Final Cut Pro X - Opinions 4

First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day One: Completely at Sea | Matthew Levie | TUAW
An interesting blog of Matt's experience, including his miss-conceptions experienced along the way:

It turns out, of course, that all of these basic features are in the program, but the documentation isn't very well written. You'd think that if they were going to radically change the way we edit, they'd throw us a lifeline and walk us through it. In fact, when I looked up split edit, it proposed a really Byzantine five-step process involving a ripple trim. It only takes three with a rolling trim. Of course, in FCP 7 it only took one step. That's not promising.

There's also a followup: First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Five: Trimming and Closing Thoughts

So today I had to go back to a multicamera FCP 7 project and, truthfully, it was quite a relief.

FCP X – Initial Reactions | Tim McLaughlin | MediaStorm

The prospect of waiting years for FCP X to mature is a depressing thought, and one that might not be financially viable for many institutions. I hope I’m wrong that it will take this long, but the point is, we just don’t know.

Who's Accountable? | Larry Jordan | Larry's Blog
Given Larry's close involvement with Final Cut Pro - including the training servies he offers - I sort of felt he was cast in the role of defending Apple and Final Cut during the early Final Cut Pro X days. Certainly there were some mixed messages when it seemed to hastily clarify some - seemingly perfectly reasonable - comments he had made about the potential stability of the upcoming release. That these comments also turned out to be prescient when Final Cut Pro X was actually released further made it unclear what Larry's agenda was.

Since the release though, Larry seems to have become more and more outraged about the new release, with his latest post containing a list of difficult questions for Apple which, as he says, don't relate to "the features of a product. They deal with the moral character of a company."

2. Why did Apple feel it was necessary to alienate one of their most passionate fan bases with this release; were professional users that expendable?

Guest blog: A week with FCPX | Adam Loretz | PhilipBloom.net
After an initially positive experience, Adam quickly came to the conclusion that Final Cut Pro X wasn't for him:

...super fast import, however, after a cut or two on the timeline, performance slowed right down. FCPX kept losing sync or begun playing sound from an event clip as the playhead moved on the timeline. Then the crashes, at least half a dozen of them, with restarts in between. I was simply cutting a single camera interview!!

Apple turns its back on the professional FCP user community | Mark David | Scenios
Mark lists four important missing features, and ponders a move to Avid or Adobe:

Hey Apple…the team at Scenios are pretty much fanboys (and girls) about most of your stuff. But you really blew it this time.

Apple attempting to redefine Pro with FCPX | Patrick Thornton | Interchange Project
One of the few positive pieces about Final Cut Pro X, Patrick looks at what Final Cut Pro X is, what Apple is hoping to do, and why they might think that it is better than Final Cut Pro 7:

Looking at the new FCP, it seems fairly clear to me that Apple wants FCPX to be a solid foundation that works for most people’s video editing needs. If you need more power or more features, Apple is pointing you in the direction of third-party plugins. It’s very clear from Apple’s literature about FCPX that third-party plugins are meant to bridge many of the gaps missing from FCPX.

Of Apples and Avids: The Cautionary Tale of FCP X | Jonathan Moser | Post Magazine
This article starts out by noting that Apple managed to embolden it's competitors (Avid & Adobe) while also pissing off it's third party developers (oh, and it's users as well.) A hat trick!

We're still waiting to see if Apple's decisions decimated their pro market or whether they just simply wanted out of it, but they have to admit that there's one thing they may not get back - the trust and respect of its multitude of users and partners. To take a politically incorrect saying: The Fat Lady Has Yet To Sing in this story.

A Sober Look at the Past, Present, and Future of Final Cut Pro | Alex Lindsay | ProVideoCoalition
Another "sober" look at the ups and downs, the why's and wherefore's of what Apple is up to, as well as the reaction of editors.

In the long term, the future is more fuzzy. Apple stands to gain and hold the bottom 90% of the pyramid—if they are able to develop the application effectively. This 90% will begin to put pressure on the top 10%. We’ll just have to see how committed Apple is to the future. For the many that will be entering the market with Final Cut Pro X… getting in now means that they can learn a simple application and grow with it…

FCPX – Not Quite Ready For Prime Time | thenewpop
This reports starts out positive, but then goes downhill fast!

However what got me the most excited is the magnetic timeline which is a thing of beauty and has to be experienced to be truly appreciated. Moving clips around on the timeline is less like stacking a deck of cards and more like moving apps around on your iPhone. These are great additions, and if it weren’t for the cons, I would declare this the best web based roll out since the first Macromedia Flash came out.

Final Cut Pro X: the Porsche Cayman S of the Video Production world | Sam | WebVideoStore
Sam makes a strong case that Apple are a smart company, and he makes an analogy to a Top Gear car test (a great BBC TV series I love), so I've got to agree with him, right? Ehhh..I'm not sor sure...maybe a lot of missing features can be added back by third parties, but I still have some problems with the basics of how the program works.

After reading several articles and blogs these valuable functionalities are on there way thanks to third party developers! By being able to facilitate third party developers, FCPX will be up to broadcasting specs and more whilst still appealing to the iMovie generation.

And I prefer Lambourghini's...



Final Cut Pro Launches a X the Chasm | Chris Steele | effectivus
Chirs comes at things from a completely different direction with talk of software rot and diminishing returns. There's also some pretty graphs, which puts this post head and shoulders above many. And yet while the reasoning sounds plausible, it's still hard to live with when the damn software doesn't do what you want.

I think Apple faced a classic problem (The Chasm to those in the know) in developing the market for FCP. They had saturated the professional market and had to look to the semi-professional and pro-sumer (professional-consumer) markets to grow beyond it. Apple are a consumer products company, for whom professional users concerns are a bit of a pain in the ass with a whole bunch of complex needs to solve everyday workflow problems. As Ron Brinkman puts it: “Apple isn’t big on the quotidian.”

The who?!



Final Cut Pro X – First Impressions | Ritchie Plunkett | Apple MMGN
Damning with faint praise:

After getting my head around the basic tool locations I moved onto editing. All I can say is that it works, not great but works. In my video I say that FCPX is more of a personal tool for personal videos and mashups. I work with FCP7 for cooperate events and I don’t see the same workflow happening with FCPX.

See also:

• NotesOnVideo: Final Cut Pro X Opinion 3
• NotesOnVideo: Final Cut Pro X Opinion 2
• NotesOnVideo: Final Cut Pro X Opinion

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