[Paul Golden]

I guess I’m curious how NLE support for proprietary codecs work in general?

Is it up to Blackmagic to write a plug-in for Apple?

Is it up to Apple to look at Blackmagic’s SDK and write their own plug-in?

Can a third party write an FCPX plug-in to support BRaw and charge for it until either of BMD or Apple write one? That’s what happened with the Adobe BRaw (BRAW Studio) plug-in that was $29.00 up until a few days ago.

Does anyone know if Avid or Adobe collaborated with BMD to implement BRaw or did BMD do this on their own?

Obviously, neither Avid or Premiere have their own RAW codecs, so it’s in BMD’s interest to expand their camera compatibility and codec uptake to Avid and Premiere. With Apple and BMD, would BMD not want their cameras/codec supported in FCPX? Would Apple want BMD camera users to go elsewhere to edit their projects?

I’m so confused!

[Paul Golden]

1) Are your settings on Better Performance or Better Quality? If It’s Better Performance, then it will be soft during playback and sharp on hold.

2) Did you try rendering out the sequence and re-importing?

[Paul Golden]

One thing I’d try: create a new Library. Copy the contents of the old Library into the new Library. Close the old Library and try your export again out of the new Library. There may be Library corruption going on which is confusing X2Pro.

[Paul Golden]

First off, the distinctions between NLEs and compositing programs are artificial at best. AE is as much an editing program its own way. Of course AE is a more robust compositor and animation tool than FCPX, but my point is that AE’s implementation of key framing is something where FCPX could take a lesson.

There are some times that I will do elaborate amounts of compositing in FCPX because I like the tools there and the fluidity of the experience and real time playback compared to AE or Motion. As FCPX adds a multitude of EFX capability (3D, masking, etc.) , to say that we need to be hobbled with primitive keyframing because FCPX doesn’t “aspire” to being a compositing app is unhelpful.

The points I made about the keyframing differences are where AE does something in a more user friendly way that requires less steps or offers more precision than what you can achieve with FCPX. For example, a hold key is one click in AE, and it requires having two identical keys (one at the front, one at the back) to accomplish the same in FCPX. Yes you can remember a modifier before Command-C in copying keyframes, but why have that when Command-C is more straightforward and fewer keystrokes?

There is nothing inherent in the design of FCPX that precludes improvement of the key framing abilities. But anyone who has used both will tell you that AE has FCPX beat by a long shot.

As for Motion, it is irrelevant because going to Motion is as much a pain as going to AE when you’re working primarily in FCPX. There’s no advantage from a workflow standpoint. Motion offers some nice tools, but it doesn’t really replace the lack of decent keyframe support within FCPX.

This is not an Adobe vs Apple thing. I vastly prefer FCPX to Premiere, but I also prefer AE to Motion.

But to give me an elaborate excuse about why FCPX can’t improve its keyframing because it’s only an NLE is like saying the color correction couldn’t be improved because its not Resolve.

[Paul Golden]

There’s not much to love about FCPX key framing. It’s pretty basic and could use improvement. Any of the suggestions I made would not change the fundamental nature of FCPX, which is a really good NLE. There’s a surprising amount of compositing capability in FCPX, so if the animation tools (of which key framing is a part) could keep up, I would be more inclined to stay in FCP for certain projects and not bail to AE.

[Paul Golden]

Stipulation: I love FCPX, but I’ll give my two cents on key framing.

I much prefer After Effects’s much more robust implementation for several reasons. (I don’t know Premiere enough to offer an opinion). The features that FCPX is lacking as keyframes are the following:

1) Lack of hold frames:
Right now in FCPX, you have to use two keyframes: one at the beginning value one at the end before the value change. This is tedious and fraught with opportunities for mistakes. AE has a hold frame that can be converted to a non-hold frame or back with ease.

2) No roving keyframe expansion:
If you want to stretch out the action, you can’t lasso the keyframes and option drag them out to create a rove over time function.

3) Copy Paste a drag:
In AE, you just copy/cut and paste keyframes as normal. In FCPX, you have to find a special copy Keyframes command in the menus, which gets old real quick.

4) Not all things are key-frameable
Certain parameters, which I’m not sure why, are not key-framable in FCPX

5) Keyframe in Timeline awkward:
The control-V expand of keyframes in the timeline brings up a very poorly interface where you either have too much space or not enough space devoted to the keyframes you want to control. AE is consistant.

6) No twirl down values in Timeline:
FCPX parameters must be changed in the Info panel which is a ways from where the keyframes live. AE allows twirl down and adjustment of keyframe parameters in the same line of sight just off to the left of key frame.

7) No scripting or expressions in FCPX:
I know that it’s not After Effects, but the expressions language in AE is very powerful. FCPX has very basic, non-programmable key frames.

This list is just the stuff off the top of my head. I know FCPX is not a composite tool like After Effects, but the closer it gets to AE’s keyframe abilities, the sooner I can stay in FCPX for more of the time.

[Paul Golden]

I’ll offer two observations: one about Hollywood and another about Apple.

Hollywood post houses are notoriously cautious about workflow changes and are extremely reticent to switch to anything that might cause them some pain. I‘ve worked in VFX for 30 years and it always amazes me when I see shops clinging to approaches that would be solved by switching platforms. The collaboration tools are something that Avid has built in over FCPX, but are not so super duper that you couldn‘t replicate a workable solution with FCPX if so inclined. Which brings me to Apple.

Apple‘s M.O. is to roll out features when they feel they‘re ready for prime-time, and not before, to the general dismay of a lot of folks who want it all now. The initial roll-out of FCPX was filled with holes and dead ends, but pointed the way to a great new way of working. A lot of people got hung up on what wasn‘t supported on day one and lost interest.

My guess is that as Gig10Ethernet and TB3 become ubiquitous and affordable, Apple will focus on collaboration as a logical extension of that. The recent color updates and titling updates were huge and I“d be surprised if the collaboration tools didn‘t make an appearance before long.

[Paul Golden]

Noise reduction was on a feature list earlier today but was removed a little while ago:

[Paul Golden]

Have you updated your graphics card lately? Some of the new 4gb+ cards will make things quite a bit more zippy if you’re looking for a bit more life out your aging MacPro. FCPX is all about the GPU.

[Paul Golden]

I have a “cheese grater” 4,1 (upgraded to 5,1), a nMP 2013 and an iMac Pro. (I have a 2,1 cheese grater, but that really can’t do any editing justice at this time.)

The iMac Pro is (obviously) the best for 4K+ timelines, and the 5,1 gives respectable 4K performance with a Caldigit RAID, although it’s happier with 1080 projects at this point. The nMP is also fine for 4K, but not so good for Resolve as the iMac Pro. But I never felt any of them particularly sluggish using FCPX compared to other NLEs.

FCP7 was definitely past it’s prime by the time they put it out to pasture, but FCPX keeps getting faster & faster. Premiere feels like FCP7.5 at this point.