Final Cut Pro X draws mixed reactions from users, professionals

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  • Reply 61 of 248
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jonamac View Post


    That comment sums what's wrong with this whole attitude towards FCPX. You would be the person telling Henry Ford to build a faster horse.



    To label anyone who doesn't need OMF/XML support a 'Wallmart grazing prosumer' is elitist drivel.



    This is version 1.0 of a massive redesign intended to set FCP up for the next 10 years. To expect the refinement of FCP7 (yes, 7) at version 1.0 of the new architecture is absurd. Your crowd really ought to learn some patience and temper their reactions a little. I give you the benefit of believing you need OMF/XML etc. because it seems every man and his dog is suddenly a Hollywood editor at the moment.



    No 'Pro' would move all of his workflow to a completely untried piece of software 24 hours after its release. If your current setup is so wonderful, why do you even want a new FCP? The answer is because you always want better. Here comes the reality hit: if you want better, you need to go 64-bit and you need to re-engineer. Final Cup Pro 7 looked archaic and ran on an archaic architecture. In short, it had reached it's limits. Retooling for the future is painful. If you can't do it and don't want to use 1.0 FCPX, don't. Stick with FCP7 until FCPX is ready. I would have thought that should have been the plan all along!!



    Rating this software, which by all accounts brings huge speed increases, just 1 star on the MAS is just childish. The top-end video industry should be embarrassed by the completely over the top reaction to this release.



    hear hear - I am not in the video editing business but I never remember running the latest DAW in a studio, at home maybe but even that is bloody risky. Upgrading immediately makes no sense whatsoever, just wait and carry on doing your job with the software you love. Maybe it time you will love this one too. The result is far more important than the tools.
  • Reply 62 of 248
    jonamacjonamac Posts: 388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by quamb View Post


    Hey, I didn't rate it on the App Store. Not sure why you think that? And I'm not sure why you're going out of your way here to defend Apple, this is a simple, frustrating, criticism. The end.



    I guess they just can't do anything wrong in some peoples books.



    I didn't mean you personally, I meant the stupid number of so-called professionals (I refer to the mentality, not to how they earn their living) giving this software 1-star.



    Apple most certainly can do wrong. There was a debacle when they released Aperture 3 that had me fuming for days, but that wasn't a 1.0 release. Criticise sure, but people ought to have some balance, and en masse one-star rating in not balance.
  • Reply 63 of 248
    fearlessfearless Posts: 138member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by charlituna View Post


    This is point zero on a total rewrite of a major program and it has been out less than three days. So yeah, it is bitching and moaning in my opinion. And i'm also a pro editor....



    Charlituna, I don't know what you edit or what your daily demands are but Patrick is absolutely right in all his points. The April preview was very scant on real information, and the rumour network gave a lot of weight to the probability that they previewed the eye candy but the things needed in the professional space would still be there, under the hood. They're not.



    The unceremonious dumping of a decade or so of investment in Final Cut and its peripheral equipment is what people are bitching and moaning about, not some luddite aversion to a new UI. It's gorgeous, getting most things in is a dream. Getting anything useful out is hopeless.



    People were entitled to expect that the next version of FCP (yes, that's what it's called) would be able to be used for the same tasks as its predecessor, before FCS3 vanished from the shelves. It can't.



    There are a lot of analogies being used here, but let's say Adobe just released Photoshop XX, took the current version off the shelves, told you it couldn't open all your old Photoshop files and all you could make was JPEGs - because that's what people put on Facebook. You could keep the old version for old pictures but it won't run in Lion, and the next Mac you buy only runs Lion... but man, it's the future...
  • Reply 64 of 248
    z3r0z3r0 Posts: 238member
    I just hope Apple has a new replacement for Final Cut Server up it's sleeve if not they should open source the code just like they did with QuickTime/Darwin Streaming Server. Shake and Color would be great contributions to the community as well.



    Hate to see great software locked up when it still has it's uses and unexplored potential.

    Plus it would be a great PR move on Apple's part!
  • Reply 65 of 248
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by fearless View Post


    You could keep the old version for old pictures but it won't run in Lion, and the next Mac you buy only runs Lion... but man, it's the future...



    The solution is clearly for Apple to offer the old version of both the OS and software to pro users who aren't ready to switch. This is pretty standard in the enterprise market, but Apple is very much a consumer oriented firm and so it tends to resist it.
  • Reply 66 of 248
    jonamacjonamac Posts: 388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by spliff monkey View Post




    You're whole rant is centered on the idea that FCPX is V1. It's not really. Again if it was they should have called it by another name and in this case it would still not be a rose. I assume since you called real professionals who know what they are talking about "elitists' (OMG LOL) another tool you must be. Yes, from where you stand we must seem like elitists and you know what, most of us are comfortable with that.




    Ah the conceited 'rolleseyes'.



    You haven't actually read my post it seems. Thanks for quoting it so more reasonable people can see for themselves what I wrote.



    I didn't label professionals elitists, I labelled the comment that I was replying to elitist drivel. It was. He called people who didn't know what OMF and XML were 'wallmart grazing prosumers'. That is as elitist as it gets. You using the term 'real professionals' also smells a bit wiffy. I'm a professional photographer but I don't label everyone I see using a mid-range DSLR Wallmart grazing prosumers or claim 'real professionals' work with 1Ds or D3xs. Some staggering work is done with these cameras, that's what makes them professionals or not in my book.



    Nobody's claiming the top-end pro market doesn't have good reason to be frustrated or even angry, but the reaction is over the top. If Apple add OMF/XML support, Multicam etc. in an update next month, you'll all look pretty silly. Not because you got annoyed, but because hundreds and hundreds of you gave it 1 star on the MAS and took to the forums in a furore of vitriol.



    The failing of Apple here, as is SO often their failing, is the complete lack of communication with their market. All they needed to do is put 'the following features will follow shortly in updates:' and all this heat would have been a heck of a sight cooler.



    At least you knew FCPX was coming! I waited years for Aperture 3 and my industry had no inkling that it was even in development until the day it was released! We guessed it was because Aperture 2 was a success, but there was no announcement from Apple whatsoever until the release day.



    I wish Apple would understand that when it comes to professional software they can't afford the complete, deafening silence that they insist upon so often. People's livelihoods depends on being able to plan smooth transitions that don't impact on their delivery of service.
  • Reply 67 of 248
    Calling this product FinalCut was just one of many mistakes. VideoEditorPro for iApp users would have been more appropriate.
  • Reply 68 of 248
    The number of comments of people so religiously defending Apple on these comments is hilarious, people who have no concept of a professional edit and saying things about how editors need to adapt and change their workflow when they have no idea of the difficulties and intricacies of a NLE workflow.





    Other people have already covered things they left out like EDLs, OMFs etc... so I'll throw a few more into the pile.



    My company is fairly small, we don't hand off projects to Protools, we don't use EDL's.. but there is still A LOT missing from this. We need total control over our media and FCPX does not provide that. I am an example that it is not just the people working in huge production houses that find this version unusable.



    Example. We work off external storage like everyone else, we have a series of drives we use on a per-project basis.

    With FCP7, when i first ingest footage I set up ALL my associated media, scratch disks, render files, autosaves, waveform cache etc to all go onto that one external drive, the project is 100% portable. Take the drive to another machine, boom, you're working.



    FCPX, you can set where the duplicated media goes (note, you have to duplicate media from most formats or manually move the original native files to a location of your choice in the finder.

    It supports less native files, we wrk with Canon XF and Sony XDCAM formats a lot and no support there, we would now have to convert to prores, prores is great, but the 270% increase in file size is not always worth it and takes time to re-encode.

    EVEN WORSE

    Not all of the associated media now lies where I want..externally. The 'Events' and 'Projects' libraries sit on the /Movies drive of the BOOT drive. this is terrible practice and there is no way to change it.



    So... there is literally no ay to move a project without copying those libraries and manually placing them in aid location on the new macine...then redoing when returning to the first machine.



    THIS IS NOT A SMALL PROBLEM. This literally 100% knocks out my current workflow and the workflow of pretty much all Mid-High end FCP users.



    So Media Management - Broken

    Format support - Seriously weakened ("oh but we now support h.264"...great, anyone who edits in h.264 needs to have their FCP licence revoked)



    Multi cam - This is huge, it is huge, I don't need to explain.



    Single monitor display, lack of being able to arrange the workspace to fit the project...awful.



    Trackless workflow. Now this is an interesting concept. but it makes doing serious sound mixes a lot more difficult and since they killed Soundtrack..what are we to do?



    The list goes on.....



    Don't get me wrong, there are some great new ideas in FCPX, it is very fast, it looks great the UI have some nice ways of working. but they have destroyed so much of the bread and butter that a professional editor needs that it is not an option.



    "So just use FCP" A lot of you are saying...

    Well, yes, that is exactly what I am having to do for the time being, but FCP7 is not 64bit, it doesn't support OpenGL or Grand central, it is sluggish and the reason people wanted an upgrade was for things like 64bit.



    Also, with them now killing FCP7 and no longer selling it, how are we supposed to add edit stations and how long will FCP7 survive and we are forced to use FCPX (not possible..) or go elsewhere.





    Those saying "people who bought on day 1 are not pros"... this is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard, it is us pros who were so excited by this new FCP and want to try it out, I installed it alongside FCP7 on my personal machine, why would I not try it out?



    For now I will continue to chug along with FCP7, fiddle around on FCPX and wait and see what Apple do but I can't see them listening to the outcries, they may add EDLs or OMF's and multicams they are the loudest cries, but there is a lot more missing that I just don't se them every doing.

    I am mentally preparing for Premiere or Avid to potentially be starting to be used a lot more, but i hope not, I've used FCP for years and it is a great product...until now.
  • Reply 69 of 248
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by robochic View Post


    All in all, I think this post by a well-respected, and long-time member of the professional post community, Walter Biscardi, of Creative Cow sums it up best. I highly recommend everyone confused by the backlash to give it a read.



    That is an excellent link. There will be a lot of people defending Apple here, that's what we tend to do. But this Final Cut Pro X move is somewhat disconcerting, and I did suspect it was leaning this way.



    Steve Jobs and Randy Ubilos seem to be too excited about iMovie these past few years. Sure, it's cool, but it's iMovie. I'm not sure how involved Randy is with Final Cut Pro X but Apple has dropped the ball on a 10 year legacy of a truly revolutionary video editing system (Final Cut Pro, not iMovie).
  • Reply 70 of 248
    ivladivlad Posts: 742member
    I think people need to relax and take a chill pill. There is a huge team of software engineers and UI experts that know little more than any professional video editor. Apple had to release FCP now because it's so overdue, but they always listen to their customer feedback. I am 100% sure that all those little features people cry about will get implemented.
  • Reply 71 of 248
    cory bauercory bauer Posts: 1,286member
    The number of blind loyalists here with little to no understanding of a professional editing workflow is kind of disturbing. I don't mean its disturbing that they don't understand the professional editing workflow, I mean its disturbing that they don't understand it but speak as if they know better than those who do.



    The five-star ratings in the Mac App store are from people coming from iMovie. The one-star ratings are from people coming from Final Cut Pro. What's the name of this program again? That's right, Final Cut Pro.



    For the software to be released in such a crippled state is unacceptable; they've had four years to prep this program (yes its been that long since a legitimate Final Cut Pro update was released) and what they put out was iMovie with some additional features. The comment about this application not being ready for "some" professionals today, but being ready for many others is flat-out wrong. There is only a single workflow in which this program can currently function. If you are an editor coming from iMovie who works completely alone on a single computer with only digital files, then this app is ready for you today. For any other workflow, the program is unusable. And I mean that literally; there are no workarounds for any of the biggest current issues.*



    I don't think people are understanding the severity of the state of this app; Apple just released a version of Final Cut Pro that doesn't open up Final Cut Pro documents. Let that sink in for a moment.



    Other deal-breaker features are the ability to get any kind of layered edit in or out of the program. You can't bring in an edit done elsewhere (except from iMovie, which tells you where their priorities now lay), nor can you output a layered edit to be used with other software. That means every project must start and finish in Final Cut Pro X. You can't send your project to be mixed or colored by a specialist (which any project with a budget over 4 figures likely would be), you can't send an edit out for vfx or a finish, and you cant even share your project over a network with other Final Cut Pro X users. All of the metadata (which X's new one-way organization requires) and proxy files are generated locally on the user's machine!



    All of that alone makes the program unusable in a professional environment beyond the aforementioned one-man band scenario. But then there's no support for deck control or capture from tape (even for those who are shooting all-digital today, they have libraries of tapes they need to access when projects creep back up), no way to put a project to tape, no multi-cam editing, no video output (even if the built-in color tools weren't awful they're pointless without the ability to send picture to a calibrated plasma), no RED support, no way to re-link missing media, no way to have more than one timeline open at at a time, and two-dozen other less-critical things.



    But even if Apple were to add all of that back in a timely manner, which is not something they have publicly committed to doing, the way in which Final Cut Pro X organizes and handles media is fundamentally flawed. The "Event Library" shows all of the media for all of your clients and projects all at once. Who is that helpful for? There are no real folders any longer, only smart folders that rely on metadata. Metadata, as I mentioned earlier, that is only stored locally on your own computer. Should you share a project with another user, all organization is completely absent on their computer. And while Apple brags that the application handles nearly all formats "natively", what it actually does is create Apple Pro-Res duplicates of all your footage on your boot drive, with no way to designate a different location for those duplicates to reside.



    So effective Tuesday, Apple has killed Final Cut Studio (you can no longer buy it) and replaced it with an usable application. Unusable, unless you are coming from iMovie and only work by yourself with strictly digital files and on a single computer.



    The "you can just keep using the old version until Apple fixes the new one" argument doesn't fly either. Professionals have waited four years for a significant upgrade to Final Cut Pro; few if any are going to give Apple another four years to turn this iMovie Deluxe release into something that can actually be used in a professional environment. Editors want an application that can handle all video formats natively and uses all of their computer's CPUs and memory today. And if we have to burn all of our previous work to move to Final Cut Pro X, it'd be easier just to jump ship. Adobe Premiere's come along way, and it actually opens Final Cut Pro projects. What a novel idea, right?



    *Automatic Duck has released a plug-in for OMF-export, which would allow for sending your project to be professionally mixed by a Pro Tools artist, but the plug-in costs two-thirds more than Final Cut Pro X itself. For a single feature! At that rate, it would cost professionals about ten grand to plug all of Final Cut Pro X's holes with third party plug-ins, if such plug-ins even existed.
  • Reply 72 of 248
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    That is an excellent link. There will be a lot of people defending Apple here, that's what we tend to do. But this Final Cut Pro X move is somewhat disconcerting,...



    Yeah that's the way I see it too.



    Why would a "professional" video app import iMovie files and store projects on the local hard drive?



    Seems like this product is aimed at iMovie enthusiasts that may want to step up to a more advanced product. Like a previous poster mentioned, I don't see how a high end production with advanced audio mixing and color correction can be done with FCPX as it currently is. These features may be added in the future.... then again they may not. I would not want to be in the position of hoping that they are added back in.



    Aperture and and Logic Pro users.. be afraid, be very very afraid.
  • Reply 73 of 248
    jlanddjlandd Posts: 873member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jonamac View Post


    Ah the conceited 'rolleseyes'.



    You haven't actually read my post it seems. Thanks for quoting it so more reasonable people can see for themselves what I wrote.



    I didn't label professionals elitists, I labelled the comment that I was replying to elitist drivel. It was. He called people who didn't know what OMF and XML were 'wallmart grazing prosumers'. That is as elitist as it gets. You using the term 'real professionals' also smells a bit wiffy. I'm a professional photographer but I don't label everyone I see using a mid-range DSLR Wallmart grazing prosumers or claim 'real professionals' work with 1Ds or D3xs. Some staggering work is done with these cameras, that's what makes them professionals or not in my book.



    Nobody's claiming the top-end pro market doesn't have good reason to be frustrated or even angry, but the reaction is over the top. If Apple add OMF/XML support, Multicam etc. in an update next month, you'll all look pretty silly. Not because you got annoyed, but because hundreds and hundreds of you gave it 1 star on the MAS and took to the forums in a furore of vitriol.



    The failing of Apple here, as is SO often their failing, is the complete lack of communication with their market. All they needed to do is put 'the following features will follow shortly in updates:' and all this heat would have been a heck of a sight cooler.



    At least you knew FCPX was coming! I waited years for Aperture 3 and my industry had no inkling that it was even in development until the day it was released! We guessed it was because Aperture 2 was a success, but there was no announcement from Apple whatsoever until the release day.



    I wish Apple would understand that when it comes to professional software they can't afford the complete, deafening silence that they insist upon so often. People's livelihoods depends on being able to plan smooth transitions that don't impact on their delivery of service.





    Jonamac, but it is your last comment that sums up why the smart money isn't assuming the missing features will show up in a month. Aperture is the program I spend every day in front of professionally, and while I stuck with it when it was too slow and had no localized editing, many of my peers did not. I would certainly not characterize them as "looking silly" when the program finally matured as if by magic one day without warning, um, four years later.
  • Reply 74 of 248
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member
    deleted
  • Reply 75 of 248
    minderbinderminderbinder Posts: 1,703member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sennen View Post


    There are a lot of hissy-fits being thrown at the moment.



    That's a pretty sycophantic way to spin a product update having a number of important features removed. Professionals have been using FCX to make a living, if they release a paid "upgrade" that can't be used to do what the previous version did, isn't that a completely reasonable grounds for complaining?



    And maybe all the high end features will be added back, maybe they won't and apple is happy with abandoning the high end and making money off of prosumers.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by paxman View Post


    The pro set is a tough crowd to please and there's nobody more conservative. It amazes me that apparently so many will condemn the software so quickly. It's clearly very different so it's it's gonna take a while. For some it will take years. I wonder how long the average reviewer has spent with the software.



    Do you even know the specifics of the situation?



    FEATURES ARE MISSING.



    It's got nothing to do with being "conservative" or not spending enough time with the software, playing around with it longer isn't going to make those features magically appear.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by frankie View Post


    Just use the older version. No one is telling you you can't.



    Yeah, that advice is going to go down well with someone who just shelled out $299 for an alleged "upgrade" only to find out that they can't use it - maybe a few months down the road they will, maybe not. And maybe those missing features will be free updates, maybe they won't show up until the next paid version (full price, no longer an upgrade). I expect there are some who want their money back, and I think apple should give it to them, particularly since they don't make it clear that features are missing and there's no opening of old sessions.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jonamac View Post


    You would be the person telling Henry Ford to build a faster horse.



    Speaking of drivel...this isn't an issue of being a luddite, its a case where the new version is missing features and it IS literally unusable for many professional situations where 7 was being used. If a new version can't be used and someone spent their money on something that's just going to gather dust, that seems like EXACTLY what a one star rating is for.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by The-Steve View Post


    It appears that people are not grasping the nature of FCPX. It's NOT a software update of Final Cut, it's an ENTIRELY NEW APPLICATION. Apple did not "strip out" features, they were never there to strip out! The fact that it looks somewhat like iMovie is probably because it started from the iMovie code base!



    Looking at it that way then Apple killed off a perfectly good app that people were using for a wide range of work all the way up to the high end. And replaced it with something new that couldn't do everything the old one could. Not to mention that if it is a new app, it's dishonest for Apple to present it as an update which leads people to believe that it will have at least everything the last version had as well as session compatibility.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lowededwookie View Post


    Is there really no workarounds that people are so stuck?



    Absolutely. That's what most of the apologists don't seem to understand. That, or they are hobbyists who are happy with the new version and either ignorant of how broadcast/film works or just don't care.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jnjnjn View Post


    If you buy software and don't check the feature list and mis 'essential' features afterwards you can only blame yourself.



    Show me the link where the feature list says "doesn't open FC7 sessions". I'm dying to see that link. And the fact that you put "essential" in quotes shows how little you understand about those missing features.



    Listen to Patrick Sheffield, he has done a great job of summing up the situation and it's obvious he's a working professional who completely understands the situation and what it means for broadcast users. It seems like the two sides are people actually using the software for the living who are most in the position to know what software is usable and what isn't, and a bunch of apologists who seem like they would defend anything apple did no matter how boneheaded, who have never worked as an editor in their life and whose expertise of the situation is nothing more than "Hey, that new one looks nice."



    Guess whose opinion I'm going to take seriously in this case.
  • Reply 76 of 248
    minderbinderminderbinder Posts: 1,703member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jonnyboy View Post


    all this moaning... what i wouldn't give for logic pro to get the same kind of ground up engine rewrite...



    For the love of all that his holy, no no no! Logic is already 64 bit, it just needs some improvements and new features. Release a version that is missing features and can't use any old sessions and watch the user base flee.
  • Reply 77 of 248
    gustavgustav Posts: 827member
    Sorry to the pro editors who don't like the new version, but you are bitching and moaning. It's one thing to post a critical review, it's another to act like a child while doing it.



    Asking for a guy's contact to blacklist him in your business, just because he has a different opinion than you? Really? How incredibly childish!



    How about instead something like:

    "I can't use FCPX because I need it to do this, this and this. I might have to switch to Avid or Adobe if Apple doesn't offer these features."

    or

    "I don't like the new UI because I use multiple monitors and I can't put blah blah on my second monitor"



    Send that feedback to Apple too.



    Whining with a post "This is like iMovie Pro - it sucks! Apple sucks!" is doing nothing, and won't be taken seriously. If you want Apple to update FCPX to give you the professional features that you need, then act like a professional.
  • Reply 78 of 248
    gustavgustav Posts: 827member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dacloo View Post


    Perhaps Apple can add 700 floating windows and checkboxes for you to make it look better.

    I actually used it for a client project and I think it's wonderful.

    Who cares about the iMovie similarities? Does that turn it into a bad app?



    Every time a pro app is within the range of amateurs, you get complaining. Many pros are afraid that their customers will go to the amateurs, forgetting it's their talent, not the tools, that provide the pro level results.
  • Reply 79 of 248
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by paxman View Post


    The pro set is a tough crowd to please and there's nobody more conservative. It amazes me that apparently so many will condemn the software so quickly. It's clearly very different so it's it's gonna take a while. For some it will take years. I wonder how long the average reviewer has spent with the software.



    I wonder how many of those reviewers have spent ANY time with the software? This is why I don't trust web-based reviews at all. You constantly see tons of reviews for products or content that haven't even been released yet. This obviously has been released, but when a product has been rewritten and redefined from scratch, you've got to spend more than ten minutes with it to know what it really is. Could anyone write a fair review of a new version of Photoshop after only one day of use? Only if they used only the most basic functions.



    At NAB, the editors there seemed "blown away" by what they saw, but those were probably mostly TV editors, not movie editors.



    I'm sure there are some things missing for pro workflow. And I think the lack of backwards compatibility was a big mistake. But I still don't trust all those negative on-line reviews. I'd wait for detailed reviews from people who actually know what they're doing and examine all the functionality. And even if some of the negative reviews are correct, this is still an amazing deal for $300.
  • Reply 80 of 248
    jlanddjlandd Posts: 873member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gustav View Post


    Every time a pro app is within the range of amateurs, you get complaining. Many pros are afraid that their customers will go to the amateurs, forgetting it's their talent, not the tools, that provide the pro level results.



    Not the case here by a long shot. Do you even know what an EDL is much less ever used one?



    Read up and come back.
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