New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Hey guys, Apple has stated a new version of FCP is going to be released alongside their new MacPro Desktop........does anyone know if it will continue along the lines of FCP X or revert to more of a FCP 7 style?
It's no secret many editors were unhappy with FCP X as it was quickly touted "iMovie Pro"........I too disliked it and still use FCP 7.........anyone know anything?

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I very much doubt that they will ever revert the entire way the program works back to the "old ways." No one is still complaining - they're either accepted the benefits of FCPX, or moved on to Adobe or Avid. I for one love the "new way" of editing with Final Cut.

I think we're talking FCP 10.1.0 for the next update, which will add features to make editing smoother, faster and more convenient - whatever those features may be. We'll see if that announcement comes tomorrow during the Apple event, or if the MacPro will have to wait until later in the year.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Aside from the addition of simple discreet audio tracks for exporting purposes, I do not want a return to FCP7 or anything resembling the old style NLE programs. This is a much better way to edit.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Thank you guys for the replies.
Is it safe to assume if I were to purchase FCP X now, I'd get future updates or revisions free?
I'd hate to purchase it now only to find out I'm not eligible for this upcoming revision.

(Are there any improvements in working with ProRes footage with the current FCP X as to the FCP 7 version?)

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I think there is absolutely zero chance Apple will revert to an FCP7 style. Like it or not, (and I REALLY like it) Apple is committed to the paradigm change of FCPX. I read that Apple is actively soliciting input in LA among editors on what they would like to see added, and that they are consulting with some major studios to assist in film production workflow.

And, not only has the original dislike of the new interface been fading rapidly over the past 2+ years as people discover it really is powerful and fast, Apple has already sold more copies of X than of all previous versions of Final Cut combined.

I used the original Final Cut from 2003 - 2011, but I would not go back for anything.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

The general consensus seems to be that the 10.1 update (which we all hope will be at least announced tomorrow but may not release until next month) may finally be the first paid update. And, the assumption is that, just as with 10.0.x, all future 10.1.x updates would be free.

As far as working with ProRes, the immediate difference is that when rendering FCPX will use every processor core on your Mac. X will also work with many more formats natively than 7, if that's your wish.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I just wish they'd include the ability to switch to track-based editing. The magnetic timeline is a dream for straightforward edits (where you know what you want), massively faster than anything else out there. But some sequences are constructed entirely in the edit, montages made from all sorts of disparate clips - and trying to wrangle them on the magnetic timeline is a nightmare - track-based editing is the only way to clearly layout complicated edits like that.

I don't want to get rid of the magnetic timeline, I just want a better alternative to it for projects that require an alternative (without having to learn an entirely different piece of software just for those edits).

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Anyone who wants to stay stuck in track based editing should move to Premier or AVID. Those programs are both excellent at that.

For those of us who've learned to edit with X, there's absolutely NO WAY I think many will ever go back to the slow, inflexible and frustrating paradigm of traditional track based editing.

During my edit of content for last weeks Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards. X let me chew through the 140 plus "winners clips" submitted on all sorts of weird broadcast and webcast formats - and cut the show content together in a snap.I estimate that the database in X and the ability to search, sort and find assets via it's internal database saved me about 20 full hours of drudgery over the 10 day deadline heavy edit.

The magnetic timeline and the ability to create vertical scene blocks that stay cohesive during subsequent moves, probably saved me another 10 hours.

The cutting edge tools in X made the process so insanely easy that the producer and I spent a significant part of the week allotted for editing - showing each other cools stuff on the internet and trading family stories.

The traditional tools like Premier and AVID are well established and robust and completely worthy of any editors attention.

I'll just stick with X thank you. Apple was brilliant with the programs re-design for a modern file-based and data centric editing world. And some of us who have invested the last two years learning it fully are now reaping big benefits for all our hard work.

But if you want to stay with traditional tools, feel free to perpetually hook your credit card to Adobe or pay the AVID or Vegas folks and dive right in. They both have truly superb tools for more traditional video editing.

I'm just happy not to still be stuck in "traditional" editing. Apple saw a better way - and now I for one feel like I'm fully reaping the benefits of their vision.

FWIW.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Wow, Bill - great post!!

Could I ask what hardware you were using for this big project you describe? Which Mac, and did you have an external Thunderbolt box?

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Sure hope it won't revert back to the bad old days! I never liked the way old NLEs worked but just love FCPX, it feels so much more natural to work in... To me it feels that the people that don't like it are those that are unwilling to relearn. I think they will just evolve FCPX and keep adding functionality just like they have done continuously since the release...
And besides, I heard somewhere that FCPX has sold more copies than all other versions of FCP combined so I don't think the motivation to revert is there either ;)

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Just finished doing some editing this morning and I have to say that FCPX is really nice to work with. Wound up buying it shortly after it came out in spite of numerous moaning and griping posts about it. Fortunately I didn't have to come from some other major editing application and relearn how to use it so that made it easier I suppose. I feel I really lucked out making the decision to get it.

Even though I've used databases I don't think that was that much of an advantage to learning how to use it. Just set up the file system and stick with it - don't move the files after they've been used otherwise the application can't find them.

FCPX isn't a simple application like TextEdit so one can't expect to just jump in and run with it. Looking back there was some learning pains but isn't there always with a new application?

This morning I was importing clips into the Event Library then dragging them, or part of them, into the Project timeline. Several of the clips were dragged into the timeline between existing clips and the timeline just moves ahead to let them be inserted, or replaced as the case may be. If there is a question there is a little window that pops up asking if it is to be inserted or replace the existing. This process goes faster than one can even talk about it.

Stabilization: The monopod isn't exactly the worlds most stable platform because there is often some small amount of movement. No problem. Select the clip and then select "Stabilization" then any movement is taken out. The Stabilization works well even with handheld shots as long as there is something that it can fix on that isn't moving. For example, if people are walking beside a building it will fixate on the building.

Color correction: I'm certainly no "colorist" - that's a whole new area that I have to learn; however, the color correction options are pretty good but I'm still learning. Tried messing with one underexposed clip that also had a bad color balance by adjusting things and gave up. Decided to try "Balance" and Bingo! Close enough for Government work. The "Match Color" option often works too but in the case above I didn't have a clip handy to color match.

Titles, Transitions, editing audio, ... oh, there is an Audio Enhancements section where one can select a "Voice Enhancement" option - used this several times recently and I was impressed. This video was taken using a camera mounted Rode Stereo Videomic from probably 30 to 40 feet away. I used the Voice Enhancement option and it did a really good job of picking of the peoples voices that were previously just buried in the background noise.

These are just a few thoughts that come to mind. Needless to say, I'm very pleased with the application. That doesn't mean to say that there isn't something that can't be improved or added but bang-for-the-buck I'm happy.

Will I upgrade to 10.1.0? That depends on how much they want for it. This version, 10.0.9 has enough bells and whistles to keep me occupied for quite awhile. Just in case they're listening, I'm not in the business of paying big bucks just because it's an Apple product and I don't have to have the latest and greatest, but I'd be willing to pay a proportionate amount for value added so lets see what they come up with.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Sit down, cuz this might make you woozy... ; )

I did the entire Emmy show edit on my MacBook Pro (model just prior to the release of Thunderbolt.)

That's it. Nothing else.

I had an external Firewire 800 drive attached sometimes for project backup - but I did all the editing on the stock machine without anything extra.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I couldn't agree more, Bill. And I find that the more I work with the magnetic timeline, the more I understand it.

In fact, here's a simple workaround I just thought of if you need a "track-based" approach for an FCP X project (without any need for the Apple people to change or redesign the software):

1/ Put your first clip on the Primary Storyline. (Press"W")

2/ Right click on the clip and select "Lift from Storyline". (Or use shortcut "Alt-Cmd-Up Arrow")

3/ That leaves you with a dark-grey "dummy" clip on your Primary Storyline, with your original clip now attached to that as a Secondary Storyline.

4/ Click on the right-hand edge of the dummy and stretch it to 5 minutes, 10 minutes or whatever length you might need.

5/ Assemble your complex project by adding every other clip to the Secondary Storyline (always press the shortcut "Q" from hereon and never press "W").

Because everything is connected to your stable dummy track (which won't move around) you can shuffle clips about and construct your story on the Secondary Storyline. The "track-based" editing should be achieved by the stable dummy track.

That should work, I reckon.

And it would take less than 5 seconds to set it all up in FCP X. Then you should be good to go.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

While David's process will work just fine, I think the larger problem is that what you're doing is simply trying to defeat the nature of the X editing system rather than just learning it.

Horizontal magnetism on the primary ROCKS. And workng magnetically -vertically- rocks even more! Since you can create video groupings that maintain their relationship relative to the time of the group - rather than to the entire project. It's freeking brilliant. It opens up whole new ways to think about program construction.

You can learn to work in these new ways - or you can spend twice the effort trying to make a modern editing system like FCP-X work more like all the other editing systems that were originally spawned to make the editors coming from the A/B roll tape systems of the 1960s and 1970s not feel too uncomfortable.

If you don't believe me, look at the head stack on a 1970s multi-track audio recorder. It's a STACK just exactly like 8 or 16 video tracks in FCP-Legacy. But today the tape is gone. The "head stacks" are gone. And amazingly, the requirement that you put a piece of content into a "channel" and subsequently LEAVE it there so the machinery doesn't get confused - should ALSO be long gone.

That's what X does. "Tracks" are virtual and fluid and automated. If something gets moved down a track, rather than destroying what it runs into, the software just moves it dynamically out of the way and create another virtual track. Simple. And smart. Instead of making you put video UP on those stripes and Audio DOWN on those stripes - X lets you put them anywhere. Why NOT add another video clip below the audio? It it serves your need, go ahead - at least in X.

Look at the screen cap below. Music video I did a couple of months ago. Where's the audio? It's embedded in the primary clips which were cut in mutli-cam. It's a recorded final song, so there' NO need to edit it further. So in X, everything you see is video. Above AND below the storyline. Why? Because with multi-layered composites floating above and below each other - it worked better that way.

Instead of having to "see" everything in terms of horizontal stripes - you can "tag" your clips with roles and keywords and find them instantly, anywhere they need to be, regardless of their physical arrangement on any timeline. So you're freed from having to manually futz with the possible destruction of the current arrangements, simply because you need to move something a little.

X is smarter editing. It's faster editing. Because it reflects the actual video world we're in today rather than the one we're moving away from every single month. Tape is gone. Today is downloadable content from everywhere - in all sorts of formats - that need to be mixed together in a stew that the creator will likely need to sift and sort and re-arranged over time - that's what X is all about.

Please, please don't try to make X work more like every other NLE tool. Learn to *think* in it's new ways.

Believe me, it's so, so much better in the long run.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I too am interested in FCP X.

I work in a news and features environment where we still use several audio tracks. I'm Avid trained and am used to having a minimum of 3 audio tracks - A1 for interviews & pieces to camera, A2 for natural sound & A3 for voiceover and maybe A4 if there's any music, etc.

Can FCP X deal with this is in a manner that works effectively in the real world for people like me or does it work best for those that only have 1 audio track on the magnetic timeline.

I've spoken to people who've used both and from what they say FCP X isn't suitable for those of use in a news and features environment. Is this true??? FCP 7 has been and is still used by Sky BBC, etc but it's no longer supported by Apple. So I'm wondering whether FCP X is worth considering or not.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

FCPX can have scads of audio layers, and due to the magnetic timeline, in places where you don't need more than 1 or 2, those will snug up to the primary "timeline" so they're easy to see. But if you want a certain audio track to "always" be three layers down from the bottom video track - it might be possible but that's not the way FCPX goes at it.

Bill, thanks for the info about doing network TV with a laptop. Sorry, it makes me think of that line from Kevin Smith in Transformers 1 - "this is a guy who shut down freakin' NORAD with a laptop!"

It is true that recent Macs are much snappier with FCPX. Something to do with system busses for RAM and hard drive access (AVX or something). My 2008 8-core MacPro (can't believe it will soon be 6 years old) will still render pretty fast, but actual snappiness of the interface - selecting clips, changing tools, dragging, etc. is sluggish and is actually faster on my wife's mid-2011 i5 iMac.

So after hearing the details on the new MacPro I've decided its power/price ratio is overkill for my needs, and I ordered the fastest 27" iMac just this morning! :-)

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Kevin, I have been doing several audio sources for the ice skating videos I work on with FCPX. I have CD music, announcer and audience sounds and occasionally other sweetening. I migrated from Sony Vegas Pro 10 which was a track paradigm. Since I tend to edit a couple of times over the year in bursts of activity, it took about a year to feel comfortable. I guess a full time production editor would be wary of the down time (or reduced output time), but now I feel like I get more done with less confusion.

I had no prior Final Cut Pro experience so no "unlearning" to do.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Kevin,

There are two schools of thought about audio in X.

The first is people who have established workflows and habits and who feel the need to keep working largely the same way they have in the past - just on newer software. They will be disappointed in X because that's NOT how it works.

The second group is editors who are comfortable with tossing out some of their old habit in order to build new ones that are potentially more effective. Those are the people who will come to X and in a year or so, wonder why they didn't change MUCH sooner.

Audio (and timeline editing in general) has traditionally been a track based thing. It's comforting. Video up there, audio down there, nothing to think about.

But in X, that rigid system has been re-invented. Audio tracks are still possible - and I have them in 95% of my story lines. I have storylines that "appear" to be quite traditional, video on top, green audio tracks on the bottom. But the point is you are not constrained to that form. Tracks are now no longer "rigid" in X. Clips jump and move tracks in order to solve other problems. (such as clip collisions - where dragging an audio or video clip down a track would knock out anything on that same track via overwrite)

If that was all it did in that case (avoid clip collisions) it would be a poor system - because potentially, you'd be un-certain where your audio clips would land after multiple moves.

But that's the cohesive genius of X. You have new tools such as the timeline index and Roles which are database driven links into ALL the assets on your timeline. So locating assets in a project storyline is trivial. Search for the clip via the index - and it highlights on the storyline and the skimmer bar moves to it.

Suddenly, the "need" for structured tracks becomes much less important. You don't need to remember where a thing is in virtual physical space if you have a computerized system that can wisk it to your fingertips with a keystroke or two.

And with Roles, you can suddenly output things like stems and alt mixes using sort rules and keywords.

This is the nature of X compared to other NLEs. The entire system is built on metadata, range tagging and database concepts, so lots and lots of things simply don't need to work the way they used to.

And as everyone knows from operating even simple databases such as phone lists - the more work you do putting things INTO the system - the more powerful it becomes for the user.

So the power of X will GROW as you learn to build out your editing database. You end up with common assets that live in your Event Browser, opens, audio snippets, prior whole projects, editable graphics, etc, etc - that become available as building blocks for your new work.

Honestly, it's transformed the way I edit. I'm getting a lot more work done more easily than ever in my career. Now to be fair, this is partly because I have the luxury of being able to focus my practice on the kind of work I enjoy doing - which is primarily informational. I don't do feature work, so I'll leave that for others to discuss.

But I can tell you that having just edited the Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards shows - and having just viewed more than 150 of the finest news stories from the top video producers in the southwest - theres' not a single one of the winning pieces that X would have had the slightest problem cutting - and I suspect an experienced user would have gotten done faster. It's just the nature of the rapid assembly and rapid revision that's part of the DNA of FCP-X.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I recently used a rather simple workaround (found it in a web search) for the lack of discreet audio tracks for a project where the audio designer needed the different voice tracks separated by speaker. All you do is create slug for each track and place them below the primary storyline. Label each slug for the track and then place the audio files below that slug, later you can select the track and assign it a role. When exporting just be sure to select the option to split the tracks by roles and you get separate audio tracks the length of the project to send out. This works great when the audio is not with on-screen video. For that I use an add-on called Final Cat Pro (yes, really) which can find all clips on a timeline that are from the same file. Once those are all selected I add a role.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Hi Kevin - just read your post and after reading it I thought this article on Apples site might be of interest.

The article is about a newspaper, the "Globe and Mail", Canada's largest. Yes, I know, it is a newspaper ... but, they also have a video section and that section uses FCPX. If you're in the news business then the comments in the section "News Travels Fast" (in the article) would probably be of interest.

Apple - Final Cut Pro X - In Action - The Globe and Mail

There are other articles at Apple - Final Cut Pro X - In Action

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Thanks guys. Some interesting views and material to investigate and look through.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

Interesting posts.

I'd been a professional user of FCP for a very long time, up to FCP7. I bought FCPX on day one and played with it. I didn't run with the pack of condemning it. I read the manual (who else does that?), I even watched all of Larry Jordan's initial tutorial videos. FCPX was good, but as Larry himself said at the time, it wasn't ready for prime time. Well, not my kind of prime time anyway.

There were big holes, everyone knew that. But I had waited and waited (hanging on with FCP7) for better native media support and when FCPX launched I had paid my money, done the 3-4 weeks of testing and then jumped ship to Adobe Premiere Pro. We used Pr for a couple of years as the main editing app but I kept my eye on FCPX until eventually 10.0.6 came. Then we started using it for corporate jobs but kept most of of the multi cam jobs within Premiere Pro.

Recently (perhaps the last 6 months) we've gradually migrated over to 100% FCPX. Why? It's faster. Faster to ingest (Premiere Pro takes forever to conform audio!), faster to edit, much better built in colour grading (colour in Premier Pro is a joke and needs Colorista or other plugins for much of the work), faster to export etc etc (comparisons we did on the same timeline had FCPX exporting in 35 mins and Premiere Pro taking 6 hours).

The one weak link for me is still audio. I'm not talking about tracks, but audio in general. I'm hoping Apple has some improvements in the pipeline.

The biggest problem I have with audio is not the day to day cutting of corporate video, that's fine. It's in the long form multicam productions with multiple audio channels (think 10-12 tracks of audio). Cutting multi cam audio is awkward at best. When ever you cut the video it also cuts the audio. PITA! So, you end up disabling audio from all but one clip and stretching it out so you can cross fade between different mics as needed. Then you realise you need to make a video cut due to audio and boom! It's all gone. So you have to make other changes to the way audio it dropped in to the sequence and try again. It's a pain. It's much easier to do multi cam audio in Premier Pro, but the rest of FCPX workflow is (IMHO) worth the effort of doing it in FCPX.

I'm not one to jump on the bandwagon of expectations of up coming releases. I will wait until it's released and see what happens. It looks like being December now. I can live with that. I just hope they have found some way to bring better audio mixing and (per track/role) metering. I really miss being able to see what clip/track is causing the spikes in audio. While you can look at wave forms it doesn't always tell the whole story in real time.

So, Apple, better audio metering please. Stereo meters is for final output, not editing.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

If you're curious as to the direction the new update will go, take a look at the fcpx.tv's "100+ Requests for Final Cut Pro X 10.1" Final Cut Pro X Request list
I think a lot of the evolution of the features can be found on that list.

I'm loving it after only 2-3 weeks, excited about editing again! The integrated Motion engine is big for me, too.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

This is just me and I know nothing special...

But that said, I have a sneaking suspicion that the December release won't have a ton of new features.

(BTW, I'd LOVE to be wrong about this!)

My reasoning is that the new MacPro is all about new internal plumbing built to deliver blazing speed. I think optimizing stuff like Grand Central Dispatch and access to the new dual GPU architecture will deliver more boost to the FCP-X ecosystem than adding a bunch of new features.

I think that there are lots of roadmaps and plans inside the X team for revising/adding capabilities and handing production tasks such as more flexible audio handling for the small but important top tier classes of editors who need those advanced capabilities.

But being able to load up 16 tracks of modestly compressed 4k footage and have it transcode them wickedly fast - will do a whole lot more good for more users than re-working how to handle 32 tracks of film soundtrack audio - a thing that only affects perhaps one our of a thousand editors.

My speculation only. I could be totally wrong here.

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I want to chime in and say Apple BETTER not go back to the old FCP7 style.

I knew most of the complainers had little to actually complain about. I love it, have motion, compressor, 7tox, and aftereffects (for things I can't do in motion).

Re: New FCP coming soon~ ??
 

I'm Apple Certified in FCP 7 & FCP X. I use FCP X now almost exclusively, if I have to temporarily go back to FCP 7 for a client, it seems too old school to me. Looking forward to 10.1.