digitalfilms by Oliver Peters

Thanks for the positive comments on my previous post. As a review of Final Cut Pro X, I wanted it to be even-handed. It was intended to let you know about the program without injecting too many of my own opinions. After all, FCP X does work for many potential users and my goal as a reviewer is to try to determine whether or not a product achieves the objectives its designers set for it. I wanted you to be able to have the basic facts and decide for yourself. This post is different, written from the niche I work in, advanced post-production.

From creative platform to iDevices

FCP X is hard to judge. It is viewed through the lens of twelve years of ever-increasing professional development that culminated with FCP 7 and the 2009 version of Final Cut Studio. In that time Apple, capitalized on the positive marketing vibe generated by the success of prominent users, like A-list editors working on high-visibility projects. In that time Apple also evolved from a niche computer company to the dominant mobile devices company. It seems pretty obvious that the new Apple view of the world is different from that of Final Cut’s biggest champions.

Apple has always been about the user experience. Hiding the technology under the hood and making things easier, more intuitive and more fun. The original acquisition of Final Cut Pro by Apple was intended to keep a QuickTime-based video editing tool on the Mac and to offer a powerful multimedia editor that served a variety of needs. With that purpose in mind, it was OK if certain advanced features and functions were missing. All it needed to be was an 80/20 application that could work with FireWire (then limited to DV) tape and camera sources and other QuickTime files.

Had the story ended there, Final Cut would have never been widely adopted into advanced film, video and broadcast environments. Final Cut up through version 7 evolved into a viable competitor to established NLE companies like Avid, thanks to the ecosystem of third-party hardware and software that had grown up around FCP. If it weren’t for original vendors like Pinnacle, Aurora, Digital Voodoo and others, FCP would have never been used for advanced post. read more...