So far I am enjoying learning Premiere Pro, in fact much more than I thought I would, but one feature I really miss is iChat theater.
The ability to cut remotely and show your cut and see the producer and let them see you was an amazing addition by Apple, and something that really needs to be added into Premiere to bring it on par with Final Cut Pro 7.
Alex Gollner of Alex4D, has an article on how to get around FCP X automatically applying an audio cross fade when you add a dissolve in FCP X. It is a useful tip, but my question is, if this is really supposed to be a professional app, why would you need a workaround for what should be one of the simplest things to do in an editing suite? I mean seriously, what the hell!
Neptune Salad has an article that is worth reading on waiting for Final Cut Pro X to release to start a big job, and then seeing what it is, and moving to Premiere Pro. It is really worth checking out, and looks to be the start of a series of articles.
But the real question anyone who edits is this: What are we going to do right now? I mean what are we actually going to do? As professionals, we don’t have the time to play around with multiple new programs until this dust settles as it could be months, and it might take Apple over a year to put FCP back on track.
And
Honestly, I’m not excited about moving to a new platform. This will be my third (Media 100, Final Cut Pro, now this – go ahead and laugh, Avid users). But the integration of AfterEffects (which is becoming a must-have item for filmmakers, see www.videocopilot.net to understand my zeal) and Photoshop make it an attractive one-two knockout punch.
Kind of how I feel, though he did not get a refund on Final Cut Pro X, and I did, but we both are making the move to Premiere Pro.
Here is an interesting Article on Final Cut Pro X from TUAW.
I have to say that the magnetic timeline’s “primary storyline/connected storyline” paradigm just does not work for me yet. The concept is this: think of a documentary. The interviews are your “primary storyline,” and the music, titles, and B-roll are your “connected storylines.”
In theory this is very cool, because a particular piece of B-roll is “connected” to a particular piece of interview in a particular place, and you can reorganize the interviews and the associated B-roll comes with them.
In practice it’s really annoying. It assumes that you always have a block of footage that starts and ends with a cut-in video and audio simultaneously, which I actually almost never do.
And
The magnetic timeline also irritates me because I’m a strong proponent of track discipline. If I put something on V2, it’s there for a reason. But in the magnetic timeline, items on subordinate tracks just jump up and down all over the place. Your music might be towards the top here and towards the bottom there. I suspect that in a complicated project, it will become impossible to find a given element.
Something I despise: the loss of Reconnect Media. Not having that on Avid was one of the worst things about it, and losing it on FCP hurts. A file suddenly went offline for no reason — I hadn’t moved it — and I was just hosed. That sucks.
I tend to agree, and have returned my FCP X because of it. Track Discipline is the biggest thing ever for an editor, and without it, I can’t edit!
Looks like I am going with Premiere Pro. It is fast and responsive, though I have had some random crashes, but it was on sequences that I had imported via XML from Final Cut Pro 7.
The thing is the CUDA support with the NVIDIA card is unbelievably fast, and the integration with After Effects plug-ins makes it so usefull.
Again Macrumors has a great article on the origins of iMovie 08, which became Final Cut Pro X.
Ubillos returned from vacation and found that Final Cut wasn’t ideal for organizing raw footage. From that experience, First Cut was born which would let you import your raw footage and quickly skip through, organizing and building a rough edit. The intention originally was to then export to Final Cut Pro. At some point, Apple officially latched onto the project and turned it into the new iMovie ’08.
No wonder so many features seem shoehorned, it was meant to just create quick rough cuts, not to be the whole editor!
Macrumors has this interesting interview with Ron Brinkman, Shake’s product designer. Shake was the industry standard compositing program that Apple killed after 2 updates for no reason, except maybe to mine Q-Master for Compressor.
I love what he has to say:
And back then the same questions were being asked as now – “Doesn’t Apple care about the professional market?”
In a word, no. Not really. Not enough to focus on it as a primary business.
Brinkman goes on to explain that there are maybe 10,000 “high-end” editors in the world while the market for an easier to use more casual product is “at least an order of magnitude larger”. The market size, however, isn’t necessarily the only reason. Brinkmann offers an interesting anecdote about how the high end market tends to be 90% driven by product requests from the big customers. Apple doesn’t work that way:
After the acquisition I remember sitting in a roomful of Hollywood VFX pros where Steve told everybody point-blank that we/Apple were going to focus on giving them powerful tools that were far more cost-effective than what they were accustomed to… but that the relationship between them and Apple wasn’t going to be something where they’d be driving product direction anymore. Didn’t go over particularly well, incidentally, but I don’t think that concerned Steve overmuch… 🙂
Apple’s hierarchy is also described as one in which easily demo-able features tend to be easier to promote within the organization. He goes on to say that in the case of FCP, Apple would rather introduce more easy to use features for the broader audience even if it means pushing out some items for high end editors.
Well after only one day, I got the following letter and got my refund for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4. It is time to purchase Premiere Pro, which is really impressing me to no end!
I did have a disturbing thought though, is Apple doing this to remove some of the worst reviews on their site? Every refund should be one 1 star review they get rid of!
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Dear Jonah,
Thank you for contacting iTunes Store Customer Support. My name is *****
I’m sorry to hear that the application you recently purchased is not functioning as expected. I know how eager you are to get this issue resolved. I will make sure that this issue is resolved at the earliest.
Jonah, I have reversed the charges for the purchase of applications “Final Cut Pro X”, “Motion 5” and “Compressor 4”. In five to seven business days, a credit of $399.97 should be posted to the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase.
If you require further assistance, please feel free to reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.
Have a good day!
Sincerely,
*****
So here is what I wrote to apple in my request for a refund for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4.
I am writing you about my orders for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4. Order numbers M3NT1XYK15, M3NT1XYK7J and M3NT1XYLSB. I want to get a refund on these because the products do not function as advertised. Today you released a FAQ on Final Cut Pro X and it’s very first entry states that I cannot open Final Cut Pro 7 projects into Final Cut Pro X (it should not be named that, what if Adobe had made Photoshop CS5 not able to open any previous Photoshop docs when it became 64 bit) and as a professional editor, that is a good 75 percent of my business, working on variations of old projects and fixing projects for other people. Without this features the program is useless to me and the FAQ says it will never happen. If this FAQ had been out when the app was released I would not have purchased any of these 3 apps. Honestly I can say I am furious! I have already paid money for Ripple Training, and have also upgraded AUtomatic Duck, and since every statement after FCP X came out was that features were coming I expected that opening FCP 7 projects would be the first priority, but since it will never happen I must get an editing suite that can open FCP 7 sequences like Premiere Pro or Media Composer with Automatic Duck (which as I said I already own).
I also never saw any documentation that said that the magnetic timeline could not be turned off and that you can’t assign tracks. I work on 28:30 long infomercials often with 20 tracks of video and must put different graphics on different tracks in order to organize so that any editor can open it and understand it, with the magnetic timeline I might be able to make a sequence that looks the same visually, but it would not be organized so any editor could see it or so that I could easily turn texted on and off. This is another reason that this suite is not usefull to me.
As for Motion, I only got it to edit effects within FCP X, and to me it does not vastly improve over the previous motion. I don’t notice any major speed increases, and I see it as a downgrade since it is missing the send to features in FCP X that made it a good companion to final cut pro.
And Compressor 4 is not even 64 bit, and I am fine with having Q-master seperate, and since it won’t get video sent from Final Cut Pro 7, it is useless to me.
Please refund my money ASAP because these apps do not do as advertised, and you have only made these shortcomings aware as of today. I tried to learn and use FCP X, and did the ripple training, but found it is not at all a replacement for FCP 7, and instead feels like a consumer downgrade.
And right off the bat the FAQ shows that is useless to me, as the first note negates the usefulness of FCP X.
Can I import projects from Final Cut Pro 7 into Final Cut Pro X?Final Cut Pro X includes an all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline and connected clips. In addition, Final Cut Pro X features new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools. Because of these changes, there is no way to “translate” or bring in old projects without changing or losing data. But if you’re already working with Final Cut Pro 7, you can continue to do so after installing Final Cut Pro X, and Final Cut Pro 7 will work with Mac OS X Lion. You can also import your media files from previous versions into Final Cut Pro X.
Basically being unable to open FCP 7 projects or sequences (though it can open the consumer iMovie ones) is a huge part of my business, and I would rather move to Premier Pro 5.5 or Media Composer 5.5 which can open my FCP 7 sequences via XML (Media Composer with the help of Automatic Duck, which I already own).
The FAQ did have some good answers, but this above alone was enough to send me to try to get a refund.
Does Final Cut Pro X allow you to assign audio tracks for export?Not yet. An update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize your audio clips by type and export them directly from Final Cut Pro X.
Of course this feature as well, not being able to assign tracks means my 20 video track infomercials would be so confusing it would hurt! And mixer’s will still hate the exports of audio, even if things are tagged!
So I am going to fight for a refund!