Thoughts on new FCP X Sneak Peek

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Ron Evans

Do you know that to be true ? I spent my working life in marketing and certainly I don't think Apple will hid the best till last. If there is anything left its what will be expected of an editor. I think we saw the "new for Apple stuff:" already. What remains is if its a usable program other than the presentation. We will of course see other modules all at $299??

Looks to be a very nice program if it works as presented. But not new or great. Wonderful presentation. The presentation covered things that have been available on many PC editors for some time. Apple is playing catchup and will do it in a way advantageous for Apple of course. For the price most of the features demonstrated are available in many PC programs which also include Bluray authoring/ burning and photoediting at a lower price point. For more complex editing then one would expect to pay more and move into a more pro area. The competition in the pro area will need native file editing ( not background rendering but true native file editing), media management, realtime performace etc etc. We will see what comes.

Ron Evans

I don't think they hid their best to last but this is a totally new program here. There wasn't time to go into exporting/encoding, ingesting, native file support, media management or 100's of other feature we use everyday but don't hear about in product marketing literature. Look how many features are in a typical NLE. When Edius first came out did you see a demo that showed every single feature?

If this was just an upgrade then yes new features could be shown in an hour. This time however every single bit is brand new. Apple knew they only had an hour so they had to decide what would be the cool stuff to show in an hour. It's sort of like creating a 2 minute trailer for a 2 hour movie. You want to give the biggest impact to catch people's attention.

Personally I learned more about FCPX by looking at the giant screenshot floating around the web then I did watching the video of the entire presentation. Ok maybe not that far but I did learn a lot that I didn't see in the presentation. For example this is not confirmed but it looks like FCPX does support native AVCHD formats.

Now I'm not saying FCPX is going to be the last NLE we will ever use. We have been hearing that about FCS for years and sometimes it has fallen very short. All I am saying is that we have only seen a little bit of what it can do so far. I'm not talking bells and whistles either but meat and potatoes editing. The sort of stuff we use every day but doesn't look like much when shown to other people. Like a killer keyboard shortcut that saves hours on a project sort of thing. It was a lot of these features that were in the FCS3 update that didn't have any fanfair and people criticized. To me they were awesome but I would never do a presentation of some of it unless I wanted to put people to sleep.

[Heath McKnight]

I think Apple tinkered a bit with FCP 7 (ver. 6 had smoothcam and ProRes, among other "killer" features), and got some heat for it. As such, I commend them for going back to the drawing board and re-building everything from scratch, adding in features that are prevalent in other NLEs, plus some awesome new ones, then cut the price so low that Avid, Adobe, Edius and maybe Sony, to an extent, are nervous.

heath

[Ron Evans]

We will have to wait and see exactly what comes out as FCP X. I don't think that Adobe or Sony or GV Edius will bother too much unless there is a Windows version of FCP X. Now they can run on MAC's but FCP can only run on MAC's. They have the whole market available to them rather than just one brand of PC. Depending on the actual feature content of FCP X they may also have lower cost product to offer as well.

Ron Evans

[Heath McKnight]

Ron,

You're right about the lowering of the price.

In the early- to mid-2000s, I saw a lot of producers walk away from post-production houses, and purchase a Final Cut Pro system and just hire an editor to cut for them. I'd say 2/3 of the independent video producers I worked with did this. It's a combination of saving money, but also cutting prices because customers, at least locally in South Florida, weren't willing to pay the higher rates from the 1990s.

I'd show up with a laptop and FCP, but they'd already have a Power Mac G5, and, later, a Mac Pro ready to go with FCP loaded up.

As an aside, some of my fellow editing buddies, one a major Hollywood editor, on Facebook and I have been joking about the ultimate NLE feature: tell the computer you want the footage captured, cut, color corrected, mastered and ready to go by the time we get back from lunch. If only we were so lucky.

Heath

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Not computer but the phone or ipad. So when you are having lunch your phone is doing the data crunching as per your preferred "cinema profile" . :-)

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Dean Sensui]

Originally Posted by Duncan Craig

What's always a worry for me is having this kind of simple yet powerful software the App store means more of my clients (mostly creative agencies in the North England), will be encouraged to try using it for themselves. And I'll start losing the little day jobs that keep me ticking over.

Still it's been going that way for a while...

Having a pen doesn't necessarily make one a writer.

What will make the difference in any market is the skill level. Because although anyone can have the tools, it still takes a good production team to create compelling programming.

[Mike Marriage]

Dean, totally agree. It's just a shame that some clients don't realise that.

Cheap is good in some ways but it will also encourage producers to take an edit "in house" which can have varying consequences.

[Ron Evans]

My Sony CX700 will automatically produce a highlight clip of a date range on the camera with music !!! Adobe Elements will also do this based on a choice of video quality, fixing audio noise etc or movie theme complete with titles !!! . Available for Windows and the MAC at $80 !!! Plus version even has auto backup to the WEB if you pay for it. !!!! Both are intended to create a very quick highlight of a holiday for example and both do a credible job. I was pleasantly surprised and amused.

Ron Evans

[William Hohauser]

A cheaper Final Cut means more people just out of college doing free work to "fatten" up their resumé. Other then that, the new version is looking good to me.

[Nigel Barker]

FCS 3 with the Higher Education discount is already priced at around $299.

[Steve Kalle]

I'm not an Apple fan whatsoever. In fact, I can't stand their business model where Jobs dictates what is best for Apple users (ala dictator).

BUT, I am very happy that the new FCPX looks like a killer NLE. Many people just don't understand that competition is GREAT for all of us.

Btw, Native Editing isn't everything its cracked up to be if using any form of H264. Also, FCPX users will need to get used to the slight delay every time hitting the space bar like us in Premiere CS5 due to decoding. I have two PCs and a 6-core Mac Pro. One PC has an i7 and the other PC is a 12-core Z800. With H264, only the 12-core can handle it easily.

On a side note, the Premiere 5.5 upgrade adds FCP 7 keyboard shortcuts.

Speaking of Mojo and AVID, I can't believe their business model is still working even though it has been 'relaxed' a bit. Their 5.5 upgrade is something like twice the price of FCPX.

Speaking of pricing, are you certain the $299 is ONLY for the full program or is it the UPGRADE price? If for the full app, then it seems Apple is taking an odd stance by eliminating upgrades.

Lastly, it is refreshing to hear FCP users who are not stuck in the RDF (reality distortion field).

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

Btw, Native Editing isn't everything its cracked up to be if using any form of H264. Also, FCPX users will need to get used to the slight delay every time hitting the space bar like us in Premiere CS5 due to decoding. I have two PCs and a 6-core Mac Pro. One PC has an i7 and the other PC is a 12-core Z800. With H264, only the 12-core can handle it easily.

You should try Edius. Plays with no delay at all. Your i7 should play 3 or 4 tracks of AVCHD native with no problems. My 4 core Q 9450, an old PC by todays standards will play 1 track at high data rate 1920x1080 ( 24Mbps or 28Mbps 60P) no delay and two if they are lower data rate 17Mbps or lower. Vegas also has no problems with much the same response.

Ron Evans

[Steve Kalle]

With Premiere, it is not much of a delay and I don't mind it, but others have complained about the not-instant-response when hitting play with certain codecs (MPEG2, H264). I edit mostly XDCAM EX and MXF nanoFlash in addition to image sequences (DPX, PSD and OpenEXR from Cinema 4D renders) and I have no problem.

[David Parks]

Part of me says I will wait until others kick the tires on the new car and let a few updates and bugs rolled in and to get worked out. My experience says, like most completely re-written new apps, there will be some bugs. I'm hesitant to edit a paying gig or anything involving a client that's not proven

The other part of me says,,well it's $299.00, ... I love Avid,,,been loyal,,,it has served me well,,,but ,,,,

$299.00??? What have I got to lose?

[Jordan Hooper]

If anybody wants to see the new version in action you can check it out here, just under an hour of the presentation:

Video of Final Cut Pro X Announcement Now Available | Mac|Life