Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Releases Major Final Cut Pro X Update with Dual Viewers, Multichannel Audio Tools, RED Camera Support and More
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The issue isn't that Apple is incapable; it is that they simply aren't willing to allocate the necessary resources to ensure the needs of professionals are met in a timely and reliable manner. All that revenue and still a year later FCP X has yet to match the scope of FCP 7.
Those who have already made the switch to Avid Media/Adobe aren't coming back to the FCP fold. As was previously pointed out: too little, too late.
Perception is reality and here is what professional editors see:
Avid's bread and butter is from the professional market. The needs of professionals are their priority.
Adobe's bread and butter is from the professional market. The needs of professionals are their priority.
Apple's bread and butter is now from the consumer market. Professionals are NOT their priority - they are only a proxy revenue stream.
Why on Earth, would medium and large companies, some of which have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, be willing to hold their workflow hostage to a company that regards some 14-year old punk kid shuffling his feet to dubstep via the iPod attached to his hip as their future?
Sheer madness!
Those who have already made the switch to Avid Media/Adobe aren't coming back to the FCP fold. As was previously pointed out: too little, too late.
Perception is reality and here is what professional editors see:
Avid's bread and butter is from the professional market. The needs of professionals are their priority.
Adobe's bread and butter is from the professional market. The needs of professionals are their priority.
Apple's bread and butter is now from the consumer market. Professionals are NOT their priority - they are only a proxy revenue stream.
Why on Earth, would medium and large companies, some of which have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, be willing to hold their workflow hostage to a company that regards some 14-year old punk kid shuffling his feet to dubstep via the iPod attached to his hip as their future?
Sheer madness!
Anyone else get a security certificate popup on the first link? Odd it's on Apple's own site.
Sorry way off topic. So to get on topic
FCPX sucks!!
FCPX rules!!!
Last edited by a moderator:
Since nobody replied so far:
The recently updated iMac will handle FCPX more than well. On the other hand, not every iMac available is worth buying. The 21.5in suffers from a very slow HDD (in that case grab a fusion drive with the 2.9ghz CPU if you can afford it - otherwise I wouldn't bother with 21.5 in and pretty much any iMac at all) and you can't upgrade RAM yourself.
If you have the money - get the maxed-out high-end version of the 27in. The screen is gorgeous, it has a very nice CPU, upgradable RAM, and a pretty good GPU (iMacs unfortunately have mobile graphic chips but GTX 680mx at least is arguably the best mobile GPU on the market). If you grab either a fusion drive or a regular SSD module the whole thing will be really fast in every way.
The basic 27in is still ok - SSD isn't generally a must and the 2.9ghz i5 is a good CPU but the whole thing seriously falls behind in terms of GPU performance. GTX 650m is not at all weak but Apple has a strange strategy of using GPUs with low RAM numbers - why on earth does rMBP has a 1GB version of 650m and iMac only has 512MB?? Memory isn't the most important thing about graphic cards but Adobe for example requires GPUs with at least 1GB of memory to support CUDA or OpenCL acceleration in their Creative Suite apps. I know you want to use FCPX but if you planned on using Adobe software in the future, the GPU in the high-end iMac would give you a huge performance boost in some important tasks there.
You have been able to export separate audio tracks since 10.0.2 I think
X2Pro works very well for sending to Protools.
Roles (which is the way you tag an items use) is really powerful and allows you to create various output options. So creating a file with say a full mix, international, an M&E and just music is very straight forward.
You realize this is exactly what the Pro's said about Final Cut 1.0 when it was first released? The product matured over a number of years. Time will tell, but the same can happen for FCP X.
And you need to stop stating your opinion as fact. FCP X is not a good interface for you. Believe it or not, you are not the judge for the entire installed base of editors...
Want to talk about dead? Check Avid's revenues and profits (or lack thereof).
Wow... I initially agreed with you, but you sound like such a stuck-up **** that I don't even care. People earn a living at all different levels of the industry. I used to do movie score work for major studio films, and left that to work on indie stuff- on purpose, because the big budget lifestyle and people suck to be around. Thanks for reminding me of that and confirming the decision I made.What have you done in your life that constitutes as a whole a contribution to the filmmaking community? Are you doing skateboarding videos? Church recitals? Weddings? That's fine, stick to FCP X.
Let the people who do this for a living decide if it's good or not.
Apple is trying to reinvent the wheel here, when the wheel has been perfectly fine for a long long time (think late 80's).
If they wanted to reinvent something, they should have just taken FCP 7 and rewritten in from the ground up, gave it a better looking GUI and kept most, if not all the features.
They can reinvent the phone market, tablet market, but they cannot reinvent the creative market that is already fairly standardized. It's their loss, really. Also the lack of Mac Pro updates says a lot about Apple's stance in the ever diminishing professional market.
I still love my Macs, I would never use windows.
----------
That's fine, do what you do in your corporate banking videos, but don't try to dictate what happens in the high end industry, which FCP 7 was highly appraised for being affordable and feature rich.
I have used it, I dislike the bin structure and the "magnetic" playhead. It's a horrible piece of application.
Sure it's fast, but that doesn't mean anything.
FCP comes from Macromedia, and we all know how horrible their code base was. Including Flash and Director. Yes, FCP 1-4 sucked (still usable), but FCP 7 was fine as it was.
Apple also bought then dumped Shake, a very good piece of application. Let's not forget that.
Please. Stick to your corporate and banking videos. No one in this forum knows what they're talking about when it comes to the professional market. No one has credentials here. Same goes for the photography area of this site as well as the design area.
P.S. Ben Hur was not cut digitally
The "high end industry" are the heavy users of FCP 7? Really? And this high-end industry picked FCP because it was affordable? Interesting.
other opinions aside, apple missed the boat with me.
I tried FCX and it just wasn't up to snuff for my workflow. I understand the magnetic timeline, but it doesn't mean I don't find it pointless. The lack of being able to drop a motion 5 project into a timeline really put me off, it seems like the most basic idea that they forgot there. I know about motion templates but I don't want 100's of 1 or 2 time use templates for random jobs cluttering up my interface just to get that integration. tools for keyframing weren't all there(it was missing easing when I tried), layering with effects didn't work right (can't remember exactly, I think it was adjustment layer blurs effecting layers improperly). The background rendering had me laughing, it only does it when you leave everything alone aren't working, basically it is just hitting command-R for you when nothing is going on-big whoop. Cuda supported real time mercury engine playback with CS6 is lightyears ahead of FCX's render system.
Mostly my gripe is we were all expecting native format support, most formats still need to be wrapped or converted on ingest, working with premiere now that will take pretty much anything native it just seems so backwards to have to do all that conversion and double up on storage.
I'm not in a large city so I don't meet tons of new people in the industry, but everyone I have met that has anything to say about FCX never says anything good & doesn't know anyone really using it as a daily editor.
The one person in town I know who bought it has primarily an audio background & bought it to support his AV work, and even he was disappointed in the whole thought process of using it, he was hoping it would be more like FC7.
I tried FCX and it just wasn't up to snuff for my workflow. I understand the magnetic timeline, but it doesn't mean I don't find it pointless. The lack of being able to drop a motion 5 project into a timeline really put me off, it seems like the most basic idea that they forgot there. I know about motion templates but I don't want 100's of 1 or 2 time use templates for random jobs cluttering up my interface just to get that integration. tools for keyframing weren't all there(it was missing easing when I tried), layering with effects didn't work right (can't remember exactly, I think it was adjustment layer blurs effecting layers improperly). The background rendering had me laughing, it only does it when you leave everything alone aren't working, basically it is just hitting command-R for you when nothing is going on-big whoop. Cuda supported real time mercury engine playback with CS6 is lightyears ahead of FCX's render system.
Mostly my gripe is we were all expecting native format support, most formats still need to be wrapped or converted on ingest, working with premiere now that will take pretty much anything native it just seems so backwards to have to do all that conversion and double up on storage.
I'm not in a large city so I don't meet tons of new people in the industry, but everyone I have met that has anything to say about FCX never says anything good & doesn't know anyone really using it as a daily editor.
The one person in town I know who bought it has primarily an audio background & bought it to support his AV work, and even he was disappointed in the whole thought process of using it, he was hoping it would be more like FC7.
fcp.co is reporting that FCP X 10.0.6 render times are up 3200%.. I haven't put it to the test yet...
The new support for RED is meant to be great, but the support for Phantom is reckoned to be the best on any platform.
Native MXF support comes from plugins from Hamburg Pro Media and Calibrated software.
10.0.6 is a different animal to 10.0.1, if you interested was peeked by the first version but found it lacking in some ways, I would seriously recommend a revisit.
Did a few quick tests. While not scientific, background rendering on the timeline does seem faster. Not as fast as the FCP.CO tests as the specs on my machine were probably considerably lower.
I'm aware that FCPX will allow assets and video to reside on a network volume, but it's important to our workflow that the project files reside within the project folder, and I have a difficult time imagining a work environment where editors would tolerate physically switching rooms every time an edit had to change hands. Without being able to open a project file from another editor's suite, over Ethernet, Final Cut Pro X just isn't an option for us.
Edit software that insists your project files reside on a local drive, and requires flooding your drives with background-transcoded footage in order to work properly, is just not a realistic option for anyone I know who isn't a one-man shop.
Finally, A FCPX I can be happy about!
I was frustrated with the first release, and the same with 10.0.2, 10.0.3, 10.0.4, and 10.0.5. I can finally say I am happy with FCPX, 10.0.6. Why? I feel Apple actually listened to my feedback, and I should claim royalties for all the things they put in it that I suggested (not that I was the only one). ;-)
What upgrades I am happy with the most:
Dual Viewers.
Chapter Markers.
Memorized In/Out points for clips in Event Browser and Import Browser.
Lift and Paste Tool, similar to Aperture Lift Tool.
Playhead remains in place when selecting a clip and skimming is Turned Off.
Blade All (Shift-B).
Removing the Animation Tab and making it a short-cut.
I still want the following:
Audio Crossfade Shortcuts/Favorites.
Video Transition Shortcuts/Favorites.
Project Library or Independent Projects saved in Finder Folders.
Project Sequences (Currently using Compound Clips as a makeshift Sequence).
Option to edit sequence with tracks or magnetic storyline.
Mark used clips in Event Browser, Clip view with (Color) and List View with (Checked Column).
Color Correct multiple selected clips at the same time.
White Balance Eye-Dropper tool.
Timed Auto-Save preferences and Versions.
Tab View for open projects.
Blu-Ray/DVD Studio Pro X!!!
I was frustrated with the first release, and the same with 10.0.2, 10.0.3, 10.0.4, and 10.0.5. I can finally say I am happy with FCPX, 10.0.6. Why? I feel Apple actually listened to my feedback, and I should claim royalties for all the things they put in it that I suggested (not that I was the only one). ;-)
What upgrades I am happy with the most:
Dual Viewers.
Chapter Markers.
Memorized In/Out points for clips in Event Browser and Import Browser.
Lift and Paste Tool, similar to Aperture Lift Tool.
Playhead remains in place when selecting a clip and skimming is Turned Off.
Blade All (Shift-B).
Removing the Animation Tab and making it a short-cut.
I still want the following:
Audio Crossfade Shortcuts/Favorites.
Video Transition Shortcuts/Favorites.
Project Library or Independent Projects saved in Finder Folders.
Project Sequences (Currently using Compound Clips as a makeshift Sequence).
Option to edit sequence with tracks or magnetic storyline.
Mark used clips in Event Browser, Clip view with (Color) and List View with (Checked Column).
Color Correct multiple selected clips at the same time.
White Balance Eye-Dropper tool.
Timed Auto-Save preferences and Versions.
Tab View for open projects.
Blu-Ray/DVD Studio Pro X!!!
If its any help...
http://images.apple.com/finalcutpro/docs/Final_Cut_Pro_X_Xsan_Best_Practices.pdf
I know what you mean about control of project files. What you have to ask yourself is:
1) Do you like/prefer editing on FCP X?
2) Will it speed up your editing?
If the answer to either is yes, then you have to ask yourself Q3:
3) Can you adapt your workflow to incorporate FCP X? or more importantly
4) Is you workflow out of date and is it time to change.
Well, when you state the CREATIVE market cannot be reinvented... the only thing that crosses my mind is "if the creative one cannot be reinvented, what would that mean to the 'uncreative' one's?"
No one in this forum knows what they're talking about when it comes to the professional market. No one has credentials here. Same goes for the photography area of this site as well as the design area.
P.S. Ben Hur was not cut digitally
So I guess you are a professional in the filmmaking, the photography AND the design markets no? You must be a really really good and important designer... maybe one that does photography AND film? maybe even all on the same project, who knows? That would be really impressive...
it must entitle you to loads and loads of "credentials"
Stop arguing about pseudo-"pros", and "creative" markets for that matter... wtf is a creative market? And wtf is a "professional"? My mother cleans houses for a living.... doesn't that make her a "professional"?
Because it really is here "profession" you know... the word from witch "professional" comes from...
Just be glad that FCPX suits someone's needs and that Avid or iMovie or whatever you like suits your own needs! It doesn't even matter if someone makes money from the use they give to the software...specially if you take into account that FCPX costs a (really small) fraction of the other pieces of software you seem to have deep praise for.
If by "organization" you mean organizing your footage in the app, it's like saying that the Finder is better than aperture at organizing photos. In FPC 7, you can just make folders and suborders. In FPC X, you can use range-based keywords, smart collections based on metadata, batch edit files properties (including names) based on rules...This is an aspect on which FCP X is head and shoulders above FCP7 and it clearly doesn't support your argument that FCPX is fundamentally unprofessional.
I suppose were confused by the fact that events correspond to shooting days by default and that you didn't care too look past that.
Share Menu Problems
I've been working with FCPX for a few months now. I finally got used to the Share menu and Export options and then I updated to 10.0.6.
Now I'm trying to export a video at a very low resolution and having a really hard time at it. I've spent most of my day searching for solutions both here and everywhere else.
I don't want to share to YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook. I want to export a low res (1.5 hour video) to less than 1GB to my desktop. Preferably a fairly universal codec.
Any recommendations on how I can customize an export?
So far I've tried exporting H.264 (where I can't customize the resolution) and with the format of Apple Devices with 854 x 480 resolution, but I'm not satisfied with my options here.
Thanks!
I've been working with FCPX for a few months now. I finally got used to the Share menu and Export options and then I updated to 10.0.6.
Now I'm trying to export a video at a very low resolution and having a really hard time at it. I've spent most of my day searching for solutions both here and everywhere else.
I don't want to share to YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook. I want to export a low res (1.5 hour video) to less than 1GB to my desktop. Preferably a fairly universal codec.
Any recommendations on how I can customize an export?
So far I've tried exporting H.264 (where I can't customize the resolution) and with the format of Apple Devices with 854 x 480 resolution, but I'm not satisfied with my options here.
Thanks!
i've noticed the exporting feature is different in this update. i can't see the progress anymore