NVIDIA released a new CUDA driver 5.0.59, though it did not show up in the control panel and needs to be manually downloaded from their web site. Unlike the web driver it seems to work with my system!

Yesterday I saw that NVIDIA had released a new web driver , 313.01.01, and was hoping it would help my Geforce GTX 670, but instead it caused a cascade of failures and kept me down for a whole day!

Installation went fine. bit on restart the computer would not come up. Eventually I had to put my old Geforce GTX 275 back into my Mac so I could use option and boot into my edrive or the emergency partition (both of which I had to use). First off even with the GTX 275 the computer would not boot at all, not in single user mode or even safe mode (well I honestly stopped Safe Mode after about 2 hours, it was still moving, but going so slow I didn't think it would boot.

And even emergency mode was trouble, because my external OWC 3TB backup drive, no longer mounted, so I couldn't do a restore from my Time Machine partition! And I didn't want to try and re-install the system over the old system, just in case, so I had to go to Best buy and get a new Hard Drive.

DId you know that the new Seagate Barracuda drives in fact don't say Barracuda anywhere on the box? It just stays Desktop, though the drive still says Barracuda! WTF?!?!?!??!

So I got that drive home and re-installed a fresh install of OS X on it, and then had it take my old user and settings from the old drive, which after about 5 hours worked just fine (though I had to move the drive internally as it wasn't working from my external USB housing for some reason).

After everything was in place (including my slow finder) i reinstalled my GTX 670 and the machine rebooted just fine, and even stranger now has the NVIDIA control panel installed, but not the new driver.

I could immediately see the menu bar item for the new control panel.



And when I opened the control panel it informed me that yes that driver is incompatible with my system! YES NO KIDDING! So what systems is it for?


I just wished it realized the Web Driver was not compatible before it installed it before, as it took down my whole system! And I had to buy a new hard drive to get it up and running again!

TonyMacX86 has posted his latest guide to building a CustoMac. Still wish they would do a multi processor XEON one, but that is just me.

No film school is covering this.

Seems inevitable since they edit their own stuff, and FCP 7 is dead and and I would not want to edit a feature on the FCP X timeline.

Creative cow has the press release, but you can check out the new xMac at Sonnet's site. Using thunderbolt to expand a Mac Mini is a brilliant idea now that not only is there not an X-server anymore, but the MacPro has not been upgraded in ages, and though we have Tim Cooke's promise of a new MacPro, this may be the best Mac Server solution going right now, as you can expand it with many PCI cards, and make a real server, with an inexpensive Mac Mini.

Dan Frakes at Macworld has now written 2 articles on how now is the time for a Mac Minitower (one is here, and the second is the editorial in the June 2013 issue of MacWorld), and I have to say I think he could not be more wrong!

Apple has already almost completely killed the current MacPro. It hasn't truly been updated in many many years, and is no longer even on sale in the EU due to environmental regulations, and seems like Apple killed it, but Tim Cook has said that we should expect "something really great" sometime in 2013.

From what it sounds like while the MacPro does not lose money, it is not a money maker either, not like Apple's other products, so they don't need any stupid mini tower to split the market and make a MacPro that much less of a moneymaker.

What Apple needs to do needs to do is at the June 10th WWDC, announce their new MacPro, which should be a serious upgrade to the new MacPro, with the ability to use the latest and greatest video cards and pci cards (and I am talking the NVIDIA TITAN HERE) as well as having Thunderbolt technology and USB3 and yes still Firewire 800, as so many of us still use it (though SATA ports would be great too). And as many hard drives as they can cram in there. I would love an SSD for my system and an addition 6 drives spaces for a hardware raid 5, and yes I still want an optical drive, but can live with that externally if it means more drive space!

Apple please do not listen to Mr. Frakes! Don't split your pro market, just make a new MacPro so that I don't have to make my next tower a Windows machine, because once us high end graphics people, editors and designers all move to windows Apple will lose a lot of it's cool!

Social Meteor has an a good look at how the divide between using a Mac or a PC has mostly gone away for designers.

I totally agree, which is why I have been considering a PC for my next Mac. Sure there are things I like better on a Mac, but on a PC I can buy any video card I want, and get a huge powerful tower with many internal hard drives. And since Mac seems to have basically given up on MacPro's (I know they are supposed to announce a new on this year, but with this long wait I am kind of thinking why bother, when PC's seem to run faster).

AppleInsider has a 2 page article speculating on the new MacPro.

Talking about the very small size of the market for the MacPro, and how Apple could do something small and modular.

If it is true, it is time to move to a PC for me. As a video professional I need a big tower with as many drive bays internal as possible and as many PCI expansion slots as I can get, and maybe 2 CUDA video cards with 4-6GB of RAM if I can afford it. And if Mac isn't going to offer it, then it is time to make the jump to PC.

Part 3 of the speed tests, though this time against some PC GTX 680's (which would take additional power to run in a MacPro or should), wish they had tested against my GTX 670 EVGA with 4GB of RAM.

Wired Magazine has 5 great ideas on how iTunes needs to be fixed, and I totally agree!

The new Search is horrible, and slow and buggy. It is needs to be fast and simple.

They should also add allowing you to default to song view instead of the useless album cover view! And yes a tiny helper app that lets other computers pull songs and work would be great. And even if they don't pull video out (though a better app with Apple TV support and organization abilities would be awesome) better controls would be great.

Apple has announced the WWDC, or World Wide Developers Conference for June 10th-14th. 

This would be a perfect place to announce a new MacPro as these are Developers, and this has been a venue in the past, though Tim Cook in his recent call said that they had new things for the fall.

Honestly if there is no MacPro announced at the WWDC, it is time to start thinking of moving to PC, as I just can't trust in Apple anymore. And they have had years to work on a new MacPro and the current model currently can't even be sold in Europe! They need a new model and it needs to be before the Fall (if it is even then, as all we know is that Tim Cooke said something about a new MacPro this year).

The only thing that gives me hope are the new video cards, the NVIDIA Quadro 5000k and the GTX 680 being released for Mac.

Netkas has posted that yes the incredible $1000 single CPU GeForce Titan does work in the MacPro with the updated NVIDIA drivers in OS X 10.8.4. How is the power draw though? Would it work without external power is the question? It is supposed to draw 250 watts vs the 670's 170 watts, so I am assuming that is way too much.

Bare Feats has posted it's second part of it's Geforce GTX 680 Review and the results are mostly good. It does get beat in Cinema 4D and Motion 5 by the GTX 680MX in the top of the line iMac, but that is likely because of the older hardware and buss speed of the now ancient MacPro over the newer hardware in the iMac. Still it does win for DaVinci Resolve, After Effects, and Octane. Hopefully it would really whoop ass in a new MacPro if that ever happens.

Awesome to have the choice now and not have to get something off of ebay that is many generations old!

Barefeats has some speed tests and things are looking good for gaming, though I would like to see some Premiere Pro and After Effects Speed tests (especially with the Quadro 5000K in the tests).

Now if only Apple would allow more than 2GB of RAM (yes I know the QUADRO 5000K has 4GB of RAM, but you still have to hack your mac to get a PC NVIDIA card to run that has more than 2GB of RAM).

Electronista has a rumor that it may happen this month, though I am not holding my breath. I am betting on the WWDC, whenever that is. And I am also betting it won't be as much as we want in a replacement.

Yes, I was a backer of the Pebble Smartwatch Kickstarter Campaign and got a black Pebble when it came out. And they can now be ordered for $150, though through Kickstarter I got it for less. It is a pretty impressive watch, with the ability to display notifications from your iPhone or Android, though it is still a little buggy, with me having to reset Notifications on my iPhone a few times a day.

Overall I enjoy it, and like that the SDK is now out so third parties will be able to write there own watch faces and applications.

Still it needs to get better. The RunKeeper application has not been included yet, even in Beta for iOS (though Android users have been able to try a BETA), and my biggest complaint is battery life.

Not only does having it on, and bluetooth in use drain my iPhone 4 very quickly (we are talking down to 20% by the end of the day), but the old school bluetooth in my iPhone 4 really drains the Pebble quickly. In fact while it has gotten better (it used to not last 24 hours), but now with the latest firmware 1.10 I would say it lasts more like 36 hours without a charge. Still not so good. And even worse is what happened last night. I connected my Pebble to it's charger and left it. It was still connected to my phone, so vibrating, and somehow managed to unconnected the power. So today my watch is on it's last legs, and not likely to even make it through half the day because it disconnected itself last night! Certainly not so good.

I am sure the battery life would be much better if I connected to my iPad 3, but since I don't currently have cellular hooked up to it, that would only work when near a wifi connection, so not all that often. I am sure it would be better if I ever got an iPhone 5, or 5s when that comes out, but I find that unlikely right now!

Overall I really like the Pebble. I like being able to see my e-mails and preview them, so I know when I really need to check e-mail, as I am usually editing on other people's computers, so I don't have a dedicated e-mail program open and must stop and check to see if I got e-mail. Of course it can also get annoying, as some times my watch is buzzing allot, and it sucks that you can only see your latest message, especially when you get a bunch of messages at once!

I am looking forward to RunKeeper and other 3rd party applications, and better battery life would be great!

Mark Christiansen at the Pro Video Coalition has a good article on running a Hackintosh instead of a MacPro. Well worth the read, and I especially like the ending.

Let’s be clear: the situation with Apple and the Mac Pro right now is identical to what was going on with Final Cut Studio in the years between its final version and Final Cut X.

In other words, there’s no reason for Apple to be stealthy or mysterious with its plans, unless they are likely to upset a large set of Mac users

Or dislike it, but agree. If Apple really is going to release an amazing new MacPro that will please professionals, why not just talk about the damn thing. Sure they won't sell any more MacPro's, but the ancient machines can't be selling too well as is, and has already been pulled from Europe.

It would be so nice to know if it is time to move to windows (ugh, I do really hate Windows 8) and be able to run inexpensive but powerful NVIDIA cards to propel Adobe programs to insane speeds.

Apple has better make the announcements at the WWDC rumored to be in June or it will be time to really think giving up on Mac all together, no matter how much I don't want to!

Apple has Updated Final Cut Pro X to 10.0.8



They are continuing to update with unpaid updates, but I still don't see FCP as a professional software even if it has professional underpinnings.

Arstechnica has an interesting article on problems of working with Apple's iCloud.

It is really interesting to hear that developers are having so many problems with iCloud, since as a user I have completely given up on iCloud because I have found it to work so incredibly badly.

My first issues were with bookmarks and iCloud. I use X-marks to sync my bookmarks between browsers, since Chrome (and formerly Firefox) is my browser of choice, and I don't use Safari at all, but since Safari is what syncs to my iPad and iPhone I needed it to have my bookmarks.

And every time X-Marks overwrote them it worked fine and they were correct until they went to the cloud. The cloud ones had become corrupt and would overwrite not only Safari on my mac, but also on my iPhone and iPad. And there is no way to get rid of the bookmarks! Now most companies would create a way to overwrite either on your computer or online, but not Apple. Their simplified iCloud bookmarks have no way to get rid of the bookmarks from iCloud, so I had to turn off iCloud syncing and just do a direct sync via itunes, which directly brings Safari's bookmarks to my iPad and iPhone.

My Second issue cropped up when I moved from an iPad 1 to an iPad 3. I had been a Mobile Me user, so I got 25GB of space on my iCloud (necessary to backup an iPad, and not enough for both my iPad and iPhone), and had 3 months previously moved to iCloud backup. When I attempted to move everything to my new iPad, it would not work. None of the apps would install. They started to download, and then stopped there, for days! And I could get no help on the issue, so I ended up going to my 3 month old previous backup on my home computer and have been syncing with my computer every since.

Why should I even try putting stuff on iCloud when I have no control over it? And it does seem to get corrupted often! So why not just leave everything on my Mac and use Dropbox or Sugarsync or box.net or even my Synology NAS to sync to. They all actually work and don't seem to screw up all the time, like iCloud does.

iCloud at the very least needs basic controls to allow overwriting of items on the cloud or on your computer (though they could probably get away with just overwriting iCloud, since that is where the glitches happen!).

Dare Dreamer Magazine has an article on using compound clips instead of projects to make new sequences, since new projects take up a lot more hard drive space.

Sounds interesting, though it does just further highlight the continued issues with FCP X. Not being able to share renders between Projects (which are sequences in FXP X) seems ridiculous, and not very power user friendly.

Still just can't see myself every trying FCP X again, not when Premiere Pro CS6 and AVID Media Composer are out there.

Appleinsider has heard rumors of Apple working on 2 GB SSD's for the new MacPro with a standard SATA connector.

And while that would be awesome, at least for a boot drive, the cost would be so prohibitively expensive that it would be useless! And the fusion drives scare me as if one drive goes you lose everything (though you should be backing it up anyway). Still the most hopefully thing out of this is that maybe we will be getting a new MacPro soon. I SURE HOP SO!!!

Jonny Elwyn at Toolbox has a great article on making the switch from FCP 7 to AVID Media Composer 6.5.

Jordon Smith at Phantom Moose Films has come up with a way to share FCP X projects like you could old FCP 7 projects.

Mark Spencer at the Pro Video Coalition has an article on the new Event Manager for FCP X that allows you to hide events in FCP X without moving them.

I AM FILM GUY has a good article on moving from Mac to HP.

I still worry about articles like this as it seems like they may be payed or getting gear for free (you can never tell), and they never go into the OS differences of moving from Mac to Windows, but you never know. I have been seriously considering the switch because Windows machines are so much newer and CUDA support so much better.

I thought about a Puget Systems custom system though.

Who knows, maybe the next MacPro will change my mind, if it ever comes out.

As Apple Insider says, the Mac Pro is no longer available in Europe due to recycling regulations.

At this point Apple just needs to announce the next itineration even if it has a while before it comes out, or many people will be moving to windows machines in the near term, and yes the new iMac's are nice, but they really don't replace a MacPro!

The ProVideo Coalition has 2 open letters to Apple.

Why do Mac's deal with external monitors haphazardly.

and

Why does FCP X deal with i/o haphazardly.

Unfortunately I am not sure how much Apple listens anymore (though they seem to have on the MacPro), but we can hope.

Appleinsider has a report that a French retailer, who has been forced to stop selling MacPro's in March due to a new EU law, has said that they have word on Apple that new MacPro's will arrive this spring.

Now that is all second hand, but with the current MacPro being banned in the EU, maybe Apple would try and re-assure it's retailers, though why not just make an announcement. I guess they need to clear their current stock.

Still, lets hope this is true, and it gets releases at the WWDC. The current MacPro is quite old in the tooth and we need a thunderbolt equipped MacPro with PCI slots and power to spare including graphics power!

Ars Technica has this note, and it isn't an apple choice, it is a new ruling about safety on fans, but I still find it ominous.

Apple should be pushing out a new update as fast as they can, as they want the line to still exist if they are planning on having it in the future, but maybe their pans have changed. And who knows what Tim Cooke was actually talking about.

Apple has added a 128GB iPad 4 to it's lineup (at least within a week), but it is $799 for WIFI and $929 for 4G, so they are charging a premium for more memory instead of staying the same price as they get bigger.

Starting to get to be the right size, especially for video and audio, though I could still use bigger. I keep most of my music in Apple Uncompressed AAC, and it is huge, and I am constantly fighting it being full.

Larry Jordan has an article on my Final Cut Pro X is ready and in fact being used for Professional work.

Now I did try and use FCP X right from the start with lessons, and I don't think it is a professional program at all. Yes it might be faster to teach to someone with no previous editing knowledge as Larry says, but that is because it forces you to edit in a very specific way, and for me not a way that I find faster or better at all. And yes I am biased by all the horridness of Apple's launch of FCP X and killing of the Final Cut Pro 7 suite, and that may bias me, but I also think that Larry making his living doing Final Cut Pro lessons may bias him.

And I hate how no one ever talks about the things that Final Cut Pro 7 is not setup to do, like working in a multi-user environment on an X-Serve or Edit Share. He does mention it is not that good at going to Pro Tools, which is a deal breaker, but also the inability to organize tracks makes for a mess of a timeline when I often use 15-20 tracks on a commercial, all for different elements or graphics to keep it organized, and to have that all haphazardly put randomly into the timeline is insane and a mess, and not at all professional!

Now I do love the ability to mark clips by keywords and make it all easily searchable, but that could have easily been ported into a Final Cut Pro 8 and made it a really powerful 64 bit editing system instead of a mixture of 64 bit tech with iMovie conventions.

Even with all the additions I still see Final Cut Pro X as a mess and not-professional. It has too much wrong with it, and has so many weird bugs (see previous posts on Red Giant software and FCP X), and I just don't see the magnetic timeline as being professional in a commercial environment or any graphics heavy environment where timeline organization is more important that clip organization, which I am perfectly capable of organizing myself.

StudioDaily has an article on editors picking Dell Computers over MacPro's for editing, which may in fact be true (though the article is written by someone working for Dell), as the MacPro has basically stagnated for years now, but I also hate how they never bother upgrading a MacPro with more modern technology for speed tests. Like putting in a PC NVIDIA Geforce 675 GTX with 4GB of RAM. That will make a huge difference in speed, especially with CUDA compliant software like Premiere Pro or Black Magic's DaVinci Resolve! It may not be a TESLA, but it also doesn't come with the price, which could set you back well over $6000 for a QUADRO and a TESLA, vs under $500 for a GTX 675 which works with the Mac's current power supply and can really upgrade your existing MacPro.

Now of course their is still the question of what Apple's next MacPro will be like and if it will be a worthy and powerful successor to the current MacPro, but we won't know till it comes out, hopefully at this years WWDC.

FCP.Co has 2 articles from 3D designer Peter Zigich on possible, though pretty out there designs for a new MacPro which Tim Cook has promised we will get this year (hopefully at WWDC).

The first is on a modular tower, and the second a smaller design using low powered AMD chips (wouldn't that require a new OS and apps?).

Interesting ideas, though I doubt either will happen. I am hoping for something really powerful, and better would be the ability to use PC videos cards without Mac supplies firmware as long as you have drivers, and releasing the 2 GB of video ram limit, NVIDIA TESLA support would be great too, as well as many hard drives as you can stuff in there!

So Red Giant knows it has issues with Looks and Mojo in FCP X, and it seems they can't fix it. It is an Apple thing that must be fixed, and there is no word if or when they will.

Larry Jordan has an article on just how impressed he is with the new iMac for editing. He tricked out a system and it does sound pretty impressive.

I have been interested in the new top of the line Graphics Card for the new 2012 iMac, which is an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 680mx, and was wondering how it faired against my Desktop GTX 670. Everyone has been claiming it makes the iMac the most powerful Mac Editing machine out there, but I doubted it, as I have not seen any speed test against equivalent graphics cards. The 680m is actually a 680 slowed down.

I found a EuroGamer review of the GTX 680m, which tells me what I wanted to know about a 680M, but not a 680MX, but I found a review of that at Notebook Check.

Here is some of what they have to say:

Compared to the GeForce GTX 680M, the GTX 680MX features 1536 instead of 1344 CUDA cores and higher memory clocks (720/2500MHz vs 720/1800 MHz)

the graphics performance of the GeForce GTX 680MX should be 15 - 25 percent above the GTX 680M and similar to the Desktop GTX 580.

And specs on the GTX 680mx from NVIDIA's site.




And as for the GTX 670 from NVIDIA's site.





So the iMac has more CUDA cores, but it's speed is not as fast, and it's memory speed is less than half the speed.

So basically the 680MX it is a really powerful mobile graphics chip, but not as powerful as it's equivalent Desktop GPU the GTX 670, and is more in line to a last generation GTX 580.

And yes it is not the easiest thing in the world getting a new generation NVIDIA card running in your MacPro, but it is not that hard, but should put your speed above that of the top of the line iMac GPU, and have more processing power, making it still champion, even though it is such dated technology at this point. Have to love expandability though as an old machine can still hold a performance edge, which is something the iMac will never have.

Lets just hope Apple makes a really good new MacPro this year.

Bare Feats has run the tests, and the 2012 iMac 27" 3.4GHz Core iMac with 32GB of RAM and the GeForce GTX 680MX GPU actually does beat the MacPro in Resolve and Premiere Pro, but that is a MacPro with the Radeon HD 5870 GPU. Not really a fair test unless you have an NVIDIA CUDA card in the MacPro. As the MacPro still beats the iMac in 2 out of 3 CPU tests.

I have a feeling my non Mobile NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 4096 MB would slaughter the iMac in anything CUDA aware, which would be Premiere Pro, After Effects or DaVinci Resolve.

MacOSRumors has the news on this Docking Station for a Thunbderbolt equipped Macbook Pro.

It has a Gigabit Ethernet Port, Two USB 2 ports, AUdio in and out jacks, and either HDMI or DVI port (depending on the model).

A very cool idea for around $250.

CNET has an article on the 7 features Apple dropped from iTunes 11. These are Cover Flow (which I don't miss), de-duper (now you need to use 3rd party applications, the excellent iTunes DJ for creating easy continuous mixes, Gapless Playback Editor (works for old Gapless albums, but not new ones, so all my new live stuff will have gaps), Multiple Windows (as you can tell from my previous post my other biggest piss off), the other Sidebar (which was just a link to the store and I will not miss) and quick volume control in the mini player.

I hate when Apple upgrades and removes features! It is the dumbing of the Mac and I don't like it!

And honestly so far I haven't been so impressed by the much vaunted speed of iTunes 11. Maybe my library is too big, but scrolling still does not seem that fast to me.

Well Apple has released it's huge update to iTunes, iTunes 11. And honestly I find it harder to use, especially playlists. Instead of all on one window, you have to use separate windows, so it actually takes more steps to do things I used to easily be able to do.

Here is the album view.

And the Playlist view

And you can no longer break playlists off, so you can copy between playlists or use it to organize. Now you can only see one playlist at a time. I hate the move to more iOS like single window viewing, instead of being able to view as many windows as I want!

Yes the iTunes store is now even prettier, and you can now play songs from the iCloud (if you have a small enough library to do iTunes Match, which I don't), but overall I find it actually harder to use. It is much more focused on Album covers instead of lists, and I have always found lists to be much easier to use (faster and more efficient), and while there are still lists here, they are more hidden. And I have to hit a button to edit a playlist, and then go to where the song is and drag it in, instead of being able to see my playlists and my songs at the same time. The extra step is not easier, it is harder!

And I don't think syncing has been much improved. Instead of your connected devices showing up in the playlists they show up on the right, but the menus inside seem mostly the same except the addition of an "On this iPad" which I like since the movies have never been as well organized as playlists, especially when you have a huge list. I hate the thumbnail there view, which has not changed (a list would be much more efficient), but at least you can look "On Your iPad" and more easily see what you have already synced.

Here is the On This iPad button.

Here is where your iOS devices show up.

And what happens when you click on the button. And then you can go into the standard sync section, which hasn't changed much.



And another loss of efficiency is that you have to hover over areas on the iOS device to see how much actual space each section is taking up.

Adding another step which slows things down.


Overall it stills works and I can still make playlists, play music and sync, and there is a better mini player with a search function, but I actually think it downgraded in many ways. I don't think you will have a choice before long, so this is where iTunes is going and if you need to sync and iOS device you need to use the latest and greatest, so here it is, but overall it is not much of an improvement and even might be a downgrade to what we used to have, even if it always has been bloated and slow.


EDIT:

Well I was wrong on one thing, as I can at least bring back the sidebar and have my playlists back, and iOS devices on the left again.

It is easy to do, just got to the view menu.


And the Sidebar is back.



Nice. Still defaults to Album view, but you can view by songs and that solves the problem. Still can't open up multiple playlists anymore though, which is a pain. At least with a full 64 bit app it should be faster. Still would like more options in the sync, like viewing by list, but at least we have some more speed.

I also recommend turning on the status bar,


So you can see the length and size of playlists as you used to be able to!

I have now been in Apple stores twice and checked out the iPad mini and must say it is just about perfect. The perfect size and weight. My iPad 3 gets heavy to hold, and I think the iPad mini would be just right to hold for extended periods of time. it is so light and feels pretty well constructed.

I still think the price is way too high though. $250 would be a perfect starting place, and even $299 would just deel better than the extra $30.

HD Magazine has an excellent article on the lack of a new MacPro.

It basically is how I feel. Many in the industry love Macs, but the MacPro is just not as fast as PC's right now and there are great options from HP and Dell that just have the Speed advantage. Companies are waiting to see what Tim Cook was talking about, but we are not holding our breath, and if Apple does not release a new MacPro that really can compete with high end PC's, people will start moving to PC's for their computers, possibly with a Mac laptop for personal stuff.

It really is so sad, but the MacPro's just don't make enough as compared to Apple's consumer products (even though they do make money), so Apple is abandoning the people who kept the company afloat all those years when Apple was doing so badly with everyone else.

The consumerizing of Final Cut Pro is further proof of their changing focus, and I don't think that they realize the damage they will be doing to themselves in the long run as all professionals move away from Macs.

And that doesn't even delve into the fact that Windows 8 is such a dud, after Windows 7 being such a good OS.

ArsTechnica has done it usual and gone deeper into Apple Fusion drives, now using a true Fusion drive from a Mac Mini. They show how the technology works and the caveats (if one drive goes the whole partition goes, and everything writes first to the SSD, which you can't control).

He was able to re-create a Fusion Drive using an SSD and a regular hard drive. Of course the 2 drive setups means more possibility of errors as if one drive fails, they both fail, but it seems more likely that 3rd parties will be able to offer Fusion drives.

He has also posted more on building your own Fusion Drive and Fusion Drive Loose ends.

ArsTechnica has a good article on the difference between these processors in the new Macs.

Honestly I hadn't realized there was so little difference in the mobile versions except clock speed (and the quad over dual core versions), though I did think that the i7 desktops had superior performance, cache and hyperthreading (strangely both mobile versions have hyperthreading).

Ken Stone has an excellent and thorough review of the new FCP X Update with many photos.

It is an excellent look, and the program does look better, but I still won't be giving FCP X a spin again anytime soon, and no I am not just a hater who feels wounded by FCP X.

Honestly while I love the metadata capabilities, and think they should be included in other programs, I hate the timeline. It is unintuitive and unorganized. Cutting DR, I usually have shows with 12-15 Video Tracks and I like to keep them well organized so it is easy to see what is what, and easy to jump in for anyone else and replace a shot if need be, but the magnetic timeline is not at all conducive to that.

And it is not set up to easily be used in a multi-user multi-machine environment, which is essential for how I work.

I still don't see forcing an editor to work a certain as possibly being the future of editing, no matter how fast it can be. Editors have ways that they like to work, and adding new ways is great, and if they are better people will use them, but being forced to use them is just unacceptable.

Anandtech has a very good article on the Mac Fusion Drive, and how it works and who it is good for.

Sounds great to me personally, and I would love one for my MacPro if that is possible (probably not).

I like the idea of the pinning and moving, as I have about 1 TB currently on my main system hard drive, so the 3TB with Fusion would be awesome. Hopefully a 3rd party can figure this out and have 256MB instead of 128MB with the 3TB.

I know, I know I should just go SSD, but I just don't have enough hard drive space. I have all 4 drives in my MacPro with 2TB hard drives (would love to have 3's some day) and no room to add an SSD at all (even have 2 optical drives, a DVD-R and a Blu-Ray burner as well)..

Apple has updated FCP X to 10.0.6 with many new features, but the biggest being, having 2 viewer windows now. Seems that one viewer thing didn't work out too well for Apple. There is also multi-channel audio editing, a unified input window, an MXF plug in support and RED Camera Support with 5K resolution up from 4K.

Personally I think the FCP X's unorganizable timeline is still a mess, but they are slowly making it better. Having dual viewer windows is a huge step forward to normal editors feeling comfortable with the program. Still I am not going to invest in it, as I still hate the timeline, and I don't think that will ever improve.

And Phil Hodgetts has been using a beta version for a while, so he has a look at it. It seems pasting features is now back (from FCP 7, now Premiere Pro needs to implement this feature better than an all or nothing). He really goes into all the new features.

ArsTechnica also got it's eye caught by the new Fusion drive, and speculates on how it works.

Let hops 3rd parties can figure this out, and we can have these additions for MacPro's in the future. I would love to move my main drive to a Fusion drive in the future.

The 1 TB is an additional $250 for the MacMini and you can't pre-order the new iMac's yet, so you can't see what the 3TB will set you back, but the price of a 3rd parties would be less, and well worth the speed increase.

Apple has updated it's Mac Mini. For $599 or $799 you either get a dual core i5 or a quad core i, though with only the intel Graphics HD 4000 for graphics. And for $999 you get the server version with 2 hard drives and Mountain Lion Server.

Still a very powerful desktop computer in a very small size, though not for CUDA unless you added a thunderbolt expansion chasis for way too much.

Impressively this can also be built with a Fusion drive for added speed.

Apple today released the 13" MacBookPro with Retina Display. And unlike it's 15" Cousing which sports an NVIDIA Geforce GT 650m and a Intel HD Graphics 4000, the 13 model only has the Intel HD Graphics 4000, which means no CUDA support for Premiere Pro editing, and certainly not as good graphics.

It is still an impressive little machine, but not really a solution for editors.

It starts at $1699 and is shipping today.

I wouldn't want one, as the 15" would be much more conducive to editing.

Apple has updated it's iMac and it is thinner and more powerful, and now sans a CD rom drive.

Most impressive for editing are NVIDIA Mobile processors across the line, so they should all be great for CUDA in Premiere Pro. The low end has a GT 640M with 512MB of RAM, the second has a GT 650M with 512MB, the 3rd has a GTX 660m with 512MB and the high end has a GTX 675 with 1GB of RAM (best for editing right there). Even better the high end is configurable to a Geforce GTX 680MX with 2GB of RAM!

Too bad ll the stock models have i5 processors, but you can upgrade to an i7 that is 3.4Ghz. The high end also has user addable RAM, though the smaller model is soldered, but comes with 8GB to start.

Another exciting upgrade is the Fusion Drive you can get in BTO. It has 128GB of Flash Ram tied to 1 or 3 TB of regular hard drive, so your system can be on the fast Fusion, but you seamlessly get FLASH speeds for your system.

Starting at $1299-$1999 and available in November to December.

You have to configure it, but it really could be a great editing machine, especially with Thunderbolt, though I would prefer a non-mobile video card personally.

Wow, 6 months out and Apple has upgraded the iPad from the new iPad to the iPad with Retina Display (iPad 4). It is basically an iPad 3 with an A6x instead of A5x processor, which is supposedly twice as fast. It has a 720p Facetime camera, and a lightning connector and is the same price as the last model, which is no longer available.

Very cool, and a damn fast update!

Apple has announced the iPad mini started at $329 for 16GB Wifi and up to $659 for 4G Celular with 64 GB. A smaller upgraded iPad 2 (same pixel density display). 7.9 Inch display versus 9.7 for full iPad, but thinner and lighter.

Pretty cool, but overpriced I think. Still bet it will sell very well.

ArsTechnica has an excellent hands on.

So Apple is busy making announcements, but they have a new 13" MacBook Pro (Sans NVDIA graphics card), a new thinner iMac with a better NVIDIA 660m graphics cards (Hurray CUDA) and improved Mac Mini, the new iPad 4 (or iPad with Retina Display which is faster, with lightning connector for same price after only 6 months) and the overpriced iPad mini starting at $329 for WIFI 16GB.

FCP.Co has an article on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro to get better OpenCL performance in FCP X, but it will also increase your CUDA power for Premiere Pro and After Effects CS6.

Still you can score over 1000 on Luxmark if you go for a GTX670 instead (which has a huge amount more of CUDA cores, and can still draw it's power from the internal power supply instead of say a 680, which would require an external power source to run), but they are not as well supported on the Mac. Either way you will need to go to Netkas to get some instruction and some help (though some of the help can be rather surly, but it is worth it if can really beef up using your MacPro). Someone at Netkas has also figure out how to Firmware update recent MacPro's to the latest firmware for the newest itineration, allowing beefier XEON's into your old MacPro.

The instructions are pretty easy, but I have found that they don't always work, so think about re-installing your NVIDIA drivers once you are done, as that did it for me.

You will also need to do some hacking to Premiere Pro and After Effects to get them working with the CUDA cores on a new video card.

Managed to fix it though. I carbon copy cloned my main hard drive to make a new, then did a clean install of Mountain Lion. This took a download of Mountain Lion from the app store and Lion Diskmaker 2, which installed a full version onto a USB stick. I then did a clean install. This is of course after de-activating Adobe CS6, Final Draft and AVID Media Composer.

Just to try it, I had it import my User and Applications from my carbon copy cloner version (thinking this would bring over the problems, whatever they were), but after the import I had a system that was working fine, with all of my applications installed. Sure I had re-install a few, but overall everything worked just fine and my computer is back to speed!

I am glad there is still a way to do a clean system install, since Apple removed the Archive and Install option a while back. Still it should be easier than it is (IE the option given from Apple). Glad it is working though.

Now just really need a bigger hard drive so I can get my Time Machine going again (had to do a bunch of moving of files to get an extra drive for the Clone procedure).

StudioDaily has an awesome article on how they are using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 on SNL. They were in Final Cut Pro and decided to move to Premiere Pro, especially because of the workflow with After Effects.

Still I am surprised it is all Mac, but they obviously had Macs for Final Cut. So far I am impressed with CS6, but there have been some stability issues for me, especially with CUDA, though hopefully that last NVIDIA update fixed that. I would think PC's would be faster and more stable, though I do still love my Mac. They had just better make a really kick ass MacPro really damn soon!

Adobe blogs has the story.




It doesn't mention all the crashes I was having for other reasons, and general premiere pro instability, but hopefully this will cover it. And hopefully I can move back to my GeForce GTX275 from my Quadro 4800 as the 4800 just isn't fast.

Wonder if this improves Kepler card support? That would be awesome, though I doubt it.

You can download from NVIDIA here.

Arstechnica has a good article talking about how the connector for Apple's new Lightning Adapter may be able use the metal shielding as a 9th wire, making for a 9th wire and making Lightning USB 3 compatible. If so it could live up to it's Lightning name.

Still have my iPhone 4, but went to the Apple store to check out the iPhone 5. It sounded great, but not too great, but I was wrong.

The first thing you notice is how light it is. It makes the iPhone 4 seem heavy, but it still feels well built and solid. And the mostly metal back is much better than the glass iPhone 4 and 4S. The phone is thinner, and lighter, and taller.

The taller screen looks better even at the same resolution. And the bigger screen is just better. Wide screen shows look great and having an extra row of apps on every screen is fantastic.

And the lightning connector is impressively small. Still if it is not faster, it sucks to make every previous accessory either incompatible or have to work with an adapter.

if all of the speed tests are true, this is a really impressive phone. I so want one! Ha!

So with the iPhone 5 Apple updated and downgraded it's connector to the new lightning connector. The good news is it is smaller, and will work in either direction. The bad news is it is the same speed as the old adapter, sends less data, so many old accessories won't work, and for those that do it requires an adapter at $28 for a direct or $39 for a cable.

Youch! Honestly i would rather have had the old adapter still so all my old devices would work. Especially since Apple said they won't make docks for the iPhone 5, and i prefer my iPhone and iPods in docks!

Sure I have an iPhone and an iPad, but even with the largest models of their generations and a bunch of apps 64 GB doesn't leave much room for music. Not only that but I rip all my CD's at Apple Lossless, which is about half the size of CD quality with no loss of quality. That leaves me with my venerable iPod Classic with 120 GB harddrive (there was once a bigger model, but it is no more). Still not huge, especially with hard drives growing every year, but sans a plethora of apps it can store quite a bit of music. And there is nothing else that matches it's size. Sure eventually static memory will get larger, but so does app size as screens get better. And don't even get me started in how much space large photos take up on the new iPad!?!?!

And streaming music doesn't work for me as long as data plans have caps. And even most unlimited plans are not even close to unlimited! As streaming could be the future, but only if it can be all your songs just as they are in your computer!

I know it will never happen, but i would love a new hard drive based ipod, say 320GB, with an updated interface. It can still be scroll wheel, but playlists needs a fast scroll like artists have! It could store most of my music and mean i can just worry about apps on my iOS devices!

Apple has released a new iPod Nano with bigger screen, which is in fact huge compared to the last version (which Ia m not so certain about. Certainly better for playing video, but not as portable as all. Starting at $149.

Apple has released a new iPod touch based on the iPhone 5, but still missing a true GPS, with a 5 Megapixel isight camera, but still a 720P Facetime HD camera.

Still at starting at $299 since it is not subsidized it is expensive!

And they didn't name it the next iPhone, which is even better. It has a powerful quad core A6 processor and a taller screen, which allows one more row of icons, or bigger 1135 by 640 16x9 apps, which is great for watching movies and old apps show up as letterboxed instead of stretched. It has a better 8 Megapizel camera, and it's towards you camera is now 720p for facetime. It has a new connector called Lightning that should be faster and is much smaller, but will require all new accessories or adapter cables.

Nothing revolutionary, but certainly very cool. I would love to replace my iPhone 4 with one, but it is not going to happen. Too broke after surgery and possible not having work for a while. It is $199, $299 or $499 for 16, 32 or 64 GB versions.

Today as Apple announced the iPhone 5, new iPod Touch and Nano and iOS release next week, they also showed off a new version of iTunes which is a complete revamp, and I am scared, very scared.



As with OS X it seems to be getting dumber.

It looks like you have to look via album covers, instead of a text list, which is not convenient for someone with as big of a library as I have (I can't even get an iCloud account as it won't fit). And how does that work for playlists? Is that still a list?

I am not saying iTunes doesn't need help, but I want a nice list view for things, and not have to use album covers! Hell many of my playlists are random, so they don't have covers anyway!

I would also like to see the music sync window for iPods, as that has been a peave of mine and needed an update, but the site says nothing about how it works.

Honestly I am scared that this new version will cut down on functionality and only be for the lowest common denominator!

Please apple keep list views for those of us with huge libraries.

I know, I know iChat theater is old technology and has been out since Final Cut Pro 7 was was released, but it is still awesome tech. If you have a web camera or iSight you can share what you are viewing in Final Cut Pro 7 using iChat (or messages in Mountain Lion) and you can hear the person on either end and see Timecode as well. It has it's issues (audio often drops out and you have to restart the computer to get it back, and often it is hard to get the chat to actually start), but overall it works very well and allows for remote monitoring of an edit.

Sure you can share your screen with Skype, but that shared the whole screen, timeline and all, and the video is small. iChat theater allows you to share just what is playing back from Final Cut Pro. It is awesome for editors who like to work at home, and producers who like to do the same. And it works very well overall.

The problem is that Final Cut Pro 7 is EOL and will never be updated again, and is really showing it's age. Sure many companies have such an investment that they are still using it before the go with AVID (though I prefer Premiere Pro, if only it were more stable). And neither Premier Pro or Media Composer have anything like it.

iChat theater and Final Cut Pro 7 is an elegant solution to a problem that is very relevant today (editors working remotely), and a new solution needs to be implemented in AVID and Premiere Pro.

I wonder if it could be done via a plug in like BlackMagic or AJA, as if it was going out via video to Messages or Skype or a proprietary messaging program? The thing is it is such a great piece of software that the competitors need it (even if FCP X doesn't have it anymore either).

Working from home means companies need less edit bays, editors get more sanity from not driving, and it is better for the environment not having to drive, so someone please come up with a solution and fast!

MacMatrix has updated SideEffects which combines SIMBL and and ColorfulSidebar to return colored icons to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. The best part is having your custom drive icons back (as they really do help you hit them).

The only thing that did not work for me was the finder restart added to your Users startup items, and I had to use my own I made with Automator, but I am back to color icons.


Don't these look so much better, and I love my custom icons as well!

I am still have some SIMBL crashes though, but have been in contact with the creator to see if we can clear them up, as I love my color finder icons!

I did have some weird error messages saying it would not open, but it seems to open and work.

John Siracusa over at ArsTechnica has written another of her amazing OS X reviews, this of Mountain Lion. And it is a must read for anyone who is going to be using the new OS. It is 22 pages long, so expect to take some time with it, but it is worth it.

So Apple has released Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 via the Mac App store for $19.99! Sure are undercutting Microsoft there, and with a year between released they can really add in the near and the short term.

So far my favorite part if that Contacts has returned to a 3 pain view so you can see the groups and contacts at the same time as you could before lion. Still hate the B&W icons in the Finder Sidebar, and the stupidification of the OS (such as hiding the User/Library folder).

Also had some issues, lost the icons in the sidebar and had to dump the sidebar preferences to fix them. The finder also ground to a halt after the upgrade, but I fixed it with Diskwarrior. And I have had some scrolling issues where I would scroll and it would instantly jump back to the top. And Launchbar had to wait for the OS to re-index with Spotlight before it worked (wow, I can barely function without Launchbar at this point). Had to change the settings to allow all apps to launch, so I could install apps from anywhere to get everything working though.

Tej's Tech Blog has a post on installed an NVIDIA GTX 570 PC card into a MacPro and it seems to work except for EFI (so it goes straight to desktop or login screen, you don't see the spinning ball at the start. Guess you can't do safe mode or boot to another drive then from startup, though not positive on that).

You will have to do some Terminal tricks to get the Adobe suite to see it as compatible as the card is not listed for Mac, but it can be done.

This is great news. Wonder if NVIDIA is going towards one driver for all their cards, or if it means that Apple is planning to include NVIDIA if and when it ever updates the MacPro?

No matter what, more NVIDIA support for Macs is a good thing. And it is great that the new MacBook Pro and the MacBook Pro Retina are run by NVIDIA cards, as more CUDA support means more realtime with the Adobe Suite.

The Pro Video Coalition Cut.N.Colro by Steve Hullfish has released part 2 of making the switch from FCP 7 to AVID.

This talks about SmartTools (Avid's concession to an FCP like Timeline) and keyboard controls as well as the Pen tool for Audio rubberbanding.

Steve Hullfish of Cut.N.Color at The Pro Video Coaltion has part of an article on Making the Switch to FCP 7 from Avid Media Composer.

it talks about using JKL and IO which are the same, and then how AVID shows you what speed it is playing back, and the differences in keyboard shortcuts with normal tools, such as zoom.

Biscardi Creative has posted part 3 of it's switch to CS6 from Final Cut Pro 7. A good read with interesting points.

•Because of Native editing, they their render time is basically down to realtime render, so a 30 minute show has around a 30 minute render! That is a huge change!

•It requires more setup before hand, and it is smart to organize everything before import.

•Still using FCP 7 for videotape ingest!

•Use Davinci Resolve for grading, though it does not support all the files that Premiere Pro does, so a flattened ProRes Quicktime file is created from final timeline and use resolve's scene detect tool!

There is of course more, and this is a must read for switchers!

Now this is some seriously exciting news at Hardmac, it seems the members at Netkas forums using the new mac NVIDIA drivers for the MacPro have managed to get an NVIDIA GeForve GTX 680 running in a MacPro.



Now lets hope that Mountain Lion come with drivers and new cards are released, or are at least hackable to work, because I want a new video card in a big way!

I already have a the New iPad with Retina display and love it, and haven't owned a Laptop in years (my last was the black plastic Mac Laptop, which was fantastic), and have been unpleased with the lac of NVIDIA cards in mac laptops to work with CUDA, but this answers that problem in spades.

And the screen is fantastic. Being able to switch to a 1920x1080 resolution for editing is fantastic, I could really use one of these. The screen is gorgeous and this is a powerful machine, just have to upgrade when you get it, as it is not user upgradeable, so spend more on the high end and the bigger hard drive and more RAM, so it would cost an arm and a leg. Still it would be worth it to have a portable editing machine this powerful!

I so want one, but can't afford it, though I sure wish I could.

MacFixit has a good article on how to upgrade your system hardrive and maintain the recover partition on the hard drive.

Oliver Peters at Digital Sky has an article on using Final Cut Pro X in a full production environment with clients in the bay for the first time. Now he seems positive on the experience, but to me it makes it sound even less ready for a production environment! First off he has to use Final Cut Pro 7 in many stages of the preparation for the project, as FCP X seems less well suited for a project that ever needs to be handed off or moved and doesn't actually modify the original files for things like changing reel numbers.

Now the metadata features do sound great for finding files once you have spent the time to organize, but I have never had an issue with organization once I have a project ready to edit.

And things like this give me even greater pause.

Due to the “rubbery-ness” of the magnetic timeline, it did appear that removing transitions at the beginning and end of spots and removing the slomo clips caused some shifting of the spots within this string of six spots on a single Project timeline. No sync issues, but definitely not as locked into position as with an FCP 7 timeline.

This program still is not even close to ready for primetime, and I am not sure it ever will be. I have said it before, but if they had added some of these features onto a 64 Bit Final Cut Pro 8, people would love it, but by taking so much away, and trying to force people to edit in a very strict way they have shown how little they understand of the world of editing, where no 2 editors do things the same exact way!

Fat Cat Software has updated their post on using iPhoto Library Manager with iPhoto 9.3 and the new Aperature, and it does work to change libraries, but copying albums/events or merging libraries currently doesn't work.

Glad to be able to have multiple libraries and use iPhoto or aperature! Nice.

MacRumors has a very interesting look at the new MacBook Pro Retina display and some features I didn't know about. It seems you can increase the apparent resolution of the 15 inch display by decreasing the PPI. Normally the display is equivelent of a 1440 x 900 display at full PPI, but cna be changed to 1680 x 1050 High-Res or 1920 x 1200 and you just lose pixel density, but would be awesome for editing.

Also the loss of the glass cover is supposed to reduce glare by 75%!

Of course it is now coming out that it has no user upgradeable parts and soldered RAM, so buy it with the Max RAM that you will need because you won't be adding anymore later!

Forbes says new Model, designs for MacPro in 2013. It seems that after the uproar over the MacPro non-update that Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an e-mail to a customer saying that there will be new designs and models of MacPro in 2013.

Franz,
Thanks for your email. Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event, don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year. We also updated the current model today.
We’ve been continuing to update Final Cut Pro X with revolutionary pro features like industry leading multi-cam support and we just updated Aperture with incredible new image adjustment features.
We also announced a MacBook Pro with a Retina Display that is a great solution for many pros.
Tim
Of course having to wait till next year after a 2 year wait fucking sucks, but at least it looks like the MacPro has a future. And it better include NVIDIA cards and external Retina Display monitors, as well as Thunderbolt and USB 3!

9to5Mac has the story on this one, and it seems that Apple has seen the backlash of their new MacPro update, and they have deigned to pull the new designation from the MacPro.

It doesn't make up for releasing an update to the MacPro with zero new technology, but at least it makes me think they realize how much this has pissed people off.

Macworld has the story, on the new Airport Express, which was not mentioned in the WWDC Keynote. It basically looks like a white Apple TV now, but now sports a WAN and a LAN connector, and the standard USB and analog/optical audio jack, but it also has the best features of the AirPort Extreme, which is dual band 802.11n support, which will allow macs and iPads to connect over a 5Ghz network, and your iPhone over a 2.4 Ghz network.


And it remains priced for $99 and is available now from Apple's Web Store.

Dave Pogue in the New York Times has a great article on all the new goodies Apple released yesterday, but for me the most interesting part is what he has to say on the MacPro's.

Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013.

Still though, that could really mean the iMac are getting an update soon, and the MacPros will just continue with these crappy updates, but one can still hope that Apple has reversed course and is finally working on a new and more powerful MacPro with the latest technology and powerful NVIDIA support (how about a QUADRO 5000 and a GeForce GTX 690 or at least 680). Still the tech in the MacPro is so far behind at this point, they need to work fast or more and more people will move to Windows in the Interim!

MacStories has the story on this one. Apple has updated Aperture to 3.3 and iPhoto to 9.3 which not only give them a Retina Display for the new MacBook Pro, but also unify their libraries, so you can make modifications in either program without having to duplicate the images! This is so very cool! If only they would allow third parties to also do this so Lightroom could do the same, but that will never happen! Still this makes Aperature so much more usefull! Very very cool!

Of course it also means programs like iPhoto Library Manager will need to be updated for this new update to work properly, but still this is a very exciting new feature.

9 to 5 Mac is reporting that in fact Apple has slightly updated the MacPro towers with new Processors, but no Thunderbolt, no USB 3 and no new Graphics cards. This actually makes me more worried that they are killing the MacPro, because who wants a MacPro with so little upgrade? I mean the new processors are nice, but come on. And not only that they are still 2 year old processors, not the latest Xeon's Intel has released, so while they 12 core is $1200 cheaper than it used to be, it is still old tech.

And if the MacBook's get NVIDIA graphics cards, why not the MacPro? We want CUDA as well, not the same 2 year old graphics card!

This is not an upgrade. It is a little FU to all us power users!

COME ON APPLE, WTF!

Apple has the pages up on the new MacBook pros.

The MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and the new 13 and 15" MacBook Pros with the old encloses and Optical Drives.

I am still not sure about SSD as it is just too small. Especially if I am moving to a laptop as my main machine for e-mail and documents and a tower for editing. The worst part is my music and video library is almost a terrabyte itself, so there is no way that could make it on a laptop!

Well, not like I can afford anything new right now, but it does look like Windows will be in my future!

Now they could be releasing it and not announcing it, but that seems unlikely. Looks like Apple may in fact be killing the MacPro all together. And while I would love a Retina display MacBook Pro, it looks like my next editing machine will be a Windows machine. As I can get better graphics cards and have more room for storage. I never wanted to have to move to windows, but if Apple is really putting the MacPro out to pasture I will have no option but to move away from the Macs that I love and get a windows machine. Maybe if we make enough money I can get a laptop to be my personal computer and have the tower just for editing, but will need to make a lot more money first! SHIT!

So far there is a new MacBook Air which is faster and faster MacBook Pro 13 and 15" models and the 15" gets an NVIDIA GeForce 650M, so say hello to Mercury playback from Adobe, nice.

And a new MacBook Pro, which is super thin, but not like an Air and has a Retina Display. Only .71 inches thick and only 4.46 pounds, lighter than current 13" MacBook Pro, and it has a 15.4 inch screen, with a 200 ppi pixel density or 5,184,00 pixels! No Optical drive in this model of course. And an updated version of lion with Safari, iMovie, iPhoto made for Retina, as well the pro-apps including Aperature and Final Cut Pro X (yipee fucking do), though being able to see full 1080p in the viewing window is pretty cool, but must take a serious video card! And Photoshop has been updated (or will be soon). Yup it has a GeForce GT 650M with 1 GB of Video Ram. Nice! And up to 768GB of internal flash storage. And up to 7 hours of battery life (that screen has to be a major draw on power). For ports it has SD card, HDMI, USB3 and 2, Magsafe 2, 2 thunderbolt ports and headphone.

It seems the magsafe has been made thinner, nice!

And Firewire 800 and gigabit ethernet adapters for thunderbolt, though I would rather have the ports!

And no word on the 17" MacBook Pro so it is likely EOL.

Uh Oh, now OS X, does that mean no MacPro. I sure hope not!

Onto Mountain Lion. And 8 new features.

•iCloud built in. With Apps updated for iCloud, so your documents can live in the cloud (hurray can we use Pages docs with iPad and Pages on the Mac? Looks like it ). And a final version of messages for the Mac, which will also send SMS (How does that work, do you pay via your phone?).

•Notification Center, banners are top right (just like Growl) or can slide notification center our from right. And can support from other services like Twitter.

•Dictation to the Mac. Probably need something to replace my old iSight though!

•Sharing, now built in to share to twitter from everywhere, and an SDK for any app to support it.

•New Safari, unified top search and url bar like Chrome. Share tabs across iCloud to mac and iOS, and can see what tabs you have open in what place. And Visual Tab View.

•Power Nap. Keeps Mac up to date while it sleeps, fetching e-mail and keeping track of calenders. Still backup to time capsule, download from app store and automatic software updates, and doesn't spin up fans and goes easy on battery.

•Airplay mirroring, display your mac onto your TV with an Apple TV and up to 1080 content (how does that work with the new retina display?).

•Game Center makes it to the Mac. Can even play Mac to iOS on certain games.

And Mountain Lion is released next Month for only $19.99! WOW! And that is from Lion and Snow Leopard! And one purchase will do all your personal macs! That rocks!

Now iOS 6. 200 New Features.

•Significant enhancements to Siri, including partnering with Open Table and Yelp. And working with car manufactures to add a siri button to cars! Now that is cool! BMW, GM, Jaguar Mercedes, Honda, Land Rover, Audi, Toyota!

•Integrated Facebook like Twitter before it with public API.

•Phone App enhancements. Can reply with message or add reminder to call back later!

•Do Not distrub, to get no notifications, or allow it to ring for only certain numbers. Or let a second call from someone though.

•Facetime has been enable over cellular. And unifiying phone number and apple iD, so it will work with mac or iPad and the same with iMessage.

•You can upload photos in Safari

•Smart App Banners to let people know of native apps in App Store

•Photo Stream adds sharing and can comment on photos of friends

•Mail adds VIP, really important people, want to be notified, new mailbox, and a flagged mailbox.

•Mail can add photos from compose window.

•Passbook, looks like a replacement for SplashID and 1Password. Also has location based allerts and can load things like your movie ticket on the window. Airline tickets, Fandago Tickets, Store Card from Starbucks, coupons for Target, express hotel check in and all integrated with Lock Screen. Sounds very cool.

•Accessiblity. There is guided access, lets you lock out controls you don't want kids to be able to access. Single App Mode. Can lock things up so students can't leave the app to get answers.

•Maps. Yup, rumors were right, they are doing it all themselves, no more Google Maps. What does this mean for traffic? Adding local search. Ah, new traffic view added, shows incidents. All crowd sourced traffic from other iOS phones. Built in turn by turn navigation. With an ETA based on traffic. Integrated with siri and works on lock screen. Siri can give time estimates.

•Flyovers for Maps with 3D photographic models. Maps are all vector based. Can rotate and zoom labels, zoom in far enough buildings appear. And satellite view in 3D. Can change camera angles. Adaptive cinematic camera angles.

•Maps, siri can read out directions and give an eta.

•Maps get an overview at any time and just tap to resume turn by turn directions.

•Mail has per account signatures! Nice!

•Lost Mode where you can send a phone number to that phone and someone who finds it can tap it and call you back.

•iOS 6 will ship this fall and goes to beta developers today.

NO NEW MACPRO! WTF! Either the rumors were wrong or they didn't bother announcing it.

MacRumors is saying that they have found new parts numbers for 3 new MacPro models, which would be huge news for Mac Professionals, but still would be nice to hear a real commitment to the MacPro from Apple, and support for NVIDIA graphics cards.

Macstories has a little article on a new command line shell called Fish, which has color syntax highlighting, web based configuration and auto suggestion. I have been giving it a try and have been very impressed.

For years I have lamented the dumbing down of Apple products for the masses, especially when OS X is build on the so powerful UNIX operating system, but it has certainly gotten much worse of late. Just look at Lion. It now hides you Library folder where all preferences and other user system files are stored, and it even password protects your Utilities folder. This may be fine for an average user, but for a power user they are just frustrations that add steps to the normal things we do every day, but that is not the worst of it. The worst part is when they dumb something down too much and it doesn't function right. It is not like Apple has good customer support, unless you want to go into an Apple store, and I am not brining in my tower, ipad and iPhone to get iCloud to work right!

A little explanation is necessary here, but I use both Firefox and Google Chrome as my primary browsers, not Safari, but I do have an iPhone and iPad, and like them to have the same bookmarks as my main browsers, so I use X-Marks to sync my bookmarks between all browsers, but recently it stopped syncing my bookmarks correctly to my iPhone and iPad. I looked on Apple's forums, and tried all sorts of methods to clear my bookmarks off of iCloud, which seam to have become corrupt, but nothing seems to work. With iSync you could always set to overwrite the bookmarks in the cloud, because these things happen (and you can do it in X-Marks), but they have dumbed down iCloud to the point where it has basically zero controls, so when something like this happens you are just SOL!

And I already had to give up cloud syncing for my iPad and iPhone as when I moved from my trusty iPad 1 to my the New iPad, I tried syncing my iPad from the cloud and it basically hung every time, and I had to revert to my last backup from iTunes, which was 4 months old, but at least that worked. Now I don't trust iCloud at all, and use iTunes to backup and sync bookmarks as that actually seems to work with some consistency (though don't even get me started on how old and out of date iTunes is).

Now unfortunately iCloud is completely useless to me as it is broken on two fronts, and I have no way to reset things in the cloud to make them better. No way to see those files, or delete them and start over. Maybe if I went into an Apple store I could get them to do it, but honestly I don't have time. And for files i have moved away from the now defunct Mobile me to services from SugarSync, DropBox and Box.net as they work and won't have features pulled as I continue to use them, only get better.

I have been an Apple man for years and years, since I was a little kid and got an Apple IIC, but really the company is making many stupid decisions and I think a lot of them will end up biting them on the ass, like the whole killing Final Cut Pro 7 thing. I continue to like Apple products, have have never been a fan of windows, but have been considering getting a windows machine to edit and do graphics on, and possibly that will mean that my only Apple products are my iPhone and iPad, and the computers I so loved will no longer matter to me, but I sure hope that doesn't happen.

Apple you are not perfect and your products are not either, please restore a modicum of control to us users to fix thing when they do have issues.

Scott Simmons over at the Pro Video Coalition has a list of 10 things Final Cut Pro editors might miss in Premiere Pro 6.

The biggest here for me is selective past and remove attributes which I use all the time in FCP and it will be an adjustment for sure.

Still all livable changes, just have to get used to it.

DigitalFilms on AVID Media Composer for Final Cut Pro Editors. And must read for any recent switcher to let you know about the features you need to look into to really become an expert in AVID.

Camerman and editor Phillip Bloom has a quick little article on moving from FCP 7 to Premiere Pro CS6 and why.

Sounds like the non-CUDA acceleration is pretty damn good, though as I have said I keep wishing for more NVIDIA on the mac, but it looks less and less likely to happen every day.

David Lawrence has an excellent article over at Creative Cow.


He really sums it up in a Creative Cow Forum Post.

Believe the hype, the Conan boys are right. It really is Adobe's Final Cut Pro 8.

Though later says:

Is Premiere Pro 6 Adobe's Final Cut Pro 8? If you ask me, the answer is no. It's something different and potentially better. Is there room for improvement? You bet. If you miss certain features, let 'em know. They're listening.

 I am so looking forward to Premiere CS6, and do hope it is an FCP 7 replacement, though that also makes me wish for more NVIDIA CUDA cards for the Mac, or it looks like editing is going to move all PC in the future.

Richard Keates has a good article on why he dropped FCP X after trying to use it to cut corporate video, and why Premiere Pro is the solution for what he needs to do (graphics heavy productions).

Unfortunately I see many places moving back to Media Composer which I do find inferior for graphics work and hope that Premiere CS6 can make some inroads. I just wish that Apple would re-commit to the MacPro and push to get powerful CUDA Nvidia cards across their line to allow people who are unhappy with FCP X to use the products they want to and stay with Mac!

Walter Biscardi has a good post on editing for now, and or now that is AVID. And Premiere CS6 will be or some things as it is getting better, and Smoke will be tested and he is giving the ideas for their next version, both will possibly be implemented for him in 2013. For me it looks like AVID will be part of it, but I am hoping that CS6 is really a good replacement for Final Cut Pro 7.

Larry Jordan has posted a preview of new features that will be added to FCP X and that Apple is saying that FCP X is to be a pro editing App. This includes native RED and Scarlet editing, and better audio editing, Dual Viewers (wow is apple admitting it was wrong??) and native MXF support, and rumors of another app to go with Motion and Compressor.

Maybe Apple can make FCP X a real Pro Editing Program, but the bad word they have created with the initial release will forever taint it. Honestly they should be a doing a 64 bit Final Cut Pro 8, and put in as many new features from X as they can as additions, and that might convince people they are still going for the pro market, but FCP X in my opinion will be forever tainted.

Jan Ozer over at OnlineVideo.net has a great blog on Apple taking the Pro out of Final Cut Pro with Final Cut Pro X.

I totally agree with the conclusions and think it was one of the stupidest moves Apple has ever made, but it looks like Adobe and AVID are ready to take the slack.

This is all over the web, but Larry Jordan reported on it. And Apple has updated FCP X in time for NAB.

Sounds like the biggest edition is better broadcast monitor support and better Multicam performance. So mostly bug fixes, but the broadcast monitor support is certainly important.

Little Frog in High Def has an excellent article on the 10, or make that 9 things he will miss about Final Cut Pro 7 after moving to AVID and Premiere Pro.

I just needed to add a little rant here. It is the difference between using iOS and a Mac, and specifically iTunes. Now I have way too much to even be allowed to join the iCloud and have my music there. I have 35531 music tracks and 1091 movies.

It is easy to sort within iTunes, as first off I have a trackball and a scroll wheel so I can move through my playlists and movies very quickly on my mac, but it is way too much scrolling in iOS. Sure in some apps you can click on the letter to jump, but there needs to be a quicker way to scroll.

This is even worse in Apple TV. I have an Apple TV to be able to watch the movies on my HDTV instead of my Mac. To find a movie on my Apple TV I have to scroll through my 1091 items, which is slow and not very efficient. They need a quick ability to search or a way to easily pick starting letters.

On my iPad there needs to be a faster to jump pages. I have way too many apps, but I use them, and have them very well organized, but to get from the first to the last page takes a whole lot of scrolling. I want a way to quickly see all the pages and jump to where I want to go instead of just having to scroll.

iOS is great, but it needs work, and honestly it needs more functionality like Mission Control. Instead of the MacOS being more like iOS, iOS needs to be more like the Mac.

Honestly for me in an ideal world I would have a very powerful MacPro, that was expandable and more upgradeable. I am talking even new Motherboards and processors, so it could last years. I would be able to access it in my office for screaming fast speed and video editing especially, but it would have an online portion where I could access it all the time from other computers, say my iPad and a laptop. So I could use the apps there, and basically have dumb portals as my laptops and iPad that could access my main computer and run it’s apps and use it’s documents. And honestly I don’t want everything stored in the cloud, because I don’t trust it, I would rather have the main storage local for me.

Now that is a best case scenario, but that way I could have one computer and one file system, and I could use it from anything with an internet connection. Now this would require fast internet everywhere, and the end of all these internet caps on broadband and wireless.

Now I might not be able to edit completely remotely, but I should be able to do all of the basic things on my computer and work with my computer, and even do basic editing.

Who knows when the technology will be there, but hopefully before too long.

So the new iPad does pretty much totally rock, especially over my first generation iPad. And really it all comes down to the gorgeous screen. The screen looks absolutely amazing. It glows. Actually at first I didn’t think it looked that good since my wallpaper was showing my old wallpaper which looked pretty bad, but when I replaced it with a better image, wow, the whole thing pops!

And it is good to have more RAM as the thing just seems to run better.

Still missing not having Siri, especially since the dictation feature (which does OK) has to have an internet connection, so I don’t get why there is no Siri!

Still this is certainly the best iPad, though apps need to be updated. The wired magazine app has some jagged looking text, but then of course the apps will be so much bigger, so I wish it was 128GB, but 64 GB is certainly not bad, especially after having 24.

Glad to have it up and working, though it did take a lot of sorting to get my apps into place after having to use such an old restore, and I forgot how long backing up takes every time I sync the ipad with my desktop, but oh well.

And my wife loves having my old iPad 1. She is carrying it everywhere, so that is certainly a good thing.

Was all excited for today, stayed home from work so I would make sure that I would get my new 64GB iPad, but I have not been able to use it in 4 hours, and am having a nightmare time trying to restore it.

Unfortunately I have been syncing to the cloud with my iPad 1, and it seems that a restore from the Cloud does not work right. Instead all the apps get stuck either loading or waiting, and they never move forward. I seem to be able to install new apps, but I can only delete the old apps and if I try to re-install they continue getting stuck. And I have wiped it 2 times in hopes of trying again, but I seem to keep getting the same problem. I wonder if the cloud is down because so many people are restoring today?

I decided to try from my October Backup via iTunes, but took half an hour for iTunes to do anythign with it, it kept balking and saying it seems an iPad, but doesn’t recognize it.

Took a while, but I finally got my new iPad to connect to iTunes via cable and do a restore from an old backup to the computer. It is from October, but hopefully it will work. What seems promising is that now the iPad says Restore in Progress with a shot of water and clouds. It is taking about 20 minutes, then I assume it will start installing apps. We shall see, but I am have already turned off cloud sync for my iPhone and gone back to syncing to my computer, and will do the same to the new iPad if I can manage to restore the thing to any semblance of where it once was.

OK, now it is restarting, and we have the firmware or update screen on the iPad.

And am on the App install stage. 240 Apps, so this could be a while. Hopefully they will install.
UPDATE:

Yes, restoring from the computer worked, so either iCloud is messed up or not working right as too many people are using it now, anyway I am moving back to local backups, as it is more secure and actually seems to work!

Am having to add all the apps since October, wow that is a lot of apps, and will be a lot of sorting, but oh well.

I can see why friends did in store pickups as it took until 3:15 PM to get here! Youch!

Looks pretty sweet, but is currently syncing and since my sync is with iCloud I am sure it is going to take forever, so I am leaving for work in a minute and hopefully it will be done when I get home.

And I am setting up my old iPad on Kelly’s computer, so she will have it when she gets home.

Woohoo, new iPad.

One the day of the new iPad release I got my shipment from Marware and got my new Ecovue case for the newest iPad.

I have one of there cases for my iPad 1 and totally love it, and after I found out that M-Edge does not have custom printed cased with magnets (they have them without) for the new iPad I went for another Marware, and it is a great case.
They have a variety of cases for the new iPad, but I went for the EcoVue, which is what I had, and it is even better now.


It even includes a pen and an elastic to hold it on the side. It has a space for the camera to fit through , they moved the place to put the iPad in to the side with the top on it so it won’t fall out, and it has a little stand for having it prop up on a desk.



This is an excellent case, and well worth the price of $54.99.
Well the case fits awesome, the magnets work well. This is an awesome case. I highly recommend it.

It is out for delivery, but I am still waiting unfortunately. Am doing work from home, but have a lot of work to do at work too! Damn I want my new toy! At least my current boss is cool enough to let me stay home today to wait for my new iPad.

DenVog, LLC has updated it’s excellent outlining tool Index Card to version 3.0.

What's New in Version 3.0.0

• Column view: Displays stacks in columns. Scroll independently. Great for TV writers, and those that like to view act breaks vertically.

• Stack count indicator: Displays how many cards a stack contains

• Selectable font size for cards on main corkboard (small - 5 lines of text, medium - 6 lines, large 7 - lines)

• Preview: See what your compiled project will look like

- Open In... : Send Simple Text or RTF file directly in another iPad app, without needing to use mail or dropbox. Great for working on a plane!

- Print: Send your file to AirPrint enabled printer

• Text Selection options:

- Selecting a URL (including http://) presents Open in Safari option

- Selecting an email address presents Mail Composer option

- Word count for selected text displayed in popover

• Forward Delete: Extended keyboard button enables delete to the right of the cursor

• Label memory: The last selected label will be the default for new cards

• Stats: Displays Project count, Card count for entire app (accessed via Info button on menubar)

• RTF export font now matches screen app display font

• Navigate to previous card from a new card (when working on a new card, swipe left-to-right)

• Editing screen background matches user setting

FIXES & ENHANCEMENTS

• Onscreen keyboard will no longer partially cover the last line of text, when Long Text is set to OFF

• Changes in progress will be saved if you leave the app while editing screen is still open (didn't tap Cancel or Done)

• Adding a new card while viewing back of card notes, will flip you to the front of the new card, ready for typing in Title

• Tapping the button for a popover that is already visible will dismiss it

• Selected item count now displayed in title, instead of individual buttons

• Select All / None toggle button for quicker selection of cards

I am looking forward to try this out, as I have already outlined a screenplay on this app and loved it. This is an excellent app all the way around.

Just evil, I want it now! Ha!

Apple has released a 3rd generation Apple TV which now supports 1080p content.
They have also upgraded the software, and second generation versions have already got the update. It is much easier to navigate and they have added Vimeo support as well, and Netflix now has 1080 support for streaming (though I no longer have Netflix as I am doing Amazon Streaming and using my Roku which already does 1080). And it keeps it same size and shape for $99 and comes out the same day as the new iPad, March 12th, next Friday.

Apple has surprised no one and released the new iPad. Retina Display, more Ram, a better processor, better graphics, an improved forward camera (thought not the camera facing you) and 4G internet, for the same price. .
There is also a new iPhoto App that looks pretty impressive, though I don’t have the hard drive space to keep that many photos on my phone, though maybe if they expanded cloud or made it more like Adobe Carousel. Will check it out on my iPhone 4.

The weirdest thing is that Siri is not included, but I guess since not every model can have always on internet, though it can dictate what you say to it, so the technology is there, they just haven’t activated Siri.

Too bad there is not more processing power and more hard drive space, as well as a better forward facing camera but it is still a rocking machine. I can’t wait to get it!

I am getting one with my X-Mas Money! Thanks Mom and Baba! I can’t wait for Friday March 12th to come. Going to have to see about going in late for work so I can make sure I get it.

TUAW is reporting that AT&T has officially set it’s data throttling at 3G a month for their legacy unlimited data plans.

This is obviously in response to them losing at small claims for throttling an unlimited customer, but I bet there is still a class action law suite here as we all signed up for unlimited not throttled 3GB for 3GB or 5GB for 4G.

FCP X has a video from the LA Final Cut Pro User Group on bringing FCP 7 projects to FCP X with 7tox.

MacTech has the press release, that Revision Fx has released a FCP X compatible version of Twixtor. It is $329.95, and is not the full pro version.

Creative Cow has the press release on this new defocus tool that works with Noise Industries FX Factory.

Some Features are

• Chroma Aberration – Editors can simulate chroma aberration – the imbalance of RGB color channels that can occur with camera lenses.
• Fast Defocus – This effect can be used to simulate ‘bokeh,’ or out-of-focus lens effects. Editors can create depth of field with the use of a depth mask, rack-focus effects, and more.
• Pan / Tilt – A popular effect used in many motion pictures and music videos, users can create a tilt-shift setup for still and motion picture cameras, with smooth, defocused gradients.
• Vignette Vision – With two effects options, editors can defocus either the outer edge or the center of the image. Defocusing the outer edge simulates POV shots, vintage lenses and more. Defocusing the center of the image allows editors to censor images, create hallucinations, etc.

You can read all about it at Noise Industries Site.

I gave up on FCP X, but it does look to be getting better, though I still find the timeline to be useless, and hate that they are trying to force me to edit how they want me to, but people are using it, and it is improving.

The guys at FCP.Co have posted a video from Mark Spencer and Steve Martin on Macbreak Studio on how to use the new multi-cam feature.

Part 2 of 3 has now been released.

Part 3 of 3 is now out.

FCP.Co has the announcement of Canon having released a new MXF ingest for FCP X. Download it from Canon here.

Apple has announced the next version of their OS, which now drops the mac name and is just OS X Mountain Lion. This continues bringing OS X and iOS closer together.

New features include:

• Further integration with iCloud, which keeps your mail, calendar, contacts and documents in sync.
• iChat has become Messages, and includes support for messaging with iOS devices and you can download a beta today. It is still a little rough, but being able to have my iMessages synced across all my devices is very cool.
• Reminders is now on the Mac and syncs with iOS, though this should have been there from the start.
• Notes is now on the Mac as welll
• Notification Center on the Mac access with a 2 finger swipe is just like the iOS version, and looks like it will replace GROWL for notifications on the Mac.
• Share Sheets allows you to contextually aware share where you are from Safari, Notes, iPhoto
• Twitter has been fully integrated into the OS, just like on iOS
• Game Center is now integrated into the OS, and you can supposedly play some games between the mac and iOS.
• AirPlay Mirroring allows you to mirror your computer to your Apple TV.
• Gatekeeper is the most controversial new feature, initially is set to only allow apps from the Mac App Store, but can be turned off so you can install your own Apps.
• Another unannounced feature is that Sotfware Update is now gone and integrated into the Mac App Store. This one I find weird, as you don’t upgrade your iOS device through the app store, you have to go into settings to do the update, so why shouldn’t you have to go to Software Update?

Of course it doesn’t come out to till the summer so features will change, and hopefully the color finder icons will return!

AND AN IMPORTANT NOTE FOR EDITORS AS FINAL CUT PRO 7 will likely no longer work on Mountain Lion, so it is time to move on.

Macnn is reporting on the latest set of rumors on a new MacPro, and lets hope it is true, and Apple is staying committed to the pro market in at least it’s hardware.

They would be powered by the new Ivy Bridge 22 nanometer Xeon processors which can have 8 cores and 20MB cache, making for 16 core machines, with 32 virtual machines. And even more exciting to me is the possibility of returning to NVIDIA and their soon to released Kelper hardware. This would mean CUDA acceleration in Adobe Premiere, and hopefully the next generation Quadros being released for the mac. This could mean that Jobs fued with NVIDIA is over. Wouldn’t that rock!

Good old Larry Jordan has a great blog post on the update to FCP X 10 10.0.3, which is another free update.
APPLE’S RELEASE NOTES

According to the Release Notes from Apple, Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.3 adds the following features:

• Multicam editing with automatic sync and support for mixed formats, mixed frame rates, and up to 64 camera angles
• Media relink for manual reconnect of projects and Events to new media
• Ability to import and edit layered Photoshop graphics
• Advanced chroma keying with controls for color sampling, edge quality, and light wrap
• XML 1.1 with support for exporting basic primary color grades and both importing and exporting effect parameters and audio keyframes
• Multiple improvements to the Color Board, including new key commands, editable numeric fields, and adjustable parameters that act like infinite sliders when dragged
• Ability to reorder color corrections in the Inspector
• Reveal in Event Browser shows clip range in the filmstrip while in List View
• Batch offset for clip date and time
• Ability to search text added to Favorite and Reject ranges
• Automatic restore of projects and Events in case of file corruption
• Beta version of broadcast monitoring with third-party PCIe and Thunderbolt I/O devices

Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.3 also improves overall stability and performance, and addresses the following issues:

• Improves performance when editing text in titles
• Improves performance when applying an effect from the Effect Browser
• Improves key-framing behavior in the Inspector, with keyframes automatically added when moving to a new point in time and adjusting a parameter
• Modifies transition behavior so that all newly added transitions use available media and maintain project length
• Fixes an issue which affected audio solo while skimming
• Resolves issues related to using Synchronize Clips with media containing a silent audio channel
• Fixes an issue in which constant speed retiming was not properly applied when using the Paste Effects command

The 3rd Party FCP XML transfer apps are created by Intelligent Assistance and include 7toX and Xto7. 7toX is available for $9.99 and Xto7 is $49.99 in the App Store, and both with XML much like Premiere Pro ability to open XML files from FCP 7.

Looks like Apple is listening and has added back many of the features that are necessary for a Pro to Use this software, even Beta support for broadcast monitors, and multicam, and especially the ability to relink media to different clips. The biggest are the utilities from Intelligent Assistance, which should be free and integrated, but it is great that they are available at all.

Compressor and Motion have also been updated.

Now FCP X does become a viable editing app and successor to FCP 7, though we still don’t know for how much longer FCP 7 will run on the latest OS’s, so it is time to freeze a system to keep FCP 7 viable and be able to even export XML to be able to import into FCP X (Since it does not work with project files).

And no matter what I still think that that the basic editing techniques of FCP X is broken. The inability to have numbered tracks just would not work with the DR workflows that I cut with and make Media Composer and Premiere the real solutions available for editing with. And honestly FCP X will make more people think they are professional editors and leave the high end jobs to people who can use the other software. Sure you will still be able to make good stuff with FCP X and it does have a powerful engine with impressive features, but it’s fundamental changes to editing are not going to revolutionize the industry, but instead continue to drive people to Adobe and AVID.

I still say Apple should have released this as a new App and made a 64 bit version of FCP 7, and slowly added the new features they wanted to implement instead of this scorched Earth policy which has and will continue to alienate the high end post people.

I think the fact that the Final Cut Pro User Group is now the Creative Pro User Group says a lot. Still the updates to FCP X will mean that more people can and will use it, and I am glad Apple is actually listening to some of the complaints, but mostly I hope it means that AVID and Adobe continue to upgrade their software. After all Premiere Pro really needs to be able to do more than 4 angle multi-cam and the automatic syncing, and being able to re-sync at a later time are very cool features that it could use.

Ars Technica has an article on why Pros are moving away from Apple. It talks about the whole Final Cut Pro debacle, the fact that MacPro’s have not been updated in so long, and are rumored to be EOL’ed, but it does end with quotes about how FCP X is not that bad, which may be true for some people in certain situations, but for most Pro’s it is too little and too late.
I mean my first Apple was a IIC, and then a Mac Classic and I have never looked at a Windows PC, but have been pricing them out of late, and even talked to adobe to find out the process for moving my Creative Suite license to Windows, as it is likely that Mac just won’t be around for me as a professional editor and graphics artist.

Noise Industries has updated their Flag Ship Plugs in suite to version 3.0!

This version has new Playback Ready transitions, as well as other new updated effects for it.

Still I wish they had added Premiere Pro support, as having Final Cut Pro support is no longer so important for me (yes I still use After Effects) and Adobe Media composer support would be nice as well.

Arstechnica is reporting that, that top reality show producer and long time Final Cut Pro proponent Bunim/Murray has dropped final Cut Pro and is moving back to AVID media composer.

Due to the large volume of media generated by our reality shows, we needed to re-evaluate our editing and storage solutions. At the same time, we were looking for a partner who would understand our long-term needs,

Basically FCP X is not good enough, and FCP 7 is old and gettiing long in the tooth, and with AVID now being 64 bit, they felt the need to make the move.

Well Apple has finally updated their iBooks app to be more like the Kindle App (can anyone say scared of Amazon Fire) and it now does full screen and night modes where you get gray text on a black screen. I complained about this to Apple right away, but went with Kindle App, because I have found the grey text on a black screen very easy to read, especially at night.

MacGasm is reporting on a video of Richard Harrington that FCP.CO reported on and posted the video which has subsequently been removed.

Harrington said in the video:

"There was a Final Cut 8 and it was 64bit and it was done and they looked at it and said 'This is not what we want to do, this is evolutionary, this is not revolutionary' and they killed it."

If this is true I am totally disgusted. If it is true, Apple should have released the 64 Bit Final Cut Pro 8, and also released Final Cut Pro X as something else, probably iMovie Pro and then done what they could to implement some of the new technology as add ons to Final Cut Pro 8. They would have had a huge hit on their hands, and could have revolutionized editing, but instead they have killed Final Cut Pro as a professional editing program and made FCP X a completely consumer program. Sure it has some great technology, but it will never become a standard even if it does have some good new ideas, because it does not work as well or efficiently as Final Cut Pro 7.

I still can’t figure out why they did this to begin with. A new program that is a revolution is fine, but you should not throw out an industry standard program because you have a new idea.

Applinsider is reporting a rumor that Apple is set to return to NVIDIA for the next round of MacBook Pro’s. This would be great news for editors who have made the switch to Premiere Pro after the whole Final Cut Pro X debacle! I just hope the 17” adds the top of the line GeForce GTX 580M. That would be a pretty bad ass CUDA machine, and with a thunderbolt port could be a pretty serious editing system.

If this happens, maybe you will even be able to get an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 for the MacPro (if they release one more MacPro system at least), it won’t top an SLI system for CUDA, but would be a pretty serious CUDA system.

One can only hope!

I have doing research into what PC could replace a MacPro is Apple does abandon the MacPro which seems more likely with Apple’s complete shift to consumer. I had previously edited on the kick ass HP workstations, but would no longer trust them, with their waffling on the entire PC division.

Well I found these guys that create custom machines for editing. Puget Systems looks like the way to go. Especially if you go the completely Custom Liquid Cooled route.

Personally I think I would go with the new Core i7’s instead of Xeons (I love being able to have multiple CPU’s for rendering in After effects, but the price is ridiculous). And you can get a kick ass GeForce card for a grand with a huge amount of CUDA cores.


Now I want to see a test of a TESLA VS a highe end GeForce doing CUDA!

Gear Live has a quick article on how to access your iDisk after upgrading to (in my opinion) the inferior iCloud.

• Open Finder and press ⌘K (Command + K) • Enter 'https://idisk.me.com/yourMobileMeName' as the Server Address (without the quotes) • Click the Connect button

Very useful since those of us who payed for Mobile Me still have our iDisk for another year!

Apple has released an update to Final Cut Pro X 10.0.2. Here are the bug fixes:

• Fixes an issue where a title may revert to the default font after restarting Final Cut Pro X

• Resolves an issue that could cause files recorded with certain third-party mobile devices to play back incorrectly

• Addresses a stability issue caused by changing the start time on a Compound Clip

No major new features, but at least they are doing bug fixes.

This is really a must read for all switchers from Final Cut Pro 7 to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, as it gives a full rundown of the similarities and differences in the 2 different timelines!

After reading this report from AppleInsider I wrote the following letter to Apple and left it to them as feedback. I know they won’t listen and don’t really care, but I sure do.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is considering killing the MacPro as it is no longer profitable.

What I don’t think you get is how many graphics houses and editing houses will be leaving the Mac completely if this happens.

Without NVIDIA cards you can barely edit with Premiere Pro or even use programs like SMOKE, and if the artists are going to move to PC, there whole facilities will go PC, and Apple will lose a lot of it’s coolness, and a lot more business than they think they will.

AVID already gives you PC and Mac Versions on one disc, and without a MacPro, and it's PCI cards you lose a lot of functionality, like AJA or Blackmagic cards (and no the thunderbolt cards are not as good, and there is no SAS storage solutions for thunderbolt).

Still an Alienware is looking better and better. Kick ass NVIDIA graphics make it the only choice for an editing laptop (since Premiere Pro needs an NVIDIA card), and if the MacPro goes, then it is time to move PC.

I already feel betrayed by you for what you did to Final Cut Pro X, as I have been an avid Final Cut Pro supporter since version 3, and Final Cut Pro X is not it's replacement, but a program that has some of it's functionality and is not superior to AVID or Premiere Pro, and if you get rid of the MacPro that will be the last straw.

I am not a windows fan, and think the fact that the main programming language for Windows 8 being HTML 5 is just shooting themselves in the foot, but at least I can use high end graphics and will still have PCI slots!

Please Apple I love you, and have since my Apple IIC, but more and more it looks like you are leaving me the graphic pro and video editor behind, and it makes me sad, but you are making a PC and windows look more and more attractive.

Please keep making MacPro's and keep updating them (quicker than you have been) and make them compatible with more graphics cards, because we will keep buying them, but if you stop making them we will be leaving the Mac in Droves.

Jonah Lee Walker
Video Editor and Graphics Artist

I honestly thought with them moving to Adobe that the old plug ins were gone for good, but it seems not as Automatic Duck has released all their old plug ins for FREE!

I already owned Pro Import AE 5.0, which allows you to import either Final Cut Pro 7 or AVID Media Composer sequences into After Effects. You use Free XML exporter for FCP and it works almost perfectly. A must have.

Pro Export FCP 5.0 is for FCP X and is to allow OMF export.

Pro Export FCP 4.0 lets you export either OMF or AAF from FCP to AVID, and I previously owned this.

And their is Pro Import FCP 2.0 which allows you to import an AVID sequence into Final Cut Pro.

And they are all FREE. So download them now. Sure they will not be updated again, but free is a huge price drop!

FCP.co is reporting on some things reported in twitter feeds from the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group where Walter Murch spoke. And a report from Chris-Portal on the event, and it seems that he doesn’t like it, and may be done using Final Cut Pro to edit features with.

While Walter is encouraged by the updated FCPX version last month, he hasn’t used it on any real work yet, so he is cautiously optimistic (and still traumatized he says). “Do they love us? No…I know they like us….but they keep saying they love us??”

Actually sounds like he while he has used AVID in the past, he is going to try Premiere Pro to see where it is at, and then see if it is AVID or Premiere Pro.

Personally I am liking Premiere Pro, though it still needs some features to go on par with FCP 7 (though it does beat it in others).

I don’t know if this just affecting me, but I am having some finder weirdness in Lion.

First off it is not working as it did with Spaces when I had it set to have one finder for all windows, though I have the finder set for all, it seems I get some finder windows in some of the windows in Mission Control, and not in others.

And even weirder, I often have the same folder open in two different windows by different sorting methods, well it seems that this can’t be done anymore. When I change the sorting method in one window, it changes other windows with that same content to the same sorting method. WTF? This is horrible, and not how it should work at all!

Is this just happening to me, or have others noticed this?

TUAW has an article on why you should disable AutoUpload for iPhoto and Aperature in the photostream of iCloud.



This is what to uncheck in iPhoto, otherwise you will upload all your new photos from iPhoto, which is fine from you iPhone, but if you are shooting camera raw, is going to quickly fill your iCloud (which only comes with 5GB of space) and you iOS device.

I mean luckily I have 25 GB of iCloud space as I was a mobile me subscriber, and I have a lot of documents and comics on my iPad, but it only has 10GB free of the 25GB of iCloud space, so putting up full size RAW images would be disastrous. And you can still add images to your photostream by dragging and dropping, though you can’t remove images (which is plain stupid in my opinion).

that DaVinci Resolve 8.1 now has support for FCP X and conforms and roundtrips. So you can now do a full color out of FCP X, though you audio is still going to be hard to conform without tracks.

You can even move an FCP 7 edit to FXP X using resolve, which is pretty huge. Now they need to add Premiere Pro support!

The Provideo Coalition is reporting

I don’t know if any of you were bothered by the fact that in Lion, the default icon size in Mail was much larger than it had been previously.

Personally it bugged the hell out of me, as I have a huge amount of mailboxes, and I didn’t know how to change the icon size.

Now I know. Go to System Preferences:General



And then chose Sidebar Icon size, which also controls the finder icon sidebar icon size (though not iTunes) and changes them within in Mail as well.


The default is medium, if you change it to small, the icons in mail are back to their old size.



Yes, so much more pleasing!

I don’t know anyone who like Launchpad, the iOS like App Launcher built into Lion, especially anyone with as many apps as I have, but if I were to use I would want something like this, which allows you to turn apps off from display (since deleting an app from Launchpad deletes the app from the computer completely).

Launchpad-Control is pay what you want and you can download it from ChaosSpace.

PilotMoon has released Scroll Reverser for OS X Lion. This cool little app not only lets you easily change the scrolling direction of Lion (which was reversed to be more iOS like, but it lets you set different preferences for mice vs trackpads, as a track pad actually makes sense to be reversed, but a mouse scroll wheel does not. Very cool, and it is free!

OnLineVideo.Net has an article on Final Cut Pro 10.0.1 it is not so positive. I agree with it wholeheartedly.

I like what they have to say about the new feature roles:

To a degree, roles are a solution to a problem Apple created by making Final Cut Pro X trackless. For example, in Final Cut Pro 7, or Premiere Pro for that matter, you could accomplish the same thing by placing narration on one track and music on another, and enabling/disabling the track as necessary for preview or rendering.

In addition to preview, when rendering out to a QuickTime file, you can also use roles to create separate files for further editing in another program. This is shown in Figure 4. For most high-end users, however, OMF or EDL export in Final Cut Pro 7 provides the same capability, while those editing in sister programs like Soundtrack Pro or Color would simply use the direct export feature shown in Figure 2. Apple declined to include industry-standard mediums of exchange in their product, or direct access to Soundtrack Pro, and roles is a substitute. In my view, you don’t get brownie points for fixing a problem caused by your own questionable design decisions.

And in conclusion:

For me, all the glorious new features seem like solutions to problems that I don’t have, added complexity with no payoff. With Final Cut Pro 7 or Premiere Pro, there are projects, clips, and a timeline. You import your clips, organize them into folders, and drag them down into the timeline. Then you trim a bit, add some effects, maybe a transition or two, export, and you’re done.

With Final Cut Pro 10, you have Events and Projects. You have a Magnetic Timeline, Clip Connections, a Primary Storyline, Auditions, Roles, Smart Collections: all are completely new concepts that I’ve never encountered in the dozen or so editors that I’ve cut projects on in the past, and, in some cases, they’re solutions to problems caused by questionable design decisions like the trackless interface.

The result is a cluttered interface that you really can’t control and asset management with even less control. You have effects and other functions seemingly designed to prioritize being different rather than superior. Honestly, was every established editing convention, from marking clips in and out in a source window to three-wheel color correction, so tragically flawed that it wasn’t worthy of being implemented in Final Cut Pro X, if only because it was functional and familiar to all pro target users?

More importantly, within the context of my typical projects, whether a two-hour ballet or music concert, or a ten minute streaming clip or screencam, will these new concepts help me do my job faster or better? I honestly don’t think so, particularly because Final Cut Pro 7 and now Adobe Creative Suite already suit my needs so well.

Exactly, the new features do not speed up my editing, and I actually find them slowly and less efficient. And now that is seems that FCP X has lost OMF export when Automatic Duck went away, so roles is even more useless, as I need OMF much more than just exporting tracks (though I do need tracks as well)

I don’t want a new form of editing, I want new features on top of the way I already edit, and if I like them will use them, but I don’t like the new way of editing of FCP X, and I don’t think I ever will

Wow, I can’t believe how many people have been affected by Steve Jobs death. It is all over the web. He really did affect so many people’s lives. I know it is no consolation to his family and friends, but we all appreciated him so much and I hope this shows them!

It is a sad day, it seems that Steve Jobs has passed away today at the age of 56. He was an amazing man, and really changed the world with the computers and other devices that he created. He must have been very sick to have left Apple, and he obviously was.

I got my first Apple computer when I was 7, and have been a loyal Mac user ever since (though the whole Final Cut Pro thing has shaken my loyalty a bit).

Steve Jobs created computers and electronics that have inspired me and become a part of my life.

I am saddened for his family and friends, and for the world.

Rest in Peace Steve!

MacTech is reporting, that Singular Software has announced that a free update to Presto and Plural Eyes will support Final Cut Pro X (so it is good that Apple released an XML for FCP X).

Check out his plug in at Foolcolor. For $89 it will move your FCP X project into After Effects. He is also working on one to export audio to FCP 7 so you can export an OMF and to export FCP 7 Sequences to FCP X and FCP 7 Projects to FCP X.

Pretty awesome that he is doing this, especially with Automatic Duck possibly out of the picture!

FCP.CO has a video by Micha Schmidt on using Roles, and getting out the audio to do a mix.

It is worth checking out, and makes it seem pretty useless as the exports using ROLES for audio tracks, only gives you complete mixdowns of each track that has been assigned Roles, but they are mixdowns, and not at all OMF tracks with individual audio tracks. So not all that useful. Sure you could make versions with audio on different tracks like this (if you have another program to make tapes).

My question do Roles export with Automatic Duck Pro Export 5.0 so that the clips show up in tracks? If that works, then it makes Pro Export more useful, but if not, Roles are pretty useless.

Macstories has an article on an interesting new preference Pane for OS X Lion RestoreMeNot, which is free and allows you to individually disable OS X Lion Restore Restore for Each Application of your choice.



Personally I think this should have been built into OS X as I have had some issues with Restore and certain apps (Rapidweaver will open two instances of my site, and crash if I try and save, and the Core OS X service keeps trying to open the last installer that was opened instead of the one I am trying to open) so this is a very useful little tool.

Check out this article on FCP X, and why it should have been a professional app when it was released, and not a partial app that will slowly have new features, which is commenting an article at Post Magazine. Which I totally agree with and have bee saying all along. Adobe did it just fine in bringing their apps to 64 bit, why did Apple have to not have feature parity or even compatibility with their old app?

And the fact that FCP X now has XML, but it is still not, and will never be compatible with FXP 7 is a joke. If Premiere Pro can do, Apple could do it, but they won’t.

I like this part:

At one point in the article Townhill notes that Apple is responding to feedback and changing the application quickly to meet the demands of the Post community.  The strange thing to me is that Apple was given much of the same feedback during the beta testing and it was roundly ignored.  Pages upon pages of information was fed to Apple with pretty much everything that has been said publicly since the application was released.   In all cases, Apple ignored the suggestions moving ahead with the product as they developed it.   NOW that there’s a tremendous outcry, NOW Apple is “responding to the Post Production community.”   Maybe if they had responded to the people who were testing the product, they could have avoided this entire fiasco.

So it looks to me like Apple’s original plan was to just release FCP X as a prosumer product that really didn’t need the full fledged Post Production community blessing because there are millions of consumers out there and only a couple hundred thousand Post Pros.   If it was truly aimed at the pros, then Apple would have listened to the pros during beta testing about all the things that were badly missing from the app.

But with all the subsequent negative press on the product, Apple is desperately trying to backtrack and figure out how to add the extremely basic functions that it left out by “skating where the puck is going.”  (read the article to understand)

If Apple was truly dedicated to the professional editing community they would have taken the two to three years to deliver something that built upon their 11 year legacy.  I just see what they’re doing now as creating a whole box of band-aids to make the product cobble along and sort of kind of do what the product has done for the past 4 years at least.  Apple is admittedly leaning heavily on third party vendors to fill in what they call gaps, what I call chasms in the software.

So true so true. Apple made FCP X on purpose, they knew they were giving up on the pro community completely and all the businesses that make a living making plug-ins and hardware for final cut pro, but they figured they would make more money by making a consumer application and banking on the name of Final Cut Pro which has come to mean something in the industry. Now they realize they may have screwed up, but it is too late. These new features could have been add ons to a true 64 bit Final Cut Pro and it would have been awesome, but this weird prosumer app they have made with some pro features and the rest decidedly consumer will never be used by Pros, and shouldn’t even have Pro in the name.

iMovie is not called a pro app because it is not, and adding some pro features to it, when it forces you to work in it’s limited way does not make it pro, and never will. And nothing Apple does will ever make this app right for professionals, Apple has ceded this market, and Adobe and AVID are going to be really happy to fill the gap.

Apple has released their quicktime Codecs as a download, this is version 1.0.1.

Macworld has an article dealing with Apple’s 10.0.1 Update to FCP X which will be released today (so far I only see an update to Compressor). Anyway for features they have done 3 major things for editors, the first is to release XML in and out of both project and event information (though likely no FCP 7 integration), added XSAN integration, and allowed intelligent stem export for audio and video using tagging in a feature called Roles.

I was wondering if Apple cared at all about this software to take a solid 3 months for an update, but at least they have updated.

And now you can have tracks be made out of sound for Audio export by tagging content, and it will smart export the tracks to the proper tracks, though I still think track support would be better an easier at least their is now a solution.

Amazingly Apple is also listening and is offering a free 30 day Trial, so you can try it out before you buy it. And they will also be releasing a free PDF Booklet entitled Final Cut Pro X for Final Cut Pro 7 users, which will be available from the Final Cut Pro X website soon. This should have come out with the application, but it is a start.

The article also talks about the release of Multicam and support for video monitoring, which will not be released until 2012, and they don’t say when, making this software not at all a professional app.

I am glad they are adding in features, but to me, they should have waited to release any app called Pro until all these features were integrated, unless they were going to continue to update and support final cut pro 7 during the period!

FCP.co has an article leading to some interesting tutorials from Paulus the Woodgnone.

Pretty cool if you are using FCP X.

Well with all the rumors that Tim Cook is actually listening to customers I decided to leave Final Cut Pro feedback with Apple once again. I asked them to rename FCP X into iMovie Pro and release a true 64 bit FCP 8 (along with a new Color and Soundtrack Pro) with all it’s previous functionality and some of the added features of FCP X. They can even put the magnetic Timeline in, as long as it can be turned off!

I doubt it will make any difference, but it sure would be nice to have FCP 8 truly 64 bit with all it’s functionality, bug fixes and new features that make it the premiere editing system out there. And Tim Cook could make that change, even if he in all likelihood wont.

TUAW is reporting that Tim Cook may in fact be open to returning some MobileMe features which are going away with iCloud.

You can leave feedback on MobileMe Here. I have already requested a return of iDisk as I use it all the time, and while I also have SugarSync and DropBox I still like the functionality of my iDisk, which I often use to share files with clients.

I hate having Apple take away functionality, but it seems to be becoming their MO. I mean look at FCP X!

Hardmac has an article on an official statement from Adobe about them having a 45% growth in OS X after the release of FCP X. Good job Apple! You could not have done more for Adobe, or in all likelihood AVID than crippling FCP X as you did!

And if you cared, you would have released an update to FCP X by now, but obviously you have not, so your claims to caring are shown to be hollow!

FCP.Co has a video from Mark Spencer on customizing colors in Motion Templates. Worth checking out if you are using FCP X.

FCP.co is showing off DVcreators 3 new film looks FXScript plug ins for Final Cut Pro 7 created by the great Graeme Nattress. The effects look great and are only $35 dollars, which is good as they don’t work with FCP X or anything besides FCP 7, which is EOL.
Check out the filter FilmStyles at DVcreators.

Inexpensive enough that people may still get them for FCP 7, but they had better add Premiere Pro support soon!

FCP.CO has an article on the beta of a new app called Foolcut AE to export video from FCP X to After Effects for $89. Impressive considering I paid $500 for the same functionality from Automatic Duck from FCP 7 to AE, though the same functionality is free from Premiere Pro to AE.

Digital Rebellion has an excellent article on 18 features that Premiere Pro must lift from Final Cut Pro, some of which I have covered extensively (like showing clip duplication in the timeline) and others I had not even realized, but all I agree with are necessary for Premiere Pro to really replace Final Cut Pro.
Though I doubt you will ever be able to open multiple projects as you can’t in After Effects either (only import projects into each other). Still it would be nice!

Film Riot has a a good video podcast on is Premiere Pro better than Final Cut Pro, and basically it comes down to that yes it is. It can open Final Cut Pro projects, and is really damn fast. And one of my favorites, is the After Effects integration, which really is incredible. Check out this video below.

Of course he is staying on as Chairman, and he chose Tim Cooke to replace him. I guess he is just too sick. I hope he can get better and continue to have influence at the company that he created and revitalized.

Of course it makes me wonder if he was the one behind killing FCP7, and if his stepping down could cause a change and it to return, but that is just wishful thinking.

Lets just hope he is able to recover.

Production Apprentice has an excellent article on moving back from Final Cut Pro 7 to AVID Media Composer. He likes the move and really gets back into using trim mode, which is barely used on FCP 7, though still likes some things about FCP 7.

I feel about the same, I still like certain things about FCP 7 better, but now that it is EOL, it is time to really to get back into Media Composer, though I am also really enjoy Premiere Pro quite a bit.

Scott Simmons at Studio Daily has an interesting article on some Road Blocks in FCP X. This goes with Olivier Peters recent article over at digitalfilms, which I posted about before.

Of course I agree with all, though maybe not in the same order.

It does really blow me away that there is no live timeline scrolling in FCP X. This was a feature that FCP 7 really did need, and AVID has had for a long time.

And the fact that you can set an in and out in a clip, then click on another clip, and when you go back the points are gone had better be a bug, because that is so not a usuful feature.

digitalfilms has an excellent article on FCP X roadblocks. I agree with all of them, but one particularly as it is my favorite tool in FCP.

Track tool. This plays a huge part in how I edit and something I really loved in FCP over Media Composer. I use it to move clips downstream to open a space on the timeline to work. If I want to do the same in FCP X, I either have to insert a placeholder (essentially the OLD Avid way of working) or select a number of clips (also the OLD Avid way). Not very effective when you have an hour-long timeline. Another reason to use the track tool is to select all the clips to the right in order to apply common effects.

I really don’t get these people that are fervently defending FCP X.

I know I have said this before, but to me it is not just incomplete, and you can’t call it a beta( because if it was a beta they would still be supporting FCP 7, while they worked out the kinks of FCP X), it is actually broken. The basic paradigm of the timeline that you cannot organize is broken. Some of the new features could be interesting and powerful, but as additional features, not as the only features. And I never want a timeline that I cannot organize unless it is has zero graphics or overlays, and even then I like to organize my tracks.

And while I could see a usefulness to being able to scrub where the mouse head is, like the AVID timeline, it should be able to turn off and on (I know you can turn it off in FCP X, but then you can’t scrub in clips in the viewer either, which doesn’t work).

And what exactly does Apple want us to do on jobs where we need a FCP 7 license? I am on one right now? How do we get one? E-bay, they are going for much more than $1000, and you don’t even know how legal they are?!?!

Check out there feature request for FCP X.

I really agree with the scrolling timeline, and reconnect media.

For those still using FCP X, there has been released a $1.99 PDF manual that everyone says is great. It will also be $14.99 printed at AMazong, and you can get it here.

Biscardi Creative has an excellent article on why they are not waiting for Final Cut Pro X to become this amazing Paradigm of editing in the future, when they can do everything they need in Premiere Pro right now. The article really mirrors what I am feeling about Premiere Pro right now. I love not having to re-compress to Pro Res, and edit in realtime in my timeline.

There’s been so much talk about a “new paradigm” and “a new beginning” lately courtesy of Apple.  Defenders of the “new paradigm” are quick to point out that this is an entirely new application, nothing like it has ever been done, therefore, Apple had to break with all convention to create Final Cut Pro X.   It’s stripped down now, like Final Cut Pro 1, but give it time and the things we “need” will be added back over time.  It has so much “potential for the future.”

The more I work with Adobe Premiere Pro the more I just don’t understand that mentality.   Why wait?  Premiere Pro already includes the “missing elements” of FCP X and so much more it can’t do.

He goes on to say that despite all the protesting in forums he transferred over a large project to Premiere Pro final Cut Pro 7 and it all worked perfectly, he loves all the realtime effects, and also how Adobe Media Encoder can look into Premiere Pro and After Effects projects and render individual sequences without having to open the host apps, which for him, and for me is huge! You don’t have to export a quicktime movie and you don’t have to give up the host app to to the compression. THAT IS SO COOL, AND SO USEFUL! TALK ABOUT A TIME SAVER!

Finally figured out something that was bothering me. I have already said that I hated that Apple had gotten rid of the spaces control panel to control which apps go into which desktop spaces, well the controls are still there, they have just been moved.

Once you have created multiple spaces in Mission control (I have 6).



Open the Application which you want to put in different spaces, and then right click on it’s icon in the dock. You will get a menu like this one which lets you pick where to put the app.


Honestly it is not as elegant as it was having the old control panel where you could set all apps, but it is pretty functionally and allows the same functionality, so I am happy.

Still not sure about Mission Control VS. spaces and Expose though. I use 6 desktops, if I start using full screen apps, I am sure going to have a lot on the top row, and I have a fairly large monitor.

Apple's abandonment of Professionals is obvious to me.

If they were planning on supporting professionals they could have done what they did with OS X. Release FCP X as a beta, while also continuing to support FCP 7 for a time, and especially keep it available. And keep adding features to X until it was at par with 7 and then kill 7, with a definite timetable. They did it with OSX, so they could have done it here, but they are aiming for Prosumers and have abandoned the pro market completely.

All the people saying how great FCP X is, well I am glad you like it, but it is not, and will never be a professional app. Sure you can edit amazing things with it, and use it’s new very powerful features to make an incredible product or movie or whatever you are editing, but you can do that with any tool, it is just not a professional editing program and from what I see, never will be.

Check out this MaxFixit article, it details ways to make specific resume states for different apps and how to lock out Apps from having resumes. These all work as advertised, though are a bit of a cludge, and hopefully someone will release an app to do this easier.

The web site Macgasm has an article on two editors take on FCP X, and why they are not going to be using it. It is a good read on the subject and goes along allot with how I feel about FCP X.

From Eugene Ho:

By releasing a program that ought to have been a step forward from the existing app, but instead was missing many features that used to be there, Apple made it so that FCP X doesn’t “just work” for many professionals. By changing the video editing paradigm, FCP X now “gets in the way” of many pros, who will now have to spend the time to learn the “new way” of video editing.

From Paul Skidmore:

People keep asking me what I think of the new Final Cut Pro. My answer has been consistent: “It’s hands down the best editing program I’ve ever used, and when it comes time to edit my short film this fall, I won’t be using it.”

Though Paul seems to think FCP X will get there, which I don’t. I think it has some very basic flaws that will preclude it from ever being a viable pro editing program, and that is why I will be getting Media Composer for $999 before the deal runs out, and I already have Premier Pro CS5.5 and have been spending a lot of time learning it.

1. OK, so NVIDIA has been able to re-create the problem, and there is a workaround. You must force the Mac into 64 Bit mode (If it can handle it). This Apple Tech Support Document gives how you can do it permanently or for a single boot.

If your Mac uses the 32-bit kernel by default, but supports the 64-bit kernel, you can start up using the 64-bit kernel by holding the 6 and 4 keys during startup.

To select the 64-bit kernel for the current startup disk, use the following command in Terminal:

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64

To select the 32-bit kernel for the current startup disk, use the following command in Terminal:
sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386

1. The article talks to people who are using FCP X and seem to think it is great, and at the very least the future of editing, but I completely don’t agree, and have to say these people are pretty insetting.

Schechtman is a little more blunt, especially when it comes to editors who have already declared their intention to abandon FCP for the competition. "If you're making a rash decision based on a product that isn't complete, you're an idiot," he says. "We all live a technical life. We all can look back at the not-so-distant past and see that we've been through this before. Don't jump ship, permanently, while someone else is rethinking the NLE for your benefit."

Insulting and ignoring much of the big picture. Like me having a 5 month job starting where we need a new Final Cut Pro editing bay because our client is a Final Cut Pro house. Well we need to buy a new system and duplicate our Black Magic setup, which is useless for AVID (at least for now) and at this point we have to buy another copy of Final Cut Studio 3 on Ebay for more than $1000, because it currently isn’t available anywhere.

And it is idiotic to say that FCP X is going to be all this and that, if it is as you say an unfinished program! What if when Adobe moved to 64 bit they made their entire suite incompatible with the previous version, and cut out most of the features people needed. People would be up in arms, as they are about Final Cut Pro X! They did not need to release an unfinished product, they had years, and could have waited to release their supposedly finished product. They released it, so it is finished, sure they may add some more features, but it is a finished product.

I spent a week learning FCP X and did not find it any faster than FCP 7 for my editing, in fact I found many features backwards, and felt I had to spend more time organizing because of the lack of ability to use tabs for folders, and organize quickly that way for easy access.

If you want to make the old paradigm better, then add to it, add the new features on top of the old, and if people like it, it will take over, but just to make their way that only way, and to require more steps to do many of the essentials features of the previous version is unacceptable!

This video is well worth checking out, I knew what was coming, but still enjoyed it.
Rob Tinworth’s 10 years with FCP a retrospective at Filmmaker.com.

You can read his post at his blog. I find a lot of what he is saying a little too positive on Apple’s turn from Niche market leader to completely consumer product, but he does have some really great things to say that go along pretty much how I feel about FCP X and what apple has done to it’s own market.

Unfortunately by releasing FCP X in the way it was done, Apple has destroyed the existing ecosystem built around FCP and all developers start at square one again. Some are happy for the new opportunities and others express concern. By ignoring legacy support and releasing a product with many gaps, Apple has alienated many high-end professionals. You can argue all you want that these users constitute an insignificant niche, but for developers, it’s these users who will pay thousands of dollars for capture cards, accessories and plug-in packages.

The danger of re-inventing the wheel

I have nearly four decades of experience in broadcast operations, production and post, with most of it in editing. I’ve gone through numerous transitions and along the way operated, reviewed or been associated with well over two dozen different edit platforms. One of the things I’ve seen in that time is that non-standard workflows and interfaces eventually return to accepted concepts. After all, editing tools are built on over 100 years of post production practices.

For me, FCP X simply is NOT faster nor easier, just DIFFERENT – precisely because Apple has radically changed the way an editor organizes the information and works in the timeline. I will freely admit that my nonlinear days started with Avid and I first disliked moving to FCP. Now, after eight years of mostly non-stop experience with Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Studio, FCP 7 has grown to be my preferred editing tool – warts and all. It’s incredibly versatile, but that level of user control was dropped from FCP X.

I use the timeline as much as a scratch pad as the location for a final assembly. Place multiple clips onto top tracks and preview them as one option versus another. Or build little sub-sequences at the back of the timeline and then copy & paste these into the place I want. Work rough and then clean things up. FCP 7  and Media Composer give me that freedom and precision. FCP X does not. Of course, some of this is handled through Audition clips in FCP X, but that requires that you know and select the possible options first and then combine them into an Audition clip, which can be cut onto the timeline for previewing. To me, this requires more work than I go through in all other NLEs.

My ideal NLE would likely be a mash-up between Final Cut Pro 7 and Avid Media Composer, augmented by the performance features of FCP X and Premiere Pro. It’s difficult to predict the future where Apple is concerned, so I don’t want to discount the possibility of FCP X picking up steam with my customers. If that’s true, then I’ll be there ahead of them; however, today, FCP X is the wrong tool for my projects and those of my clients.

Take the Precision Editor, as an example. This highly-promoted feature is little more than a toy in my view. Trimming in FCP X is much weaker than in FCP 7 and that version wasn’t anywhere close to having the trimming control of Media Composer. Asymmetrical trimming in FCP X is virtually non-existent. The basics, like trimming L-cuts, haven’t been properly implemented. For instance, split edits (L-cuts, J-cuts) are only based on trimming audio track in-points in FCP X, instead of either audio or video as in most other NLEs.

It’s these and many other little things throughout FCP X that will hinder its adoption by the upper tier of users. That has a cascading effect. In a film school, why adopt FCP X for your students, when they’ll encounter Avid Media Composer as the tool of choice out in the “real world”? If you teach a digital media curriculum, whose graduates are destined to work in the corporate and web arena, then isn’t Adobe Create Suite better suited? What Apple has in effect done – by rebooting Final Cut as FCP X – is to pull the rug out from under its own advances earned over twelve years of FCP development. They’ve handed an extraordinary gift to competitors who can better service these smaller, but still important, market segments.

Sorry, i Know that was a lot to quote, but all of that I find right on target.

You can see them right on Apple’s front page for Final Cut Pro X. They Claim to show how superior FXPX is at Faster Editing, A New Way to Organize, Motion Graphics and File Based Workflows, but are obviously BS marketing speak from people who are not professional editors. Sure there are some cool new features, but they needed to be ad ons to the features and not replacements, because Apple’s way is not the better way, just a different way, that I do not believe is better.

For those of you who are annoyed by the Library folder being hidden in your user folder in lion. Here is the terminal command to make it unhidden. You will have to change to you superuser to do it though.

chflags nohidden /Users//Library

Now if only I can change back the permissions on my Utilities folder so I can read and write...

A Quick Note: It looks like then 10.7.1 update reset this, so I guess you will have to keep making this change if you want to be able to see your library at all times.

So I am checking Editing Software Compatibility of Mac OS X Lion.

As Apple Said Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 does open fine in Lion, though it does ask me to register, though the button to register is grayed out.

The Demo of AVID Media Composer 5.5.2 boots and runs just fine.

Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5 I am having issues with. and it won’t start. Adobe claims it should run fine, so I am going to try and re-install and see what happens. It is weird as After Effects and Photoshop work fine, but just Premiere won’t boot.

Well it just came out today, so I have obviously not dealt enough with Lion to really know, but i have a few annoyances already.
I hate the new scroll bars and how they disappear, and even though you can make them always show up, I hate the removal of the arrows at the ends. I was always a fan of double arrows at both ends, but to not have them at all is stupid.
I don’t like the new Address book, as it is harder to add an entry and then add it to a group as it is on 2 different pages and takes extra steps to do so.
The death of Power PC apps completely is annoying, though only affects one app I have, which was an app that published my now playing song in iTunes to my FTP server. I will have to find a reasonable alternative.
The death of the spaces control panel. I for one use spaces all the time, and I love it. I have different screens for Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop, and could easily use the spaces control panel to pick which app showed up where, and have some apps show up everywhere, like Safari and iTunes. Now this has been taken away. At least it still remembers my old settings (though I had to turn off the auto rearranging of spaces which just confused things). I get mission control, but I would love to be able to name my spaces, and once again have real control over what apps show up where. Hopefully someone will release a 3rd party app to return this functionality. I mean I am glad it remembered my old Spaces settings, but not being able to easily change them is a real pain.
Not sure I like the new Mail. I was fine with how it was, and think it actually shows less info now than it did before, but at least the classic view is still available, so i can switch back if it really annoys me.
Launchpad is useless to me, and I have way too many apps for it, but might be nice for a novice user.
I am sure I will have more as I use it.
For a thorough review check out Ars-Technica’s Extensive Review, which you can also get in ebook or pdf format, though you will have to pay for it to get it in those formats.

EDIT:
I have some additions. I don’t like that in Finder windows the custom icons for hard drives no longer show up. I use custom hard drive icons for a reason for easy visual identification of drives, and not having this just slows things down.
I hate that the user library is now a hidden file, as I want to be able to go there if I need to easily. And the Utilities folder now requires administrator privileges to make changes, and strangely it won’t let me add myself in the info panel. Hopefully this is just a bug, because I trust myself with my own Utilities folder!
Another thing I hate. The ability to turn off the backwards scrolling requires either a Trackpad or a magic mouse! Well what if you only have a 3rd party mouse? That needs to be settable no matter what!
I find the Address book to be a major step backward, as it takes extra steps to do what it could do before. To add a new entry you must be within a group, but to add an entry to different groups, you have to click to see groups. I would rather have a 3 way window pane than a 2 way pane as it is now.

ADDITIONAL:

I don’t know if it is because I use a third party mouse driver (SteerMouse from Japan which I have used to enable a third mouse button on my EOL Microsoft Trackball Explorer, the best trackball ever made, which I used when using Shake and Color, both of which I probably won’t be using anymore) or if it is a feature of Lion, but moving the mouse no longer wakes my computer up. I have to hit the keyboard, which is just annoying! Is this a feature?

The Article has some good answers and also says some interesting things that I believe to be true.

In its current state I would not use FCPX in a professional, client heavy environment. At this time I don’t consider it an FCP7 replacement as it lacks so many features that I’ve come to rely on. It’s a brand new piece of software so it will take years to mature into the full featured application that FCP7 is ... that is if Apple chooses to add back a lot of the features missing from FCP7. At this point in time I don’t know when / if it could replace FCP7 (or Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro).

and

23) Do you think Apple is moving away from the Pro Video market towards the wider prosumer market with FCPX.

Most definitely.

and

51) Does your knowledge of FC7 help or get in the way of learning FC10?

That’s a great question. I’d almost say it gets in the way as FCP7 uses long established editing paradigms that work very well. In some aspects FCPX is trying to reinvent the wheel. Where there are some great things in FCPX there’s other instances where, IMHO, the wheel doesn’t really need to be reinvented because it works so well.

and

63) how does the magnetic timeline handle a music video where the main audio should be locked permanently?

My music video testing has found that I would create a synchronized clip with the master audio to place in the primary storyline and then connect all my angles to it via Connect to Primary Storyline. In theory that should keep them all in sync. Truth be told the inability to really lock a clip in place and lack of multiclips / group clips would make me look elsewhere for music video editing.

and

77) Worthwhile building new edit suite around FCPX or still shrink-wrapped FCPStudio 7… etc?

Personally I would never build an edit suite around a single NLE so I certainly don’t feel the current release of FCPX is enough to build an entire edit suite around. As one tool in that suite yes but the only tool? Not in its current form and probably not for a long while. Plus, if Apple is going to rely on 3rd parties to supply many of the pro-workflow tools that we need for FCPX then the final cost is going to end up well above $299 to run FCPX in a professional / broadcast environment.

and

83) What’s your favorite new feature, and new disappointment?

Favorite new features are the many different background processes from rendering to transcoding to media management. Auditions is another strong new feature. Disappointment is the Magnetic Timeline and single Viewer that changes between source clips and the timeline.

The rest has some interesting points, and tells how to do may good things, but these are things that really stand out to me about what is wrong with the software.

And I have to agree. He has an excellent blog post on the subject, which talks about defining Pros, as people working working in Broadcast Television and Film and not just people making money editing.


This is how he ends the article:

Businesses in the film and TV industry, that have to deliver a product to a strict standard within a strict deadline, can’t pin their hopes on a future upgrades or the next version while relying on an increasingly ageing product that has been EOL’ed. They need certainty and at the moment the only certainty that exists with FCP is that the current version has no future hopes and the current version isn’t suitable for their work. They have no choice but to look elsewhere.

It simply makes no financial sense for Apple – selling a $300 product that appeals, as is, to millions of people – to pursue a small market with very specific and complicated demands.

In the end Final Cut Pro X will be a success, it is a powerful and innovative application. But it will no longer be a big part of the film and TV post-production industry.

FCP X will work for a lot of the smaller people, and will eventually, with a slew of plugs in (driving it’s price right back up to what it used to be) will do even more, but it will never be the the pro app that it once was. Apple has nixed that market, and it is just too bad they don’t have the decency to rename FCP X into iMovie Pro to show that they really are going a completely new direction and instantly saying to all pros that they need to find another home, instead of doing it in such a backhanded way.

Dylan Reeve has an excellent post on the FCP X Disconnect, which is about how FCP was used by professional users and how Apple sees FCP.


He has some excellent graphs that show what he thinks is the potential market for FCP and how Apple just doesn’t see it as an important segment of it’s market, because it is so incredibly small, and I completely agree.


Apple is going lowest common denominator, and it can even be seen in Lion. Making everything more iOS like, instead of making iOS more mac like, because iOS is great for portable devices, but too simple, but they want to make the mac more like iOS and that personally scares me.

Well for those still struggling with FCP X, Intelligent Assistance has released Event Manager X, so you can have an intelligent manager to pick which media and which projects show up in FXP X (I can’t help thinking this shouldn’t be part of the program).

Matthew Levie in his fifth and final article on using FCP X to cut has some things to say on the Magnetic Timeline that mirror my thoughts, and are the main reason I am in the process of moving to Premiere to edit.

Which brings me back to where I was on day two: the "magnetic timeline" is cute, but it keeps me from making the sequence I want and therefore it really has to go.

It reminds me a little bit of when Apple was introducing FCP 1.0 and Steve Jobs showed us how we could take a clip from the Viewer and drop it on this beautiful transparent overlay in the Canvas to choose insert/overwrite/replace/etc. and the crowd went, "oooooooh." But who edits that way?

Maybe you'll say I didn't give it enough of a chance. That might be fair. I just played around with it for a few days. But the truth is that we have an editing paradigm that works for us in FCP 7. It's not enough to show us that if we completely rethink our workflow then we can do the same things in FCP X as we can in FCP 7 with a couple of extra steps. What can we do that's more efficient, faster, better? Yes, the infrastructure is improved; yes, the 64-bit implementation and background rendering mean things will be much faster... if we can still figure out a way to tell the stories we want to tell.

In conclusion, I think if Apple's FCP X team really is serious about wanting professionals to use this program -- and maybe they're not, and that's okay -- we will need to see it go back to a track-based editing metaphor, at least as an option. If that happens, I can't see why I wouldn't use it eventually. I don't really care about the feature set: they can always add multicam and OMF export and whatever else, and I'm sure they will. But if they add those features while retaining the current editing paradigm, it will still be very difficult to use professionally.

My biggest complaint about FXP X is that I think the basic editing paradigm is broken and much too simplistic for a professional editing program. The magnetic timeline is what the program is built around and for me it makes things harder and not easier, as Matthew points out, it actually makes many things take more steps than they did in Final Cut Pro 7.

Sure there are some cool new features, but we would have been better off having those added to a 64 bit upgrade to Final Cut Pro 7 and not this monstrosity that is Final Cut Pro X.

Apple has obviously given up on the professional editing market and done it in the most insulting way possible, and I don’t think they realized the bad press and loss of sales they will get for not taking their professional market seriously.

Today Larry Jordan has a new article, where he talks about why he is sticking with FCP for now, and waiting for new features.


I personally disagree. Apple had a mature and powerful editing program that could have been updated and have had some of the great new features added to it, but instead they decided to make a new less powerful program geared at making editing ‘easier’. The thing is they are engineers and have no idea what editing is really about, and have instead made a program that I don’t think will ever be right for a professional editor. The magnetic timeline alone proves this to me, because they no longer think that organization is important, and it is one of the most important things!

Larry Jordan has a good blog post on how Apple is not accountable to anyone for the disaster of it’s Final Cut Pro X release.


And it really is true. No is accountable, and Apple would hold everyone accountable if things were revered. Nvidia made one mistake and look they have not been in a mac since, and we the users are punished by Apple for it (having to put our ATI cards back in for major upgrades and then re-install the NVIDIA drivers).


I am knee deep into learning Premier Pro (after trying, but giving up on FCP X) and am pretty impressed by many features (especially the XML export being able to do the whole project with all sequences), but can’t see why this was even necessary! I can see that Apple might have wanted to cement their lead in the future, but not at the expense of their entire installed user base who are going to bad mouth the hell out of their new product until they make something useful.


And why buy Color, just to kill it a few years later? Or why kill Shake? Why did they not spin off their entire pro-division like they did with FileMaker Pro? Make a business unit that is answerable to it’s base. and needs to make a product that it’s customers want!


I am left shaking my head.

The Amazing Alex4D has posted another free FXP X filter fora text pox with a color or gradient.


If you are using FCP X, download it for sure.

ProVideo Coalition has a good article on FCP X and what Apple is probably doing.

Sooo ... IF Apple loses 10% of the 200,000 high-end editors (and I think this is generous … the real number is probably near 50,000) but gains these markets, will it be an even trade? No, not at all—each of these markets is 10 times the size of the current high-end editing market. If only a small percentage buy FCPX,  Apple’s installed base will double, and quickly. Almost every person I’ve talked to in these areas are excited about the new release. They don’t want or need EDLs or multicam edits, they just want to cut their story together quickly.

In the long term, the future is more fuzzy. Apple stands to gain and hold the bottom 90% of the pyramid—if they are able to develop the application effectively. This 90% will begin to put pressure on the top 10%. We’ll just have to see how committed Apple is to the future. For the many that will be entering the market with Final Cut Pro X… getting in now means that they can learn a simple application and grow with it… like many of us did with Photoshop over 20 years. It was simple when in started, really.

And I think they will lose a lot more of 10% of the provideo market, more like 90%, but yes I admit it is a small portion of the market that Apple probably could care less about. They are shooting for the other 90% and FCP X does have some great features for them, but at the cost of making a program that will not work fro the pro-editors.


And honestly they have lost our trust completely! I mean just killing Color, an Amazing HIgh End color correction program is so arrogant it is ridiculous. And sure we could move to DaVinci from Black Magic, but that is $1000 with another $1600 for the control board, and Color was included in the FCP Studio Suite!

I have to say I am starting to get burnout on FCP X disaster, but Studio Daily has a good review that covers some of my problems.

iMovie on Steroids? MaybeAfter using FCPX for a few weeks I still believe what many initially thought upon first seeing FCPX back in April: This is just the first version of a new application and in this form is essentially iMovie on steroids. There are just too many things that Final Cut Pro 7 users will be missing when they really dig into FCPX. It's not that we won't be able to make cool effects and pretty video, it's just that we'll do it in a much different way without some tools that we now take for granted. Word from people who are smarter than I am say that FCPX isn't built off of current iMovie code. I still find that hard to believe, as the similarities are striking. If they aren't based on the same code then Apple made a very conscious, very clear and very targeted decision to copy an awful lot of what's in iMovie now. Some of it is actually for the better but a lot of it is for the worse.

And

•No More Dual-Monitors: Also gone is the more traditional FCP7-like Viewer/Canvas two-monitor layout. The viewing window changes to the timeline or the clip events depending on what you’re doing. In my time with the new software, I have come to really, really miss that two window layout.

And

There is the option of importing from tape, but that's only from a tape-based camera and only via FireWire. Why Apple included only FireWire camera support is perplexing. It seems downright silly to rewrite FireWire tape support for FCPX and not include something like multi-clipping, especially when it feels like you approach something close to multi-clips when you use the new Synchronize Clips feature and have it sync multiple camera angles. Sure, the resources for FireWire support might be vastly different than support for third-party I/O hardware (which isn’t supported out of the box) but FireWire support for DV and HDV? Really? When Apple, and an entire industry, is moving away from FireWire?

And

When media comes into FCPX it must be associated with an Event or dropped into a new Event created upon import. Forget about project-based media; everything here is based on Events. In fact, all the media you’ve ever imported is available all the time. This feature alone can be totally amazing and/or insanely frustrating; I experienced both feelings when using FCPX. There are definitely times I don't want media from other projects available, especially in a professional environment, where you can have hundreds of hours of media from different clients on your media drive. Conceptually, it’s an interesting idea for the right environment but in practice FCPX desperately needs some type of "Event Media Mounting Manager" to keep unrelated media from intruding on an unrelated project. You can physically move the media in the Mac Finder to hide it from FCPX but isn’t this an application for the future? That seems really antiquated.

And

This type of project setup, and the more structured way FCPX stores and tracks media, reminds me very much of Avid Media Composer. Media Composer has always been great at both media management and mixing formats. Avid's often been chastised by FCP users for it's structured, less free-flowing way of working, but Apple is doing something very similar now in FCPX.

And

The timeline has done away with video and audio tracks as we know them and therefore, it’s a very free form way of working. The magnetic timeline means clips move out of the way where clip collisions might have happened in FCP7. This new, freer way of editing will suit some; others it will not. I like quite a lot of what Apple is trying to do to make editing faster and better, but there are other things in FCPX that really don’t make the overall editing experience any faster or better. You really have to try it yourself, which makes it rather frustrating that there isn’t a free demo available.

and

My fear is this free-form timeline will lead to some real sloppy jobs coming in the door if FCPX catches on.

And summing up

The new Media management in FCPX may seem to offer more options to editors, but it actually uses a very rigid, specific way to store clips, renders and projects. If you were a sloppy editor in FCP7, then you’ll be fine in FCPX, at first. But if you don’t really understand how FCPX organizes your media you might be in for some trouble if files get moved and drives get shuffled.

I hate how there’s no real dedicated Viewer window when I skim those source clips.I hate how imprecise much of the actual editing process has become in the magnetic timeline.

And finally

How much real-world editor feedback did Apple really get before this came to market? Even though some very high profile editors got a chance to evaluate it before the release, I'm more inclined to think it was designed by a bunch of engineers who don’t actually edit for a living. Either way, it just feels unfinished. I won’t be implementing it with my paying clients as of this version, and probably not for a few versions to come. But I’ll happily bang out home movies with it.

And yes he also does have good stuff to say, but it is the negative to me that is the most telling. This is not a pro app, and the way it is built I don’t think it will ever be. Sure kids who have never edited might love it, but forcing editors to work in one way that is not proven to be better is not necessarily a better way, just different, and for this different, I am not sure I agree.

Alex Gollner also known as Alex 4D has a blog post summarizing a supposed Apple Pro briefing on FCP X in London.

Personally Apple needs to come out and just say this stuff if it is true, and tell people what will be paid and what is coming, and give a timeline.

And anyway I think it may be too little too late. Apple has screwed this release completely. Any program that cannot open it’s previous versions files should not be called the same thing. If it is not iMovie code (which I don’t believe) then call it iEdit Pro,

Here are some point from the meeting:

1. FCP XML in/out is coming via 3rd party soon…no FCP 6/7 support project support coming ever it seems…

2. Ability to buy FCP7 licenses for enterprise deployments coming in the next few weeks…

3. FCPX EDL import/export coming soon…

4. FCPX AJA plugins coming soon for tape capture and layback…capture straight into FCPX bins.

5. XSAN support for FCPX coming in the next few weeks…

6. FCPX Broadcast video output via #Blackmagic & @AJAVideo coming soon…

7. Additional codec support for FCPX via 3rd Parties coming soon…

8. Customizable sequence TC in FCPX for master exports coming soon…

9. Some FCPX updates will be free some will cost…

And

conigs Do they have any kind of timeframe for “soon”? Am I safe in guessing in 2011?aPostEngineer within a few weeks for some updates i.e. XSAN up to a few months for 3rd party developers to get their heads around the API.gigarafa what about the rest of the suite? Color, dvd studio etc?aPostEngineer they have unfortunately reached their EOL and will not be developed any more..

So Color and DVD Studio are officially dead as well.

This is an interesting article at Techvessel on Final Cut Pro X. I still don’t think that Apple is really thinking they have the new professional paradigm. I tend to think they are using the cache of the Final Cut Pro name to try to sell to Prosumers, but the article dose have some interesting points.

It’s hard to say exactly what Apple’s strategy was with their release of FCPX. Its announcement at the NAB convention seems to suggest that they were trying to get professional editors excited about FCPX, yet the lack of support and backwards compatibility with FCP7 shows either a disconnect, or outright disregard for the realities of being a professional editor.  

This release feels similar to their previous iMovie reboot. In that case, I think Apple could afford to be more aggressive with abandoning the previous version of iMovie and starting from scratch.  Many iMovie users probably don’t use it on a daily basis, so throwing out their previous experience with an older version and starting over really wasn’t that big of a deal.

For *professional* editors, this is an entirely different scenario. Pro editors use their software of choice all day, every day. They become masters at shortcuts and UI tricks to make them effective. If you’ve never seen a *good* professional editor at work, I can tell you it’s amazing. The speed and precision in which they work is staggering. They can do this because they’ve spent countless hours training on and mastering their tools. That’s why it’s unreasonable to expect that Pros would jump on board with FCPX on day one.

and

What happens if you’re currently on a project using FCP7, and you need to bring some new people on board to help finish the project? You’d better hope they already have a copy of the software, since now you can’t buy FCP7 any longer. I’m not sure what you do in that scenario. I think it’s these kinds of issues that show a lack of respect for the Pro editor that has gotten the community so riled up.

and

The bigger concern I would have if I were at Avid would be that it appears Apple is again trying to leapfrog their competition with a new paradigm for video editing. Avid’s interface was already showing its age, and now it’s only going to appear more antiquated in the eyes of young editors growing up on FCPX. Maybe Avid doesn’t necessarily see that as a big deal – they have their loyal users who aren’t going to switch and they know it. Remember also that Avid doesn’t make their money from the editor software alone – they also have big enterprise server systems that manage large amounts of media and also do things like big newsroom automation systems. These are things that Apple are not likely to compete with. However, in all those kinds of systems, the lynchpin is the Editor, and if none of the younger editors know how to use, or don’t care to learn Avid, that’s a big long-term problem.

As I said I don’t fully agree, as I don’t see FCP X really taking off in the condition it is in, and I believe some of it’s basic paradigms are so flawed (the magnetic timeline being one) that I don’t see this being the choice for young editors if they actually expect to work in a professional environment.

Alex Gollner of Alex4D, has an article on how to get around FCP X automatically applying an audio cross fade when you add a dissolve in FCP X. It is a useful tip, but my question is, if this is really supposed to be a professional app, why would you need a workaround for what should be one of the simplest things to do in an editing suite? I mean seriously, what the hell!

Neptune Salad has an article that is worth reading on waiting for Final Cut Pro X to release to start a big job, and then seeing what it is, and moving to Premiere Pro. It is really worth checking out, and looks to be the start of a series of articles.

But the real question anyone who edits is this: What are we going to do right now? I mean what are we actually going to do? As professionals, we don’t have the time to play around with multiple new programs until this dust settles as it could be months, and it might take Apple over a year to put FCP back on track.

And

Honestly, I’m not excited about moving to a new platform. This will be my third (Media 100, Final Cut Pro, now this – go ahead and laugh, Avid users). But the integration of AfterEffects (which is becoming a must-have item for filmmakers, see www.videocopilot.net to understand my zeal) and Photoshop make it an attractive one-two knockout punch.

Kind of how I feel, though he did not get a refund on Final Cut Pro X, and I did, but we both are making the move to Premiere Pro.

Here is an interesting Article on Final Cut Pro X from TUAW.

I have to say that the magnetic timeline's "primary storyline/connected storyline" paradigm just does not work for me yet. The concept is this: think of a documentary. The interviews are your "primary storyline," and the music, titles, and B-roll are your "connected storylines."

In theory this is very cool, because a particular piece of B-roll is "connected" to a particular piece of interview in a particular place, and you can reorganize the interviews and the associated B-roll comes with them.

In practice it's really annoying. It assumes that you always have a block of footage that starts and ends with a cut-in video and audio simultaneously, which I actually almost never do.

And

The magnetic timeline also irritates me because I'm a strong proponent of track discipline. If I put something on V2, it's there for a reason. But in the magnetic timeline, items on subordinate tracks just jump up and down all over the place. Your music might be towards the top here and towards the bottom there. I suspect that in a complicated project, it will become impossible to find a given element.

Something I despise: the loss of Reconnect Media. Not having that on Avid was one of the worst things about it, and losing it on FCP hurts. A file suddenly went offline for no reason -- I hadn't moved it -- and I was just hosed. That sucks.

I tend to agree, and have returned my FCP X because of it. Track Discipline is the biggest thing ever for an editor, and without it, I can’t edit!

Looks like I am going with Premiere Pro. It is fast and responsive, though I have had some random crashes, but it was on sequences that I had imported via XML from Final Cut Pro 7.

The thing is the CUDA support with the NVIDIA card is unbelievably fast, and the integration with After Effects plug-ins makes it so usefull.

Again Macrumors has a great article on the origins of iMovie 08, which became Final Cut Pro X.

Ubillos returned from vacation and found that Final Cut wasn't ideal for organizing raw footage. From that experience, First Cut was born which would let you import your raw footage and quickly skip through, organizing and building a rough edit. The intention originally was to then export to Final Cut Pro. At some point, Apple officially latched onto the project and turned it into the new iMovie '08.

No wonder so many features seem shoehorned, it was meant to just create quick rough cuts, not to be the whole editor!

Macrumors has this interesting interview with Ron Brinkman, Shake’s product designer. Shake was the industry standard compositing program that Apple killed after 2 updates for no reason, except maybe to mine Q-Master for Compressor.

I love what he has to say:

And back then the same questions were being asked as now – “Doesn’t Apple care about the professional market?”

In a word, no. Not really. Not enough to focus on it as a primary business.

Brinkman goes on to explain that there are maybe 10,000 "high-end" editors in the world while the market for an easier to use more casual product is "at least an order of magnitude larger". The market size, however, isn't necessarily the only reason. Brinkmann offers an interesting anecdote about how the high end market tends to be 90% driven by product requests from the big customers. Apple doesn't work that way:

After the acquisition I remember sitting in a roomful of Hollywood VFX pros where Steve told everybody point-blank that we/Apple were going to focus on giving them powerful tools that were far more cost-effective than what they were accustomed to… but that the relationship between them and Apple wasn’t going to be something where they’d be driving product direction anymore. Didn’t go over particularly well, incidentally, but I don’t think that concerned Steve overmuch… :-)

Apple's hierarchy is also described as one in which easily demo-able features tend to be easier to promote within the organization. He goes on to say that in the case of FCP, Apple would rather introduce more easy to use features for the broader audience even if it means pushing out some items for high end editors.

Well after only one day, I got the following letter and got my refund for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4. It is time to purchase Premiere Pro, which is really impressing me to no end!

I did have a disturbing thought though, is Apple doing this to remove some of the worst reviews on their site? Every refund should be one 1 star review they get rid of!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Dear Jonah,

Thank you for contacting iTunes Store Customer Support. My name is *****

I'm sorry to hear that the application you recently purchased is not functioning as expected. I know how eager you are to get this issue resolved. I will make sure that this issue is resolved at the earliest.

Jonah, I have reversed the charges for the purchase of applications "Final Cut Pro X", "Motion 5" and "Compressor 4". In five to seven business days, a credit of $399.97 should be posted to the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase.

If you require further assistance, please feel free to reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.

Have a good day!

Sincerely,

*****

So here is what I wrote to apple in my request for a refund for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4.

I am writing you about my orders for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4. Order numbers M3NT1XYK15, M3NT1XYK7J and M3NT1XYLSB. I want to get a refund on these because the products do not function as advertised. Today you released a FAQ on Final Cut Pro X and it’s very first entry states that I cannot open Final Cut Pro 7 projects into Final Cut Pro X (it should not be named that, what if Adobe had made Photoshop CS5 not able to open any previous Photoshop docs when it became 64 bit) and as a professional editor, that is a good 75 percent of my business, working on variations of old projects and fixing projects for other people. Without this features the program is useless to me and the FAQ says it will never happen. If this FAQ had been out when the app was released I would not have purchased any of these 3 apps. Honestly I can say I am furious! I have already paid money for Ripple Training, and have also upgraded AUtomatic Duck, and since every statement after FCP X came out was that features were coming I expected that opening FCP 7 projects would be the first priority, but since it will never happen I must get an editing suite that can open FCP 7 sequences like Premiere Pro or Media Composer with Automatic Duck (which as I said I already own).

I also never saw any documentation that said that the magnetic timeline could not be turned off and that you can’t assign tracks. I work on 28:30 long infomercials often with 20 tracks of video and must put different graphics on different tracks in order to organize so that any editor can open it and understand it, with the magnetic timeline I might be able to make a sequence that looks the same visually, but it would not be organized so any editor could see it or so that I could easily turn texted on and off. This is another reason that this suite is not usefull to me.

As for Motion, I only got it to edit effects within FCP X, and to me it does not vastly improve over the previous motion. I don’t notice any major speed increases, and I see it as a downgrade since it is missing the send to features in FCP X that made it a good companion to final cut pro.

And Compressor 4 is not even 64 bit, and I am fine with having Q-master seperate, and since it won’t get video sent from Final Cut Pro 7, it is useless to me.

Please refund my money ASAP because these apps do not do as advertised, and you have only made these shortcomings aware as of today. I tried to learn and use FCP X, and did the ripple training, but found it is not at all a replacement for FCP 7, and instead feels like a consumer downgrade.

And right off the bat the FAQ shows that is useless to me, as the first note negates the usefulness of FCP X.

Can I import projects from Final Cut Pro 7 into Final Cut Pro X?Final Cut Pro X includes an all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline and connected clips. In addition, Final Cut Pro X features new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools. Because of these changes, there is no way to “translate” or bring in old projects without changing or losing data. But if you’re already working with Final Cut Pro 7, you can continue to do so after installing Final Cut Pro X, and Final Cut Pro 7 will work with Mac OS X Lion. You can also import your media files from previous versions into Final Cut Pro X.

Basically being unable to open FCP 7 projects or sequences (though it can open the consumer iMovie ones) is a huge part of my business, and I would rather move to Premier Pro 5.5 or Media Composer 5.5 which can open my FCP 7 sequences via XML (Media Composer with the help of Automatic Duck, which I already own).

The FAQ did have some good answers, but this above alone was enough to send me to try to get a refund.

Does Final Cut Pro X allow you to assign audio tracks for export?Not yet. An update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize your audio clips by type and export them directly from Final Cut Pro X.

Of course this feature as well, not being able to assign tracks means my 20 video track infomercials would be so confusing it would hurt! And mixer’s will still hate the exports of audio, even if things are tagged!

So I am going to fight for a refund!

Richard Harrington has written another article on Final Cut Pro X, entitled The Final Straw that was FCP, It is a response to all the bull that people are putting out there against people critical of FCPX. And he gives the 10 reasons he thinks people are leaving FCP and moving to AVID and Premiere Pro and I tend to agree with him.

The release of Final Cut Pro X was the defining moment for many. In my line of work, I get to interface with a lot of video editors and other video professionals. I have spoken at numerous user groups and conferences. As a forum leader and podcaster for Creative COW, I have been hearing complaints for years. I also get to sit in edit suites with clients. The waiting for transcode on import as well as the 32-bit nature of Final Cut Pro 7 has caused a lot of impatient waiting in edit suites around the globe.Final Cut Pro X was supposed to fix this. At least that was the belief most held. It would be “awesome” we were told. I guess that can mean different things.People are not breaking up with Apple because of what Final Cut Pro X is. They are ending their relationship because their fears have been confirmed. I present to you a summary of the issues that have people freaked out. Please pass this list on to anyone who asks you what the big deal is. These are my 10 reasons that people are switching. These are just opinions. Opinions formed by my interactions with many and my professional experiences and connections.

This is a must read article, and all his reasons are spot on.

Richard also links to the second article from OneRiver Media on Is the Trust for Apple Gone for Good, and I would have to say that it is.

In the blink of an eye, the release of Final Cut Pro X has caused a ripple in the Matrix so huge, I’m not sure Neo could even fix this catastrophe. But it’s much more than good software gone astray, it’s deeper than infrastructure changes; it’s about the loss of trust, faith and even livelihoods.

and

But switching non-linear editing applications is only part of the problem, and in some cases, only a small problem by comparison. There are many people that have devoted the last ten years in direct relation to Final Cut Pro, and as a result of Final Cut Pro X, are going through a major life/career change. These include certified Final Cut Pro trainers, value added resellers, user group organizations, third party software/plugin developers, and many more. There are many people that are questioning their livelihood because of this radical shift that Final Cut Pro X has taken. I wonder if Apple knew they were going to directly cause such an issue, or if all they were looking at was nothing but their bottom-line. To me, it shows an enormous amount of arrogance, ignorance, and selfishness from Apple, which is not the Apple I once knew.

and finally

So all of this begs the big question, “Can Apple be trusted from here on out?” For me, I will no longer buy any kind of pro app from Apple for my facility, knowing their EOL history is very strong—even if an updated Final Cut Studio 3 (based on FCP7) was released. It amazes me that all of my favorite pro apps from Apple are all EOL’ed. Literally.  For me personally, I no longer care about FCPX or even FCP7 updates. I’ve already started passing up articles on FCPX how-to’s or work-arounds, as I will not be using FCPX in my facility, and since FCP7 is EOL’ed.Because I’m switching to Avid Media Composer, all I care about at this juncture is integrating my current hardware and software with it, and what else I need to change or buy in order to make that happen. It’s a domino effect really, and all because of a 2.5-star, $299 downloadable app from the App Store. Seriously, that $299 app is costing me thousands of dollars, but luckily, none of it is going to the App Store. Just keep making powerful desktops, Apple, so I don’t cut my ties from you completely.

This is another must read article and really is much of what I have to say on the subject, though in the future i will talking more about individual features and what I do and don’t like about them.

HardMac has posted an article entitled, Professionals are unanimous: they don't like Final Cut Pro X

And I completely agree! This app is just not for pros in any way shape or form!

FCP Producer is pushing the web petition to get us a 64 bit FCP 8. I have signed, but as of now there are only 147 signatures though!

Apple recently introduced a completely new version of Final Cut Pro that immediately replaced the previous one. Although modern and revolutionary in many ways, this new version X lacks at least 10 main features required by any professional who uses Final Cut on TV studios, Feature Film editing, Production and Post-Production houses. In order to keep expanding the numbers of Final Cut Pro editing suites on these places we request that the Final Cut Pro 7 application should be temporally available for free as a download to all of those who bought Final Cut Pro X, while these 10 features are not addressed in the X release. They are: Add ability to import and export XML files natively;Add ability to import previous Final Cut Pro projects natively;Add ability to export OMF files natively;Add ability to change a project’s frame rate after it’s been created; Add ability to read and write projects stored on an network or SAN volumes; Add ability to switch the Final Cut Pro X layout to a more traditional 2-monitor setup; Add ability to preview true video signal, independent from the 2-monitor setup; Add support for Multicam editing; Add support from capturing and recording to tape, not only via capture now but also via batch capture and print to tape natively; Add support for importing image sequence files such as DPX and OpenEXR;

Some very true facts.

Planet 5D has a good article on the whole FCP X fiasco, though to me they are still a little too positive on the whole thing, while I am basically thinking this program will never be for pros!

Apple/Steve Jobs also realize that there will be a group of editors who leave and go to Adobe Premiere Pro or over to Avid – but they believe that the video editing market is going to be huge in the future and they have positioned iMovie to be the basic editor – and FCPX is the pro editor (which by the way imports iMovie assets – get the hint?).They will sell tons of copies of FCPX in the next 10 years and are not afraid to lose a few old fans along the way. They would have sold even more if they were to have gotten ownership from the editing community instead of taking it away. They’re going to have to go into major recovery mode or they’re going to lose a big hunk of the community – bigger than they were willing to lose in the first place.But I still believe that in the long run, in a year or so, FCPX will rock. I’m certainly using it now and will continue to explore and learn from those who have tutorials ready (more on that shortly too).

I still just don’t believe it can ever get as good as people think it will, too many fundamental problems!

If this article at MacRumors is to be believed what became iMovie 08 and later FCP X was supposed to be an app to quickly make rough cuts that would export to finishing in FCP. I wish that was all it was!

From that experience, First Cut was born which would let you import your raw footage and quickly skip through, organizing and building a rough edit. The intention originally was to then export to Final Cut Pro. At some point, Apple officially latched onto the project and turned it into the new iMovie '08.

I just wish it had stayed that way!

Wow, I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Apple has basically killed Final Cut Pro, my favorite editing program and the program that I make my living off of.

For years we have been waiting for a true 64 bit version of the program, but instead they kill the old suite including Color and Soundtrack, and released what is basically iMovie Pro.

Final Cut Pro X can’t open old Final Cut Pro sequences, only iMovie sequences.

It’s magnetic timeline doesn’t allow for any track organization. It doesn’t import or export XML so you can’t finish in anything else. The viewer window is gone, and has not been well replaced. It is not designed for dual monitors. The organization is awful. You basically have to do titles in Motion now, and it doesn’t even have a build int drop shadow!

You can do text in templates created in Motion, but have to go to Motion to do anything like you could previously.

It has no XML import and output, so you can’t leave the program to color correct, or finish in another program. In fact to get the Audio out, you have to buy a $500 Automatic Duck plug in, and you have no control over where all the clips go.

It also is not made for versioning, as it autosaves, and basically has one sequence per project, or event as they are now called, so you will have lots of Events.

The lack of Multi-Clip is insane, and sure it can sync audio to one track, but won’t work with multiple tracks.

The loss of a dedicated viewer monitor makes less room for organization, and means you see the audio waveform much smaller than you used to. Also if you want to move your Events to a second monitor, your scrubbing of the clips moves to, so it is very far away from what you are seeing in the one Viewer. This was not thought out well at all. And it really seems setup for a single monitor, sure you can move one segment to another monitor, but not how you want.

For organization, it is all geared toward keywording, which is great, but you lost so much of the old organization that you could do with tabs.

The new in Timeline Trim feature feels like old Premiere 4.2.1 where you had to A B roll clips, and is a huge step backwards.

The fact that you can’t make chapter markers for Quicktime movies and DVD’s is a huge step backwards!

The auto color matching works terribly, the clips come out looking pretty awful!

I tried it with Canon 60D raw H264 and it was as sluggish as can be, as though it can play it back it is basically a ProRES only app. Going back to AVID which converts everything, now you must convert to ProRES to get the real speed out of the program.

No drivers for AJA or Black Magic video cards!

The forced organization is not made for multiple drives.

There is no way to share projects without copying everything.

Even the Title safe is messed up, there is no centercut markers on it, and I often have to do an HD edit for 4:3 SD delivery!

Sure it is 64 bit and has some cool new features, but this program is a slap in the face.

Still, being able to scrub over effects and see them on your clip is very cool. I like the new customization, where you can set keys for even every menu control. Background rendering is cool, but the fact that while it is happening you can’t organize your project is not.

Time to move to AVID or the other 64 bit program Premiere Pro, which will work with Black Magic and AJA cards.

I don’t know what Apple was thinking, but they have completely alienated a user base they spent 10 years cultivating, and made a program that no professional editor can ever use!

So far my favorite article on this is the one by Richard Harrington which I have linked to. It really goes into much of the frustrations I feel, though not about the damn magnetic timeline.