FCP X: READY OR NOT, IT'S HERE

Creative Cow by Gary Adcock

I'll be honest. When I first opened FCP X, my first title for this article was, "What the @#%, Apple?!"

Let's get the hard part out of the way first. FCP X is NOT an upgrade to Final Cut Pro 7. This is a whole new app, literally built from the ground up. Here's one thing that this means: upgrades traditionally allow you to open previous projects. That is not allowed here, so let's just call this a whole new app.

This release is not for the professional editor, not yet. Apple knows this -- BOY, does Apple know, and they understand that if they want to make this useful for pro editors, they have a short window to deliver some of what's missing.

The main issues for most pro editors now: no support for any tape based capture, no third-party hardware support, and no third-party codec support. That means that you cannot send or receive an EDL or XML file for online editing or finishing.

Apple has been very specific, that this is not the final state of FCP X. Features are expected to be added quickly, via the App Store, with some of them waiting to show up natively in OS X Lion and with support for Thunderbolt. read more...