Major Resolve Update! Can FCPX Keep Up?

Man, Resolve just had an awesome update! Better media management and I'd jump ship. Resolve is evolving much faster than FCPX, which to be honest, has been slowing down in development. Seriously, we've seen less and less over longer and longer times. FCPX is not keeping pace with Resolve.

Side note; Avid's GUI make-over is nice, but it's the same Avid. Make-up on a pig is still a pig.

What do you want to in see in the next FCPX update, and when do you hope we'll see it?

While there are certain user-facing features I'd like, I wish Apple would address some long-neglected issues. E.g:

"That doesn't work with multi-cam": stabilization, optical flow, audition, Mocha tracking, export from Browser, etc.

Proxy management: cannot be relinked, original volume name is permanently "burned in" the library, greatly complicates collaborative work when using external proxies.

Broken, fragile, unpredictable UI elements. E.g: color mask randomly quits working if using scopes. On opened multicam, audio-only waveform is tiny. Angle Viewer randomly goes blank unless you skim a different clip.

Media management: Copying clips or projects between libraries creates spurious duplicates unless "transfer event" workaround is used. This is not mentioned in Apple docs or in any published tutorial I'm aware of.

Re FCPX "not keeping up", an example of this is 4k 10-bit HEVC export where Premiere Pro 13.1.0 is 6x faster than FCPX 10.4.6 on the same iMac Pro hardware.

Let's talk professional level audio mixing... collaborative abilities... neither addressed in going on 8 years.
Let's talk Motion development... nothing of significance from Apple in going on 8 years...

And this from someone who's been a certified trainer since 2005, die hard fan boy, but also a realist.

We better have some significant development this year, or I am honestly afraid the other NLEs will take over and FCPX's user base in television and film will continue to shrink.

roughly, I see for 'movie making' four sectors:

1. Broadcast (news, sports…)
2. Hollywood (… ehm, Hollywood not in geographical meaning)
3. Independent (movies, docs, 'festival' movies)
4. Enthusiasts (goPro sportsmen, the Brandon Lees of the world)

each group has very diff. demands, news-makers ask for live-ingesting of material, Hollywood asks for an integration into an existing infrastructure, Indies want the look of a 50mio movie for 299, a from-the-trunk-producer an easy to use interface for fast results …

Which of the 4 is a market, in terms of profitability for Apple (hardware maker)? If I'd be in charge, I would concentrate on #3 and #4 …

For sure, bug-fixing, integration of existing Apple-technology (smart tracking, depth-based keying, …) are obvious. But wishlists differ per group. And actual Motion is a crazy patchwork, no doubt.

That doesn't explain the lack of serious development. After all these years, no audio mixing tools, no built-in collaboration, and Motion have been stagnant with no timeline integration. All of those categories use these tools extensively in other NLEs.

I know I'm going to be very unpopular for questioning the development of FCPX, and claiming it has been slowing, too much, and still lacks audio and collaboration tools. But it's true. We get one update a year, like the other NLEs, and over the past few years, we've gotten much less.

And many folks, like LumaForge and others, claim Apple is, in fact, marketing their three pro video apps to film, to broadcast, Hollywood, etc.

Maybe having pages like in Resolve where you can have motion and logic directly.

joema wrote:
Re FCPX "not keeping up", an example of this is 4k 10-bit HEVC export where Premiere Pro 13.1.0 is 6x faster than FCPX 10.4.6 on the same iMac Pro hardware.

I agree that Premiere Pro can seem faster than FCPX depending on the video codec and hardware being used. On the other hand FCPX can seem faster than Premiere Pro depending on the hardware and video codecs being used. All the NLE for the most part can edit Red One R3D files, AVCHD and even Pro Res just fine. Having said that all NLE will have their pros and cons. For me the GUI is the most important feature not the rendering speeds.

What feature is most important t you folks?

Collaborative workflow (totally missing) and audio mixing (totally missing).