Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Why everyone is so painfully wrong about FCPX

Thor Melsted said:
I don't think many of us who use EDL/XML in/out on a regular basis appreciate being called luddites just because we feel this tool is a step backwards. That's blatant fanboyism and just rude.

I've used iMovie before. This may be iMovie on steroids, but Final Cut it is not.
It's also clear as day that this is built upon iMovie. Too many similarities and cross functionalities.

In my view, this marks the end of Apple's support of the professional video industry.
When their flagship "pro" app becomes a souped up consumer app lacking vital professional features, the writing is on the wall.
I get it, the consumer business is more profitable than the professional business. No hard feelings. I'd just like to be told up front that they're abandoning the pro features in a program the claim is a pro tool, with so much fanfare at NAB they pushed other companies out of the way to put on a show and tell of new features.

I welcome changes in technology, but only when they move us forward - not when they destroy workflows with no alternative options to replace the ones they destroys and then claim it's "better."

If there's any doubt as to the basis of this new tool, look at this picture:
imoviex.jpg
Click to expand...

Amen!
 
Terry VerHaar said:
This is getting crazy but I'll go one more round...

Which part don't you believe?
Click to expand...

Actually I found 3 parts I don't believe:

1. That you can "set your RED camera to shoot and capture video in the QuickTime format" (thinking of Alexa?)

2. That FCP 7 didn't export OMF files (?!?!):
"Complaint: Can’t export AAF or OMF files. These formats are successors to EDL. They let you export your project to other programs, like Avid, Quantel or Pro Tools, for more sophisticated editing.
Answer: The old Final Cut didn’t export these, either"

3. That desktop preview hacked through an AJA card has the same functionality as video out? All fields intact? "Just as before"?
"Complaint: Can’t connect an external monitor. Pros work with Final Cut on the Mac screen, but they prefer to view the actual edited video on a dedicated second screen. While Final Cut Pro X works just fine with a second computer monitor — you just choose Window -> Show Events on Second Display (or Window -> Show Viewer on Second Display) — there are complaints that it can’t connect to an external video monitor (TV), which pros feel offers better color fidelity."
Answer: Just as before, you need a Mac Pro with a video-output card in order to connect a TV monitor. Apple expects that the output-card companies will soon offer the necessary drivers for FCP X; AJA, one of the major makers of these boards, already offers beta versions of such drivers. Apple is working with Black Magic to offer drivers for its boards."

Glad he set all those naysayers straight!

Also - http://t.co/qYxlHOb is just kinda weird. But that's off topic, sorry. I don't care if someone makes unfunny videos. I think a journalist should do basic research though.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Terry VerHaar said:
Bruce - If you keep changing the subject, you can keep being right.
Click to expand...

I point out the same factual error. In bold. In two successive posts. Because you asked me to.

This is changing the subject?

Oh, and in the second post (responding to you asking "where's the factual error?"), I mention an additional two factual errors in the same article.

I don't think you really are interested in listening to anyone, so I'm going to just put you on my block list. Cheers!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce Allen said:
Did you even read the article you linked to? It contains major factual errors. EG:

"Complaint: No support for RED digital cameras. The RED camera is a favorite of filmmakers; it records incredibly high-resolution video directly to a hard drive. But FCP X can’t import its files.

Answer: Apple is working with RED to create a plug-in that will give native RED support to FCP X. In the meantime, you can set your RED camera to shoot and capture video in the QuickTime format, which FCP X imports just fine. "

Oh really?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Click to expand...

Bruce, you are nit picking. Almost all of the complaints are flat out wrong which David clearly debunks. In this instance, he mentions Apple is working on native support and im sure we will see an update from RED to use the proxies in FCPX if they are not already working (haven't tried it). What other statements did David make that are so factually wrong? You are ignoring the answers as a whole and zeroing in on RED support.
 
Zach Gray said:
Didn't I read that compressor is still 32 bit?
Click to expand...

Looks like compressor is still 32 bit but it's just the "setup" app
Share Monitor (replacing QMaster) is doing all the compressing work and is a 64bit app

:-)
 
He said you can't export OMFs in FCP 7. What the f*ck have I been sending my sound mixer then and how did he get them to work? Pogue is pretty much an Apple mouthpiece. I really can't give his opinion much weight when he cleary hasn't done much research and doesn't understand the world I work in.
 
Emery Wells said:
Bruce, you are nit picking. Almost all of the complaints are flat out wrong which David clearly debunks. In this instance, he mentions Apple is working on native support and im sure we will see an update from RED to use the proxies in FCPX if they are not already working (haven't tried it).
Click to expand...

The complaints that David "debunks" do not represent the major issues with FCP X. They're just a bunch of random issues he got emailed about which he chose to answer.

Furthermore, he gets 3 of the answers to the more serious issues wrong.

Emery Wells said:
What other statements did David make that are so factually wrong? You are ignoring the answers as a whole and zeroing in on RED support.
Click to expand...

In my previous post...
- He said that OMF export wasn't in previous versions of Final Cut Pro.
- He thinks that editor's video monitoring needs are served by piping the desktop preview to a monitor because then they get good colors.

EDIT:
Michael Hancock said:
He said you can't export OMFs in FCP 7. What the f*ck have I been sending my sound mixer then and how did he get them to work? Pogue is pretty much an Apple mouthpiece. I really can't give his opinion much weight when he cleary hasn't done much research and doesn't understand the world I work in.
Click to expand...

Thank you, Sir!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
They had enough time and enough resources to do it right and just didn't. Close, but not close enough.

-michael zaletel
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
The reason we haven't seen a similarly full featured v1 application in recent memory is because everyone else is smart enough to know that you don't toss out your code and start over--you rewrite it piece by piece. There have been monumental shifts in the underlying technologies behind many professional apps without starting over. It's impressive how much they wrote in 2 years--but it was the wrong decision. Premiere for instance rewrote its entire rendering system--without ditching the rest of the application.
Click to expand...

Having been going through this myself for the last three years (and my company for a lot longer than that), I think that rewriting piece by piece is not a good way to go... The client-side applications of our product started out in Win32 (on Windows 2, something like 22 years ago), then moved to MFC (with COM libraries), and then a lot of the applications moved to VB, and then eventually we moved to .NET (this point was about five or six years ago) with WinForms and then now some of our UI is moving to WPF. So what we had at some point was .NET code from 2010 talking to a COM library written in 1992 and using a Visual Basic control from 2001.

What you get is a complicated mess of translation layers, and you are severely constrained by the limitations of every technology you have to deal with.

Now, it would have never been feasible for us to throw out all our code and start over (because we only have a couple of clients and they need too many features to be working or they wouldn't pay us), but if we could have started over, I think the product would be five years ahead now (because so much of the time we've spent working around the old code could have been spent adding new features)...

Now, I don't know much about what the architecture of Final Cut Pro pre X was like, but I'd assume that the Quicktime and Carbon code was all through the application, and moving to AV Foundation and Cocoa would have taken years longer. I think that this way will work out better in the long run...
 
Bruce Allen said:
Also - http://t.co/qYxlHOb is just kinda weird. But that's off topic, sorry. I don't care if someone makes unfunny videos. I think a journalist should do basic research though.
Click to expand...

(Completely OT, but man, in that vid he's a total douchebag. Not to mention the awesome mirror and mosaic effects.)

Pogue's message is loud and clear in his vid: FCPx = consumer

I'm a fan of FCP and have used it since 1.0 after Media100 and a Toaster on 3/4. I'm all for easy to use, but I wish apple could have just been more clear about what exactly they are planning for the future. I hope apple's plan is different than Pogue's.
 
In my opinion, if the app is changing the targeted crowd, especially for specific professional field, a company shouldn't use the same name.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
"Premiere for instance rewrote its entire rendering system--without ditching the rest of the application. .
Click to expand...

Anybody can rewrite the premiere rendering engine, it was designed to detach (download the SDK you crazy fool) Cineform have been doing just that for a while.

FCP, wasn't designed with that in mind, so probably better to rewrite it IMHO, or support 8bit+ RGB to start with, ..

I wish FCP was a physical object so I could keep a door open with it or something, I hate the fact everyone loves it but I can't find a single good use for it.

I've found over the years that Apple is basically just a marketing campaign designed to take money off people , nowadays on a more regular basis.

Wow, I wrote a lot. I should have just written:

"Premiere wasn't completely re-written because it wasn't completely sh*t to start with"

.. or maybe "Premiere wasn't completely re-written because it wasn't completely sh*t to start with but was unreliable and likely to freeze, so people switched to FCP which was more reliable, but otherwise pretty sh*t and now they may have to rethink strategy"

.. or maybe "I've been pushing 4k 16bit tiffs through Premiere since the late 1990s, and FCP still can't do that.. not the 4k bit, or the 16bit, er, bit"


Conclusion IMO = They are doing you a favour. The more it looks like a consumer app/ little plastic apple toy, the better chance you have of realizing it always was.

.. now stop giving them your money, their hardware is pricey, and their software is sh*t. The best thing about apple is QT, and thats broken in many places, and getting worse.
 
Michael Hancock said:
He said you can't export OMFs in FCP 7. What the f*ck have I been sending my sound mixer then and how did he get them to work? Pogue is pretty much an Apple mouthpiece. I really can't give his opinion much weight when he cleary hasn't done much research and doesn't understand the world I work in.
Click to expand...

Thank you! The problem is just that, pros vs. prosumers vs. enthusiasts. Either the prosumers or enthusiasts won 'cause pro's got the shaft. Even if I'm a one man band working from home, which I've done many times in my career, you still have to interact with others. And Audio (OMF for ProTools) is a prime example. It just doesn't make a lick of sense that EDLs, XMLs, etc. etc. wouldn't be in a editing software deemed "PRO" from the get-go. I take that back! It makes perfect sense. If you don't have layers and/or tracks, how the hell are you going to generate an EDL!?!?!?! Personally, I'm giving Apple 6 months to get their s*!# together or I head back to where I started - Avid. If that makes me "painfully wrong", well, it's not my fault, Apple should have said something sooner so I might have had time to dab KY in a certain sensitive area :OP
 
Ben Rojas said:
If you don't have layers and/or tracks, how the hell are you going to generate an EDL!?!?!?!
Click to expand...

You don't need layers or tracks to create an EDL, and their presence in your edit will likely cause your EDL to fail upon import into another app anyway since every app interprets the "non-existent" EDL standard differently..

All you need is some paper and a pencil.. its definately the most reliable system anyway
 
Talking of OMFs... the funny thing is that I was optimistic that Apple might actually start out AHEAD of the others with FCP X. The potential is there for sure with the metadata.

Eg: all audio is tagged with metadata (voiceover, etc). Then when you export OMF, it goes and automagically puts all of the VO checkerboarded across designated tracks, all of the MX checkerboarded on its own tracks, etc. Eg you can work in magnetic timeline mode for the rough cut... and then it will use the metadata to make a nice traditional multi-track export at the end.

But yeah - looks like that's a while away.

I am in no way anti- the metadata ideas in FCP X (which in many ways extend a lot of the things I already liked about Avid).

It's just that it appears Apple is so far behind that Avid will have Pro Tools really tightly integrated with Media Composer before Apple gets OMF export right.

Avid's obviously going in that direction - you see the same RTAS effects across both apps. Heck: you can even import a Pro Tools soundtrack with MIDI channels and virtual instruments into Media Composer these days - and it will play everything. Suggests to me that the same engine is under the hood. Which could lead to things getting pretty awesome quite quickly.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top