FCP X dead for Professionals?

I was just curious what everyone's thoughts were on whether FCP X will get adopted by working professionals in the industry. I work mostly in Television and nobody seems eager to adopt it for obvious reasons. Anyone know if Final Cut is going to continue with anything like the FCP Suites?

Two things need to happen for FCPX to be widely adopted:

1. It needs to be stable and have features that professionals need like multicam and proper monitoring.

2. After being dropped so suddenly, people need to be confident that they can trust Apple and its commitment to professionals.

#1 is easy, #2 not so much.

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...

Can't argue with Jon here. #2 will be the most difficult and time will tell on that. #1 is coming and coming soon. What I can never argue with though is the $299.00 price tag. It allows hundreds of thousands of more people into visual storytelling and that is a good thing. Bring em on, and lets hope many of them can and will affect change.

For the better.

Michael Horton
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It really is a shame, because although I enjoy Avid's stability and the Unity is a great system, I just downright prefer to cut in FCP leaps and bounds over Avid. I guess I am curious if Apple is even concerned at all with pro's? But you have to wonder who are they marketing FCP X too?

It's already being used in broadcast in a limited capacity. Many of the post season major league baseball games apparently had segments cut in the truck on FCPX. One of the freelance editors who used it reported first hand.

I've heard other stories. All anecdotal and obviously not pervasive but it is happening despite the lack of monitoring. It seems the element in common is that most of these are fast turnaround work.

The next release which will have multicam and broadcast important monitoring and, apparently some other important improvements will be telling.

Yeah, I guess that seems about right Craig on the quick turnaround type environment. The next update will probably seal the deal for where the professional market is going to head I would think. Most companies don't have time to wait around anymore. Is anyone seeing a trend towards Premiere at all?

Some companies think emotionally. Others are very mercenary since overhead is a critical part of their business model.
If the next FCPX update covers much of the missing pieces some of the companies who are waiting may transition to it.

It's not about waiting around so much as moving when one needs to financially. FCP7 still works for some. For others it has serious drawbacks being 32bit and tied to Quicktime and not handling many files natively that other NLEs do.

emissaryfilms Wrote:
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> Is anyone seeing a trend towards
> Premiere at all?

Premiere's #1 selling point is its Dynamic Link integration with After Effects so it's definitely worth looking at if you have graphics-heavy projects. I'm still doing some work with FCP 7 but my future looks like Premiere for short-form stuff, Avid for long-form.

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...

I've never really don't understood this switching argument. If X goes the way of the dinosaur, then forget about it, but for now learn all of the tools and stock your house with all of them. It's cheap.That is if you seriously want to compete in this industry. And that includes X. Don't dismiss something after 30 minutes of playing with it, not saying that you have. Stop reading the opinions of the pundits and seek your own truth. Not happy with current version? OK. Fine. Did you try it? Did you work with it? Or did you just look, dabble with it for 30 minutes and dismiss it? WORK with it. Learn it. Hey, won't hurt. And after that, move on to something else or continue working with it.

And this "no multicam" argument is nonsense. FCP had no multicam until what, FCP 5? Before that we simply worked around it. Then we got it, and now it seems everyone has to have it or this app is not professional. Broadcast monitoring is one thing, but Multicam? Come on. Of course if Multicam is mission critical to your workflow then don't use X. If working with Red files is mission critical then use Premiere. If editing 3D is mission critical then use Avid. Bottom line, learn them all.

Michael Horton
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I mostly agree with Micheal, but not on the "no multicam" argument.
I know that there was no multicam till version 5, but a lot of companies had build their workflows upon it after it was implemented. This workflows won't work with the current version - one customer of mine was (and still is) using an XML based multicam workflow with FCP 7 to produce mainly daily soaps and a lot of them per day effectively because they build their own "eco system" around that beside of some other XML based stuff. They switched from Avid to FCP (with a lot of seats) just because of this options. To use the old work around way the will loose a real lot of time and have to buy a real lot of storage.
Even though they had been in the beta cycle and had some discussions with Apple nobody knows how and when for example multicam will be implemented and how Broadcast monitoring will be integrated or what will be the enhancements on XML which is poor as well at this moment.
And the above is only about one big customer of Apple.

So from my opinion its the argument Jon gave: ...,people need to be confident that they can trust Apple and its commitment to professionals.
And there is a lot to do.

I agree also with the argument that you should learn all NLEs - you never know what will happen - but that's an investment both in time and money.

I do see a lot of advantages with FCPX when doing sports, news or similar especially when you bought the whole 'suite' for a ridiculous price.
But I do feel a lot of pain with other stuff; for example rendering of burned in subtitles. Sure they mostly play real time, but when it comes to export and render this current version fails. I took some simple only primary storyline and an average amount of subtitles applied (400 subs, no video/audio); it rendered with FCP7 within 2 minutes, using FCPX I gave up after 20 minutes and it had done 10% of the timeline.
Even though subs are kind of niche they got more important every day because of the kind of delivery. So FCP7 shines, FCPX can do something but it's very slow and has a lot of missing features, Premiere can do things as well but creating editable subs in a batch for PPro is also time consuming, Avid doesn't really shine but is fine and fast.

So take that NLE you need for the job which needs to be done - and wait and stay tuned.

Andreas

emissaryfilms Wrote:
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>Is anyone seeing a trend towards
> Premiere at all?

Yep, we are here in Atlanta. The general consensus is that it's so close to being absolutely perfect for almost all applications that many of us are dealing with some of the minor annoyances right now. Most importantly, there are many MANY very good FCP 7 editors here in Atlanta and it's a very easy switch to either Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer 6. I have to take that into consideration when deciding where to go. If we go all FCPX, well then I have to teach them all a new way of editing AND a new dictionary since FCP X changes much of terminology in the app.

There is no question that nobody, and I mean nobody handles every single codec under the sun better than Premiere Pro. I'm still trying to get used to the fact that no matter what the videographers send to us, even if the folder structure is all messed up, Premiere reads the files and we can work. So we're moving our PBS series, "This American Land" to full Adobe Premiere for Post starting with Season Two for this very reason. We have videographers all over the country who shoot with every camera and format that's made. Premiere Pro handles it all in realtime with no problems.

Avid is obviously incredibly good at media management and long form production. So we are also installing that in our workflow here and that will most likely start taking over our documentary work.

So we're going to support multiple NLEs here and simply choose the right tool for the project at hand. Going Avid / Adobe also opens up to cross platform workflows and as such, I'm evaluating HP and other Windows workstations to start replacing our aging Mac Pros in January.

The biggest hurdle Apple will have in getting FCPX back into all the shops they used to dominate is the trust factor. They threw out the workflow once, they've EOL'd pretty much every professional piece of software they've touched, they released the exact software they intended to release with no regard to the production community, and they can do it again. Just the loss of Apple Color alone is enough to give me pause, especially when I see the agressive moves of Adobe and BlackMagic Design with SpeedGrade, Resolve and now Teranex. Those are moves that I like to see, companies expanding their offerings to make my workflow better, not simply throw it out and reinvent the wheel because they can.

We have exactly one copy in our shop on an iMac. If it's a tool that serves a purpose in the future, we'll move it into production, but right now, nobody is asking for it and we don't have a need for it.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

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The biggest hurdle Apple will have in getting FCPX back into all the shops they used to dominate is the trust factor.

Is it my age or background. I don't trust any NLE developer. They've all done things that impact one's security. Avid did it when they said they were going to stop developing for Mac (although they didn't). Adobe did it when they were slow to put PremierePro on Mac. Avid again concerns me with a 5 year run of loses and that they are certainly NOT dependent on Media Composer sales (they're really a hardware company these days). Of course they all may have had very good sound business reasons for these decisions at the time. Each is capable of making decisions that concern me. Let's add Discreet(AutoDesk) to that with Edit* as well.

They're all businesses capable of making decisions based on evolving market decisions that might be detrimental to an NLE user. Just because Apple is the latest doesn't mean they will be the last nor does it mean the others may make a decision down the line that will have a negative impact. The one thing that changed is that it's no longer a $60k plus per seat decision.

For me, it's too many years and too many decisions by too many companies for me to ever "trust" a business, hardware or software in production or post. I believe that with any purchase, I may have to make a reassessment in a year or three. Life cycles are short and so should be ROI in the "modern" economy.

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The biggest hurdle Apple will have in getting FCPX back into all the shops . . .

It may be the "paradigm shift." It's relatively easy to transfer skills between MC, PP and FCP7. FCPX is very much a different beast so one has to be specifically skilled and the shop must see a significant cost/benefit to using it when it comes to freelancers. I do think that will change over time but over time is key, not immediately and not even if the next big release resolves the issues presented to broadcast and feature film professionals.

FCPX has the potential to dominate smaller self contained shops if those professional issues are resolved and if the speed and ROI are high, that may be a significant factor is such shops start to show advantages in cost or workflow over the bigger shops. There's some big hurdles for FCPX but Apple can jump very high and as a hardware company, are extremely motivated to move Macs. A key cog will be what replaces the MacPro.

Am I missing something with FCPX? I've got the fastest Macbook Pro - 8 gigs of ram and it's very slow -- the background rendering may be the problem

And can someone explain why youcan't make a transition on a second track of video? It transitions everything including what's below it (want to fly in titles without the built in title effects - nothing doing - it flies that in and transitions the video below it)

This was supposed to be fixed in the latest version -- and yes I understand how to make the "secondary storyline" but it won't work on that with titles either.

Yes I'm transitioning to AVID but it doesn't have the robust selection of plugins and transitions as FCP 7 and even something as simple as making a drop shadow on AVID MC on a second track of video is a chore.

Would be great if someone bought the code to FCP 7 and just updated it to 64Bit and newer camera formats

Both FCPX and Avid are very different from FCP7. The closest thing to FCP7 right now is Adobe Premiere so you may have better luck with that. The titler's better than FCP's and you can delegate anything more advanced to After Effects.

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...

Adding transitions has worked fine for me since they added it in 10.0.1. Now at 10.0.2. Are you sure you're up to date? Add transition to Connected Clip and it becomes a Secondary Storyline automatically.

Yea, I am hoping Avid beefs up supporting 3rd party plugins. They have the Boris filter bundle, which is actually pretty good (has a much better keyer than a chroma keyer). The drop shadow on an Avid is in the text tool. The Marquee text tool is better than the default text tool. However, I have issues with Avid reading and displaying certain fonts.

Premiere is much better on short form projects, especially with the integration with After Effects. And word through the grapevine is that they are working hard on CS6. I doubt they will get the kind of stability that Avid has with long form projects, but PPro is something to look out for, especially if you do shortform work.


Currently, I have a project on dual system sound with multiple cameras, and timecode on jam sync (which naturally drifts). Yea, FCP X has that audio detection which is kind of similar to Plural Eyes, but Plural Eyes does have a significant error rate due to split track audio recording. which caused us to revert back to manual syncing to slate. I have no idea how multicam syncing (which has always been better done in timeline), can be done in the timeline if the timeline does not have tracks.



www.strypesinpost.com

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Jon
The closest thing to FCP7 right now is Adobe Premiere so you may have better luck with that. The titler's better than FCP's and you can delegate anything more advanced to After Effects.

The titler is somehow good, but when it comes to subtitles and exporting/exchanging subtitles, correct them etc. PPro is currently a bad choice, if you have to do jobs like that. Avid is not perfect but at l
least those things do work. Beside all the things in FCPX I don't like and all the bugs, titling is pretty good and flexible if you got Motion and know a bit about it, but it's far away from being good. Like many other parts of the workflow.

@ Gerard to may have a look at the workflow we had with FCP 7
[www.spherico.com]
it is based upon tc or ltc

Andreas

P.S.
Has somebody enough spare time to do some benchmarks on importing subtitles to AVID, FCP7, FCPX. I could supply subs for all though they are under NDA - means you should publish the actual text of the subtitles.

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for the link. Currently the issue I am having is that I have all these devices with random and incremental timecode drifts due to jam syncing and not having a sync device. The timecode drifts are unpredictable as it seems to depend on number of starts/stops on each device, as well as latency during recording on each device. This also means that I cannot do a global sync offset. What I do is that I create a multiclip sequence of each camera angle, use an automator script to replace each single cam multiclip (i tried using Sequence Liner, but it sent back 12 hour long clips with a lot of black for some clips).

For the audio, we sync and merge them in the browser, then "make independent clips" and drag them into bins in the browser to create new synced master clips. Then we stack the different camera angles together, sync each clip and group each multiclip in the browser by in points.



www.strypesinpost.com

I don't know about the Adobe world being a bad choice. I believe you should be able to get titles into After Effects. Not sure how to get them out, though. Or if After effects is where you want the titles to be.

I'm not sure how far Avid goes with XML workflows or subtitle exchange formats, but if it works like how Avid works with After Effects (which is not at all), it could be a pretty crappy world. And I won't be surprised if it doesn't read certain fonts very well either, as I had issues with Japanese and Chinese font names.



www.strypesinpost.com

PPro is a bad choice??? I do not think so. It's taking over market share of the peeps not going to FCPX (it's more like FCP7 that Avid)...which is pretty substantial to FCP users. FCPX is more of a niche app than ever becoming a standard the way it sits now.

This discussion is stale until FCPX comes out with a significant upgrade and TRIES to get back in the race. I am on FCP7 until I can't upgrade it anymore...then we are looking @ MC6 and the upcoming Production Premium CS6 (I have it on GOOD AUTHORITY that there are some spectacular additions coming to Premiere Pro and After Effects CS6 - just cannot talk about it yet via NDA).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.