NEW Final Cut to be Announced at NAB?

[John Bellari]

299 bucks!
4k,
Auto everything!

hahah

I was waiting for... it does all the editing and even auto-imports the itunes soundtrack
and dialogue in for you so everyone's cut looks and sounds exactly the same, and runs on iphone 5...

BTW... Where's the black turtleneck motion tracking button?

(I kid... it's unmatched at $299, it's cheap and cool)

 

[Chris Kenny]

I don't know about you, but for $299 that sounds pretty good.

Remember, the App Store doesn't have upgrade pricing, and $299 is the old upgrade price. It's basically a discount for first-time buyers, which makes sense if you're trying to grow aggressively.

 

[Kevin Wild]

Let's not forget, you can turn off "Auto" anything with Apple USUALLY and I am nearly certain that is the case here. There is no way they are going to autocolor or autostabilize your shots if you don't want them done.

 

[Mark Toia]

Here are the main bullet points

The name is Final Cut Pro X
64 bit
Unlimited menory
Uses Open CLI and Grand Central Dispatch
Color fully managed with ColorSync
Resolution independent playback system up to 4K
Mix & match all content in timeline without transcoding
No rendering, it does it in the background using every available CPU cycle
Can plug into cameras and edit whilst ingesting
Non destructive color balance on ingest
Stabilisation on ingest
Audio cleanup on ingest
People and shot detection
Range based keywording - metadata attached to part of a clip
Smart collections - like smart folders
Clip connections, primary and secondary media locking together
Magnetic timeline -moves audio out of the way to avoid collisions.
Single keystroke nesting
Compound clips - collapse clips into a single clip
Inline precision editor - simplifies trimming of clips
Auditioning - sampling of different versions of edits
'Skimming' media previews when you move the cursor over
iMovie like filmstrip view
Timeline Index- an index of all the clips in the timeline
Sync clips with Plural Eyes style featue (Not Plural Eyes)
Automatic control of number of tracks - add and go when needed
Pitch corrected audio skimming
Waveforms show levels in realtime
Retiming in the timeline
One click to match color between clips
New advanced color correction
Improved keyframing, bezier paths and curve display in the timeline
Color & Soundtrack now in FCPX
Ships in June $299 on the App Store

 

[Chris Kenny]

Let's not forget, you can turn off "Auto" anything with Apple USUALLY and I am nearly certain that is the case here. There is no way they are going to autocolor or autostabilize your shots if you don't want them done.

IMO this is just a more developed implementation of the notion that software should have reasonable defaults. Stable is a more reasonable default for a shot than jerky, etc.

Reasonable defaults are one of the most powerful ways to enhance ease of use, and they do nothing to detract from flexibility, because, of course, you can always change default settings.

 

[Kevin Wild]

Exactly, Chris. I'm with you. As long as you can turn off "auto" anything, I'm all for it. From what I heard, everything it does is non-destructive, so it sounds like even if you bring it in "stabilized" or "color matched" that you can just turn it off.

 

[Robert Frank]

Here are the main bullet points

Good summary, thanks Mark.

 

[Robert Frank]

Well... I think I'm going to pop for the Avid crossgrade, upgrade to CS5.5, and get Resolve. And FCP-X too.

 

[Art_Jaguar]

Im torn on the price, or maybe confused by it.

It is now up there with Premier and Avid, amazing new features, and all this for $299. Great for us, but I can just now see the flood of 'editors' that just buy this off the App Store and are now calling themselves 'editors'. The higher price point kind of kept the kiddies at bay, now your mom will be using FCP :/

 

[Jerrod Cordell]

Remember, the App Store doesn't have upgrade pricing, and $299 is the old upgrade price. It's basically a discount for first-time buyers, which makes sense if you're trying to grow aggressively.

Which is okay because when I got FCS 2 I got the Academic version because I'm cheap.

 

[Chris Kenny]

Im torn on the price, or maybe confused by it.

It is now up there with Premier and Avid, amazing new features, and all this for $299. Great for us, but I can just now see the flood of 'editors' that just buy this off the App Store and are now calling themselves 'editors'.

You mean instead of just stealing it and calling themselves editors, like they do now? Heh. That would be a net gain. At least they'd be helping to fund development.

 

[Kevin Wild]

Yes, exactly! I can't tell you how many people I know who have fake licenses for FCP. But that's also something Apple hasn't fought much. Not when you have a $2500 dongle (ie computer) that always requires upgrading. I actually knew an Apple engineer WAY back on FCP2, I believe, who told me Jobs said to take off the encryption on the install disks. That is why Apple always has an advantage over software-only companies. It's also very much the reason this software is only $299.

Personally, I will upgrade all 5 suites with this once it's deemed stable, reliable and works with our MetaSAN. BUT, it won't be long after that that I'll be wanting the latest and greatest Macs. Smart people those Apple folks...

 

[Robert Frank]

There was speculation that FC Server would be rolled into this. Any news on that?

 

[Kevin Wild]

Actually, the speculation I heard a while back was that Apple was going to let FC Server die. No good source on that...just a rumour site.

That said, though. You can see how they've added a whole lot of metatagging to shots. The fact it can automatically find closeups vs medium shots is pretty cool. That said (again), I will believe it when I see it. I find a lot of things like that don't work as well as they say they do on paper.

 

[Alex Hastings]

So you want Smoke and Lustre for $299?

Thats how progress works there at one time was a database program that cost over $450,000, per station license, and now mySQL does more for free. Yes that is how it works, software becomes cheaper.

 

[Jake Bastian]

Remember, the App Store doesn't have upgrade pricing, and $299 is the old upgrade price. It's basically a discount for first-time buyers, which makes sense if you're trying to grow aggressively.

How does the app store not have upgrade pricing? Next time you download an update for your ipad/iphone look at the interface, there's a button that's labelled download all free updates or something like that. Developers are allowed to charge a separate price for upgrades.

 

[ChrisLyon]

There was speculation that FC Server would be rolled into this. Any news on that?

I thought Server was abandoned until I just searched and found that they did in fact make a 1.5 version in 2009.

How does the app store not have upgrade pricing?

The app store does not support upgrade pricing, but in-app purchases are allowed.

 

[Alex Hastings]

Again, Alex. Instead of complaining, tell me what you had wanted that you didn't get and your post might be more intelligent sounding.

I'm primarily interested in better stability. But I absolutely love the no rendering, no transcoding of any footage (if that works, the real time audio syncing without Plural Eyes, the color match between clips, the new "compound clips" which seems better than nesting, in timeline color correction with secondaries, etc.

So what is it you wanted?

I have a company with over 10 FCP licenses, Final Cut Server, we use DVDSP and COLOR on a daily basis. Editorial has never been an issue for us, we have all the tools we need to do world class editing. We need a Final Cut Studio, we now have no future for our investment, if you don't know what that sucks, then you have no business asking me why I am complaining.

 

[Jake Bastian]

I have a company with over 10 FCP licenses, Final Cut Server, we use DVDSP and COLOR on a daily basis. Editorial has never been an issue for us, we have all the tools we need to do world class editing. We need a Final Cut Studio, we now have no future for our investment, if you don't know what that sucks, then you have no business asking me why I am complaining.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised at this level of melodrama from someone in the movie business, but I don't understand how you could watch that presentation and not see all the possibilities it opens up for a company doing world class editing. I don't think they're cutting Color, but even if they did at $299 you can go out and get a Davinci license and you're still pretty close to where you were with Final Cut Studio. I was never a fan of DVD Studio Pro, but it's not like the program you have is going to suddenly stop working when FCP X comes out in June - you've got plenty of time to plan for an alternative before DVD Studio Pro is obsolete.

Just breathe... change is good.

 

[Chris Kenny]

How does the app store not have upgrade pricing? Next time you download an update for your ipad/iphone look at the interface, there's a button that's labelled download all free updates or something like that. Developers are allowed to charge a separate price for upgrades.

The "free" wording on that button does sort of imply developers can choose to charge for updates, but they actually can't. There was speculation that Apple would have to change this with the Mac App Store, which sells much more expensive apps, but Apple's solution seems to be to just cut prices instead.

(On iOS you can sort of sneak paid updates in by issuing a free update which enables an in-app purchase unlocking new features, but the Mac App Store doesn't have in-app purchase yet, and even once it does, Apple itself won't be playing those sorts of games.)