Studio Daily has an excellent review of Final Cut Pro X

I have to say I am starting to get burnout on FCP X disaster, but Studio Daily has a good review that covers some of my problems.iMovie on Steroids? MaybeAfter using FCPX for a few weeks I still believe what many initially thought upon first seeing FCPX back in April: This is just the first version of a new application and in this form is essentially iMovie on steroids. There are just too many things that Final Cut Pro 7 users will be missing when they really dig into FCPX. It's not that we won't be able to make cool effects and pretty video, it's just that we'll do it in a much different way without some tools that we now take for granted. Word from people who are smarter than I am say that FCPX isn't built off of current iMovie code. I still find that hard to believe, as the similarities are striking. If they aren't based on the same code then Apple made a very conscious, very clear and very targeted decision to copy an awful lot of what's in iMovie now. Some of it is actually for the better but a lot of it is for the worse.And•No More Dual-Monitors: Also gone is the more traditional FCP7-like Viewer/Canvas two-monitor layout. The viewing window changes to the timeline or the clip events depending on what you’re doing. In my time with the new software, I have come to really, really miss that two window layout.AndThere is the option of importing from tape, but that's only from a tape-based camera and only via FireWire. Why Apple included only FireWire camera support is perplexing. It seems downright silly to rewrite FireWire tape support for FCPX and not include something like multi-clipping, especially when it feels like you approach something close to multi-clips when you use the new Synchronize Clips feature and have it sync multiple camera angles. Sure, the resources for FireWire support might be vastly different than support for third-party I/O hardware (which isn’t supported out of the box) but FireWire support for DV and HDV? Really? When Apple, and an entire industry, is moving away from FireWire?AndWhen media comes into FCPX it must be associated with an Event or dropped into a new Event created upon import. Forget about project-based media; everything here is based on Events. In fact, all the media you’ve ever imported is available all the time. This feature alone can be totally amazing and/or insanely frustrating; I experienced both feelings when using FCPX. There are definitely times I don't want media from other projects available, especially in a professional environment, where you can have hundreds of hours of media from different clients on your media drive. Conceptually, it’s an interesting idea for the right environment but in practice FCPX desperately needs some type of "Event Media Mounting Manager" to keep unrelated media from intruding on an unrelated project. You can physically move the media in the Mac Finder to hide it from FCPX…

Alex4D writes about a secret FCP X meeting in London

Alex Gollner also known as Alex 4D has a blog post summarizing a supposed Apple Pro briefing on FCP X in London.Personally Apple needs to come out and just say this stuff if it is true, and tell people what will be paid and what is coming, and give a timeline.And anyway I think it may be too little too late. Apple has screwed this release completely. Any program that cannot open it’s previous versions files should not be called the same thing. If it is not iMovie code (which I don’t believe) then call it iEdit Pro,Here are some point from the meeting:1. FCP XML in/out is coming via 3rd party soon…no FCP 6/7 support project support coming ever it seems…2. Ability to buy FCP7 licenses for enterprise deployments coming in the next few weeks…3. FCPX EDL import/export coming soon…4. FCPX AJA plugins coming soon for tape capture and layback…capture straight into FCPX bins.5. XSAN support for FCPX coming in the next few weeks…6. FCPX Broadcast video output via #Blackmagic & @AJAVideo coming soon…7. Additional codec support for FCPX via 3rd Parties coming soon…8. Customizable sequence TC in FCPX for master exports coming soon…9. Some FCPX updates will be free some will cost…Andconigs Do they have any kind of timeframe for “soon”? Am I safe in guessing in 2011?aPostEngineer within a few weeks for some updates i.e. XSAN up to a few months for 3rd party developers to get their heads around the API.gigarafa what about the rest of the suite? Color, dvd studio etc?aPostEngineer they have unfortunately reached their EOL and will not be developed any more..So Color and DVD Studio are officially dead as well.

Helmut Kobler has an excellent article on being a Final Cuttter moving to Premiere Pro

Helmut’s article is mostly on the switch and what Premiere does and doesn’t offer, but also talks about the whole FCP X Fiasco.Yes, well before all of Apple's recent shenanigans, I started to sense that Final Cut, along with all of Apple's professional apps and gear, was slowly being strangled to death. Here are a few of the harbingers of doom that caught my eye over recent years:• Apple took nearly 2.5 years to upgrade Final Cut Studio from version 2 to 3 (and v.3 was only a moderate upgrade at that). Until then, updates had come at a much more aggressive pace.Apple cancelled the popular Shake, promising to replace it with a new tool that never came.• Apple got lazy with its Logic Pro app as well, letting development creep along with an upgrade about every two years.• Apple stopped updating the Pro page on its web site long ago. There hasn't been a new item posted in almost two years: http://www.apple.com/pro/Apple took more than a year to fix a glaring Final Cut 7 bug that made its Close Gap command unreliable. To break a core Timeline feature like Close Gap and not fix it for 14 months was offensive and inexcusable.• Apple cancelled its Xserve RAID then its Xserve hardware.• Apple started taking longer and longer to release Mac Pro workstations, and absolutely phoned in the latest upgrade last July. 511 days in the making, the newest Mac Pro was one of the most un-inspired hardware upgrades I've ever seen from Apple.• Apple pulled out of industry trade events like NAB.• Multiple rumors (and confirmation of rumors) of significant layoffs in the Pro Apps division.• Multiple rumors that Apple was trying to sell off its Pro Apps division.Take just a few of these and maybe they don't add up to anything. But take all of them together, and it's a real sign of Apple's low-to-non-existent priority for professional media. Yes, the writing has been on the wall for quite a while, and by 2010, I reluctantly began to read it. Late last year, I started to look at the two clear alternatives to Final Cut....The rest of the article has some excellent reasons why he moved to Premiere, and documents the differences and similarities, and really gives a good idea of why to try out Premiere Pro, it really is a must read!

Techvessel has an interview with a former Avid Employee on FCP X

This is an interesting article at Techvessel on Final Cut Pro X. I still don’t think that Apple is really thinking they have the new professional paradigm. I tend to think they are using the cache of the Final Cut Pro name to try to sell to Prosumers, but the article dose have some interesting points.It’s hard to say exactly what Apple’s strategy was with their release of FCPX. Its announcement at the NAB convention seems to suggest that they were trying to get professional editors excited about FCPX, yet the lack of support and backwards compatibility with FCP7 shows either a disconnect, or outright disregard for the realities of being a professional editor.  This release feels similar to their previous iMovie reboot. In that case, I think Apple could afford to be more aggressive with abandoning the previous version of iMovie and starting from scratch.  Many iMovie users probably don’t use it on a daily basis, so throwing out their previous experience with an older version and starting over really wasn’t that big of a deal.For *professional* editors, this is an entirely different scenario. Pro editors use their software of choice all day, every day. They become masters at shortcuts and UI tricks to make them effective. If you’ve never seen a *good* professional editor at work, I can tell you it’s amazing. The speed and precision in which they work is staggering. They can do this because they’ve spent countless hours training on and mastering their tools. That’s why it’s unreasonable to expect that Pros would jump on board with FCPX on day one.andWhat happens if you’re currently on a project using FCP7, and you need to bring some new people on board to help finish the project? You’d better hope they already have a copy of the software, since now you can’t buy FCP7 any longer. I’m not sure what you do in that scenario. I think it’s these kinds of issues that show a lack of respect for the Pro editor that has gotten the community so riled up.andThe bigger concern I would have if I were at Avid would be that it appears Apple is again trying to leapfrog their competition with a new paradigm for video editing. Avid’s interface was already showing its age, and now it’s only going to appear more antiquated in the eyes of young editors growing up on FCPX. Maybe Avid doesn’t necessarily see that as a big deal – they have their loyal users who aren’t going to switch and they know it. Remember also that Avid doesn’t make their money from the editor software alone – they also have big enterprise server systems that manage large amounts of media and also do things like big newsroom automation systems. These are things that Apple are not likely to compete with. However, in all those kinds of systems, the lynchpin is the Editor, and if none of the younger editors know how to use, or don’t care to learn Avid,…

Premiere Pro Needed Feature

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.

Final Cut Pro X Audio Crossfades when you put on a Dissolve

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 a great article on switching to Premiere Pro

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.AndHonestly, 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.

Is Final Cut Pro X annoying?

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.AndThe 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 Premiere is how I am going

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.

Adobe having 50% off sale!

I wish I had waited a day to upgrade to Premiere Pro, because adobe is now offering up to 50%!You can see the deal here.Wow, they are pushing hard to take over the hole left by the death of Final Cut Pro 7, and with deals like this, they might just pull it off!