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Apple starts to fine-cut Final Cut Pro X


al mcguire

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  • 4 months later...

Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 restores professional features; adds notable new ones.

excerpts from article: Macworld website

FCP 7 projects to FCP X

Another big surprise was XML 1.1 integration with FCP via Intelligent Assistance, the company owned by video guru Philip Hodgetts. Available with the launch of this update will be the 7toX for Final Cut Pro conversion app for $10. The new 7toX for Final Cut Pro offers full import functionality that will allow users to convert their older project files into FCP X events. While I am sure there will be many poorly organized FCP 7 projects that may not translate, I urge everyone to treat this news in much the way as when we started converting and sharing our first FCP projects via XML or EDL.

A quantum leap with multicam

Videographers were promised from the introduction of FCP X that in the near future we would once again be able to edit a multi-camera project, and Apple has delivered. With up to 64 active camera angles available, FCP X may actually shake the industry to its core with that level of multicam facility in the basic editing package. This means that you can actively edit more cameras than I have ever heard of being used for any multicam project, with the possible exception of the Super Bowl or, perhaps the bullet-time for The Matrix.

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In other news, I noticed that the LA Final Cut Pro User Group has just dropped the "Final Cut" part of their name! They're now going to be called the "LA Creative Pro User Group":

http://www.studiodaily.com/blog/?p=8433

So they go from "laf-cee-pug" (as guru Mike Horton calls it) to "lac-pug." I believe they're going to expand their editing coverage to Premiere and Avid in addition to FCP.

Note also that major Final Cut Pro TV reality production company Bunim/Murray (Project Runway, Real World, the various Karsashians shows, etc.) has dropped Final Cut entirely and switched to Avid, as announced a couple of weeks ago. This has caused huge ripples in the LA post community, because the Bunim/Murray execs have said they're not happy at Apple's response as to whether they intend to continue making Mac Pro desktop computers, and they find that FCPX does not work for what they need as far as delivering weekly network and cable shows.

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In other news, I noticed that the LA Final Cut Pro User Group has just dropped the "Final Cut" part of their name! They're now going to be called the "LA Creative Pro User Group":

http://www.studiodai...om/blog/?p=8433

So they go from "laf-cee-pug" (as guru Mike Horton calls it) to "lac-pug." I believe they're going to expand their editing coverage to Premiere and Avid in addition to FCP.

Note also that major Final Cut Pro TV reality production company Bunim/Murray (Project Runway, Real World, the various Karsashians shows, etc.) has dropped Final Cut entirely and switched to Avid, as announced a couple of weeks ago. This has caused huge ripples in the LA post community, because the Bunim/Murray execs have said they're not happy at Apple's response as to whether they intend to continue making Mac Pro desktop computers, and they find that FCPX does not work for what they need as far as delivering weekly network and cable shows.

That IS a slap--I worked on the Apple videos that featured Bunim/Murray, that was the biggest FCP install I'd ever seen, and they were the poster people for how FCP could "scale" to a really big, time-sensitive operation.

phil p

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  • 1 month later...

Apple messed up with this bad iTunes has made them suck the feet of the masses. If they alienate sound and video community they will be sorry. This is the only professional industry that relies more on macs than pcs. If they want to give up their only legitimate users ( users who use it as tool instead of a toy) they can but I believe it will hurt them more than they think.

Yes we are a small part f the market share. But consumers who buy apples keep them for years and be happy professionals will buy the biggest baddest version, then buy the new one when it comes out. Also it certainly doesn't hurt their business to say hey this platinum album was mixed on a Mac pro tower in pro-tools( they wish it was in logic)' or this oscar winning film was cut on FCP.

Go ahead apple keep screwing up I love your stuff and I started in pcs and switched to apple. I can still build a pc and go back, and PC hardware has options that blow Mac hardware out of the water, better keep your software good, cuz your hardware is mediocre. My fellow professionals are not sheep like all your iTunes customers, we will use the best tool for the job, so step it up apple, if you make the pros happy you won't make the consumers unhappy, but if you ignore the pros you'll lose us.

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I went to the LA Final Cut Pro User meeting last week, and they have still not settled on the name. There is also now a non-Apple $9.95 utility [mentioned above] that will import "most" of an old FCP7 into an FCPX session, which is pretty amazing (given that Apple initially said it could not be done). This news got a near-standing ovation at the meeting.

I'm still bugged by the FCPX interface. I'm waiting to see if Apple will pull this out of the fire, and reaffirm their commitment to the pro audio/video market at NAB in April. If not, I think they're gonna lose a lot of customers -- and they'll still make hundreds of billions of dollars selling consumer products like the iPad and iPhone.

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"Apple messed up with this bad iTunes has made them suck the feet of the masses. If they alienate sound and video community they will be sorry. This is the only professional industry that relies more on macs than pcs."

All this love for Avid now and all this hatred towards Apple... I wonder how many people really think about the long term history of Avid (picture and sound editing), Apple (FinalCut "Pro") and throw in Sound Tools - ProTools also. A few tidbits: when Avid picture editing software was first developed, it was Mac only (the Mac platform and OS was the best choice to develop the Avid system). At some point in time, Avid software/hardware system was made available to PC (Windows OS) users but the overwhelming majority of feature film editing was still being done on Macs. At one point in time, Microsoft made a huge investment in Avid and part of the deal was that Avid was to drop support for the Mac. This was Avid/Microsoft turning its back and dumping on the high profile professional editorial community that had literally put Avid on the map. The outcry from everyone, including a petition signed by well over 80% of the members of the Editors Guild, caused Avid to change its (evil) course.

Additionally, when Apple came out with FinalCut Pro, it was universally declared UN-professional software, not up to the task of professional editing which, of course, must be done on an Avid system that dominated the market. Well, Avid did so many things that pissed off so many people that FinalCut was embraced by lots and lots of people, including many high profile feature film editors. So, FinalCut Pro became "Pro" software.

So, Apple has now done something different, pissed everybody off, and Avid is trying to be "software for the rest of us" by making some toy version of their "pro" software to run on your phone.

All of this just highlights a general and steady trend that is affecting all professionals --- there are less and less systems designed and built exclusively for our "little" corner of the woods. In the past, this all worked out fine because it was only professionals who could afford these specialized systems because they were very expensive, huge learning curve, but that was the price you paid. Now, with everyone able to own a laptop/phone/pad etc., and very powerful software can be had for $1.99, it's a whole new world.

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Now, with everyone able to own a laptop/phone/pad etc., and very powerful software can be had for $1.99, it's a whole new world.

I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. When everyone has access to sophisticated creative tools, the only thing to differentiate the 'pros' from everyone else is the quality of work and the strength of their ideas, not merely access to technology.

That said, at least on the production side, there is still a certain technological barrier to entry. Every kid on the planet may have some piece of audio production software on their laptop these days, but not everyone is going to be willing/able to invest in professional sound gear for recording on set.

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That said, at least on the production side, there is still a certain technological barrier to entry. Every kid on the planet may have some piece of audio production software on their laptop these days, but not everyone is going to be willing/able to invest in professional sound gear for recording on set.

Not true. Lost more that one job this year to a bunch of newbies that turn up on set and record to ProTools (I think - it's definitely not Boom Recorder or Metacorder) on their laptop. For TVC's. Had to bail them out with real gear twice, but I don't get called first. They're cheaper. When I told them how much my bag cost, they laughed and told me I'd been ripped off.

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All of this just highlights a general and steady trend that is affecting all professionals --- there are less and less systems designed and built exclusively for our "little" corner of the woods. In the past, this all worked out fine because it was only professionals who could afford these specialized systems because they were very expensive, huge learning curve, but that was the price you paid. Now, with everyone able to own a laptop/phone/pad etc., and very powerful software can be had for $1.99, it's a whole new world.

Yes, many, many internet pundits have been screaming about the "race to the bottom mentality" that has been going on for the last few years. The VFX people are really going nuts about it.

I don't know if anybody is interested in this, but there's a fairly incredible -- roughly 2000-page -- "History of Editing" book that came out last year, and I've slowly been working my way through it. It literally starts with hot splicers and cement at the turn of the 19th century, and moves forward to sound, Movieolas, synchronizers, then progresses through Steenbecks, KEMs, then through Ampex, RCA, CMX, Convergence, Sony, EditDroid, Ediflex, Montage, Avid, Media 100, Lightworks, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro... you name it. All the big names -- Coppola, Lucas, Thelma Schoonmaker, Art Schneider, Steve Jobs, on and on and on... a monstrously complicated, convoluted history. The missteps, mistakes, dead ends, bonehead decisions, genius innovations, and brilliant inventions will boggle your mind. Just the number of editing companies that went down the tubes is kind of stunning; I think at least fifty companies went bust, to finally wind up today with basically Avid Media Composer, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere as the last men standing.

The book is written by Australian editor John Buck, both eBooks available for a trifling $4 each:

Timeline 1

Timeline 2

Part 1 covers about 1900 to maybe 1975; part 2 covers about 1975 to the present, with some overlap. Both are actually pretty interesting; I initially skipped part 1, then went back and was fairly surprised and fascinated by the rich history I had almost bypassed, since I erroneously assumed I knew all that stuff. (As somebody famous once sang, "the more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.")

John managed to track down pretty much everybody still alive who had anything to do with the evolution of electronic picture and sound editing in the last 50 years, along with many excerpts from past industry publications and technical papers, and it's a pretty remarkable story. It's too long by about half, but once I hit the section where I started actually knowing a few of the players (1980-ish), it started getting pretty interesting.

No doubt the feature version will be more dramatic!

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Thank you for that, Marc. I had no idea that one author would have gone to all the effort to document such a long and detailed history. Personally, I am most in touch with developments starting in about 1965 and very well acquainted with the tumultuous time between 1975 to 1990 or so. As everyone knows, I am a real history nut but I am NOT a very good reader (seriously dyslexic and never really got comfortable reading, even to this day). I may have to jump into this work because I am also guilty of what Marc says, the idea that I already know it all, and I would like the history to be accurate.

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The book could use some organizing. The author is essentially selling an early draft in hopes of getting a few more contributions and corrections before print publication, but even in electronic form, there's some very eye-opening details there.

Some interesting conclusions come out:

• many of the most important developments in editing happened by accident, and not from any formal process

• some of the greatest inventors were people without degrees, sometimes even not editors (!)

• a few of the old die hard companies like Ampex fell apart because they kept trying to sell their old machines, and pushed newer, better machines to the back, afraid to interfere with their core business

• there was no one giant revolution -- everything happened gradually, over time, and much of the user interface process and design work happened through painful trial and error (mostly the latter).

It's a very sobering story. Just the stuff on Lucasfilm alone, with their adventures into Editdroid and Sounddroid, were pretty interesting. It's unfortunate to me that Lucas essentially financed all the early development on Avid, Pro Tools, and Pixar, but none of those companies were successful when he owned them. Ten years later, they were all huge successes.

When there are 13-year-old kids using Final Cut Pro, it's kind of sobering (and sad) to realize that they're never going to know what it was like to do a hot splice, how to deal with mag tracks and splicing tape, and they probably have almost no sense of the rich history that led up to them working on their project.

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  • 7 months later...

Final Cut Pro X 10.0.6 brings the following improvements:

  • Expand multichannel audio files directly in the timeline for precise editing of individual audio channels
  • Unified import window for transferring media from both file-based cameras and folders of files
  • Redesigned Share interface for exporting projects and range selections to one or more destinations
  • RED camera support with native REDCODE RAW editing and optional background transcode to Apple ProRes
  • MXF plug-in support that allows you to work natively with MXF files from import through delivery using third-party plug-ins
  • Dual viewers, each with a video scope display, let you compare shots to match action and color
  • Option to add chapter markers in the timeline for export to video files, DVD, and Blu-ray disc
  • Range selection now preserves start and end points in the Event Browser and allows you to create multiple range selections on a single clip
  • Paste attributes window lets you choose specific effects to copy between clips
  • Flexible Clip Connections allow you to keep Connected Clips in place when slipping, sliding or moving clips in the Primary Storyline
  • Add a freeze frame to your timeline with a single keystroke
  • Drop shadow effect with intuitive onscreen controls to adjust position, edge falloff, angle, and more
  • New controls for combining audio from multiple angles within a Multicam Clip
  • Compound Clip creation in the timeline now saves the clip in the Event Browser for re-use in other projects
  • XML 1.2 featuring metadata import and export for richer integration with third-party apps

Apple's Motion 5.0.5 adds the following updates:

  • Improved anti-aliasing increases text sharpness for enhanced legibility
  • Open multiple projects simultaneously to easily switch, copy and paste between them
  • Accelerated loading of complex projects

Finally, Apple's Compressor 4.0.5 adds these improvements:

  • Improved cluster setup eliminates the need to have Compressor open on all cluster nodes
  • Activate additional encoding clusters without re-authentication
  • Addresses an issue related to third-party QuickTime components that could prevent Compressor from opening

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UPDATE: X2Pro

Marquis Broadcast's X2Pro Audio Convert 2.1 makes it possible to move Final Cut Pro X projects to Avid Pro Tools for audio finishing, with audio Roles in Final Cut Pro X converted into Pro Tools tracks and sorted by type. It translates the audio timeline along with L-cuts, J-cuts, and transitions as well as Final Cut Pro X compound clips and handles any QuickTime-supported audio formats. This release adds support for the just-released Final Cut X 10.0.6 update and its new FCP XML 1.2, plus other enhancements. X2Pro Audio Convert is $149.99 for Mac OS X 10.6 through 10.8 and is only available in the Mac App Store.

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