FCP X – The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Support Partners

Working for a company that is constantly managing change, you can understand the issues that arise when a new piece of software comes out and changes your world completely.

Especially when that software is the main tool of choice for so many editors in the creative industry. In fact, for some, the only piece of software they may have ever used.

I am, of course, talking about Final Cut Pro.

Earlier this week Apple finally announced the shipment of FCP X. Let’s just be clear, this is not an upgrade to Final Cut Studio ( there is no upgrade pricing ) but a completely new product.

FCP X has been written entirely from scratch in Apples COCOA programming language. Not one line of code was taken from previous versions of FCP.

Also released were Motion v5 and Compressor v4. Soundtrack Pro, Color, Cinema Tools and DVD Studio Pro no longer exist as separate applications, although some of this functionality (especially audio and grading, in a simple form) is now included with FCP X.

So, as a v1 product, how does it stack up? And what does this mean for the industry, considering our industry is changing at an amazing rate are we looking at the future or the next wave of editing tool just like all those many years ago? read more...