Final Cut Pro X named PCMag's Editors Choice for high-end video editing - Page 2

I should point out that FCP supported 128 "angles" to their MultiClip. FCX only supports 64. You can easily get more than 64 takes of performance in a music video. A 50% reduction is hardly what I would call parity.

And, I still don't see EDLs or import of earlier FCP projects. Sorry, still a fail.

How do I edit DV footage in FCP X?
Works fine in old FCP, but not in the crazy FCP X.

The limitations of FCX are less to do with editing than with workflow for features and television. Once the picture is locked various elements are sent to the sound editor, composer, colorist, etc. This often requires using OMF/AAF, EDLs, change lists, and organizing tracks in a specific manner.

Until FCX can do all of these things appropriately (which it cannot), it makes the overall post production process extremely difficult or impossible.

There is also the matter of technical support. If Jerry Bruckheimer is looking over your shoulder and the system has a problem, you expect to reach someone extremely qualified to troubleshoot and resolve the issue. Not sure if Apple's tech support is setup to handle this.

However, these things impact a relatively small percentage of users working on those sort of projects. It comes down to the definition of the word "professional" which seems to get everyone bent.

Side note: an earlier post mentioned the cost of Avid Media Composer vs FCX. If you put a bit of effort into it, you can buy a Student version of Avid for $300 which does most everything the $3000 version does.

Lastly, a number of camera products output ProRes media because of FCP7's popularity. The current and future existence of the ProRes codec isn't indicative of FCX's success or failure ... simply a response to market needs. It's just one of a few intermediate codecs like DNxHD and Cineform created to address needs the others didn't.

Yes, price shouldn't be a show-stopper in itself, especially if it gets what you need. In general, there will be times in any professional's life when spending 10x as much is a bargain for what you get. If the price is all you look at, you might be missing out on something important. My point of agreement is, look at the whole picture, not just the sticker.


There is a drawback though, there's less incentive to focus on the pro users when most of your buyers are consumers.


I think it makes sense, but it would seem that there would be some user base numbers floating around. Also, Hollywood isn't the only market for NLEs, it's a major sub market but it doesn't necessarily reflect the overall market.


Not being an editor, I don't know if this helps, but when learning new, complicated software, I find it's a good idea to just do a practice project. Any complicated program has a difficult learning program, especially when it's a serious reboot. It sounds like X would be worth the extra time, if it is capable of serving your needs.

Not to be a big weenie Apple Insider, but that picture is of Motion, not Final Cut Pro.

Prosumer is a weird term. Years ago people you'd think of as prosumers still dropped thousands on a G4 (dual cpu model) or G5. $300 is cheap as hell. At that point anyone can afford it. I don't have a problem with that. I'm just saying that the price doesn't limit its market to those who use it to make a living. If you can afford a mac, you can afford FCPX at that price. I don't know the product well, but that transition was ugly.

So, do you cut all the takes simultaneously as 128 angles?

If so, how do you play/view the 128 takes simultaneously on FCP 7 with limited RAM/CPU/GPU usage?

If you do, what hardware are you using?


Rather, I suspect you would divide the takes into groups of, say, 16, 32 or 64.

This might do the trick:

ThunderBolt + OpecCL http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp

Though I hope the Mac Pro line continues. No other Mac can beat the expansion and performance.

Please, respectfully, do your own research. Find out. What these folks are saying is common knowledge in the pro world.

Here's a very simple illustration how FCP X can save time and make the editor's job easier and more productive.

MotionVX has released a package of film burn effects for FCP X, FCP 7 and Adobe Premiere.

The video below is a tutorial that shows previewing and applying the same effects in two different NLEs -- Premiere and FCP X (FCP 7 would be used similar to Premiere, but require rendering any changes before playing).

You might want to open the page in 2 separate windows so you can do a side-by-side comparison using these effects in a more traditional NLE (Premier) and FCP X.

The Premier edit starts at 2:20.

The FCP X edit starts at 4:26

mBurns Film Burn Effects


In the Premiere edit you:
1) select the effect
2) drag it to the timeline
3) set the opacity
4) scrub the timeline to preview the effect

-- repeat for each effect until desired effect is found

In the FCP X edit you:
1) select the effect thumbnail
2) scrub the thumbnail to preview the effect applied to the selected clip in the timeline

-- repeat for each effect until desired effect is found

3) double-click the thumbnail to apply the effect.


If you previewed 5 effects:

Premiere == 4 steps x 5 effects == 20 steps

FCP X == 2 steps x 5 effects + 1 step -- 11 steps


Not only are there fewer steps, there is a lot less mouse movement:

Premiere == move mouse from the effects browser to drag an effect to time line, scrub in timeline, then back to browser

FCP X == all mousing/scrubbing is done on the thumbnail in the effects browser


Not only is it easier in FCP X -- but it is faster, more productive and fun.


This is the way all effects are previewed in FCP X -- it's built into the FCP X app!

No, I don't view 128 takes at once, I use the multi clip to be able to easily select any given take in sync and to easily make changes. So, when the artist or record label says they don't like the shot at a given point, I can see what else is available. If I have to break it into multiple multi clips, I can't do that, I'll have to look at each one separately, and not in situ.

So, yes, losing 64 tracks of multi clip is a big deal. Not that my needs matter to Apple...

Have you tried to do this in FCP X -- I believe that you can do the same thing?

You can combine multiple clips into a single angle.

You can combine multiple angles (takes) into a multicam clip.

You can add or delete angles to a multi cam clip from the same or different takes -- and sync them by time code, automatic sound match, marker, wave form, video cue match, manually tweak frames, etc.


Mark Spencer has an excellent tutorial:

Ripple Training release their $29.99 Multicam tutorial for FCPX

I linked to the fcp.co website because they have a code that Ripple honors for a discount.


It includes all the multi cam media!


So, you could spend < $30 on the tutorial and try it with a free download of FCP X.


It might change your mind on FCP X's Multicam feature -- it sure opened my eyes!

I do pro audio, often with film. The new i7 iMac with 16g ram is faster and more efficient than any Mac pro I've used. Coupled with a thunderbolt ssd and you're not wanting for much. It's not a 'consumer' computer.

I think Apple could have avoided 90% of the backlash if they had named the product Final Cut Express X or whatever. It would have kept the high end Pros waiting for the real PRO version and also given Apple another 2 years to release the Pro features.

The number one need (or guiding feature) in high end post production as it currently stands is the need to collaborate. Final Cut Pro X makes that really hard, if not impossible. Apple may have some ingenious ideas to make collaboration between various studios across the country easier in the future. For the moment FCPX works best for the Prosumer audience and with projects where everything is completed using just a few computers or isn't constantly having large portions of it sent off and the results reintegrated.

Apple has put so much work in to speed frameworks over the last few years: Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, 64-bit OS, new compiler, Objective-C runtime improvements. It's not surprising the reviewer was impressed by the speed, Apple is cashing in on it's research.

Okay, so what are YOU pretending isn't in Final Cut Pro X and what do YOU think isn't "pro" about it?

Because we've covered this to death, really.

The Editor whose choice this is edits magazines, not movies. FCP X is coming along, but it's still hopeless in collaborative environments. FCP had build a core professional market of outliers from the Avid-dominated broadcast camp, but they're gone for the foreseeable future.

Sigh...here we go again.

All these "I won't touch it until..." comments are super annoying, and most are laughably out of date. It's as if none of the so-called pros actually read about the features they added at all, they just want to keep making Apple pay for the initial botched release. How unproductive is that?

So okay, great, keep using FCP7 or switch to Avid until FCPX has that one feature you need, but quit whining already. The point here is, Apple just dropped a big update that addressed a huge number of concerns. Yes, we get it, they made a HUGE mistake in the way they introduced the product, probably in introducing it to market in that state at all. But this shows they are serious about correcting the mistakes they made, and your concern is going to be fixed, likely sooner rather than later. If you can't stop dumping on it long enough to see that, you're going to miss out.

I've searched the web for information/tutorials/workflow regarding collaborative video editing.

I can't find any good references.

Could you please point me to some, or explain how several editors can edit the same project/sequence at the same time.

If you define collaboration as dividing the work into serially based tasks -- ingest, transcoding, cataloging/naming clips, clip selection/rejection... these can be done on any system, including FCP X.

If you define collaboration as several editors having read-only access to source material on a common store, then creating their own version of a project/sequence, to be later combined -- FCP X can do that.

If you define collaboration as different editors working on different portions of the same project, e.g. 4 segments of a 24 minute project -- FCP X can do that (likely better than FCP 7 when the segments are later assembled).

If you define collaboration as different editors performing specialties (titling, effects, sound, color, etc.) on different copies of a project at the same time -- FCP X can do that.

If you define collaboration as different editors checking out a project to work on it, serially, one-at-a-time -- FCP X can do that.

If you define collaboration as different editors demonstrating their edits/choices to other editors -- FCP X can do that (in fact you can even do that on an iPad).

If you define collaboration as different editors working on the same clip, in the same sequence, at the same time in real-time -- FCP X cannot do that.

If the latter is what you mean, please explain the workflow -- especially when several editors are making cuts to the same clip, in the same sequence, at the same time!

But if you define collaboration as each editor doing his own thing, with his own copy, at the same time... to be later combined/pieced together by a lead editor/director -- FCP X can do that -- likely much better than FCP 7, because each editors work can be included (in part or in whole) as an audition in FCP X.

It's not really about editing the same sequence and getting real-time updates or anything like that, it's just the workflow of sharing edits that hasn't been thought about enough. Here's an article describing some of the concerns:

http://provideocoalition.com/index.p...t_avid_switch/

With FCPX, there is now no ability to manage media outside of FCPX. The focal point is Events, not clips. The relinking ability is fine and everything but it's still slower than before.

In FCP 7, you could right-click a segment, reveal in Finder, move it, open it in AE, do a comp and render it back out to the scratch and FCP 7 didn't even ask you to do anything, it just relinked it exactly in place with the changes.
In FCPX, you can't get to your source media easily as they are shoved into Events and if you make a change to an Event, it breaks. If you are constantly shuffling media around and making changes, which you do in a collaborative workflow, that gets to be a real pain the ass.

You can't open two projects/sequences at the same time. If someone sends you an edit that you need to merge into yours, you can't just flip between tabs and copy/paste the parts you want because FCPX only opens one project sequence at a time.

You can't version projects the same way. You can duplicate edits but then your active projects view gets cluttered with versions. Before, you could just save a file and shove it somewhere out the way.

You can't really send an edit to someone in an intuitive way. Apple has included no option inside FCPX to actually save out your edit. You can copy it to an external drive, you can move it but you can't save a copy of your edit somewhere else on your internal drive to send to someone else. You have to do it manually by going into your projects folder, getting the .fcpproject file and sending it from there. On the receiving end, the person has to create a project folder and drop the fcppproject in and restart FCPX for it to show up and do the same back and forth.

Then there's the issue of non-native editing. Sometimes you just want to knock together a proxy clip e.g as a storyboard edit. Regardless of what you do, FCPX will always try to render your footage to ProRes. Constantly rendering, wasting CPU cycles. If all your camera source footage is in DVC Pro HD and FCP 7 can edit natively, why doesn't FCPX do the same? If you jump from FCP to AE or Logic or whatever else, do you really want FCPX burning your CPU up and wasting drive space on a transcode that isn't really necessary? If it plays back in real-time, then leave it the fuck alone.

FCPX has a lot going for it with GPU-accelerated encoding, real-time effects, nice UI (this is important to all users) and is feature-rich but the way it's setup is not going to work for everyone. Users have to decide for themselves what works and if collaborative users migrate to software that they find more efficient while single editors adopt FCPX, which is what seems to be happening, the software design will have defined its audience. If Apple wants an audience of collaborative users, they have to design the software to suit the workflow better.

Good read!


I believe that the reason for the focus on events rather than clips is the metadata and the ability to quickly categorize, find and reference the clips -- among other things, eliminating the need to copy/bury the same clip in several bins in several projects.


As I understand the collaborative environment, the media clips reside on a central store -- wouldn't moving/changing clips disrupt collaboration? In any case, in FCP X the events as well as the clips are on a central store for collaboration.


In FCPX the project and the sequence are the same thing. In FCP 7 you cannot have 2 sequences open at the same time (but you can tab between them). In FCP X you cannot have 2 projects open at the same time -- but you can easily go back and forth among projects... there are left and right arrow controls in the upper left of the project/storyline window.

So, you can open project A, then open project B, go back <--, copy (any or all), go forward -->, paste... I think it is easier to incorporate and rearrange the clips in the combined FCP X project that it is in the FCP 7 project -- using the magnetic timeline, absolute positioning, either or both.


In FCPX you can duplicate a project in the same location (project view) or Duplicate and move (place) it in a different location. Or, you can just move the project to somewhere else -- either way can be used to hand off a project to another editor or computer,


Here's one way that looks pretty good:

Managing Your FCP X Events & Projects using Disk Images


You can turn off transcoding and background rendering and edit quite nicely in the native codec. If you wish, you can make a selection and render only that -- say to improve playback on a stacked composite or clips with lots of effects. But you can playback edits without any rendering -- maybe slow, but they play.


I think that FCP X can improve their collaboration features (I've been reading up on Final Cut Studio).

I believe that this is in the master plan. One of the advantages that FCP X has is an SQL database as part of every project and every event -- in the future, I can see these individual dbs being incorporated into a master shared SQL DB on a central store for collaboration.

In this way, editors could check out projects/events/clips/edits down to whatever level that makes sense, e.g. editor 1 does color, editor 2 does sound, editor 3 does titles... on the same edited clip segment at the same time.

We are an FCP7 production company and happy there at the moment, but our tapeless workflow and delivery to web often means that FCPX is looking like a good upgrade in the future for us...

At the moment with FCP7, we have a RAID which is shared as an AFP volume that any other editing station can access and edit over Gigabit ethernet and it works really well for two editors (not working on the same project but being able to access the same stock footage or media if required).

I know in FCPX you can add a SAN location and work from that, but it looks like only one person at a time can work off it.

I am wondering if anyone above has had experience of using FCPX like this? Can it work off an AFP volume?

I don't have a shared RAID, so I can't duplicate your environment...

But, I have used FCP X to access/import/share media that resides on my iDisk.

So, I assume anything you can see in the Finder can be accessed* by FCP X without using ay SAN setup.

* copy files from the iDisk or just reference the files on iDisk in an event

You can see for yourself, by downloading a FCP X free trial:

Final Cut Pro X Free Trial

It doesn't need to encapsulate the media though. Metadata exists in the Finder but it doesn't prevent you from editing files in any app you choose. If you replace the content from an FCPX event using any other app, FCPX thinks you have broken the event. This gives the metadata a higher importance than the source footage.

Separating the metadata from the media doesn't affect the universal media bin.

I don't really see why they couldn't have had a setup where metadata tagging was simply an offset from the source start time. This way if you open the source in another app, it retains the offset on a modified, possibly replaced clip. It can warn the user of the change by the timestamp and ask to regenerate proxies if needed, otherwise update the timestamps.


Changing clips on a central store wouldn't necessarily disrupt anything, FCP 7 just pulled in the new version of the clip or asked you to locate it. FCPX would just say the file is gone if any change was made with an overly horrible and worrying warning symbol.

Media isn't always located centrally, you could have the exact same copy of source footage in two countries where it's not feasible to have a networked share. In this scenario, you just need to be able to exchange edits. In all cases, you need to be able to edit footage outside of FCPX and you can't edit Events outside FCPX at the Finder level.

In a shared environment, you don't know if someone is going to edit a sequence in AE and drop out a flattened ProRes file that you insert into an FCP edit. If you do that, correct it and their edit changes, how do you replace the edit? You have to relink the Event media, which is possible in 10.0.3 but it's more cumbersome than it used to be (it used to be transparent).


I think it's faster to jump between tabs but I agree FCPX makes it easier to push things around. You can't view two sequences at the same time though.


When you have to find workarounds, that's when you know Apple has done it wrong. The disk image idea is not feasible because render files go in beside the project so it will fill up the sparse image pretty quick and you can't free up the space easily again when you flush it out. The project duplication/backup can be done manually in the Finder but Apple chose not to do it in the app, where it used to be. Even if they had snapshots like Time Machine, it would be something tangible without clutter.


They could do something like that, like you get for collaborative word processing apps where someone makes a change and you can see the history of non-linear edits and decide which version to go with in the master version. Comments would be handy too e.g this part needs colour-corrected, this part needs a title, this footage is too shaky whatever monkey shot this is fired.