From everything that has been written this past week from the why's of development, FCPX was never designed to be the upgrade to FCP7. It simply is the new direction Apple is taking. That's why I say it truly is a take or leave it. Apple's huge mistake was not making that abundantly clear from the start, also dropping FCP7 entirely is another huge mistake. What has transpired is what it is. We will obviously see much more added to FCPX, for no other reason than that's just what software development is, a continual growth. They just chose to start from scratch with a new path of growth. Napalm was laid down on the old forest and they are planting a new Apple utopian forest.
I think we're talking to different groups.
If your a professional user, or work with professional editors, FCP X won't work for you today and probably won't work in the future.
Still, the final result of final cut ten is it's not useable in a professional arena and I doubt if this is some kind of silly mistake, this is a planned move.
Apple could have made or bought any NLE they want. After all they bought the original FCP.
This isn't a shift to a better editor, it's a play to a larger market that wants to work easy.
Apple came at this as if a NLE never existed and no one had ever cut a project prior to this week and there in lies the reasoning.
Apple isn't looking at the professional editors because in the real world AVID really has that covered (and has for a long time) and real professional production is just a drop in the bucket next to the millions of people shooting Youtube and blog videos.
For a lot of people that have never cut a project before this might seem to be a good system, but that just places emphasis on the fact that they don't know what they're missing.
For the rest, it's a scary proposition to know that if you were FCP based all progress stopped last week.
It's even scarier to know there is no way to work with multiple tracks and sequences.
Whether Apple promises to replace some of these functions is irrelevant, since moving to X takes a complete relearn anyway, might as well go to AVID that is made for professional image editing.
Yesterday I finished 4, 1 minute videos that had over 12 tracks and 36 sequences for client review.
I had to park footage on the timeline to match the client's background colors.
When approved the imagery will go to a secondary source for coloring and back to the sequence for finish.
I made my deadlines, I made a profit, I have it backed up, I can show it on multiple computer and broadcast monitors.
These 4 little videos could not but cut on X, but if I was shooting "girls gone wild", it would have worked. (Hmmm, why aren't I shooting "girls gone wild"?)
Anyway.
To me the only real problem with Final Cut Pro Ten is they called it Final Cut Pro.
Actually, had they named it Apple Party Editor (well I guess ape won't work) or something that didn't make us believe this was a professional application then Apple might have gotten by with this, but for me and thousands like me, this just signals that Apple is not interested in professional motion image production.
Apple should have just fessed up and said "sorry guys, but your just not that large of a market. We're going to facebook, but here's Avid's phone number, give em a call".
Apple is looking for the 10 million people that are not like me.
IMO
BC
P.S. I might be wrong, because I remember saying that when FCP was introduced, AVID is in trouble.
Wow, has the moused turned.
P.S. 2 I will buy a copy of FCP 7 on Monday. I've been running 3-6's for a long time and just didn't want to upgrade hoping X would be something useable for me.
Why 7? Just to be able to work on legacy files, but in a few weeks, when my schedule clears we'll move to Avid.
Why? Because they only have one agenda and that's to sell to professionals.