New Final Cut Pro Team in Apple

[Dan]

"Final Cut Pro is the first choice for professional video editors, and we’ve never been more excited about its future, The next version of Final Cut is going to be awesome, and our pro customers are going to love it."

"Apple spokesman Bill Evans "

Thought this was interesting…

[Adrian]

It’ll be interesting see what will happen! More on it here:

[url:3uxlv33a]http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/18/apple_scaling_final_cut_studio_apps_to_fit_prosumers.html[/url:3uxlv33a]

[url:3uxlv33a]http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/19/professional_final_cut_pro_users_worried_about_upcoming_changes.html[/url:3uxlv33a]

[Eoin O hA]

While reading those articles I was thinking about how much I disliked the re-design of iMovie.

[quote:23grdnk8]In 2007, Final Cut Pro’s original lead developer, Randy Ubillos, completely redesigned iMovie ’08 to streamline and simplify the iLife title.[/quote:23grdnk8]

and

[quote:23grdnk8]The Final Cut Pro team has since been put back under the direction of Ubillos, according to information AppleInsider has obtained, with the aim of similarly improving Final Cut Studio…Because Apple now primarily sells the Express version, the company wants to rethink Final Cut Studio and scale its overall development to better fit the majority of its customers.[/quote:23grdnk8]

worry me.

[quote:23grdnk8]Apple’s response was apparently originally directed to CNET, which reported in a post by Jim Dalrymple that any efforts to retarget Final Cut Pro to match the needs of its actual audience "would mean Apple would target customers moving to Final Cut Studio from the company’s more basic iMovie application, instead of continuing to offer more high-end features designed for video professionals."[/quote:23grdnk8]

is exactly what I’d be afraid of. I’ll certainly be backing up my existing version of Final Cut before installing any new release.

[Dan]

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…

[Eoin O hA]

Fair points Dan. Hard to argue with them. If the redesign focuses more on Final Cut Studio than Final Cut Pro that could be good. DVD Studio Pro hasn’t had as many upgrades either. I too have found moving between Final Cut and Soundtrack a bit annoying.

I have an early G5. Luckily I made modifications to it so it’s still hanging in there but I’ve accepted that an upgrade is coming sooner rather than later.

I don’t have After Effects experience yet, but it’s high up on my to do list. That may change my attitude but I’d still be concerned that Apple will dumb it down in features rather than simplify the operation of Final Cut.

[Dan]

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, whatever happens, it should be interesting.

[Author]

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