Good old Larry Jordan has a great blog post on the update to FCP X 10 10.0.3, which is another free update.
APPLE’S RELEASE NOTES
According to the Release Notes from Apple, Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.3 adds the following features:
- Multicam editing with automatic sync and support for mixed formats, mixed frame rates, and up to 64 camera angles
- Media relink for manual reconnect of projects and Events to new media
- Ability to import and edit layered Photoshop graphics
- Advanced chroma keying with controls for color sampling, edge quality, and light wrap
- XML 1.1 with support for exporting basic primary color grades and both importing and exporting effect parameters and audio keyframes
- Multiple improvements to the Color Board, including new key commands, editable numeric fields, and adjustable parameters that act like infinite sliders when dragged
- Ability to reorder color corrections in the Inspector
- Reveal in Event Browser shows clip range in the filmstrip while in List View
- Batch offset for clip date and time
- Ability to search text added to Favorite and Reject ranges
- Automatic restore of projects and Events in case of file corruption
- Beta version of broadcast monitoring with third-party PCIe and Thunderbolt I/O devices
Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.3 also improves overall stability and performance, and addresses the following issues:
- Improves performance when editing text in titles
- Improves performance when applying an effect from the Effect Browser
- Improves key-framing behavior in the Inspector, with keyframes automatically added when moving to a new point in time and adjusting a parameter
- Modifies transition behavior so that all newly added transitions use available media and maintain project length
- Fixes an issue which affected audio solo while skimming
- Resolves issues related to using Synchronize Clips with media containing a silent audio channel
- Fixes an issue in which constant speed retiming was not properly applied when using the Paste Effects command
The 3rd Party FCP XML transfer apps are created by Intelligent Assistance and include 7toX and Xto7. 7toX is available for $9.99 and Xto7 is $49.99 in the App Store, and both with XML much like Premiere Pro ability to open XML files from FCP 7.
Looks like Apple is listening and has added back many of the features that are necessary for a Pro to Use this software, even Beta support for broadcast monitors, and multicam, and especially the ability to relink media to different clips. The biggest are the utilities from Intelligent Assistance, which should be free and integrated, but it is great that they are available at all.
Compressor and Motion have also been updated.
Now FCP X does become a viable editing app and successor to FCP 7, though we still don’t know for how much longer FCP 7 will run on the latest OS’s, so it is time to freeze a system to keep FCP 7 viable and be able to even export XML to be able to import into FCP X (Since it does not work with project files).
And no matter what I still think that that the basic editing techniques of FCP X is broken. The inability to have numbered tracks just would not work with the DR workflows that I cut with and make Media Composer and Premiere the real solutions available for editing with. And honestly FCP X will make more people think they are professional editors and leave the high end jobs to people who can use the other software. Sure you will still be able to make good stuff with FCP X and it does have a powerful engine with impressive features, but it’s fundamental changes to editing are not going to revolutionize the industry, but instead continue to drive people to Adobe and AVID.
I still say Apple should have released this as a new App and made a 64 bit version of FCP 7, and slowly added the new features they wanted to implement instead of this scorched Earth policy which has and will continue to alienate the high end post people.
I think the fact that the Final Cut Pro User Group is now the Creative Pro User Group says a lot. Still the updates to FCP X will mean that more people can and will use it, and I am glad Apple is actually listening to some of the complaints, but mostly I hope it means that AVID and Adobe continue to upgrade their software. After all Premiere Pro really needs to be able to do more than 4 angle multi-cam and the automatic syncing, and being able to re-sync at a later time are very cool features that it could use.