UPDATE
David Pogue, New York Times, has written an excellent followup article with Apple’s response to missing features in Final Cut Pro X.
Read it here: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video-editors-weigh-in-on-final-cut-pro-x/
– – –
Apple released Final Cut Pro X this morning at 5:30 AM LA time. You can read Apple’s announcement here — http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/06/21fcp.html
You can visit Apple’s new webpage here: http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/
In three words – speed, power, cutting-edge.
The first time I saw Final Cut Pro X, back in February, this quote from the title of Stephen Ambrose’s book on the transcontinental railroad flashed into my head.
Just as the transcontinental railroad permanently changed 19th century America – in a wide variety of ways – Final Cut Pro X has the same capability.
During the last several months, I’ve had extensive discussions with engineers and product managers at Apple, read virtually all the Help files and, more recently, been running the software itself.
I’m knee-deep in a long newsletter which will provide a lot more detail when it comes out next week (subscribe for your FREE issue here: larryjordan.biz/newsletter), so here, in this blog, I just want to provide a bigger picture approach.
In every conversation I’ve had with Apple, each person stressed: “The easy thing would be to just create an incremental upgrade. But, we felt that while the current version of Final Cut held up well for the last ten years, it wasn’t ready for the next ten. We needed to design something from the ground up to take us into the next ten years.”
With this release, Apple made four significant changes in direction:
* For the first time, two different versions of FCP can coexist on the same system. I’ve been running FCP 7 and FCP X on the same system for months.
* Maxing out performance to take full advantage of current hardware
* Almost exclusive support for tapeless workflows
* Distribution via the App Store
FINAL CUT PRO 7 IS NOT DEAD
To me, this is one of the highlights!
Installing FCP X does not remove FCP 7. So you can take your own sweet time deciding when to make the switch. And, in fact, you can use FCP 7 where it makes sense and FCP X when that is a better choice. For the first time ever, we can have two different versions of FCP on the same system at the same time, without partitioning hard disks and jumping through hoops.
PERFORMANCE
Its no secret that Final Cut Pro took forever to accomplish some tasks. (I have it on good authority that many families were significantly augmented while waiting for the render bar to complete its measured progress.)
Plus, the 4 GB RAM limit caused projects to corrupt, files to mysteriously disappear and spawned a new breed of tech: the Final Cut guru, who, with an apparent laying on of the hands, could bring nearly dead projects back to life. (That last may be a dramatic overstatement, but I like the allusion.)
This new version flies. Whenever Final Cut needs to think, it does so seamlessly, in the background, with a little indicator that tells you how its doing and a complete dashboard for the curious who want to monitor their system.
It allows editing files natively, but prefers to convert them to ProRes – a decision that I agree with, for both performance and image quality reasons.
Once you edit with the magnetic timeline, you’ll never want to go back. And, while the concept of connected clips is a bit weird initially, the benefits these provide are so well-thought out and obvious that I stopped worrying about them after the first couple of days.
Nesting is improved. Audio filters are amazing and first-rate. There is much tighter integration with Motion and Compressor.
There are as many ways to edit in the new version as the old and more ways to trim. Trimming can even be in real-time or slow-motion. Old barriers such as clips in the Browser, still image sizes, clips in a project, and tracks have all fallen away.
The context-sensitive nature of the Viewer window, and the speed it responds, make me completely comfortable editing with only one image window.
The whole system is designed for speed.
And, when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, there are already hundreds in the system and the new process for creating shortcuts is just amazingly powerful – and easy to use.
NOTE: Remind me to mention how much I like the new audio meters – big, fat, large, readable, and adjustable.
SOME OLD FRIENDS DIDN’T MAKE IT
Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, and Color are not in this release. (LiveType was discontinued when FCP 7 came out.)
We all have our favorites, but I will miss Soundtrack Pro the most.
HOWEVER, keep in mind that if you own this software now, you’ll still be able to use it with FCP X. But it is no longer available.
DEALING WITH THE IMOVIE MONKEY
Much ink has been wasted and many pixels have died in the flame debate that FCP X is just a larger form of iMovie.
Yes, they share a similar approach to the interface.
Yes, FCP X imports iMovie projects and media. No, it doesn’t import FCP 7 projects. Yes, Apple should figure out a way to provide an FCP 7 translator. It can’t be that hard.
However, think about this for a minute. iMovie has been out for, what, eight years with ZERO ability to upgrade to Final Cut? Doesn’t it make just a little bit of sense to provide an upgrade option for the millions of future editors out there?
Of course it does.
There’s such in increase in power stepping from iMovie – which I’ve never liked – up to FCP X, that it would be like moving from a bike to a motorcycle. Yes, they both have two wheels and a handlebar, but there’s a huge difference in power in the seat!
APPLE IS MOVING TO TAPELESS
If tapeless media is your life, it will take you a week to stop giggling once you fire up FCP X.
However, FCP X has only limited support for tape. Tape ingest is from FireWire-attached devices, and streaming-only, no timecode controlled positioning of ingest or output to tape.
I’m reminded of the hand-wringing that occurred when Apple dropped floppy disks for optical media “back in the day,” now that Apple has decreed that tape is dead.
In this case, though, I side with the “tapists.” Apple controls the eco-system of the Mac. They don’t control the eco-system of Hollywood; then, again, I’m not sure anyone does. I have clients today that are using 3/4″ Umatic cassettes for sound design and music composition, and EDL lists are used daily for conforming major feature films. Both those formats were declared dead AGES ago!
While FCP X can ingest from a Firewire-attached deck, its output options to tape are limited to live streaming.
This lack of support for layback to video tape using RS-422 control protocol with timecode accuracy gives the perception that Apple is not meeting the needs of professional output. It remains to be seen if companies like AJA, Matrox, or Blackmagic Design will step into the breech. If they do, great. If not, this will cause many of us problems.
However, if you are shooting tapeless, this new software is designed for you. Easy ingest, background transcoding, background rendering, background analysis… Very cool. And, best of all, you can stop or cancel a background process at any time.
Plus, if you are someone that likes to organize their files, FCP X supports that. If you HATE organization, FCP X will organize your files for you. Now, we have a choice.
DISTRIBUTION VIA THE APP STORE
This is a real biggie, as Apple explained it to me. Because no physical media is involved (think packages in an Apple Store), Apple can push out updates faster and at much lower cost because they are using the App Store.
In the past, Apple used a 18 month, or so, cycle between updates. Now, Apple is telling me they are hoping to do an update once or twice a year.
This ability to respond faster to the market and deliver economical updates has already born fruit with the new low prices for Final Cut, Motion, and Compressor.
This gives me lots of hope for the future.
MONKEY #2: APPLE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE PRO MARKET
Writing software like this is not easy, not fast, and not cheap. Its taken Apple several years, dozens of millions of dollars, and an engineering crew big enough to fill a small cruise ship.
You don’t go to that effort to meet the needs of a market you aren’t interested in.
Apple tells me they are committed to quickly improving this version and building on it. They tell me they are committed to making changes quickly and bringing them to market. They tell me they are interested in hearing our reactions to the software.
I believe them and look forward to them fulfilling their promises.
THINGS I DON’T LIKE
Final Cut Pro X is very impressive, but it isn’t perfect. There are a variety of design decisions that I disagree with – and I’ve shared these many times with Apple.
There’s no multicam support.
The audio capabilities in FCP X are far superior to FCP 7 in terms of technical specs and filters. But a completely unintuitive method for adding audio cross-dissolves and lack of support for track-based audio mixing leaves me fondly missing the power of Soundtrack Pro.
The process of adding an audio cross-fade is dangerous, unintuitive and dumb.
Worse, there’s no native way to export a project to send it to either Soundtrack Pro or ProTools for sound mixing.
I’ve already mentioned there is no native ability to layback to tape using timecode control.
The autosave is great, but what we need is the ability to freeze specific project builds so that the client can review and approve a version and KNOW that if the project is opened in the future that nothing will be changed.
Preferences need to include the ability to use frames, not just hundredths of a second for all timing decisions.
A clip needs to remember the In and the Out when you deselect it.
There needs to be a way to remove a project from the Project List without having to resort to the Finder.
There needs to be a preference setting so that all new projects default to Stereo vs Surround.
There are others, and I’m sure you’ll have your own list.
SHOULD YOU BUY IT?
Look, you and I both know you’re going to buy it regardless of what I say. So here’s my main point. I think that within the next 18 months virtually all of us will be running FCP X and wondering how we lived without it.
It’s that good.
Is it perfect? No.
Whether this is right for you depends upon what you are doing. Here’s a list to help you decide:
* If you are exclusively shooting tapeless and outputting to the web, this product was designed with you in mind. However, some vendors – Sony comes first to mind – need to update their drivers to work with FCP X. Be sure to check the Sony website for updates before moving to FCP X.
* If you are shooting tape and sending XDCAM SR tapes to the network, you should stay with FCP 7 and complain to Apple to add improved support for video-tape output.
* If you are shooting (H)DSLR cameras, you’ll love the automatic transcoding, auto-image correction, and blinding speed built into the new system.
* If you shoot on DV or HDV and export your files for the web, Final Cut Pro X can make your life a lot simpler.
* If you shoot tapeless and distribute your files on DVD, you can use FCP X for your edit, export your footage, compress on Compressor (either old or new) and use DVD Studio Pro to create your DVD.
* If you simply need to burn your project to either DVD or Blu-ray, the new Final Cut makes this easy. If you need to author a DVD, or Blu-ray, you’ll need to use either DVD Studio Pro or Adobe Encore.
* If you are working in iMovie, you should step up to the new version and put some power in your pictures.
* If you are doing projects with complex audio mixes, stay with FCP 7 until Apple gives us improved audio mixing and audio export support.
* If you live for speed and high image quality, you have a new love in your life.
* If you are in the middle of an FCP 7 project, you should stay there. Don’t even think about trying to port your project into the new system. Finish your project. FCP X will be here when you are done.
* If you are responsible for meeting incredibly tight deadlines, stay with your current system. Buy FCP X – learn it. See what you like and what you don’t. Then, as it makes sense to you, roll it into production.
In other words, consider that your job is telling stories with pictures. Final Cut Pro X is another tool in your toolkit that can help you with your story-telling. For some of us, its perfect now. For others, it needs to mature a bit.
But, when the credits roll, it isn’t the power of the tool, its the power of your story that makes people care.
I’ll have much more in my newsletter next week. In the meantime, let me know what you think.
Larry
P.S. I’ve spent the last six weeks creating training for Final Cut Pro X. 88 movies, over eleven hours of in-depth training. All ready, right now, for you to discover the power and capability of this new software. Visit: larryjordan.biz/fcpx
214 Responses to Ain't Nothing Like It In the World
← Older Comments Newer Comments →-
Jack says:
June 24, 2011 at 6:45 am
-
Larry says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:54 pm
-
DavidH says:
June 24, 2011 at 7:45 am
-
Larry says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:54 pm
-
Alvaro Tobar says:
June 24, 2011 at 10:51 am
-
Larry says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:58 pm
-
Tim Garber says:
June 24, 2011 at 11:00 am
-
David Stacy says:
June 24, 2011 at 1:16 pm
-
Larry says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:51 pm
-
nickeditor says:
June 24, 2011 at 2:30 pm
-
Jason Lyons says:
June 24, 2011 at 3:40 pm
-
Allynn says:
June 24, 2011 at 3:58 pm
-
Larry says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:48 pm
-
Andrea says:
June 24, 2011 at 4:00 pm
-
Larry says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:46 pm
-
Jimbo says:
June 24, 2011 at 4:29 pm
← Older Comments Newer Comments →Also, is there any chance you will publish that email you read last night on your blog? It’s the closest thing any of us have had to an “official response” from Apple, and I daresay it might reassure some people.
No. I have not been given permission to publish it.
Larry
Larry, I was looking at Your Inside Source forum at this response from you–
“Everyone:
All QuickTime files, from any version, CAN – repeat CAN, be imported into FCP X .
All my training was done using imported FCP 7, and earlier files.”
So, Larry, what does IMPORT actually mean?
Do folders of .mov files, no matter what codec was used to create them in a previous FCP 7 project, actually show up as iMovie resources after IMPORT?
If a user has terabytes of files, common situation, doesn’t the Final Cut Pro x import function automatically start converting terabytes of files into Pro Res?
In other words, is the truth actually that you cannot simply USE pre-existing media in its own specific QuickTime specs…for instance, custom file size, and 25 frames per second *European tapeless standard using DVCPRO 25, as an example?
By IMPORT don’t you really mean “CONVERT”?
And if that is so, can you specify where such ProRes file duplicates are stored and used, say to another external SATA drive?
Will Final Cut Pro X HONOR the .mov format as simply what it is , how it was created and stored originally on a FCP 7 project from 2009?
Thank you for your expertise.
First, let me clarify. FCP X can import – which can mean EITHER link to or copy – any QuickTime file PROVIDED you have the codec installed on your system and FCP X supports the codec. (This is an additional element I did not know when I wrote my earlier statement.) For instance, XDCAM codecs need to be updated by Sony before you can play XDCAM material in FCP X — something I discovered to my dismay when creating my training as much of my exercise files are in XDCAM EX.
Second, you control whether media is copied or linked and you further control whether it gets transcoded to ProRes. Both of these are preference choices.
Third, should you decide to transcode to ProRes, yes, you can decide which hard drive to store these to.
Larry
Found this in Apple’s support “It is strongly recommended that you install Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, and Compressor 4 on a startup disk that does not have Final Cut Studio (2009) already installed.” Could you elaborate on that? What is the risk of installing without a partition? Thank you.
Alvaro:
They are referring to this Apple support document: http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/resources/
Larry
In the professional world of broadcast, no tape support is a deal killer in itself, but FCPX has so many deal killers it is laughable.
No OMF, no XML, no export to Color, heck no Color, no layered Photoshop support, no backward project support, no multicam, from what I have heard no way to reconnect media to another drive, it copies media to local (we have hundreds of TBs on multiple XSANs), you can’t assign audio tracks (I organize my tracks for sweetening – oh wait you can’t sweeten since you can’t output an OMF, XML, or AAF.)
I think even attaching the word “professional” to FCPX is a stretch. If you are self-contained, work alone using files and FW ingest, complete the project (edit, effects, and sweeten) in the same machine with plenty of internal storage, then FCPX is golden.
If you work in a professional environment with archival footage coming from various tape formats, cut multicam programming or performances, revisit old projects, share my project with multiple editors, access TBs of footage, need to send the project to a colorist, need to have high-end sweetening added, then FCPX is a joke.
Those are a ton of conditions NOT met by FCPX. After looking at it I question the premise that this was a ground-up build. Could be true, but rather it looks like a pattern rebuild using iMovie as the pattern.
We joke about Apple fanboys drinking the coolaid…
Your amazing Larry! You help everyone by answering all their concerns. There are so many questions and a Google search comes up with very little answers and even more questions. I was looking for an honest review and this blog is the only real source I have found. It is a relief not to “guess” about the features and “all the problems”. It is one thing to have problems and another to wait until the monkey jumps out of the bush and surprises you. People’s greatest fear is fear of the unknown. To substitute for the facts, fear and worry create lots of negative press.
Apple had to know their new child was not going to work for the professional or serious editor they worked so hard to convert from Avid. They had a complete professional tool set and a price line that Avid couldn’t compete with. Now for the first time I think people are going to consider the Adobe Studio of products as an alternative who were doing the best they could to copy Apply and compete with those slow to move to an Apple computer or who had a solid foundation in multiple Adobe products by completing their suite of features.
The biggest surprise is that Apple knew exactly what they were doing by killing the professional workflow, but they haven’t said that they would take care of them in future versions. You said Apple would make future revisions for the professional but Apple hasn’t addressed their top end audience. That comes down to a lack of commitment on their end.
I agree with you that Apple may have made a mistake by immediately pulling FCP 7 off the shelf. One of the first things I did was to see if it was still available at a discount. OK its clear they want to kill the old editing software and force a new product but all the time they knew the top editors couldn’t use the new FCP. Especially top end users are the first people that want to spend the money to get an edge with the latest greatest. It is hard to imagine that they took their hands and covered their eyes and ears to leave the top editors to figure out on their own that they couldn’t stop using FCP 7 even if they wanted to.
I am excited that finally there is a FCP has the programming to use power of our significantly better computers. I have always been handcuffed by the rendering bar especially when doing special effects. The only previous solution is to buy more and more expensive hardware to try to solve the problem. Yes, I am happy that they finally listened to you and put in a useful audio bar, but what to do about mixing and voice overs?
I am just one of the many unknown students who have loved your excellent presentation in your Lynda.com tutorials above and beyond the information you teach. I have caught several other Lynda.com authors trying to copy both some of your style and even your quips. I guess that waiting for all the professional functionality in the new FCP will be like sitting and waiting for oil “paint to dry”. This conversion is probably going to create lots of extra work for you as an educator and producer. Do you take interns?
David:
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
And we are always interested in working with good people.
Larry
Hello Larry,
FCPlug is interesting Larry, but for third-party developers ¿what about Apple?
¿Is only third-party solutions can we expect?
Regards
Hi Larry,
Thanks for providing another perspective on this issue. Sounds like FCPX.x might be a real tool someday…
I must take issue with one point you raised.
“MONKEY #2: APPLE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE PRO MARKET”
Its nice that YOU have been able to consult with the software engineers and that Apple has reassured YOU that they are committed… what are all the rest of us users? chopped liver 🙂
…but its really the actions of Apple and their pro hardware and software positioning that tells me something completely different.
Apple XRAID – gone
Apple XServe – gone
Apple Shake – gone
Apple Color – gone
Apple STP – gone
What’s next ? Mac Pro Desktops?
Back to chopped liver:
Yes their journey of re-writing the software, the millions of dollars spent on development means something indeed. Where you see a promise to be fulfilled I see a big question to be answered, “Apple, if you are going to all these lengths to develop this ground breaking software, and you are indeed committed to the pro market, then why keep your user base in limbo for years and be so secretive about all this effort and why not include a large collective of users to provide feedback, or even an official statement, a timeline, a shared forward looking vision about the future of the product beyond a rogue email by Steve Jobs saying how cool or great it is going to be?”
I agree with you FCP 7 is not dead, it is still very functional as long as you know the work-arounds and are willing to work with it. As for me I don’t want to be in your article a few years from now as an example of people still using the 3/4″ UMATIC equivalent NLE editor – Final Cut Pro 7.x… 🙂
(BTW-that mention of Umatic made me grin, that’s what I started cutting on back in 1989)
My bet is on the companies that show that they are committed to the Pro markets. Namely, AVID and Adobe in that order.
Here’s my two cents on Apple’s whole strategy… I think they are moving out of the computer market and into the personal electronics market. There was a CNN report the other day that Apple is going to start making TVs (http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/06/22/apple.tv/). iPhones, iFads, iPods and iMacs are consumer electronics. Sure you can (probably) make a really slick YouTube video using them maybe even cut an indie movie on the cheap but they are all designed to sell (in volume) to a mass market. Not so a high end video editing suite or the hardware it runs on (which is why I think Mac towers are going away very soon too).
Apple has always been a hardware company; we all know that. And the profit margin in computers is really, *really* slim these days. But consumer electronics? That’s a different story. How many iPods have you bought in the past ten years versus how many Mac Pros?
I think we have a major paradigm shift going on here and I suppose, from a profit standpoint, it’s inevitable. I’m sure FCP X will get updates and some missing features added back in but I don’t **ever** see it catering to a high-end pro market. Apple wouldn’t have launched it the way it did if they didn’t **intend** to alienate pro users.
Allynn:
Allow me to disagree. Apple is predominantly a software company – they use their hardware to sell their software. (Think of a Mac as a big dongle.) I agree with you that they are moving into the consumer space, but what is allowing that move is not their hardware but the software that runs on it. That which makes an iPhone exciting is not that it is the size it is, it what the software – and the apps in the App Store – can do with it.
What this portends for the video segment remains to be seen.
Larry
Well, first of all I’d like to express my solidarity to Larry. I’ve read some comments against his person in this blog which are almost surreal. As though to say: “FCP doesn’t include Multicamera Editing. It’s Larry Jordan fault” . I think Larry has helped al lot part of us (maybe everyone of us) with his perfect training job in this years. We have the right to be angry for a lot of things about what’s happened with FCPX, FCP 7, Color and so on, but to attack Larry in some way it’s the wrong thing to do. Instead I’d like to think to him like an huge resources in this transition moment.
Second: I’ve just started to have little business using Color. Perfect. Color is dead. I think I can continue to work with this software for a while, but can anyone of you, Larry and the others on this blog, to help me to understand if it’s better to learn similar application? For example Da Vinci Resolve? This is just a simple questions but i think it’s the right way to face this moment. To debate our problems with this new situation and to find new workflows and solutions.
My apologies for my english. Thanks to Larry and to everyone here.
Andrea
Andrea:
Thanks for your kind words!
FCP X does color correction, but it doesn’t really do color grading. After talking with Alexis Van Hurkman and seeing his demo of Davinci Resolve, published by Blackmagic Design, I would suggest you look into that program for high-end color correction.
Larry
No multicam, oh heck. But on second thought, with the new features of FC X I think we are met halfway. In the old FCP we needed to set up multicams for many reasons, but one reason was that we in the sequence weren’t able to see the tracks below the upper one. Of course we could turn off the upper one, then the next and so forth, but that could jeopardize render etc. Now we can scrub and see and hear a multitude of “tracks” on top of each other. We can even sync the soundtrack from the external audio recording device without use of timecode.
For music productions with perhaps 3 or 4 cameras I wouldn’t hesitate to use FC X.