Should I get FCP 7?

I have fcp 4.5 but just got a new macbook pro 15.4inch 10.7.1. Do I want to get fcp 7? I understand that fcp x is awful. Is it forward compatible with 4.5? And my understanding is that fcp 5 and fcp six will not work on 10.7 is that true?

> Is it forward compatible with 4.5?

"Forward compatible"?
As far as I understand, FCPX isn't compatible with any other version of FCP at all, to any degree. Can't open the project files, can't export or import XMLs or EDLs. If you really need to work with older FCP project files, get FCP7, or Adobe Premiere. FCP7 can simply open an FCP4 project file and update it. Archive the older project file first to prevent unexpected issues.


www.derekmok.com

comountainair Wrote:
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> I have fcp 4.5 but just got a new macbook pro
> 15.4inch 10.7.1. Do I want to get fcp 7? I
> understand that fcp x is awful. Is it forward
> compatible with 4.5? And my understanding is that
> fcp 5 and fcp six will not work on 10.7 is that
> true?

In my opinion spending $1000 on FCP 7 is a complete and utter waste of money. (there is NO upgrade price anymore)

Take advantage of the cross grade offer and purchase Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5. It's essentially FCP 8. If you create XMLs of your old FCP 4.5 projects, Adobe Premiere Pro can open them.

I have no idea if FCP 5 or 6 will work on Lion but my guess would be no.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

What the guys said. No point buying and learning a dead software. There is Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro, and also the soon to be released Lightworks by EditShare. These are softwares still in active development.

I like Avid for its editing features and stability (once you get a hang of it, many functions are very similar). Premiere Pro is good for its integration with After Effects. I haven't worked with Lightworks yet. You can look at FCP X. There are some nice features, a totally different editing paradigm that you need to get your head around, and some of the limitations are caused by Apple deciding to change an existing paradigm. Only time will tell if those issues can be properly addressed and if FCP X will ever be able to function as a day to day editor.



www.strypesinpost.com

If looked at lightworks at IBC, it´s a finishing system in my eyes!
AVID will do the editing job for me! But the crossgrade to Premiere Pro is a good offer!

hamaca Wrote:
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> If looked at lightworks at IBC, it´s a finishing
> system in my eyes!
> AVID will do the editing job for me! But the
> crossgrade to Premiere Pro is a good offer!

Both crossgrades, Avid and Adobe, are excellent offers right now. Remember you can download both of these apps for 30 days free of charge to try out and I certainly would.

Also remember the Avid cross-grade is now a permanent deal for FCP users BUT the price will go up after the end of this month. $995 now and I think $1495 as of Oct. 1.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

>Also remember the Avid cross-grade is now a permanent deal for FCP users BUT the price will
>go up after the end of this month. $995 now and I think $1495 as of Oct. 1.

I think I missed this announcement. The deal is $995 now, with the original price at $2495 for the boxed studio version and $2295 for the downloadable MC (not sure if it comes with squeeze, avid fx or Boris).



www.strypesinpost.com

What are you cutting? If it's narrative in nature, FCP 7 is still the best. Feature film? FCP 7 by a mile.

> Feature film? FCP 7 by a mile.

Hardly. Avid is still the leading NLE in feature films, by a huge margin, and my guess is that Avid's share is actually likely to go up now that FCPX has made the FCP franchise nearly unusable for serious film work.


www.derekmok.com

Strypes,

Yes it does come with boris fx and squeeze. I took advantage of the crossgrade and purchased it about a month ago.

Jeff

well, more features might be cut on Avid.
doesn't mean it's the best

i like cutting in FCP. it's a year or so a since i had my hands on an Avid, but i didn't love it.
i'd say for assistants, avid might be better for feature work.
it does have great tools for the beginning and end of a project.


"my guess is that Avid's share is actually likely to go up now that FCPX has made the FCP franchise nearly unusable for serious film work."

most likely.

actually, i have a theory that the real reason directors like Fincher favoured FCP is because it protected them from having their Edits taken over by the studios.
(the "studio approved" re-cutters would be solidly in the avid camp.)

so it will be interesting to see which way they jump


nick

Jeff C, I know the crossgrade (boxed option) comes with production studio, but I'm not sure if the Internet option does. But I would think so, since the price is almost similar.



www.strypesinpost.com

Humm,
I wonder if Avid is doing a slow draw on everyone. If the crossgrade is 995.00 plus a minimum hardware purchase of Matrox at roughly 600.00, then, they release version 6 for maybe another 600.00 upgrade fee, they just about have everybody paying the full price they always charge.

You can say the same about Adobe. There will be an upgrade price in the next release when they make the software better, but point is that these are softwares that are in active development. You don't want to buy, learn and practice on a software that is already dead.

Overall, there is not that much difference between FCP and Avid when you are actually editing. The only thing I dont really like about Avid is that when going between certain softwares (After Effects and the DaVinci Resolve) you may want to buy plugins that costs a few hundred dollars to be able to send/read an AAF and DNxHD.

Not sure if you can do renders to ProRes/DNxHD in PP. The thing that bugs me about PP is that you can't resume renders.



www.strypesinpost.com

You can Export to ProRes in PP.

Export yes, but what does PP render/cache to? And what container format?



www.strypesinpost.com

DM Wrote:
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> Humm,
> I wonder if Avid is doing a slow draw on everyone.
> If the crossgrade is 995.00 plus a minimum
> hardware purchase of Matrox at roughly 600.00,
> then, they release version 6 for maybe another
> 600.00 upgrade fee, they just about have everybody
> paying the full price they always charge.

Hence the reason many of us are waiting for MC6 if the planned AJA / BMD support is already there. I'm not going to buy new hardware just to support Avid when Adobe Premiere Pro already supports it.

That's the primary reason why Premiere Pro is being implemented in our facility right now to replace Final Cut Pro. If / when Avid gets the AJA Kona boards working with MC 6, we will most likely add a seat or two of that. As an independent Post house, it makes sense to have both in house.

We will have one copy of X (already purchased) on one iMac in case anyone should bring us a project already cut in that.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

strypes Wrote:
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> Export yes, but what does PP render/cache to? And
> what container format?

You can change the Video Preview file format in Sequence > Sequence Settings. For some reason mine is disabled and won't let me change it but it is capable of rendering to QuickTime formats on the Mac.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Hey Strypes, look what I just came across on the avid community site as I was gearing up to install the edit suite.

[community.avid.com]

"Software downloads DO NOT come with the Production Suite components so if you buy a new Media Composer seat as a software download or an upgrade as a software download you will NOT receive the production suite components. Inside the Media Composer shippable box is a 5 disc CD sleeve that contains the following applications."

Avid DVD
Avid FX
Boris Continuum Complete
SmartSound Sonicfire Pro
Sorenson Squeeze -

Very good question on your part. I really would have assumed that it did come with the downloadable version.

Jeff

which is why we did the Boxed upgrade - which is same price - but you get more (seems as though it would make sense to let you download it all as it would save AVID money in shipping - materials production)

strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The
> only thing I dont really like about Avid is that
> when going between certain softwares (After
> Effects and the DaVinci Resolve) you may want to
> buy plugins that costs a few hundred dollars to be
> able to send/read an AAF and DNxHD.
>
> Not sure if you can do renders to ProRes/DNxHD in
> PP. The thing that bugs me about PP is that you
> can't resume renders.


That is true, never the less I saw Resolve 8.1 on IBC with timeline AAF Import/Export. Yes, MXF/DNxHD Plugin is mandatory, but if you have it, it is very very easy to round trip between AVID and Resolve. I have also seen Resolve on Windows in an alpha stage!

That's interesting! Yea, one thing I feel about Avid is they should work to improve the collaborative workflows between softwares, namely After Effects and the DaVinci Resolve, or at least improve the SDK so it is more friendly to developers. Currently it is a $500 option to get out of the Resolve and a $500 Automatic Duck option to get to After Effects, and LUT buddy/Colorista Free is available on PP and FCP 7, but not on Avid. That part sucks, because I like the editing tools in Avid, and I find myself reaching for the same trim tools when I'm back on FCP 7, but trimming is just faster on the Avids.



www.strypesinpost.com

So far nothing beats FCP from a developer point of view but Adobe's use of XML for project and preference files is appreciated.

I'd like to see Mackie protocol support in both Premiere and Avid, some sort of communication system like Apple Events for live communication, and number one on my list is XML support for Avid. It needn't necessarily be FCP XML but some way of encoding an entire project or bin into XML is desperately needed.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Spoke to an Apple rep who said not only is FCP 7 no longer available, Final Cut Studio isn't either. He encouraged me to try the FCP X free trial but sounded fuzzy when I asked about using FCS with it. Specifically he isn't sure if you can share a timeline from FCP X to Compressor 3.5.3 like you can with FCP 7. Any thoughts on this?

You cannot send an FCPX timeline to Compressor 3.5. You have to have Compressor 4. You can send to that.

I guess Apple's sold off it's surplus FCS boxes.

All the best,

Tom

>> Spoke to an Apple rep who said not only is FCP 7 no longer available, Final
>> Cut Studio isn't either.
> I guess Apple's sold off it's surplus FCS boxes.

I've read that many Apple reps were actually confused about the resumed availability of Final Cut Studio 3, and were telling customers wrong information. So it's possible, but not definitive, that the sales have stopped once again.


www.derekmok.com

Unless you call that 800 number I doubt seriously if any rep knows for sure or even knows about the 800 number.

Michael Horton
-------------------

I think many people have likened Apple's FCP X marketing campaign to New Coke, and they aren't too far off the mark. After the sale of the last surplus FCS3 box, Apple's pro apps division do not have a professional video editing tool in the market until early 2012 when their tool finally incorporates critical broadcast monitoring. Reality distortion field or not, this is a textbook example of how not to sell your products.



www.strypesinpost.com

New Coke -- spot on! It's a huge misstep for pro users, and utterly great for iMovie users blissfully ignorant of FCP body memory, workflow and pro requirements, who want to step up to some really cool features littered with thumbnails and other needless visual stim.

And for them, the FCPX KeyGuide is almost ready! ;-)

However...

We need a list of all the cool things in FCPX that SHOULD show up in FCP 8, like its smoother card media ingest, well-integrated color control and matching, magnetic dodging (but which create new tracks either immediately or when needed) while not including utter trackless ADHD, single-monitor autism, and needlessly changed terminology and behaviors.

I don't need Roles to define whether a clip goes into synch, narration, music, effects, or titles-- I'll put it where I want it when I edit and there it is. What I really need are track colors. The only visual stim I like in the FCPX interface is the color change when you raise and lower a clip's audio. I don't need events, I need master clips. Sometimes I still need tape log and capture; sometimes I need multicam. I don't need collections, I need bins. I need a separate viewer, not a color circus. I don't need an event browser, I need a master project window. If I need a library I'll get a card. I need sequence timelines, I need some kind of nesting for repeat material to be purposed over several programs, I need 64-bit awareness, not 2-bit thumbnails. These should all be options in FCP 8.

I just completed a 1-hour doc with 20 hours of interview, Screenflow captures of social media, Photoshop graphics up the kazoo, full HD ProRes422, in 6 weeks, on FCP 7 on my 8-core Mac Pro, including a 15-layer main title I really should have done in After Effects. I would have LOVED 64-bit rendering in the program. Instead, pro users get this needless remapped colorama for an upgrade.

IMHO, if Apple can untangle the mixed messages in FCPX -- not "ten"- "eXperimental"-- into the separate products they really express, it's a win-win for everybody. Otherwise, as stated above, many of us move back to Avid or on to Premiere Pro.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Summon your Video Scopes with Option - 9 !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Hi Loren, would you say - yourself included - that Premiere Pro is likely to claim the majority of ex-FCP users and that the majority of post houses will now being running Premiere alongside their Avid suites (if they weren't already) instead of FCP and X?

Also how long do you think it will be possible to keep a studio running on FCP 6.6/7 before a program change would become unavoidable? The workflow concerned primarily consists of exporting to quicktime, archiving, and then converting the QTs to wmvs exclusively for use on the web . . .

Many thanks,
Bluey,