Final Cut Pro X - still Pro

And here is Part two, with a bit missing in the middle.

Thanks for these, Jude; I can feel my comfort level rising.

There's a glimpse at the sanest rendition of the timeline when the demonstrator switches to plain clip mode (Part Two, middle), sans thumbnails. Then I see my future timeline and not a roll of postage stamps, which simply reminds me of all the bills I have to mail out.

I think like most serious editors I don't want image stim in my timeline, I want it in the Viewer and the Canvas, so that one setting change-- he didn't keep it long because I guess they want to appeal to beginners familiar with iMovie-- makes it clear you have options which back up the statement here- yeah, you can simulate a conservative FCP7 timeline experience and keep all the genuinely cool stuff.

Nowhere did I get a hint, however, of a Viewer window.

I need a viewer for many reasons:

- match frame, then match to master in Browser
- gang source to timeline
- experiment with color changes, filter packs, and audio adjust in source before editing and being able to compare the two instantly, without having to edit in or switch clips in the timeline.

In fact, I don't need a Browser full of graphic stim either, unless I have a client who needs to select desired clips (we all get folks like that once in a while, they insist on participating!!) and for years I've pleaded for LARGER storyboard-like thumbnails for this. I cannot tell here if I can open a bin and give my clients large thumbnails they can actually see, and play in situ (much like Avid). That would be hot.

Some of these operations are addressed in the timeline (clip collections, auditioning, etc), which has a hell of a lot of function packed into every region. It was fun to see how "live" every clip section, corner and edge was with contextual menus and neat presets for audio ramps and the like. There's good thinking throughout.

I think a proper demo would have stripped out the eye candy so we could see these more clearly. In that sense, I think the sneak peek was hamhanded by developers living with these changes for about two years without ordinary mortal pro feedback. Thus, very rude for editors working in the traditional paradigm like myself, resulting in grump shock. My jaw would really drop if they stripped out the basics in which we work day in and out.

I'm very impressed with new audio range select and ramping ability, that's spot on for me. The subtlety of dragging a track region (much as I and other vets avoid a lot of mousing-- Randy, for God's sake, I've seen RSI cripple friends) and displaying the progressively hotter clip level in color was very effective. Can we select a clip region precisely with keyboard commands and elevate the gain for that-- all from arrow keys?

The 3YCC color balance tool right by the Canvas nails that operation nicely, and color matching is very cool. The rendering speed was exactly what I'd expect from 64-bit multicore tastiness. I would never turn that down.

Image motion control looks straightforward but I want to see a Photoshop still pan and zoom! Maybe they've put Tom W's scaling bugaboo to pasture with a sensible algorithm.

But consider this: Swap Clip with the Option key, among the simplest and fastest of drag operations in the present FCP7, seems at least three times slower waiting for the"magnetic timeline" to get enough gauss to move a clip out of the way for the swap. Look at the demo and time it. This is the kind of accumulating annoyance I react to the most: letting eye candy get in the way of simple operations. Skimming seems slightly sluggish, probably due to rectifying the pitch on the fly to keep it intelligible. I would expect to be able to turn that off if it's a real issue.

IMHO, the whole key to universal adaptation of X will be a comprehensive list of option checkboxes in User Preferences. Keep your favorite functions, suppress the rest.

Demonstrator also underlined the presence of keyboard commands for those of us whose wrists were falling apart just looking at these demos.

I will enjoy playing with this in Snow Leopard and trying to build Final Cut Pro 8 out of it!
I also hope the other components come up to speed with it as the year progresses.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Nudge a Canvas layer by SUBpixels
with Command-Option with Arrow keys !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Been playing in iMovie the last few days and it feels like an app I would use for teaching my 8th graders before I retired. No waveform or vectorscope, not really frame accurate...heck, all I wanted was to use all my ram/cores and 64bit. Hate the thought of putting all these years of learning to the side only to have to start over again learning a completely different workflow and lexicon. But grafixjoe is correct, it is all about the story and always has been, just hope X allows me to make one.
Steve

steve-sharksdelight

Ooooh, Ben. I love the circumflex. Will you show me your cedilla some time?

Harry.

Çouldn't pøssibly dö thåt Hârry...



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Läfcpüg, the new heavy metal sensation.


www.derekmok.com

"Big wet thumbnail award." LOL, Loren.

-Russ Johnson

"It's not a "Pro App" without Tape I/O Control IMHO. Even though we we have prediminantly converted most of our clients to accept Digital Delivery, we still crank out hundreds of tapes a year to the stubborn clients (some still taking Beta / DigiBeta).

I don't know what Apple is thinking with this omission"

Personally Apple stopped thinking when they invented i. That's all it is now. i. Ego. Style over substance. Substance isn't completely eradicated, but it is second place to style. Oooohs sell at point of release. @#$%&! comes too late, money is already in the coffers. Who cares? Not i.

Quicktime X. Er... wtf. Quicktime for consumers. Apple is a consumer company now because that's where the money is. Pro users are, er, well, i likes to pretend to keep it's hand in with them because it looks cool on the CV. After Quicktime X the instant I heard FCP8 was called FCP X I figured I, as a pro app user, is buggered. I wanted FCP 8 to use the potential of Snow Leopard. Shame, that it doesn't look like i'll ever be able to because they aren't going to make it.

I will reserve judgement but this looks like a lot of oooohs, which will be followed by a fair amount of @#$%&!'s. And I like my expensive software on CDs. Call me old fashioned, but they last, they are tangible. If this is download only from the App Store then that's another obstacle to me taking a punt. but then this isn't targeted at me. I may not be nearly as proficient or established as many on here but I've spent 8 years generating £60k a year (excluding the first 3) making videos for the not for profit sector, and now cut live sessions and music videos too, so I consider myself a professional (of sorts), but this feels like it is aimed at iPad owners who reckon making video is cool... which of course it is... I would rather not work with a toy, no matter how much it has under the hood, and the oohs look like a load of toys some of which seem to be replacing the tools I use. I have total resistance to the fact that there isn't a viewer (wtf) that they have stupid little thumbnails for clips (if they can be changed to what i currently have then moot complaint), that I can't (apparently) lay off to tape (my choice, not Jobs... though i've grown both use to and weary of Jobs being a one-man nanny state) and all the other oooh things that have been mentioned just look irritating, possibly counter-intuitive and only the future of NLE if you truly have a need to feel like you're at the cutting edge of life because your @#$%& looks different.

At the moment I can't even update my OSX because they bundled the pro-apps update that everyone on here said broke their FCP with the OSX update (again, time may have altered this and i haven't checked the forum properly to see if that is true) but the point is that iApple don't really care. Not about me. Not about you. They care about i, and there is no i in Pro Apps, though there is in 'Ooooh, i want that'.

We (myself and a few other friends who use Macs for different pro uses) are all at breaking point. We have heard about some software that can make a PC run OSX in case we want to continue with Apple software and apparently bespoke PCs are ahead of the game over Pro Macs and still cheaper. I keep reading that Premier is ahead of FCP. Our hardware and software isn't due an 'upgrade' yet, but when it is I would be surprised if any of us carry on with iApple. It hurts a little given that I've spent 8 years with it and have a lot of plugins I use, but you know what, perhaps less third party tools will improve my own creativity and the best thought associated with a bespoke PC and Adobe software, is no more i.

I understand that long after your friends have pointed out your partner is a twat you still cling to the good moments, the fond memories and the fact that sometimes you look at them and still fancy the f*** out of them, but your friends are right and your partner is a twat who constantly disappoints, lets you down, has become a stress making entity on a daily basis and has started championing capital radio. Move on, I swear after the initial pain abates you'll never look back.

X. FFS. Really?!

eyeseesound - it hasn't even come out yet and you're already spittin'. lol

Personally I think maybe it is time for you to switch to something else. You're clearly unhappy, and that's not the way to live and work. Do a crossgrade to Avid, or get Premier, Or Edius or Vegas or Quantel or Pinnacle or something. Let go of all this angry and move on. There are lots of alternatives.

I don't care for Internet bitch-sessions, but I feel compelled to jump on this, because it's widely misunderstood.

Quote

Quicktime X. Er... wtf. Quicktime for consumers.

Please note that I say this with all the love and respect in the world: You don't have the first goddamn idea what QuickTime X is. Nor should you! It's a low-level computery thing. But given that you don't know what you're talking about here, you should probably pick one of two tracks to go down: Either educate yourself so you can speak about it in an informed manner, or just shut the hell up and get back to work.

For those who may be curious: With the possible exception of the computers on the Space Shuttle, QuickTime is arguably the oldest widely and consistently used bit of software in existence right now. It dates back to the late 1980s, and at that time it only ran on computers which despite having the "Macintosh" badge were in fact completely unrelated to the computers that carry that name today. They had an entirely different architecture and were programmed using entirely different languages.

Over the years, QuickTime has had bits of tape and string applied to it to keep it running on computers that are fundamentally different from the ones on which it was originally written. During the same time it's also had thousands of features added to it ? quite literally. The QuickTime API, which is sort of like the menu of functions and options the software offers, has thousands of items on it, the overwhelming majority of which are absolutely essential. Writing a program that uses QuickTime is a baffling, baffling ordeal, and it's increasingly difficult for Apple to add new features without breaking the whole thing.

Several years ago, Apple started working, internally, on what would eventually become iOS. At that time it was blindingly obvious that QuickTime would be needed on small, battery-efficient mobile devices with modest capabilities and high ambitions. The QuickTime that existed then was simply not up to the task. It never would've worked in that environment. So an effort was begun to rewrite QuickTime from the ground up, making it small and sleek so as to play well on devices that have roughly the same intrinsic power as your average refrigerator, while also modernizing it to take full advantage of things like hardware optimization for efficient decoding and scaling of media objects in real-time without reducing battery life from hours to minutes.

About three hours after that effort got started ? metaphorically speaking ? everyone involved looked at where they were going and declared unanimously, "We need this on the Mac, right away."

And so was born QuickTime X. It's a complete, ground-up rewrite of QuickTime for the 21st century. It's architecture-independent, it's object-oriented, it's multithreaded everywhere to take efficient advantage of parallel processing, it's in short a whole new QuickTime.

And it's also not finished. You see, QuickTime is twenty years old. It's vast and venerable. It can't be replaced in a day. Instead, Apple charted a multi-year, multi-release approach to the migration. The very first bits of it appeared in Tiger ? not Snow Leopard, not Leopard, but Tiger, six years ago. Just a few basic pieces which worked for media playback and not a whole lot else, but it was a start. The first actual piece of software to bear the name QuickTime X 10.0 was shipped as part of Snow Leopard, along with a new minimalistic player application (also called QuickTime X) that used it. More functionality is present in QuickTime X than in the old QTKit which shipped as part of Tiger, but it's still a work in progress. QuickTime X 10.1, which will be part of Lion, contains more features still, as the "new QuickTime" gradually catches up to where the "old QuickTime" had got to.

It's like Apple threw together a flat-pack shed in their back garden one day twenty years ago, and gradually added bits and pieces to it over the years. A window here, a toilet there, a few new rooms, a second floor, then a third, a basement and a six-car garage. Only it never had a foundation or any insulation or any actual wiring. It was luxurious and wonderful, but you still had to read by candlelight after dark, and the toilets only flushed if you jiggled the handle. And every day, the ominous creaking sounds coming from the walls and ceilings grew louder.

So they went out and bought a big plot of land and started building a new house to the same floorplan as the one they'd cobbled together, only this one will have a proper frame instead of pressed cardboard, and electricity that doesn't start fires every third time you flip a switch. It's going to be great when it's finished, and more to the point it's necessary, but it doesn't happen overnight. They're building it in stages, and moving their stuff in a room at a time as each one's finished, over several years.

The application, QuickTime X, on which you so gleefully @#$%&, is the postcard that Apple sent out with the picture on the front of the architect's rendering of what one corner of the house's roof will look like when it's finished.

So let's bottom-line this thing. You, "Eye See Sound," are clearly deeply unhappy. This is fine. It's a free country. You're even free to share your deep unhappiness with others ? to a certain extent whether they want to hear about it or not.

But please don't run your mouth off about things of which you have absolutely no knowledge. You just end up misinforming people that way.

Thanks.

This one's worth framing. Thanks Jeff.

All the best,

Tom

The media API on iOS is called AVFoundation and it's got a lot of features. It will most likely replace QuickTime on OS X, although they might still keep the QuickTime name. QuickTime X on the other hand is a playback only API. Once you open a movie via a QuickTime X function, you can't process it, export it or read any useful data from it. It's essentially useless as it stands right now. I'm hoping this is on the priority list because all of my QuickTime-based apps are stuck in 32-bit land until a proper solution comes along.

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...

Which raises the question: What is FCP X built on? QuickTime X? AVFoundation? Something else?

All the best,

Tom

Maybe they're bundling it with the AVFoundation frameworks.

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...

In an App Store download? Interesting. I wonder if we'll actually download an installer rather than the app itself as is currently the case with App Store downloads.

All the best,

Tom

I believe my opinion is valid in as much as I use the software the way I use it and to a degree of success that is more than palatable to me, cheers. Quicktime X didn't do what I needed it to do and it was imposed upon me. Sure, maybe it is all you say but it had no Pro features so the most fundamental part of what I needed it to do as a Pro App, it didn't. if it is a "postcard that Apple sent out with the picture on the front of the architect's rendering of what one corner of the house's roof will look like when it's finished" then why was it imposed as the default feature? Oh, that's right, because Apple are now iApple, toy makers for the disposable income generation... and this is the most salient point of my dissatisfaction and the point that is ignored the most by those who defend iApple blindly. The funny thing is, I don't hate blindly, I don't love blindly, I respond to my experiences.

Yep, I'm fed up, as I stated... no deep insights offered from your awesome sense of perception there i'm afraid. I also stated when the upgrade time comes it is unlikely that I'll stick around with iApple... and that i'm not alone. Obviously though each of us over here that are fed up with the toy makers are all ignorant morons whose opinions are invalid... I shall pass that on, i'm sure everyone will be happy to be enlightened about their place in the grander scheme of things, cheers Sensei.

To say I don't know what i'm talking about is to assume I don't edit, I don't use Apple, I don't use FCP and I have simply turfed up and mouthed off. I do know what I am talking about within the realm of what I do, and within that realm iApple have been less than good. I am not misinforming people as I haven't deigned to inform anyone, I have expressed my experiences, my perceptions and my feelings. I will bet my flat on the fact that I am not a sole voice on this position. Will you bet your dwelling I am?

Yep I want to vent because for the last 2 years I've been 'fighting' with the set-up I used so peacefully for the 6 years previously. And yep I do it here because I have been reading this forum for about 8 years and I respect it. Dismissing my point of view as ignorant and and chucking a load of techno-talk at my derision for Quicktime X and thinking that that makes QX great, Fact! is, well, it's what you do when your partner sucks and you can't bring yourself to admit the change. Blinkers, for one. And selective arguing for another. QX isn't a Pro App. Sure it may have stuff under the hood, but it isn't for professionals now is it? If it was it would have the Pro Features that made me spend $30 on it the first time i licensed it. And my belief is FCP X will be the same. Sure, you'll be able to write a long essay about all the stuff it has under the hood and feel rather splendid about it but when the pudding is tasted my money is on it not being a bold step to a new NLE dawn, but rather it will be an extension of Apple no longer being Apple, but toy makers. And that is the point.

I don't think my lack of technological knowledge or my increasing antipathy to iApple denigrates my (and others) perception of Apple no longer being Apple but iApple and that I, and you, don't matter to them anymore.... perception of them matters, yes, but they don't care about you, or me, or anyone on here, because we don't generate a drop in the ocean of their bottom line. But hey, if you think stuff under the hood makes them all they were and promised they would be, then good for you and enjoy downloading your toys for years to come.

Or perhaps your extensive technical knowledge is your trees that stop you from seeing the woods aren't the same anymore. Ultimately I don't care as I'm not married to you so you can spend your money on what you want.

Call me clearly deeply unhappy in a condescending tone all you wish, it's a childish way to dismiss someone's opinion, which I believe is valid even if it isn't backed up by the hours spent reading manuals and articles you obviously have because it is an opinion based on my experience: but hey, this is fine. It's a free country. And I'm sure you felt a warm glow of satisfaction as you hit send, so i'm glad a sliver of light entered your life off the back off it.

Thing is, Apple no longer exists, and you won't see it till you take your heads out of the iSand.

Dude, install the QUickTime 7 player from the Snow Leopard install disc and do everything you need in the pro player.

I have no idea what that last sentence means.

All the best,

Tom

It seems plausible that Final Cut Pro X is based on a development framework that is already available in iOS.

In that case, as there is no more information coming out of Apple, those interested in the future of FCP might as well spend their time speculating. Expecting the best or the worst is up to the nature of those doing the expecting. You don't see things as they really are, you see things as you really are. When Apple deigns to tell us more, we'll have opinions on whose speculation was more accurate.

I can't help spending the next eight weeks trying to finding more out about Final Cut Pro X.

That meant upgrading to 10.6.7 so I could use iMovie. Learning about the UI and what the chief architect of pro applications think works for non-professional (but intelligent) users seems relevant.

As most effects in iMovie are implemented using Quartz Composer, and I have have ideas for more plug ins, I've finally started to learn how to make compositions (on my third attempt).

If Final Cut Pro X is to be based on a version of iOS's AV Foundation, I might as well speculate how the design of this framework reflects the future of Pro Apps, because you can bet Randy, Darrin and friends were at least asked how they'd like to store and manipulate AV content using iOS and OSX.

The first class to look at is AVAsset:


Here's what they Apple says about AVAsset:

Quote

An asset contains a collection of tracks that are intended to be presented or processed together, each of a uniform media type, including (but not limited to) audio, video, text, closed captions, and subtitles. The asset object provides information about whole resource, such as its duration or title, as well as hints for presentation, such as its natural size. Assets may also have metadata, represented by instances of AVMetadataItem.

A track is represented by an instance of AVAssetTrack. In a typical simple case, one track represents the audio component and another represents the video component; in a complex composition, there may be multiple overlapping tracks of audio and video.

I imagine that Final Cut Pro X's Compound Clips will be manipulated as AVAssets. Each track can have different kinds of media combined together.

Frame rates:
Each item can have a different 'frame rate' - this might mean that Final Cut Pro sequences might not have need to have specific frame rates (unless we specify that they do). This will be a good idea once the majority of playback devices will be able to deal with frame rates that change within a given story. I imagine that at some time in the future, Peter Jackson would rather not have The Hobbit films play at 48 fps throughout. Maybe he'll be able to get the right amount of shutter blur during some sequences by having some sections play at 24fps (I'm not talking about slow motion).

Fun fact: the highest frame rate that Apple's Core Media can define is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 fps.

'Multiscreen' playback:



The AV Foundation allows applications to use more than one AVPlayer to play an AVAsset at the same time, but each player can be playing back a different representation (activating different combinations of tracks). This combines the features of multiclips, stereoscopic 3D, mipmaps and Final Cut Pro X Auditions in a single feature. This illustration is from Apple's iOS developer library - note that the sample players are playing different timecodes at the same time too. That means that audio and video can also be played at different synchronizations depending on the player.

For more information, here's Apple's developer introduction to the AV Foundation.

Here's specific information on AVAsset and how time is represented in AV foundation.

I'm sure there's a lot more to support Final Cut Pro X speculation at [developer.apple.com]

Please remember that Apple probably has plans for the next few versions of Final Cut Pro, they won't be using all the features of AV Foundation in the version coming out in June (or July...).

___________________________________________________
Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, London

alex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com + .com

Hey Jeff,
Maybe you can explain to this to me because it is really something I am a bit ignorant about. Why was QT X introduced in the first place if it didn't work properly?What was its purpose unless, as you suggested, it was just a preview on a postcard? I really don't know.
I was asked to speak about underwater filming for a Media Association Group recently and gave them a data disc with a film which they then copied over to their MBP. It had played just fine on my MBP in QT7. When the panel presentation was over, they went to show the film and it would play than stall,then play a little more before stalling with the audio emitting all kinds of squawking and other problems. I went to look over the shoulder of the guy whose MBP it was and he was trying to play it on QTX which obviously was what the problem was. So, again, what was the thinking behind QT-X and why would Apple ship something that simply does not work. A bug is one thing but QT-X is a lot more than a simple bug. Educate me please.
Steve

steve-sharksdelight

The OS X 10.6 version of QT X player is built on QTKit and QT X both. QT X on snow leopard is, for a very limited subset of functions, directly plays H.264/AAC using Core Audio and Core Video (Image) directly. All other playback falls through to QT Kit (the limited 64 bit QT functions) or eventually falls back to the C-API that makes up the majority of QT today.

On 10.7 Lion I expect QT X player to be based on AV Foundation as AV Foundation is native to 10.7

Final Cut Pro X is built on AV Foundation.

Philip