[Mark Dobson]

[Oliver Peters] “And what do you see wrong with FCP X’s grading? I thinks it’s rather good as built-in NLE tools go.”

After 2 years of using it I’ve found FCPX’s Color correction pretty useable. I film everything in Canon C log, so everything needs attention, and despite serious shortfalls in defining areas with the shape masks, I’ve found that through applying multiple corrections it’s possible to achieve pretty sophisticated results without leaving the application.

I’ve even got used to the color board, which once you stop thinking about it and comparing it to color wheels, is very easy to use in a weird counterintuitive way.

What I liked about Color Assist was the inclusion of the curves tool and if FCPX were to include something similar to that it would be a great asset.

[Mark Dobson]

I bought the Color Assist app when it was launched, had problems with it in relation to it not working with both FCP7 and FCPX. I asked for a refund and was persuaded to wait for the next update as this resolved that problem.

The customer support has been really good, personable and very responsive.

On hearing the news from them about Color Assist being EOL’d I’ve been offered a full refund so I really can’t fault them.

They have been open and communicative and have obviously encountered either poor trading results or technical problems with the new version of FCPX being prepared at the moment.

I’m sorry this product is being discontinued, it had a lot of potential which I had hoped would have been developed as time went on.

For me some the fundamental downsides were that, like Magic Bullet Looks, it took you on a roundtrip outside of FCPX and that the monitor window inside of the app did not match the definition or color space of the FCX windows. However the inclusion of both color wheels together with the ability to create custom log curve adjustments offered a lot of potential for users like me who capture with Canon C Log.

So I wish good luck to the development team at Technicolor and look forward to seeing what they develop in the future.

[Mark Dobson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “And you get the warning “boop”.”

Yes – its quite loud and I definitely feel told off.

[Bret Williams] “For me 10.0.3 was a rock on my 2011 iMac. But now, 10.0.8 on 2012 iMac is a crashing, buggy, nightmare. It’s the experience people described with 10.0.1. “

How strange – exactly the opposite to my experience but illustrates the fact that FCPX problems seem to be very specific to individual Mac and set-ups. I spent a fair amount of money trying to get my 2008 MacPro running FCPX properly and neither the new 5770 graphics card or 22GBs of Ram seemed to have much positive affect. And others had no problems with the same set-up.

[Mark Dobson]

[David Eaks] “Mark, out of curiosity. On average, throughout all the times FCPX crashed or you force quit a sinning beach ball, how many “unsaved” edit operations do you think you lost per crash? In my experience, upon returning from a crash my last edit was usually completed and saved before crashing. I took to the “no saving” pretty quickly, to the point of just hitting control-option-command-eject right from the timeline, to shutdown at the end of a late night edit session. Everything is always right as I left it in the morning”

Strangely enough I don’t think I’ve ever actually lost anything. And spinning balls seem to be a thing of the past – is this because the software is sorted or is because I splashed out and bought the new 27″ iMac? I’ll never know.

I have to admit that I still sometimes find myself hitting cmd S after an edit.

[Mark Dobson]

[Charlie Austin] “”270 Mac Pro servers per POD in only 12 square feet of Datacenter floor space.””

So how do you access the I/O ports on this wine rack collection of MacPro’c ? How are they powered and is this not just a bit of joke? Why keep the machines in their covers.

Pressurised Pod environment?

And can I have one please.

[Mark Dobson]

Given the democratisation of FCP with FCPX and with the new MacPro already being promoted within the FCPX advertising I’d be very surprised to see the very high figures that have been speculated in this thread.

Obviously this speculation is going to continue until a price is announced but I would see an entry level machine coming in at around $2.5K matching a moderately high specification 27″ iMac.

I think that Apple would rather sell a lot of machines to the wide user base established by FCPX than a few machines to the very picky top end users.

The other speculation is when this computer is going to go on sale, could it be as early as this Autumn, now only a few months away or will it go up against the wire and be released in December? – that would be a long wait.

[Mark Dobson]

Well I’ve heard that after he left Braun he took up guitar and, like Mark Knopfler, bought a slide from Diamond slides and . . . . something clicked

[Mark Dobson]

Honestly, save the money and put it in a piggy bank.

I think you will be only get slight improvements through biffing up your graphics card, the trick is a new mac ( the 27″ iMac is excellent ) and thunderbolt hard drives.

Your PCIe Mercury Accelsior_E2 will probably be a better buy but will set you back $719.99 (OWC) and the AMDSapphire 7970 another $400 – and for that money you could almost get a new generation Macbook Pro which will be considerably faster than your present machine.

The future is here already and investing in an old MacPro, however brilliant it was when you bought it will not bring you to a place where FCPX runs really well.

[Mark Dobson]

[Ridley Walker] “the new design means everything a connected peripheral, a tangle of TB and USB cables.”

If you’ve got the iMac that’s pretty much what you’ll see out the back – but tangle is probably too strong a description. The thunderbolt cables are too thick to tangle – they just dangle !

I’ve got a bunch of thunderbolt cables loosely held together with a velcro strap so that when I disconnect my external drives everything stays more or less in place.

One thing I thought strange in the presentation was that you could swing the back of the new Mac Pro towards you to connect cables. But if you have some connected already this will not work and you’ll have to lean over to see the pretty lights from behind.

[Mark Dobson]

Well I guess that means we won’t see any incremental upgrades until then.