[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
← Older Comments Newer Comments →-
Marcus R. Moore says:
September 21, 2011 at 10:51 pm
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Craig Seeman says:
September 22, 2011 at 1:46 am
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Larry says:
September 22, 2011 at 2:10 am
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Craig Seeman says:
September 22, 2011 at 2:05 am
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david says:
September 22, 2011 at 2:38 am
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Cooper says:
September 22, 2011 at 3:57 am
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Cooper says:
September 22, 2011 at 3:59 am
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Cooper says:
September 22, 2011 at 4:18 am
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Richard Parker says:
September 22, 2011 at 7:46 am
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Nivardo says:
September 22, 2011 at 8:32 am
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Floris says:
September 22, 2011 at 9:02 am
← Older Comments Newer Comments →@Nivardo. Your last three points are missing features and (explicitly stated by apple) are coming in the next major update. As for the first four- look, either your going to come to terms with the fact that Apple is pursuing a different methodology to FCPX, and approach it honestly and without preconceived ideas… OR you should just walk away now.
If the only thing that’s going to make you happy is the way things were, then you’re just going to be frustrated and disappointed. NO ONE is going to fundamentally change the way the work and find it immediately easier. But there are some profoundly interesting ideas at the core of FCPX, and I think a lot of editors are doing themselves a great disservice by not pushing past the fact that it’s “different” and seeing the advantages that might lurk within…
Larry, I’m curious why you refer to Compound Clips as a “workaround?” I infer that you believe the “legacy” method was more utilitarian.
If you see the FCPX Project (which contains the Timeline) as the “master” sequence, Compound Clips are quite flexible. You can create your “subsequences” in the Event Browser and create a Keyword Collection which contains them. After you’re done with each, you drop them in to your Project timeline.
You can even make a Compound Clip “template” such as a show standard open you use, and drop them in to each new project as needed.
Compound Clips in the Event Browser/Library are much more “modular” then those sequences later added into your final sequence in FCP legacy.
Maybe you’re seeing a disadvantage I’m not. Maybe it seems awkward that you can’t have multiple “Projects”(sequences) in a “Project” (how awkward is that to translate) but I’m not sure if the old way was “better.” Certainly there’s a difference but I don’t see any disadvantage to making Compound Clips in the Browser and creating Collections in the Event.
Craig:
The more I work with compound clips, the more I discover they can do – and I agree with most of your comments. The real advantage to Compound clillps occurs when you create them in the Event Browser first, because, as you say, you can then use them in any wide variety of different projects.
Larry
Cooper, Apple certainly cares about the way we think. Basically the main way they get our money is if we like what we see.
Personally I’m not sure trade shows are the best way to find out what people think. They probably can get a broad sense from the many online forums.
The difference between Apple is that rather than simply being reactive, they are proactive. It’s a very different business model. That latter doesn’t lead to innovation. The former does. I’d suspect their decision comes from observation rather than simply asking what people think. Sometimes they surmise correctly and sometimes they don’t. That’s always the risk with innovation.
Carlos why would you want Apple to bring back Tracks or the old File Management system? You have Premiere Pro and Avid for that. Apple is building a powerful metadata-based relational database. The new and very powerful Roles feature is an excellent example. The Events/Projects relationship portends to be very flexible especially if it becomes part of a server-based system. It’s just not fully exploited yet.
Reading your blog I kept thinking to myself, “Great, now the geniuses behind final cut pro X have elevated the Editor to a glorified file clerk.” (You know, the editor? That person who use to make interesting juxtpositions of images to illicit emotional responses from viewers-hopefully reminding them of and celebrating their humanity? Remember? And yes I know it’s a fragment). The primary benefit of FCP X goes to those privy to the instant economy created (or fabricated) by the very fact of the new version’s dissimiliarity to it’s earlier version. This includes corporate entities such as yourself, Digital Film Tree (Steve M) BAVC here in SF and others who now get to charge large sums of money to such people as myself for training that will neither make them better editors-in any sense of the word “better”-nor enhance the joy in their life that sometimes comes from making a great edit. Hell, FCP X is tantamount to changing our national language from English to French-French for God’s sake! Well more power to you. A man’s got to make a buck (and as far as corporate entities go you’re a pretty cool one). But from my point of view I believe that the “brains” behind FCP X should all have their asses kicked, then taken out to be tarred, feathered then summarily run out of town. I began my nl editing career as an Avid editor here in SF. A great deal of my technical education took place on the first Avid introduced to SF. The majority of my work over the past 5 years has been on fcp. However with Apples decision to kick me in the balls with FCP’s evolutionary reversal in X Avid has become far more appealing of an editing platform option-even if I have to ditch my Mac for a pc.
Craig:
I hear you. However, Final Cut X reminds me a lot of the iPhone. It’s ground breaking, it’s game changing in many ways. It sort of creates a before and after in its sector, but like the iPhone…it does what it does and it doesn’t do that thing you want it to do (which is so obvious that it should do), until Apple releases the next version of it and makes you buy a new one.
Remember the first iPad? Everyone said…Why doesn’t it have web chat capabilities with a camera? The first iPhone…Why doesn’t it have 3G?
Apple could use a little bit more “reactivity” I don’t mean to quote anyone, and less, Larry Jordan himself, but Apple had meetings with many professionals before releasing FCP X and according to them, didn’t implement or heed many of their ideas and concerns.
Besides the GUI looking like iMovie, it’s like iMovie and iLife in many ways. It does what it does and it doesn’t do that thing you want…and you say to yourself, why in the heck doesn’t it do that????
I have been using and teaching Mac programs for a long time now and I just wish Apple would get off their pedestal of power and give the people what they want.
As far as, “Basically the main way they get our money is if we like what we see.” I don’t completely agree. The way I think is we, as consumers, have choice A, B or C or better yet A, A or A. Adobe, Avid or Apple. Adobe and Avid are VERY aware of this and Apple doesn’t seem to be. In the same way that in the moment that Android or Microsoft Windows are more convenient for you or do what you want them to, you will leave Apple. Well, many people are leaving FCP X and as we speak I am studying Premiere Pro to see if it fits better into my workflow.
I also would just like to say that I am not abandoning FCP just yet. I have just downloaded the update and am looking forward to learning more about the program and using it to discover all of its potential.
Mal:
In response to “CRASH every 15 minutes.” I hope this doesn’t sound like a stupid question, but are you using Lion or Snow Leopard? If you are using Lion, did you do a clean install or an upgrade? When I first installed Lion as an upgrade everything was crashing and my computer was ridiculously slow. I have since done a clean install and now programs like Mail, FCP X and others are working “better”. FCP X does need a lot of processing power and RAM, especially if you have background processes activated and running at the same time you are trying to edit. I have a MB Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and I feel like I don’t have enough power to do things in real time on FCP X. Sometimes I see the video choppy. Sometimes the audio goes out of sync, sometimes I see the rainbow wheel spinning.
After reading Daren’s comment (his ATI card is not compatible) I looked for the tech specs of the update before downloading it and I couldn’t find any, well it says you need Mac OS 10.6.8 or later and a 64-bit processor.
FCP X is okay to work with.
We tried Premiere & it felt ‘old’ as a lot of the editors are complaining about fcpx maybe they are getting ‘older’
Agree with Floris most points well constructed
Larry your forum is positively good and the chap praising C Cow should look atit Some geek heads over at your forum doing some answers of intense quality
Why should I accept the FCP X? Why should I change the way we work the way that Apple thinks is best? Would not it be otherwise? The software to adapt to the way we work?
As I mentioned before:
Stop whining if you think Adobe CS is so much better. Why didn’t you quit yet? To who are you talking? What do you want to achieve with all the complaints and rants? Why haven’t you made the transition? Some things are better in Adobe CS but many of them are definitely not. Pick the things you need most and select the right software accordingly and don’t attack people with another opinion.
People were upset that Apple did not support Flash. Now Microsoft is not supporting it either in the Metro version of IE10.
You can say what you want about Apple. They do rack in huge profits and maybe it is their focus and ultimate goal: but you can’t ignore how much this company has contributed to technology, and especially with regards to how we interact with our computer.
Not thrusting such a company to reinvent non-linear editing workflows (which are based on film cutting, in a time that computers did not exist) is ignorant. There are multiple ways to achieve something and Apple has a different view from Adobe and Avid. I don’t want to go back to Final Cut Pro anymore since I am using FCPX… I only miss certain features; which will be added back in time or replaced by something better that makes sense.
So: make the SWITCH (in Adobe’s words) or stop whining.