[Updated Sept. 21 with a few extra details and the link to the free trial.]
[Updated with a link for the QuickTime update.]
[Updated with more information on Roles, and clarification on Davinci and AutoDesk.]
[Updated with clarification on XSAN.]
About two hours after Apple updated Final Cut Pro X to version 10.0.1, earlier today, I was in a meeting with key Apple product marketing folks to discuss the new features. Let me share with you what I learned.
UPDATE ACCESS
Unlike past versions of Final Cut, upgrades are only available through the App Store. In fact, if you look closely at the App Store icon in the Dock, you’ll see a small badge appear, indicating that an upgrade is available for FCP; or any other application that you purchased through the App Store.
(By the way, a benefit to upgrading to Lion is that upgrades only download the differences between the old and new software versions, which significantly reduce the download time. I’m still on Snow Leopard, so my download is, um, continuing. Some people are reporting problems with the update. I downloaded mine with no difficulty, however, if you have troubles wait a day and try again. Otherwise, the workaround is to remove FCP X from the Applications folder, then redownload from the App Store. Or contact Apple Support.)
FREE TRIAL
Also, for the first time that I can recall, Apple is offering a free 30-day trial for Final Cut. The 30-day period starts when you launch the program, so you can download today, yet not work with it till the weekend without costing yourself time on the demo.
Here’s the link: http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial/
Apple also updated QuickTime with new codecs. Get more information here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1396
APPLE’S KEY POINTS
As our meeting began, I asked what were the key points Apple wanted to convey with this upgrade. The answers were instantaneous:
1. Apple is committed to the professional user.
2. Apple is listening to user feedback and adding major new features far faster than they could do in the past.
I remarked that a release labeled: “10.0.1” was hardly a new feature release. At which point, our discussion began.
VERSION NUMBERING
The new version is numbered 10.0.1 – which, given the past numbering system Final Cut used, implies this is only a minor bug-fix.
However, Apple has moved FCP X to the same numbering system that OS X uses. Using that example, the current version of OS X is 10.7.1, which we commonly call “7.1”. Using the same convention, the upgrade moved FCP X to version 0.1. In other words, Apple views this as a significant product enhancement.
HIGHLIGHTS
You've probably read the highlights on Apple's webpage (by the way, Apple also refreshed the FCP webpage with this update): http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/software-update.html
* Media Stems Export
* XML Import and Export
* XSAN network support
* Customized timecode by project
…and others. Let me go into detail.
XSAN (NETWORK) SUPPORT
XSAN is bundled with Lion (a small fact that I forgot). However, these network features should work with any network file server provided the data transfer rate is fast enough from the server to the local computer to support media file transfers, and the server supports user permissions and record-locking, which OS X Server does.
Shared media on a server has always been supported by FCP X. However, Project and Event folders needed to be stored locally.
Now, media, Projects, and Events can all be stored on a server. Media can be accessed by multiple users at the same time, however Project and Event folders can only be accessed by one person at a time. In other words, multiple editors can now access the same project, however only one editor can be in the Project at the same time. FCP X provides a simple menu choice allowing editors to move Events and Projects into, or out of, the app as necessary.
(As a network bandwidth thought, render files are stored in the Project folder. You might want to consider putting Events on the Server and storing Projects locally to minimize network traffic. Just a thought…)
XML IMPORT AND EXPORT
The core of Final Cut Pro is metadata and XML is the language of interchange of this metadata from one application to another. From XML we can get EDLs, OMFs, and all the other acronyms that we need. However, the first step is XML. The new version supports both XML import and export. While this feature will be used primarily by developers, the benefits of this feature will be used by all of us.
At our meeting, I was shown an XML export of an FCP X project directly into a pre-release version of Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Lite! This replicates the ability to send a project to Color, with fewer restrictions and faster export. The Apple representatives told me that all the DaVinci Resolve line would support XML transfers from FCP X. (This is a correction, as I earlier wrote that this would be supported by the entire Davinci family.)
This is great news for anyone looking to do serious color grading of their FCP projects.
Another use of XML involved CatDV. Again, Apple showed a collection of media stored and cataloged in CatDV, a great media asset manager for the Mac. We built a short rough-cut, using clips stored in CatDV then, with a single AppleEvent keyboard shortcut which activated an Apple Event — Shift+Command+X — the entire rough cut was sent to FCP X, along with all the media and project data. The whole XML transfer process took about two seconds from pressing the button to seeing the new Event with media and the Project opened in the Timeline. This was very impressive.
Two other programs that use XML transfer were mentioned:
AutoDesk Smoke. Apple demoed an FCP X export to Autodesk Smoke. UPDATE: However, Apple told me that they are working with Autodesk and collaborating to support XML based workflows for FCP X. It is not supported just yet.
Atomos, I was told, is also launching an export utility for their file-based digital recorders that transfers ProRes files and metadata directly into FCP X. In fact, more than 20 companies are in the process of announcing new utilities or programs to work with the new version. (As we realized at the launch, XML import and export is the critical first step to unlocking the flow of third-party applications.)
AUDIO ROLES AND MEDIA STEMS
We spent a long time talking about Roles and Media Stems. Roles are a new metadata category that allow you to assign “roles” to clips. The most obvious is tagging audio for export to mixing, but the benefits are deeper than that.
FCP X is trackless. This means that the “age-old” method of putting the same audio in the same track so that you can mix all your dialog separately from your effects won’t work.
Instead, we assign Roles, which is a special metadata tag similar to a keyword. Some Roles are assigned on import. FCP looks at the file and attempts to determine if it is dialog, effects, or music. (If it guesses right, you save time. If it guesses wrong, you can easily change it.) You can create an unlimited number of new Roles.
Roles can apply to video, titles, or audio. There are three default audio Roles: Dialog, Effects, and Music. All have keyboard shortcuts and you can add as many as you want. You can even add “subroles” — roles related to other roles.
You can also apply Roles to titles – say to flag all English titles or Spanish titles.
When you export, you can export all audio that is flagged with a specific Role. You can export just music clips, or dialog, or effects.
But, Roles can be a real benefit in the Project, separate from exporting. You can solo all clips that belong to a specific role. For example, you can just listen to all dialog clips.
You can highlight all clips that belong to a specific Role – for instance, display all sound effects clips.
You can make invisible all clips in any combination of Roles. This is the equivalent of turning off the green Visibility light at the left side of the FCP 7 Timeline. This is VERY cool, because now, you can hide or reveal any combination of clips that all have the same Role assigned to it.
When it comes to exporting audio, using Roles we can export all our different audio stems, for example dialog, in a single pass. Or, for multiple-language video, Roles makes exporting video in different languages simple. Turn on all the English titles and export. Then, turn on all the Spanish titles and export again. I can see all kinds of ways to use Roles in editing.
UPDATE: For moving projects to ProTools, use Automatic Duck. According to Apple, the stems are really for delivery of final mixes either as a digital delivery or output to tape using a third party app like the upcoming Media Express or VTRxchange. The Roles info is in the XML so a third party could use the metadata for a wide range of workflows.
Apple took Roles far further than simply flagging clips for export into something that can help make sense of a complex timeline.
EXPORTING
Apple added an entirely new export option to allow exporting Roles. In fact, the process of exporting a QuickTime movie is now faster – if you are working with optimized media FCP just does a simple file copy of the ProRes in the Project to the ProRes of the export. Also, you can export a master QuickTime file and have it automatically loaded into Compressor, while still retaining the master file.
Then, both Blackmagic Design and AJA have announced products that will take the exported file and output it to tape.
OTHER NEW FEATURES
We can now change the starting timecode in a Project. Timecode is set in Project Properties.
We can now add transitions to connected clips with a single keystroke. What this does is both add the transition and converts the connected clip into a connected storyline. (We still can’t add an audio transition to audio in the Primary Storyline without detaching clips, however.)
A new Theme — Tribute — was added.
If you have Lion, FCP X now supports editing in full-screen mode. However, there are no other Lion-specific features in FCP X, so if you are still running OS X 10.6, you aren’t missing anything else in Final Cut.
Exports are now GPU accelerated. In the initial version, exports ran in the background, and they took advantage of multiple CPUs, but they didn’t take advantage of the graphics card. Now, exports are significantly faster. However, in order to take advantage of GPU acceleration, you need to export in the foreground, because the GPU is shared for both exports and real-time playback of Timeline effects.
(An interesting sidenote: Given the technical specs of the H.264 codec, exporting directly to H.264 will be MUCH faster if you use single-pass than multiple-pass. Apple suggested using single-pass unless you can see a difference in image quality, at which point compress as multi-pass.)
Apple released a camera import SDK so that camera manufacturers can provide support for their latest cameras without waiting for Apple to update the software. What this means to us is that we should see cameras launch with support for FCP X built-in.
THINGS STILL MISSING
For the first time ever, outside a Steve Jobs speech, Apple announced products that are coming, but more than 30-days away. Apple publicly stated that both multicam editing and output to broadcast monitors will arrive “early in 2012.”
I tried to pin them down to a more specific date; no success.
Apple said they also fixed a number of bugs, but I didn’t have time to find out what some of them were.
There are still some significant missing features which are not addressed in this upgrade or their announcement: Retaining In and Out points for clips in the Event Browser is undergoing a debate in Apple. So is the ability to read source timecode for clips in the Timeline. Drop shadows for elements other than text and a few generators requires creating a custom Motion template. The ability to apply an effect to a group of clips, then modify that effect — think audio mixing — is still severely limited. There is no out-of-sync indicator for detached audio clips that have shifted in the Timeline. There is no way to set the default project audio to stereo.
Apple stresses that there is far more development planned for the program.
But this update is significant for several reasons:
1. The speed with which Apple was able to get it released.
2. The fact that most of these features are of interest to pro editors; an iMovie editor is not going to care about audio stems
3. The flexibility Roles provide as part of the editing process is really amazing.
If you currently own FCP X, I recommend you get the update as time permits.
Let me know what you think.
Larry
P.S. If you have purchased my Final Cut Pro X training, I will be providing a FREE upgrade later this month highlighting how to use the new features. (This update applies to all new purchases as well.) We’ll send you an email notice when our update is available. Learn more about my FCP X training here: www.larryjordan.biz/fcpx
91 Responses to Full Details: Apple Updates Final Cut Pro X
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george manzanilla says:
September 21, 2011 at 11:21 am
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Chris Faber says:
September 21, 2011 at 12:06 pm
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Jeff Orig says:
September 21, 2011 at 12:21 pm
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Carlos says:
September 21, 2011 at 12:25 pm
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Larry says:
September 21, 2011 at 12:31 pm
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Markus says:
September 21, 2011 at 12:47 pm
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Mal says:
September 21, 2011 at 12:47 pm
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Christopher says:
September 21, 2011 at 1:04 pm
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Reed Brown says:
September 21, 2011 at 1:05 pm
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Mark Hewitt says:
September 21, 2011 at 1:14 pm
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Marcus R. Moore says:
September 21, 2011 at 2:02 pm
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Larry says:
September 21, 2011 at 2:18 pm
← Older Comments Newer Comments →Thanks for your informative updates. There are a lot of small details missing from FCPX that many editors have grown to learn and use over the past 10 years. I find it hard to think that they could add all of that back in, even in a couple years. That being said, the best thing about this update is knowing they are still listening to the consumer (as any real business should).
I’m a little put off by statements I hear about Apple’s rationale in doing away with something like tracks. To me they were never burdensome, and evrey other video editing and sound editing/mixing software uses the same method, so I still don’t understand why do away with them. They could still implement roles and keep the flexible method of working with tracks, which by the way is just another way to organize media.
Still using fcp7, and probably will for a while, however I happen to be more excited about adobe’s moves than i am over dot releases of fcpx.
Thanks larry.
Great news, Larry, especially what it signifies about the Pro nature of FCPX.
I’ve been thinking about the issue of not being able to have audio transitions in the primary storyline. When audio and video are collapsed and the cut point is the same for both, it would be easy enough for Apple to allow a separate audio transition. But that’s not most of the time. Most of the time we’d want to have an audio transition when cuts for audio and video are offset — and a solution there is difficult.
The problem is built into the the paradigm of the magnetic timeline itself because when trimming, if audio is not collapsed into video, it’s the audio that “goes magnetic,” shifting right and left as video trims. This would break any existing audio transition.
But there needs to be a solution. Detaching audio is inefficient and prone to causing sync and other problems. And adding audio transitions by hand is just a repetitive act that’s ripe for a built-in single keystoke solution. How many times can we pull audio on the left to the right, pull audio on the right to the left and add a fade on each before going insane?
I have a solution. Pass it on to Apple with my compliments. 🙂 It’s essentially a macro that does what I describe above and places a visual indicator across both tracks of audio, a crosshair “scaffolding” for example. The diference here vs. previous versions of FCP is that if you trim after applying this audio transition, the scaffolding breaks — and disappears. The value of the visual scaffolding is that you could adjust it’s length though a context menu, as in prior versions of FCP, as well as the db style of the audio transition.
The paradigm seems to demand something like this. So such transitions would have to be reapplied when changes are made, but that’s the situation we’re in now. It would also require a quick way to select both edges of the clips to indicate where the transition would go, such as a marquee.
Whatever the solution, I’m sure there will be one at some point. The evidence is in that Apple is dedicated to the program, so I’m resting easy.
Best,
Chris
Larry, great info as usual. For the editors that have not tried FCP X yet, please do. I hated FCP X when it came out but wanted the workflow speed of editing H.264 files right away. I upgraded Adobe CS4 to CS5.5. The only advantage that CS5.5 has over FCP7 is that it can work with H.264 somewhat easily. I believe FCP7 is better than CS5.5 in all other aspects.
Reluctantly, I opened up my copy of FCP X and decided to open my mind as much as possible. I had the mindset of using only the tools that were offered and use them in default mode. Basically, trust what Apple had to offer was better than their previous version. And to my amazement, FCP X, in many ways, blows away FCP 7. It is not perfect and it is missing key features like retaining in and outs in the browser. But in my workflow, that is not a huge deal breaker. It is annoying and takes longer, but there are so many other great features that make FCPX a contender. I am in the process of editing all new projects in FCP X.
Again, my recommendation is to get FCPX, do some FCPX training, and test it on several fun projects. Not your paid work unless you have additional time for your learning curve. Just DON’T ask where is this feature or how do I replicate my FCP 7 workflow. Instead, treat it like a brand new piece of software and use the new workflow that Apple intended. Granted, it takes a lot of getting used to, but it is really cool.
BTW, I am a huge fan of Apple and FCP 7, but my main goal is get the job done as best I can, and in the most efficient way possible. If Microsoft came out with an editing system that blew away everything out there, I would get it in a heartbeat. No offense to Apple and Apple fans, I am a filmmaker first and an Apple fanboy second.
And yes, submit those feedback forms. It is in the FCPX menu under Final Cut Pro > Provide Final Cut Pro Feedback. Then it opens up a browser to the appropriate page. I don’t know if they are really listening or if the suggestions just end up in a huge pile in the desert somewhere. But it feels reassuring to at least vent my requests and suggestions.
I will hold off on the upgrade until I upgrade my machines. I am waiting for the next hardware updates.
Sorry for the long comment.
Thanks.
Any idea when they’ll undo that idiotic iMovi file management system and bring back sequences? Ditto for audio/video tracks.
There is a very nice workaround for sequences using compound clips.
I don’t ever expect to see tracks.
Larry
Thanks for the great write-up Larry. You are – as always – our voice at Apple! And we are all very grateful for that.
I love the new “roles” feature. It could be quite a bit more powerful than the traditional track-layout.
I also love the way you can selectively minimize the track height (sorry – clip height – old habbits…) for certain “roles” (groups of clips).
However, I don’t understand why Apple chose to NOT include storylines (primary and secondary ones) in that feature. You can click the “minimize tracks” button in the roles/timeline index, but storylines stay “big” (they do lose waveforms and thumbnails though).
If you tend to work with lots of secondary “music bed” storylines (or the magnetic timeline will drive you nuts), this limitation with the roles-feature is not going to make complex timelines easier to deal with.
If anyone else is being bothered by this – please do send Apple feedback via their website http://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html
Like a lot of others I’m getting no notification or opportunity to update my existing version — but rather than trash the FCP 10.0 I have now and re-download, I’d rather just wait for Apple to fix the problem. For all I know if I did that, and everyone else, we’d all discover in 30 days we’d downloaded the ‘ticking-bomb’ trial version. I’ll wait.
I’ve used FCPX fairly extensively and it’s grown on me, I quite enjoy it, except for the CRASH every 15 minutes. However I still CANNOT believe they don’t have In and Out points for export however… I very frequently need to send clients SECTIONS of a project and the only way to export is to export the whole shebang… which I’ve had to do and then trim in Quicktime 7. Ridiculous, quite frankly.
Also ridiculous when I want to send a small section to After Effects for some finessing. Maybe the debate inside Apple surrounds the fact that they want you corralled in the sandbox as much as humanly possible! (With electrical fences zapping you and a water canon just in case.)
(deep sigh)
Happy for the updates. Glad someone is fighting for the use of FCP X. Hopefully someday it’ll be an option. When all the bugs are worked out, all the professional features are back in, and by features I mean working features not “workarounds” or “3rd party options” I think I’ll give it a shot. Until then I’m going to keep using FCP Studio 3 and Adobe 5.5 Suite. Both immediate and working options one of which will be long standing.
Another reason to hesitate on FCP X for me is the issue concerning other editors. Not enough editors are currently willing to go the FCP X route. So when I have to hand off a project, the odds of another experienced editor using FCP X is next to nothing. One of my biggest clients (huge computer company) finally hired an in house editor, and they were about to purchase FCP X, and I quickly talked them out of it for Adobe instead (I would have said FCP 7 but I didn’t want them to be obsolete in 2 years) Their new editor (unexperienced) is dropping the ball and I’ve been called back in to fix stuff. Had he been on FCP X, they would be screwed. Good luck finding an “experienced FCP X editor” Just a thought when working with other professionals and compatibility.
Thanks again Larry for staying on top of it. Always good to see the programs evolution.
Oh…and Dave Heinzel, I am a huge fan of Color myself, but trust me, invest in DaVinci no matter what Non-linear software you use, while it is a somewhat expensive, it’s more affordable than ever now especially with compatibility of 3rd party controllers and it blows Color out of the water…you will fall in love with it!!
Great blog! Most useful information about the FCP X I’ve seen in a while. I’m sure you’ve got a list of “wish list” of features editors would like to see in FCP X. Here’s mine: 1) MOST IMPORTANT: Two window source-record editing! Always always helpful to see the outgoing image at the same time as the possible incoming image without flip-flopping images in one window. That was one of the huge disappointments of Media 100 and a huge advantage of Avid and FCP. I and many other editors I know would greatly consider FCP X if that feature were re-instated as an option. 2) Of course, multi-cam editing 3) copy/paste attributes functions. Thanks and keep up the good communications!
Thanks Larry for the update 🙂 Already see faster exports and nice ability to set transitions on Secondary Story lines without having to first create a new storyline. Thanks again for keeping me in the loop.
A couple of people have mentioned copy/paste attributes as a feature request. This IS in FCPX, if I’m not mistaken.
You are not mistaken, but you are not able to select which attributes get pasted, as you could in FCP 7. It pastes all attributes associated with the source clip into the destination clip.
Larry