Should I get FCP 7?

Roles are crucial to the FCP Xperimental workflow. It is a horrible workaround to tracks, but Apple is doggedly determined that tracks is the bane of their existence and refuse to embrace the fact that tracks may have been more useful than just an archaic relic from the days of ancient Rome. Looking at FCP X is painful. It is almost like having a bunch of football studs design the perfect night gown for a lady, or at least they think it is a perfect.

I am skeptical about the magnetic timeline being useful in a long project. The snappiness and the way the magnetic timeline is not a good use of computing resources. In a heavy collaborative project, with the film strip view, background optimization of media, floating point calculations, constantly updating skimmer, and background renders, something has to give. And you will probably pay for that with editing down time. I won't even say that the magnetic timeline is useful at all. What really do you need it for? It is really an over fancy UI implementation that is taxing on resources that can be better used for other things. 64 bits does not mean that you now have unlimited Ram and computingpowerr.

I think keyword collections is good. It is like bins, except that you can keyword a portion of the shot. It is like a marriage of sub clips and bins. Except that keyword collections didn't have to come at the expense of bins,



www.strypesinpost.com

I suspect an even split.

I could see myself getting more into PP, but I trained in Avid almost 20 years ago so I have a soft spot for it.

For all my ranting, I intend to tackle FCPX for a realworld project. The 64-bit awareness is alluring. It's just so damned wrongheaded for pro's, and throws out all that Apple certified training... good thing I never took it!

- 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

Not to mention all the new Mac sales Apple is going to lose.
We still have a G5 Dual with FCP 6 and Tiger.
With FCPX being the new Coke I have recommended that we
think about going Adobe Premiere on an i7 PC.

So that would count as a lost sale to Apple!




Loren Miller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 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.
>

Gerad-

Noted, good points about UI overhead.

Magnetic action is kinda cool but I often need a sceond permanent track to overlap audio.

I might get really confused about keywording regions of a shot. I just use a marker region-- M key, type an ID, jump ahead to end of region, Option-M. Voila, marked and ID'ed as either clip or sequence marker. It's visual, it's right there in the Viewer or Timeline. The handy thing about keywords is masking irrelevant shots. But I can do specific shot searches with FIND, which many pro users vastly under-use.

- 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