I hate to say this but FCP X is easy ...and fast

So after buying AVID MC 5.5 and installing and spending the last week learning it (and not being thrilled about not knowing all the keyboard shortcuts and getting tired of all the mousing around in what seems to be 4 steps to do what takes one in FCP 7).....

I went back and played with FCP X

It's fun and easy and pretty intuitive.

.... if Apple just put in the RT audio mixer, the copy/paste attributes and had some better in and out options and let us bring old FCP projects into this -- they could have avoided this firestorm. The no legacy projects import is the major deal breaker for us.

Still can't use it for our broadcast and complex corporate work - I hope it will improve to the point that we can.

The plus side - My editors and I willl soon be proficient in three major NLE's - Premiere - Avid and FCP 7 --

Apple - just keep selling FCP 7 till this is ready and stop the exodus.

I think you've done a pretty good job on describing some of the basic plusses and minuses of FCPX. I believe Apple will add many of these features or their API will open the door to good third party solutions.

FCPX is in its infancy. I can't wait for it to grow up.

If X would stop crashing every 2 minutes that would be a great start. On the plus side, I get to keep Jon busy with crash reports.

FCP X crashing? I didn't get it to crash so far, but I got it to clog up the memory in a matter of a minute. Open FCP X, put a clip in the timeline, apply some effects and 4 GB of memory are already full, which makes OSX start to swap memory out on the HD. This makes FCP X horribly slow.

And yes, I did switch off background rendering. This feature is neat, but a total energy waste (my Mac uses about 70 Watts more when all the CPUs are rendering all the time for no reason) and it makes FCP X respond much slower.

--
Christoph Vonrhein
[www.chv-plugins.com]

I got two crashes the first day I used it and none since for what is now weeks. I get beach balls though that sometimes results in my doing a force quit. Things open as I have left them though. I suspect the beach balls have to do with memory management issues.

Andy, If you're getting crashes have you had a look at the crash logs? The first couple of lines can often indicate what the cause is.

I got it to crash repeatedly by putting text on a background layer and trying tonplay it back.



www.strypesinpost.com

There is no background rendering in FCP X. FCP X is on render when idle for 5 secs. Classic FCP had background rendering. You could launch a second instance of FCP and have it render while you work on another project. Of course, it gets laggy and crashy, so I only use it when I needed it, but that is background rendering.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
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> I got it to crash repeatedly by putting text on a
> background layer and trying tonplay it back.

Can you post a step by step? I've had no problem with text as connected clip over video on Primary Storyline. At worst it's a brief beach ball.

strypes Wrote:
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> There is no background rendering in FCP X. FCP X
> is on render when idle for 5 secs. Classic FCP had
> background rendering. You could launch a second
> instance of FCP and have it render while you work
> on another project. Of course, it gets laggy and
> crashy, so I only use it when I needed it, but
> that is background rendering.

FCPX seems to be doing "idle" rendering most of the time. I'd have to watch carefully what functions take place while using the cursor or keyboard to do other things. I'd have to watch both the FCPX background task thingy and Activity monitor (for core and/or memory use).

It may do analysis or transcoding (proxy or optimized) in background while importing but rendering only during idle time for FX stuff for example.

>> background layer and trying tonplay it back.

>Can you post a step by step? I've had no problem with text as connected clip over
>video on Primary Storyline. At worst it's a brief beach ball.

I tried to do a placeholder over a shot, so I dropped a color generator and set that to black and placed that on track 2 (aka connecting clip), then I put a text generator (it's a slide in text generator) on track 3 (aka connecting clip to the connecting clip). Then I hit play and FCP crashes.



www.strypesinpost.com

P.S. Don't ask why I used a slide in text generator. I just haven't found the default FCP text generator yet.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
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> P.S. Don't ask why I used a slide in text
> generator. I just haven't found the default FCP
> text generator yet.

The default text generator is Motion 5 and then Rig and Publish.

Centered or Custom might be close to generic if that's what you're looking for. Look at Titles Built In/Out for those.
Middle if you're looking in Lower Thirds might be considered generic as well.

Can't reproduce that.

BTW, everything is connected to the primary storyline. You can't connect clips to clips unless you make them a compound clips and that's connected to the primary.

All the best,

Tom

I was working off XDCAM EX footage. That may have contributed to the problem. I'll test it again when I get home.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
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> I was working off XDCAM EX footage. That may have
> contributed to the problem. I'll test it again
> when I get home.

How was Proxy and Optimized Media set in Preferences?
Was the EX .mov media in the Event folder or was it aliased to another location?

It was not set to create or use optimized media. Basically, I was working off XDCAM EX files in a Quicktime wrapper. Doesn't work too well as I have color shifts.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It was not set to create or use optimized media.
> Basically, I was working off XDCAM EX files in a
> Quicktime wrapper. Doesn't work too well as I have
> color shifts.

Although nearly all my shooting is XDCAM EX, I haven't torture tested that yet. A Sony rep has said publicly that they are working on some things related so maybe it's something on their end. FCPX is color managed unlike FCP7.

ClipBrowser and XDCAM Transfer are EOL and will not be made compatible with Lion. XDCAM Browser will be and I wouldn't doubt they'll also have a plugin as well at some point.

Where are you seeing the color shifts? On import? Maybe give Optimize Media a try and see if it has impact on either stability or the color shift issues. You can right click on an EX file in Event Viewer and select Transcode Media to test with one file.

Andy, what kind of work are you doing?

The default text generator is here:
[files.me.com]