John Davidson
11
Apple Final Cut Pro X Coins
28
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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2.8 Octo with 16 gigs of RAM and a Kona 3 (unused). I’m just going through listing bugs my editor hits. They may not happen to everyone. We had to deliver something so we just wanted to basically cut around the bug. I’ll play some more tomorrow and see if I can recreate it.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Yep. I’ve been staying out since last night. They should put a sticky to the apple feedback page if people want their voices heard.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/3442
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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It paid for itself not because it parted the Red Sea, but because it was used in a professional environment to complete a project, albeit small.
Here’s the case study, if you will…
Movie Studio ‘X” called at 6pm asking if we could cut together 18 clips of fans of their studio doing funny things with their logo to show at a board meeting for fun. As we had been experimenting with X all day, when we opened FCP7 it seemed weird – so we took a chance and imported the 18 .mp4 clips into X. Because we were new to it, it was a bit unwieldy, however this was not a 20 layer project so it worked.
After we cut the piece to about :60, we adjusted and retimed the whole thing a few times. We also used the ‘fix audio’ (I forget the exact name) setting across all the clips to level them out. During the edit we really enjoyed the compound clipping to keep everything neat. We used fade to color and dissolve transitions throughout. Many of our quick keys (shift + , and . for moving 1 to 5 frames) came across from FCP7, which was nice.We submitted to our client who was at dinner. We used the ‘share’ email setting, which turned the clip into a very night looking 2.3 meg file precomposed in an email, which was also viewable on the iPhone.
The client responded that it was just what he wanted, we then use the share/dvd/hard drive setting to create an .img file, which when opened contained the video/audio ts folders. We also created an H264 Quicktime using the ‘movie export’ generic setting under ‘share.’ Dragged the qt’s over the YouSendIt icon in the dock, entered the clients email address, clicked ‘send’. Done.
Not everything was perfect. We use 2 monitors, and during testing earlier today the program froze while video was fullscreen in monitor 2. When we tried to open X up again, it was stuck on ‘loading window layout’ or something like that. The solution – keep everything in 1 monitor for now. It’s how X wants it.
To get back in, selecting the username/library/app support prefs files and deleting didn’t work. You have to delete the folders too. It opened back up – back in business.
We are also not loading AJA drivers until they are out of Beta. My editor had to hot-wire the audio out of the Mac Pro stereo port into the Mackie mixer since X doesn’t see the Kona card.
The project did not need any mixing, so we rode the levels in FCP (normally we would use FinalPlug by WaveArts). The audio meters are cool, too. The editing experience began to feel more natural by the end – to the point where we would collapse compound clips and expand them – each time we would catch ourselves grunting with approval like the technical apes we are.
There’s a lot we don’t understand yet. Gotta figure out the science of certain aspects of why it acts a certain way. Also have to get our heads around file management. Don’t so much mind the events being locked in the “movies’ folder since it’s protected by Time Machine (which might also be a great resource for previous versions of projects since we can’t save anymore). It could be a problem later as the Movies folder is on a 256 gig SSD, which may one day fill up.
I like it. I like it alot. I’ve been dreaming of playing with it since the meet, because I’ve always felt editing would be more fun if it weren’t so clumsy. I’ll have to develop my muscle memory on repetitive functions and learn the psychology behind why certain things are implemented as they are. Using lots of the other native Apple apps, I do like how things are getting more consistent across the board.
Gotta look into that time machine thing for previous edits. That might be awesome.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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We just turned around a small emergency project this evening that paid for Final Cut Pro X three times over. We exclusively used X and nothing else. If it’s all about business, any program that pays for itself on the first day is a winner, IMHO.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Who told you that it wouldn’t import 7D native? That’s completely false – I just did it and it was awesome. In fact, we’re doing a project tonight on X. It’s great – and it’s going to get better.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Greg, have you even used it yet?
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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I wonder if Automatic Duck is a per seat license.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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And you’re totally right, those things should be included. That said, we always archive a quicktime file, to to lay back to tape I’d just open fcp7 and work it out like that. OMF export – well, I’ll bite the bullet and get Automatic Duck and try that (we have an older version of it, so the upgrade cost of 195 isn’t so bad). The multi camera support – yeah, that’s annoying. For our business, we pretty much never used multicamera, so it’s not the end of the world. I would suspect a great deal of these issues will be resolved in an update, so we are going to play with this for now and learn it’s tricks. There’s a whole lotta cool stuff in here that I really like. The waveform monitor is a really cool. I love the effects layout now, too.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Specifically, people hate change and they hate learning. They just found out they have to do both today. Nobody remembers that FCP7 didn’t get AJA drivers for 2 weeks after it launched. Heck, Zaxwerks Invig just last month started working with CS5 – right around the time 5.5 came out! If your whole business is based off FCPX OMF exports on day one, please go buy Automatic Duck. It’s available today.
I have been playing with the new FCPX for 2 hours without a crash or even a restart after install. Whatever that’s worth…
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.