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  • 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 :)

Final Cut Pro X Released

After reading all of the responses here, I just wanted to chime in with my perspective. FCPX is an interest to me, not only as an editor and a filmmaker, but from a usability standpoint.
My education is focused in Human Computer Interaction, so User Experience Design, User Centered Design, UI Design, etc. are all in my field of expertise. One of the most important goals of HCI is to improve performance. From an HCI perspective, NLEs have ALWAYS been backwards, in my opinion. Avid, PPro, FCP...they all have focused on "what can our software do" instead of "look what you can accomplish with our software". Avid is a dinosaur, and PPro and FCP7 are pretty much replicas of each other in regards to UI.
From my perspective, FCPX is the first NLE that has given a damn about performance when it comes to the metrics for a user to perform a task. I've heard a lot of complaining about how FCPX looks like iMovie, but I simply don't agree. The only major things FCPX and iMovie have in common from a UI perspective is the scrubbing ability and the window pane setups. In regards to the window panes, there is another editor FCPX resembles: Avid. The biggest new feature I can see is the magnetic timeline...and this looks like nothing any other NLE has accomplished. FCPX is fast: from a computing perspective and from a user's ability to perform tasks to complete the edit.

To those who are saying that this UI is geared more towards prosumers entering the editing market, I don't think this is true at all. Typically, the FASTEST way for a user to perform a task is to simply not have a GUI at all. Command line interfaces definitely allow users to perform tasks more quickly. That's why you see software developers working from the command line with Linux/BSD installs (or the BSD based terminal in Mac OSX). The trade off is that a user has to learn all of the commands to perform the tasks. Imagine trying to learn all of the keystrokes to edit a feature from a command line (YIKES). Not happening.

For most of us editors who make our money from our trade, we've learned to coexist with our NLE UIs by trying our best to learn every hot key, keeping our fingers on the keyboard and saving our wrists from the mouse as often as we can. Though you can do a lot of work without having to touch the mouse, it is inevitable you are going to have to do some switching back and forth. If I am going to have to touch the mouse, I want to be able to do a lot with the UI with the least amount of work. All NLEs up until FCPX have been disappointing in this regard. With the new UI of FCPX, editors can perform certain tasks MUCH faster than we have been able to with previous UIs.
I just wanted to go over the UI, because I think it is being overlooked as "iMovie +". That is a bit ignorant, in my opinion.

The three main showstoppers I see right now are: Lack of Red support, lack of I/O support, and lack of XML/EDL/OMF. I feel pretty confident the first two are going to be resolved, but lack of XML/EDL/OMF? This is a total workflow destroyer. Last feature I would have imagined that would be excluded from this release. It makes FCPX unusable for a lot of people...and the only solution out right now is a nearly $500 plugin from Automatic Duck. No offense to the Automatic Duck team, but this is highway robbery.

I'm a software developer, and if there are any others here on the boards who know how to code, I would be willing to work as a team and produce a plugin FOR FREE that will give us at the very least XML and OMF support. The UI in FCPX is just too good for me not to use it because it doesn't have a feature that should have been trivial to implement to begin with. Nobody should have to pay $500 for import and export. Let's see if they can compete with FREE.
 
Call me a fool, I just clicked "buy app".
If i get too pissed off with it Ill just hand it and my iphone over to my 10yld, that'll be his summer camp.
It's The Future Man ; )
 
Jared Caldwell said:
I'm a software developer, and if there are any others here on the boards who know how to code, I would be willing to work as a team and produce a plugin FOR FREE that will give us at the very least XML and OMF support. The UI in FCPX is just too good for me not to use it because it doesn't have a feature that should have been trivial to implement to begin with. Nobody should have to pay $500 for import and export. Let's see if they can compete with FREE.
Click to expand...

That's cool - I'm a software developer too. Maybe we can add ALL the features that Apple forgot and then give them away for free. Oh, no, wait a minute... I have a living to make, and there's other software that already provides the features I need.

I know, I know, I'm being snarky... but you get my point. Glad you dig the new interface: maybe Apple will finish the rest of the product at some point!
 
Okay, someone said that Final Cut Pro X is perfect for 90% of final cut users. This is simply not true for anyone Prosumer or Higher. If you are shooting with an HVX or higher costing camera (dSLR's are okay for now, but EX-1's and up are screwed at the moment) than you are pretty much screwed if you are planning to use FCPX exclusively (with the new Motion and Compressor). Basically you are being told to use FCP7 along with FCPX until it's all ready - but wait, why don't you just keep using FCP7??

And in order to use both of them, Apple suggests you use them on different bootable partitions. I sure hope none of you opened any of FCS3's software before you opened the new Motion, as per Apple's directions for having both FCPX and FCS on your machine. Otherwise you might have problems in the future. So even the basic solution to surviving with FCPX requires significant effort and annoyances.

I'm not saying that FCPX won't get better. What I'm saying is that right now this won't cut it for 80%+ of Prosumer/Professional Users. For some small projects, maybe. We won't be using it for our TV shows or films for now. We'll re-evaluate in six months.
 
Tim Morten said:
That's cool - I'm a software developer too. Maybe we can add ALL the features that Apple forgot and then give them away for free. Oh, no, wait a minute... I have a living to make, and there's other software that already provides the features I need.

I know, I know, I'm being snarky... but you get my point. Glad you dig the new interface: maybe Apple will finish the rest of the product at some point!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your contribution, Tim.

I'm with you though, Apple should be working on releasing the import/export features...like yesterday.
 
Jared Caldwell said:
Nobody should have to pay $500 for import and export. Let's see if they can compete with FREE.
Click to expand...

I hear ya, I'm not about to spend 500 for the Auto Duck solution but if you make a good plugin to do that I'd happily send you $20. I bet you would make a lot more coin than the Ducks (if you get it out before Apple gets around to fixing that particular cluster@#$.)
 
Well, if anyone can elaborate on where this is heading, it's probably Randy Ubillos. I don't have his contact information, so I can't invite him to the conversation, but maybe someone else out there does. It would certainly be interesting to hear his thoughts on the matter, rather than hearing all of us speculate and perhaps blow things way out of proportion. Anyone know Randy? He hasn't been that active on Twitter, so it would probably take someone contacting him directly.
 
I have to join in with the folks who are saying that the harsh reactions against FCP X are unwarranted.

That is definitely not to say it isn't missing key features.

I'm not really a fan of its grading interface ... but it has almost all the functionality of Color 1 (I never used Color 1.5) It also adds new functionality. Shot matching is amazing, it can lower my workload for a grade up to 90% ... I'm serious.

I'd prefer a color wheel based UI, like we had in FCP 6/7 and Color. Its a smarter way to work that directly represents the color relationships in the UI. I do however like having a fourth control for the overall image. Yes, you can create secondaries. I didn't get a chance to attempt tracking, but you can use shapes and keys to qualify secondaries. I didn't attempt custom shapes ... but I thought I saw that in other demo/tutorials. There is room for Magic Bullet and Baselight Plug-Ins and without question Resolve will see more business.

(as a side track, I do wish BMD offered a version between Resolve Lite and Resolve 8 ... "Resolve Intermediate" for $200-$300 - I think they could be selling those by the truckload today. )

The magnetic timeline, as little as I could use it, was a joy. Seriously ... I am dreading editing in FCP 6, PP5, MC5 et al. I'm sure the magnetic timeline will prove to have some "gotcha" where it doesn't do what you actually want - but I didn't encounter it. (XML could get me around this, by giving me the chance to export to another "old style" NLE and deal.)

The only reason I am not putting it on a small paid project TODAY, is because of the lack of XML type interchange. I would love to capture some material using FCP 6 or BlackMagic Media Express and try some quick projects in FCP X. Then when I am "finished" in FCP X, I could go out to Color or Resolve to really finish.

The only reason I can't use it on a somewhat larger project is that I can't get broadcast output from it. I need a BlackMagic Decklink driver for it ASAP. Its severely crippled without it.

I listed other issues I had with the software before ... but those are the two show stoppers for me to work TODAY. Add those two features and I can drop it into a lot of workflows TODAY.

OK, so there are problems. It's a product called Final Cut Pro X, and its version is 1.0 ... not a huge surprise.

I remain excited about what Apple did accomplish. This isn't Mercury ... its faster, more scalable and more optimized by far. Moving from a no thunderbolt macbook pro Core i5 to a 6 core Mac Pro gave me a better than linear increase in processing. Yeah .. it was a bit more than 4 times as fast. I only toyed with compressor for one h.264 encode ... but Adobe Media Encoder had better duck cause this thing is coming.

A lot of the metadata, background processing and automatic metadata detection is kind of awesome. Now ... if only Apple got its idea of where everything should be and what should be loaded out of my way. They should be using the older project+ sequence paradigm together with a lot of these new organizational/analysis technologies. I'd say its comparable to all the organizational power of Aperture+iPhoto 11, but using iPhoto 09's interface.

So, if like me you can't really use it today, that's OK - to be expected really. You should complain to Apple.

Its way too early to call FCP X a failure and to declare it will never be a professional tool.

One thing I couldn't test is integrating FCP 6 with Motion 5 and Compressor 4. That would be pretty awesome for my FCP 6 work. I didn't check to see if XML was supported for input or output with those products.
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
I have to join in with the folks who are saying that the harsh reactions against FCP X are unwarranted.

That is definitely not to say it isn't missing key features.

I'm not really a fan of its grading interface ... but it has almost all the functionality of Color 1 (I never used Color 1.5) It also adds new functionality. Shot matching is amazing, it can lower my workload for a grade up to 90% ... I'm serious.

I'd prefer a color wheel based UI, like we had in FCP 6/7 and Color. Its a smarter way to work that directly represents the color relationships in the UI. I do however like having a fourth control for the overall image. Yes, you can create secondaries. I didn't get a chance to attempt tracking, but you can use shapes and keys to qualify secondaries. I didn't attempt custom shapes ... but I thought I saw that in other demo/tutorials. There is room for Magic Bullet and Baselight Plug-Ins and without question Resolve will see more business.

(as a side track, I do wish BMD offered a version between Resolve Lite and Resolve 8 ... "Resolve Intermediate" for $200-$300 - I think they could be selling those by the truckload today. )

The magnetic timeline, as little as I could use it, was a joy. Seriously ... I am dreading editing in FCP 6, PP5, MC5 et al. I'm sure the magnetic timeline will prove to have some "gotcha" where it doesn't do what you actually want - but I didn't encounter it. (XML could get me around this, by giving me the chance to export to another "old style" NLE and deal.)

The only reason I am not putting it on a small paid project TODAY, is because of the lack of XML type interchange. I would love to capture some material using FCP 6 or BlackMagic Media Express and try some quick projects in FCP X. Then when I am "finished" in FCP X, I could go out to Color or Resolve to really finish.

The only reason I can't use it on a somewhat larger project is that I can't get broadcast output from it. I need a BlackMagic Decklink driver for it ASAP. Its severely crippled without it.

I listed other issues I had with the software before ... but those are the two show stoppers for me to work TODAY. Add those two features and I can drop it into a lot of workflows TODAY.

OK, so there are problems. It's a product called Final Cut Pro X, and its version is 1.0 ... not a huge surprise.

I remain excited about what Apple did accomplish. This isn't Mercury ... its faster, more scalable and more optimized by far. Moving from a no thunderbolt macbook pro Core i5 to a 6 core Mac Pro gave me a better than linear increase in processing. Yeah .. it was a bit more than 4 times as fast. I only toyed with compressor for one h.264 encode ... but Adobe Media Encoder had better duck cause this thing is coming.

A lot of the metadata, background processing and automatic metadata detection is kind of awesome. Now ... if only Apple got its idea of where everything should be and what should be loaded out of my way. They should be using the older project+ sequence paradigm together with a lot of these new organizational/analysis technologies. I'd say its comparable to all the organizational power of Aperture+iPhoto 11, but using iPhoto 09's interface.

So, if like me you can't really use it today, that's OK - to be expected really. You should complain to Apple.

Its way too early to call FCP X a failure and to declare it will never be a professional tool.

One thing I couldn't test is integrating FCP 6 with Motion 5 and Compressor 4. That would be pretty awesome for my FCP 6 work. I didn't check to see if XML was supported for input or output with those products.
Click to expand...

I was very Anxious to read your post, as you always seem to post from a technical POV, But this time my friend I have to tell you that FCPX is not ready for primetime or even ready for publics access stations. It SUCKS balls. I just went over to a suckers studio to try it out. He kicked me out after an hour of laughing at him for dropping 3 bills, 3 hundos, 3 Benjamins, What a waste of money. Even his wife a high school teacher who happens to use imovie thought FCPX was too cluttered and complicated for her kids. Sorry Alexander but ditch it fast before your clients compete with you on imovie
 
the app is cool...makes fun..
but no xml in/out?....comon, its like having a iphone but without the ability to call somebody...or to receive a call.
missing OMF export is my biggest disapointment, along with lack of DPX support.
i regret that i spend the 300 bucks, would have been better to make a trip with my nephews....
all the dslr shooters are going to be happy.
but i am doing longform stuff, need to communicate with a lot of departments...honestly....they should erase the pro out of final cut pro X.

and i dont buy the version 1.0 argument. xml edl is around for years....why the fuck should i understand that apple has time to implement imovie import but no xml import?
they are going for the gh2 market, thats a really huge market, i admit....but the pro features i need today arent in this fcpx stuff.
they could have waited and launched it for the pros, but this is plain bullshit....workflow wise, for me.
 
Oh shit! First thing I see "Open iMovie events" in big blue cartoon letters.
I want my money back.
 
Oh, and it crashed. Restarting.

Ok, call me a fool now.
 
parts of FCPX are amazing..... imported a folder of ProRes files and then see the thumbnails that you can scrub thru each clip/thumbnail while in the bin..... lots missing but... can see the potential
 
shashbugu said:
I was very Anxious to read your post, as you always seem to post from a technical POV, But this time my friend I have to tell you that FCPX is not ready for primetime or even ready for publics access stations. It SUCKS balls. I just went over to a suckers studio to try it out. He kicked me out after an hour of laughing at him for dropping 3 bills, 3 hundos, 3 Benjamins, What a waste of money. Even his wife a high school teacher who happens to use imovie thought FCPX was too cluttered and complicated for her kids. Sorry Alexander but ditch it fast before your clients compete with you on imovie
Click to expand...

Thank you for the kind words.

Please listen to me now.

I agree that FCP X is not ready for deployment as a primary NLE even in small one man band studios, like mine.

I think you are still missing my point - there is a LOT of exciting stuff going on with FCP X.

For years I've been saying that Apple should tear the guts out of FCP and do a completely modern rewrite.

Well they did, and I'm just not going to knock them for it.

I am surprised that there is no XML import/export option, and no option for importing FCP 6/7 projects. Aside from that I got more or less what I expected from the product on day one. Great technology that needs to mature.

I am going to edit a music video with it. I shot the video with a 7D, I frankly feel its destined for the web. Its also a project I think I can keep entirely within FCP X and the other new Apple post applications.

That's the sort of project where FCP X can work well today ... and its a very small minority of projects.

This will change ... Apple simply can not afford for it not to change. I think we can bank on extensive project import/export modules so FCP X plays well with other applications, and support for video IO boards very fast. The lack of those two features are garnering the majority of negative reviews.

XML interchange is a huge issue, and one that Apple should have been prioritizing from day one. Even powerful "hero box" applications that can do everything like Smoke have great interchange capabilities. Whoever decided to ignore this at Apple simply doesn't understand real practical editorial work.

I don't know why Apple didn't work with its partners at AJA and Black Magic to make sure FCP X had i/o support on day one. That was a very bad decision.

If Apple fixes those two issues within the month, I'll be happy with their direction.

If they fix it slower than that, I'll question their commitment and market understanding, but still be happy with the technology FCP X 1.0 represents.

If they don't fix it ... well its a fantastic upgrade to iMovie and Final Cut Express.

That's a pretty harsh review, but the key is the high notes: This product has the technology Apple needs to actually deliver the tools we really need. FCP 7 was a bad foundation for modern postproduction.

So, bravo to Apple for being bold and making a big change - now follow it through with fast updates adding essential professional features.
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
That's a pretty harsh review, but the key is the high notes: This product has the technology Apple needs to actually deliver the tools we really need. FCP 7 was a bad foundation for modern postproduction.
Click to expand...

Fair point. I think what ires the rest of us that they took two years, and set an expectation that this release would serve our needs. Instead, they obviously spent a lot of time on iMovie interoperability, iPhone support, etc. And they haven't set any kind of roadmap for the features that we care about. Those send a message that their priority is consumers first, pros second. I'm sure they will eventually roll out features to try to quell the uproar, but the bottom line is that moving forward, we should all expect consumer needs to come before our own when it comes to Apple's priorities. That's a strong motivator to move to another product/company.
 
Hated it at first. My initial gut reaction was to close it and toss it out the window. Now it's starting to grow on me. Can really see a lot of pros migrating over once the "pro" menu features are incorporated. The workflow speed is greatly improved you can't deny it's advantages.
I think once the smoke settles and all the updates are in, we'll have a hard time using version 7 ever again.

I just had to get over my initial reaction of WTF did Apple just do!
 
FCP X is a pice of Garbage !!!

FCP X is a pice of Garbage !!!

Oh my GOSH !!! What a piece of JUNK !! I downloaded FCP x, and I can not get over the way is like a "Pro" version of iMovie, this is a joke and an insult to all the editors out there.
Let's put it in the app store so every freaking high school kid and Mon and Dad can say that they now edit their wedding videos in Final Cut.

Apple can give a crap about their software, all they are concern is about their phone and ipod .
Titles? Curtain opening? WTF are they thinking ?

Final Cut X is an insult from Apple. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY !
 
After spending quite a bit more time with the new FCPX... I still think it sucks. I also think it's totally awesome and just what the industry needs... Now if that contradiction doesn't make any sense, then here's why:

It's awesome because they have written a fairly solid introductory 64bit NLE system. Very good performance, seems almost on par with Premiere CS5, maybe even a bit faster, but not up to the new CS5.5 in comparative terms. The new interface is pretty darn good. Once you get beyond a few of the changes and quirks, it really starts to grow on you. Metadata tagging and other features is going to be insanely useful. I only hope they open up their system for plugin developers to tie into it. If we could eventually share tagging between REDCINE-X, STORM, FCPX, SCRATCH and others, it could be the coolest thing to happen to multi-application workflows in a long time. Nice to *finally* see an NLE that sports a dynamic intelligent timeline, like what many animation and audio applications have had for a while. Nice to see a keyframe editor that works like the graph editors in Lightwave, Maya, etc.. The audio controls are nice as they provide most base functionality in a way that anyone can use them and get seriously good results. If you need more than that, you're best to post-process your audio and do a full-on professional sound mix.

Why it sucks... Compressor. OMFG, nice to see they gave us a pretend update on top of a band-aid applied to 6 year old crap. WTF, Apple? FAIL. As pretty as FCPX is, you guys should have terminated QuickTime with extreme prejudice and then did a complete ground-up rewrite of Compressor FIRST. All the pretty NLE fluff in the world can't make up for a shitty system to finish and deliver a good looking product. Which brings me to the next point about why it sucks. There is no XML or EDL support. WTF? OK, a significant portion of your "professional" user base will now go use something else for the next several months or however long it takes for you to put this back in. And by then it may be too late, they may not come back. Lack of format support. OK, so we were told at NAB/ FCP SuperMeet that FCPX is no longer QT dependent and we can drop other formats directly onto the timeline. OK, thank you for catching up to 2008, Apple. But this is 2011... The functionality is worthless with I can't work with R3D or several flavors of AVC and other codecs without painful transcoding. Apple screwed the pooch on that one. Sure, it may be coming in a future update. Or perhaps they will extend the developer integration so we can all add our own file I/O plugins. Fine either way, but there seems to be a few oversights made here. The inability to import old FCP projects is inexcusable. Especially when you announce that, effective today, support for FCP7 is terminated. At least let us import the media to the bins and give us a timeline! So we can attempt to move forward in a more convenient manner.

This is the first release of a new product. I can understand that a lot of things will be incomplete or even not implemented yet. I'm fine with that. But I really have to question many of the choices made.... Actually, no, I don't. Apple made the appropriate choices for functionality to release in the initial version. They catered to the vast majority of their user base. Unfortunately, most of us here in the Reduser community do not fall within the realm of vast majority of Apple's (or anyone else's) user base.

I can't wait to see the update to this first release. I just hope I don't have to pay for it because right now I just spent $300 on something that will be worthless to me on most any of my projects.

Oh, and I'm getting sick of the Apple philosophy of having to install new versions of software on separate system partitions. Being a software developer and having to manage multiple startup volumes for various versions of Xcode and the iOS SDK, this is just routine for me. But it's a real pain in the ass at times and definitely not something I expected for a more mainstream consumer software. While editors tend to be technical people in many ways. There's a lot of them who just want to use the software and don't want to be buggered with fresh OS installs and separate boot drives or whatnot just to run the latest version of one application. Not cool. For what it's worth, I did install FCPX alongside FCP7 on one of my systems... No problems to report yet, but then again, I haven't loaded FCP7 on that system since X was installed.... Maybe I should and see if it blows up.
 
Apple release a "pro" application that is missing the basic essentials. It's not a hate campaign here, I'm just dumfounded at their stupidity!

Why release it if it is not ready. They should have waited, added XML and OMF import/export, ability to work with FCP 7 project files, tape ingest etc....the basic fundamental tools needed by professional users.

They are badly damaging their reputation here and are becoming a laughing stock.

Scott
 
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