On January 31, 2012 Apple released the latest upgrade to their top video-editing software program, Final Cut Pro X (FCPX). This is the fourth update to the original release of FCPX last June. Although the professional video-editing community anxiously anticipated Final Cut Pro X, last year’s release created a howl of protest.
Significant release, but is it enough?
The online firestorm was so loud you could almost hear the Mac Pro DVD drives spinning and new versions of Premiere Pro or Avid being loaded. Video editors who had been migrating away from Apple software (and now hardware … see below) because of no upgrades to the previous version (FCP 7) for over two years, began a torrent of defections from Apple. Although FCPX was a complete rewrite of the code, and the price was much more attractive (going from $999 to $299), did that go far enough? Did it go too far? This is the second release in four months of FCPX and Apple calls it “significant.”
This release of FCPX (10.0.3) resolves some of the issues that editors of all sorts had with FCPX since its initial release. The product is getting better with each new release according to some editors, yet it still doesn’t offer the robust feature set professional editors need for their work. FCPX 10.0.3 includes a one-click button for inserting chroma-key shots that works very well indeed, multi-camera syncing that works (sometimes), and the ability (through a third party) to open up files created in FCP 7. And there are more worries.
The Mac Pro problem
Another issue is deeply entwined in FCPX for a lot of professional editors and managers: the Mac Pro. These Macs are about 18-months old, an eternity in computing time, and a lot of people in the Mac rumor camp are beginning to think that Mac Pro computers are going away. If that’s the case, Apple will sell nothing bigger than a 17” Mac Book Pro in the future.
Most analysts think that the computers are the least profitable part of the Apple line and that Apple makes a lot more money selling the iMac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices. To most editors, no Mac Pro is an unacceptable solution. The disappearance of Mac Pro computers that can power multiple 30” screens will be a loss that will force editors to move to other platforms, mainly Windows. Laptops are fast, but it’s sometimes a pain when you’ve got multiple people working on the same project or your project is a terabyte or two in size. You need a machine with room for multiple hard drives. The fate of these big Macs has the fate of FCPX bound up in it as well. Many editors feel that Apple is abandoning the professional video market. Maybe they’re right.
Final Cut Pro X’s Achilles heel – another “maybe”
FCPX still doesn’t have the ability to create an EDL output or tape output. EDL is an Edit Decision List, and it takes the absolute time code embedded in the video when you edit it, and allows your edited video to be sent out to finishing and color grading labs that use different software, without any changes in the timing that the editor has put into his or her project. It’s true enough that in eLearning, we don’t generally work with EDLs, so for those of us in this space it’s probably not an issue. And we’re not usually going to “print” our video projects to tape, so the big-two omissions for broadcast aren’t that big a deal for us. Also, until this latest release, you couldn’t even open a project in a prior version of FCP.
Not all the news is bad
All these things said, there’s still a lot of good in FCPX, depending on your needs and point of view. One thing that FCPX has is real time rendering. You don’t even notice the program rendering your video while you’re working on it. But then, Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas have this feature too. All the programs give you complete control over the content you’re creating.
At the end of the day is FCPX a better tool? It’s certainly better than the original release, but it still lacks the features outlined above. This tool is simply not great for production houses. Is FCPX good enough for eLearning professionals? While I can’t answer that specifically, I know that I’ve seen and talked to many people who have left the Final Cut Pro fold but who are still using the Apple platform with Premiere Pro or Avid, which does have a native 64-bit application along with Premiere Pro. Time will tell.
