I have an opportunity to get $200 for pro apps but not sure if I wanna get Final cut pro or not due to Davinci Resolve. Any thoughts?
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Final Cut pro or Davinci resolve?
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The Pro Apps Bundle is a great value! FCP X also has a 30 day free trial if you want to compare it to DaVinci Resolve. Regardless, I'd get the Bundle anyway just for the included programs.
Do a test run with Resolve doing a couple things you would generally do when editing videos. I last tried Resolve 8 months ago and found it still a bit lacking in foundational stuff.
For instance, the titles interface was still clunky (doesn't show font styles in the list so you have to click each font to see what it looks like, you can't simply arrow up and down through fonts either, keyframing titles was buggy, etc).
You also can't have multiple text boxes per title like you can with Premiere. Which can mean half a dozen titles stacked on the timeline. The bummer is that FCPX also can't do multiple text boxes unless you use Motion which I think comes with the bundle.
But because FCPX is made by Apple, I suspect editing is faster and smoother, but I guess you would have to try them both.
For instance, the titles interface was still clunky (doesn't show font styles in the list so you have to click each font to see what it looks like, you can't simply arrow up and down through fonts either, keyframing titles was buggy, etc).
You also can't have multiple text boxes per title like you can with Premiere. Which can mean half a dozen titles stacked on the timeline. The bummer is that FCPX also can't do multiple text boxes unless you use Motion which I think comes with the bundle.
But because FCPX is made by Apple, I suspect editing is faster and smoother, but I guess you would have to try them both.
Apple may have published Final Cut Pro X, but it seems to be at war with it's self, in that the hardware aspects of Apple, and the software are not talking to each other, Apple updates FCPX and this creates further strain on the hardware, and instead of solving this through software updates, or rethinking the FCPX approach, Apple does nothing, the hardware fixed on mobile devices to 16GB is way ineffective, there seems to be no good news going forward, whispers say Apple is going with low power RAM, which is fixed to a max of 16GB RAM, as an example, Apple ships with FCPX only 1 pro res option, and that is the I am sure due to the war between hardware and software, I am sure if software had it's way, it would ship many options of pro res..
FCPX is at this point, with 10.4 the latest update, not a viable option on low end devices, it should be, the old final cut 6 worked on low end mac laptops, and being 32bit you were locked to no more than 2GB per app, but this was fine, a faster scratch hard drive, you were able to deal with most things...
What has happened is that RED is basically creating a mess, the video is huge, 10K, and 10K is a huge amount of data to through around, Apple and Intel have not proved reliable with mobile hardware capable of dealing with 10K, this is a huge problem, one hopes an update to FCPX, High Sierra, solves this, but sadly no....
FCPX is at this point, with 10.4 the latest update, not a viable option on low end devices, it should be, the old final cut 6 worked on low end mac laptops, and being 32bit you were locked to no more than 2GB per app, but this was fine, a faster scratch hard drive, you were able to deal with most things...
What has happened is that RED is basically creating a mess, the video is huge, 10K, and 10K is a huge amount of data to through around, Apple and Intel have not proved reliable with mobile hardware capable of dealing with 10K, this is a huge problem, one hopes an update to FCPX, High Sierra, solves this, but sadly no....
FCP, I think, actually has an edge on Apple hardware (and software)
In FCPX I can select from multiple ProRes variants for a project just fine. Infact, I regularly use ProRes LT for simple projects.
When talking performance, 4k/5k/8k are one thing, but I have no problem cutting 1080p footage on a 2013 13" MBP with only 8GB of RAM.
If you use proxy files, and really that is the only way to go if you have a laptop, the performance of FCP is very good, even on my 2012 MBP. I think for casual users FCP is really effective. I pretty much have a Mac because FCP exists. If you need to use Resolve run it on Windows, not an Mac, to save a lot of disappointment.
I believe Resolve performs better with CUDA too. Which means Nvidia GPUs, and Macs aren't exactly offering many options for those these days.
What RED camera does shoot in 10K? And if you really want to edit 10K footage on a mobile device, while workstations are now only capable of editing 8K in an okayish manner, why not use proxies? I could use my 2016 12" MacBook to edit a music video made out of 32 camera angles using proxies quite fine, but then again, that was only 1080p material.
And just think about it. UHD (or 4K) is four times the resolution of HD, 8K is again four times the resolution of 4K, and 10K, if it exists, is probably 1.5 times as big as 8K, thus 10K is 24 times bigger than 1080p, which is kinda ridiculous for a notebook.
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@high heaven
If you are new to editing, I recommend FCP X for learning it, as Resolve still uses the track based editing system, which is more than okay, but its concept is hung up on editing reels of film and not video files, which is something FCP X is much better at due to the storylines and such.
I come from track based editing, Premiere since 1998, Avid since 2001 and then Premiere again in 2014 and FCP X since 2016. It was quite a change to abandon tracks, and I am still trying to get rid of the older way, but FCP X is quite efficient when it comes to editing faster and with less of a hassle where to route this track or that track.
Give it a try, FCP X and DaVinci Resolve Lite, but you really have to edit something instead of just fiddling around. That was at least my experience, trying FCP X several times over the years with no project to cut. When I finally had one and was sick of Premiere, it was a breeze, even though I had to learn a new way of editing. Well, in the end, they are only tools, and you have to find out, which suits your way of thinking better. FCP X does for me.
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grrh...The point is that the camera suppliers and the software suppliers are not on the same wavelength, Final Cut Pro is so far behind the development of the camera suppliers, that even the top of the range imac pro is not capable of native file editing, surely that is a problem???
The problem is 2 fold, the pace of camera development, and the pace of software are out of sync, Apple is not sure what path to take, when combined with the inability of Intel to innovate, yet the film maker wants, demands content at 10K, but the hardware cannot handle this...the 2nd is that Apple has only 1 viable proxy, so if you use that 1 1 proxy on a RED 10k footage, you are still outside of the range of most macs, you need something custom built, and that is stupid.
At this point 10K might not exist, the point is still valid, the point is, the value of the camera device, and the ability of the editing hardware are incompatible, you need to render out, that costs time and money, it is not time that can be recovered, this is stupid...Of course I don't expect a laptop to be all things to all, that is just insane..
No I expect the software app to be configured in such a way that allows a 1 time pass through to create a proxy that is effective no matter the value of the original file, and Apple has started this with the now very outdated single proxy file creation system in FCPX, that was a start in 10.0, we are now 10.4 and still only 1 stupid proxy...
Yes yes I hear you whine, you can go off the app, using compressor and create low rez proxy, this is not good enough, it solves no problems, it only creates more work, doubles the effort for what????
There should be a sliding scale of "compression" like the very old Avid or Premiere or VM Studio had, you selected the video quality in preference and on ingest it compressed the hell out of the video, so you could edit, and print out/save to disk an edl, then re-ingest at 0% compression, and create the online master using the edl...it worked in the 1990's!!!
We have better drives now, faster GPU, so really we should be able to ingest at full 8K, and in the app select the proxy file and use that to "compress" the data, a clone of the original, apple has shown this to be viable, sym links etc...
An idea is to toss out the 360 garbage, the VR junk, build into fcpx compressor, so that compressor does the work internally to fcpx, it "renders" viable proxy files, and if you want, you can have compressor as an external app, a new name and new functionality built in..Sort of file manager...
The hardware needs to be updated, so that 23GB RAM, 64GB RAM laptops are standard, along with 17 inch versions, with post purchase upgrading capability, so that laptops can be upgraded/downgraded as an when needed, a device that grows with needs of the user.
Apple sees no potential in video editing, it sees some value in audio post/music creation, but in video, Apple sees no future, FCPX gets no love from the mothership, Logic gets all the love, so much more heaped on music, video that is some ugly dumb waste of time!!!
The problem is 2 fold, the pace of camera development, and the pace of software are out of sync, Apple is not sure what path to take, when combined with the inability of Intel to innovate, yet the film maker wants, demands content at 10K, but the hardware cannot handle this...the 2nd is that Apple has only 1 viable proxy, so if you use that 1 1 proxy on a RED 10k footage, you are still outside of the range of most macs, you need something custom built, and that is stupid.
At this point 10K might not exist, the point is still valid, the point is, the value of the camera device, and the ability of the editing hardware are incompatible, you need to render out, that costs time and money, it is not time that can be recovered, this is stupid...Of course I don't expect a laptop to be all things to all, that is just insane..
No I expect the software app to be configured in such a way that allows a 1 time pass through to create a proxy that is effective no matter the value of the original file, and Apple has started this with the now very outdated single proxy file creation system in FCPX, that was a start in 10.0, we are now 10.4 and still only 1 stupid proxy...
Yes yes I hear you whine, you can go off the app, using compressor and create low rez proxy, this is not good enough, it solves no problems, it only creates more work, doubles the effort for what????
There should be a sliding scale of "compression" like the very old Avid or Premiere or VM Studio had, you selected the video quality in preference and on ingest it compressed the hell out of the video, so you could edit, and print out/save to disk an edl, then re-ingest at 0% compression, and create the online master using the edl...it worked in the 1990's!!!
We have better drives now, faster GPU, so really we should be able to ingest at full 8K, and in the app select the proxy file and use that to "compress" the data, a clone of the original, apple has shown this to be viable, sym links etc...
An idea is to toss out the 360 garbage, the VR junk, build into fcpx compressor, so that compressor does the work internally to fcpx, it "renders" viable proxy files, and if you want, you can have compressor as an external app, a new name and new functionality built in..Sort of file manager...
The hardware needs to be updated, so that 23GB RAM, 64GB RAM laptops are standard, along with 17 inch versions, with post purchase upgrading capability, so that laptops can be upgraded/downgraded as an when needed, a device that grows with needs of the user.
Apple sees no potential in video editing, it sees some value in audio post/music creation, but in video, Apple sees no future, FCPX gets no love from the mothership, Logic gets all the love, so much more heaped on music, video that is some ugly dumb waste of time!!!
Regardless of it's label, when using the previous resolution measurement standard, 4K is only twice the resolution of HD.
The standard of measuring resolution changed with 2K/4K, seemingly inexplicably. It used to be that resolution was measured vertically. So for example HD 1920x1080 is measured as 1,080 vertical pixels.
But the standard has changed so that resolution is apparently now measured horizontally. UHD 4K is 3840 × 2160. Note that 3840 is the horizontal measurement. 2160 is the vertical measurement, which is exactly twice the resolution of 1080.
So going by the previous standard, 4K is actually true 2K, and 8K is actually true 4K.
We can actually see this same proportion in the horizontal resolution too, if one does the math beginning from HD's 1920 horizontal resolution:
(HD) 1,920 x 2 = ("4K") 3,840 x 2 = ("8K") 7,680
1080p (1920×1080, Full HD) is not the same as 2K (2048 × 1080), and same goes for 2160p (3840 × 2160,UHD) not being the same as 4K (4096 × 2160).
The former (1080p, 2160p) are television & consumer standards, the later (2K, 4K) are cinema standards, plus they have different aspect ratios.
I understand where your are coming from, as HD is often named as 720p and 1080p, which is the vertical resolution. But if the new naming scheme of 2K and 4K and 8K relates to the horizontal resolution, the math should still be the same, shan't it?
If HD is 1920 x 1080 pixels and UHD is 3840 x 2160 pixels, then UHD is twice the vertical resolution. But often resolution also means the entire pixel count, as in 2.073.600 pixels in an HD frame and 8.294.400 pixels in an UHD frame, which makes UHD four times the resolution of HD.
Once the industry has figured it out how to relate to the term resolution, as it has figured out the use of GigaBytes and TeraBytes (it hasn't, as it does not use 1024 but 1000 as divider and now we also have GibiBytes and TebiBytes to use the 1024 divider or base 2), we might finally arrive at 4K being UHD or UHD being 4K or just one instead of two.
Yes I noticed this as well looking at the math, and those nifty resolution diagrams (see below). 1920x1080 does fit 4 times within a UHD 4K space (2x2).
Wasn't aware they had made this distinction, but the whole 1000 / 1024 thing never really bothered me anyway, because they've been consistent with the naming conventions (kilo, mega, giga, tera).
Yes, except that 2K is actually 2,048 horizontal pixels, so the horizontal pixel math as I noted above doesn't quite work.
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Yes, and for purposes of this discussion I'm only dealing with the naming conventions on the consumer side and how that pertains to the measuring standard being changed.
Understood about DCI 4K, which is the 4K standard for film/video production.
The context of the HD to 4k "4x resolution" statement was performance issues involving handling higher resolution. He was talking about "image resolution" which is often considered to be total pixel count: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_resolution
Failure to understand this has led to innumerable problems. I have personally answered dozens, maybe scores of confused people who don't understand why their computer is so slow on 4k media because it's "only twice" the resolution of 1080p.
The answer is in cases involving performance or storage issues, doubling the linear resolution increases total image resolution by 4x. Thus it takes 4x the computation or 4x the storage to manage that at the same performance. Referring to it as double the resolution is not necessarily wrong, but if the context is performance or storage, that can be (and often is) confusing.
It is so confusing, is it 4x the length or 4x the width, or is it 8x as many pixels in a square yard? There are 20 000 combinations of this and that codec, pro res, avi, mov, bloody hell...Back in the day, there was only 2...PAL and that rubbish across the pond...then the French had some dodge system.....
You knew what you got on the tin, now HDR, UHD, 2K, RED, long gops, 360, AR, you spend as much time deciphering the specs as you do editing and shooting...then this wants in this format, and that in a different format, and and and...
My head hurts trying to understand the math, then it changes if it cinema or tv, or or....
You knew what you got on the tin, now HDR, UHD, 2K, RED, long gops, 360, AR, you spend as much time deciphering the specs as you do editing and shooting...then this wants in this format, and that in a different format, and and and...
My head hurts trying to understand the math, then it changes if it cinema or tv, or or....
I have a 2013 rMBP (spec in sig) and I tend to always use optimised files - seems to run just fine (1080p projects).
I will look into using proxy files though - it seems a lot of people opt for that option with good feedback.....
I use that and my feedback is Apple is rubbish at doing the proper right thing, FCPX is good, and it will never be great unless the hardware can cope with the demands and Apple is ignoring this demand, not even a fully specced out 18core imac pro has a chance to run the top end of the video formats...
It was less than a decade ago, when we used final cut pro classic, we only had HD to worry about, fcp was locked to use a max of 2GB of RAM, due to being a 32bit app, now we are 64bit and sadly FCPX is not full 64bit compliant, FCPX is at best 40bit compliant, more than 32, was less than 64bit...
This matters as it is not what you do that matters, but that you are doing something, and what is Apple doing, NOTHING!!!!
The fact we have no post purchase upgrading, of 99% of devices, why not post purchase upgrading?? I dont want to hear the reasons Apple puts out, old news!!
The fact that we are 10.4, and there is only 1 proxy file format, a pretty dismal proxy file format included, and for a couple for $ you can buy compressor...Wrong wrong wrong... That is not a viable solution, it is a solution, and yes it does get around something that should not be a problem.
FCPX suffers from 2 things, incomplete coding, and relying on RAM that does not exist, using proxy is a way, what is needed in built in variable user selectable levels of proxy compression, from high to low, to no compression, and the removal of bloatware devices such as VR/360.
FCPX needs a complete re=write, packaged as 2 apps, one lite, and 1 studio version, the lite version has basically only proxy workflows, so no matter if you have an air gen 1 or an imac pro 18core, you can edit, if you need 360/VR and tons of intense rendering you go studio route...
I know folks will hate the idea, I don't care, you are not me, you are not buying the gear, if you want to buy the grar for me, sure why not... that is not the point..
FCP classic worked on mac laptops, hell Apple went out of their way to promote the portability of FCP, editing a movie on a train bench, as well as can be done on a cheesgrater...that was what soled me on fcp classic, and now you need 2 tons of gear to edit a movie shot on an ifone x!!!
Really this is not good enough, I am stunned that no one sees it this way, that Apple is not showing the video editing side any love, Logic gets updates almost weekly, and FCP gets 1 update a year if we are lucky...
We need post purchase upgrading, we need high end mobile devices to handle more than 16GB of RAM, and we need variable rate compression for FCPX...
It was less than a decade ago, when we used final cut pro classic, we only had HD to worry about, fcp was locked to use a max of 2GB of RAM, due to being a 32bit app, now we are 64bit and sadly FCPX is not full 64bit compliant, FCPX is at best 40bit compliant, more than 32, was less than 64bit...
This matters as it is not what you do that matters, but that you are doing something, and what is Apple doing, NOTHING!!!!
The fact we have no post purchase upgrading, of 99% of devices, why not post purchase upgrading?? I dont want to hear the reasons Apple puts out, old news!!
The fact that we are 10.4, and there is only 1 proxy file format, a pretty dismal proxy file format included, and for a couple for $ you can buy compressor...Wrong wrong wrong... That is not a viable solution, it is a solution, and yes it does get around something that should not be a problem.
FCPX suffers from 2 things, incomplete coding, and relying on RAM that does not exist, using proxy is a way, what is needed in built in variable user selectable levels of proxy compression, from high to low, to no compression, and the removal of bloatware devices such as VR/360.
FCPX needs a complete re=write, packaged as 2 apps, one lite, and 1 studio version, the lite version has basically only proxy workflows, so no matter if you have an air gen 1 or an imac pro 18core, you can edit, if you need 360/VR and tons of intense rendering you go studio route...
I know folks will hate the idea, I don't care, you are not me, you are not buying the gear, if you want to buy the grar for me, sure why not... that is not the point..
FCP classic worked on mac laptops, hell Apple went out of their way to promote the portability of FCP, editing a movie on a train bench, as well as can be done on a cheesgrater...that was what soled me on fcp classic, and now you need 2 tons of gear to edit a movie shot on an ifone x!!!
Really this is not good enough, I am stunned that no one sees it this way, that Apple is not showing the video editing side any love, Logic gets updates almost weekly, and FCP gets 1 update a year if we are lucky...
We need post purchase upgrading, we need high end mobile devices to handle more than 16GB of RAM, and we need variable rate compression for FCPX...
Two updates this year already so that's not true. Including 10.4.1 with ProRes RAW and much improved closed captioning/subs.
I take your point about the hardware not keeping up, but lead times for major hardware updates are longer than for incremental software updates.
I started with film many decades ago, moved to Avid and Media 100, then FCP. I can honestly say that ever since FC arrived I have always been able to edit in the field with a laptop. You haven't lived if you haven't edited using a powerBook and a pile of SCSI drives....
ANY video editor you choose will not be 64 bit compliant as you describe. Intel I7 processors, while supporting x86-64 bit instructions, are limited to 36 bit physical addresses. After some shenanigans with virtual lanes, the top end processors will take 128GB of Virtual Ram, but individual channels can be as low as 36GB. 64 Bit addressing would support 16 exabytes (a very big number by today's standards). So, EVERY LAST video editor suffers the same limitation of bing 40Bit. This isn't Apple's fault. Intel (and to a lesser extent, AMD - I think they use 48 Bit address space), chose to believe there was no one on the planet who was going to buy 16 MILLION Terabytes of RAM (cost about $153,600,000,000 on today's market assuming you could buy all of it without driving the price up).
I would suggest that if you have $153 Billion lying around to invest in RAM, you could pay off Apple, or Adobe, or BMD to write a video editor like you want. You could probably have enough left over to get AMD to make a chip that would address the RAM limit. You'd still need a motherboard that would support 48,000 32GB RAM sticks (drawing about 480KW or power for the RAM). But, you could sure edit the **** out of 4K footage on that beast.
In short, financial and scientific limitations are a real thing, and even the money of Apple can't overcome something that is at least 20 years out.
To clarify: The the logical address space viewed by the app is 64 bits and pointers are 64 bits. CPU address translation using page tables configured by the OS translate this to a physical address space. That physical address space varies among CPUs but is not visible to the app. On the i5-4260U in a Mac Mini, it is 16GB. On the i7-8700K in an iMac it is 64GB. On the Xeon-W 2150 in a 10-core iMac Pro it is 512GB.
The max physical RAM on an iMac Pro is 128GB but that's a packaging and configuration limit, not a CPU architectural one. In theory an 18-core iMac Pro could use 512GB of RAM.
The 24-core Xeon E7-8894 v4 can use up to 3.07 terabytes of RAM.
You don't have to re-write or recompile 64-bit apps to run on those different platforms. The apps perceive exactly the same logical address space.
It is true that not all of the 64 bit logical address space is usable and as an optimization AMD (which invented the x64 instruction set) defined this as 48 bits. So even though pointers are 64 bits, bits 48 through 63 must copies of bit 47. This is normally handled by the compiler. So the max logical address space on x86 is 2^48 or 256 terabytes, which is mapped by the specific OS memory manager to the available physical address capability of the CPU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Virtual_address_space_details
I don't see how the x86 48-bit logical address space limits any current apps, whether FCPX or any other. Apps perceive exactly the same logical address space no matter what x64 CPU they are running on. An app could theoretically do invalid pointer arithmetic and cause an exception, but that would be so whether it was running on a Mac Mini with 4GB RAM or a future dual-socket Mac Pro with 48 cores and 3 terabytes of RAM.