwavering opinion of FCP X. But it does show what a large portion of this community is thinking and feeling, and it paints a picture of where (I am more or less convinced) the industry is heading.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Videographer | Video Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
“From a freelancer’s perspective though, the need to be proficient on FCPX is the lowest priority due to it’s lack of presence in post facilities.”
That certainly doesn’t represent any of the freelancers who have been using FCP X the past 6.5 years. Also, it seems to me that what post facilities are doing should be largely irrelevant to most freelancers, who generally find their own clients through various avenues, clients who could not care less what NLE they use. If you were looking for a job at another post facility that’s a different story, but in that case you’d no longer be a freelancer.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Videographer | Video Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com -
“As you said there are cases where putting the library and cache files on an SSD (even the system SSD) can help performance. However it can be difficult to determine whether this helps. Just because your spinning RAID array is chugging loudly doesn’t mean it’s overloaded. Lots of people speculatively put items on SSD, yet it may not help performance if the workflow isn’t I/O-limited. If you measure the before/after timing of a specific workload and it’s faster with library on an SSD, then that’s good evidence but methodically doing such things is time consuming.”
Tests like this are indeed time consuming, but so is waiting say 8 hours for waveforms to draw when the Library is on a RAID vs on the internal SSD, which is at times twice as fast. After a few years of cutting one recurring type of project with the Library on a RAID, then cutting the same project with the Library on the internal SSD, and seeing dramatic differences, the results were actually not difficult to determine at all —just move the Library to an SSD and compare the times. Granted, some of this speed improvement is moving to a beefier machine, but I tested the iMac Pro with the Library on a RAID and on the internal SSD and there is a huge gap in the amount of time it takes to draw waveforms.
Gabriel Spaulding
Creator & Director of ACE Enterprizes
Videographer | Video Editor | Motion DesignerHow Can We Help You Tell Your Story?
http://www.aceenterprizes.com