Issues with FCP Studio and Mountain Lion

Unlike many of you who have been on systems for a while and have the option to upgrade to ML, or not, I found myself in a position where I had to buy new computers that shipped with 10.8. I installed FCP Studio, and initially had few problems, though with my MacBook Pro with Retina Display, I did find some minor display issues, most notably a scan line that would moves across the image occasionally. This also happens in my iMac (3.4ghz i7 with 16GB RAM).

For those of you not yet on ML, you might be interested to know that the User Library is no longer accessible through finder (at least I haven't found it). I've uploaded a program called Preference Manager that seems to be able to find and trash preferences.

So here are some of the issues:

Upon adding a clip to the timeline, all clips on the timeline and the sequence is renamed the same as the current clip. This is intermittent, but once it's in the project, it stays in the project, trashed prefs or no.

Phantom audio. I manually adjusted levels on my time line, however, the sound of the adjusted audio fades back in briefly. After scrubbing through the time line a couple of times, the problem seemed to disappear, however, on import, the problem showed up again. Perhaps a memory issue, but I hope not. So I've trashed preferences again, the phantom audio has disappeared when I play the sequence in the time line. Fingers crossed, I export again, but the phantom audio still shows up in the .mov. This is a the very end of my sequence and I want the music to fade out, so I've just cut out the remaining audio track. And that seemed to have taken care of that issue. Yay me, I figured out that fix, but this is something in the six years I've been using FCP that I've encountered this problem.

Realizing that perhaps Apple is nudging us toward the FCP-X app and it's "cross OS functionality" I decided I would purchase X. That was a pre-mature and ill advised move on my part and this may or may not affect those of you that are going to upgrade to ML from Lion. I own a Canon XF 300, and just discovered that Canon has not released a plug-in for 10.8. Canon suggests you try the plugin for Lion, which if you upgraded from Lion, may work. However, upon opening the DMG, I discover that my machine will not allow me to install the plug-in. So I'm basically screwed on FCP-X as an option until Canon fixes this problem, which one their website is suppose to happen in early October (NEWS FLASH: it's already mid October).

While many of you might suggest "work arounds" to this and the previous issues, I DON'T like work arounds. I'm not a "computer geek" and I can't and don't want to trouble shoot technical glitches. My job is to edit, and edit well. I've produced videos for almost seven years, and learned FCP initially on my own, and got some wonderful insight on a better work flow after attending two two day seminars. I am very familiar with the interface (FCP Studio, not X) that when some of my peers call me and I'm on a road trip away from my computer, I can accurately talked them through the various commands and menus and usually help them with their issues.

A program as expensive and well developed as FCP should be able to migrate into updated OS's and I think that Apple is doing a great disservice to it's customers by letting such an important program that's still widely used wither on the vine. I don't know what Apple's endgame is, but I don't think we will see an interface like FCP Studio again.

That said, I've started to learn Premiere Pro CS6, which has a lot of similarities to FCP Studio. I haven't gone deep, but it does seem to me to be a poor man's FCP. It's got some cool features and functionality, but some of the interface and functions are not as well thought out. (Two monitor set up is kind of lame as it duplicates the "canvas" (can't think of what Adobe calls it), on the 2nd monitor, but doesn't allow you to set up a different window on the 1st monitor. Again, I'm new to it and I might stumble on a solution to this.

I know I've thrown a lot out there, and not a lot of positives, but I might be missing something here, so if any one has some real solutions, I'd love to hear them. I love the FCP Studio interface and want to keep using it, but if the consensus is to let it go, I will reluctantly do so, as I'm a big fan of progress.

Thanks.

Jay McNally

I haven't come across those issues in Mountain Lion, but I don't use legacy FCP very much on my home machine, so someone else may be of better help. Otherwise, I would try repairing disk permissions, then re-installing FCP.

>Upon adding a clip to the timeline, all clips on the timeline and the sequence is renamed the same as the current
>clip.

I vaguely remember this bug in an early version of FCP 7. Have you updated to FCP 7.0.3? That would be the last version of FCP 7.


>you might be interested to know that the User Library is no longer accessible through
>finder

It's still there, but it's hidden. Go to the root in Finder, and hit Shift Cmd G, and type "library". There is an app that reverts Mountain Lion back to most of its old behaviours, but I can't remember what it's called.


>A program as expensive and well developed as FCP should be able to migrate into
>updated OS's

Well, no. FCP is ancient, and you would be glad to hear that the source code base for FCP has been deprecated in Mountain Lion, so it will get buggier as time goes on.


>I DON'T like work arounds

Well, troubleshooting is part of the post work. Not every NLE works well with every workflow and every system, and depending on the job, there may be workarounds. There is always going to be quirks with every NLE (try transcoding 5D footage in L&T). Last I heard, FCP X is looking to expand native support for more cameras, so there will no need to transcode some formats. But it will be quite a bit of work to get native support up to scratch. Avid and Adobe have had a good head start in this area.


>Two monitor set up is kind of lame as it duplicates the "canvas" (can't think of what Adobe calls it), on the 2nd
>monitor

I don't have two monitors, but I'm sure you can undock the source and program monitors. You can do that by clicking on the icon on the top right hand corner of the program monitor, and selecting "undock frame", or right clicking on the top left hand of each frame where the stubbles are. You can do that on almost all the windows, including the project panel. The interface layout in Premiere is quite customizable, more customizable than FCP X, but it takes a while to set it up.


>I haven't gone deep, but it does seem to me to be a poor man's FCP

I won't go as far as call it a poor man's FCP. There are a lot of jobs that I prefer doing in PPro CS6, due to the native support, multithreading abilities of the software, and the editing tools. I generally find the editing process to be more efficient in PPro than in FCP, once you get the hang of it. There are some areas that I don't like so much about PPro, such as the media management, search tools, markers, and PPro's implementation of multicam. For those, there's Avid.



www.strypesinpost.com

if you want to see your user library just put the following into terminal:

sudo chflags nohidden ~/Library


it will promt for your password. you'll also need to relaunch the finder i think.

You can get to the Library by holding down Option under the Finder "Go" menu.

- Justin Barham -

I'm just hoping I don't need to learn more that two NLE's at this point (I'd perfer to only have to know one, but alas I am hacking away at Premiere Pro.) I'm not a savvy computer guy, but pretty good at dealing with the programs from an end user stand point. I think my issue with apple is that the jump to FCP Studio to FCP X was such a radical jump and that after almost two years that native camera support is still lagging.

I don't disagree with you in that trouble shooting is part of the process, but I feel that there should be basic operations that don't require the user to jump through hoops, like ingesting footage from your camera. I've read that FCP can support almost all consumer level codex, why did they neglect the higher end cameras?

My main frustration with FCPX is that I can't really even begin using it until Canon (or Apple) updates the support for my camera. I can use another program to import the footage, but I'd rather just continue using Premiere until such time as that support is available. I do want to explore FCPX before I dismiss it entirely.

I guess I must have been fortunate, because my experience with FCP has been for the most part positive and productive. And I do understand that there is a time for evolution. I just wish that Apple would do it in smaller, more progressive steps. The past couple of changes in OS has brought on a fair amount of disruption to it's users, along with some improvements.

Firstly, I have to say that I was wrong about native editing in FCP X. I thought I read a release from Apple where they seemed to re-consider native support for cameras, but I must have misunderstood it due to the vagueness of the wording. They now support plug-ins for mxf that were formally supported in FCP 7.

>I've read that FCP can support almost all consumer level codex, why did they
>neglect the higher end cameras?

Truth is, there is a lot of marketing out there, and I can safely say that most of the folks who diss FCP X, do not really know what it can do and what it can't, or have tried it out. Most people just latch onto marketing slogans. I've met people who diss FCP X because they believe that it's a slightly more powerful version of iMovie, and I've met people who prefer FCP X over FCP 7 because they liked how easy it was to edit in FCP X, yet they didn't know that you could do an insert edit or ripple trim in FCP 7.

It's easy to demo the whiz bang features of an app, yet another to use it on the daily grind. Today, NLE suitability seems to be more on a project by project basis. You have some apps that are wicked fast with native editing, and some apps that are great at managing your media.

I just churned out videos for an event over the weekend with PPro and FCP 7 and I don't think I could have met the deadline if I just stuck to one tool. I had about 5 hours of rushes, and I needed to cut 4 minute sizzle/highlights in about 7 hours, lots of dialogue and interviews. So I used PPro to assemble my rough cut, and FCP 7 to finish, because the production house uses FCP 7. Then, there were segments where I had to cut out a chunk of footage and slap on graphics at front and end, but they were about an hour long, so for that, I needed FCP 7 to export QT refs so I can encode them in QT 7. I may have been able to use FCP X in place of PPro, but I wasn't so confident about navigating large amounts of footage quickly without timelines and markers. And I also wasn't so sure how well Xto7 worked.

I won't use the word evolution or revolution to describe FCP X. Not so much with regards to professional editing. My view is that it is about mass market appeal, and the shrinking desktop market. Apple's core market has changed, and truth is Apple has never really gone for the high end, and it has been a while since they went with the "attract the top and the rest will follow" mantra. The Walter Murches of the yesteryear have made way for "creative" Justin Bieber-like geniuses in tight fitting blue t-shirts. That's evolution. But hey, that sells iMacs.



www.strypesinpost.com

Great post Gerard

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

If its any consolation, the more NLE platforms you can drive the more money you will make.

Good point. These are good, but challenging times to be in. There are lots of good NLEs as well as finishing tools, but the demands are still the same. As an editor, we are still expected to know the software that we will be using. So yea, take your pick, learn a couple of them, but learn them well.



www.strypesinpost.com

And then learn more when they get dumped. And then more...

Hello, Lynda.com!


- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Advance to next/previous keyframes in a clip with Shift/Option-K !

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

Anyone else experincing issues with FCP7 on Mountain Lion? I'm still on Snow leopard but a new computer purchase is on the horizon and that will come with Mountain Lion.