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More random, mindless speculation about the new Final Cut Pro

SmoothCam Analysis is a background process in FCP7. I hope we can expect many more of those in FCPx.

One thing that is sure to make its way into FCPx is background rendering and more background processes in general. We saw the arrival of background processes with FCP’s introduction of SmoothCam and saw them extended a bit with FCP 7’s Share feature. The way FCP’s Share works doesn’t seem to be very efficient as processing from Share often seems to take 5 maybe 10 times longer than if you did an export the old fashioned way. iMovie doesn’t do background exporting but we know that’s possible so my guess would be that we’ll see both of these things implemented quite well in FCPx.

An interface change is inevitable.

No matter what the overall changes are between FCP 7 and FCPx the first thing everyone will notice is the interface. I think this is the big wild card and one of the biggest factors that could cause an upgrade to be “jaw-dropping.” To me, jaw-dropping could go either way: good or bad.

The removal of a Viewer window in FCPx would be one big interface change and that possibility has led to some interesting discussion on Twitter since this rumor broke. The Viewer/Canvas (or Source/Record) 3-point style of editing has pretty much taken over as the non-linear editing paradigm for most applications. Is it the only way to work? Of course not but it’s simple, intuitive, fast and it works very well, especially when doing basic storytelling or working up a paper cut.

iMovie kinda still has 3-point editing without a Viewer/Canvas style layout as you create the first two points when you drag a selection area and the 3rd point when you then drag that to the timeline. Other applications like early versions of Adobe Premiere and Media100 didn’t use the Viewer/Canvas idea (though they came to adopt it as an option later) and I don’t think Media Composer did either. And there’s a lot of effects / finishing oriented applications that don’t use it either but most creative / storytelling NLEs do. The two monitors may seem more complex to a brand new user but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a large consensus among that 90% mentioned above who don’t use the Viewer/Canvas 3-point editing on a regular basis. Maybe that’s because it’s there but of all the iMovie to FCP users I’ve come across (and I have come across quite a few) like the two monitor, Viewer/Canvas idea.

If FCPx has come up with something new that will require us to re-learn a lot of what we know about basic non-linear editing then I’m all for trying it out, especially if it’s a better, more efficient way of working. I have doubts as to what that could be but real judgement will have to wait until it ships and we can begin using it on real projects, with real deadlines.

While the interface may look completely different from FCP 7 (and again, that’s fine as long as it’s functional) I hope there’s not a lot of superfluous fluff that’s included just to jazz up the experience.

Interface animations like iMovie’s Swap Events and Projects are flashy but take too long to implement if you have to make the change over and over again during a long edit day.

iMovie’s genie-like effect that happens when you Swap Events and Projects looks cool the first time you see it but then becomes annoying after that. It takes too long to occur and is totally unnecessary in a professional environment with time ticking away and a client sitting in the room. I love FCP’s current, near instant ability to reshuffle the window layout with a keystroke to meet my needs. I shudder to think that either couldn’t happen in FCPx or it would take a few seconds each time as I reshuffle those windows countless times each day. Walter Biscardi posted a great discussion of just that on his blog recently. Those types of interface animations may be built into the operating system, require no extra programming resources or processing power but they do require time to happen and that’s something we often don’t have much of, especially if it has to happen over and over. If they are there then I hope there’s the ability to turn them off.

Videotape?  What’s videotape and why would I want to interact with that?

And finally, feature wise, I don’t think an FCPx discussion can be had without mentioning the recent idea that Apple should drop the Log and Capture (from video tape) function from the next version of FCP. Philip received a lot of blowback from the professional community (and even followed up with the idea later) as many of us still use L&C, myself included. Rumor does point to Log and Capture being gone. Any let’s be honest, if there was a 10%-er feature in FCP then L&C is probably it. While there’s a lot of ways to get to and from tape outside of FCP (we use Blackmagic’s Media Express applications all the time) having it integrated into the application is, most of all, convenient.

I would also argue that it’s most important when outputting and mastering to tape. Specifically it’s the ability to stop an output, perform a fix or a change and then restart the assemble to tape. And the ability to go back and Insert Edit a slate, copyright, or edit fix after a tape output is complete is equally important. While FCP’s Edit to Tape window doesn’t make it the easiest tool to perform edit to tape inserts (this Quicktip helps with that) it will work, just maybe not frame accurately 100% of the time. I don’t really know how you could do stuff like that without tape based output right in the application. It would be a more time-consuming, multi-step process to use a tool outside of FCPx. I guess that is a 10%-ers type of operation but what are we 10%-ers supposed to do since tape-based output isn’t gone as of yet? Again, emphasis on “pro.” And that’s TechCrunch’s emphasis, not mine. For outputting to tape there’s always Media Composer and it’s very well integrated Digital Cut.

While FCPx will be a version 8 in number (if Apple continues with the current numbering) it’ll be more like a version 1.0 product … and it may exhibit some version 1.0 problems. When the current iteration of iMovie was introduced Apple left the old iMovie up for download for those that didn’t like the drastic change. They also added some older iMovie features back to the new version as it aged. I would bet something similar might happen as FCPx gets updated over the next few years. All those plug-ins and effects will have to be rewritten to be used in a 64-bit FCPx. I’ll be keeping a separate boot drive with my current FCP 7 install just in case.

You must be a 10%er.

This article has probably been entirely too much time and too many words devoted to a product that hasn’t been announced, publicly demoed or shipped. I can’t think of anything but an Apple product generally, and Final Cut Pro specifically, that generates this kind of speculation and discussion over something that doesn’t yet exist for us all to see and use. Until it ships it’s not really real. If you’ve made it this far into the read then congratulations: you’re more than likely a Final Cut Pro 10%er so you still need a pro application to do your work. As I’ve said before, many of us make our living and feed our families with these tools (and have many, many hours logged in front of them) so we care deeply about how they operate and what they do. Does that really put us in an elite 10% of editors that are out of touch with the majority of FCP users? I don’t think I really buy that as even a part time FCP editor probably wants to get their work done quicker and easier. Save the superfluous stuff for the hobbyist. I really hope Apple does keep the “pro” in FCPx.

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First off, I think that 10% number is ridiculous.  Granted, I work in video production, but easily 99% of the editors I know are FCP users (I don’t do much TV or film work), and I’d put 90% of those editors into the ‘Pro’ user demographic.  So if there’s a 10% to be designated, I think it’s casual users, not pro users.

That said, the one major feature that this article doesn’t mention and that I desperately wish Apple would add to this major revision of FCP is the ability to set your scratch disk by project.  I work off many, many external drives, and having a central scratch disk simply isn’t feasible.  So having each project know exactly where its scratch disk when I open it rather than me constantly having to reset it would be a godsend.  Other than that, I just really, really hope they don’t completely wreck the interface just for the sake of change (as frankly they did with iMovie…I have yet to meet anyone who thinks that ‘09 and later is a better interface than HD).

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/14  at  05:17 PM

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Good points all.

@Jack: the current FCP way of handling scratch disks is very cumbersome. I think that a revision of scratch disks would go hand in hand with better media management. And a project level setting of them would be very nice.

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  03/15  at  07:47 AM

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