Final cut pro X is out, and I accidentally bought it immediately. There has been a lot of fuss about fcpx recently when it came out. Many people said that it was imovie and not a pro app, that it lacked a lot of essential pro facilities and that apple jumped the shark with this. Here's my take on this.

When I bought it and started it, I was dissapoint. My knee jerk reaction was: I want my money back. But after reading some reviews and watching tutorials I decided to actually edit it in myself and my opinion changed.

First of all, I am not a pro, I have edited a lot of footage for my own projects and helping out a friends projects.

However, I do think a lot of the missing things make X unfit for many pro's. No XML/EDL/OMF export, no multicam editing, limitations in the use of tape and of external monitors. Color and soundtrack removed and not really replaced. Final cut studio 3 being removed from retail. Apple telling that if users need XML export, they can just buy a 500 $ app. Overhauled GUI. I can very well understand the frustrations of the pros.

I do hope that apple will add those facilities back in, and would allow people to buy FCS in the meantime.

Now, as a non-pro, I do not care so much about EDL, and XML is something I hardly use. I never liked or got color, since I am not a colorist. I don't use tape anymore, and in the rare occasion that I do, firewire tape workflow is still available in FCP X. I also do not edit for TV, so external monitoring is also not something I use.

So what do I miss? For me, the most important things I miss are the use of external plugins (I use magic bullet looks sometimes, although some sensible presets for the coloriser might help in this. This is about the only plugin I actually use), and I miss sending footage to soundtrack to edit the audio and exporting the footage as XML to send it to after effects. In FCP 7, sending footage to AE was also not great, the best way was to export as XML, then load it in premiere and send it to AE, and back. So for AE the workflow is not that different, probably sending original footage or export as prores, edit in AE and send back as prores. For audio, I still need to find a good workflow.

When it comes to the user interface, I also have to get used to a lot of things. Some things are good, some things need getting used to, and some things are indeed dumbed down a bit. I miss some things, like the mixer, which I use for example to quickly pan two different audio tracks to full left and right to check sync. There also does not seem to be an easy way to quickly mute or solo a single track like in 7, although you can use the V key.

Then there is some performance issues. In general, the performance is very good, the fact that I can edit H264 footage from my GH1 directly, with effects in real time is quite amazing (this does not seem to work for me in premiere). But I did experience the spinning beach ball of death a few times, freezing the whole system, so that I had to kill FCPX. This seems mostly be the case when doing a lot of heavy background jobs concurrently. I have to see if os X lion improves that. (On my old MBP, os X has improved performance enormously compared to snow leopard).


So in short:

FCP X might not be the right NLE for most pros, but it seems to be for me. I will use it for my future projects.
I still have to get used to some stuff.
It being imovie on steroids is partially true, but that is not necessarily a bad thing: I like the simple colour management, the scrubbing, the organisation in events, face recognition.
I do not miss color. I do miss soundtrack pro, which I still have as part of logic studio.
The real time timeline for multi format footage and effects works very well, this is probably the biggest improvement.
A lot of the old workflow is still in there somewhere.
Most important things I am missing is an easy way to export to logic, soundtrack and after effects.
There are still some bugs and performance issues, which may be eliminated with updates and with an update to Lion.



So, I will use it for my current and future projects for now, and will try to get used to it and hope for enhancements.

Tags: Video

(Panasonic GH1 with R0de stereo videomic, Voigtländer Nokton 50/1.5, Cokin filterholder A with hoods.)


I am doing some video recently. Some of my video work you can find on vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/nakedcellist/videos


I started doing a bit of video with my first digital camera, a canon ixus. Video quality was quite crappy, so I did not use it a lot. My other digital cameras and mobile phones had also crappy video quality so I only used them for unserious things. Then I got an old DV camera from my father, a JVC. It was a neat and small camera, but very bad low light performance. Then got a better panasonic 3ccd DV camera with mic input, which was a lot better. Used it for the videoworkshop at the Rietveld academy. Then I got a panasonic LX3 digital camera, which had rather good HD video quality. Sound was crap, but I used it on some projects.

The JVC broke down, the 3ccd camera is for sale and I sold the LX3, which I replaced with an iphone 4...

I wanted a more serious camera and got the sanyo xacti 2000. The Sanyo is a very good camera, up to 180p60 HD video, microphone input with manual level control, decent low light performance. I used it a lot for concert recordings. But when the dslr video craze took off, I wanted a good dslr video camera.

What I got was a panasonic GH1. Got it second hand, with hacked firmware, so I was sure that it could be hacked (newer versions can’t) with a 14-45 lens.

And I love it:

- Video quality is amazing, it shoots 1080p avchd and 720p MJPEG, with quite high bitrates thanks to the hacked gh13 firmware
- It has a mic input and decent built in mics
- Good image quality also for stills, and with an adapter I can use my Leica M mount lenses on it.
- It is small and light
- Ergonomics are good
- Low light performance is very good
- Got it relatively cheap
- Thanks to the hacked firmware, on PAL camera’s the 30 min recording limit is removed and third party batteries can be used
- There is a large community of gh1 video users

Of course it has some limitations:
- Depending on which patches you use on the hacked firmware, you can get very good quality, with 24p without pulldown, at 1080p or 720p, using MJPEG or AVCHD, viewable on the lcd, and stable, but not all at once: very high bitrate result in more crashes when using MJPEG, MJPEG can only do 720p, very high bitrate movies can not be played back on the lcd.
- There is no live video or audio output via hdmi or composite. So no monitoring.
- Audio levels are set automatically, no manual override. This is the one thing which keeps me from selling the Sanyo for now.

All in all I am very happy with the camera. The video quality is amazing and I can work around most of the limitations. I am slowly starting to pimp the camera, some of the stuff I still had lying around:

- R0de stereo videomic for better audio (but still limited by the automatic audio levels)
- Bolun wireless lavalier mic (10 $! Works quite well!)
- Clapperboard
- Cokin filterholder A with hoods, makes it look a lot more cinematic..
- Velbon tripod
- Leica M to MFT ring
- My Leica M lenses, so Leica summicron 40/2, elmarit 90/2.8, Voigtländer Nokton 50/1.5 and 35/1.4. Especially the Nokton 50, which I never really liked on my Leica, works very well and looks very good on the GH1.


To pimp it further I am probably getting:

- A weifeng videotripod. Cheap but sturdy video tripods. My velbon is rather crappy.
- Maybe a follow focus contsruction, but these are quite expensive, and probably will not work with the thin barrels of my M mount lenses.
- Nikon mount to MFT adapter. Not entirely sure, since I have the lenses I want in M mount.
- Maybe a nice mattebox with french flag and rail kit. But this is still expensive and not a high priority.
- LCD hood or viewfinder. Probably a hoodman hood first.
- Class 10 SD cards. Probably Transcend 16G.
- Steadycam. Probably Hague MMC.
- Zoom h1 to replace my h2. The h2 can do surround sound. The h1 is smaller and has a steady clock, which makes syncing a lot easier.



Now let’s start filming! I have some ideas. Don’t be surprised if I ask you for a project..

Tags: Video