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Today Apple released Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 which offers several new features such as multicam and broadcast monitoring (beta) that were previously missing.
Looking through the details, it's hard to find anything that would appeal to consumers and it is clear that this is an attempt by Apple to appease at least some of the pros. My first reaction (and the reaction of a lot of people on Twitter) was that this was the version Apple should have released back in June.
Here are some of the features I found interesting:
That doesn't make it a perfect tool for the professional broadcast / film industries of course. I really can't see EDL support ever being added, nor support for broadcast tape capture. But over time I think this will matter less and less. Case in point: I'm working on a feature right now and was very surprised when the post house asked me to deliver the Final Cut Pro 7 project for grading / mixing instead of EDLs and OMF.
I think Apple is very much gambling on the future here and I am definitely considering looking into it for short form work.
Update: Larry Jordan offers more info on the differences between FCP7 and FCPX's multicam implementation. Thanks Larry!
FCP 7 would LINK up to 128 cameras in a multicam clip, however you could only view 16 of them. FCP X links and allows you to view up to 64 clips at once, by switching between up to four banks of 16 cameras each. Also, edits can be made in real-time or by positioning the playhead.
Apple's recent obsolescence of Final Cut Studio has forced a lot of us to reexamine which editing platform we want to use for future work. Ironically, Adobe Premiere Pro is a much easier transition for FCP 7 users than Final Cut Pro X due to its similar interface, support for old FCP projects and ability to use FCP's keyboard shortcuts.
The transition to Premiere is easier than any other NLE but there are lots of little things that I miss from Final Cut Pro. Here's a list of some of them, in no particular order.
The Ctrl+V keyboard shortcut in Final Cut Pro can be used to make a cut on the timeline at the current playhead position. While Premiere also has a keyboard shortcut for cutting (Cmd+K), it pauses playback when it does so. There is no way to cut and continue playing.
Premiere Pro is limited only to four multicam angles.
Unlike Final Cut Pro, the audio mixer in Premiere doesn't work on a clip-by-clip basis. Every adjustment affects the entire track.
It took such a long time for colored markers to be introduced in Final Cut Pro 7 that I was sad to see them disappear in FCPX. Premiere needs this too.
Final Cut Pro can also export text-based marker lists, which is a great way of sending markers to another application. If Adobe were to implement this, I would also recommend they include a way of importing markers from a list, which Final Cut Pro unfortunately lacks.
Like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere has a useful Paste Attributes command. However, unlike FCP, this function does not allow you to specify which attributes you would like to paste - it just pastes everything. This is often not what you want.
Ctrl-G in FCP can be used to easily close a gap in your timeline. There is no equivalent keyboard shortcut in Premiere to do this in one step.
Update: This one seems to have been misunderstood by a lot of people so I'll repeat it with additional emphasis: there is no way to do this in one step. There are many ways to do this in more than one step.
Only one project can be open at a time in Premiere. There is no way to refer back to another project without closing the first one.
When you cancel a render halfway through, Premiere discards the entire render file, unlike Final Cut Pro where the portion you rendered remains valid.
Using the JKL keys to navigate through media in Premiere can sometimes be tricky because the audio becomes high-pitched and difficult to understand.
Scrolling your mouse vertically scrolls the Premiere Pro timeline horizontally. This is useful if your mouse is only capable of vertical scrolling, but if you have a trackpad or a mouse with a scroll ball, there is no way to scroll vertically to see extra tracks. There should at least be a preference for this behavior.
(FCP tip: if you have a mouse with a vertical scroll wheel only, hold down Cmd when scrolling and it will scroll horizontally.)
There is no indicator icon to show a through edit. A through edit is a cut within a clip where the frames on either side of the cut are adjacent to each other. It appears to the viewer as if there is no cut at all, and in most cases it is unnecessary and should be removed.
When media goes offline, you can browse to the location of the file if you know where it is but there is no way to search your entire hard drive.
When inserting or overwriting a clip to the timeline in Final Cut Pro, the tracks that the video and audio will end up on are controlled by the buttons in the patch panel that are normally marked v1, a1 and a2. If you don't want to insert a track, click the button in the patch panel to disconnect it.
In Premiere things work differently. The patch panels AND the tracks need to be selected in order for this to work. If you want to insert video on video track 2 without any audio and have disconnected the A1 patch button, having an audio track selected will insert a blank space into that track. It seems redundant for patch buttons and audio tracks to need to be selected in order for this to work as expected when only patch buttons are needed in other NLEs.
Walter Biscardi gives a video overview of this problem here.
Final Cut Pro 7 finally brought us a long-requested timecode overlay window. While Premiere does show timecode in the Info window, this is not a direct equivalent.
In Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 and higher, if you drag a clip and press the N key to toggle snapping, snapping will be switched on or off only for the duration of the drag. Once you let go of the clip, snapping reverts to its previous value. I found this feature very useful.
Final Cut Pro can place markers on a clip whenever an audio peak occurs. There is no such function in Premiere.
While you can view how many times an entire clip has been used, there is no way to see if a particular frame has been used more than once. This is crucial for film projects that will be having a negative cut.
Sequence markers in Premiere Pro allow you to set a name, description, duration and various other options. Clip markers cannot be customized at all.
This is a list of things I think FCP does better than Premiere. In some cases, Premiere has no equivalent feature. In others, the feature exists but I feel it is lacking. None of these problems have prevented me from editing successfully with Premiere, but things would be smoother and certain workflows much easier if these features were present. I'm sure Adobe has been getting a lot of feedback from former FCP users and I have high hopes for CS6.
Sound off in the comments if you can think of any more things Adobe should borrow from Final Cut Pro.
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was released earlier today. I've heard a couple of people say they're not enthusiastic about it and, with features like Autosave and Launchpad, it's mainly geared at consumers. I completely disagree and here's my list of five features that are great for editors and video professionals (in no particular order).
Even in the 21st century, many people I know still use good old Sneakernet to distribute files between computers. People still use such a low-tech method of transferring files because the machines don't need to be networked to each other, there's no setup process and you're not opening yourself up to potential security issues (assuming the files and the drive are virus-free, of course).
AirDrop allows you to send files to people physically located nearby who are not necessarily on the same Wi-Fi network. When you want to send a file to someone, both of you click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar and you then drag the file onto the person's name. If they accept the file, it is encrypted and sent directly to their Downloads folder.
You only appear to other users on the network if you have the AirDrop folder open. This provides greater privacy and security than having regular file sharing running constantly.
Every Mac now has the potential to be a server for just $50, giving you a great deal of control over your system and the users that access it.
Lion now includes Xsan, a network file system popular with video editors. This used to cost $999 so it's a huge saving for large installations.
Love it or loathe it, you can't deny that Final Cut Pro X is built on a great technical foundation. AV Foundation ships with Lion and allows developers to utilize the same technology in their applications. It's something we plan to explore to improve future versions of Pro Media Tools.
It's also worth noting that the QuickTime 7 API is still there so existing QuickTime applications will continue to work. Final Cut Pro 7 runs just fine in Lion.
This feature has been part of Windows for decades and I'm surprised it's taken this long to make it to the Mac. If you drag a folder onto another folder with the same name, it now gives you the option to merge the two together. This is a huge timesaver.
We're big fans of incremental backups, which is why we created FCP Versioner. It's great to see something similar included in the OS for applications that support it.
Other nice features include the ability to encrypt an entire drive without a perceptible performance drop (according to Apple's marketing), OpenGL 3.2, Resume and Time Machine local snapshots, for recovering files when you're on the road without your Time Capsule or backup drive.
Lion seems faster too - I've seen noticeable performance improvements in all of our applications when run under Lion.
Of course, there are downsides too. Firstly, it's only available from the Mac App Store. If you are running OS X 10.5 Leopard, you will need to first upgrade to 10.6 Snow Leopard in order to access the store and download Lion. Apple will be selling Lion USB keys for $69 in August for users on Leopard or without broadband internet access.
Secondly, Rosetta is dead. This means that applications built for PowerPC computers will not work on Lion, including the Final Cut Studio 2 installer.
Thirdly, for some reason Apple decided to invert scrolling in Lion, meaning that dragging two fingers down scrolls up and vice versa. This would work well on a touchscreen but feels unnatural with a scroll mouse or trackpad. Fortunately it can be disabled in System Preferences but I don't know why Apple decided to make this the default.
Fourthly, features that some professionals have been demanding for a while, such as OpenGL 4.1, 10-bit monitor support and Blu-ray playback via third party drives still haven't materialized.
Overall, I think Lion is a step forward for professionals that provides much-needed additions to OS X. Driver and application support will likely take a while to catch up, despite the beta period, so as a rule I wouldn't recommend using it for professional use until the .3 or .4 update ships, even though I've actually found it to be quite stable in my testing.
I've already mentioned The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Final Cut Pro X but when it comes to developer features, there's a lot more to like.
Chris Kenny has been doing some delving and discovered that there are references to Python and AppleScript in the Final Cut Pro X app. This would be a big step up from the current method of sending commands via Apple Events.
There are also references to XML import and Final Cut Pro XML import, which implies that they will be two different formats. This makes sense, as the structure of FCPX projects has changed significantly (no more bins and no concept of tracks for instance) and there is a greater focus on metadata.
Neither of these are publicly accessible right now but they show that Apple has at least experimented with these functions and it is likely that they will be enabled in a future release. There has been speculation that import of FCP7 projects or XML may never come as the project formats are too different, but I think it's likely that we will at least see an FCPX-specific exchange format at some point in the future.
Final Cut Pro X now uses the Motion engine to render effects, which means that plugin output is now consistent between Final Cut Pro and Motion - something that was not the case in previous versions. Developers need to wrap their Motion plugins as Final Cut Effects in order for them to show up in Final Cut Pro X.
Other notable changes include more control over plugin user interfaces, support for multi-threading, keyframing, undo and bezier paths. These have been requested for a long time so it's great that they're now here. Thanks to Darrin Cardani and Paul Schneider at Apple for listening to the needs of developers.
Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5 require plugins to be compiled as 64-bit so most users' plugins won't be compatible. This is only a temporary problem until plugin developers catch up and the benefits of a 64-bit environment and FxPlug 2.0 will make it worthwhile. (There are, of course, some bugs in the implementation as would be expected in a 1.0 release.)
Just before Final Cut Pro X was unveiled at NAB earlier this year, I wrote a post about my Top 5 Developer Requests for the Next Final Cut Pro.
Storing settings in preference lists was number one and, as expected, this was implemented. While the reasons for wanting it so badly (mainly for programmatically changing scratch disk locations) are less important in Final Cut Pro X, we can still do a lot of things with it.
Making the Final Cut Pro project format more open was second on the list. This one is a little more complex because on the one hand, it's in SQLite format which makes it readable by the sqlite3 Terminal command but on the other, Core Data assumes that no-one other than the owning application will ever touch those files and so it's very easy to corrupt it if you're not careful. Also, while the SQLite format offers some predictability, Apple are free to structure the database any way they see fit and change it without notice in future versions. I've written a basic filename parser but I'm going to wait for official documentation or an API before doing anything more substantial.
Third, fourth and fifth on the list were requests for more API control. This is not in the initial release of Final Cut Pro X and remains to be seen if it will be in future versions.
Of course, I wrote this on the assumption that FCPX wouldn't remove any developer features that were in the previous version. While the developer features are sparse in the current version, the future looks bright, especially as it appears that Apple is expecting third-party developers to fill in many of the gaps in FCPX's feature set.
This list will document the bugs in Final Cut Pro X as they become apparent.
This one is scary. There are several reports of people losing work due to FCPX's autosave function (which is the only way to save) not working.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15469208
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15460282
When you add media from another drive and choose not to copy the files to your Final Cut Events folder, FCPX adds symbolic links to the Final Cut Events folder that point back to these files.
Some people have been reporting that they relaunched FCPX to find all of their media offline. When they looked in the Final Cut Events folder, FCPX had either deleted the symbolic links or failed to save them in the first place.
You can reconnect them by going to File > Import > Files but this causes another bug to surface: the files will always be copied to your Final Cut Events folder even if you deselect the option to do so.
Some people are reporting that Undo is disabled for them. What makes this an especially big problem is that FCPX saves automatically and so any mistakes they make are immortalized forever if they can't undo them.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15467240
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3136611
There are reports of projects disappearing from the project library.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15497434
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3136040
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3136124
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3133840
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3133760
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3134562
If you experience problems with media, I would recommend updating to OS X 10.6.8 which "Fixes an issue when importing certain media files into Final Cut Pro." I don't yet know if it solves these particular issues though.
Apple recommends only running FCPX on machines with one graphics card.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3842
This can be caused by templates from previous versions of Motion residing in the ~/Library/Application Support/Motion folder. To get around this, move the templates from this folder. More info here.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15582977#15582977
This can happen if certain folders exist on the drive. The poster in this forum thread says folders called "private" and possibly "backup" can cause this issue:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15794411#15794411
I'd be interested to hear if anyone finds any other folders that can cause the drive to disappear in FCPX.
More bugs will be listed as they surface.
Update: There are more bugs listed in the comments of this post, on LAFCPUG and at FCPX Quirks.
Apple just gave a sneak preview of Final Cut Pro X at the NAB Supermeet. I wasn't there so thanks to everyone who tweeted and posted photos of the event.
There's a lot to like - 64-bit Cocoa rewrite, OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch support, color management to prevent gamma shifts, no rendering or transcoding, native support for DSLRs and many more features. You can read the full list here.
Apple only talked about new features so there was no mention of existing features that had made it into the new version. Consequently the presentation left more questions than it answered - what about XML, EDLs, tape workflows, scopes, DVD output? We won't find that out until the release.
There is an emphasis on automation in the new version - it can automatically detect audio hum and remove it, and the magnetic timeline can simplify L- and J-cuts by automatically moving clips to a new layer to prevent clip collisions. I think this is great, as anything that makes me a faster editor makes me a better editor, however I can see a lot of cases where this would be unwanted and I hope it can be disabled when necessary.
My favorite features are the 64-bit rewrite, the lack of rendering, the new keyframe editor and Plural Eyes-style audio syncing.
The feature I'm most unsure about is dynamic tracks. Tracks will appear and disappear as you move clips around and new tracks will be added when you use the magnetic timeline. This could cause organizational problems if you always put music on tracks 8-9 for instance, and it would be a nightmare if you need to output a multi-channel show. Apple sought professional feedback so I assume this issue was brought up and that they have a solution for it.
There was no mention of other apps in the suite. Final Cut Pro X will be sold in June via the App Store so this means it will be a self-contained app. There is no way to sell a group of apps via the store, however it would still be possible to sell them separately like iWork. It also means there is no way of upgrading if you own an old version of Final Cut Pro, however the $299 price point is the same as the FCP 6 to FCP 7 upgrade cost.
What about my top 5 developer requests? Number 1 looks to be done; I'm not sure about any of the others.
Although I haven't tried the new version, I'm cautiously optimistic. There are a lot of features designed for speeding things up and that's always a good thing. It's also clear that Apple isn't trying to do everything, so it leaves a lot of gaps for third-party developers like myself to fill. As it is an App Store app, it won't overwrite the old version of Final Cut Studio so you can still go back if anything is missing.
The new version would be great for a lot of my smaller projects for the web but I don't yet know how well it would translate to larger projects where I need Cinema Tools, tape ingest / output and DVD creation. That's something I'll only find out when it's released.
P.S. Anyone else prefer the old icon to the new one?
Update: "Today was just a sneak peak of Final Cut Pro, stay tuned," an Apple representative told The Loop. This implies that there may be additional apps available separately.
Lots of people have been posting wish lists for the next version of Final Cut Pro with such features as 64-bit support, OpenCL, etc. One thing I haven't seen is a wishlist from a developer's perspective, so here's mine.
I've included a description of the feature, how likely I reckon it is to be implemented and what we could do with it if it was.
Apple introduced a standardized format for preference files in Mac OS X that allows applications to easily read and write from them. Final Cut Pro, which dates back to the days of OS 9, uses a proprietary binary format that only Apple knows how to read from and write to. It is also the reason why Final Cut Pro preferences get corrupted so easily.
What we could do with it: You could choose to backup only certain settings in Preference Manager instead of the entire file. Path Manager could modify and sync Final Cut Pro scratch disks.
Likelihood: Certain. If they've rewritten FCP, there is no reason why they would not use the standardized OS X preference system.
There is currently no method of reading from or writing to Final Cut Pro project files. The workaround is to export an XML copy from Final Cut Pro. The downsides to this are that Final Cut Pro has to be running, exporting to XML is slow and it locks up FCP so the user can't continue working.
There are several solutions to this problem - Apple could keep the format the same and release detailed specifications, they could create an API for reading and writing or they could convert the Final Cut Pro project format to XML (perhaps with binary and plain-text options like Maya). I don't really mind which method they choose as long as a solution arrives.
What we could do with it: FCP Versioner would be faster and would no longer lock up Final Cut Pro when exporting to XML. Pro Media Tools would be much faster and would not require FCP to be installed in order to read an FCP project file.
Likelihood: 50/50. I'm sure Apple will make big changes to the file format but we'll have to see if these are developer-friendly.
The only way to get timecode from a Final Cut Pro project is to setup a fake MIDI device to receive the information. The downside to this method is that it is not very user-friendly - the user must specifically setup the device as a control surface in FCP and must have the audio mixing window open at all times.
A playback and timecode API would allow developers to control the Final Cut Pro timeline and receive timecode without any intervention on the user's part.
What we could do with it: Final Cut Pro syncing for Cut Notes with no complex setup for the user.
Likelihood: Ordinarily I would think this was unlikely but there are rumors that there will be an official iPad control app for Final Cut Pro. If this rumor is true, I highly doubt that Apple is using the user-unfriendly method of setting it up as a MIDI control surface.
With Apple Events, developers can send commands directly to Final Cut Pro for such tasks as saving a project or highlighting a clip in a bin. There is no way to automatically export a sequence to a QuickTime movie without user intervention.
What I'd like is a command that exports all or part of a sequence to a file the developer specifies along with the ability to specify export settings such as the codec, if it is self-contained, whether or not it should contain markers, etc.
What we could do with it: This would be incredibly useful for a super-secret future product...
Likelihood: Unlikely.
All third-party applications have to be launched separately and there is currently no way to integrate a third-party application with Final Cut Pro. What I would like is the ability to add interface buttons or menu items to send data to third-party applications in the background. The applications could then send data back without the user leaving Final Cut Pro.
What we could do with it: Lots of things, including adding buttons to manually initiate FCP Versioner backups from within FCP, a "Send to Edit Detector" command that cuts up a clip on your timeline at each edit point, an "Add Quick Bin" menu item, and more.
Likelihood: It's a long shot.
I hope at the very least that 1 and 2 are implemented in the new FCP. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Do any other developers have requests?
Today Apple released brand-new MacBook Pros with Intel's LightPeak technology, now called Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt is a 10 Gbps port that can daisy-chain up to six devices including a display. To give you an idea of how fast it is, USB 3.0 is 5 Gbps, Firewire 3200 is 3 Gbps, eSATA is 2.4 Gbps and Fibre Channel can be up to 4 Gbps.
To me, this is a game-changer because these ports can become any type of port as long as you have an adapter, so Apple essentially added support for USB 3.0, eSATA and anything else you like in one go. Thunderbolt is a huge leap forward for professional users. Its power is in its versatility.
It also means that laptops can finally rival desktops in I/O performance. As an example of the amount of throughput you'll be able to get on a laptop, Apple showed a demo of Final Cut Pro running four streams of uncompressed HD on the 15" MacBook Pro, peaking at 600MB/s.
And if you're in a shared environment you'll be able to easily add laptops, or indeed any type of Mac, to an Xsan network for fast access to shared storage, which is something that was difficult to do before.
Finally, Apple posted some new details about Mac OS X 10.7 Lion today and revealed that the desktop and server versions of the operating system will be merged together, meaning that every Mac is now a server out of the box. Couple that with Thunderbolt and the Mac Mini suddenly looks reasonable as an Xsan metadata controller (and indeed for many other server tasks) now that the Xserve has been discontinued.
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