Final Cut Pro X Released

[JanneJansson]

I get the intended humor, but that's the point isn't it, the "be happy for me at least since I'm happy about the potential?" Whether you meant it personally or not, your post captured the essence most directly, those arguing against the frustrated are still arguing for waiting to see what happens next. That it could be "a paradigm shift", and worth overlooking Apple's conduct. Where the real paradigm shift is that FCPX is the final straw for a lot of people, and no one believed that was possible. Bitching to Apple will help as much as bitching to the president, and only matters if you like the guy to begin with, neither is going to change their core after the fact. In this case a lot of people are decidedly done with Apple's behavior.

Why folks like yourself come in to these threads to further the arguments based on theories and probabilities against the realities, with little bits of salt to throw on the wounds while pretending to be outside and above the situation is what I find amusing and why I continue to snipe back, it's obvious those who continue to do so, have the time to waste. I've already asked a few pages back why come in here to defend Apple, and the answer was:

Great post

 

[Javor Divjak]

I wrote to Blackmagic design and their reply is that they are working with Apple to resolve the issues with the new FCP X.
Here is what I wrote:

„I purchased a new top spec 27" iMac with thunderbolt connections . As new Final Cut Pro X has no support for tape capture I decided to purchase your UltraStudio 3D because it will allow me to capture and output to tape using your Media Express software.
I have three questions;
1. Can I connect a Panasonic plasma display trough UltraStudio 3D for monitoring my footage from FCP X(using HDMI on the UltraStudio 3D) because I need such setup for client monitoring?
2. I read in the press on the internet that you are working with Apple to support the new FCP X with your products so I was wandering will UltraStudio 3D be supported with the new FCP X?
3. Can I use UltraStudio 3D for color critical monitoring (as output to a professional grade monitor) with new DaVinci Resolve (which I'm told supports Open CL so my iMac should be fine)?
Thanks in advance,

Javor Divjak“

Here is their reply:

„Hi Javor
Thank you for your email.

The new Final Cut Pro is a complete rewrite of the software and because of this, not all the features we need are included in the first release. Blackmagic Design and Apple are working very closely to improve compatibility and to iron out any compatibility issues etc.

As such, our products cannot currently be used for real time video output from Final Cut Pro X.

The HDMI output of Ultrastudio can be used for monitoring while grading in Resolve. Resolve 8 will support open CL, so you will be able to use Mac systems that only have ATI graphics on board.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further information or assistance.

Regards

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

support-emea@blackmagic-design.com
T. +44(0) 1565 830 049“

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I wrote to Blackmagic design and their reply is that they are working with Apple to resolve the issues with the new FCP X.
Here is what I wrote:

„I purchased a new top spec 27" iMac with thunderbolt connections . As new Final Cut Pro X has no support for tape capture I decided to purchase your UltraStudio 3D because it will allow me to capture and output to tape using your Media Express software.
I have three questions;
1. Can I connect a Panasonic plasma display trough UltraStudio 3D for monitoring my footage from FCP X(using HDMI on the UltraStudio 3D) because I need such setup for client monitoring?
2. I read in the press on the internet that you are working with Apple to support the new FCP X with your products so I was wandering will UltraStudio 3D be supported with the new FCP X?
3. Can I use UltraStudio 3D for color critical monitoring (as output to a professional grade monitor) with new DaVinci Resolve (which I'm told supports Open CL so my iMac should be fine)?
Thanks in advance,

Javor Divjak“

Here is their reply:

„Hi Javor
Thank you for your email.

The new Final Cut Pro is a complete rewrite of the software and because of this, not all the features we need are included in the first release. Blackmagic Design and Apple are working very closely to improve compatibility and to iron out any compatibility issues etc.

As such, our products cannot currently be used for real time video output from Final Cut Pro X.

The HDMI output of Ultrastudio can be used for monitoring while grading in Resolve. Resolve 8 will support open CL, so you will be able to use Mac systems that only have ATI graphics on board.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further information or assistance.

Regards

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

support-emea@blackmagic-design.com
T. +44(0) 1565 830 049“

This is how professionalism is done, answers to questions and concerns. It's laughable that companies have to "answer for apple". Apple need to take their head out of their ass and be like these guys.

 

[Javor Divjak]

I completely agree. Apple marketing team blew it. I will wait and see what Apple does. If they don't fix everything by the time Scarlet comes out I'm moving to Adobe.

 

[Brian Boyer]

I get the intended humor, but that's the point isn't it, the "be happy for me at least since I'm happy about the potential?" Whether you meant it personally or not, your post captured the essence most directly, those arguing against the frustrated are still arguing for waiting to see what happens next. That it could be "a paradigm shift", and worth overlooking Apple's conduct. Where the real paradigm shift is that FCPX is the final straw for a lot of people, and no one believed that was possible. Bitching to Apple will help as much as bitching to the president, and only matters if you like the guy to begin with, neither is going to change their core after the fact. In this case a lot of people are decidedly done with Apple's behavior.

Why folks like yourself come in to these threads to further the arguments based on theories and probabilities against the realities, with little bits of salt to throw on the wounds while pretending to be outside and above the situation is what I find amusing and why I continue to snipe back, it's obvious those who continue to do so, have the time to waste. I've already asked a few pages back why come in here to defend Apple, and the answer was:

Dearest Scott,

I'm still not sure you get my comment about being happy for me and you may be trying to read some meaning or subtext into it for other people. But for those who may indeed feel that way, would it kill you to acknowledge its validity. You're going to have to accept that some people are going to be able to be productive with the software despite the criticism and its current shortcomings. Yet, it does seem as if you want people to feel bad for YOU. Bitching to Apple won't work, you say? Then, by your own logic, you acknowledge that wait and see what happens next is all any of us can do, no matter how badly you want to commiserate over Apple's behavior. We're not arguing against the frustrated. We've all acknowledged as much. What we're asking is how many different ways are you going to say the same things without adding anything but more anger to the conversation? Page 106 reads the same as page 70 and page 70 reads the same as page 20. You have nothing more to say besides "I can't use it yet. I'm mad at Apple."

Folks like me are here to help keep this thread from turning into an all out hate fest. Let me let you in on something that many of you may not realize but Jim learned the hard way and still deals with from time to time. You tend to be an angry bunch. He has to be very careful what he says on this forum lest the vitriol and venom get out of hand, where even he can't control it and eventually may have to shut it down (like the Arri thread). Not too long ago he made mention of the gamma issues in Quicktime. It wasn't long before people started in with the Apple bashing. He then tried to make it clear that he loves and uses Apple products but they simply needed to fix the gamma issue. The Apple bashing continued and worsened. In Jim's case, he learned that many of you look up to him and almost respond to his negative comments like you're trying to win his praise. People are so inclined to do it, he has to temper his approach to some subjects, even regarding RED. In threads like this one, people keep upping the ante until the anger gets unmanageable and serves no one. You can be upset over something but there's a point of diminishing returns at which you should probably ask yourself what purpose it serves. It doesn't take much for a thread to derail and devolve into insults and name calling. I'm here trying to help you to calm down. Things aren't THAT bad.

Oh yeah...there's just one more thing ;-)

Pouring salt on wounds? Are you kidding? WOUNDS? The notion that of any of you are wounded makes me chuckle. Disappointed? Certainly. Frustrated? I can see it. Wounded? That's why I love you, Scott. Don't ever change.

 

[Brian Boyer]

Great post

Not really.

 

[Scott M]

Not really.

Actually it was an awesome post. You're just jealous and that's ok.

You continue to drag this thread out by trying to be the voice of your own reason in a thread where people have gone to vent, no one asked you to, Apple didn't ask you to, you can't help any of the affected. And then you act aghast when your "help" wrapped in your humor isn't well-received. Even having now gone so far as to offer insight as to the struggles of Jim to relay your superior understanding of the situation. What do you expect to happen because of your enlightened posts? You are here to argue just like everyone else while taking the stance of pretending you're not. And that's ok.

Good grief! You guys are still at it.

Welcome to the club.


Edited to Add: Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the efforts at levity, but my humor is a little more dry, and we had already planned to switch to Premiere because of native R3D support. But this sealed the deal and an opportunity to argue the merits of good conduct in corporate-customer relations is to good to pass up a legitimate argument on.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Not really.

Why not?

 

[Brad Webb]

Apple needs to make an official statement about what the hell is going on with FCPx. We need to know their plan. Even if Steve Jobs gets up to a podium and says "Pros, you can go fuck yourselves" that would be better than NOT SAYING ANYTHING. Sure I would pissed, but at least I'd know, and knowing is half the battle.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

I'm going to let someone I admire a lot try to bring some more signal to the noise ratio on this thread and then move on.

Mr. Ron Brinkmann

http://digitalcomposting.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/x-vs-pro/

 

[Brian Boyer]

Why not?

Because it's inaccurate in many ways. Mostly that post consisted of "leave us alone to bitch as much as we like and go join another thread if you want to extol the virtues of FCPX or apologize for Apple's behavior." The name of the is thread is "Final Cut Pro X Released". It is NOT called "What the fuck were they thinking?" So, all ideas are welcome here, as they would be even if the thread initially had a negative tone.

I guess misery truly does love company. Except that, I don't believe there's anything to be miserable about. You guys are bringing EACH OTHER down with all the cyclical, negative droning on about well established viewpoints. My point in rejoining this thread was to make light of, after all this time, the bitching consisted of nothing NEW.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

So what do you suggest we discuss in a thread called "Final Cut Pro X Released"? I'm curious to know.
Also, the FCPX lovers bashed the critical people way before any of us started complaining back. But seriously, look at your last post; doesn't it really say that we should stop complaining and you should have the thread for yourself to express your love for it?

I don't understand the logic. Criticism is a natural part of new release and this little screw up by Apple has generated a lot of it, not only in this thread.
Stop acting like we killed your dog.

 

[Jarred Land]

play nice kids...

 

[Jason Hilton]

I've spent a couple hours with FCP X now, here are my first impressions, some good, some bad. I'm going to focus on the actual process of editing, because it seems like this thread has largely ignored that. The bad are probably minor gripes in the long run, and I understand apple is trying to create a new way of editing, but I put them in as the impressions of an editor that started in premiere before FCP existed, and have been using FCP since version 1. I've edited feature films, TV shows, corporate video, and everything else. Also, these are first impressions, nothing more. I'm probably complaining about a couple things I simply don't know how to do yet. Ok here goes

The good:
Tags are COOL. I know people have been grumpy about not being able to create bins and move clips around and stuff, but keyword tags are SO MUCH BETTER. The process is slick. You can individually tag and rename clips, use keyboard shortcuts which set up automatically or can be created yourself, and once a tag is set up you can select it and import new files into that tag set, automatically adding tags to them. Once tags are set up you can drag and drop them between Events, so you don't have to recreate them for every project.

I like how the timeline works (with one exception, below). It feels more natural. Audio stays connected, clips don't get overwritten in the timeline when you're shifting things around, and you can quickly adjust the length of a clip without having to move the entire edit to accommodate it.

I like the single viewer, it streamlines a lot of things, creates one fewer active window to deal with, and is intuitive. Also working with effects on clips is much easier as the info pain slides in from the right, so you don't have to load a clip in a second viewer then visit its motion/effects tabs to make adjustments and changes.

IT'S FAST. Really fast. I'm on a first gen unibody macbook pro. Background editing is quick, search is snappy, even through my itunes library of 30k songs, and everything feels smooth.

The geometry tools are much improved and faster. Cropping, resizing and masking are all much faster and simpler.

The not so good:
No Separate audio track - Trackless editing, I get it. But COME ON. This has to be my number one gripe. You can't drop an audio track without attaching it to a clip. I do music videos, and I often lay a bunch of clips in and then place my music track below, then rearrange the clips as desired. When I then drop an audio track underneath, it has to attach to something, meaning that whenever I move whatever it's attached to, the audio track moves with it. I can't figure out how to disconnect this track completely, so if anyone knows, please tell me.

Transitions - Adding Right click transitions are visually confusing. I find myself accidentally adding cross dissolves to whole clips instead of between two clips as expected. In the same vain, there is not enough power for default transitions, in fact a right click transition can only default to a cross dissolve, and the only control over the default transition is the Default Transition Length setting in the preferences. What if I want to use a Fade In Fade Out Dissolve as my default? Oh wait, I can't, because FCP X only ships with cross dissolve and Dip to Color Dissolve :/ (and a bunch of home video cheese). Finally, there is no drag and drop with default transition. You can select all and right click to add the default transition, so this is really just a workflow change I guess, but the old way worked great.

Speaking of things that are missing: 8 point masks, tons of useful transitions and filters, etc. I should probably compile an exhaustive list. Possibly some of that stuff is restored with Motion, but I haven't downloaded that yet.

There is now a separate "position" tool for creating gaps in an edit. It's annoying to have to select a second tool to move all my clips and create a space for later. Also missing is the type to move feature: In FCP 2-7 you could simply type a number while the timeline was active and reposition the clip x frames forward or backward. You can nudge clips with keyboard shortcuts as well.

There are no arrow selection tools. You have to drag, shift-select or command-select. Fine for a few clips, but what if I want to use the previously mention "position" tool to move half my 45 minute edit? I have to zoom way out and select the whole chunk with the bounding box. Minor, but when you're trying to increase editor efficiency with redesign you shouldn't drop useful tools. (T now selects the trim tool, which acts like the slip/Roll tool from FCP 7)

You can't scrub in the viewer.

It would be nice to drag and drop right from the viewer as well as the clip bin as was possible in FCP 7.

Uhm ok, that's it for now! Hopefully some of this stuff will be addressed as we go forward.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Stop acting like we killed your dog.

Hey, you stole my metaphor. I used it in post #609 of this thread!! :furious3:

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Also missing is the type to move feature: In FCP 2-7 you could simply type a number while the timeline was active and reposition the clip x frames forward or backward. You can nudge clips with keyboard shortcuts as well.

You can do this.

There are no arrow selection tools. You have to drag, shift-select or command-select. Fine for a few clips, but what if I want to use the previously mention "position" tool to move half my 45 minute edit? I have to zoom way out and select the whole chunk with the bounding box. Minor, but when you're trying to increase editor efficiency with redesign you shouldn't drop useful tools. (T now selects the trim tool, which acts like the slip/Roll tool from FCP 7)

If I understand what you want to do, I think you can do this with the range selection tool; perhaps shift-Z to see the whole timeline and then R and select what you want?

You can't scrub in the viewer.

It would be nice to drag and drop right from the viewer as well as the clip bin as was possible in FCP 7.

You can scrub/skim in the clip (and/or use J-K-L), mark I/O from what you see from the skim and then drag that directly to the timeline. Not terribly different. :smile5:

And thanks for the comments.

 

[Tom Lowe]

We need to know their plan. Even if Steve Jobs gets up to a podium and says "Pros, you can go fuck yourselves" that would be better than NOT SAYING ANYTHING.

Isn't this basically what happened?

:smilielol5:

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

hi jason, audiontracks (music) dont have to be connected to videos.
just play around a little with the menu bars at the timeline.

 

[Brian Boyer]

Actually it was an awesome post. You're just jealous and that's ok.

You continue to drag this thread out by trying to be the voice of your own reason in a thread where people have gone to vent, no one asked you to, Apple didn't ask you to, you can't help any of the affected. And then you act aghast when your "help" wrapped in your humor isn't well-received. Even having now gone so far as to offer insight as to the struggles of Jim to relay your superior understanding of the situation. What do you expect to happen because of your enlightened posts? You are here to argue just like everyone else while taking the stance of pretending you're not. And that's ok.

Welcome to the club.

Edited to Add: Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the efforts at levity, but my humor is a little more dry, and we had already planned to switch to Premiere because of native R3D support. But this sealed the deal and an opportunity to argue the merits of good conduct in corporate-customer relations is to good to pass up a legitimate argument on.

I'm dragging the thread out? You just quoted me being surprised you were still going full tilt on this topic and that it hadn't really morphed into anything else in a week. You can go as long as you want. But usually, when there's a topic I want to read more about, someone inevitably ends up hijacking it and it doesn't take long to get off topic. Not so with this one. Post away.

Aghast? Okay, if you say so. To tell you the truth, none of my posts are well received. I just assumed it was because they were full of rational arguments and you guys weren't interested in that sort of thing.

Almost everyone who posted in this thread approached it from a point of superior understanding, including you. How do you know I don't actually have one? Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean I'm wrong. And my posts ARE enlightened. That's the only way I roll.

If I'm wrong about Jim (but I don't think I am) and speaking out of turn, he can say so and I'll eat my words. But, I mentioned him to illustrate how even he can lose control of a thread despite his influence and despite the tendency for some people to seem to bend over backwards in order to get his approval. The latter is the same phenomenon that occurs when celebrities struggle with being seen as role models, whether they intend to be or not. Their words and actions are amplified because of their celebrity status, for whatever reason. If the guy who people probably look up to most on this forum can't rein people in on occasion, the potential for a thread like this to turn really nasty is pretty great. Mentioning Jim had nothing to do with whether or not Apple had some 'splaining to do or whether FCPX was a worthwhile effort.

You totally misunderstand me. I'm not pretending AT ALL. Ask anybody, I love a good argument. I should say, I love a healthy debate - emphasis on healthy, but I'll resort to arguing if I have to. When I was about 6 or 7, I famously (for my family, anyway) asked my older sister to play argument with me. She told me you couldn't play argument. I disagreed. Ultimately, an argument ensued. However, your side of the debate is still "I can't use FCPX yet. I'm mad at Apple." Well, we knew that a week ago. What else ya got?

What's wrong with venting peppered with a pinch of "try to look at it this way" here and there. It keeps the mob mentality at bay and might help you see alternatives that may not have occurred to you. Maybe this is where the disconnect comes in but I just don't see how people were all that "affected", as you call it, by this release. No one had to buy it, updates are coming and FCP7 still works as well as it did last Monday. The other disconnect is that you think my comments mean I'm somehow against you as an editor or user of FCP. I'm on your side by default because your side is my side. I don't work for Apple. I buy their products like the rest of you. What I do think is troublesome is the tone of this thread and how, after a week, the ire is still up, mainly because someone keeps throwing gasoline on the fire. I've seen people riot in person. It is not our finest hour. Some of that same mentality showed up here. Are you really going to defend that? I hope not. Call me a peace-lovin' hippie but I think we can all do better than that.

 

[Scott M]

What else ya got?

That's all. You'll notice my first post in this thread was simply to ask why people were arguing in defense of the way Apple conducted itself. As that is what essentially I feel this all boils down to and the real reason arguments were continuing past the venting of others. I don't see a need to argue what is or isn't needed in a professional workflow, that should be obvious at this point for all.

I was simply truly disappointed in Apple whether or not I "should have seen this coming" based on their prior actions, and I wanted to see what was driving people to continue to promote their cause.

I will bow out of this discussion at this point. I think I've made my points as best I can make them and won't try to argue with any additional posts, for as you have correctly surmised, I have nothing new to say on the matter.

I do think the closing statement from the very poignant article Brandon Kraemer linked to by Ron Brinkmann sums up my thoughts unfortunately, but with his greater depth of experience forming the sentiment and second his recommendation to read it: http://digitalcomposting.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/x-vs-pro/