I too feel a little worried about this redesign, my machine is on the brink as it is pushed to the limit with video and editing, a new flashy interface with funky buttons and animation stuff could slow down the machine, the thing i love about final cut is it bare bones interface, it’s simple yet productive (sometimes maybe a little too simple) and iMovie 08 was a disaster of a program.
however,
I do feel apple has learned from its mistakes, the last update was minimal, nowhere near enough enhancements and as a result fianl cut is losing momentum. 64bit is the present not the future, basically means g5’s will be extinct, but a lot has changed in the last year or so with the advent of DSLR, tapeless media, some great plugins like magic bullet looks who have nailed the colouring interface (note a plugin in, not a whole new program that completely slows you down), Premier pro is now 64 bit and can edit raw footage from these DSLR codecs. While i feel final cut pro itself is excellent, when it comes to motion, compressor and colour, they really are way too over complicated, the interfaces of these supplementary programs are cack.
How the interface works for these programs changes way too drastically, for example when going from final cut to soundtrack pro, simple things like scrolling the mouse wheel has a completely different effect on the timeline, ie. in soundtrack it expands the view and zooms into the timeline whereas in final cut its scrolls down through it which is fine for each app but the thing is you spend a good few hours in soundtrack, you get used to how the interface responds and when you go back to final cut you expect the same thing to happen and you find yourself throwing your mouse at the screen in frustration (I really need to take up an anger management course). When scrubbing in final cut and bouncing over to soundtrack it gets really annoying, you keep pulling up the cycle region yolky on the timeline when all you want to do is scrub through the bloody footage!
I hate saying this but after spending a lot of time in after effects of late, its remarkable how great it really is, I mean its pretty much perfect, and when you try to do simple things like key framing in final cut in a tiny little box behind the video it can get really annoying. where 3/4 of the interface is taken up by the title of the keyframe your about to edit and all your left with is about an inch to keframe in….. aaaaarghhh (yes I know you can expand your window but thats really annoying too!)
They did make a stab at improving the time remapping key-framing business but to be honest its still very clumsy, fairly random results..
I do love final cut and its main interface, its simple approach to editing, but i do agree that its interface needs rework in places, while it pains me to think i may need to upgrade my machine to use it, i think maybe the time is coming for and upgrade anyway.
Rant finished…