Steve Jobs was the greatest product innovator within the last couple of centuries, and his passing saddened me significantly. My appreciation dates back to his storied commencement address at Stanford University, which unveiled him to be a deep and thoughtful man. I stand in awe of his incredible string of product successes, such as the original Mac, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, and Apple App Store-in addition to Pixar-along with his capacity to produce maniacal, passionate fans. But that doesn’t imply that Personally, i as with any product created under his watch or accept every product-related decision.
This can be particularly so after finishing Walter Isaacson’s outstanding biography, titled simply Steve Jobs, where I learned of two of Jobs’s passions: one for simplicity and also the other for managing the experience. In particular, I can’t reconcile Jobs’s desire for simplicity with Final Cut Pro X.
Recently i reviewed the newest features in Final Cut Pro X Effects and located them impressive. Overall, though, I abhor this system. When I run FCPX, my reaction is visceral; I feel the walls pressing in and my blood pressure level rising. I adore the clean slate of Adobe Premiere Pro and its doppelganger Final Cut Pro 7. FCPX has so much structure, so many completely foreign concepts, it feels like my 31″ monitor has shrunk to 17″. With your a supposed focus on simplicity, how could an organization run by Jobs produce such a program?
Well, if you feel about it, while Apple’s hardware is easy, its software is complex, a velvet chain tying one to Apple’s vision from the “way things should be done.” If you’re on the Windows machine, you can’t drag a book onto your iPod in Windows Explorer; you must load it into iTunes and synch. That’s not simple. You can’t drag a picture from the iPhone in your desktop having a file manager; you have to load it into iPhoto and save it from that point.
Of course, I understand how iTunes is great for inexperienced users, and that’s precisely the point. With iTunes and iPhoto, as well as the iPad and iPhone, Apple wasn’t selling to experienced users. It was opening new markets. In contrast, with Final Cut Pro X, Apple was seeking to modify the workflows of experts who knew a little more about video production than any of the engineers who created the product.
It is possible to only impose structure whenever a marketplace is new or when some great benefits of that structure are incremental. And also the more structure you build into a product, the less it’s likely to interest experienced users in the product it replaces. That’s why most profe
That being said, you can find refinements through the entire app, though more with effects than editing. The newest version is worth enough time to upgrade. When you begin to use the newest color tools, you’ll never return. What exactly in case you do? If you like being on the cutting edge And also you are between projects, upgrade today.
If you are a died-in-the-wool skeptic, wait monthly and find out how this rolls out before committing. There’s no harm in waiting – particularly if you rely on 3rd-party plug-ins and software. What am I likely to do? I’m upgrading my main editing system to 10.4 tomorrow and keeping two backup editing systems on 10.3 for the upcoming month approximately. I like this new version and I’m getting excited about making use of it for real productions.
Given how aggressively Adobe and Avid are supporting team editing, and particularly because Final Cut Pro X is constructed over a database engine, it continues to surprise me that collaboration is just as difficult since it is.
This can be compounded by Final Cut’s limited support for editing libraries using shared storage, even though connected via 10gb Ethernet. Editing teams are available for even small projects today and Final Cut does zhxspu make it easy to share libraries or projects. Media sharing, obviously, has been available since the creation of FCP X.
I am just a massive fan of Roles. They create making many tasks much easier, especially in terms of exporting – however, not audio mixing. The thought of applying a compound clip to some role so that we are able to apply filters to the compound clip is an exercise in frustration. Audio mixing in FCP X is ridiculously awkward. It is far faster to export an XML file from FCP X, convert it using XtoCC, import it into Adobe Audition, mix the project, export a stereo pair, import it into FCP X, assign a role to it, then export the finished project rather than attempt to perform the mix in FCP X itself.
I am aware, I timed it. FCP X is 3-6 times slower than round-tripping in Audition. Roles are wonderful, although not for mixing.
Finally, it might be that Apple has grown the amount of clips which can be supported in a Library, but I’m getting emails virtually every week from editors experiencing performance slow-downs since they have a lot of clips in a library. Again, FCP X is actually a database, it must be able to handle a lot more clips without choking.
Company Name:
Pixel Film Studios
Company Address:
120 Vantis Dr.
Suite 300
Aliso Viejo
California
About Company:
Established in 2006, Aliso Viejo, California-based Pixel Film Studios is an innovative developer of visual effects tools for the post-production and broadcast community. Their products are integrated with popular non-linear editing and compositing products from Apple FCPX.