Reuben Evans at OWC’s Tech Talk Blog on what Top Pros want from Apple as a Platform

OWC's Tech Talk blog has an article with Top Video Pros Weight In On Where Apple Should Take Its Platform. It is a good article, if a little too FCP X focused overall. I made my huge post on the problems that I have with extensive use of FCP X, and I wish Apple would deal with them before adding too much else, though collaborative editing might help with some of my complaints quite a bit, but there are still so many to go into.I totally agree that Apple needs to knock it out of the park with a GPU, but not just for Cinema4D, but also for Premiere Pro (as well as DaVinci). And yea the CPU needs to really stomp ass with After Effects for sure.An updated XDR display should happen quickly, and the new version should also be the basis for a new iMac Pro.And yes the Afterburner card needs to be able to decode different codecs as well, not just ProRES, and that should also be either added to the iMac, or make a breakout box with BlackMagic and include the tech in that along with an HDMI out and in.I really do wish I could afford a MacPro, though with the M1, it calls it into question. Be really weird if Apple ends up with the MacPro as the only Intel Mac, and a medium machine like the article calls for as M1.

Have now learned Final Cut Pro X for a job, and I have made a lists of my thoughts and the problems that I ran into

So I got hired for a job at a Final Cut Pro X only post facility, so I had to learn FCP X and used it for almost 2 months, but first I picked up a copy at home to learn the basics.I am someone who loved Final Cut Pro 7, and purchased FCP X the day it came out, played with it for 2 weeks and returned it. It was just not for me, as I keep a very organized timeline and the magnetic timeline seemed to be something that I was always fighting.To learn FCP X I picked up the Apple Pro Training Series Book Final Cut Pro X 10.4 by Brendan Boykin and went through the whole thing until I felt completely comfortable with the program. The book was a good start for sure.I can certainly edit with FCP X, but I will never be a convert to it’s way of editing. This program has been out for 9 years and in many ways it still feels like a new program just filled with bugs, though I am sure they would call some of them features.Here are some thoughts that I have had using it and bugs I have run into.The nomenclature is insane! Why is a project called a Library. And why is a sequence a fucking Project! WTF! Project and sequence are pretty much terms across the industry and renaming them just screams of hubris, saying that you know better than anyone else. Epic Fail!And you can’t tell me making V (the select key for Adobe) the disable clip key wasn’t a fuck you to Adobe users.I hate the magnetic timeline. It was why I gave up on Final Cut Pro X initially.For an initial edit and trying different orders of clips the magnetic timeline is great and very fast. Once you start using connected clips attached to your timeline it gets beyond dicey and I am always fighting it. And deleting clips getting rid of all connected clips is a disaster. I know that rolls work as it’s organization, but I hate not having tracks, and how things in and out of storylines don’t line up. It is just a mess to look at. And it makes something as simple as audio transitions so much harder. I never had a problem with old school timelines. I love keeping a project super organized, and being able to see stuff easily by looking at, but these timelines are a damn mess! And if you roll a clip with a connected clip, it moves too, wtf (I know it is the attach point, but it is almost never what I want to do)! And putting transitions on a clip that is attached automatically puts it into a storyline and adds transitions to both end. WTF, why? At times I want to put 2 transitions on, but not every time, in fact very in-often do I want transitions on both ends. And audio gets to be such a…

So the next Apple Mac Pro is a 2019 product, you have to be kidding me?

So Matthew Panzarino from TechCrunch has had another meeting with Apple about Pro Machines, a year after their last roundtable when they announced the iMac Pro. It seems this is meant to assuage fears of the pro community and show that Apple is now focusing it's attention on Pros and building a modular Mac Pro to work for them, that won't appear until 2019 (Likely end of December just like the iMac Pro which means almost another 3 years wait from the initial announcement and almost 2 years from now).OK it is good that Apple has hired pros to come in and work with them on projects and help shape the future of all Mac Pro products, and they claim to be working with 3rd party developers and not just apple products, though it sounds like Panzarino only saw Apple Logic and Apple Final Cut Pro X edit bays. And what really scares me is the modularity seems to be things like the external eGPU's for Laptops, and using multiple iPad Pros with an iMac Pro as control surfaces. None of these are bad things, but they are not PCI slot rich MacPro's that can use off the shelf PC Cards to expand and enhance the mac, and Thunderbolt is not ever going to be as fast as the fastest PCI slots.And honestly if Apple is so into working with 3rd parties to make their products work, how about working with NVIDIA to include their Web Drivers in their system updates? Many of us struggling Mac Pro users are using the most powerful modern video cards in our old Cheese Grater Mac Pro's and that means using NVIDIA cards. And while with some system updates have not required me to swap back to my old Apple flashed video card, most of them do. So I now dread system updates. Not because they are undoable, but because they take me so long to have to swap out my video card and run the update and then upgrade NVIDIA's drivers, before I swap back to my old video card. And it never goes perfectly, and always takes hours. If you want to care about Pro users, help us NVIDIA users out!Also Final Cut Pro X was my final straw in trusting Apple Pro software. I bought it and it just didn't work for me at all. It forced an entirely new way of editing and seemed to only work with that one workflow. While with AVID and Premiere Pro every editor has their own methodology that they use, and that is how Editors like it, not being forced to work one way and one way only with a completely uncontrollable timeline. And Apple has killed so much great pro software. Final Cut Pro 7. Shake. Color. Aperature. I just don't trust them anymore. And I almost wish they would get out of Pro Software completely and just work with AVID and ADOBE to make their software work better. Now they claim to…

RedShark article on time to take a new look at Final Cut Pro X 10.3

So RedShark has posted an opinion piece on Final Cut Pro X 10.3 and why you should give it a second look now because it is so fast and has become so powerful now. The author gave it a new look after looking at this video.It is interesting and it does look powerful now, and full of most of the features it should have had on release.Still a couple of things give me pause. Number one being this quote from the article on the magnetic time line:The stress of knocking your entire sequence out of sync is gone.I can honestly say that I never had any stress about knocking a timeline out of sync in any NLE. You learn how to use it and never have an issue with knocking stuff of of sync. To me that is not a reason to create an all new paradigm for the timeline, because I have never had a problem with knocking things out of sync!And second I just don't trust Apple anymore. Sure I love OS X and wish I could stay on it forever, but without having a customization "Pro" machine like the old MacPro I can't see them as Pro. And that is why they have to make FCP X work on less powerful machines so well, because they don't have a viable alternative. And no way am I ever getting a trashcan even if they do upgrade it. Not having it upgrade able or internally expandable means it will not last like my MacPro from 2009 has! And I don't trust apple to not just kill FCP X one day. They did it with Shake. They did it with FCP 7. They did it with Color. They did it with DVD Studio Pro. They did it with Aperture. I just don't trust them anymore.

Simon Wyndham on RedShark News on him considering leaving the Mac for Windows Editing

Simon Wyndham at RedShark News has a good read on why he is considering moving back to PC after the lackluster Pro Laptops and the lack of a real Pro Mac.Now I have been saying this for years now. I don't want to leave Mac, as I like it much better than Windows, but Windows has really become superior for Professional Computer work. There is not the choice with Mac, and the fact that the MacPro is from 2013 and itself has no upgrade ability really limits the Mac. Sure I could go Hackintosh, but working on a Quo at work I have seen the issues with upgrading, and don't really want to deal with it.Apple has given up on the creative professional, and Microsoft has stepped up. Look at the next Windows Update for Creatives, and the Suface, Surface Book, and Surface Studio are really for creatives!I think Apple is making a huge mistake by not making machines for the market that kept them afloat through all the bad years, but Tim Cook doesn't seem to agree, and Apple will suffer for it.

Problems with MXF files that have been imported into Final Cut Pro X

So I was given some footage with absolutely no knowledge of how it was shot, or what format it was, but was not worried as I have am running Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Unfortunately I was wrong.They all appear to be quicktime movies, but will not open in anything, or if they do only audio appears. And when I opened them in VLC it says it is a missing XALG encoder.The only thing I could find on this issue is this unanswered post at Adobe Forums, and it seems to be my exact problem.It turns out these are MXF files shot from a Sony Camera, and they were brought in through Final Cut Pro X (which I do not have on this machine), and it wrapped it in an MOV with the XALG encoder. The strange part is I do have the latest version of Motion so that I can get the Apple Pro Codec Updates, so you would think it would have the codec to play the video, but even motion won't open this quicktime movies.Luckily I was able to get the person with the footage to send the original cards that the footage was shot on, and was able to copy them over and import the MXF files directly into Premiere Pro with no problem, but I can't seem to get the MOV's that Final Cut Pro X to open in anything. I figured Motion would do it, and was thinking maybe Compressor, but if Motion can't do it I am not spending the $50 on compressor, and certainly not paying Apple for Final Cut Pro again because it made some video footage useless.This is a huge issue. Final Cut Pro X should not do anything to the files it imports, it should just play them all natively. That it wraps them in another file that makes them unusable by other programs makes me dislike this program even more.

Macnn Feature Thief article on Final Cut Pro, iMovie and iDVD

William Gallagher and Charles Martin have an interesting article on Apple and it's changes to it's video lineup. It goes into iMovie, Final Cut Pro and iDVD, and how Apple upgraded the first 2 with less features, but slowly made better versions.My biggest complaint with the article would be on who they polled as they say that most of the people who were angry over Apple's switch from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X have moved back X (with a cursory mention of Premiere Pro as an alternative).Personally being a professional editor, I did give the initial Final Cut Pro X a try, and hated it. And got a refund and have not gone back. There are some features that I do really like in X (especially it's handling of Meta Data), but since I edit complicated graphics heavy shows, it is the timeline that is the deal breaker for me, and it is the fundamental feature of X, so no matter how many updates they do, the timeline is too unorganized and broken for it to make sense for a 15 track highly organized video project.And of all the editors that I know, I have only heard of one that has gone back to X and really likes it now. And while features are starting to make their move to Premiere Pro, there have only been a few instances I have heard of big houses moving to X. Most of the big houses I know that were basically all Final Cut Pro have moved to AVID at the studios insistence (kick backs?!??!), while most commercial houses have moved to Premiere Pro for it's fidelity with graphics.I just don't see Final Cut Pro X as a viable solution, and with Apple's history of dropping software, I don't trust Apple to keep it going anyway!

The BBC has adopted Final Cut Pro X for News Gathering

FCP.CO has the story. And Big news for Apple and Final Cut Pro X to have moved the entire BBC News Pipeline to Final Cut Pro X.Still pretty surprising to me, as I know Final Cut Pro X has really grown as a program, but things like Adobe Anywhere seem perfect for news, as you can edit remotely without having the media locally, which seems huge for news organizations, but I guess they like the Speed and Power of FCP X.I still don't like it, mainly because of it's timeline, because I do graphics heavy shows and I like to have my timeline very organized so things are easy to swap out or turn on and off with ease, but it isn't like you are going back and doing different versions of pieces for news, so the organization might not be quite as important for that.

Chris Hocking at Late Nite Films on Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro CC and Avid Media Composer

Chris Hocking at Late Nite Films has an awesome article, where he goes into not only the best things about AVID and Premiere Pro, but also his first attempt at using FCP X. And his is the first article that makes me interested in taking a look again at FCP X, though maybe once they fix audio issues.And I still say that for graphics heavy projects, even longform (at least 28:30 Direct Response), I think Premiere Pro with a proper video card can easily outdo AVID, which is still archaic in how it deals with Alphas (and importing them) even if it is the king of media management. And those same projects would be a mess in FCP X without the ability to have tracks for organization.I mean my current sequence has 18 tracks of video going all organized into different layers.