Steve Jobs Murders Final Cut Pro

Well, that’s just a small part of the actual headline.  The entire headline is:

“Steve Jobs murders Final Cut Pro and then dresses up iMovie to LOOK like a new and improved Final Cut Pro much like that ‘Weekend at Bernies’ movie where these two dudes pretend their rich boss is still alive and throw this huge party with the dead body and everyone has a blast, but then they discover, oh yeah, Bernie is dead.”

But that’s a little excessive as far as headlines go.

Not that I shouldn’t have seen this coming.  Cue flashback…diddledoo, diddledoo, diddledoo…the year was 1984-ish.  I was twelve.  My voice was changing.  Girls still had cooties.  I was living in Northern Virginia.  Had the Rolls Royce of paper routes…the Washington Post.  And paper routes meant money.  Cold hard cash-ola.

Comic books, Star Wars toys and action figures, remote control cars, Dukes of Hazzard posters…you name it, I could afford it.  I could have even bought some of those red and black Nike Air Jordans if I had wanted.  Easy Peasy.  Or the Michael Jackson Red leather thriller jacket.  Hee Hee…Ow!  No prob.

But, as a young computer nerd, I set my sites higher on a new personal home computer.  No, not the TRS-80. The Apple IIc.  And within a year had earned enough money to purchase it.

As my family will attest, this new “portable” system would go with me everywhere because I could plug into any TV set and play games like King’s Quest, Chopper Command, whatevs.  It boasted an AWESOME 128 mb of raw computing power.  In fact I was quite the budding programmer with gems like:

> 10 Print “David is Awesome”;

> 20 Goto 10

> Run

I was king of the world for all of 3 years…and then Apple came out with the Macintosh Plus.  The Mac.  Next thing you know, the Apple IIc was ushered into a black limo by Steve Jobs’ cronies and driven out to some toll booth south of Cupertino and gunned down in cold blood while Godfather music played in the background.

Not pretty.

And what of the dozens or so of Apple IIc users out there?  Left in the dust while the Apple party moved on.  It happened with the Apple Lisa.  It happened with the Newton, it happened with Shake, Final Cut Server, etc.  I mean, I get it.  I totally understand the business decision to go after the Amateur and Pro-sumer markets, but it’s still a pretty lame move to leave behind the Professionals that have invested heavily in the Apple Workflow only to have it yanked out from under them.

If you’re not familiar with the situation, let me ‘splain.  No, that will take too long, let me sum up.  Final Cut users were all excited about the new, huge release of Final Cut Pro earlier this month.  Only, when the new software released people realized some major functions were not there:

1. The ability to open up older Final Cut Projects in FCP X
2. The ability to hook up an external monitor for Professional Color Grading, etc
3. The ability to interface with 3rd Party Hardware to Digitize or Lay back to Tape
4. The ability to end all conflict in the middle east

To be fair, Final Cut Pro 7 also did not end conflict in the middle east, but we were expecting nothing short of the Second Coming of Jesus and what we ended up with was…well…Bernie. But FCP 7 could do all that other stuff that Pro shops have come to expect and rely on.  FCP X was released and it was little more than a new & improved iMovie application.

Team Coco had a humorous insight into the new software:

So now the professional world is scrambling.  Final Cut Pro 7 has been yanked from the shelves, and presumably swims with the fishes.  And with no more support for FCP7 then what that means is: as the Mac Operating System upgrades and matures over the next year or so, eventually, FCP7 will no longer work with Mac Lion or Ocelot or Liger or whatever the cat-themed OS is a year to 18 months from now.

Clock is ticking, my friends.

Post-production houses are being forced to consider other options.  Guys much smarter than myself have weighed in and broken down the Professional Editing options which face us which essentially boils down to Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5 or Avid Media Composer 5.5.  You can read about that on Creative Cow where Helmut Kobler gives you what’s what.

Don’t get me wrong about FCP X.  The reports are in that it is pretty phenomenal, earth-shattering software.  If you’re a student or a stand-alone editor doing one-offs and short form videos, it’s still a great solution.  Especially for the price.

However, it won’t export EDLs which means there is not a film match-back option which means Filmmakers will be moving away from it.  Back to Avid.   Professional Edit houses that have 10 years worth of FCP timelines they need to be able to access and extensive tape libraries they need to utilize will also be moving away to another system.  Preferably something that plays well with shared storage which FCPX does not.

What this means is, students and film schools that jump at the $299 price will no longer be training students on a platform that can gain them entry into most Professional edit houses.  Now they will be equipped on Final Cut Pro X and move into a workforce and have to re-educate on Adobe Premiere or Avid.  At least for a few years in there, we had a good training and breeding ground for student editors that moved seamlessly into the work force.

Water under the bridge, Apple.  Water under the bridge.

After all, we’re editors.  We bounce back!  As an editor, I have journeyed from humble beginnings on Video Toaster and Grass Valley Switchers to D/Vision, Media 100, Avid and then Final Cut Pro.  Now, I’m brushing up on Adobe Premiere Pro.  And one day when we’re finally editing on floating wall-monitors  like Tom Cruise in Minority Report I’ll gladly move to that system as well.  Either that or back to the Steinbeck.

But, in all the smoke and mirrors and confusion and back and forth over what FCP X is and is not, let’s not mistake Final Cut Pro X for anything more than the newest version of iMovie.  The Pro’s agree that there’s not much Pro about the new Final Cut Pro.  Final Cut Pro is dead.  Long live Final Cut Pro.

Could be worse, though.  I could be delivering Newspapers.  Sunday editions the size of Encyclopedias.  In the snow.  Uphill, both ways.

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Final Cut Pro Online Tutorials

For anyone using Final Cut Pro to produce video, Digital Producer Magazine has compiled 125 (it’s actually 138) tutorials online – including clips, tips, and screen shots. There’s a wealth of information for beginners and experts, all in one place.

Some of the tutorials you will find:

Exporting Movies in FCP
Masks & Mattes
Adjust to TransferModes in After Effects
Automatic Duck Pro Export for FCP 
Working with XDCAM EX Footage in FCP
Trashing Preferences in FCP
Keying Options for Motion 3
Using Sorenson Video 3
Apple ProRes 422
Smooth Cam Filter
Creative F/X at lightning speed!

And dozens and dozens more for any skill level it looks like.  Read more at DigitalMediaNet.com.