[Scot Walker]

Final Cut Pro X is definitely not iMovie. iMovie can scroll the timeline during playback! 🙂

I cut a feature film on FCP X last year on a Mac Pro with 24 gigs of RAM, Radeon 5770 1 gig, using a $1,000 PCI card raid SSD as my hard drive for the event and project. This system, which is lightning fast with Premiere Pro CS6 (even though the Mercury is software), is very non-responsive with FCP X and sluggish. I get the spinning wheel way too often.

I need a 3rd party utility to manage my events and project folders so FCP X doesn’t take a year to launch because it’s dealing with so many events and projects.

I need a 3rd party utility to delete the preferences because they get corrupted so often and FCP X will refuse to launch.

My guess is a very large percentage of FCP X users own those two utilities.

I’m getting a 3rd party plug-in that lets me do something radical – place custom guides on my viewer to allow me to align objects. Wow!

The iMovie comparison probably stems mostly from the fact that the user interface can’t be customized like a pro app should be. I really don’t understand Apple in this regard. Their other pro apps were wonderful in this regard. To this day, Motion allows me to drag individual palettes all around. With FCP X, I can look at the Audio tab or the Video tab, not both. I can look at Transitions or Effects, not both….etc.

The import dialog is basic and less powerful than the file dialog of TextEdit (no Spotlight, only one view option, my system-wide favorites on the left side pane are gone).

I really have no idea why a small XML-based project file that points to my media on my hard drive in my folder where I want it is inferior to FCP X having this whole Events/Projects methodology. What was Apple trying to accomplish by being so radical with my media and project files? I want to do a simple thing like make a duplicate of a project file just in case the original gets hosed. For decades, that was a very simple thing and quick. Just do a Save As and name it differently, or go to the Finder and duplicate the file. It’s just a very small XML file. In FCP X, I have to go to the Project LIbrary and wait while it gives me a spinning wheel and renders out thumbnails and this takes a lot of time if you have a normal number of projects (reason why I use a 3rd party utility to manage them). You then duplicate it and make sure you tell FCP X to duplicate just the project file and not the rendered files (that are huge ProRes files) and not the references files (which are huge). You think this wouldn’t take long to simply copy a project file without the media, but it takes a while, and then when it’s done it has to render the thumbnails of that project file in the Project Library.

Want to delete the media in an Event that isn’t being used? Simple, right? Just tell FCP X to select the unused media and then press the DELETE key, right? Nope. That basic feature isn’t there. The workaround is to duplicate the entire project and hundreds of gigs of referenced and rendered media and then delete the one you duplicated.

I can’t lay down 4 clips and tell FCP X to trim all 4 at the same time. I have to go to each one and trim them with snap turned on so they trim to the same point.

For me, personally, this application isn’t fully baked and I don’t recommend it to my Premiere Pro-using friends. I love, love, love Motion and I’ve been using it since version 1. I think Apple just lost its way with pro software after making billions on phones. Just my opinion. I’m rooting for it, though.

[Scot Walker]

Thanks for the replies!

[Scot Walker]

Thanks, Paul!!

I haven’t assigned any roles and it would take a lot of time to go through a 113 minute feature and assign roles, so couldn’t I export out just the audio as a 5.1 and then just the audio as a stereo mix and bring both of those in, lay them down in the timeline, assign the roles Surround & Stereo, export it as you stated with roles?

You are a life saver. Thank you for your time.

Scot

[Scot Walker]

Along those lines, I think it’s pretty hilarious that Final Cut Pro X doesn’t have the functionality of TextEdit in it’s file dialog.

The standard OS X file dialog is much more powerful than FCP X’s import dialog. The fact that it doesn’t have Spotlight or even give me the same sidebar Favorites I have in every other application is a joke. I have a project and I need my client’s vector logo and I don’t remember where it’s located. In every other application (Adobe is guilty of hijacking the file dialog, but at least you can still get the OS X one), I do the import and then start typing in the Spotlight field and it shows up. In FCP X, I have to manually hunt for it.

The workaround is to resize FCP X so that it’s not full screen and use a Finder window and then drag it into FCP X as described in this thread. That’s pathetic. This is a Pro app?

What’s wrong with the standard OS X file dialog? It’s so much more powerful than the silly one in FCP X.

[Scot Walker]

Hey, thanks for the info.

I’m using Compressor 4 and when I use the SMPTE DTV preset, the resulting QT movie has no audio at all. It’s weird. If I use any of the other presets, I get audio.

I cut an indie feature in FCP X and I’m trying to get it to the Apple iTunes spec to sell/rent the movie there.

Apple wants:

ProRes 422 (HQ)

LPCM audio
16 or 24 bit
48Khz

Ch.1 Left (Front)
Ch.2 Right (Front)
Ch.3 Center
Ch.4 LFE
Ch.5 Left Surround
Ch.6 Right Surround
Ch.7 & 8 Left Total / Right Total (Stereo Pair)

Thank you for your time!

Scot

[Scot Walker]

I agree that you are going to want to use a 3D application for this.

I use Carrara because it’s the most “Mac-like” and it’s pretty inexpensive, but it does the things that I need done, like this:
https://www.swproductions.com/kla-tencor_singapore.html

Output with Animation codec with alpha and bring into Motion to composite…

Good luck

——————–
Dual 2.5 Ghz G5
4.5 gig RAM
nVidia 6800
OS X 10.3.6

[Scot Walker]

More of those real time plug-ins for Motion, please. 🙂

[Scot Walker]

Hey, Joe. I’m still waiting for LiveMotion 3! 🙂

Encore sounds great. That would have been a big time saver for me on my last project!

Thanks for the info.

Scot

[Scot Walker]

Yeah, good idea. They would, no doubt, keep a copy of each model too, so that’s incentive. Who wants 9 discs worth of free textured models? Anyone? Anyone? 🙂

[Scot Walker]

That makes sense. Thanks!