Underwhelmed

Sam Mestman wrote:

Apple has laid the foundation for what this app is going to look like in the long term, and I think you'll start to see a lot of things still on your wish lists start to happen.

I couldn't agree more. This was the major gripe I had with legacy FCP and still with PremiereCC: lots of features and preferences, but a very weak foundation. I prefer a rock-solid foundation first, bells and whistles are easier to implement once you have this.

The major weakness in FCPX was the Event/Project structure. This was a nightmare for any larger production or any facility and I couldn't be happier this has finally been dealt with. There also were lots of nasty little bugs, inherent to entirely new code, which seem to have been addressed.

By creating a much better media management foundation and optimizing overall performance I think FCPX is ready now to inherit more features. Everyone will have his personal wish-list and all wish-lists will differ. For some people send to motion is a big request, for others it is irrelevant. Just to say there always will be happy people and disappointed ones with every new update. This is quite normal, and people who feel their personal needs haven't been addressed yet have every right to say so. As long as we can accept that everything takes time and effort and that the things WE want are not always the things the majority of the user base wants.

Apparently getting the foundation right has taken a lot of time. No sweat if this will allow the app to keep improving the way it has the past two years. I have my personal requests for further improvements and I will not hesitate to convey them to Apple on a regular basis. That's the only way of making sure they know about them. A few of my older gripes have already been addressed with this update, so I'm very confident for the future.

- Ronny

Dawar wrote: I hear you, but still, I feel like reading the same argument for two years and a half. All about foundations. When is it OK ? When can I say to a postprod manager : This is now, they won't break it anymore ?

Ha! Okay... I can certainly understand the frustration. The short answer is... never. My guess is that they will never say this app is "done" and won't change. It's the best and worst thing about Apple... and I guess it depends on your definition of "break". I do think, however, that we'll see a lot less fundamental change... or at least quite a bit less than what we've seen the last couple years. The changes they've made have been in response to real problems, and at least in my opinion, I've yet to see a change in this app since its release that was done for no reason and hasn't substantially improved the app overall.

My honest opinion is that Apple will always try and push the envelope and will always be unafraid to change as long as they think it's in the best interests of their users long term. They may not always be right, but at least they have the guts to take risks. I think this will benefit them in the long term... they took a couple steps back, so they could take a whole lot more forward. FCPX is the only NLE on the market that is based on completely modern code... expecting it to be perfect right out of the gate is probably unrealistic.

As far as telling your bosses "it's done now" is concerned, I think they went off in a completely different direction that no one saw coming, got the response that they got, and I think what you're seeing now is them gradually moving back and bringing back a lot of the things people missed about FCP7 and gradually moving towards what I think is now the best of both worlds. Will it ever be done? no. Should it ever be done? no... at least not until technology stops advancing and the rest of the world stops changing too... it may be awhile before that happens.

People, can I remind you that it's been 2.5 years and we haven't paid for a SINGLE upgrade?

That $50/month Adobe sucks from me starts to hurt when you put it in perspective at how powerful a piece of software FCPX has become.

But seriously, it's free. Be happy, stop complaining and get back to work. If you don't need the new features, fine, keep about your business. But for some of us (myself included) these are small changes at all, they are enormous improvements.

**end rant**

Dawar wrote: [quote="All about foundations. When is it OK ? When can I say to a postprod manager : This is now, they won't break it anymore ?"

After a bit of stress converting my events/projects over to 10.1, I realized it's something I will only have to do once. It's a small inconvenience for how much more flexibility in media management there is now. I'm really surprised by how many people are upset by this.

A doc with over three thousand clips in 10.0.9 was a beachballing nightmare. In 10.1 it runs like a dream even after waking from sleep. Being able to work on such a massive project this smoothly with five different codecs is a major new feature for me.

I've finished three features in X and with every update, it's never gotten worse. Even without the new mac pro it's like I brought in my Toyota Camry to a mechanic and they put in a Ferrari engine free of charge. Personally, I'm glad they started there.

Someone of this forum mentioned FCPX being like an operating system for editing, so to compare this update in that way makes a lot of sense. they have been updating and improving OSX for over a decade, none of the updates ever really add anything really amazing, but it's always a solid improvement and allows the daily experience to be improved.

I'm still on 10.0.9 and there have been at lease 10 times in the past few days where I really wished I had been able to update just for these little improvements. The major groundbreaking features are going to come from third party developers like crumplepop. Apple just wants FCPX to be the foundation like iOS and then allow the developers to make it great.

Julian wrote: Someone of this forum mentioned
… The major groundbreaking features are going to come from third party developers like crumplepop. Apple just wants FCPX to be the foundation like iOS and then allow the developers to make it great.

That's why FXPlug 3 can't be overlooked as a major improvement. As I understand it, the support for custom GUI is big as well as not being dependent on Motion which may improve plugin realtime performance.

In my own wishes I hope that will make some Boris and GenArts stuff more attractive as well as RedGiant. I'm sure the NoiseIndustries partners will do some very interesting things as well.

I just wish there was a better way to manage plugins. Right now it's really annoying to have to work on multiple computers. It's also a pain to update plugins.

That's how plugins are for any NLE. I don't see third party developers allowing you to install a plugin with one license to, and then moving it willy-nilly to any old machine you move a project to.

BenB wrote: That's how plugins are for any NLE. I don't see third party developers allowing you to install a plugin with one license to any old machine you move a project to.

Isn't the whole point of FCPX that it's not like every other NLE? Someone mentioned an idea about having FCPX store the plugin in the project file so that it stays with it.

"I don't see third party developers allowing you to install a plugin with one license to, and then moving it willy-nilly to any old machine you move a project to."

Then they lose money, and they can sue you and Apple for copyright and licensing infringement. Remember, third party plugins are not Apple products (those are on every machine with FCP to start with), they are third party products that Apple does not, and can not control.

Julian wrote:
Isn't the whole point of FCPX that it's not like every other NLE? Someone mentioned an idea about having FCPX store the plugin in the project file so that it stays with it.

Plugins distributed via App Store with associated terms could be an alternative.