Question: I use iVI to convert lots of videos (add metadata, etc) and include them on iTunes.
I do this on i7 2011 air, and this little beast converts them at 100% Cpu (obviously) during a whole day non stop (and a few hours to rest) and even during conversions, it doesn't get uncomfortably warn and is still perfectly useful. I do this a lot, and it looks like it doesn't even need to stop... I never thought (when I bought it) that it would be THIS good.
What's like to do the same thing on a fully loaded beast like the Mac Pro? Can you describe it? I never used a computer like that.
Best thing is to check online. Most well-written Mac OS X apps use GCD (libdispatch) and should scale up with the number of cores. Number crunching apps like compression, rendering, global illumination, DCT algorithms, etc. should scale nicely, because these are by nature highly parallel. But if an app is poorly written, it's possible that it'll limit itself to a fixed number of cores, and that's bad.
He's complaining that it's crap. That tells me he hasn't used it in the first place.
That should tell you that he HAS used it!
But seriously, I actually haven't tried it myself. Not because it lacks features I need though, I just don't care much for the new interface or Apple's "atypical" file management system.
Atypical... watch this:
BTW, take note of the machine being used to run FCPX and the machine used to guide (tele prompt?) the preso.
They'd better focus on higher ed. I know first-hand of multiple universities that have completely dropped Final Cut Pro (the platform they previous taught) to Adobe. That's hundred of video editors being minted every year that are being educated about Apple's abandonment of the professional marketplace in a failed bid to chase the "prosumer" market. Turns out there are hobbyists, there are professionals, and vastly fewer prosumers.
I've been saying it for years; Apple's abandonment of professionals blunts the tip of the testimonial spear, and it will cost Apple in the long run.
I don't see it that way exactly. I actually look at the lack of Final Cut Pro Studio updates as more of an abandonment. It wasn't even 64-bit. It was clear that it needed an overhaul and Final Cut Pro X if anything, was evidence that Apple wanted to be active in this space. They just made some bad decisions with the new version with the biggest one being a total lack of legacy support so you couldn't even open a current or recent project and hit the ground running. A good way to test out a new version is to see if it can handle the jobs you use the old one for. Having to rebuild those old jobs from scratch is a non-starter, especially without feature parity and it's a little insulting that they took the time to implement iMovie imports regardless of it being easier to do.
There was also the issue of volume licensing that made it clear they didn't even plan it to be multi-user/collaborative. Further evidence was lack of options for sharing projects and the media library that couldn't reconnect files. Working with other apps too - they put everything into Events but how are you supposed to open an Event in After Effects, save it out and have FCP know you've done it? Every time you change a piece of media, FCPX thinks you broke the connection. FCP didn't even bother asking, it just updated without skipping a beat. It is perhaps safer with projects that share media as it discourages changing shared Events but sharing media files between apps is way more important. To discourage changing shared media, it should just issue a warning.
I do think some positive PR will help but they really need to address the core design issues. If it's not possible to export an edit and email it, to export directly to a multitude of formats and resolutions without using Compressor, to share imported media with other apps for editing seamlessly, to edit natively without transcoding to ProRes first (or at the very least having to disable auto-rendering because it's not smart enough to know when it needs to render) then it's less functional than the old version and that needs to change. With Pro Apps, they need to get away from the idea that they dictate how everything is going to be. That's fine for consumer apps because the people at Apple know better. The people at Apple don't know the workflows better than the people who use the software for a living. That's not to say they should bend to every whim, there are places they should dig their heels in like moving people to tapeless media and database-based projects. They just need to start listening to the right people in the industry and maintain an open dialog. The secrecy thing is playtime and it's not necessary here. Pro Apps aren't impulse buys so surprises don't really have the same effect.
Students have started moving to Windows and Linux in large numbers.
Do they realise that Avid and Adobe products run on the Mac too or is this just hyperbole? Given that you used the phrase 'large numbers', you must have a ballpark figure.
Intel has an IDF event in April and one in September. We'll see what they say on April 10th, they might at least have demos of the E5 chips. I'd rather hear Intel announce that they are skipping Ivy-Bridge altogether and going to Haswell and that way they'd have support for DDR4 memory, USB 3 and SATA 6G.
The [2009 8-core] MacPro completed the task in 35 minutes, the MBP in 37. That is not a huge gap in time and the iMac has a lot more horsepower than the MBP. Then factor in the cost of the machines and that iMac starts looking pretty attractive.
Lots of Mac Pro owners don't want to hear that though so it won't change the rhetoric. Some people just won't accept a substitute for the MP. Even if you compare a MP1,1 to a 2013 MBP, it's fingers in the ears time. Maybe in another few years.
LOL. I mean: LOL. While everybody dances the game of Mr Kuo rumors, and while everybody loves Apple being a gadgettobusiness, then somebody at Apple remembers they used to be a computer company. But it's just a déjà vu, tomorrow they'll continue with their gadgets, so don't worry, you'll have your new iPhone soon.
They'd better focus on higher ed. I know first-hand of multiple universities that have completely dropped Final Cut Pro (the platform they previous taught) to Adobe. That's hundred of video editors being minted every year that are being educated about Apple's abandonment of the professional marketplace in a failed bid to chase the "prosumer" market. Turns out there are hobbyists, there are professionals, and vastly fewer prosumers.
I've been saying it for years; Apple's abandonment of professionals blunts the tip of the testimonial spear, and it will cost Apple in the long run.
Agree in spades. Seems like the world's nearly most valuable company with the largest cash hoard could be cutting off its nose to spite its face - when relatively small investments could forestall the possibiity - and the deleterious effects might take years to really play out, but could matter in an actually strategic fashion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joelsmith
We've been an Apple shop for 20 years. I'm a huge Apple fan at work and at home.
For us the eroded trust isn't just a matter of FCP X, (which I really like by the way) - it's about a perceived pattern - Apples absence from NAB, dropping Xserve, dropping Final Cut Server, a lack of MacPro updates and the FCP X issues.
So for us, we're waiting to see if this is a campaign of words or of actions. I'm hoping for the latter!
Ditto.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paxman
Apple needs to seriously improve their relationships with the pro crowd. Video, graphics, photography are areas where I think Apple needs to spend money and ensure that both software and hardware remains at the cutting edge. Its not about selling lots of high margin kit to professionals - its more about the marketing value of the cachet that being the number one choice in these ares bring. Generally in those circles marketing in terms of the mass market is less relevant. In fact, I imagine that exposing the general public to the marketing aimed at the pro's is the wrong thing to do and may well be counter productive.
If Apple is initiating a marketing campaign for Final Cut using the video editor for Toronto's Globe and Mail as a spokes person I wonder if they are giving up on the 'real' pro's (TV & Movies) and instead going for the (much larger) general media market. I am not saying that is a bad decision, its just an observation.
Three among a number spot-on comments in the thread about what's really at stake here! (And Apple's - to me - curious seeming non-chalance about it. Not everything that matters to their future is entirely about mass products and margins in those - tho' of course they are huge. But keeping its cachet and its leading edge vertical markets is, I think, critical in the long-run.
If someone comes up on Mac and hits a ceiling in going further, fewer are going to pick the Mac route in the first place over time. Simple logic, really.
There was also the issue of volume licensing that made it clear they didn't even plan it to be multi-user/collaborative. Further evidence was lack of options for sharing projects and the media library that couldn't reconnect files.
I suspect the way Apple will address volume licensing and multi-user/collaboration to to offer a FCPX Studio product... and with FCPX's database structure, I suspect it will provide more granular multi-user/collaboration than other NLEs.
Apple added support to FCPX to reconnect files -- it is similar, but a bit easier than FCP 7.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Working with other apps too - they put everything into Events but how are you supposed to open an Event in After Effects, save it out and have FCP know you've done it? Every time you change a piece of media, FCPX thinks you broke the connection. FCP didn't even bother asking, it just updated without skipping a beat. It is perhaps safer with projects that share media as it discourages changing shared Events but sharing media files between apps is way more important. To discourage changing shared media, it should just issue a warning.
7toX for Final Cut Pro - brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects.
Xto7 for Final Cut Pro - translates the brand new Final Cut Pro X Project XML (fcpxml) and converts it to Sequence XML for import into Final Cut Pro 7 or other applications.
see my above response re long-term multi-user/collaboration.
In the meanwhile, It it is fairly easy to create a duplicate of a project (all the edits) and its events (all the media) and copy it to a sparse disk image -- which can be shared with as many editors or AEs as desired, for concurrent use. Later, a single person can combine the work product of the various edits. The FCPX Audition feature allows multiple cuts of a clip (or clips) to be combined as a single clip. Then while playing the timeline you can select which cut you want audition -- rippling through the various cuts as desired. Because of the magnetic timeline, the audition cuts can be different lengths without throwing other clips out of sync.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I do think some positive PR will help but they really need to address the core design issues. If it's not possible to export an edit and email it, to export directly to a multitude of formats and resolutions without using Compressor, to share imported media with other apps for editing seamlessly, to edit natively without transcoding to ProRes first (or at the very least having to disable auto-rendering because it's not smart enough to know when it needs to render) then it's less functional than the old version and that needs to change.
The above shows the FCPX Sharing feature -- you can setup multiple destination presets with mix and match any of the destinations.
Most popular camera/video formats are supported with no transcoding.
You can disable background rendering, or set the idle time before automatic rendering begins.
The sharing is addressed in prior paragraphs.
To be honest, FCPX, today, is quite a different animal than it was in June 2011 -- or even last September. Lots of things have been added or improved, but many like the Sharing feature fly under the radar... I think it would be worthwhile to try the 30-day Free Trial, combined with some inexpensive training -- to gain a new perspective on just what FCPX is and isn't.
In many ways FCPX has lapped FCP 7 and other NLEs!
I need a useable piece of video editing software. Apple hasn't produced one since creating the abomination called Final Cut X. I do all my editing on an old MacBook Pro (ca. 2006) running Final Cut 5.x.
Any suggestions on video editing software?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Ah, so you've never even used it. Gotcha.
Final Cut Pro X.
Ha,
Those were exactly my thoughts on reading his post too!
I really am thinking a lot of these folks haven't kept up with developments.
It looks to me like FCPX is turning out to be the revolution in NLDE that Apple claimed when they released it. Change is hard, and Apple should have eased the transition a little better, but I think most people will decide they will want to use FinalCut.
I suspect the way Apple will address volume licensing and multi-user/collaboration to to offer a FCPX Studio product... and with FCPX's database structure, I suspect it will provide more granular multi-user/collaboration than other NLEs.
Apple added support to FCPX to reconnect files -- it is similar, but a bit easier than FCP 7.
I give you a big ditto.
I think Apple has redefined NLEs again. Most people, even most pros, just haven't figured it out yet.
with FCPX's database structure, I suspect it will provide more granular multi-user/collaboration than other NLEs.
I think so, they got a patent on it somewhere. Someone could edit the end of a sequence and someone else the start and they could merge them easily. That's for the 'they could' category though.
Apple added support to FCPX to reconnect files -- it is similar, but a bit easier than FCP 7.
I don't think it's easier. Say that you have a clip in your timeline and you want to edit that clip with an effect in an external program. You'd find that file in the Finder, open it in say Quicktime Pro and use one of the effects and export. With FCP, you just put that exported file in the same place and it automatically replaces it in the timeline. FCPX doesn't do that.
Xto7 for Final Cut Pro[/COLOR] - translates the brand new Final Cut Pro X Project XML (fcpxml) and converts it to Sequence XML for import into Final Cut Pro 7 or other applications.[/COLOR]
$50 though and should have been inside the app from day 1 and should definitely be in it by now.
In the meanwhile, It it is fairly easy to create a duplicate of a project (all the edits) and its events (all the media) and copy it to a sparse disk image -- which can be shared with as many editors or AEs as desired, for concurrent use. Later, a single person can combine the work product of the various edits.
It's a workaround though and when you are dealing with many GBs of footage, using sparse images that can't reclaim space isn't ideal. It should have been designed for collaboration. People shouldn't fix these problems for Apple, they need to fix them.
The above shows the FCPX Sharing feature -- you can setup multiple destination presets with mix and match any of the destinations.
I meant sharing the project, those are for sharing/exporting the video. For example, say person A has a project and the media and person B has the media and an old project, how does person A get the new project to person B? They have to do it manually and it requires restarting FCPX, which is not ideal.
Most popular camera/video formats are supported with no transcoding.
Can you for example take a Motion JPEG clip, edit it and export to a Motion JPEG clip without re-encoding? You have to go through Compressor to do this.
To be honest, FCPX, today, is quite a different animal than it was in June 2011 -- or even last September.
It is and it has had a lot of improvements and I'd say it's worth the price. I do think the low price lowers expectations though and I don't think they've addressed all the problems.
"News flash, idiots: Apple doesn't get to choose when the chips come out. If Intel releases them all at once, then Apple should probably update as soon as possible. We'll likely see the Haswell iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air roughly around WWDC, and maybe they'll have the Mac Pro done by then, too. If not, hey, they should take their time. "
Err.... Sandy Bridge Xeons have been available since last June. It's Apple who chose not to upgrade the Mac Pro with them. There would have been no complaint if Mac Pro updates follow Intel's chip release schedule. It makes things much easier to plan for the pro users.
Westmere EP Xeons are in the current mac pro that was updated last fall. Sandy Bridge are just an extension of Westmere EP. Not really worth it. Ivy Bridge Xeons are the ones that Apple has been waiting for they went into production in Late December/January. Ivy Bridge are in all of the current laptops and iMacs. But desktop consumer processors are quite different from Xeons. Both architecturally and in Size. (Cache and Transistors there much larger than there consumer cousins). Ivy Bridge support trigate transistors, smaller 22nm size, native usb 3 without separate chips, and finally native thunderbolt. As a whole as well there much much faster because of trigate transistors.
The Ivy Bridge Xeons were suppossed to be out mid year last year. Intel failed to meet that schedule. Not apples fault.
I edited this post to reflect that apples current Mac Pros use Westmere EP Xeons.
Also just a link to the new Ivy Bridge Xeons on Intels sight, The 4 core version I think apple will use.
Eh? No, that's Westmere. Same chips (higher clock) as 2010, right?
My bad I corrected the post above to reflect it. The current mac pros use Westmere EP. Sandy Bridge really is not much of an upgrade the Ivy Bridge are much better and what apple was waiting for.
As a longtime Mac user and professional editor, I have stopped looking for Apple to "do right" by my needs as a professional. Apple simply doesn't care. They have bigger fish (iPhone's and iPad's) to fry than worry about me and my brethren. It sucks to say, but it's true.
So, I'm not waiting for the overdue MacPro update. And I'm certainly not waiting for them to fix that busted program - Final Cut Pro X. I, along with many other editors, are moving towards Autodesk Smoke - which formerly cost $15,000, but today - in the face of Apple and Final Cut Pro's collapse from the professional market - can "be had" by the next generation of editors - students - for FREE from Autodesk's site. It's also free for faculty - which I am also.
At its current price point for the Education market, Smoke represents a real, long-term threat to Avid and Adobe. While its editing interface is very much like Final Cut Pro 7, its effect engine environment and finishing toolset shares the same DNA to its big brother Flame. So, it's a much more powerful package on the whole imho.
So, this past weekend I took the time to familiarize myself with the interface (and yes, it is very much like Final Cut Pro 7 - the last version that worked!) With 400+ free online tutorials on YouTube, I feel comfortable urging my students and others like yourselves to give it a good FREE look.
Never though I'd say it, but... Final Cut Pro is dead. Long live Final Cut Pro ---- in Smoke 2013!
He didn't say "I hope this doesn't hurt poor Apple," he said "Apple obviously doesn't care about me, so screw it, I'm going elsewhere" and described where he's going instead. What's wrong with that?
I read somewhere that there were about 10,000 professional editors in the world. Say that's wrong by a factor of 10 and there are 100,000…. Or maybe by a factor of 100 and there are 1 million professional editors out there.
So, Apple can sell these 1 million editors a new $8,000 machine every four years... And a suite of Pro software for $400.
Where is the incentive for Apple to rewrite their entire Pro editing suite, offer it at 1/3 the price, and alienate their existing users?
Why not just continued to milk it with incremental updates? Wouldn't they still sell the $8,000 machines? Wouldn't they still sell FCP 8 upgrade seats for $900?
Okay, it has a metadata editor. Admittedly a cool feature, but I don't really see how it does anything to mitigate my complaints about how FCPX manages files and structures sessions.
I actually had trouble getting past the first two minutes of the video because I couldn't take him seriously after he said, "You don't need to worry about what your files are called... don't even think about it."
Question: I use iVI to convert lots of videos (add metadata, etc) and include them on iTunes.
I do this on i7 2011 air, and this little beast converts them at 100% Cpu (obviously) during a whole day non stop (and a few hours to rest) and even during conversions, it doesn't get uncomfortably warn and is still perfectly useful. I do this a lot, and it looks like it doesn't even need to stop... I never thought (when I bought it) that it would be THIS good.
What's like to do the same thing on a fully loaded beast like the Mac Pro? Can you describe it? I never used a computer like that.
I can't describe the difference as I haven't done any video conversion on a laptop, though I do read that it's way better now than it used to be, to be expected, obviously.
On a MP it's mainly taking advantage of the many cores. Sometimes I queue up a whole folder with 20+ video's, .flv .vob .avi (and .mov .mpeg) and convert in Handbrake. Fun to see Activity Monitor and all cores doing their thing; it truly is Multi Core, Hyper Threading and 'going through it like butter' but I don't have any hard numbers for you. iVI also works very well for converting.
If you live anywhere near an Apple Store I would expect them to give you a demo on the difference in speed from MP vs MBP / MBA. Download a flash or avi file and take it with you, or download something right there in the Store. I am bound to do just that to see how it works on a laptop after they've opened a new store in my town later this year.
Comments
Best thing is to check online. Most well-written Mac OS X apps use GCD (libdispatch) and should scale up with the number of cores. Number crunching apps like compression, rendering, global illumination, DCT algorithms, etc. should scale nicely, because these are by nature highly parallel. But if an app is poorly written, it's possible that it'll limit itself to a fixed number of cores, and that's bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by v5v
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
He's complaining that it's crap. That tells me he hasn't used it in the first place.
That should tell you that he HAS used it!
But seriously, I actually haven't tried it myself. Not because it lacks features I need though, I just don't care much for the new interface or Apple's "atypical" file management system.
Atypical... watch this:
BTW, take note of the machine being used to run FCPX and the machine used to guide (tele prompt?) the preso.
I don't see it that way exactly. I actually look at the lack of Final Cut Pro Studio updates as more of an abandonment. It wasn't even 64-bit. It was clear that it needed an overhaul and Final Cut Pro X if anything, was evidence that Apple wanted to be active in this space. They just made some bad decisions with the new version with the biggest one being a total lack of legacy support so you couldn't even open a current or recent project and hit the ground running. A good way to test out a new version is to see if it can handle the jobs you use the old one for. Having to rebuild those old jobs from scratch is a non-starter, especially without feature parity and it's a little insulting that they took the time to implement iMovie imports regardless of it being easier to do.
There was also the issue of volume licensing that made it clear they didn't even plan it to be multi-user/collaborative. Further evidence was lack of options for sharing projects and the media library that couldn't reconnect files. Working with other apps too - they put everything into Events but how are you supposed to open an Event in After Effects, save it out and have FCP know you've done it? Every time you change a piece of media, FCPX thinks you broke the connection. FCP didn't even bother asking, it just updated without skipping a beat. It is perhaps safer with projects that share media as it discourages changing shared Events but sharing media files between apps is way more important. To discourage changing shared media, it should just issue a warning.
I do think some positive PR will help but they really need to address the core design issues. If it's not possible to export an edit and email it, to export directly to a multitude of formats and resolutions without using Compressor, to share imported media with other apps for editing seamlessly, to edit natively without transcoding to ProRes first (or at the very least having to disable auto-rendering because it's not smart enough to know when it needs to render) then it's less functional than the old version and that needs to change. With Pro Apps, they need to get away from the idea that they dictate how everything is going to be. That's fine for consumer apps because the people at Apple know better. The people at Apple don't know the workflows better than the people who use the software for a living. That's not to say they should bend to every whim, there are places they should dig their heels in like moving people to tapeless media and database-based projects. They just need to start listening to the right people in the industry and maintain an open dialog. The secrecy thing is playtime and it's not necessary here. Pro Apps aren't impulse buys so surprises don't really have the same effect.
Do they realise that Avid and Adobe products run on the Mac too or is this just hyperbole? Given that you used the phrase 'large numbers', you must have a ballpark figure.
The chips to wait for would be the Ivy Bridge E5-2600 v2. They are scheduled for Q3, which is July-Sept:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20130321223150_Intel_to_Take_Gradual_Approach_to_Introduction_of_New_Xeon_Microprocessors.html
Intel has an IDF event in April and one in September. We'll see what they say on April 10th, they might at least have demos of the E5 chips. I'd rather hear Intel announce that they are skipping Ivy-Bridge altogether and going to Haswell and that way they'd have support for DDR4 memory, USB 3 and SATA 6G.
Lots of Mac Pro owners don't want to hear that though so it won't change the rhetoric. Some people just won't accept a substitute for the MP. Even if you compare a MP1,1 to a 2013 MBP, it's fingers in the ears time. Maybe in another few years.
Originally Posted by ecs
But it's just a déjà vu, tomorrow they'll continue with their gadgets, so don't worry, you'll have your new iPhone soon.
They released an update. Before you even posted, actually. What say you now?
Bolding added:
Quote:
Originally Posted by godrifle
They'd better focus on higher ed. I know first-hand of multiple universities that have completely dropped Final Cut Pro (the platform they previous taught) to Adobe. That's hundred of video editors being minted every year that are being educated about Apple's abandonment of the professional marketplace in a failed bid to chase the "prosumer" market. Turns out there are hobbyists, there are professionals, and vastly fewer prosumers.
I've been saying it for years; Apple's abandonment of professionals blunts the tip of the testimonial spear, and it will cost Apple in the long run.
Agree in spades. Seems like the world's nearly most valuable company with the largest cash hoard could be cutting off its nose to spite its face - when relatively small investments could forestall the possibiity - and the deleterious effects might take years to really play out, but could matter in an actually strategic fashion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joelsmith
We've been an Apple shop for 20 years. I'm a huge Apple fan at work and at home.
For us the eroded trust isn't just a matter of FCP X, (which I really like by the way) - it's about a perceived pattern - Apples absence from NAB, dropping Xserve, dropping Final Cut Server, a lack of MacPro updates and the FCP X issues.
So for us, we're waiting to see if this is a campaign of words or of actions. I'm hoping for the latter!
Ditto.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paxman
Apple needs to seriously improve their relationships with the pro crowd. Video, graphics, photography are areas where I think Apple needs to spend money and ensure that both software and hardware remains at the cutting edge. Its not about selling lots of high margin kit to professionals - its more about the marketing value of the cachet that being the number one choice in these ares bring. Generally in those circles marketing in terms of the mass market is less relevant. In fact, I imagine that exposing the general public to the marketing aimed at the pro's is the wrong thing to do and may well be counter productive.
If Apple is initiating a marketing campaign for Final Cut using the video editor for Toronto's Globe and Mail as a spokes person I wonder if they are giving up on the 'real' pro's (TV & Movies) and instead going for the (much larger) general media market. I am not saying that is a bad decision, its just an observation.
Three among a number spot-on comments in the thread about what's really at stake here! (And Apple's - to me - curious seeming non-chalance about it. Not everything that matters to their future is entirely about mass products and margins in those - tho' of course they are huge. But keeping its cachet and its leading edge vertical markets is, I think, critical in the long-run.
If someone comes up on Mac and hits a ceiling in going further, fewer are going to pick the Mac route in the first place over time. Simple logic, really.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
There was also the issue of volume licensing that made it clear they didn't even plan it to be multi-user/collaborative. Further evidence was lack of options for sharing projects and the media library that couldn't reconnect files.
I suspect the way Apple will address volume licensing and multi-user/collaboration to to offer a FCPX Studio product... and with FCPX's database structure, I suspect it will provide more granular multi-user/collaboration than other NLEs.
Apple added support to FCPX to reconnect files -- it is similar, but a bit easier than FCP 7.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Working with other apps too - they put everything into Events but how are you supposed to open an Event in After Effects, save it out and have FCP know you've done it? Every time you change a piece of media, FCPX thinks you broke the connection. FCP didn't even bother asking, it just updated without skipping a beat. It is perhaps safer with projects that share media as it discourages changing shared Events but sharing media files between apps is way more important. To discourage changing shared media, it should just issue a warning.
7toX for Final Cut Pro - brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects.
Xto7 for Final Cut Pro - translates the brand new Final Cut Pro X Project XML (fcpxml) and converts it to Sequence XML for import into Final Cut Pro 7 or other applications.
see my above response re long-term multi-user/collaboration.
In the meanwhile, It it is fairly easy to create a duplicate of a project (all the edits) and its events (all the media) and copy it to a sparse disk image -- which can be shared with as many editors or AEs as desired, for concurrent use. Later, a single person can combine the work product of the various edits. The FCPX Audition feature allows multiple cuts of a clip (or clips) to be combined as a single clip. Then while playing the timeline you can select which cut you want audition -- rippling through the various cuts as desired. Because of the magnetic timeline, the audition cuts can be different lengths without throwing other clips out of sync.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I do think some positive PR will help but they really need to address the core design issues. If it's not possible to export an edit and email it, to export directly to a multitude of formats and resolutions without using Compressor, to share imported media with other apps for editing seamlessly, to edit natively without transcoding to ProRes first (or at the very least having to disable auto-rendering because it's not smart enough to know when it needs to render) then it's less functional than the old version and that needs to change.
The above shows the FCPX Sharing feature -- you can setup multiple destination presets with mix and match any of the destinations.
Most popular camera/video formats are supported with no transcoding.
You can disable background rendering, or set the idle time before automatic rendering begins.
The sharing is addressed in prior paragraphs.
To be honest, FCPX, today, is quite a different animal than it was in June 2011 -- or even last September. Lots of things have been added or improved, but many like the Sharing feature fly under the radar... I think it would be worthwhile to try the 30-day Free Trial, combined with some inexpensive training -- to gain a new perspective on just what FCPX is and isn't.
In many ways FCPX has lapped FCP 7 and other NLEs!
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBlackbird
I need a useable piece of video editing software. Apple hasn't produced one since creating the abomination called Final Cut X. I do all my editing on an old MacBook Pro (ca. 2006) running Final Cut 5.x.
Any suggestions on video editing software?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Ah, so you've never even used it. Gotcha.
Final Cut Pro X.
Ha,
Those were exactly my thoughts on reading his post too!
I really am thinking a lot of these folks haven't kept up with developments.
It looks to me like FCPX is turning out to be the revolution in NLDE that Apple claimed when they released it. Change is hard, and Apple should have eased the transition a little better, but I think most people will decide they will want to use FinalCut.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
. . .
I suspect the way Apple will address volume licensing and multi-user/collaboration to to offer a FCPX Studio product... and with FCPX's database structure, I suspect it will provide more granular multi-user/collaboration than other NLEs.
Apple added support to FCPX to reconnect files -- it is similar, but a bit easier than FCP 7.
I give you a big ditto.
I think Apple has redefined NLEs again. Most people, even most pros, just haven't figured it out yet.
I think so, they got a patent on it somewhere. Someone could edit the end of a sequence and someone else the start and they could merge them easily. That's for the 'they could' category though.
I don't think it's easier. Say that you have a clip in your timeline and you want to edit that clip with an effect in an external program. You'd find that file in the Finder, open it in say Quicktime Pro and use one of the effects and export. With FCP, you just put that exported file in the same place and it automatically replaces it in the timeline. FCPX doesn't do that.
$50 though and should have been inside the app from day 1 and should definitely be in it by now.
It's a workaround though and when you are dealing with many GBs of footage, using sparse images that can't reclaim space isn't ideal. It should have been designed for collaboration. People shouldn't fix these problems for Apple, they need to fix them.
I meant sharing the project, those are for sharing/exporting the video. For example, say person A has a project and the media and person B has the media and an old project, how does person A get the new project to person B? They have to do it manually and it requires restarting FCPX, which is not ideal.
Can you for example take a Motion JPEG clip, edit it and export to a Motion JPEG clip without re-encoding? You have to go through Compressor to do this.
It is and it has had a lot of improvements and I'd say it's worth the price. I do think the low price lowers expectations though and I don't think they've addressed all the problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoffdino
"News flash, idiots: Apple doesn't get to choose when the chips come out. If Intel releases them all at once, then Apple should probably update as soon as possible. We'll likely see the Haswell iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air roughly around WWDC, and maybe they'll have the Mac Pro done by then, too. If not, hey, they should take their time. "
Err.... Sandy Bridge Xeons have been available since last June. It's Apple who chose not to upgrade the Mac Pro with them. There would have been no complaint if Mac Pro updates follow Intel's chip release schedule. It makes things much easier to plan for the pro users.
Westmere EP Xeons are in the current mac pro that was updated last fall. Sandy Bridge are just an extension of Westmere EP. Not really worth it. Ivy Bridge Xeons are the ones that Apple has been waiting for they went into production in Late December/January. Ivy Bridge are in all of the current laptops and iMacs. But desktop consumer processors are quite different from Xeons. Both architecturally and in Size. (Cache and Transistors there much larger than there consumer cousins). Ivy Bridge support trigate transistors, smaller 22nm size, native usb 3 without separate chips, and finally native thunderbolt. As a whole as well there much much faster because of trigate transistors.
The Ivy Bridge Xeons were suppossed to be out mid year last year. Intel failed to meet that schedule. Not apples fault.
I edited this post to reflect that apples current Mac Pros use Westmere EP Xeons.
Also just a link to the new Ivy Bridge Xeons on Intels sight, The 4 core version I think apple will use.
http://ark.intel.com/products/65722
This one linked is the 3.7Ghz 4 core version.
Originally Posted by Mechanic
Sandy Bridge Xeons are in the current mac pro that was updated last fall.
Eh? No, that's Westmere. Same chips (higher clock) as 2010, right?
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Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Eh? No, that's Westmere. Same chips (higher clock) as 2010, right?
My bad I corrected the post above to reflect it. The current mac pros use Westmere EP. Sandy Bridge really is not much of an upgrade the Ivy Bridge are much better and what apple was waiting for.
As a longtime Mac user and professional editor, I have stopped looking for Apple to "do right" by my needs as a professional. Apple simply doesn't care. They have bigger fish (iPhone's and iPad's) to fry than worry about me and my brethren. It sucks to say, but it's true.
So, I'm not waiting for the overdue MacPro update. And I'm certainly not waiting for them to fix that busted program - Final Cut Pro X. I, along with many other editors, are moving towards Autodesk Smoke - which formerly cost $15,000, but today - in the face of Apple and Final Cut Pro's collapse from the professional market - can "be had" by the next generation of editors - students - for FREE from Autodesk's site. It's also free for faculty - which I am also.
At its current price point for the Education market, Smoke represents a real, long-term threat to Avid and Adobe. While its editing interface is very much like Final Cut Pro 7, its effect engine environment and finishing toolset shares the same DNA to its big brother Flame. So, it's a much more powerful package on the whole imho.
So, this past weekend I took the time to familiarize myself with the interface (and yes, it is very much like Final Cut Pro 7 - the last version that worked!) With 400+ free online tutorials on YouTube, I feel comfortable urging my students and others like yourselves to give it a good FREE look.
Never though I'd say it, but... Final Cut Pro is dead. Long live Final Cut Pro ---- in Smoke 2013!
Originally Posted by jer-groovey
…I have stopped looking for Apple to "do right" by my needs as a professional. Apple simply doesn't care.
Ah, the concern troll… Who cares.
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Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Ah, the concern troll… Who cares.
He didn't say "I hope this doesn't hurt poor Apple," he said "Apple obviously doesn't care about me, so screw it, I'm going elsewhere" and described where he's going instead. What's wrong with that?
Originally Posted by v5v
What's wrong with that?
"Hi guys, I came here just to say that I'm leaving."
I wonder what's wrong with it.
I read somewhere that there were about 10,000 professional editors in the world. Say that's wrong by a factor of 10 and there are 100,000…. Or maybe by a factor of 100 and there are 1 million professional editors out there.
So, Apple can sell these 1 million editors a new $8,000 machine every four years... And a suite of Pro software for $400.
Where is the incentive for Apple to rewrite their entire Pro editing suite, offer it at 1/3 the price, and alienate their existing users?
Why not just continued to milk it with incremental updates? Wouldn't they still sell the $8,000 machines? Wouldn't they still sell FCP 8 upgrade seats for $900?
Wouldn't they avoid all the grief?
Why do this? Be honest with yourself!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
Atypical... watch this:
Okay, it has a metadata editor. Admittedly a cool feature, but I don't really see how it does anything to mitigate my complaints about how FCPX manages files and structures sessions.
I actually had trouble getting past the first two minutes of the video because I couldn't take him seriously after he said, "You don't need to worry about what your files are called... don't even think about it."
I can't describe the difference as I haven't done any video conversion on a laptop, though I do read that it's way better now than it used to be, to be expected, obviously.
On a MP it's mainly taking advantage of the many cores. Sometimes I queue up a whole folder with 20+ video's, .flv .vob .avi (and .mov .mpeg) and convert in Handbrake. Fun to see Activity Monitor and all cores doing their thing; it truly is Multi Core, Hyper Threading and 'going through it like butter' but I don't have any hard numbers for you. iVI also works very well for converting.
If you live anywhere near an Apple Store I would expect them to give you a demo on the difference in speed from MP vs MBP / MBA. Download a flash or avi file and take it with you, or download something right there in the Store. I am bound to do just that to see how it works on a laptop after they've opened a new store in my town later this year.