Wow, I can’t believe how many people have been affected by Steve Jobs death. It is all over the web. He really did affect so many people’s lives. I know it is no consolation to his family and friends, but we all appreciated him so much and I hope this shows them!
It is a sad day, it seems that Steve Jobs has passed away today at the age of 56. He was an amazing man, and really changed the world with the computers and other devices that he created. He must have been very sick to have left Apple, and he obviously was.
I got my first Apple computer when I was 7, and have been a loyal Mac user ever since (though the whole Final Cut Pro thing has shaken my loyalty a bit).
Steve Jobs created computers and electronics that have inspired me and become a part of my life.
I am saddened for his family and friends, and for the world.
Rest in Peace Steve!
MacTech is reporting, that Singular Software has announced that a free update to Presto and Plural Eyes will support Final Cut Pro X (so it is good that Apple released an XML for FCP X).
Check out his plug in at Foolcolor. For $89 it will move your FCP X project into After Effects. He is also working on one to export audio to FCP 7 so you can export an OMF and to export FCP 7 Sequences to FCP X and FCP 7 Projects to FCP X.
Pretty awesome that he is doing this, especially with Automatic Duck possibly out of the picture!
FCP.CO has a video by Micha Schmidt on using Roles, and getting out the audio to do a mix.
It is worth checking out, and makes it seem pretty useless as the exports using ROLES for audio tracks, only gives you complete mixdowns of each track that has been assigned Roles, but they are mixdowns, and not at all OMF tracks with individual audio tracks. So not all that useful. Sure you could make versions with audio on different tracks like this (if you have another program to make tapes).
My question do Roles export with Automatic Duck Pro Export 5.0 so that the clips show up in tracks? If that works, then it makes Pro Export more useful, but if not, Roles are pretty useless.
Macstories has an article on an interesting new preference Pane for OS X Lion RestoreMeNot, which is free and allows you to individually disable OS X Lion Restore Restore for Each Application of your choice.
Personally I think this should have been built into OS X as I have had some issues with Restore and certain apps (Rapidweaver will open two instances of my site, and crash if I try and save, and the Core OS X service keeps trying to open the last installer that was opened instead of the one I am trying to open) so this is a very useful little tool.
Check out this article on FCP X, and why it should have been a professional app when it was released, and not a partial app that will slowly have new features, which is commenting an article at Post Magazine. Which I totally agree with and have bee saying all along. Adobe did it just fine in bringing their apps to 64 bit, why did Apple have to not have feature parity or even compatibility with their old app?
And the fact that FCP X now has XML, but it is still not, and will never be compatible with FXP 7 is a joke. If Premiere Pro can do, Apple could do it, but they won’t.
I like this part:
At one point in the article Townhill notes that Apple is responding to feedback and changing the application quickly to meet the demands of the Post community. The strange thing to me is that Apple was given much of the same feedback during the beta testing and it was roundly ignored. Pages upon pages of information was fed to Apple with pretty much everything that has been said publicly since the application was released. In all cases, Apple ignored the suggestions moving ahead with the product as they developed it. NOW that there’s a tremendous outcry, NOW Apple is “responding to the Post Production community.” Maybe if they had responded to the people who were testing the product, they could have avoided this entire fiasco.
So it looks to me like Apple’s original plan was to just release FCP X as a prosumer product that really didn’t need the full fledged Post Production community blessing because there are millions of consumers out there and only a couple hundred thousand Post Pros. If it was truly aimed at the pros, then Apple would have listened to the pros during beta testing about all the things that were badly missing from the app.
But with all the subsequent negative press on the product, Apple is desperately trying to backtrack and figure out how to add the extremely basic functions that it left out by “skating where the puck is going.” (read the article to understand)
If Apple was truly dedicated to the professional editing community they would have taken the two to three years to deliver something that built upon their 11 year legacy. I just see what they’re doing now as creating a whole box of band-aids to make the product cobble along and sort of kind of do what the product has done for the past 4 years at least. Apple is admittedly leaning heavily on third party vendors to fill in what they call gaps, what I call chasms in the software.
So true so true. Apple made FCP X on purpose, they knew they were giving up on the pro community completely and all the businesses that make a living making plug-ins and hardware for final cut pro, but they figured they would make more money by making a consumer application and banking on the name of Final Cut Pro which has come to mean something in the industry. Now they realize they may have screwed up, but it is too late. These new features could have been add ons to a true 64 bit Final Cut Pro and it would have been awesome, but this weird prosumer app they have made with some pro features and the rest decidedly consumer will never be used by Pros, and shouldn’t even have Pro in the name.
iMovie is not called a pro app because it is not, and adding some pro features to it, when it forces you to work in it’s limited way does not make it pro, and never will. And nothing Apple does will ever make this app right for professionals, Apple has ceded this market, and Adobe and AVID are going to be really happy to fill the gap.
Apple has released their quicktime Codecs as a download, this is version 1.0.1.
Macworld has an article dealing with Apple’s 10.0.1 Update to FCP X which will be released today (so far I only see an update to Compressor). Anyway for features they have done 3 major things for editors, the first is to release XML in and out of both project and event information (though likely no FCP 7 integration), added XSAN integration, and allowed intelligent stem export for audio and video using tagging in a feature called Roles.
I was wondering if Apple cared at all about this software to take a solid 3 months for an update, but at least they have updated.
And now you can have tracks be made out of sound for Audio export by tagging content, and it will smart export the tracks to the proper tracks, though I still think track support would be better an easier at least their is now a solution.
Amazingly Apple is also listening and is offering a free 30 day Trial, so you can try it out before you buy it. And they will also be releasing a free PDF Booklet entitled Final Cut Pro X for Final Cut Pro 7 users, which will be available from the Final Cut Pro X website soon. This should have come out with the application, but it is a start.
The article also talks about the release of Multicam and support for video monitoring, which will not be released until 2012, and they don’t say when, making this software not at all a professional app.
I am glad they are adding in features, but to me, they should have waited to release any app called Pro until all these features were integrated, unless they were going to continue to update and support final cut pro 7 during the period!
So not only has Netflix doubled it’s prices, but it is now splitting off the DVD division to become a new company called Qwikster, and the subscriptions are now completely separate. And I say WTF!
They are obviously giving up on DVD all together, and I have given up on Netflix Streaming. Already Netflix streaming does not have nearly a good enough selection to possibly replace new discs (nor the quality of new discs), plus I don’t think steaming is going to work in the current environment when most broadband providers have instigated data caps, and look at the deal with STARZ. STARZ refused 10 times the money of the old deal to do streaming, so no one is going to do streaming of their newer films or shows!
Personally I have given up on Netflix streaming, and picked up a ROKU 2 to do Amazon Prime Instant Streaming. We already pay for it, since it gives the 2nd day shipping on any item from Amazon, and the streaming is included.
Sure the streaming is not as good, the selection is smaller, and it is hard to figure out what is available, and at least Star Trek has some interlacing issues when seen on an HDTV, but it is still good enough.