New Features Coming To FCP X

Yeah I had 3 PC laptops die on me in a row, one after the other. Compaq, HP and Dell. The HP one was top of the line and lasted 8 months. I managed to salvage the disks from them and use them as external drives now for backup.

My MacBook Pro was much more expensive than a PC laptop that offered similar specs. However, I'm fairly convinced that a similar specced PC would not run as efficiently as the MacBook. I think the fusion of Software & Hardware in the Mac just works better; the Mac is greater than the sum of its parts (something PC owners find hard to comprehend).

Its kind of like the Canon C300 - on paper its only 8 Bit and doesn't look like it could match better specced cameras. But once you actually use it and see the images you realize there is some crazy mojo going on inside that negates the specs on paper. The same thing with the mac; yeah on paper it might not look as impressive as a higher specced PC; but it just works really bloody well.
 
In its day the G5 Power PCwas a great chip..ok it did generate a stack of heat and ruled itself out of the laptop market...I always wonder what if we had went for the G6 chip..

Its a beast of a thing but its very expensive and a multilegged monster meaning expensive motherboard and construction costs
 
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Any AF100 users on here experiencing problems with ingesting into FCP X? I have a short project that I'm going to pop my cherries with but the program won't import AF100 footage. Any tips? I'm desperate!
 
Should work fine. Simply "Import from camera" and the SD card should show up. If you have it already on a drive (the whole content of your SD card) choose "OpenArchive". The Clips will turn up. Hit "Import all". You can now close the Import window and work instantly, because the process happens in the background while you already start logging ;-)
 
kolak said:
Realtime effects- cool, but some NLEs support this for last 5 years already.
With whole respect- FCPX does not prove its greatness (it's not bad neither), but how outdated FCP7 was/is.
There are some nice things in FCPX, but nothing that special.
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I disagree. One thing that I've found that is great about FCPX is the pure speed of the interface itself. I'm not talking about GPU accelerated effects or render speed, I'm talking about just the speed with which you can log, edit, and finish video. The ways in which you can use metadata to help sort and edit alone are pretty groovy - Adobe kind of has that functionality with Prelude, but that's a separate app and it's really built for a different kind of workflow. The way FCPX redid all the keyboard shortcuts was MAJOR - once I got used to the changed layout, it actually became easier to edit. I can hardly stand F9 F10 F11 anymore whenever I go back to FCP7. Don't forget the skimmer - subclipping interviews is TRIVIAL now that I can scrub through a 5 minute piece and mark out the usable sections in a fraction of the time. And while people complained about the removal of the 3-way color corrector, I think the new color interface is vastly improved. I can add a seemingly endless number of power masks or color key adjustments (I think the most I've ever used in a shot was 6), and it all works in real time.

The only thing I don't like about FCPX is that the interface makes it harder to keyframe motion attributes, but for projects that don't require a high degree of motion I can BLAZE. I have a regular show that I edit every month - it used to take me 2 10-hour days to edit it in FCP7 (not including ingest or export time), now I get it done in SIX HOURS. Whoa.

I'm not saying FCPX is better than FCP7 or the new CS6 stuff. They're built for different workflows altogether - and CS6 especially seems to be maturing into not only an FCP successor, but also a true Avid competitor. But for the solo shooter/editor, boy is FCPX fast.
 
I have to agree about the speed of FCP X. I have been using FCP since the 1.25 version and X rocks. Once you get over the magnetic timeline, you will learn to embrace it's functionality. It has a number of other tweaks as well, but there are many folks that are really torqued about their legacy versions and tape libraries being a little more difficult to use now. I really like the idea of a digital media library and all of it is cataloged. I absolutely hated tape.

About the only thing I really miss is the round-tripping from FCP to Motion and back, but you cannot have everything, at least quite yet.
 
Two things I really care about:
- Timeline IN / OUT for quickly export a small section;
- Copy selected effects between clips.

Ulisses
 
thanks chaps, it works. But how about getting MP4 clips in there as well - is that possible?
EDIT: Cheers, got it done.
 
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In FCP 7 I'd normally save my project and save multiple copies to different locations to safeguard against corruption. I don't even see a "Save project" or "save as" option in FCP X. Does anyone have the answer to that? How does one save and save multiple copies?
 
dtzfilms said:
In FCP 7 I'd normally save my project and save multiple copies to different locations to safeguard against corruption. I don't even see a "Save project" or "save as" option in FCP X. Does anyone have the answer to that? How does one save and save multiple copies?
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There's a few ways to do this. First, if it's for safe keeping, a simple backup drive for all your work takes care of this. There's a built-in backup of each Event and Project database that updates as you make changes. You can also take any Event or Project "CurrentVersion." db file in the Finder, right-click, Compress. There, Zip file of the db in it's current state. Move to a backup drive.

It could be more elegant, yes, but Apple has shown with the advances that have been continually made to backup db files, there will be a more elegant solution soon. As will all of these other features that will be coming out over the regular updates we've been getting.
 
let's hope they fix the AVCHD support, so clips already copied off the card can be imported.

and provide a color picker for white balance (grey card and not moving sliders with a touchpad).

hopefully even a Motion 5 integration for compositing and not just effects.
 
David Saraceno said:
Import them using the camera archive process.
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I'm refering to importing MTS files without the AVCHD file structure and without transcoding like every other NLE does.
Current AVCHD support is only halfway done as you need the SD-card or a 1:1 copy of everything on the card but and program to import media from the cards copies the MTS files along with all photos and deletes the AVCHD structure.
Nothing you can do about that 5 month later.
 
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