Tell Me Again, Why Was It That We Hated FCP X?

VA+MA=DI by Danny Indio

I remember a long time ago when we cursed Apple for abandoning FCP 7 and foisting FCP X upon us. I can't remember exactly why since I never used FCP X but it seemed the right thing to do once Apple decided not to support FCP 7 anymore and a bunch of editors and writers called FCP X a glorified iMovie... (And I really hate iMovie) so I joined the mob and cursed Apple as we ran FCP X out of town. I continued to cut on regular ol' FCP, and forget all about FCP X. Lo and behold, a year and 3+ updates later, I stumble across David Leitner at Filmmaker magazine this month who really, really likes FCP X and thinks that one day we will learn to love it. His argument:

A big advantage of conjoined operating systems is that user-interface breakthroughs on mobile devices such as the iPad can readily migrate to Mac apps like FCP X — for instance, use of animation, multitouch, auto-saving, full screen display, Retina display, integration with flash architecture — all of which in turn optimize FCP X for use on portable MacBook Pros with trackpads. On the latest MacBook Pro with Retina display, for example, you can view full 1080p in FCP X’s small Viewer window.

Of particular significance: the 64-bit AV Foundation found in OSX supplants the now legacy 32-bit QuickTime framework (video files will continue to sport QuickTime extensions). AV Foundation brings, at last, multi-core and GPU-assisted speed to Final Cut Pro rendering tasks (using OS X’s Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL), as well as full color management from input to output and finer time accuracy for subframe events. read more...