My thoughts on the new Final Cut Studio
Wow, I go away for a couple of days and Apple has a brand new version of FCS waiting for me when I get back (although I do think the fact that it is simply called Final Cut Studio and not Final Cut Studio 3 will cause confusion).
Here are my first impressions:
Architecture
This is Leopard and Intel-only, which is a little surprising because there's only a couple of months until Snow Leopard comes out, and I think many of us thought a Snow Leopard-only release in September was likely. There is no word on whether or not it takes advantage of the new features of Snow Leopard such as Grand Central Dispatch or OpenCL, nor any indication that Final Cut Pro has been rewritten in Cocoa as has been so often speculated. I noticed a lot of the screenshots in Apple's examples were taken in Tiger, suggesting that perhaps the feature list was set long before Snow Leopard was announced.
Apple claims that Final Cut Studio will not work on a device with integrated graphics - such as a MacBook or Mac Mini. However, they also say that ProRes 422 Proxy is designed for editing on a MacBook or MacBook Pro, so it would appear that Final Cut Pro can at least be used on a machine with integrated graphics, if not some of the other apps in the suite.
It's also worth noting that the minor applications in the suite only received minor updates, as indicated by their version numbers. So it is likely that the
problems with Compressor have not gone away.
Blu-ray
Blu-ray burning directly in Compressor - I certainly didn't expect this. And integrating it into Compressor is significant too. Although I never really thought about it before, the majority of the DVDs I make in DVDSP are rough cuts for client approval that don't need a fancy custom menu and I never make use of any of the advanced features like scripting. I would imagine many people are in the same boat and therefore burning a basic disc in Compressor is a much faster and more efficient way to work.
It is telling though, that DVD Studio Pro did not receive a significant update for the second time running. We have been using essentially the same version for the past three years (an eternity in the technology world), and it suggests that Apple may perhaps discontinue this product in the future.
More ProRes options
Don't underestimate the importance of this. ProRes 4444 (the extra 4 refers to the alpha channel) allows you to convert footage shot with a high-end 4:4:4 camera to ProRes without sacrificing color information. With previous versions of Final Cut Studio, you would have had to leave it uncompressed (using up significantly more disk space and bandwidth), use Animation (slow) or explore a third-party codec.
The mastering possibilities are interesting too. HDCAM SR has long been the industry choice for HD mastering but it is expensive. Using ProRes 4444, you could create an HD master of equivalent quality to HDCAM SR but on a significantly cheaper LTO tape (LTO drives cost less than 1/10th of the cost of an HDCAM SR deck). LTO is the standard for data backup / archiving in the IT world and offers a number of other benefits such as potentially faster-than-realtime writing and also being format, frame size and frame rate agnostic. Of course, the receiver would have to have an LTO deck and necessary equipment.
LiveType discontinued
LiveType has long been superseded by Motion so it was only a matter of time before it was canned. In Motion 4 you can now adjust individual letters in a text object, meaning the one advantage LiveType had over Motion has now disappeared and consequently, LiveType has been discontinued. It was inevitable really.
Avid-like features
There are some nice new features to emulate Avid functionality, such as the new floating timecode display, global transitions and the ability to automatically import clips just by plugging in a drive. This is the benefit of competition.
Faster, better quality
I am a big fan of anything that makes things faster and/or improves video or audio quality. Background rendering and exporting is a huge feature and arguably should have been in Final Cut Pro 6 because they'd already laid the foundations with background SmoothCam processing.
Soundtrack Pro has a significantly redesigned architecture which improves performance and will hopefully address some of the issues I have experienced, such as working for a while on a project and then suddenly not being able to save it. It also features improved audio cleanup tools.
Faster frame control processing in Compressor gets my vote too.
RED support
The RED post workflow has always had issues and Apple has clearly developed the new Color and Cinema Tools with RED in mind. The main stumbling block in the RED workflow seems to be conforming the R3Ds once the offline edit is complete, and some third-party solutions have been created in an attempt to address this.
Now you can maintain the relationship between your original RED camera footage and your editing proxies inside a Cinema Tools database (hopefully CT creates and links the proxies automatically). You edit the proxies, export to Color and grade the original R3Ds using the data from the database to conform. This greatly simplifies things, although some would argue that native REDCODE support in the FCP timeline would be even better - perhaps when RED Rocket comes out?
Color also now supports 4K - although Apple will still be behind if the 6K Scarlet comes out this year as predicted.
Media Management
One thing people haven't commented much on is the improved media management, which has been the bane of every Final Cut Pro user at one point or another. Spotlight in Mac OS X indexes the files on your hard disk in a database and Final Cut Pro 7 uses that data to quickly reconnect the files, as opposed to querying them directly.
What this means is that FCP can reconnect files faster (so projects will presumably load a lot quicker) and hopefully be more intelligent when a file changes.
Missed opportunities
- No ScriptSync (Avid) / Speech-to-Text (Premiere) - There is no way of syncing dialogue up to a script or automatically converting it to text. This means that, unless you have an assistant to transcribe it for you, you have to search through a load of footage in order to find the line of dialogue or the soundbite you are looking for.
- No XML project files - Please Apple, this would make it far, far easier to seamlessly integrate Final Cut Pro with other applications.
- No word on Phenomenon - Contrary to speculation, the Shake replacement codenamed Phenomenon was not included in Final Cut Studio or bundled into Motion, which begs the question of whether it will ever arrive.
Final Thoughts
There's some good stuff here - Apple has (eventually) listened to a lot of our complaints about media management, exports typing up the application, etc. But how well these work in reality will remain to be seen. I won't get my copy until next week.
But maybe it's not called Final Cut Studio 3 because there's not really anything there to justify calling it that. Although Final Cut Studio 2 also had few major features, it did at least come with a brand new application that used to cost $20k (Color). I think the new price cut reflects Apple's recognition that selling the upgrade at $499 would perhaps not be value for money, meaning future updates may not necessarily be as cheap.
Interesting Links
Official Final Cut Studio pageFully-indexed online Final Cut Pro manualFinal Cut Studio in Depth - 66 page document from Apple detailing all the changes
Apple ProRes white paperApple KB: Installing content when upgradingMacWorld review by Mike CurtisHow to Install Final Cut Studio 3Norman Hollyn's takeIn-depth review by Jan OzerMike Jones compares Final Cut Pro 7 to his wishlistInstalling Final Cut Pro 6 and 7 side-by-sideChanges in FCP 7.0 XML - for developers
Studio Daily summaryMore links from xlr8yourmac.comPosted by Jon Chappell on Jul 24 2009 to
Analysis,
Final Cut Studio,
ApplePermalinkFinal Cut Pro 6.0.6 released
Apple today released
Final Cut Pro 6.0.6.
The
release notes name only one fix:
Improved Real-Time Playback on Certain Mac Pro and Xserve ModelsFinal Cut Pro 6.0.6 improves real-time playback capabilities with Mac Pro (Early 2009) models and Xserve (Early 2009) models when working with complex sequences or high-bandwidth media formats.
There are no new features, but I wasn't actually expecting any - in fact, I wasn't expecting an FCP 6.0.6 update at all. I guess this was an urgent fix.
Of course, this new update will raise questions about Final Cut Studio 3 but I am confident that it is in development. Apple's ProApp developers on the
pro-apps-dev mailing list are very much alive and well, and frequently ask third-party developers what features they would like to see in future versions. Some kind of official acknowledgment and a tentative release schedule from Apple would be nice though.
The usual guidelines apply - don't update in the middle of a project, don't update for several weeks so that potential bugs and issues have a chance to show themselves, don't update if you don't need the features in this patch (it only applies to 2009 models), and make sure to clone your drive before you update.
Posted by Jon Chappell on Jun 23 2009 to
Final Cut Studio,
Video Editing,
ApplePermalinkSign the DVD Studio Pro Blu-ray petition
AppleInsider recently had an
article listing the version numbers of the applications in Final Cut Studio 3.
Although it's just a series of numbers, it is a useful indicator of just how much the applications have been updated. The most notable numbers are Color 1.5, Compressor 3.5 - indicating relatively minor changes - and DVD Studio Pro 4.2.2 - indicating virtually no changes at all.
So for those of you hoping for a major DVD Studio Pro update that supports Blu-ray burning, it looks like you're going to be disappointed once again.
There is now a petition
circulating that asks Apple to reconsider its policy.
"We, the undersigned, will not buy a new version of Final Cut Studio if it is still lacking Blu-ray support."
Be sure to add your signature if you agree.
Posted by Jon Chappell on Jun 5 2009 to
DVD,
Apple,
Final Cut StudioPermalinkCompressor error - "You must enter a name for this batch submission"
Sometimes when you submit a batch, you may get the error:
"You must enter a name for this batch submission. This is the name that identifies this submission in the Batch Monitor and History window."
This error pops up when you drag items into the batch window in the
wrong order. You must drag the clip in first and then drag in the settings and destinations.
There really shouldn't be a specific order for doing this but unfortunately Compressor can be very illogical at times.
Posted by Jon Chappell on May 3 2009 to
Final Cut Studio,
Apple,
Video EditingPermalinkIncoming network connection dialogs keep appearing
Amazingly for an OS that markets itself as secure, the firewall in OS X is not switched on by default. So if you switch it to the recommended mode, "Set access for specific services and applications", OS X will prompt you to allow or deny incoming connections.
But sometimes that dialog will not go away! Certain applications such as QmasterStatusMenu.app and Batch Monitor.app cause the dialog to pop up every 5 seconds (or every 20 seconds if you ignore it) which gets annoying very quickly.
The reason for this is that applications like QmasterStatusMenu.app and Batch Monitor.app don't communicate on the same port each time. It is constantly changing, as this log excerpt shows:
This really confuses the very basic OS X firewall.
Some people have recommended switching the firewall off but I wouldn't recommend this. There's always a trade-off between security and convenience, but this trade-off is far too big. Instead, it is much better to just obtain a more advanced firewall.
I would recommend
Little Snitch for this job. It gives you infinitely more options than the default firewall, lets you see where apps are sending data, doesn't bug you too often, and most importantly, it copes with applications that constantly change ports so those annoying 5-second popups go away.
The demo gives you full functionality for 3 hours, after which you just restart the firewall again. That's a lot better than popups every 5 seconds, but if 3 hours is too often, you can buy a single license for $29.99.
Just install Little Snitch, restart the computer and switch the default OS X firewall to "Allow all incoming connections". Little Snitch then takes over - you can now use Qmaster and be safe at the same time.
Posted by Jon Chappell on Apr 19 2009 to
Apple,
Final Cut Studio,
UtilitiesPermalinkGuide to Final Cut Pro Internal Tools
Did you know Final Cut Pro has a hidden menu? Just hold down
Cmd + Option + Shift and click the
Tools menu. You should now see a new menu item called
Internal Tools.
This is a debug menu used by the developers of FCP, but it actually has some uses for us mere mortals as well. It's especially useful for plugin developers and system troubleshooters, but some features benefit all users. Here is a rundown of what's in the menu.
Adjust Windows
When you open the Audio Mixer, Frame Viewer and several other tools in the Tools menu, they open in a tabbed window called the Toolbench. This normally appears on top of the Viewer and is hidden behind it when you select the Viewer again.
The Adjust Windows menu item adjusts the window layout so the Toolbench can fit in without being obscured by other windows. If you don't have the Toolbench open when you click this item, it will leave a gap in your window layout.
Before
After
To restore the default window configuration again, press
Ctrl+U.
App / Perf Info
This generates a text file containing just about everything you could ever wish to know about your FCP configuration.
Probably the most useful part is the Project / Sequence Information section. This gives various statistics about your project including the total number of clips placed in your timeline and the proportion of those clips that were unique. It will even tell you how many edits you performed per minute (don't let your boss see this!).
Log OpenGL Profile Costs
This function displays timing information about OpenGL Profiling in the Console. It will do nothing until you start profiling (see the Statistics section below), at which point it tells you how long (in ms) it took your machine to process the given frame sizes and codecs.
One thing I noticed about this is that it takes a fair while for the data to be posted to the Console - around 1-2 minutes.
Log VM Footprint
This outputs the current memory usage to the Console.
Resident refers to data in physical memory, Virtual refers to data on the disk ready to be copied into main memory as required. Note that the system often assigns more virtual memory space than it needs, so not all of that space will actually be used. So if you see a ridiculous number like 4 GB, it is not necessarily a cause for alarm.
Movie Dumpster
This one crashes Final Cut Pro for me, so I wasn't able to ascertain exactly what it does. However, Apple offers a tool called
Dumpster on their developer site which gives you a large amount of technical information about a specific movie clip. I would imagine this would be similar if it worked.
Playback Meter
This will show you how your media drives are performing, and is probably the most useful tool in the menu.
If you are not using a RAID, only the audio bars will work. Everything is fine while the bar is green, but if it turns yellow or red, this is an indication that your computer cannot keep up.
Screen Size Override
This allows you to fool Final Cut Pro into thinking that you have a different-sized monitor.
Just select the desired resolution from the pull down menus and press
Ctrl + U to automatically resize the windows to the new dimensions.
If you mess things up, just restart Final Cut Pro and press
Ctrl + U to restore the windows to the correct position for your screen resolution.
Statistics
This displays a lot of technical information about what's going on under the hood of FCP.
For instance, select the Render check box, drag the playhead across the timeline and then click the
Average button. This will average the times taken to perform the various function calls required to render the image to the screen. If your system is getting sluggish, you may find it useful to use the Averages function to see which areas are taking a long time to process.
Most of the checkboxes are self-explanatory so I won't elaborate on them here. However, I would advise selecting them one at a time otherwise you'll end up with an overflow of information.
If you want to clear the text box, click
Reset.
Copy copies the entire data to the clipboard and
Copy Avg copies only the averages.
Unset All deselects all of the checkboxes.
Both
Auto Profile and
RT Verify go through each item in the Browser (video clips, sequences, images, etc), playing each one four times and averaging the data. Sequences take longer because the profiler initially tests with only the V1 track enabled, and then gradually enables V2 and V3 to perform compositing tests (if such tracks exist of course).
It's worth mentioning that since it goes through everything four times, it will take a while to finish processing, depending on the size of the project. You cannot switch to another application either or the profiling will fail. I would advise creating a brand new project with short media clips and sequences. If you truly have serious bottlenecking, this will still be apparent in the shorter sequence.
All the timing information is stored inside the
Profile.csv log. Although you can view this in TextEdit, it will be difficult to read because it will not be formatted correctly. A spreadsheet application, such as MS Excel or the free
NeoOffice or
OpenOffice packages, is recommended.
If you are experiencing poor performance, look at the timings in this file to see where the major bottlenecks are. For instance, a slow FXScript filter could be indicative of a CPU bottleneck or an inefficient script. A slow Flop operation could be indicative of a GPU bottleneck.
Auto Profile and
RT Verify appear, on the surface, to perform exactly the same task. However, it is likely that Auto Profiling actually updates your RT information whereas RT Verify merely performs the test without changing anything. This is difficult to verify without official documentation though.
Most of the functions in the Internal Tools menu will be too technical for a lot of users, and so the menu will likely remain something of a novelty. But if you are troubleshooting performance issues or developing applications and plugins for FCP, it is an invaluable source of information on the inner workings of Final Cut Pro.
The only downside is that the menu must be reactivated every time you start Final Cut Pro. If anyone knows of a way to enable it permanently through a preference file, I'd love to hear about it.
Posted by Jon Chappell on Mar 11 2009 to
Final Cut Studio,
Analysis,
SoftwarePermalinkCompressor error: "Unable to connect to background process"
The "Unable to connect to background process" and "Unable to submit to queue" messages are common errors that unfortunately have many causes.
Before you do anything else, check that your version of Compressor is compatible with your operating system. Only the versions included with FCP 5.1.x and 6.0.x are compatible with OS X 10.5. If you have an incompatible earlier version, you will need to either upgrade Final Cut Studio or downgrade your operating system.
Try the following steps:1. In Compressor, go to
Compressor > Reset Background Processing.
2. Run
Compressor Repair.
3. Trash Compressor preferences (can also be done in Compressor Repair).
4. Try
these steps (use at your own risk).
Do the following if nothing else works:5. Disable your internet / network connections.
6. Reinstall Compressor and Qmaster.
7. Perform a full erase and install of the operating system and reinstall from scratch.
Posted by Jon Chappell on Feb 14 2009 to
Apple,
Final Cut Studio,
SoftwarePermalinkQuickTime 7.6
As I'm sure you are already aware, QuickTime 7.6 was released yesterday. Unlike a lot of recent releases that were provided solely for compatibility with new iTunes versions, this one has a lot of things that can benefit pro users.
First, let's look at the
change list:
Video:* Improves single-pass H.264 encoding quality
* Increases the playback reliability of Motion JPEG media
Audio:* Improves AAC encoding fidelity
* Audio tracks from MPEG video files now export consistently
Almost all of the main features improve exporting, and so it only benefits Pro App users and people who purchased QuickTime Pro. Furthermore, they all improve quality and performance in one way or another.
But Apple never details every single change made in detail. Discrete Cosine
discovered that QT 7.6 can now demux MPEG-1 audio, meaning you can convert an MPEG-1 file to another format and the resulting file will have both video and audio.
Meanwhile, on ProLost, Stu Maschwitz
discovered that QT 7.6 fixes clipping issues on footage imported from the Canon 5D MK II. However, as he notes, this could drastically change the look of an existing project if you update in the middle of it.
So in all, this looks like a pretty good update for Pro App users. However, the update has only been out for a day which doesn't leave much scope for discovering potential problems. If you look at the ProLost link above, some commenters are already complaining about slow playback performance with some codecs.
The Golden Rules (TM) of Updating
As always, the Golden Rules (TM) apply:
1. Never update in the middle of a project.
2. Only update if this update fixes a problem you have been experiencing (i.e. don't install it if you don't use these codecs).
3. If you do decide to update, give it a couple of weeks for any significant issues to surface that would affect your workflow.
4. Make a clone or backup of your system drive before you install.
Here are the download links:
QuickTime 7.6 for LeopardQuickTime 7.6 for TigerImportant Update!MacFixIt is
reporting many problems with this update. It would seem Apple has made significant changes under the hood that are causing compatibility issues with everything from the Finder to third party codecs - even to video games. The MacFixIt page lists several workarounds.
My advice is to avoid this like the plague until Apple releases 7.6.1 or third party developers update their software to be compatible.
Posted by Jon Chappell on Jan 22 2009 to
Apple,
QuickTime,
Final Cut StudioPermalink
Cut Notes
CinePlay
Aspect Ratio Matte Generator
Video Space Calculator
KollaborateCloud platform for pro video
Pro Maintenance ToolsMaintain, optimize and troubleshoot your editing system
Pro Media ToolsMedia and workflow management for video pros
CinePlayProfessional video player
Post HasteCreate projects from customizable templates
Preference ManagerTrash, backup, lock and restore preferences for your video apps
FCS RemoverUninstall Final Cut Studio and FCPX