“The furor over whether FCP X is a suitable NLE for pro video editors is beginning to die down. Yes, there are still murmurings of discontent amongst certain groups of FCP 7 users while others have turned their backs completely on this new piece of software,” Rounik Sethi reports for MacProVideo. “However, many editors appear to have decided to learn how the new FCP X actually works, and fully explore its potential.”
MacDailyNews Take: Huh, imagine that.
“At the recent LAFCPUG meeting on June 28th 2011, Michael Wohl (one of the first designers of the original Final Cut and insider at Apple over the past 9 months) demoed some hidden editing tricks within Final Cut Pro X,” Sethi reports.
Full article here.
Related article:
Michael Wohl, one of Final Cut Pro’s original designers, discusses Final Cut Pro X – June 25, 2011
Huh, a well thought out application by Apple. Imagine that.
It’s a powerful application, but the “well thought out” is well in contention. When you change a product weight, capabilities (and price) from a pro grade to prosumer grade (even if temporarily), your naming of the said product/application should indicate that. Preliminary Cut Express X, Intermediate Cut Express X, Express Cut X, even just slapping on a Googlesque “beta” after FCPX would have fared better. Engineering is not about just coding and executions but also in trade-offs and in thorough risk analyses with QA. This was a blunder. Maybe not earth shattering, but a seasoned artist like Apple should’ve shipped it better.
A well thought out product, I’m not convinced.
Hmmm another person really hung up on the ‘prosumer’ vs ‘pro’ labeling, while others are just getting work done.
The end result is the determination of professionalism, not which tool was used, nor the methodology, nor the workshop, nor the personnel. The video industry is a schlocky mess of half baked software garbage and out dated intermediary hardware. Listening to these clueless crumugeons (unionized bozos around here in Hollywood) whine about new tools and berate anyone who might use them as ‘prosumer’, brings me to only one conclusion… the real problem with these complainers is minuscule, perhaps totally inverted, manhood.
shutup and finish editing your wedding video
If a guy makes more money editing wedding videos than you do editing commercials or shitty music videos, wouldn’t that make him more of a “pro” than you?
Different industries and craftsmanship. If a professional athlete earns more than a wedding video artist, does that then make that athlete better or “more pro” at video editing?
I’ll leave it at that.
Meanwhile, it appears to me, heathen is angry and uncomprehending of the professional corporate structure, their demands and frustration over this. Instead of looking thoughtfully (critically perhaps is a long shot here) at the concerns raised by quite a few industry experts (some of them are reasonable and die hard Apple fans to trot), heathen here has resorted to name calling to make his case. Educating oneself is sometimes one’s own responsibility.
For the rest of you, this was just posted today:
[quote]
As Academy Award-winning feature-film editor Kirk Baxter, editor of The Social Network, told Entertainment Weekly: “I assume I’m going to be working on Final Cut 7 until they upgrade the new model to professional standards, and if they don’t do it, then I imagine all of us will end up aborting and finding a new platform to work on.”
Avid and Adobe are certainly hoping that happens.
[unquote]
[Source: “Avid to Apple: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You”
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/07/17/avid-to-apple-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you.aspx%5D
money doesn’t make you a “pro”
I don’t work in video editing… boring… but I’d sure like to cut out some editing hours and personnel next time I work near the low art of video.
Now here’s the rub for poor little krquette… who is so caught up in that Pro in Final Cut making him feel bigger than a dreaded ‘prosumer’…
Final Cut 7, Avid, After Effects, is all considered ‘consumer’ off-the-shelf tools by video pros, visual effects houses, studios, you name it. Further… features have been made with iMovie edited work and winning awards and recognition since 2002. We’re only talking about ‘blinking pictures’ krquet, it ain’t rocket science. I know you think that movies and TV can only be made with certain tools because its such an artistically driven, precision based industry… [eyes rolling].
Editing is a huge expense and time drain, maintaining the current process is only in the interests of editors… and NOBODY else in the professional film community! Ultimately editors opinions and egos are meaningless, because accountants will decide between not only FCPX vs. whatever convoluted legacy garbage, but also who can deliver with FCPX vs. those who’ve chained themselves to some legacy deck or workflow. Trim even 5% of the billable editing hours with FCPX and I guarantee you can start putting dug-in FCP7/Avid ‘pro’ editors out of work immediately. Same thing has already started happening with After Effects proponents, nobody cares if Motion can’t do this or that… if the director’s nephew can do titles and transitions on his $1000 laptop in 15 seconds… your AE ass is gunna be outta work. Welcome to Hollywood. Regardless, TV and features are already being cut with FCPX, so suck on that for a while before you swallow.
Oh krquette… Kirk Baxter (editor of the two worst David Fincher movies) will be using whatever solution is required of him for his next project by those that employ him… duh! FYI, James Haygood editor of 3 better Fincher movies thinks Final Cut Pro 7 is totally low-end, so much for that ‘pro’ reputation.
Consider your punk card pulled krickette.
ah….no
You know, to tell the truth, what makes someone a pro is IF they get paid not HOW MUCH. If you feed yourself with your editing–that makes you a pro. Now within the pro realm there are different levels–I’d say three levels–Prosumer, Pro, and Hollywood. Each level of editing has different needs and different skill sets and hardware requirements. All I’m saying is FCP X MAY (and that’s a big “MAY”) be able to be used at the prosumer and pro levels but it’s for damn sure not made for hollywood.
All Apple had to do was call it something else and keep selling supporting Final Cut Pro 7 and Server.
Final Cut X wreaks of the Microsoft Windows- “Oh, here, let me take care of that for you” logic.
Excuse me!, but I think I know best how to manage my workflow and media, thankyou very much!!
If you can’t understand why, you need to read a few issues of american cinematographer or Editor’s Guild Magazine to see their workflow. It’s not complex for the sake of complexity. It is complex and time consuming for consistency and quality’s sake. It’s a whole other level of requirements.
What Apple did with Final Cut X would be like if the car industry said-“ok, were making all vehicles automatic transmission. We’re not making any more stick-shifts and were paying all mechanics to deny repairs on manual transmissions.
That’s a big F-you to drivers who like the control, options and power of a stick-shift.
I have FCP 6 & 7 projects from 6 years ago I can open, access and pick-up editing right where I left off 6 years ago.
Not saying I won’t eventually work with FCP X, but It’ll be a while before It works for me and my clients.
Would the “Unionized Bozos” in Hollywood include Academy of Motion Pictures & Sciences awards? Or Emmys for TV?
Yep.
How many Oscars or Emmys are on your “Non Union” Mantle?
Being hostile to Unions or Guilds is your political viewpoint and has nothing to do with the expertise of an editor, director, Director of Photography, composer or other professional who could be profoundly impacted by Apple’s cavalier actions regarding Final Cut Studio and iMovie ProX Vista.
You imply disparity where there is none. You can add any label you want to it but it doesn’t change what it is; a powerful, incredibly intuitive, shift in the whole linear editing thinking of NLE systems that has plagued the industry for a long time. Case and point, the blade tool. Thousands of people use it in FCP when there are half a dozen tools that will do in one click what the blade tool requires six clicks IF it can even do it at all. Final Cut Pro X has been positioned to change the industry but most call the things it does backwards. Like the comment that Mr. Wohl said about the order of the types of editing. Overwrite is last because it is a secondary way of editing. He doesn’t even get this new software. FCP X has a “super-NLE” philosophy; super-nondestructive editing. The term ‘overwrite’ is a destructive way of editing even in a non-destructive editor.
If you want to get FCP X, you have to leave behind your preconceptions of how NLE systems work. If you were a linear editor moving to NLE, you had to leave behind those preconceptions. This is just the next step in NLE evolution. You can write this off but you’d only be selling yourself short.
Thank you for your thoughtful response, I have learnt from the well argued point with example in your post. However, I don’t think many would disagree that FCPX has advanced/revolutionary features and is more suitable for the future growth. FCP7, on the other hand, all agreed, has run its course and should be abandoned at certain point.
Just as well, as kingmel has mentioned in a comment below, that transition could/should have been handled more smoothly. A lot of users (pro or otherwise) aren’t comfortable abandoning the FCP7 just yet (for whatever myriad of valid-invalid reasons). But in the meantime, Apple has stopped selling FCP7 completely. So, a big production house today can’t just hire new folks + machines and then purchase and install FCP7 on those machines legally. That’s simply not how professionals roll. If their existing machines go corrupt (I don’t know crazy lightning storm or whatever), they are also SOL. Little that I understand it, movie making art can take more than a few years, particularly if it’s an ambitious project. These folks may not have the time nor resources to just roll out new software and new tools/capabilities with new learning curves, at the same while the shooting is disrupted/halted on someone else (Apple’s) priority. God forbid if the new application then doesn’t cover some of the previous version’s powerful and/or basic capabilities out of the box.
It has been stated before, in ad nauseam maybe (in Apple’s own admission as well), it has shipped a product that’s still to be completed. That’s smells like something from the Google territory. How do you expect any professional should react to that? Might as well have the decency then to call it beta (paid) like everything perpetual with Google (or how Apple did with Mac OS X).
Measure twice, cut once; Apple may have dropped the ball in this instance. Maybe time again for another town-hall meeting. Customers come first (big or small).
This previous comment was from me responding to ajendus’s earlier comment. Somehow my handle has changed to ‘ajendus’ instead of ‘krquet’, and I’m not sure how or why. Not something I did, but I offer my apologies nevertheless for any confusion.
Ha. Did MDN actually watch these. I wouldn’t call this favorable. At all. There is a lot laughing going on at apples expense. Steve Jobs can’t like this.
Yes, in the first couple of minutes Wohl rips Apple pretty good. Says the initial criticism was completely justified; says that Apple shouldn’t have called it Final Cut Pro.
But not, as he clearly states, because FCPX isn’t a good tool with great promise. Because it is. And a lot of pros will end up using it, happily. Just maybe not yet this morning.
The issue, as he makes clear, is that naming it FCPX raises expectations amongst those currently using FCP7/FCS that don’t correspond to what FCPX does, certainly not in how it looks.
If they’d named it “Z”, that sort of issue wouldn’t have come up. But they didn’t. In the near-ish term, most of these issues will go away, and FCPX will stand on its own merits, to say nothing of improving capability with updates.
But some people don’t have much patience. Or any, in some cases.
I thought the videos were very favorable for the most part. Certainly far better than trying to sweep things under the rug, or to pretend there aren’t issues that need to be addressed.
Where have I heard this sentiment before: “if you’re using the new, easier-to-learn thing, then you’re not getting real work done.”
iPad anyone? 😉
I’m a big advocate of getting real work done with freeware and shareware and circumventing my IT staff.
I’m te king of that in my office.
That’s not the issue with Final Cut X. The issue- not allowing a huge user-base any way of smoothly transitioning to the new paradigm.
I just finished the third video. And seriously. They never laugh in these videos unless it’s at apples expense. And it is justifiable laughter because they are usually laughing at the fact that things just don’t work right. And I don’t mean don’t work the old way. I mean. Don’t work.
And so much of the discussion is about work arounds. Not. How do I do it differently. But I can’t do something I need to do. So by adding three or four more steps. Usually mouse clicks at that, I can almost get the result I’m after.
I’ve Said so many times that I’m an apple user because, the machine gets out of the way and I can just get my work done. Instead of “working on” (to repair) say a windows box all the time. Now. I guess im going to have to learn to work around to get work done.
Precisely; if you need manuals, idiot’s guide, videos etc. to learn how to use an Apple product, they might as well slap a Penguin logo on it.
I agree. They are laughing at the pathetic nature of the software. As Mark Wohl says, “It just doesn’t work”. At issue is the *basic* contention that Skimming and hidden features are somehow superior to the outgoing FCP7. They are not. This doesn’t even live up to Pro-Sumer standards. It is not intuitive at all, requirse manuals to figure out where the hell to click (or not), and control is nowhere near accurate enough for true final editing (not to mention skimming becoming like a retarded game of Angry Birds). These are the same complaints I have experienced and heard with iMovie08 and they have not been solved there so I see little hope they will find good solutions at the Pro level.
If Apple sticks with this product, FCP’s days as pro-level software is done.
Sounds like a bunch of dogma to me. Final Cut Pro X is a professional tool and very powerful. Mr. Wohl doesn’t even get it.
I agree with ajendus. After using it for a couple of weeks, it is a different experience. I used FCP for years. This is different. What seems to be lost in these decisions is that FCP 7 was broken. Or have we decided not to discuss this any more. Sure, this program needs some quick additions and fixes. And I hope Apple will be taking care of this shortly but I think this is heading in the right direction. Now does that make me ” a prosumer ” for saying that?
He gets it more but still doesn’t get it. The overwrite tool is hidden just like the blade tool. It isn’t needed anymore but is still there for those who think the “old” way. I own a production company (really, like features, shorts, TV, etc.), have used FCP since 1.0, and Premiere, and Avid, and Vegas, and iMovie, and Pinnacle and a little with Media 100 (whoa, that’s old school! haha) and FCP X is what it needed to be 5 years ago. Despite what SOOOO many “pro editors” have claimed, this is radical, yes, but really an amazing step forward. Many won’t see it, want to see, and will throw their hands up in surrender but a promise this is a good thing.
I think my biggest fear is working with sound in FCPX on a big project with lots of audio tracks. And a question for you, ajendus. You said that FCPX is a big step forward, but is it a step you’ve been able to take yet? On any big projects? I don’t mean is it something you’ve purchased and studied up on. Is it usable in its current form? Those aren’t meant to be loaded questions. I’m really curious.
Has anybody bothered to peruse the followup interview with Wohl.*
Best you all realize that Wohl has a vested interest in the success of Final Cut Pro X. To think that he considers it a joke as some of you have taken it, is ludicrous. He’s not stupid and he fully understands that you don’t bite that hand that feeds you. Nibble, “Yes.” Bite, “No.”
“Make no doubt about it, Final Cut Pro X is an amazing piece of software. There are tons of really cool features… I think that there is an expectation problem where people want to pick up right where Final Cut 7 left off and you’ve got to realize that was a 10-year-old piece of software that was never going to survive another 10 years. It needed to be reinvented. And I think they did a bold and difficult thing to do this complete reinvention.”
“FCP X is going to be incredibly useful and is going to be everything you would want for a good 70% of the users out there. For people migrating from iMovie, people new to video editing, people working on simple projects where they need to quickly and easily get their editing done, this is going to be an amazing tool from Day One.
For people doing more serious ‘professional’ projects, it’s still pretty close. You know, it’s not far away.”
* http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/interview/exclusive-interview-michael-wohl-one-of-fcps-original-designers-speaks-about-final-cut-pro-x
Based on what I have read so far, many professionals don’t want to jump to a tool that is “not too far away.” They wanted the next generation of FCP to “pick up right where [FCP7] left off” because they are comfortable with that software and have assembled a workflow around it.
Professionals can deal with a major change in paradigm. But it really helps when a company assists them in planning for an orderly transition with plenty of time to judge when and where it is appropriate for them to make that leap. If the differences with FCPX were “just” workflow, not functionality, then Apple might have a leg on which to stand. But there appear to be plenty of omissions and bugs in FCPX that make it not ready for primetime. When the early versions of Mac OS X were released, we still had Classic as a backup. Apple should have put a little more effort into cleaning up FCP7 to support a transition period to FCPX. That would also have provided third party programmers with an opportunity to help fill in the holes.
Apple has over $60B hanging around. I think that the company could afford to take these things into consideration. The “Pro” software *is* important to Apple because it tends to spawn the more affordable prosumer and consumer spinoffs that bring new users onto the platform and offer them a path forwards as their skills and objectives grow. If Apple wants to be taken seriously, then it has to demonstrate to its pro users that their needs are important to Apple, and that Apple understands that they need stability and orderly change.
Agreed.
“When the early versions of Mac OS X were released, we still had Classic as a backup. Apple should have put a little more effort into cleaning up FCP7 to support a transition period to FCPX. That would also have provided third party programmers with an opportunity to help fill in the holes.”
FUD
Apple like Avid have been trying to solidify their respective applications for years. And neither of them have been able to satisfy the respective industry fully. Hundreds of issues, concerns, queries, work-arounds, etc., are still being posted, addressed or raised virtually every day.
As Apple has stated, Final Cut Pro X is an entirely new product. It operates and works differently. For years, we have seen application after application evolve by simply taking an existing program and modifying it based on an enterprising work-around seen by another’s view. Thus, simply importing an existing project and presenting it in a ‘newly’ creative interface, modifying a few macros/buttons and voila, all your prayers are answered except the guy(s) that already had worked it out.
FYI, Apple has a announced a number of third-party developers who were working on plug-in for Final Cut Pro X prior to the introduction and a number more have since declared their intent to do so as well.
If you really think that video professionals can ever be truly satisfied with their current processes and the equipment that they use to obtain such, visit their respective forums. There is seldom a conclusive or definitive solution. The variables are too many, starting from the media that they given to work with.
Most successful professionals have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. It may not work perfectly, but I can achieve what I have to by being creative, open-minded and without outlaying an significant resources that will hurt the bottom line; all which are relative.
Anyone that thinks that Apple, in particular, expects or expected the professional audience to throw away their existing successful process and switch to the new Final Cut Pro X is an idiot. The issue that we have seen time after time with those that do so every time Apple brings (or even announces that they are bringing, out a new product without doing due diligence, has in most cases turned around a bite them in the ass.
Does anybody ever wonder how most issues are resolved by simply reading the manual? That many of the solutions are addressed by simply following instructions from the get-go? Even using HELP? That many of the ‘professional’ tutorials/manuals/instructions/solutions are simply another iteration tabled by someone who wouldn’t have been able to do so without actually reading the original manual(s) in the first place.
Addendum: Wohl’s invested interested: http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorials/finalcutpro-application
It shouldn’t be called Fcp X. It should be called FCP Y. Get it?!? HahahahhhHa.
Huh?
Fantastic presenter, but the application’s a laughing stock… literally. I just hope Apple are listening.
I hope they is too.
Nobody – and I mean nobody – should jump to the latest product immediately. I presume most editors are attached to their own particular workflow and practices, and why should one disrupt these only to update to the latest version OS and Software? It’s generally not a good business practice. Keep your old workflow and setup a machine, or a separate boot drive to check these new things out for a while. I’m a consultant, and my customers save themselves TONS of aggravation if they stop focussing on running the latest and greatest until they have the time, and experience to change their workflow. Plenty of folks out there to run the bleeding edge side of things – and report back how their workflows are affected. Personally, I think the old FCP is rather convoluted – so I’m welcoming this update with the above caveats.
It was comical watching this “guru” fumble his way along trying to replace an audio clip and then he blames the program because he did not take the time to learn that you need to detach the audio in order to do a simple overwrite of the audio only. FCP X is moving towards an all digital format. Is it different? Yes. The future of video is going towards how fast you can render high quality material and get it out to multiple formats. There are folks now filming short movies with iPhones. I can see where news crews will be on the scene grabbing clips, popping into FCP x on a Laptop, cutting the news blurb, and then rendering on a thunderbolt based external drive. They attach the drive to the console at the studio, or they just compress and upload using a 4G connection. Either way, the old model is dying out.
FCP X is a different workflow and a different future. Speed counts for something. I can only imagine the speed gains when Lion comes out and the multiple cores are used in addition to Open CL.
It is unfortunate that so many want to cling to the old system. It worked last month and it will continue to work for years to come. There is nothing wrong with that. In the end FCP X and it’s predecessors are just tools. The true measure is the ability to create coherent content that people will watch. With that said, I would imagine a talented editor could use iMovie for the iPhone and come up with a good show.
In five years when FCP XX is released, their will probably be outcry that it is different than FCP X. Change will be okay folks. Be patient.
Yes they could come up with a good show, but good luck delivering it to a network if you’re on X. You can’t preview on a broadcast monitor, you can’t mix your work properly and you can’t grade it properly.
Maybe those features are coming, but out of the box it’s pretty damning. Apple sees FCX as an all in one which is fine for solo shops, but any large production is a collaboration where people have specific roles.
No editor I know is put off by a learning curve, so people spouting that fallacious point as if all editors are just overpaid automatons, should just give it a rest. The fact is, editors wont waste their time with it – there is no pressing need to learn it as it doesn’t suit the majority of network workflows and won’t for some time, if ever. The videos demonstrate missing functionality (persistent in and out points etc) that will come eventually, but can currently be worked around with kludges.
I’m not a beta tester and this a beta product. Best of luck to the beta testers.
I like the new FCX it’s fantastic and powerfull software…you just need to be patient to learn it and then you will like it