After all this hype that has been circulating about FCP being dumbed down for only the prosumer and not the professional video editor, what will FCP have to offer you in order to stay as popular as it is? Whether people switch to Avid or even Premiere (watching another production company nearby use the CS5 AE to Premiere to AE features are pretty cool) is another question on its own, but seriously though. What would FCP 8 have to add to its features/interface to stay or become the standard in your world?
Obviously it would have to match everything Premiere and Avid are offering with their new upgrades, but what else? All I see from Apple people is “very awesome” or “exciting” or if you want exact words,
“”Final Cut Pro is the first choice for professional video editors, and we’ve never been more excited about its future,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans told CNET. “The next version of Final Cut is going to be awesome, and our pro customers are going to love it.”
I don’t know. What do you think?
“Keep me interested”? The default isn’t that people are going to jump ship. I still like the way FCP works. I’ve worked with Avid twice as many years as FCP and I just LIKE the way the FCP’s timeline works. Having tools instead of modes to manipulate the footage. And I’m not alone in that feeling.
Sure, it’d be awesome if Apple bought AVB’s Get and included phonetic search. It would be sort of be a response to Avid’s ScriptSync and Adobe’s terrible, terrible transcription software.
More codec support, ability to handle non-QT files would be nice. Avid stepped up with AMA in v5. I thought AMA was a joke in v4 but 5 changes everything, surpassing FCP in terms of media ingest.
I hope they do a rewrite and modernize most of the code for 64 bit.
Most editors I work with do both and have gigs that force them to know both. It’ll be that way for the next few years even if Apple doesn’t update FCP.
When I bought FCP Studio 3 I was pretty disappointed with the lack of upgrades. I am amazed to hear how many people still consider Premiere Pro as mediocre as the version they might have tried back in 2001 or something. Since that time Premiere has improved many times over, while FCP rests on its waning reputation of “first choice for professional video editors.”
Since I use After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator every day, I look forward to the day when Premiere steps up as the industry standard, at least for CS users. I’ve always liked it for personal work, and only continue to use FCP because my colleagues do.
To re-win my loyalty Final Cut 8 would have to have a totally revamped integration with other suites since its own suite feels pretty stagnant. Its interface would need better asset and effect organization, more intuitive context menus, more customizable tracks and views. After that everything else would be icing.
– Remember that “I just rendered that two minutes ago”
– Remember that “these files were connected before my last crash”
– Luminance/Gamma that remains consistent across applications
– Native support for MXF files across all QuickTime applications
– Update DVD Studio Pro for Blu-Ray authoring
– Rip-off ScriptSync
FCP completely lacks the fundamental tools that Avid MC and Avid Unity systems provide.
I’ll give you three examples,
1. Trim tool. I talk to FCP users all the time who claim FCP has an actual trim tool. It doesn’t. In fact, FCP’s “trim” in omni-directional and doesn’t allow for single button slip-slide without selection. Avid’s trim tool allows for advanced asymmetrical editing that lets a pro do in one keystroke what takes a 20 on FCP. Avid editors know this affects the speed of the editing process. It took two hours with two side-by side systems for me to explain this to an FCP expert and when he finally saw the difference, it all made sense.
2. Unity. I’ve done multiple shows on FCP. They were all a workflow nightmare. Add more than one or two editors with more in a project with 400,000 elements and FCP server and xserve just can’t deal. The system slows to a crawl and the projects have to be split into multi-ple projects. You also end up making copies of copies of copies to protect yourself. In Unity, it’s one project, with multiple seats working on the same show, at the same time. It’s clean and the collaboration is far smoother.
3. Avid Script Sync – Final Cut doesn’t have anything like this. It has revolutionized editing. Cycle takes, find phrases and sound-ups in single clicks, repair audio with phonetics. Just being able to show a scripted director every line read from every camera is amazing. Helping a doc producer locate important phrases in sound bites internally of the editing system with a button click is lightning fast. Just that tool alone save me and my team hours every day. The result effects the bottom line and producers see the savings.
4. Real-time Frame Rate playback. No rendering in Avid for multi-frame rate.
5. Avid AMA – Accelerates the ingest time for XDCAM, P2, Red, Quicktime. Because there’s no transcode or render.
Most of my work of my career has been offered on Avid. Most editors I talk to prefer FCP with the exception of those who work from home. I get that FCP has some solid tools, but I don’t understand why folks still try and apply it’s clumsy workflow and interface to big projects only to run back to Avid.
1. I second Apple buying AVB’s Get and integrating it with FCP.
2. Scratch folders linked to projects not system and scratch folders that intelligently organise media when it’s imported.
3. Apple version of Mercury Engine, no more rendering.
4. Optical flow slow mo built into FCP
5. A Trim mode that works like AVID. I want/NEED to see both sides of a trim in real time. This should be top of the list and is the easiest of all to implement. Come on Apple, surprise me
All what was said here plus the ability to put effects on tracks and not on clips only.
1. – redone interface (time to unify with OS X
2. – better way of doing Ken Burns-like moves (when I don’t feel like going to Motion
3. – easier method of handling keyframes in Motion Tab
4. – buy PluralEyes and integrate it
5. – icon views that are as snappy as Quicklook at the OS level
6. – smart media management (add files in finder – shows up in project) as an option
7. – give Blackmagic the knowhow on how to add Desktop out back to decklink/multibridge products in snow leopard
8. – everything AE can do now of course
9. – make it possible for media manager to handle Motion and Soundtrack media managing as well from within FCP so when I MM my sequence wit .stp and .mtn files it ACTUALLY media manages it.
10. – buy digital rebellion and integrate some of the recovery tools
11. – when i say arrange by name in icon view, please arrange in a grid instead of just leaving it messy
12. Quicklook integration for anything (almost)
13. Did i mention fresh interface – really would like for FCS and Color to have a unified look
14. export for iphone/ipad, etc
15. export to html 5 page (like Quicktime 7 share for web feature)
16. improve Quicktime X
If none of these are met, I’d still use it of course. I love FCP; my bread and butter.
Lastly and not part of the list – Apple should by Pixelmator, inject some Apple DNA, beef it up with GIMP code and add it to FCS ( a standalone will work too).
*definitely need to fix the keyframes
*motion templates are cool, but every attribute should be assignable to a FCP control – if you enter text that’s 2 or 3 lines – you can’t even adjust the baseline
*support for grand central to keep up with the mercury engine
*all of STP’s filters and controls should be built in – you should be able to create busses and submixes and apply filters to entire tracks
*fix memory issues with large projects “preparing video for display”
*keyframing should be more like AE – and there should be a way to lock a keyframe to the start or end of a clip – if you’re doing a ken burns effect and adjust the length of the clip, you shouldn’t be stuck with still frames
*enable live fonts without having to go through motion
*make a simple way of creating your own effects by scripts or by combining current effects into a single effect
*most of color’s filters and controls should be available as plugins
*burn to DVD/bluray without exporting – most machines are fast enough to handle this in realtime once they implement grand central
*media manager should be able to collect stray files into your main media folder, without having to recopy all the ones that are already there
*STPs media linking sucks, and “replace with independent audio file” defaults to your documents folder instead of the same folder as your stmp file – so if you move the drive to another computer you’re screwed
*the fix clipped audio and DC offset have never done anything – there is a plugin by izotope that does – this should be built in
o yah, and direct access to all of the sound libraries and video loops from motion
i would like to see automatic crossfades of audio and video files, as in sony vegas
and some more: new single window interface, ability simply add effects to layer or all project, easy timeline navigation with mouse scroll (zoom in zoom out)
I would like to see the different “Studio” Softwares sold separately. i.e. FCP and Motion 4 (or I guess it could be 5 by then) and Soundtrack pro, all should be sold separately so someone can pick and choose which programs they need to buy based on what programs they know they will use.
WRITE THE APP IN COCOA ALREADY!
Real R3D integration….
The equivalent of the Mercury engine in Premiere, would be a must.
Though Apple has been able to keep that competition at bay, with the omission of Nvidia cards on latest Pro laptop and Pro desktops.
Only desktop computers can be upgraded to Nvidia cards but laptops is not possible.
A revamp of FC interface also is a must, it is so ’90ies.
Also the Color software need a revamp or being integrated in FC. Its interface is very ’90ies as well, not mentioning that 99% of what Color does, Premiere can do it.
But I would not hold my breath. Apple has become a cellphone company and professional software and coputer is not a priority anymore.
look at aperture, when it came out it was almost on parr with Capture One and Lightroom. Now with the version 3, it cannot hold a candle to those two.
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