Final Cut Pro X Released

[Max Kaiser]

I'm not sure what you were doing wrong, but surely I have to tell you are very very wrong about PPro CS5. If you have any future problems with PPro CS5 with Red R3D's feel free to post in the Adobe Workflow forum, We could help you and I know for sure Adobe's Reduser experience experts or Even Deanan from Red will hand hold you through solutions for your problems. For Redusers I must tell you that CS5.5 is the best NLE for Red native or proxy editing in existence today. This is a bold claim, but I stand firmly by it. It is indeed faster and more stable than FCP 7 by a long stretch. Heck with a few clicks you can even make it behave exactly like FCP 7.

I have not used FCPX or seen it yet. But from the looks of things it has many nifty automated functions. Really cool. The Audio unit plugin support stomps PPro. But I must say without a dedicated source window, no mention of third party plugin support, no xml output or import, no .....

Cool. I will certainly come over and ask a bunch of questions. Again, PPRO seemed to work PRETTY well locally, I just had problems using the XSAN and trying to store everything on my shared storage as our collaborative workflow dictates. If we can make that work as seamlessly as FCP7, without all the non-stop background conforming, the very long project opening, instability and relentless crashing that drove our office nuts, we'd be in business.

Thanks for the help and support!

Max

 

[Eric Santiago]

Fair enough. I'm probably annoyed because I spent so many years trying to convince Avid users that FCP really was a pro cutting tool, and now I feel like I have to hang my head in shame.

Actually, I don't think anybody here's really angry. The net just makes us sound angry. We're just disappointed. We wanted a revolutionary, Red-friendly app. It's just a disappointment.

Ive been there, but there's no shame in trying to better others workflow (unless it needed it of course).
FCP is still decent tool. Its not even the NLE of choice where I am, we have a few Avid seats here.
If it doesnt pan out to be good, we all have options at least

 

[D Fuller]

Well, Apple is certainly betting the farm on this (at least their farm of movie professional clients). Suppose it would have taken another year to add all these features. As there would have been too much time passed since the release of FCP 7, they must have probably come up with FCP 7.5 or FCP 8 in the meantime, developing it in parallel with FCP X. Which would have deviated resources from building FCP X, which would have caused more delays, etc... A vicious circle. At one point, you just need to ship. (OK, RED fans may think otherwise rrr: )

And yeah, at this new price point, FCP will reach prosumers and even hobbyists it has never reached before. So any short-term loss of market share incurred by demanding pros jumping ship will be somewhat alleviated by a new class of users joining the party. (Users the pros will forever frown on.)

To me, this strategy makes sense. And of course, I would have preferred to have everything at once immediately. But I'll take this as a second-best scenario.

Sure, from Apple's perspective it makes sense. And it will even make sense when it turns out that pro features never show up. Look at Shake and Motion. Past performance is the best predictor of future performance.

 

[András Puiz]

Did you read the rest of my post? Because you fit exactly with the category of people I called out for trying to compare FCPX with Red One.

Red One: Product that we can deliver jobs with on day one.
FCPX: Product that might be at a professional level at some unknown time in the future.

Red: Company that is focused on the pro market, and tells us exactly what is going on
Apple: Company that is focused on the consumer market, and doesn't tell us shit

Nope, I fit exactly with the category of people you never called out for trying to compare FCP7 with Red One.

Red One: Product that we can deliver jobs with on day one.
FCP7: Product that we can deliver jobs with on day one.

Red Scarlet/EPIC: Product that is either shipping in small quantities in some versions with some features disabled, or will ship some time in the future.
FCPX: Product that is shipping with a partial feature set.

And by the way, Apple does communicate about FCP X a bit.

http://www.larryjordan.biz/app_bin/wordpress/archives/1505

Apple tells me they are committed to quickly improving this version and building on it. They tell me they are committed to making changes quickly and bringing them to market. They tell me they are interested in hearing our reactions to the software.

I can't find the link, but I've read also that they want to do one or two releases per year. I'm pretty sure those won't deal with Twitter integration.

Again: the present kind of sucks, I agree. Good thing there are competitors with alternatives.
We'll see what the future brings. I think people who believe Apple is giving up the pro market are either overreacting, or frankly, a bit clueless. Look at Motion, for instance. Not a pro app?

But we'll see.

Over and out.

 

[David McGavran]

Cool. I will certainly come over and ask a bunch of questions. Again, PPRO seemed to work PRETTY well locally, I just had problems using the XSAN and trying to store everything on my shared storage as our collaborative workflow dictates. If we can make that work as seamlessly as FCP7, without all the non-stop background conforming, the very long project opening, instability and relentless crashing that drove our office nuts, we'd be in business.

Thanks for the help and support!

Max

Give 5.5 a try again with the trial and the post over in the adobe section and we will see if we can help you...

Cheers

Dave

 

[Eric Santiago]

Give 5.5 a try again with the trial and the post over in the adobe section and we will see if we can help you...

Cheers

Dave

David and movement yet on that 2GB file limit bug over AFP network? I cant move our studio to CS5.5 knowing this isnt fixed yet. I know Apples partly to blame but Steve hasnt been on this forum for years

 

[Chris Kenny]

Bump.
Does it still have the QT gamma issues?

I doubt it, since it's not based on QuickTime.

People don't seem to grasp just how radical this release is in terms of its technical foundations. Yes, it's missing some key workflow features right now, but Apple has done a huge amount of very ambitious work here, and as of today they have an app with incredibly solid core technology, that they're going to spend the next decade building on.

 

[Ivan G]

I'm not buying it. It's gone the way of Shake. I've been an Apple fan since 1988 and I can't help thinking the next FCP version will be bundled free with i-life. So, I think Ill continue with FCP 7 until I figure out which way to go. I don't suppose anyone's tried Motion. At $49 I don't think it going to replace Shake either.

+1

I strongly agree!

I remember when I use to have to overlap 4, 5 cameras and split, drag, all sorts of tools to multicam. Then "multicam lite" was created, an awesome life saver for me to multicam several clips. Apple incorporates this into their app and pisses on the competition. Then they bail once again. This is 1 out of 8 features I use almost daily and to even try FCP X, forget it.

No chime from anyone at Red? Hello?

 

[András Puiz]

OK, one final comment I couldn't resist. Sorry about that.

I hear people deriding the ways FCPX is simplifying the user interface, making the app more appealing to "non-editors," as yet more proof that Apple is now targeting hobbyists and consumers.

But let's not forget that Apple has always been about making daunting tasks simpler. Everyone laughed at the mouse: it's only for idiots, come on. Serious people are happy to type on a command line terminal, this new "graphical user interface" fad will surely not catch on with professionals.

Or, when desktop publishing appeared (ushered in by Apple and Adobe). Design and press production experts were shaking their heads at the new, simplistic, toy-like tools that even fools could master.

Yes, when technology is made idiot-proof, idiots do tend to buy into it. I'm sure we'll see lots of horrible TV ads put together by company execs with a HD cam and FCPX who think that now they're filmmakers.

But just like real designers use those very DTP apps today that they once laughed at, I'm sure lots of top Hollywood editor will use a magnetic timeline and grouped clips in a few years.

Of course, that still assumes that FCPX will quickly outgrow its 1.0 status, and prove to be a true pro app. I stand by this assumption, and will be the first to admit if the next version of FCPX doesn't clearly point in that direction.

Simple does not necessarily mean dumb. Great software makes simple things easy, and hard things possible. FCPX admittedly appears to focus more on the first part of this axiom... For now.

 

[Santiago Marti]

Epic has nothing to do with fcpx. Yes, we are waiting for a camera, but it is a camera that has no competition, you don't have a better choice right now. You have Red One MX, and Alexa, but no real competition, so if we have to wait, we have no other option. We are always being updated by red though.

I have to remind some people that this forum is called reduser, so mostly, the topics we discuss here are all red centric, so it is understandable that we relate everything to red or software wich works with red, you don't have to be angry to people that find fcpx to be useless, for a reduser point of view it is.

It is incredible how people defend a piece of software, you just have to read some threads from last year, talking about what fcpx would be.

I made the switch long time ago, glad i did, from my point of view i was right.

You have two real choices right now, avid or adobe. I recomend adobe for .r3ds or canon or whatever.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Dag nabit Im gonna make sure that I get my R3D workflow working with FCPX
Now that this subject has become boring, anyone care to share their future workflows with FCPX and (insert any RED product here)?
I did my first batch of REDCineX to ProRes (HQ). No fidgeting around in RCX just export to see how it fares in FCPX.
Ill probably start a topic soon

 

[Liam Hall]

Like Jay, I find myself astonished by the existence of Final Cut X apologists. It makes ZERO sense to use a crippled product when there are multiple other choices for fully functional products available. If FCPX had some feature that clearly established its superiority in another area, I would sort of understand. Frankly, the ONLY things it seems to have going for it are:
1. Finally leveraging hardware to provide speed - Adobe has been doing this for over a year
2. Finally supporting 4k - MANY other packages have been doing this for multiple years
3. Magnetic timeline (no source window, no tracks) - At best, an incremental improvement. At worst, a total gimmick aimed at consumers.
4. It's dirt cheap - Don't care

I do understand that some folks are sentimental. Perhaps FCP got them into editing. Perhaps they have a little Apple sticker on their car. Perhaps they have an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook, and even an AppleTV. However, THESE ARE NOT REASONS TO APOLOGIZE FOR FCPX!!! For god's sake, listen to yourselves! Are you seriously comparing FCPX to Red One? @Jason Hilton, I'm looking at you man. Red One gave us revolutionary features from day one. Did we get new features along the way? Sure. Were we at any point missing the basic functionality needed to deliver? No. Dude, you've been drinking the Apple Koolaid. You're not the first, so I don't hold it against you.

Apple delivered a product that CLEARLY had great effort put into consumer level features. We all get it: they want to maximize revenue. Makes total business sense. The problem is, they called it Final Cut Pro, and they set an expectation with the community that this would serve our needs in the same way as previous Final Cuts. The reality is that this release, after years of development, has a LITANY of significant failures missing. Not fluff: basic functionality needed to be used in a professional setting. Fan boys can try to broaden the definition of professional if they want to, but nobody here is being fooled. This product is not usable.

"But just give them some time" some say. If Apple had messaged this as a preview, if Apple had published a road-map, if Apple were here in the forum apologizing and providing dates, that might be a reasonable position. The reality is that Apple sent a clear message with what they delivered: consumers first. It was not a subtle message. If you missed it, you absolutely deserve what you've got coming. Which is a future filled with having someone else's needs met before your own.

Avid, Adobe, Autodesk, Assimilate... these guys aren't in the phone business. I have every confidence that their editing packages will remain focused on professional needs. An investment in their products is an investment with a future. I'm sure Apple will spend some time trying to recover their lost reputation, and patch some holes in FCP. But I have no reason to expect that they will ever again prioritize the pro market over their true love: consumers. FCPX apologists, if you're content being number two, that's your own choice. But don't expect the rest of us to do the same.

What a load of cobblers. I say that as someone who started cutting on celluloid and has used every major edit system known to man.

 

[David Kudell]

I'm really curious to know what Red's take is. Was their any involvement between Apple and Red to build R3D support in? Is it still in the works, or is Apple just not going to go there? That's really a key deciding factor for me. I love the new editing features in FCPX, and am excited about using them if R3d support is added along with XML.

RAW is the future. Still photographers have moved to RAW and it's just a matter of time before that's standard on video as well. I am tired of transcoding to ProRes, even with the Red rocket. It's still a waste of disk space.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

169 one star ratings... 121 five star ratings... 2.5 stars with 398 ratings. The people that are buying it don't seem overjoyed by this revolutionary app. I'm no luddite myself... if something is revolutionary I'll jump on it. This isn't for my workflow.

 

[Marc Berger]

I don´t want to get into what´s the best app, just share some first impressions:
Well, I must say, it´s not replacing CS5.5 now, but its a great ProRes app. to get a Job done fast on a DVD/bluray without leaving the app. Specially two things I like a lot. The Color correction Interface is great to work with a mouse. Very fine tuning possible. Much better the with color wheels. Adding layers with masking tools are a big help! (tracker added later?). Second, it´s great to be able to output from 23,978 timeline to a Pal 25P DVD without having to care about adjusting the audio file.
Output quality from FCPX to a DVD/bluray is very good.
My test workflow:
RedcineX: ProRes 4444, very flat (Camera RGB, Redlogfilm) set only the white point. All CC in FCPX which is really fast and fun.

 

[Jerrod Cordell]

Well I downloaded it late last night and this is my take on it.

Sure it is missing a lot of key features but a lot of credible sources have said those features are on the way. I mean its a 1.0 build. Everyone knows its not ready for broadcast and feature film editing. People still need to learn the interface first and find out where everything is. By the time you've learned that, then new features will begin to pop up.

If you open it up and click on Final Cut Pro, there's a Final Cut Pro Feedback button. Complain as much as you possibly can on there. Apple isn't going to look at a camera forum for ways to improve upon their software.

I personally believe (even though there is much room for improvement) that this is an excellent piece of software. I LOVE the idea of having Color, Soundtrack Pro, and DVD SP integrated into FCP. I haven't had a chance to play with the sound or make a DVD, but I have to say the Color grading is very similar, if not better than grading in Color. I mean I could never play a clip in Color and watch the waveforms in real time. Yes they do need a broadcast safe mode, and quite a few other things (which they may even have and I just haven't found) but again, that's why you have that feedback button.

 

[Tim Morten]

I don´t want to get into what´s the best app, just share some first impressions:
Well, I must say, it´s not replacing CS5.5 now, but its a great ProRes app. to get a Job done fast on a DVD/bluray without leaving the app. Specially two things I like a lot. The Color correction Interface is great to work with a mouse. Very fine tuning possible. Much better the with color wheels. Adding layers with masking tools are a big help! (tracker added later?). Second, it´s great to be able to output from 23,978 timeline to a Pal 25P DVD without having to care about adjusting the audio file.
Output quality from FCPX to a DVD/bluray is very good.
My test workflow:
RedcineX: ProRes 4444, very flat (Camera RGB, Redlogfilm) set only the white point. All CC in FCPX which is really fast and fun.

I guess you like DVD's with no chapter markers.

 

[Eric Santiago]

I don´t want to get into what´s the best app, just share some first impressions...

Awesome! Thanks for that Marc

 

[Timothy Eaton]

I LOVE the idea of having Color, Soundtrack Pro, and DVD SP integrated into FCP. I haven't had a chance to play with the sound or make a DVD, but I have to say the Color grading is very similar, if not better than grading in Color. I mean I could never play a clip in Color and watch the waveforms in real time. Yes they do need a broadcast safe mode, and quite a few other things (which they may even have and I just haven't found) but again, that's why you have that feedback button.

Are there secondaries with the ability to window based on shapes, chroma, or luminance?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Well I downloaded it late last night and this is my take on it.

Sure it is missing a lot of key features but a lot of credible sources have said those features are on the way. I mean its a 1.0 build. Everyone knows its not ready for broadcast and feature film editing. People still need to learn the interface first and find out where everything is. By the time you've learned that, then new features will begin to pop up.

If you open it up and click on Final Cut Pro, there's a Final Cut Pro Feedback button. Complain as much as you possibly can on there. Apple isn't going to look at a camera forum for ways to improve upon their software.

I personally believe (even though there is much room for improvement) that this is an excellent piece of software. I LOVE the idea of having Color, Soundtrack Pro, and DVD SP integrated into FCP. I haven't had a chance to play with the sound or make a DVD, but I have to say the Color grading is very similar, if not better than grading in Color. I mean I could never play a clip in Color and watch the waveforms in real time. Yes they do need a broadcast safe mode, and quite a few other things (which they may even have and I just haven't found) but again, that's why you have that feedback button.

Thanks for saying this. Seems quite reasonable as an approach.

I think some people are perfectly happy to keeping moving ahead at a solid 55 mph with their old, reliable "vehicles." Others of us are excited to pull off the road and get a new experimental vehicle that we believe, once we get it tuned up and running well, will put us back on the road at 100 mph so we can get to where we want to go much faster. Whatever works for you.