Studio Daily has an article in Defence of FCP X

The article talks to people who are using FCP X and seem to think it is great, and at the very least the future of editing, but I completely don’t agree, and have to say these people are pretty insetting.Schechtman is a little more blunt, especially when it comes to editors who have already declared their intention to abandon FCP for the competition. "If you're making a rash decision based on a product that isn't complete, you're an idiot," he says. "We all live a technical life. We all can look back at the not-so-distant past and see that we've been through this before. Don't jump ship, permanently, while someone else is rethinking the NLE for your benefit."Insulting and ignoring much of the big picture. Like me having a 5 month job starting where we need a new Final Cut Pro editing bay because our client is a Final Cut Pro house. Well we need to buy a new system and duplicate our Black Magic setup, which is useless for AVID (at least for now) and at this point we have to buy another copy of Final Cut Studio 3 on Ebay for more than $1000, because it currently isn’t available anywhere.And it is idiotic to say that FCP X is going to be all this and that, if it is as you say an unfinished program! What if when Adobe moved to 64 bit they made their entire suite incompatible with the previous version, and cut out most of the features people needed. People would be up in arms, as they are about Final Cut Pro X! They did not need to release an unfinished product, they had years, and could have waited to release their supposedly finished product. They released it, so it is finished, sure they may add some more features, but it is a finished product.I spent a week learning FCP X and did not find it any faster than FCP 7 for my editing, in fact I found many features backwards, and felt I had to spend more time organizing because of the lack of ability to use tabs for folders, and organize quickly that way for easy access. If you want to make the old paradigm better, then add to it, add the new features on top of the old, and if people like it, it will take over, but just to make their way that only way, and to require more steps to do many of the essentials features of the previous version is unacceptable!

Premiere Pro Feature Requests

So after going through and learning about the features in Premiere Pro CS5.5, I have some feature requests, all of which I have put in with Adobe at their Feature Request web site. I will continue to expand this list as I think of more things that are frustrating me, and will always submit them to Adobe first.Clip Dupe Detection in the Timeline. Both AVID and Final Cut Pro 7 have this. As it is often important to not repeat shots in Commercials, the ability to see a visual representation which shows which clips are repeated is an essential feature.MIDI interface. With Final Cut Pro I uses a Behringer BFC-2000 to be able to do a good audio mix within Final Cut Pro using it's automation controls. This would be a perfect pairing with the Audio Mixer in Premiere, and it is frustrating that only Audition has the ability to interface with MIDI controls as I would prefer to be able to mix directly within Premiere Pro.In the Title Overlays Final Cut Pro includes markers for 4:3 center cut within a 16:9 project, which I am often using (HD project for SD 4:3 delivery). A re-sizeable, movable Timecode window, like the added to Final Cut in FCP 7.Reveal in project from Source monitor and not just from the sequence.

Premiere in Lion Update

Well my issue with Premiere and Lion is certainly a CUDA issue. NVIDIA released a new CUDA driver, 4.0.21, but it does not solve the issue. The only way to get Premiere Pro to boot is to remove the CUDA.framework from my Library, and then Premiere boots, but with software only acceleration making my GeForce completely useless. Lets hope they get on this quick!

Oliver Peters at DigitalFilms has an article on FCPX

You can read his post at his blog. I find a lot of what he is saying a little too positive on Apple’s turn from Niche market leader to completely consumer product, but he does have some really great things to say that go along pretty much how I feel about FCP X and what apple has done to it’s own market.Unfortunately by releasing FCP X in the way it was done, Apple has destroyed the existing ecosystem built around FCP and all developers start at square one again. Some are happy for the new opportunities and others express concern. By ignoring legacy support and releasing a product with many gaps, Apple has alienated many high-end professionals. You can argue all you want that these users constitute an insignificant niche, but for developers, it’s these users who will pay thousands of dollars for capture cards, accessories and plug-in packages.The danger of re-inventing the wheelI have nearly four decades of experience in broadcast operations, production and post, with most of it in editing. I’ve gone through numerous transitions and along the way operated, reviewed or been associated with well over two dozen different edit platforms. One of the things I’ve seen in that time is that non-standard workflows and interfaces eventually return to accepted concepts. After all, editing tools are built on over 100 years of post production practices.For me, FCP X simply is NOT faster nor easier, just DIFFERENT – precisely because Apple has radically changed the way an editor organizes the information and works in the timeline. I will freely admit that my nonlinear days started with Avid and I first disliked moving to FCP. Now, after eight years of mostly non-stop experience with Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Studio, FCP 7 has grown to be my preferred editing tool – warts and all. It’s incredibly versatile, but that level of user control was dropped from FCP X.I use the timeline as much as a scratch pad as the location for a final assembly. Place multiple clips onto top tracks and preview them as one option versus another. Or build little sub-sequences at the back of the timeline and then copy & paste these into the place I want. Work rough and then clean things up. FCP 7  and Media Composer give me that freedom and precision. FCP X does not. Of course, some of this is handled through Audition clips in FCP X, but that requires that you know and select the possible options first and then combine them into an Audition clip, which can be cut onto the timeline for previewing. To me, this requires more work than I go through in all other NLEs.My ideal NLE would likely be a mash-up between Final Cut Pro 7 and Avid Media Composer, augmented by the performance features of FCP X and Premiere Pro. It’s difficult to predict the future where Apple is concerned, so I don’t want to discount the possibility of FCP X picking up steam with my…

Apple has new FCPX Videos Comparing it to AVID

You can see them right on Apple’s front page for Final Cut Pro X. They Claim to show how superior FXPX is at Faster Editing, A New Way to Organize, Motion Graphics and File Based Workflows, but are obviously BS marketing speak from people who are not professional editors. Sure there are some cool new features, but they needed to be ad ons to the features and not replacements, because Apple’s way is not the better way, just a different way, that I do not believe is better.

Get your Library unhidden in Lion

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For those of you who are annoyed by the Library folder being hidden in your user folder in lion. Here is the terminal command to make it unhidden. You will have to change to you superuser to do it though.chflags nohidden /Users//LibraryNow if only I can change back the permissions on my Utilities folder so I can read and write...A Quick Note: It looks like then 10.7.1 update reset this, so I guess you will have to keep making this change if you want to be able to see your library at all times.

Premiere Pro not working on Lion

I am having issues running Premiere Pro on OS X Lion with an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 285. It is crashing on launch, and seems to be a driver issues in Lion.It seems that there is a new NVIDIA driver in Lion, as it is listed as 270.05.05f01, while the most recent NVIDIA drivers on their web site is 256.02.25f01.And checking the CUDA Preferences it lists the current CUDA Driver 4.0.19 but says an Update is Required (though it is the latest CUDA for Mac Driver on NVIDIA's Web site).Since this is the relevant part of the crash log, it looks like a driver crash to me, but the driver info is the 270.05.00 NVIDIA Driver. 0   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x000000011769286f cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 4359831   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x00000001176c1e25 cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 6299572   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x000000011766efa9 cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 2903773   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x0000000117669a8b cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 2685874   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x0000000117671b0c cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 3014845   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x000000011766e2a7 cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 2870476   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x00000001176372f2 cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 618427   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x0000000117637caf cuGraphicsGLRegisterImage + 643358   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x00000001176d83c8 cudbgGetAPIVersion + 869529   libcuda_270.05.00.dylib           0x000000011762715c cuGLCtxCreate_v2 + 10810  com.adobe.GPUFoundation.framework    0x000000010cf3fe4c GF::Device::InitializeContextAndLoadKernels() + 194811  com.adobe.dvacore.framework       0x0000000100190b3e dvacore::threads::ExecuteTopLevelFunction(dvacore::threads::Allocated FunctionT

Editing Software on Lion

So I am checking Editing Software Compatibility of Mac OS X Lion.As Apple Said Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 does open fine in Lion, though it does ask me to register, though the button to register is grayed out.The Demo of AVID Media Composer 5.5.2 boots and runs just fine.Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5 I am having issues with. and it won’t start. Adobe claims it should run fine, so I am going to try and re-install and see what happens. It is weird as After Effects and Photoshop work fine, but just Premiere won’t boot.

What I don’t like about OS X Lion So far

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Well it just came out today, so I have obviously not dealt enough with Lion to really know, but i have a few annoyances already.I hate the new scroll bars and how they disappear, and even though you can make them always show up, I hate the removal of the arrows at the ends. I was always a fan of double arrows at both ends, but to not have them at all is stupid.I don’t like the new Address book, as it is harder to add an entry and then add it to a group as it is on 2 different pages and takes extra steps to do so.The death of Power PC apps completely is annoying, though only affects one app I have, which was an app that published my now playing song in iTunes to my FTP server. I will have to find a reasonable alternative.The death of the spaces control panel. I for one use spaces all the time, and I love it. I have different screens for Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop, and could easily use the spaces control panel to pick which app showed up where, and have some apps show up everywhere, like Safari and iTunes. Now this has been taken away. At least it still remembers my old settings (though I had to turn off the auto rearranging of spaces which just confused things). I get mission control, but I would love to be able to name my spaces, and once again have real control over what apps show up where. Hopefully someone will release a 3rd party app to return this functionality. I mean I am glad it remembered my old Spaces settings, but not being able to easily change them is a real pain.Not sure I like the new Mail. I was fine with how it was, and think it actually shows less info now than it did before, but at least the classic view is still available, so i can switch back if it really annoys me.Launchpad is useless to me, and I have way too many apps for it, but might be nice for a novice user.I am sure I will have more as I use it.For a thorough review check out Ars-Technica’s Extensive Review, which you can also get in ebook or pdf format, though you will have to pay for it to get it in those formats.EDIT:I have some additions. I don’t like that in Finder windows the custom icons for hard drives no longer show up. I use custom hard drive icons for a reason for easy visual identification of drives, and not having this just slows things down.I hate that the user library is now a hidden file, as I want to be able to go there if I need to easily. And the Utilities folder now requires administrator privileges to make changes, and strangely it won’t let me add myself in the info panel. Hopefully this is just a bug,…