Early Final Cut Pro X Response Mixed, Updates Coming

[samcraig]

Wow this thread is long
Cant wait till its longer than that stupid "BluRay" one
Its day two folks and so far so good with FCPX.
Did it replace our Avid suite at work? No.
Did it kill any of our past FCP projects at work/home? No.
Did it steal your gf/bf from under your noses while you were sleeping...
Well actually it did for me, I was up pretty late playing with some GoProHD clips from my last skate sesh

Speaking of GoPro

I often shoot on r3 - it's 720p but 60 frames per second so less of that "jello" look.

How is FCPX with r5 (1080p/30 fps) - I'm thinking the rolling shutter fix might help? Have you tried?

Also - FCP doesn't import r3 files natively. Does FCPX?

 

[AnotherVenue]

FCP has been in development for years, and FCPX just came out. Makes sense its not quite up to snuff yet.

 

[samcraig]

They must do that. The only info about the missing feature set of Final Cut came from people under NDA and they couldn't specify exactly what was missing, due to NDA, and only said "it'll be missing some important stuff".

And it seemed like even though those articles were posted on macrumors page 1, many seemed to have missed them and purchased this app thinking that it'll work.

This is a very bad move for Apple, not informing people about stuff as important as "this doesn't open FCP 7 projects".

Agreed. Communication is probably Apple's biggest faux pas here. And the longer they delay detailing their roadmap - the worse their reviews will be on the app store.

 

[nostromo77]

The only thing this will do is drive people back to Adobe for being more unified in their apps and thus dumping Apple.

I liked FCP but Adobe's apps are not bad so I think I'll give them a shot now... at least we won't have issues with such things as we are having now..

This sounds more like FCE than FCP...

 

[Aiwaz418]

The only thing this will do is drive people back to Adobe for being more unified in their apps and thus dumping Apple.

I liked FCP but Adobe's apps are not bad so I think I'll give them a shot now... at least we won't have issues with such things as we are having now..

This sounds more like FCE than FCP...

Highly doubtful, at least not professional editors - premier is still a clunky joke. If FCP users jump ship, it will be to Avid, but I don't see that happening for some time since FCP7 is still perfectly viable.

Hopefully Apple will get it together, come clean about their mistakes, and fix this Frankensteinian disaster of a software.

 

[olternaut]

Then this is a beta

So in other words, this is a beta.

Gawd, sorta reminds me of the mobileme launch.

 

[handsome pete]

- premier is still a clunky joke.

Have you even used it? Recently? Enough to even come to that conclusion?


I can see people preferring others to it, but calling it a "clunky joke" is just hyperbole. I've been using FCP pretty much exclusively for the past 10 years, but I've done my fair share of projects in Avid and Premiere. Premiere is a worthy competitor and has gained traction in the "pro" circles. I think to ignore it is ignorant.

 

[NorPro]

Dvd

I still have a lot of clients who require DVD's for training and outreach programs. I have seen nothing about this anywhere.

What happened to DVD Studio Pro? If its gone then this is an app for consumers with extra cash.

 

[Aiwaz418]

Have you even used it? Recently? Enough to even come to that conclusion?


I can see people preferring others to it, but calling it a "clunky joke" is just hyperbole. I've been using FCP pretty much exclusively for the past 10 years, but I've done my fair share of projects in Avid and Premiere. Premiere is a worthy competitor and has gained traction in the "pro" circles. I think to ignore it is ignorant.

Yes, I tried it last year after installing CS5, and absolutely despised it. I also had a friend who is not an editor cut an animation project with Premiere only to be completely unable to render the final output at deadline due to the failure of the software. Thankfully, he was able to export an EDL and have the project finished in FCP.

 

[Shagrat]

So you're happy to wait 6 months, except that you're not happy to wait 6 months.

Got it.

Excellent that just about sums up a lot of the posts here.

Such as all the.. "OMG! It trashes my FCP7" posts.

Except that it didn't

As a rank amateur in the Editing world (note that I admit this, but I wonder how many posters here are actually "armchair" editors?) i have bought this with the sole idea of tinkering with it, and maybe learning a thing or two.
Will instead hang about on the COW website and see what's happening over there. At least a reasonable proportion of people there are actually Pro editors and seem to know what they are talking about.

Like others have said, if you are a Pro, then you would NEVER install a completely new version without giving it a good tryout beforehand, and would certainly never do this on a machine you use to make your living.

My guess is that it is the imminent release of Lion that has sort of forced Apple's hand here. I'll bet that the old FCP codebase probably would have rqeuired so much rewriting to make it run on Lion, that their approach would have to be re-write from scratch.

So PROBABLY ( i stress the word!) either Lion would have to wait, or FCP8 would have required so much tinkering, it wasn't worth it.

I'll bet the updates to FCPX wil come thick and fast, especially once Lion gets pushed out.

Yep there's always some pain when you have to let go of old things that are familiar.

But i'll tell you one thing...I can't wait to remind people about this thread in about a years time, when everybody will have forgotten this!

 

[lcdbot27]

Someone mentioned there being a restriction, but I wanted clarification:
Is it possible to create custom sequence sizes in FCPX?

If they got rid of that function, it is absolute dealbreaker for us, as we edit for web and have to conform to a lot of non-standard sizes as dictated by our IA designers.

 

[hugodrax]

Multicam is huge in the porn industry. It's especially used for when switching seamlessly to the stunt c*** during the climax scenes.

 

[Shagrat]

...
This is a very bad move for Apple, not informing people about stuff as important as "this doesn't open FCP 7 projects".

What intrigues me, is that having seen the demo earlier in the year, and realising how radical a change FCPX was going to be, did anyone (at least anyone who actually edits for a living!) seriously beleive that there was going to ba a simple "Open FCP7 project..." button?

 

[mactree]

It's called Final Cut Pro, not 'soon to be' Final Cut Pro. Why would we expect to be enrolled in a $300 beta program? Apple just needed to be forthcoming about what was missing before releasing it with the same name of a product that has actual Pro features. that's it. Had they done that, there would be far less upset people. But instead they chose to remain silent and cash in on the early adopters.

 

[samcraig]

Like others have said, if you are a Pro, then you would NEVER install a completely new version without giving it a good tryout beforehand, and would certainly never do this on a machine you use to make your living.

If you're posting this - you've missed the point of many of the professional's gripes. Not one of the professionals has said that they can't use FCP7 OR that they expected to switch over immediately to FCPX. What they (and I) have said and legitimately complained about is that Apple has not communicated what features were included/excluded nor any time line. They've released this product into the wild and people are naturally going to review it as is.

Giving it a good try is what some people have done - and they found it lacking. But since there's no trial - that means they've spend $300-$400 on something that is of little use to them other than to educate themselves on the new UI until they can actually WORK with it.

I don't think there's a single professional editor that expected perfection nor would they think that on day 1 - they would install and abandon all previous versions. To suggest or even reference such is ridiculous.

 

[iBug2]

What intrigues me, is that having seen the demo earlier in the year, and realising how radical a change FCPX was going to be, did anyone (at least anyone who actually edits for a living!) seriously beleive that there was going to ba a simple "Open FCP7 project..." button?

I've watched the demo, and also watched the other discussions about FCP X so far, and none of them implied that opening FCP7 wasn't in.

If you remember, in the demo, Randy actually showed us a project and how it looked like on FCP 7 and how the "same" project looked like in FCP X.

Now that kind of demonstration seems to imply that same project was opened in both apps.

Now one wonders if Apple actually recreated the same project in both apps, for that demo only.

 

[mactree]

What intrigues me, is that having seen the demo earlier in the year, and realising how radical a change FCPX was going to be, did anyone (at least anyone who actually edits for a living!) seriously beleive that there was going to ba a simple "Open FCP7 project..." button?

I'll raise my hand. Why wouldn't there be?

 

[iBug2]

It's called Final Cut Pro, not 'soon to be' Final Cut Pro. Why would we expect to be enrolled in a $300 beta program? Apple just needed to be forthcoming about what was missing before releasing it with the same name of a product that has actual Pro features. that's it. Had they done that, there would be far less upset people. But instead they chose to remain silent and cash in on the early adopters.

Yes but it's not a 300$ beta program. This program is usable for many professionals out there on day one, and not usable for many others.

 

[samcraig]

I've watched the demo, and also watched the other discussions about FCP X so far, and none of them implied that opening FCP7 wasn't in.

If you remember, in the demo, Randy actually showed us a project and how it looked like on FCP 7 and how the "same" project looked like in FCP X.

Now that kind of demonstration seems to imply that same project was opened in both apps.

Now one wonders if Apple actually recreated the same project in both apps, for that demo only.

Exactly. Whether it's a simple "import" or "open as" or whatever menu item it would have been - that's what WAS expected. Even if it imported but some features were broken since they were different programs altogether would have been "acceptable" - not preferable. But to not be able to import from the previous version without warning was a grave mistake.

They have beautiful pages created on the Apple website for the software. Don't you think "Files created in previous versions are not supported" could have been added to the spec pages? I think so.

 

[mactree]

Yes but it's not a 300$ beta program. This program is usable for many professionals out there on day one, and not usable for many others.

Without a doubt that's true.

 

[handsome pete]

What intrigues me, is that having seen the demo earlier in the year, and realising how radical a change FCPX was going to be, did anyone (at least anyone who actually edits for a living!) seriously beleive that there was going to ba a simple "Open FCP7 project..." button?

No, but I think it was reasonable to assume there would be some migration tool/utility.

Regardless, this release is missing some of the basics, at least for something being marketed as a "pro" tool. It's that simple. I don't think anyone expected to just be able to switch from FCP7 to FCPX overnight. Anyone who's spent any time in this business knows that is foolish. But the omissions in this version have led a lot of longtime users to seriously doubt the company's commitment to their future. That seems to be where most of the negativity stems from. Apple has burned up a lot of goodwill with these customers. Hopefully they'll get that back, but only a timely update and some kind idea of their plans will do that.

Here is a good summation of things:

http://podcasts.creativecow.net/final-cut-studio-podcast/why-we-cant-use-final-cut-pro-x-at-our-companies

 

[H. Flower]

Yes but it's not a 300$ beta program. This program is usable for many professionals out there on day one, and not usable for many others.

Why are you continuing to use this defense?

A large portion of their market cannot use this product.

That's simply bad business, period.

 

[iBug2]

Why are you continuing to use this defense?

A large portion of their market cannot use this product.

That's simply bad business, period.

How large? For all we know this could only effect 5% of all userbase. Do you have numbers?

No.

So why not release it early and people who can make use of it today can start making use of it and others can wait.

There's nothing wrong about releasing it early.

What's wrong is not indicating what exactly is missing.

 

[thunderclap]

Yes, I tried it last year after installing CS5, and absolutely despised it. I also had a friend who is not an editor cut an animation project with Premiere only to be completely unable to render the final output at deadline due to the failure of the software. Thankfully, he was able to export an EDL and have the project finished in FCP.

I wasn't a big fan of it either. Too many pre-settings to get footage working properly whereas FCP you drop it in the timeline and go. I also didn't like how even when audio is linked together you had to cut each track separately, unlike FCP.

 

[jdredline]

I think they do, Apple just doesn't support them officially. Maybe not the newest ones but you can find a Open CL supporting card which works.

Here you go:

http://barefeats.com/wst10g3.html

According to that article 5870 5770 4870 8800GT all work on 1st gen Mac Pro.

Buddy, you just made my day!

My old X1900 has been wailing for years - freezing the whole system, refusing to turn on a monitor, drawing lines through my graphics programs. I've been wanting to upgrade ever since.

I hope those guys are right. I just spent $500 on a new card ;-)