Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut Pro X

Main editing window
Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Stable release	10.1.1 / January 16, 2014 (2014-01-16)
Written in	Objective-C
Operating system	OS X v10.6.8, OS X v10.7.5, OS X v10.8.3 or later[1]
Type	Video editing software
License	Commercial proprietary software
Website	www.apple.com/finalcutpro/

Final Cut Pro X (pronounced "Final Cut Pro Ten") is a video editing app for OS X from Apple Inc. and the successor to Final Cut Pro. FCP X was announced in April 2011 simultaneously at the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro Users Group held at Bally's Las Vegas and at the NAB Show in the Las Vegas Convention Center and released in June 2011.

Features

Although inheriting the name from its FCP predecessor, FCP X is an all-new application, written from scratch. It is a trackless 64-bit application with Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL support, allowing it to scale and use all available cores for processing such as rendering and transcoding. FCP X supports up to 5K resolutions.^[1] During import it can analyze footage and audio for automatic sorting into groups such as close-ups, medium shots, shots with two people or group shots. It can prepare the footage for quick, automatic fixes of defects such as camera shake, rolling shutter and color balance. Audio can also be analyzed in an attempt to automatically remove hums, pops or other noticeable defects and to assign channel configurations.

Particular features include:

• Magnetic Timeline: Edits footage in a storyline without knocking any other clips or audio out of place at other points of the Timeline. Clips now automatically slide in place of gaps. Clips are also now connected to each other; when one clip is moved, the other clip(s) move in sync with it.

• Multicam: The multicam tool, available from version 10.0.3, supports up to 64 angles of photos and videos. It also automatically aligns footage based on time of day, timecode, markers, or audio waveforms, individually or in various customizable combinations.

• Compound Clips: A new feature to FCP X that allows multiple video and audio clips to be combined into one for simplicity.

• Merged Clips: This process takes multiple video and audio clips and creates a new Compound Clip containing them all. It synchronizes them by comparing audio so that audio recorded on one device and video (also containing audio) recorded on another device can be merged. This is especially useful for those producing with DSLR video cameras.

• Database Engine: Apple's own Core Data database engine has been incorporated into FCP X, handling media and metadata management, helping to organize clips quickly with more extensive and customizable metadata abilities than previously.

As updates continue, FCP X has added features called broadcast monitoring output, Roles, Media Stem output, clip skimming, deinterlace setting for clips and XML support.

Evolution

Final Cut Pro X has been available on the Mac App Store since June 2011, along with Motion 5 and Compressor 4.^[2] Since the initial release Apple has averaged a new update release every 3 months free of charge, adding new features, tweaking existing ones, and improving stability. Since these updates are handled by Apple's Mac App Store the development team are able to make them accessible to users faster and more often than previous software.

Apple has brought back the formerly missing^{[citation needed]} "In Action" section of its Final Cut Pro site which features articles about industry professionals using Final Cut Pro X.^[3]

Apple has added an Associate Certification to its professional certification lineup targeted at the K-12 education market.^[4]

Reception

Critics of FCP X gave the software negative reviews on its listing in the Mac App Store; a day after its initial release, FCP X had twice as many 1-star reviews as 5-star reviews.^[5][6][7] As of October 2013 that has all changed with 78 4 - 5 star reviews, compared to only 15 for 3-1 star ratings, for the current version of 10.0.9.^{[citation needed]}

Missing features and issues noted as essential to professional video production in FCPX included lack of edit decision list (EDL), XML and Open Media Framework Interchange (OMF) support, inability to import projects created in previous releases of Final Cut Pro, a lack of a multicam editing tool and third-party I/O hardware output, and videotape capture being limited to Firewire video devices only. The inability to import projects from obsolete versions of Final Cut Pro, lack of multicam editing, XML, and third party I/0, including capture with third-party hardware, was addressed within the first six months of the product's life. EDL export, a product of the early days of videotape editing, is now supported through third-party software and is OMF export for passing projects to ProTools through X2Pro.

Immediately after the release and its backlash, Richard Townhill, Senior Director of Applications Marketing at Apple, gave a public interview stating that Apple had a 10 year development plan for the software.^[8]

Jan Ozer of Onlinevideo.net wrote:^[9]

Of course, I understand how iTunes is ideal for inexperienced users, and that’s precisely the point. With iTunes and iPhoto, and the iPad and iPhone, Apple wasn’t selling to experienced users. It was opening new markets. In contrast, with Final Cut Pro X, Apple was trying to change the workflows of professionals who knew more about video production than any of the engineers who created the product.

You can only impose structure when a market is new or when the benefits of that structure are incremental. And the more structure you build into a product, the less it’s likely to appeal to experienced users of the product it replaces. That’s why most professional video producers jumped ship when FCPX was launched and why most won’t use it.

An online petition was started demanding either the continued development of the legacy Final Cut Pro product or its sale to a third party by January 1, 2012. The initiator of the petition was banned from the Apple discussion forums. As of January 2014, the petition has received 9,172 signatures.^[10]

Conan O'Brien and his editing department lampooned some of the flaws of Final Cut Pro X in an edited segment for the Conan late night talk show on TBS.^[11]

Apple addressed several of FCP X's initial deficiencies in subsequent free updates provided via the Mac App Store, including XML support and broadcast monitoring support. Features such as EDL and OMF support and the ability to import legacy FCP projects via XML were provided by third-party software developers. Apple has since included native editing of REDONE and XAVC video as part of FCP X.^[12] Eventually, some users began to have positive reports of using FCP X,.^[13][14][15]

References