Early Final Cut Pro X Response Mixed, Updates Coming

[Sweetmate]

I disagree with only one point that FCP X is completely unusable in almost any situation. In your profession maybe.

Feel free to expand on this. I really cant think of many professional situations that FCPX could be deployed in other than wedding videos.

TV, Film, Commercials require import and export facility for grading/audio/post, and Broadcast has not reached tapeless workflows yet and wont for awhile.

 

[iBug2]

Feel free to expand on this. I really cant think of many professional situations that FCPX could be deployed in other than wedding videos.

Sure you can. You just don't want to.

Many independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers, people who shoot and edit shorts, can do what they do with FCP X. And I certainly don't think all these people shoot weddings and wedding related documentaries only.

And these were just the first that came to my mind. There certainly would be many more.

Anyway I suggest you read the story about Walter Munch, Cold Mountain and Final Cut 3.

Btw if FCP X can be used to do post on "the royal wedding", then it probably is a decent piece of software since that was broadcast

 

[robeddie]

Sure you can. You just don't want to.

Many independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers, people who shoot and edit shorts, can do what they do with FCP X. And I certainly don't think all these people shoot weddings and wedding related documentaries only.

And these were just the first that came to my mind. There certainly would be many more.

Anyway I suggest you read the story about Walter Munch, Cold Mountain and Final Cut 3.

Btw if FCP X can be used to do post on "the royal wedding", then it probably is a decent piece of software since that was broadcast

Walter Biscardi and Richard Harrington talk about final cut pro X and it's shortcomings:

http://library.creativecow.net/harrington_biscardi/FCPX/1

These are two professionals in the field going through, point by point, in a very well thought out way, the many many problems they have with this software.

It's a long podcast, but worth a listen if you really want to understand why so many people are unhappy with FCPX.

 

[Streamer]

Well, been reading this thread with interest. However here is a real-world scenario that has just played out at my station.

Our Marketing area has two Avid Media Composer Adrenalines, tied to Avid's Interplay. Due to the fact we can't upgrade INterplay (cost) we're locked at a 2.5 year old version of Media Composer. Now we're doing more HD, we started to look at a new system, either bite the bullet and get a Mac Pro/FCP setup or a new PC and the latest Media Composer. (isolated from INterplay)

The editors are extremely talented, and know MC extremely well, and one is an FCP lover too. He was excited that the Mac Pro/FCP option was on the table.

Due to our workflow, which is a mixture of file based ingest/tape as well as exporting files for transcoding to the playout server, often with tight deadlines, one week ago, both options fitted the bill.

This morning we pulled the Mac/FCP option off the table. We had no choice. We still need tape ingest, our HD files are XDCam and the editors NEED the real-time broadcast monitor for Quality Control etc. The editing window monitors vary a lot, different gamma's etc. so they need to see exactly what the viewer sees. They do a little color correction, not a lot but enough.

For our workflow, we don't care about FCP7 import, nor EDL/XML import/export but the lack of Tape ingest, XDCAm file I/O as well as a real-time playout/monitor feed (sometimes we actually play a spot live, rare but sometimes) had yanked that option..

Yes, we could wait, but large corporate budgets often dictate a "Now or lose the money" approach, so right now, Avid may get an order for MC5.5 which sadly, is not where I was hoping to go with this.

If FCP7/FCS3 was still able to be purchased, then it could go back on the table.

Prefer it to be different but c'est la vie.

 

[Sweetmate]

Sure you can. You just don't want to.

Many independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers, people who shoot and edit shorts, can do what they do with FCP X. And I certainly don't think all these people shoot weddings and wedding related documentaries only.

And these were just the first that came to my mind. There certainly would be many more.

Anyway I suggest you read the story about Walter Munch, Cold Mountain and Final Cut 3.

Btw if FCP X can be used to do post on "the royal wedding", then it probably is a decent piece of software since that was broadcast

The Royal Wedding? Link please? What TV station? What was the workflow?

I am not saying it isn't a decent piece of software, there is some amazing stuff in it that has me extremely excited. I am saying that even allowing for an understandable loss of some legacy features in a complete rewrite of an application, there are so many things missing that are real dealbreakers for so much of the industry that has been using FCP7 which means they have to wait before they can deploy it or possibly look at other solutions (a real shame as so much of FCPX is brilliant). And that the knowledge that the program wont be suitable for use until version 2 or later and FCP7 is no longer available takes much of the excitement out of this release.

PS I have read Behind the Seen, the NLE world was quite different then...

 

[flyboy4969]

Fcpx

WOW! No support for existing projects?
I can't begin to fathom how anyone could think that was a good idea. I've been on FCP since version 1 & previous to that used multiple other systems. Once I got my hands on FCP, I never looked back. Now, I'm being forced to not look back, only forward.
What happens to the 1000's of TV commercials & the hundreds of industrial/educational videos I've done?
Certainly, not every one of them will need revising, but a large number will as the clients products evolves. Even if it didn't, there was a style to each project that I could copy & paste certain elements into a new timeline & go from there.
I've read through some of the comments pertaining to this & some people are saying that we shouldn't expect everything to be at 100% from a new app like this. It's not a new app. It's a rewriting of an existing app that has a tremendous track record & is incredibly productive. While some lessons were learned & transferred to this new version, it seems that quite a few were forgotten or simply discarded.
I'm not a young guy straight out of college full of inspiration & eagerness to tackle the world, but I fully understand & fully support new ways of doing things. We'd still be eating raw meat & living in caves if we didn't progress, but there needs to be support for what already exists. Just because it's a new app, Apple seems to be saying that nothing existed before this. Sure, they'll be upgrading & rolling out other supplemental pieces of software to quiet the complaints, but that will just make it seem like they are placating users after releasing a piece of software that was incomplete & not useful to the people it's been targeted at for all these years.

Again, wow.....just wow.

 

[Keebler]

Well, been reading this thread with interest. However here is a real-world scenario that has just played out at my station.

Our Marketing area has two Avid Media Composer Adrenalines, tied to Avid's Interplay. Due to the fact we can't upgrade INterplay (cost) we're locked at a 2.5 year old version of Media Composer. Now we're doing more HD, we started to look at a new system, either bite the bullet and get a Mac Pro/FCP setup or a new PC and the latest Media Composer. (isolated from INterplay)

The editors are extremely talented, and know MC extremely well, and one is an FCP lover too. He was excited that the Mac Pro/FCP option was on the table.

Due to our workflow, which is a mixture of file based ingest/tape as well as exporting files for transcoding to the playout server, often with tight deadlines, one week ago, both options fitted the bill.

This morning we pulled the Mac/FCP option off the table. We had no choice. We still need tape ingest, our HD files are XDCam and the editors NEED the real-time broadcast monitor for Quality Control etc. The editing window monitors vary a lot, different gamma's etc. so they need to see exactly what the viewer sees. They do a little color correction, not a lot but enough.

For our workflow, we don't care about FCP7 import, nor EDL/XML import/export but the lack of Tape ingest, XDCAm file I/O as well as a real-time playout/monitor feed (sometimes we actually play a spot live, rare but sometimes) had yanked that option..

Yes, we could wait, but large corporate budgets often dictate a "Now or lose the money" approach, so right now, Avid may get an order for MC5.5 which sadly, is not where I was hoping to go with this.

If FCP7/FCS3 was still able to be purchased, then it could go back on the table.

Prefer it to be different but c'est la vie.

i don't blame you making this call. Sounds like Biscardi and Huntington might do the same thing.

Despite its shortcomings, I was wondering if a phone call to Apple might be worth it to find out what their plans are for its future. They've said 'more is to come' so I wonder if they do have plans for tape ingestion, opening previous projects etc....

If not, they are going to lose alot. For me personally, I'm not a pro editor - i transfer tapes for clients so FCP7 does the trick for me. I can certainly understand the lack of collaborative workflow. That would drive me nuts!

I don't recall Apple tripping on its feet this badly in some time...

yikes!

 

[cheesymogul]

Anyway I suggest you read the story about Walter Munch, Cold Mountain and Final Cut 3.

Actually I'm eagerly waiting on the story about Walter Murch, Cold Mountain 2 and FCpX

 

[robeddie]

Here's a quick rundown of why video professional Walter Biscardi does NOT like FCPX (From Creative Cow):


Built from the ground up to be completely self contained, one editor, one machine. Cannot even talk to other Apple pro software.

Cannot open previous Final Cut Pro projects. period. We have 10 years worth of projects that cannot be opened.

Cannot collaborate with other editors. You can't simply hand off a project file to another editor who has the same media like you could with previous versions of FCP. All of your project organization is now globally contained in the application rather than in your project file. You would literally have to give that other editor your computer to open your project with all of your organization.

There is no way to customize the organization of the project media. "Events" are nice for home movies, home photos and such, but organzation is clunky at best for a professional video editing environment, whether that's working in your home or in a facility.

Media keeps wanting to copy itself to the local drive. We have over 60TB of media in our facility, we could not possibly copy that much to a local computer.

No directory structure when media is offline. When media is offline you simply get a red screen with an exclamation point. There is no "Reconnect Media" function or any other function that will tell you where the media is supposed to be. With previous versions you were presented the original media path. Since this is based on iMovie, it expects that everything lives internally.

Multicam tool, which was one of the best in the industry, completely eliminated.

OMF and XML export and import completely eliminated. There is no way to send projects to Apple's own software from within Final Cut Pro.

Color Correction tool is mediocre at best. Apple Color, which was a $25,000 piece of software when Apple purchased it, seems to have been eliminated and replaced with dots and presets. I've used a lot of color correction tools as part of my work and what Apple has presented is one of the worst I've seen from a supposed professional tool.

Cannot assign audio tracks. The Trackless editing makes things faster initially but we send all our audio out for ProTools mixing. As such we need to assign audio to tracks. Narration to Track 1 and 2. Interviews to Tracks 3 - 6 and so on. So our audio engineers knows exactly what's on which track.

No true video output. According to an AJA Video Systems PDF on using their Kona cards with FCPX what you see on your external display is a "preview" version of your video. Not a true video signal that you can use for color correction or confidence viewing in front of a client. Simply cannnot have a professional video editing application without true video output.

No support for Capture from Tape (outside of Firewire) or Edit to Tape. We capture from and edit to tape just about every day. HDV is really not a format we use very much but if we did, well then we were perfectly set up in FCPX.

 

[SpinThis!]

WOW! No support for existing projects?
I can't begin to fathom how anyone could think that was a good idea.

What's ridiculous is it's easier to export out of FCP into MC or Premiere than it is import to FCPX. You can't get even open multiple timelines/projects at once in FCPX. How do you copy and paste between projects? What's even more appalling is you can't even keep FCPX and FCP open at the same time so even if you wanted to recreate a timeline from, say, the new version to the old, you can't do it. You would physically need to reference another computer.

If Adobe or Avid pulled this kind of thing, people would be like "oh lazy Adobe/Avid. Didn't Apple tell you from the beginning 64-bit Carbon was going away?" (Kinda like Quicken for the Mac where they dropped a bunch of features in their rewrite.) Apparently only Apple can get away with cutting so much out because this because it's so "revolutionary."

Apple has typically taken 18 months to release a new version. Even if they managed to cut that in half to 9 months, I wonder what Apple can do in that short amount of time. All these people saying Apple will add missing features in months, not years, are crazy. We've already waited 2 years. If Apple said, "we don't have this, this, and this in this release but we're planning a release in March to address these things" I think people would be less upset. But taking Apple at their word based that they'll "eventually" add stuff because the app store is so "revolutionary" is stupid. It's programming that takes the most time, not distributing it.

 

[robeddie]

More from Walter:



All in all the worst product launch I've ever seen from Apple or pretty much any software manufacturer. Instead of a nice suite of applications that worked well together (FCP, Color, Motion, SoundTrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro) you now have one big app that really doesn't do all that much well. It completely ignores the 11 years of existence by giving you zero options to open older projects. We called it iMovie Pro when it was debuted back in April and quite honestly, that's what it is. When you open the application and the first thing you see is "Import iMovie Events" and then you select File > Import and the two of the four options are "iMovie" there's no denying that this application was built on iMovie's consumer foundation rather than FCP's professional foundation. There are some neat features included and there's no denying the interface itself is nice to look at.

But I get the sense that Apple just didn't want to take the time to re-write all of the features that made this a solid professional application and dominated the post production market. Why, I'm not sure, but we will be moving our shop away from FCPX over the next month or so. As I noted in a blog entry back in April, Apple really dropped the ball on this one. Living in their insular world in Cupertino they have come up with what they think a professional editor requires to get the job done. In my 20 year professional experience, they missed the mark by a wide margin.

If you are a one man band or never have the need to collaborate with anyone else or ever open any of your old FCP projects, then this is for you. Especially if you have never used a non linear editing system before. Otherwise, you'd be best to either steer clear of this application, or download it to use for your home movies and private projects. Steve Jobs was wrong. This is not "awesome." Not even close.

But wait ... Walter isn't done:


In fact I forgot to mention the fact that layered Photoshop file support is gone. All photoshop files appear as a flattened image. In our shop we build multi layered graphics for name supers for example. I'll have 12 layers of names and the 13th layer is the backdrop. So I create one graphic for 12 supers. Now I'd have to create 12 graphics.

Just the fact that we can't open old FCP projects alone would be enough for me to stop, but add up everything I've mentioned (and more) there is just no way that any amount of fancy new tools built inside a stand alone app that traps you in said stand alone app is going to make it in our workflow. It's easier to move the projects into Avid or Adobe Premiere than it is to move them into the new Final Cut Pro.

Let's just forget the word "professional" for the moment. You're an upstart filmmaker who has this installed on your iMac at home cutting your latest project. You gave the media to a buddy of yours who has offered to help on his laptop. So you send the Project file over to him and guess what? He'll see your timeline but all that organization you did with the smart folders, keyword folders, etc.... are gone. All he sees is a huge "Event" with all your media just laid out there. Whereas if you were both working in Final Cut Pro 7 or earlier, when you handed him the Project file, all of your organization (bins, sequences, etc…) would all be there.

So far the only people I've seen with positive reviews of the application are those who were in the beta test program, application developers or those who do not make a living as a video editor. I simply will not "cut Apple some slack because it's a 1.0 release." That's complete BS. In 1999 when Final Cut Pro first came out it was the new kid on the block. So what if it didn't have certain features, it saved you from having to buy a $100,000 Avid or $30,000 Media 100. It's 2011 and Final Cut Pro is (was) the broadcast standard editing tool. Apple has had at least two years to completely redevelop the software from the ground up. To have left out so many of the features that were already in Final Cut Pro 7 and say 'well it's a 1.0 release and it will grow as we move along' is just completely self serving. In other words, the developers at Apple, who do NOT make a living as a video editor, decided that they would completely re-invent video editing based on their preconceived notion of what a video editor does. If it's not right the first time, we'll just develop more features, on our own timeline without telling anyone what we're doing, until we get it right. It's just painfully obvious this is a consumer product first and a professional application second. If that's Apple's goal, that's perfectly fine because the consumer market FAR exceeds the professional market. Just tell us so we can move on instead of waiting out this two year game of "what will they do."

 

[Streamer]

Despite its shortcomings, I was wondering if a phone call to Apple might be worth it to find out what their plans are for its future. They've said 'more is to come' so I wonder if they do have plans for tape ingestion, opening previous projects etc....

Apple are not exactly known for being forthcoming particularly on dates etc. We even have "Proximity Artbox", great product but Apple bought it, fiddled with it and launched it as Final Cut Server. The functionality we used was removed from it and that was the end of that. We still use artbox, but with no support so sometimes, a wing and a prayer help

 

[scottsjack]

More from Walter:

We called it iMovie Pro when it was debuted back in April and quite honestly, that's what it is.

FCPX seems to follow the same philosophical route as Aperture 3. A3 really is not a bad application at all. I use it as an image catalog that I can take with me loaded on my MBP. The referenced files are only on the laptop if I'm going to need them.

Also similar between A3 and FCPX is that they both seem to be a dumbing down of "professional" to mean "advanced amateur". The lack of a workable auto color, the lack of color noise control and the inclusion of Faces and Places really solidifies the idea that Aperture 3 is really iPhoto Deluxe.

It appears that FCPX and iMovie might have the same relationship.

 

[jbennardo]

Walter Biscardi and Richard Harrington talk about final cut pro X and it's shortcomings:

http://library.creativecow.net/harrington_biscardi/FCPX/1

These are two professionals in the field going through, point by point, in a very well thought out way, the many many problems they have with this software.

It's a long podcast, but worth a listen if you really want to understand why so many people are unhappy with FCPX.

I listened to it yesterday - It was an excellent overview and I consider myself only a casual user. Nobody is forced to upgrade, but the thing that's scary is you CAN'T get the older versions. And the podcast said something about Apple trying to buy up inventory from VARs. Wow.

 

[Digital Skunk]

FCPX seems to follow the same philosophical route as Aperture 3. A3 really is not a bad application at all. I use it as an image catalog that I can take with me loaded on my MBP. The referenced files are only on the laptop if I'm going to need them.

Also similar between A3 and FCPX is that they both seem to be a dumbing down of "professional" to mean "advanced amateur". The lack of a workable auto color, the lack of color noise control and the inclusion of Faces and Places really solidifies the idea that Aperture 3 is really iPhoto Deluxe.

It appears that FCPX and iMovie might have the same relationship.

I actually think that A3 was more of a bridge between the pro and the amateur that still wanted faces and places. In like the fact that I can turn faces and places off in A3 for example, and that I can use it to catalog and make simple edits, then open in PS to put my foot in the photo.

On the amateur side a user gets the best of the pro app as well as the consumer. I store both my pro work and family stuff in two separate libraries for example.

FCPX seems to have completely left the pro side of things behind. Its really showing itself to be more FCExpress X than Pro.

 

[nerdo]

So because I am used to spending $1200 on new editing software I got the $995 crossgrade AVID mediacomposer 5.5 package.

the funny thing is, I used to love AVID but after playing with FCPX for a day or so, opening AVID trial made me go...OOOPS.. why the hell did I buy this ancient dinosaur. FCPX is so smooth and flash boom bang, once you get used to it it does get a bit adictive. Editing pompeii stuff shot with a 7D, kinda sucks I can't use my cineform 3D plugin so I can edit some3D stuff but oh well...

So FCP7 is my go pro home edit, FCP6 is the on location one, FCPX is for new DSLR and promo stuff, AVID MC... is to pose with on web forums.

Oh well try before you buy they say hah.. right... naah just throwing money is much more fun. Rollercoaster at home dude!

 

[Keebler]

I listened to it yesterday - It was an excellent overview and I consider myself only a casual user. Nobody is forced to upgrade, but the thing that's scary is you CAN'T get the older versions. And the podcast said something about Apple trying to buy up inventory from VARs. Wow.

you're right about not being forced to upgrade, but I think alot of facilities are increasingly facing HD requests from clients and with FCP7, the workflow is virtually non-existent (except for clipwrap or other similar tools, but those take additional steps to prep for editing - which is the pain). Avid and Premiere apparently work HD well.

doh!

 

[nerdo]

you're right about not being forced to upgrade, but I think alot of facilities are increasingly facing HD requests from clients and with FCP7, the workflow is virtually non-existent (except for clipwrap or other similar tools, but those take additional steps to prep for editing - which is the pain). Avid and Premiere apparently work HD well.

doh!

HD as in ?!?

What particular FCP 7 workflow are you talking about?

 

[robeddie]

FCPX seems to follow the same philosophical route as Aperture 3. A3 really is not a bad application at all. I use it as an image catalog that I can take with me loaded on my MBP. The referenced files are only on the laptop if I'm going to need them.

Also similar between A3 and FCPX is that they both seem to be a dumbing down of "professional" to mean "advanced amateur". The lack of a workable auto color, the lack of color noise control and the inclusion of Faces and Places really solidifies the idea that Aperture 3 is really iPhoto Deluxe.

It appears that FCPX and iMovie might have the same relationship.

Right. But the thing is, is IS called Final Cut Pro X, not iMovie X. Apple already had iMovie ... they could have just smartened that up a bit, rather than 'dumb down' Final Cut.

What's so aggravating is that Apple touts this as being the better, faster Final Cut Pro. That's a lie. It's the better, faster iMovie. Period.

As Walter pointed out... it inability to share a project between even two computers means is was made for one editor... one machine. Not a video production office.

I work in video production department and we share project files all the time. The new FCP just won't work because of that, along with the myiad other missing features.

I quoted Walter extensively because I felt he laid it out best, with informative detail.

Too many Apple defenders here seemed to be saying 'all you so-called pro's are a bunch of crybabies'. Well, this is a program with 11 years of history, 11 years of building up features and functions that many have come to rely on... so to find out this much touted Apple 'upgrade' actually wipes out a huge chunk of those features out ... well, sure, it is frustrating. I'm not crying, I'm not a baby. Our department will move over to a Premiere. It'll be a pain to make the switch. But switching to FCPX is an impossibility.

 

[iBug2]

Walter Biscardi and Richard Harrington talk about final cut pro X and it's shortcomings:

http://library.creativecow.net/harrington_biscardi/FCPX/1

These are two professionals in the field going through, point by point, in a very well thought out way, the many many problems they have with this software.

It's a long podcast, but worth a listen if you really want to understand why so many people are unhappy with FCPX.

And? Do they disagree with anything I say? No. This thread goes in circles. Yes it's not ready for many, and yes it's ready for many others. Depending on your workflow, depending on what exactly you do, or used to do on FCS 7, you can or cannot use FCP X as it stands today. That's everything the reviewers have said so far.

The Royal Wedding? Link please? What TV station? What was the workflow?

You said that FCP X can only be used to edit wedding videos, and I said, if it can be used on "the royal wedding", then hey, that's broadcast. It was a joke.

I am not saying it isn't a decent piece of software, there is some amazing stuff in it that has me extremely excited. I am saying that even allowing for an understandable loss of some legacy features in a complete rewrite of an application, there are so many things missing that are real dealbreakers for so much of the industry that has been using FCP7 which means they have to wait before they can deploy it or possibly look at other solutions (a real shame as so much of FCPX is brilliant). And that the knowledge that the program wont be suitable for use until version 2 or later and FCP7 is no longer available takes much of the excitement out of this release.

PS I have read Behind the Seen, the NLE world was quite different then...

And nobody is disagreeing with what you said there, that still doesn't contradict anything I say. This software isn't only used in broadcast or film or tv. Just because it can't be used in your area of work, doesn't mean that it can't be used anywhere. And that anywhere includes more than weddings.

 

[nerdo]

And? Do they disagree with anything I say? No. This thread goes in circles. Yes it's not ready for many, and yes it's ready for many others. Depending on your workflow, depending on what exactly you do, or used to do on FCS 7, you can or cannot use FCP X as it stands today. That's everything the reviewers have said so far.

And pretty much everything anyone has said for the past 23 pages, welcome to macrumorsX where nobody reads old posts but just re-adds whatever has been said on the previous 50 pages.

 

[iBug2]

Actually I'm eagerly waiting on the story about Walter Murch, Cold Mountain 2 and FCpX

Too bad Minghella is dead

I listened to it yesterday - It was an excellent overview and I consider myself only a casual user. Nobody is forced to upgrade, but the thing that's scary is you CAN'T get the older versions. And the podcast said something about Apple trying to buy up inventory from VARs. Wow.

That was quite scary. If Apple is actually doing that, shame on them.

 

[Keebler]

HD as in ?!?

What particular FCP 7 workflow are you talking about?

avchd other h.264. ie. I can't connect my Panny TM900 and have FCP7 recognize the format. I know they say it's best not to edit in the native recording format, but I have to use a third party app to transcode it. Apparently the other vendors don't require that.

Walter Biscardi talked about RED as well.

 

[acearchie]

avchd other h.264. ie. I can't connect my Panny TM900 and have FCP7 recognize the format. I know they say it's best not to edit in the native recording format, but I have to use a third party app to transcode it. Apparently the other vendors don't require that.

Walter Biscardi talked about RED as well.

Isn't that because the tm900 records 1080p60 which isn't actually part of the officially AVCHD standard and it's something that Panasonic and Sony have added to their cameras that doesn't actually meet the official AVCHD criteria?

 

[nerdo]

avchd other h.264. ie. I can't connect my Panny TM900 and have FCP7 recognize the format. I know they say it's best not to edit in the native recording format, but I have to use a third party app to transcode it. Apparently the other vendors don't require that.

Walter Biscardi talked about RED as well.

Ah right, yes all formats I use are covered by the log and transfer. Log and transfer does import mpg2, avcHD, EOS movis and P2 AVC intra, but yes you do have to wait until it is all converted to whater you set FCP too. (using proress 422LT for most)

For me it is more a discspace and back-up issue, because I believe in triple copy and one online backup. (two 24TB Qnap NAS, 12X 2TB WD studio FW800 drives) for me that is the real headache. Hope FCPX will give me some better indexing power for the future.