[Marcus Moore]

Since 2011, the two have shared basic concepts, but no code.

Now, iMovie basically contains walled-off code for FCPX, Motion, and Compressor. Andy Mees recently discovered you can pull FCPX XMLs into iMovie and they open with a fair amount of fidelity.

In this particular instance, iMovie just happened to make it out the door first. But who knows how old that version of 10.1 hiding inside iMovie is…

[Marcus Moore]

Very nice. SliceX is one of the really remarkable plugins for X- happy to see this evolve.

There’s also another plugin for Motion and FCPX coming from motionVFX called mObject. It’s in Beta testing now but allows for full 3D .obj files. Full gamut of texture maps, up to 8K in size.

It’s basically Element3D for the Apple suite.

Here’s a short demo video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoawDkGNhJE

[Marcus Moore]

All great stuff. I think “Used Ranges” is one of the reasons why Apple decided to combine the Project/Event structure into a single “Library’ structure. With them separated, you couldn’t have Project info write back to the Event database. It was pretty much a one-way down stream of metadata from Events to Projects. So this opens up some great enhancements. Probably in Media Management as well.

[Marcus Moore]

Yup. iMovie purports some great changes to the file structure and media management- and the return of some welcome Legacy features like “used media”, “join clip”, and the “white balance picker”.

[Marcus Moore]

[Edgar Rothermich] “About the coming December upgrade, I’m not sure how much different they will be. There was a lot of nonsense rumors floating around before Apple’s October even that FCPx would be rewritten. Maybe the new December upgrade will be just a system upgrade for the MacPros as they did with the Retina upgrade. Maybe (hopefully) they implement the FCPx-LPX handshake. It looks like the foundation is there but not yet fully implemented. However, I still don’t know they will cleverly translate the Roles concept into Logic. I was actually afraid that they would use that Metadata approach in Logic. Luckily we still have Tracks in Logic. We will see”

That “complete rewrite” nonsense came from a guy who’s blown smoke about BIG updates before (most notably before NAB this year being a HUGE FCPX update), so I ignored that talk.

But it’s not going to be a simple tweaking for the MacPro either. All signs point to some structural changes to file structure and media management.

All that aside, the salient point here- making FCPX and LogicProX communicate better- no one knows at this point.

[Marcus Moore]

Yes, absolutely. It will be interesting to see how Resolve plays out. As editors, Smoke and Resolve both have a long way to go to be competitive editing platforms.

If FCP were to be gone as an editing choice tomorrow, Resolve with a strong editor would certainly be near the top of my list in terms of choices.

[Marcus Moore]

I find this interesting, but with reservations.

For me personally, I could see this being useful if Apple continues to develop iPad companion apps for their Pro apps like they have with Logic. I know I’m certainly hoping for something similar for FinalCutX when 10.1 comes out.

In that case I could see a larger screen appealing as a control surface for things like mixing and colour correction.

Obviously a larger screen would also benefit drawing applications. But of course these kinds of apps are only going to be able to progress so far unless Apple does something that allows for finer detail input via stylus. Perhaps a non-capacitive layer for wacom-like input.

[Marcus Moore]

Great stuff- I’ll bookmark it for a couple of weeks from now. Hopefully the 10.1 update will bring some better connective tissue between FCPX and Logic.

[Marcus Moore]

That’s the game these days- commoditize your competitor’s profit centre- and Apple certainly isn’t the only one doing it. Though they seem to be the only one who trying to actually make money from hardware.

Google gives away almost all of their software offerings- and sells their Nexus tablet hardware at break-even prices. Because their profit centre is search.

Amazon discounts just about everything at razor thin margins- trying to squeeze out as many brick and mortar competitors as possible. And they also sell their tablet hardware at pretty much cost to drive sales of content on their store.

Apple commoditized software to sell hardware for as long as I can remember. FCP and Logic were both drastically cheaper than the incumbents when they were released over a decade ago. Apple gave away iLife software suite on all new Macs. So their recent move to make OS and consumer software free isn’t that surprising.

But I personally don’t see them following suit with their professional apps.

[Marcus Moore]

Have you read any of Alex Gollner’s posts where he digs into the unreleased FCPX code that’s living in the new iMovie?

https://www.alex4d.com/notes/item/imovie-2013-and-final-cut-pro-x-10-1

https://www.alex4d.com/notes/item/imovie-2013-is-consumer-ui-on-fcpx

https://www.alex4d.com/notes/item/imovie-2013-and-fcpx-10-1-part-3

The Coles Notes version is that it looks like there’s a lot going on at the very least in the project/event structure and media management side. There’s way… WAY more as noted in Alex’s articles.

That said, not everything in code may end up working in the next shipping version- but if a good portion of what Alex has sniffed out is relevant- there’s improvements in many areas. At least as much as in what constituted a Legacy FCS update.

edited to add- actually X has 5K support at this point- can’t remember when that was added.