TOPIC:

Thanks Ben. The one thing I often need to do is reduce noise because I'm filming in environments over which I have no control, including noisy fans, air conditioners etc. The automated system in FCPX is lame at best and the rest of the time completely useless. I find myself going to Adobe audition more often than not.

Does Logic Pro X have any noise reduction tools at all?

Ben,

Have you tried bringing an FCPX project into LPX? If so I would appreciate your feedback.

BenB wrote:

Apple has always positioned Logic Pro as a ProTools competitor. The new Logic Pro looses no functionality, but gains a lot, plus is faster and easier to work in. I am a composer, and after two days with LPX, it is mind blowing fast and easy.

As for a post-production tool, hell yes it sure is! Once the bugs are worked out, I'll be doing pretty much the majority of my work in LPX, not FCPX. Mixing, sweetening, it is all so much easier and faster in LPX.

Not to mention the learning curve for LPX is really small, super fast and easy to learn.

Don't let the interface fool you, this is one mega-powerful DAW, that is geared to make life easier. Just like FCP X.

macProVideo.com has very comprehensive training up, and geared towards the Apple pro user certs, too. Very serious, in depth training. I'm going through it myself, and amazed at how far Apple has brought the DAW along.

When did Apple announced this? Sorry but this sounds more like fanboy comment. Logic Pro X may be great, especially in the music business. But anybody that has experience with ProTools will know how massive it can be. It's the Photoshop in the audio tools.

Dave_EP wrote:

Thanks Ben. The one thing I often need to do is reduce noise because I'm filming in environments over which I have no control, including noisy fans, air conditioners etc. The automated system in FCPX is lame at best and the rest of the time completely useless. I find myself going to Adobe audition more often than not.

Does Logic Pro X have any noise reduction tools at all?

Would also like to know this.

In Soundtrack Pro you could make a noise print, and then reduce the noise. It gave *much*much* better results then in FCPX, and like Dave, I almost only got bad results with FCPX, where I would run the same trough Soundtrack Pro and get much better results.

If Logic does not have this, I don't think you can honestly call it a Post Production Sound tool. A great DAW, sure. I'm a fan of Logic. But I hope(d?) that Apple would also, in the absence of a lot of audio features in FCPX, after the demise of Soundtrack Pro, maybe make Logic next to a great DAW, a worthy postproduction-sound tool.

Apple has always positioned Logic Pro as direct competition with ProTools. ProTools does have more of the higher end studio market, but Logic Pro is second in that, and first in the mid to lower studio market. It is a very powerful DAW, and does pretty much what ProTools will do.

As for Photoshop, I've not touched that in over two years with Pixelmator out. Most shops don't need all that anyway.

I never did find the noise reduction in STP to be all that great. The spectral analysis was really great, though, and the only reason STP was bundled in Logic Studio. iZotope Rx was always my go to noise reduction tool.

Not everyone will agree on what a film/video post app should be. But how many films used STP? None. How many used Logic Pro? Lots.

sidderke wrote:

If Logic does not have this, I don't think you can honestly call it a Post Production Sound tool.

Actually ProTools doesn't have a built in noise reduction tool either.

My STP still works great in 10.8.4, I would just use it if you need it.

I have actually found FCPX sound reduction to be quite good for having one slider. Impressive actually. I hope that they give us back some control in the future, however, for something quick it works well.

Noise Print in STP pales in comparison to a dedicated tool iZotope RX:

www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/index.asp?hs13

Getting back to the OT and our speculation...

Here is what I am hoping for in the next version, and what I have asked for in the feedback form (I don't think there will be a 10.0.9 personally).

Color - custom shapes with b-splines, a tracker, three way color corrector and RGB curves in addition to the color board. Color correction view in the timeline that would just show individual shot, i.e. like iMovie or Resolve. Grading "styles".

Audio - roles based vertical sorting. Roles based mixing bus. Inspector based fade controls. Roles settings obeyed during export. HW control surface support for mixer.

Timeline - better timeline navigation controls, scrolling during playback option perhaps. Marker labels that show on the timeline (i.e. iMovie) Colorizing clips. Flat design. Speed improvements. Fix for many bugs. Simpler dynamic trimming. Playback delay lag eliminated.

Event Browser - ejectable drives/events. Event/Project loader. Script sync. All metadata fields available in list view. "sticky" keyword collections, i.e. it won't go flip to another keyword collection.

Project Browser - all new interface. Text based, etc. Option to not duplicate shared items.

Inspector - load a LUT for any clip. Bigger tabs.

iPad remote - 3 way color corrector, color board, curves, audio mixing, review interface (add markers during playback).

Snapshot Interface - ability to lock a project or event. Roll back to a previous backup. Preference for how many backups to save.

Database size and efficiency - instead of 70MB for an event, make it more like 7MB.

Bugs - all known bugs fixed.


It can dream, can't I?

Fun fact. It has been 112 days since 10.0.8 was released. Isn't that the exact amount of time between 10.0.7 and 10.0.8?

Yes it is.

But we're sill a couple weeks off from the longest, which was 10.0.6 at 134 days.

Closest Tuesday to that would be August 6th.

Logically though, if an update IS timed to come with the MacPro (and that comes in September) then it will be at least an additional 4 week after that. 160+ days interval since 10.0.8.

But if this is 10.1 coming, I could see that.

Bah. Humbug

Though 10.0.8 was released on a Thursday? I figure if it isn't today (to co-incide with Logic Pro this week) then it will be around Mac Pro time

Some hint could come next Tuesday during Apple's earnings call, if they provide any update on sched for Mavericks launch- that would give us a timeframe for the MacPro and, hence the FCPX update.

They have done this in the past. Though it would probably be something like "In September"

CBlakeston wrote:

Bah. Humbug

Though 10.0.8 was released on a Thursday? I figure if it isn't today (to co-incide with Logic Pro this week) then it will be around Mac Pro time

Yes it was. Maintenance updates have been more spread out across the week. It's only feature releases which have so far been confined to Tuesdays.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) will be 117 Days since 10.0.8 was released. The next update is now the second longest since FCPX launched. 10.0.6 still holds the crown at 134 days.

Since it's becoming increasingly likely that the next update will be the one tied to Mavericks and the MacPro, I did a bit of digging to see if there were any rumours about the MacPro release.

The most recent rumour from KitGuru suggests October, citing "inside sources"

www.kitguru.net/apple/yong-lei/2013-mac-...ely-to-ship-october/

John Martallero from the Mac Observer is much more conservative, coming to the conclusion that Thunderbolt 2 will hold the MacPro back until VERY late in the year, in early December.

www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/why-appl...rly-likely-ship-date

FInally, as I mentioned before, we can keep an ear open tomorrow during Apple's Q2 earnings call, when Apple may give a bit more insight into when Mavericks will launch.

No joy at the earnings call.

"OS X Mavericks will be available to customers in the fall."

"Last month, we provided a sneak peek at the next-generation Mac Pro. New state-of-the-art Mac Pro will be available later this year."

Notice they didn't use the term "Fall" for the release of the MacPro. Fall runs from September 22 - December 20th this year. Does that mean the MacPro release will just sneak by in December?

If that's the case, I doubt they'll hold back FCPX to release at the same time.

Skip to 03:52

HA!

While I don't think Apple will release the MacPro without Mavericks, I can't think of any reason that FCPX can't be released before it- since many, MANY people who use FCPX obviously won't be on a MacPro.

Being able to release them together might have been the plan, but there are a lot of things Apple has no control over which could be holding the MacPro up: supply of CPUs and GPUs, Intel's readiness with Thunderbolt 2, and the ramp up of US manufacturing.

But I don't think there's technically anything that would hold up FCPX if it's ready- I don't think Apple will sit on it for months. If they hadn't announced the MP, possibly, since there would have been hints in the code, but that cats out of the bag now.

Disproportionate wrote:

HA!

While I don't think Apple will release the MacPro without Mavericks, I can't think of any reason that FCPX can't be released before it- since many, MANY people who use FCPX obviously won't be on a MacPro.

In past years/cycles, there have been many situations in which I thought a big feature release of FCP7 or X would be dependent on an in-the-pipe OSX or hardware release, but the FCP release has usually been released ahead of the "other thing".

Two reasons, I think. One, FCP and especially X always seem to have many private frameworks included that do not depend on the OS quite so much, and two, the last time I remember that a new FCP and new hardware came out all at once, it was a bug-squashing nightmare.

In summer of 2004, I remember the new Mac Pros showing up alongside FCP4, and holy crap there were some bad bugs with 4.0 and that new hardware. Staggering I think lets them get a better handle on issues that come up.

Right. And I think it's very doubtful that FCPX-next will be Mavericks dependant either.

That said, I still think we have a bit of a wait ahead of us if this is the giant release we all might imagine it to be.

FWIW, I've talked to folks at Apple recently about some unrelated stuff, and whenever they allude to the next release it's always "later this year". So, although I'm as antsy as everyone else, i think it might still be a while...

If that's the case, then that could potentially leave the door open for a final 10.0.9 maintenance release- perhaps hitting us soon- squashing some final bugs before moving to 10.1 November'ish...

There's so many moving pieces right now, it's really tough to guess how things might play out.