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Apple offers Final Cut Pro X update and free 30 day trial, hopes we can all still be friends
Plenty of folks were less than thrilled by the release of Apple's rebuilt Final Cut Pro -- in fact, words like "disgruntled" come to mind when describing the response to the new version of the video editing software. Take heart, however, the massive backlash hasn't gone unnoticed. The company has released version 10.0.1 of Final Cut Pro X, which offers up some new features, including support for rich XML and Xsan, Lion full-screen view and Media Stem export. Apple has even offered up a rare moment of humility, acknowledging that the additions are an attempt at "answering those concerns" of "very vocal customers." The company is also looking to push back against some of the negative press by offering up a 30 day demo of the software to wary users afraid to take the plunge. More updates, including multi-camera support and broadcast-quality video monitoring are promised for early next year.
Daily Update for Sept. 20, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Final Cut Pro X update adds "top feature requests"
Apple will release a major update to Final Cut Pro X, as well as a demo version that new customers can download and try out today. This update address the top user requests, according to Apple's senior director applications marketing, Richard Townhill. In an interview with The Loop's Jim Dalrymple, Townhill noted that Apple has listened to requests from the application's professional users. "We listened to the pros and have taken their top feature requests and put them in this update." New features include Xsan support, which will allow users to share files on the SAN across projects. Additionally, Rich XML import and export will bring third-party workflows into your project. There's more, of course, including a new, 30-day free trial demo that will let users try before they buy. That's important as Final Cut Pro X customers depend on certain functionality and compatibility. An update that unexpectedly breaks a workflow is a real problem. You'll remember that not all customers were happy with the release of Final Cut Pro X. Again, Richard Townhill says that Apple is listening. "We have very vocal customers and they told us what they think was missing. What we're doing today is answering those concerns." Note that Final Cut Pro X requires a Mac with OS X 10.6.8 or later, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better, 2GB of RAM (4GB of RAM recommended), and an OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later. You'll find full system requirements here.
Sales of Adobe video tools grow, thanks to Final Cut X
Final Cut Pro X launched earlier this year and casued much controversy. Consumers lauded the app as a relatively inexpensive upgrade to iMovie; while video professionals were discontent with what they considered to be a dumbed down application. The biggest winner in this war over Final Cut Pro X is not Apple or Apple fans, but Adobe. According to The Loop, sales of Adobe video editing tools have jumped 22% year over year and demand for Adobe's Mac products have grown an impressive 45%. Much of this growth is attributed to customers switching from Final Cut Pro X to Adobe Premiere Pro, says Adobe.
Final Cut Studio on sale again via Apple telesales, video editors worldwide breathe sighs of relief
If you're one of the many Final Cut Pro users unhappy with Apple's latest version -- and you haven't been lured into Adobe's open arms -- today brings good news. According to MacRumors, Cupertino will continue to offer the previous, discontinued version via telephone sales. Calling 800-MY-APPLE and asking for Final Cut Studio (part number MB642Z/A) will net you Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, DVD Studio Pro 4, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5 for $999, or $899 for qualified educational customers. That's a far cry from the $299.99 for Final Cut Pro X, but if you're interested in, say, opening legacy projects or outputting to tape, you might grudgingly pony up the extra dough.
Final Cut Studio back on sale, Final Cut Pro X haters rejoice (Updated)
Update: Apple tells The Loop that this is basically leftover stock. So, buy it now or forever enjoy the progress of FCP X, for better or worse. For those users who've decided Final Cut Pro X just isn't for them (and by the sounds of things, quite a lot of people feel that way), there's now hope. According to MacRumors, Apple is once again offering the legacy version of Final Cut Studio for sale, though Apple is being remarkably coy about it. The software suite isn't available on Apple's site or in its retail stores; reportedly the only way to order Final Cut Studio is by calling 800-MY-APPLE and requesting it. Final Cut Studio is available for US$999 ($899 with an educational discount) and includes Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, DVD Studio Pro 4, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5. Over the past few months professional users have voiced their displeasure with Final Cut Studio's abrupt discontinuation after Final Cut Pro X's debut, particularly given that many users feel the new version of Final Cut does not meet their needs. There's no indication how long Apple intends to keep the old version of Final Cut Studio alive and kicking, so if you've found Final Cut Pro X doesn't suit you, you might want to jump on Final Cut Studio (if you haven't already) before Apple changes its mind again.
Apple's training site back online, Lion certifications due this fall
For the past couple of weeks (since shortly before the Lion introduction, I believe) Apple's professional training and certification site at training.apple.com has been under renovation. Today it's back with a new Lion-esque look and previews of new training courses and certifications for Apple-centric IT professionals. The three new tracks/certs are for Lion (no surprise), Final Cut Pro X and Mac Integration Basics 10.7. None of the certification exams for those tracks are ready yet, nor are most of the course materials -- only the MIB class has full documentation available right now. Lion certification testing is due to start up in the fall, and FCP X certifications are "coming soon." The Snow Leopard 10.6 certification courses/testing suite is still available, and according to Apple's internal sales web site it will remain on offer until January 2012. Snow Leopard certification will not expire when the Lion exams come online, so if you get certified now you're still considered up to date well into 2012. Thanks, Wheat!
Bare Feats finds iMacs compare to Mac Pros running Final Cut Pro X
Final Cut Pro X users might want consider an iMac instead of a Mac Pro, according to some recent benchmarks run by Bare Feats. The graphics and speed testing site recently tested FCP X on three different Macs to see which current model was able to tame the power-hungry app the best. The contestants were a 2011 iMac 3.4 GHz Quad Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 6970M GPU with 2 GB of VRAM, a 2011 MacBook Pro 2.3 GHz Quad Core i7 with 8 GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 6750M with 1 GB of VRAM, and a 2010 Mac Pro 3.33 GHz 6-core Westmere with 24 GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 5870 GPU with 1 GB of VRAM. The team ran four different tests using the same 32-second HQ video clip. The first test (above) was to apply the Directional Blur effect to the clip, and in this test the iMac beat both the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro by over 3 seconds. The next test applied the Sharpen Blur effect, and once again the iMac was victorious, beating the MacBook Pro by 4.3 second and thoroughly schooling the Mac Pro which came in a full 5.7 seconds behind. Two more benchmarks measured exporting and streaming speeds. Here the Mac Pro squeaked ahead of the iMac, coming in .4 second faster on a H.264 export. When the project was loaded into Compressor 4 and exported as an H.264 stream, the Mac Pro was a full 2.6 seconds ahead of the iMac, really showing off the power of the 6-core processor. The results show two things -- that the new iMacs are surprisingly capable machines for the price, and that Apple really needs to release a new Mac Pro. The latter is widely expected to happen sometime this summer. One comment about these benchmarks, though -- Final Cut Pro X has full symmetric multicore support and renders in the background, so it no longer really matters how fast rendering is done. You can continue working while your multicore Mac is crunching away on rendering. For further details on the testing, be sure to visit the Bare Feats site.
Apple may allow additional FCP 7 enterprise licenses (Updated)
On July 6th, Apple held a private briefing in London for enterprise users of Final Cut Pro. Of course, one of the main topics of discussion was Final Cut Pro X (FCP X), which has been receiving a lot of flak from unhappy pro users since its release on June 21, 2011. It appears that Apple will be addressing many of the complaints from creative pros in the near future. Some fascinating tweets were sent out by Sam Johnson (@aPostEngineer) during the briefing, and then summarized by Alex Gollner. 1. FCP XML in/out is coming via 3rd party soon...no FCP 6/7 support project support coming ever it seems... 2. Ability to buy FCP7 licenses for enterprise deployments coming in the next few weeks... 3. FCPX EDL import/export coming soon... 4. FCPX AJA plugins coming soon for tape capture and layback...capture straight into FCPX [events]. 5. XSAN support for FCPX coming in the next few weeks... 6. FCPX Broadcast video output via #Blackmagic & @AJAVideo coming soon... 7. Additional codec support for FCPX via 3rd Parties coming soon... 8. Customizable sequence TC in FCPX for master exports coming soon... 9. Some FCPX updates will be free some will cost... The most interesting part of this string of tweets is the second one, which points out that Apple will be working out a way for existing FCP 7 enterprise deployments to purchase additional licenses for the older version. This should make some video professionals happy, as they had been upset by how Apple had discontinued sales of Final Cut Pro 7 before the pros had a chance to get used to FCP X. Update: Both Alex and Sam clarified a couple of points post-event; Sam was actually contacted by Apple to clear these up. A) The sale of additional FCP 7 licenses for existing volume license customers is under consideration, not a done deal; B) the AJA tape capture tools will be delivered as a separate AJA-branded application. Editor Peter Wiggins also blogged his impressions of the event.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Five: Trimming and Closing Thoughts
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Part 5 is the final installment. So today I had to go back to a multicamera FCP 7 project and, truthfully, it was quite a relief. I realized that part of that relief was the familiarity of knowing how the program would react when I did certain things. Do you remember when you were learning the difference between rippling an edit and rolling it and you were never sure which was the right one? That's a little bit how I feel with Final Cut Pro X. I'm getting a little more comfortable, though, comfortable enough to start talking about things that I kind of like. Let's talk about trimming, for instance. In X, there is only one trim tool (shortcut: T). Hover to the left of an edit and it ripples left; hover to the right of an edit and it ripples right; hover in the middle and it rolls; hover over the center of a clip and it slips; hover over the center and hold option, and it slides. And yes, you can click and type a number or use the keyboard to nudge. How much time do you spend going back and forth between trim tools in FCP 7? Another nice touch is the Precision Trim Editor. I've always hated FCP's Trim window and never used it, and this is a big improvement. Double-click an edit and it jumps into a mode where you see two filmstrips, the A side above and the B side below. The parts of the filmstrip that are not in the sequence are dimmed. But the important thing is that you can see the frames in the clip beyond the edit point, and to extend an edit you can just "skim" to its location and click and it ripples the edit. So if your objective is to extend an edit right up to the point where Indiana Jones cocks his head, this makes it pretty easy. It reminds me a little of Avid's Transition Corner Editor, which I love, only you don't have to apply an effect to use it. Complaint: often, when I'm adjusting pacing, I like to ripple the last cutaway, which opens up a gap on V1 and that way I get a little "air" between clips. In FCP X that doesn't work, because you can't ripple a clip on a connected storyline past the end of its primary clip -- it just rolls over the next primary clip. To do what I want in FCP X, I need to add a "gap clip" of 10-15 frames on the primary storyline and then I can extend the last cutaway over it. Maybe I'll find a better way, but right now I don't like it. Second complaint: split edits. A split edit is where the audio and video don't cut at the same time. In FCP 7, this was very easy to achieve: make your audio cut where you want it, and then use the rolling edit tool to move just the video edit forward or backward. Because FCP X treats video and audio as a single clip, it takes more work to achieve a split edit. The FCP X manual's instructions for creating a split edit could only have been written by somebody who had never used one in a real project: they suggest using a ripple edit, it takes five steps, and the result will not be what you want. Thankfully, it's not actually that hard to do it the right way in FCP X! After you make the audio cut, you just have to select the clips on either side, choose "Expand Audio/Video" to separate the audio and video, choose the trim tool and roll (not ripple!) just the video. You might say "that doesn't sound so much more difficult than FCP 7," but I might split a hundred edits a day. It gets really grating when something you do very frequently is just a little more difficult. Another positive change: exporting out of FCP X is a vast improvement over FCP 7. It has always driven me nuts that you cannot save a Custom Quicktime export setting in FCP. How many times did I have to set H.264, 2000kbps, custom size 640x360, AAC @ 320kbps, over and over and over. I know you could "Send to Compressor," but I don't like having to go to another program to do it. I will say that Compressor 4 looks very speedy and promising. Now, in FCP X, there's a Share menu that allows you to "Export Using Compressor Setting." That's the ticket! You can also send directly to YouTube, Vimeo, and even CNN's iReport. What's missing, though, is that FCP 7 ability to export multiple sequences at once. For instance, I might be working on a project that has 11 different scenarios. Before, I could select all 11 and batch export them. Now, those 11 sequences all need to be separate projects, so you'd have to open and export them one after the other. Or maybe you can just drag the project files from the Finder directly into Compressor? I guess now it's time to study up on Compressor as well. The piece is almost finished, and I'm very relieved and anxious to go back to FCP 7. All in all, I would much rather have done this project there. I don't think that's just inexperience talking, or the discomfort of having to learn something from scratch. There were things that I didn't do on this program at all because I just couldn't figure out a way to do them. I wanted to add some transitions, for example, but first you need to get the two clips on either side of the transition into the same storyline. I don't like that, because once again it's an example of how FCP X often adds another step to a process and makes it take longer. And often I would select the adjacent clips and press command-G to link them into a storyline so I could add a transition, and it simply wouldn't happen. I don't know if that was a program error or user error, but it was very frustrating. So I just gave up and didn't add the transitions. Which brings me back to where I was on day two: the "magnetic timeline" is cute, but it keeps me from making the sequence I want and therefore it really has to go. It reminds me a little bit of when Apple was introducing FCP 1.0 and Steve Jobs showed us how we could take a clip from the Viewer and drop it on this beautiful transparent overlay in the Canvas to choose insert/overwrite/replace/etc. and the crowd went, "oooooooh." But who edits that way? Maybe you'll say I didn't give it enough of a chance. That might be fair. I just played around with it for a few days. But the truth is that we have an editing paradigm that works for us in FCP 7. It's not enough to show us that if we completely rethink our workflow then we can do the same things in FCP X as we can in FCP 7 with a couple of extra steps. What can we do that's more efficient, faster, better? Yes, the infrastructure is improved; yes, the 64-bit implementation and background rendering mean things will be much faster... if we can still figure out a way to tell the stories we want to tell. In conclusion, I think if Apple's FCP X team really is serious about wanting professionals to use this program -- and maybe they're not, and that's okay -- we will need to see it go back to a track-based editing metaphor, at least as an option. If that happens, I can't see why I wouldn't use it eventually. I don't really care about the feature set: they can always add multicam and OMF export and whatever else, and I'm sure they will. But if they add those features while retaining the current editing paradigm, it will still be very difficult to use professionally. Film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and the representations of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Four: Gaining Perspective
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. I thought the next installment would be on trimming, but I wasn't able to write it, because FCP X failed to save all the work I did yesterday afternoon. You may have heard that there's no "Save" command in X. This is true. It just instantly saves everything you do, just like Google Docs (and just like most applications will do on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, in a few weeks). Unlike Google Docs, it seems that sometimes it completely fails to do this. Sigh. Apparently there have been other reports of FCP X failing to save, as well, so it's not just me. I'm actually less upset about this than you might think. I'm not thrilled about it, of course, but I've been down this road before, back in 1999, with a new product called Final Cut Pro that professionals did not want to use because it didn't have a lot of features that professionals needed. Like, for example, multicamera editing. From my perspective, FCP X is a totally new product that I'm testing out, and many of you have cheerfully watched me messing up as I did that; thank you for pointing out my mistakes. I don't expect X to instantly replace FCP 7. So if it doesn't have some features I regularly use, or it crashes or screws up on a project that wasn't that critical to begin with, that's not the end of the world. In fact, it's kind of expected. And having to redo the edits helps me master the program. Furthermore, we all need to realize that FCP 7 is at the end of its road. As Apple moves its hardware and OS forward, at some point in the not too distant future that hardware and OS will not support FCP 7 and its legacy code, and so anybody who sticks with it for too long will get hosed. I suppose there is a small chance that Apple will announce that they're abandoning FCP X and will go back and just port FCP 7 to Cocoa exactly as it was, but I'm not seeing it. [Keep in mind that there are plenty of shops still running legacy versions of Final Cut on Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.4. –Ed.] But there are some things about the way FCP X is structured that make it unusable for certain projects. For instance, as I've mentioned, the lack of defined tracks is a significant problem. On a long project, I will segregate certain types of audio on certain tracks -- for instance, all the sound effects might be on tracks A5 and A6. The reason for this is that if the producer listens to the mix and says, "all the sound effects are too loud," I can easily find them all and lower them by 2dB. On FCP X, I guess I would need to do this using the Timeline Index. I'd tag all SFX with the keyword "SFX," and then search for that in the Timeline Index and select all those clips and lower their audio. I would be very reluctant to undertake, say, a 90-minute documentary in FCP X unless I knew for sure how this was going to work. And so are all my colleagues. When I first posted my FCP X experiences, my editor friends ripped me apart for appearing to defend this program too much! And a program that sometimes silently fails to save your work could be more powerful than any edit system in the world -- I'm still not going to adopt it if I can't trust it. So I think we are all thinking about our options now. You can tell us that we're just too stuck in our ways to see the power of this awesome new program, but I've been doing this for decades now. In my career, I've already switched platforms three times: from linear editing to Avid and then to Final Cut Pro. This would not be my first paradigm-shift rodeo. But many editors are thinking that if they have to make a change, FCP X is not their only option. In fact, the alternatives are eagerly courting FCP editors with some pretty aggressive cross-grade pricing. Option one is to jump ship to Avid Media Composer. You could go to Media Composer today if you wanted; if not having to learn a new interface is a priority for you, its interface is pretty much frozen in carbonite, so if you used it in 1992 (I did!) you can use it today. It has all those features that FCP X doesn't. If you're a single-editor shop and you've got $2500 (or even $995) in your software budget --- just buy MC and be on your way. If you don't know how to use MC, now would be a good time to invest in learning it (there is a 30-day free trial of MC, which is not an option with FCP X). It's a great program. Option two is Adobe's Premiere. I'm of two minds about Premiere. Don't let me stop you from buying it (or trying it), but if you weren't using it yesterday, why was that? Did it suddenly get better than FCP 7 overnight? I think that Adobe is in kind of a bind with that program. For years the Premiere market mainstay has been hobbyists. As a result, even though I think Adobe really want to make it a professional product, there are places where they are afraid to change it because they think their installed base will rebel -- just like Apple's just did. So Premiere, for me at this point, is a prosumer program with some professional features tacked on, even though Adobe is making a full-court press to convince FCP users to give it a try. [Premiere does have native support for RED and many other formats that FCP X lacks, and if it's bought as part of the Production Premium bundle you get the advantage of dynamic linking with After Effects straight from the timeline. Premiere also will roundtrip import/export (or at least try to) your FCP 7 projects so you can choose the editor that works best for what you're doing; FCP X will not. –Ed.] It's worth mentioning again: both Avid MC and Adobe Premiere allow 30-day trials of the application, which is crucial for effective evaluation and figuring out if the app works the way you want to work, rather than you having to change gears to work the way it thinks you ought to. Final Cut Pro X's price point of $299 is a big improvement over the FCP 7 pricing, but it would be even better with a 30-day trial in the mix; better still if FCP 7 remained available through the transition period, instead of dropping off the price list like a hot potato. Other than standing pat for the next six months to see how FCP X evolves, the remaining option is to give FCP X a chance. Start learning it now, on the understanding that Apple will probably make big changes. Plus, even if you decide in a year that it's not the right solution for you, if you're truly a professional, it's likely that at some point somebody will ask you to use it or teach it or something, so you might as well start at least considering it now. Professional film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Three: Media Management
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Today, we discuss media management in FCP X, or the complete lack thereof. So far this is the most frustrating thing about this program. Like many FCP X features, it's designed to keep you from screwing up, and as a result will no doubt screw you up royally. First: understand that what we've been calling a "Project," FCP X calls an "Event." You make a new Event, import footage into it, organize footage within it, and try not to think about slowly aging aliens being held captive in Alaska on a really stupid TV show. I guess we all failed that one. FCP X also makes a corresponding Event folder on your internal drive [or on any other drive you have connected –Ed.]. If you like, when you import files you can tell it to copy them there. The nice thing about this is that it will happily let you start editing and do the copying in the background, and the transcoding as well if necessary. Now, my first thought was, wow! That's awesome! But I have to admit my next thought was, damn! There goes my last coffee break excuse! The trouble here is that you have no real control over where this Event folder is. It seems to always go to your username>Movies>Final Cut Events on your internal drive, which of course is a horrible place for your media. It's like Avid, except that on Avid at least you could choose what freaking drive to put everything on. Here you don't even seem to have that. [Matt's first impression here was incorrect. It is possible to import media directly to an Event on any attached drive, to move Events with drag and drop in the library, or use the File menu's Move command to move the Project and the Events together. FCP X's media management approach is so different from FCP 7 that many pro editors, like Matt, are not sure where to begin. –Ed.] So you might think, okay, I'll just tell FCP X not to move my media to the Events folder, I'll organize it myself. Except if you have to transcode it (think XDCAM), or render it, all those files will go there automatically. How annoying is that? As it turns out, not nearly as annoying as this: move or rename a media file, and it's lost forever. FCP X has no Reconnect Media command. That's right, one of the things you hated most about Avid has now been adopted by Apple. And it's worse than that: modify the file externally and FCP X won't be able to find it! Yes, folks, bring a file into After Effects, add some zip zap zoom, save it back to the exact same location with the same filename and your super-advanced editing system will pretend it's offline! Now for some sort of good news. There has been a lot of press about how you can't move projects around. This doesn't seem to be true. You can create a Project (which is what we've all been calling a Sequence), select the project, choose File>Duplicate Project, and have FCP X copy the entire project and its associated Event (meaning all its associated clips) to another drive. I did this successfully. [You can also simply move the Project + Events, rather than creating a Duplicate project. –Ed.] In fact -- bonus -- it does this in the background too. So you can keep editing while it moves your files anywhere in the universe! And if you do that, then your Event and Project get to be on whatever drive you want. If you transcode or render anything, those files will go to that drive. So it seems to me that as a workaround we might want to do something like create an Event, import one file, create a Project, duplicate it to the proper drive, and then import the rest of the footage. It seems to me that this would totally work for networked editing, because FCP X will find all Events and Projects on any drives connected to the system (without even rebooting, thank you). So there's a big plus. One thing that really worries me about this whole Event/Project thing is that the terminology itself seems pretty revealing. Apple says this is a professional product, but the terminology is clearly from iMovie and so are the keyboard shortcuts. Doesn't that say that it's more important that iMovie users feel comfortable with this product than FCP 7 users? Tomorrow, for the Fourth of July -- the fourth installment in this series: trimming. I think you guys are going to like most of what you hear on that subject. Stay tuned. Professional film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and that any misconceptions or misunderstandings of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Two: Learning the Ropes
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Since my traumatic first day, I've been cutting a small project in FCP X. It's growing on me in some ways and driving me bonkers in others. The good news is that, unlike last night, I don't think I'll wake up tonight with night sweats after having feverish nightmares about my editing software. Basic editing is not that different. I kind of like the new "skimmer," which is kind of like a second playhead, and you can make a three-point edit just like you used to. I need to get re-accustomed to some basic functions here. For instance, you can "overwrite," "overwrite just audio," and "overwrite just video." That could be a plus, because frankly, patching is a pain in FCP 7 and doing it from the keyboard was always awkward. The trick is that I only found those last two commands when I tried to reprogram my keyboard, because they're not on any menu and I couldn't find them in the docs. So I suspect there's a lot of things that are in the program, but to use them you'll have to reprogram your keyboard. I took a couple of minutes and reprogrammed as much of my keyboard as possible to vaguely resemble FCP 7. I found a lot of things that I thought weren't there: the scopes, for instance. I've never been so happy to see a waveform monitor! I have to say that the magnetic timeline's "primary storyline/connected storyline" paradigm just does not work for me yet. The concept is this: think of a documentary. The interviews are your "primary storyline," and the music, titles, and B-roll are your "connected storylines." In theory this is very cool, because a particular piece of B-roll is "connected" to a particular piece of interview in a particular place, and you can reorganize the interviews and the associated B-roll comes with them. In practice it's really annoying. It assumes that you always have a block of footage that starts and ends with a cut-in video and audio simultaneously, which I actually almost never do. If you use a B-roll clip to "bridge" two interview clips, is this clip connected to the end of the A clip or the beginning of the B clip? What about the music? If I connect it to the first clip in a montage, and then I decide I want to swap the clips around, the music winds up in the wrong place. Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it. Right now I feel like I'm dragging a lot of things around in a really imprecise way and it makes me uncomfortable to feel like the project is more or less what I want rather than exactly spot-on. The magnetic timeline also irritates me because I'm a strong proponent of track discipline. If I put something on V2, it's there for a reason. But in the magnetic timeline, items on subordinate tracks just jump up and down all over the place. Your music might be towards the top here and towards the bottom there. I suspect that in a complicated project, it will become impossible to find a given element. Something I really like: auditions. You can put a clip in the timeline, and then put an alternate clip in the same place. Then you can swap out your "picks" very easily. Imagine having two very different reaction shots on take 2 and take 3, or two voiceover reads, and being able to have them both in the timeline simultaneously. That could be very useful in session with an indecisive client. Something I despise: the loss of Reconnect Media. Not having that on Avid was one of the worst things about it, and losing it on FCP hurts. A file suddenly went offline for no reason -- I hadn't moved it -- and I was just hosed. That sucks. Professional film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and that any misconceptions or misunderstandings of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed. Part III coming up: more on media management.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day One: Completely at Sea
Professional film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco, produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. [Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and that any misconceptions or misunderstandings of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed.] So I really, really did not believe that FCP X would be "iMovie Pro." But I have to say, my friends, I was far too optimistic. Apple has thrown us squarely under the bus. Somebody at Apple decided that making professional editors happy was just too damn much trouble, and that a much simpler program would allow them to fire 80% of the engineers and lose only 10% of the customers. If you thought no multicam was the problem, you're thinking way too far ahead for this program. How about no split edits? No roll? No subclip? There is, in fact, a way to mark a perfectly good in and out point, contrary to rumor. But what if I told you that you could change the speed of a clip to 50% or 25%, but not anything in between? Heck, I can't even find a way to do an overwrite edit. [As noted by commenters and by ScreenCastsOnline producer Don McAllister, both overwrite edits and intermediate speed adjustments are in fact included in FCP X -- as Matt acknowledges below, citing the challenge of working through FCP X's documentation. Keep in mind that this series is documenting Matt's opinions and reactions over the course of several days, and that first impressions can be incorrect and revised over time. –Ed.] I should confess at this point that I've never used iMovie. I've been editing for twenty years, on linear systems, and then Avid, and then Final Cut. But I'm guessing that if I were a regular iMovie user, I wouldn't feel so awfully lost in this program. It turns out, of course, that all of these basic features are in the program, but the documentation isn't very well written. You'd think that if they were going to radically change the way we edit, they'd throw us a lifeline and walk us through it. In fact, when I looked up split edit, it proposed a really Byzantine five-step process involving a ripple trim. It only takes three with a rolling trim. Of course, in FCP 7 it only took one step. That's not promising. My intention was to take this project I have coming up that has very little deadline pressure, it's only two minutes long, it's not that complicated. I thought I'd do that in FCP X and that way I'd learn where the gotchas were and where this program's limitations were. Now I doubt we're going to get that far. I don't think that I could cut the simplest project I've done in the last ten years on this program. Not because it would take too long, as bad as that would be, but because it is simply not possible. There's definitely going to be a revolution in post-production, dudes. It's the one where the masses pull Apple off the throne and cut its throat. I'll keep reading the docs and playing around. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and realize this was all a really bad dream, and actually it's as brilliant as an iPod. But don't hold your breath! Part II coming up... Learning the Ropes.
Adobe lures unhappy Final Cut Pro X users with half-price video editing tools
To say the latest version of Final Cut Pro wasn't well received, would be a major understatement. Well, Adobe hasn't wasted any time taking advantage of consumer discontent, and is now offering dissatisfied users of Apple's video editing software a 50 percent discount to make the switch to its alternatives, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and CS5.5 Production Premium. If you're not feeling the latest iteration (or any version) of Final Cut Pro or Avid's Media Composer, the offer stands through September 30th. And here we thought Apple and Adobe had buried the hatchet. Full PR after the break.
Adobe's new "switcher" campaign targets frustrated Final Cut Pro users with 50% off
Adobe didn't waste anytime trying to capitalize on customer dissatisfaction with Apple's new Final Cut Pro X. Professional users are unhappy with the lack of Pro features like multiple camera support in the latest version of Apple's video editing software. In response, Adobe has kicked off a new "switcher" campaign that highlights ten reasons why the professional video editor should switch to Adobe Premiere Pro CS. It's also offering a whopping 50% off on Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium or Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 for those who own Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer. The media software giant is throwing down the gauntlet and aiming straight for those unhappy Apple customers. Anyone out there going to give in and switch to Adobe?
Apple posts Final Cut Pro X FAQ following backlash, promises multicamera support and other updates
Though Apple took to the pages of The New York Times last week to respond to a chorus of criticism about Final Cut Pro X, it's clear the company is going to have to go a little further in assuaging videographers who were alarmed to learn that the built-from-the-ground-up software omits certain key features found in Final Cut Pro 7. The outfit has posted an FAQ page on its site, which answers oft-repeated questions, yes, but also reassures users that some -- but not all -- of these features are on the way. Specifically, Apple promised that multicamera editing is coming as part of the "next major release" and that XML exporting is on the agenda, too. Additionally, volume licensing for orders of 20 or more will be available "soon," while an update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize audio tracks by type and then export them from Final Cut Pro X. Still, you're going to have to get used to the fact that you can't import old FCP files without data loss-- and don't expect updates for tape-based editing, either. As always, hit that source link for the full spill.
Apple posts Final Cut Pro X FAQ
In what seems to be an attempt to address the widespread controversy over the recent release of Final Cut Pro X, Apple has posted a FAQ on its site to address some of the concerns that have been raised thus far. Designed to answer the biggest questions that professional editors have raised over Final Cut Pro X, Apple has given very few straightforward "no" answers to questions regarding the video production suite's "missing" features. One of the few "no" answers regards importing projects from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X. Apple claims the change in product architecture prevents "translating" projects from the old format into the new one. Many other answers either explain how to accomplish tasks that may have confused users accustomed to the old interface. A fair number of the FAQ's points address questions by saying, "Not yet." As an example, professional editors have been up in arms over Final Cut Pro X's inability to support multicam editing, but Apple says support for this feature is coming "in the next major release." XML exporting will also be offered soon; Apple will release APIs "in the next few weeks" that will allow third-party developers access to the new XML in Final Cut Pro X. Final Cut Pro X has been one of the most controversial Apple software products in recent memory. It's unclear at this early stage if this FAQ goes far enough in addressing the concerns of the "pro" community to which the suite is supposedly targeted, but it's at least obvious that Apple is aware of users' concerns and working toward addressing some of them in future updates.
Evidence of XML importer found within Final Cut Pro X
There's been a lot of hemming and hawing about Final Cut Pro X since its release. But now here's at least a little good news: a reference to XML importing has been spotted inside the software by Brazilian site MacMagazine. MacMagazine found the code reference as seen above, and they were able to run the function and get a bare-bones bit of placeholder code for an XML importer. It looks like Apple either planned to include an XML importer at some point or will be including one in the future. Apple's already promised an update to the XML workflow, so maybe this was implemented but then reserved for a future revamp. This shows that someone at Apple is thinking about these issues, both during the development of Final Cut Pro X and today. That's probably not a lot of solace to editors who still have issues with the new software, but hopefully Apple will justify all of the changes soon, either with updates to the app that restore functionality, or by introducing replacements for any workflow problems editors are having. [via MacRumors]
Apple product managers respond to Final Cut Pro X criticism
During our call to discuss Final Cut Pro X earlier this week, an Apple product manager boasted about the product's low price, media management, and ground-up redesign. Unfortunately, when starting from scratch, developers seem to have overlooked a few features that professional users have come to depend on, prompting widespread backlash -- both on internet forums and even on Apple's own App Store, where the $300 download-only app currently has a rating of just 2.5 stars (out of five), including nearly 500 one-star ratings. (Note: you must purchase the app before submitting a rating or review.) The New York Times spoke to product managers about these issues, which include an inability to import old FCP files, no multicamera editing, no support for RED cameras, and no ability to specify QuickTime export settings, among many others. Apple says there are (pricey) workarounds available, or fixes on the way for all but the first issue, but head over to the source link for the full rundown at NYT.
