Don't count Apple (FCPX) out yet .........

[Clayton Moore]

For what its worth.

 

Some cut and paste from a Larry Jordon Blog on NAB:

"While Apple released a minor bug-fix update two weeks before NAB, the more interesting news came from an announcement and two employment “leaks.” The announcement, occurring during NAB, was that Apple Final Cut Pro X now has more than 2 million users. This equals the number of Final Cut users during they heyday of Final Cut Pro 6/7. This is a significant number and not to be minimized.
But, to me, the really exciting news from Apple wasn’t an announcement, it was a “leak.” As NAB started it was discovered that the Final Cut team had added Wes Plate and Tim Dashwood to their ranks............

....................It is impossible to overstate the impact these two people could have on FCP X. Wes Plate ran Automatic Duck for years, specializing in moving projects between applications. A few years ago, he was hired by Adobe for the Premiere team, where he helped redesign how Premiere imports media; basically integrating most of the features of Prelude into Premiere. Now that he is working with Final Cut, my expectation is that the application will start to improve how it moves media and projects between applications. FCP X has always been weak on this score, relying on a host of third-party plugins.

Tim Dashwood also ran his own development company – Dashwood Cinema Solutions – for a long while. I first became aware of him with his utilities to allow Final Cut Pro X to sync and edit Stereoscopic 3D video. Since then, he’s been working with virtual reality and related media.

While Stereo 3D is still relevant, my guess is that Tim will be looking at how to improve Final Cut’s ability to handle 360-VR, ambisonic audio and extend that into AR (Augmented Reality). Especially since, when it comes to VR, Final Cut is running a distant third behind Adobe and Avid.   It is now a four horse race: Adobe, Apple, Avid and Blackmagic Design."

 

https://larryjordan.com/blog/thoughts-and-highlights-from-the-2017-nab-show/

[Mattias Burling]

Switching from Premiere CC/Resolve to FCPX is the best decision I ever made. Over the last year I must have saved at least six months in editing and render times

(Btw, today I downloaded a 30 day trial of Capture One Pro 10. Took me about 20 minutes to realize that it's time to dump Lightroom as well. So, "Buy buy Adobe. Loved you from CS5 to CC but you have lost the mojo.")

 

[wolf33d]

9 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

Switching from Premiere CC/Resolve to FCPX is the best decision I ever made. Over the last year I must have saved at least six months in editing and render times

(Btw, today I downloaded a 30 day trial of Capture One Pro 10. Took me about 20 minutes to realize that it's time to dump Lightroom as well. So, "Buy buy Adobe. Loved you from CS5 to CC but you have lost the mojo.")

 

Same

[Cinegain]

16 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

So, "Buy buy Adobe

 

Ok, will do.

But seriously, what am I supposed to do, buy an additional $2500+ laptop just for editing (not going to give up ma Windows machine)? I mean, it probably keeps me from being distracted, but nobody likes throwing away money (I almost said for no good reason, but ok, it's a pretty good reason if it works that well) or working two different systems.

[Dimitris Stasinos]

9 minutes ago, Cinegain said:

Ok, will do.

But seriously, what am I supposed to do, buy an additional $2500+ laptop just for editing (not going to give up ma Windows machine)? I mean, it probably keeps me from being distracted, but nobody likes throwing away money (I almost said for no good reason, but ok, it's a pretty good reason if it works that well) or working two different systems.

I worked as a full time editor for 2 years on a late 2012 27" i5 iMac, 6-8 hours everyday, dealing with 5 angle FHD multicams and FCPX worked like a breeze. You don't need a monster mac or macbook to work with it, even in 4K. Just buy a used iMac or MBP, throw 16-32 GB of Ram inside, turn background rendering off, use a cheap external usb3 ssd for your libraries, turn on Proxy if needed and enjoy your peace of mind for the rest of your life as an editor. Then, when you get paid from your first job, buy a mac mini as a backup system, in case that something goes wrong with your main system.  Really...it's that simple, this setup will pay you back for sure.

[Clayton Moore]

11 minutes ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

I worked as a full time editor for 2 years on a late 2012 27" i5 iMac, 6-8 hours everyday, dealing with 5 angle FHD multicams and FCPX worked like a breeze. You don't need a monster mac or macbook to work with it, even in 4K. Just buy a used iMac or MBP, throw 16-32 GB of Ram inside, turn background rendering off, use a cheap external usb3 ssd for your libraries, turn on Proxy if needed and enjoy your peace of mind for the rest of your life as an editor. Then, when you get paid from your first job, buy a mac mini as a backup system, in case that something goes wrong with your main system.  Really...it's that simple, this setup will pay you back for sure.

I got a late 2013 MBP i7 with NVIDIA off eBay recently - both FCPX and the new Resolve 14 Studio run just fine!  We got Resolve and its dongle with the purchase of our original BM Cinema camera.  I have both a Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Raid and its all humming along fine.  I use Adobe for Photoshop and Premiere only if I have to.

[Davey]

1 hour ago, Mattias Burling said:

Switching from Premiere CC/Resolve to FCPX is the best decision I ever made. Over the last year I must have saved at least six months in editing and render times

(Btw, today I downloaded a 30 day trial of Capture One Pro 10. Took me about 20 minutes to realize that it's time to dump Lightroom as well. So, "Buy buy Adobe. Loved you from CS5 to CC but you have lost the mojo.")

 

Capture One is excellent. I use FCPX and love its simplicity but needed a RAW editor for my Sony pics. Affinity (which I also have) didn't support Sony RAW - though they do now - so I ended up buying Capture One and love it.

Pity there are so few tutorials on YouTube but there is a German guy who shows its full capabilities and he's going to be doing some in English some time in the near future.

[Mattias Burling]

53 minutes ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

I worked as a full time editor for 2 years on a late 2012 27" i5 iMac, 6-8 hours everyday, dealing with 5 angle FHD multicams and FCPX worked like a breeze. You don't need a monster mac or macbook to work with it, even in 4K. Just buy a used iMac or MBP, throw 16-32 GB of Ram inside, turn background rendering off, use a cheap external usb3 ssd for your libraries, turn on Proxy if needed and enjoy your peace of mind for the rest of your life as an editor. Then, when you get paid from your first job, buy a mac mini as a backup system, in case that something goes wrong with your main system.  Really...it's that simple, this setup will pay you back for sure.

My experience also. 4K, RedRaw, h.264, it doesnt matter. A modest Mac eats it all. I have a two year old base model MBP and all is well and smooth

27 minutes ago, Davey said:

Capture One is excellent. I use FCPX and love its simplicity but needed a RAW editor for my Sony pics. Affinity (which I also have) didn't support Sony RAW - though they do now - so I ended up buying Capture One and love it.

Pity there are so few tutorials on YouTube but there is a German guy who shows its full capabilities and he's going to be doing some in English some time in the near future.

I watched a quick introduction, about 20min. Then I could just apply my skills from LR, Davinci, etc.

Looove the liibrary peaking thing and having a three way color corrector. Also in my side by side edits next to LR, the files from C1 looks clearly better. Sharper, better colors, more detail, etc. Its night and day.

[Don Kotlos]

FCPX is great, other than the fact that it needs very expensive plugins for proper color grading. Its also unfortunate for many people that runs only with macs but a $1000 hackintosh  (steps here) or a used laptop even from 2013 are not that expensive. 

12 minutes ago, Clayton Moore said:

I got a late 2013 MBP i7 with NVIDIA off eBay recently - both FCPX and the new Resolve 14 Studio run just fine!  We got Resolve and its dongle with the purchase of our original BM Cinema camera.  I have both a Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Raid and its all humming along fine.  I use Adobe for Photoshop and Premiere only if I have to.

Plus you can use an eGPU to make FCPX or Resolve run like they do with a desktop:

I played with capture-one and is indeed very very good. Much better color editing especially when dealing with skin-tones. When my CC subscription expires I will most probably go that route as well. 

[Dave Maze]

I have been using FCPX since the initial 1.0 release and I was fortunate enough to be able to deal with it as a single camera op/ editor. Now I am working for a production company with 12 people and I am still the only FCPX user in the house. Everyone else is stuck in Adobe. I have been trying to convince them all to switch but they wont. I still carry the FCPX flag and LOVE the speed and keyword tagging. Its such a dialed in program now and has matured well. Wes Plate and Tim Dashwood adding to the team is good news. 

[tweak]

I went from FC to PP to DR. Still happy with my choices, but I'm not a pro.

[mercer]

Love FCPX, just wish it would work with CDNGs. 

[jonpais]

8 hours ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

I worked as a full time editor for 2 years on a late 2012 27" i5 iMac, 6-8 hours everyday, dealing with 5 angle FHD multicams and FCPX worked like a breeze. You don't need a monster mac or macbook to work with it, even in 4K. Just buy a used iMac or MBP, throw 16-32 GB of Ram inside, turn background rendering off, use a cheap external usb3 ssd for your libraries, turn on Proxy if needed and enjoy your peace of mind for the rest of your life as an editor. Then, when you get paid from your first job, buy a mac mini as a backup system, in case that something goes wrong with your main system.  Really...it's that simple, this setup will pay you back for sure.

I've got a 2013 27" iMac, 16GB RAM. When editing my last video, a five-minute clip (ProRes) with two LUTs and NEAT video, the RAM was completely exhausted and there was over 32GB swap. Will creating proxy media and turning off background rendering help, or should I just bite the bullet and buy 32GB of memory today?

[Mattias Burling]

 

[Dimitris Stasinos]

5 hours ago, jonpais said:

I've got a 2013 27" iMac, 16GB RAM. When editing my last video, a five-minute clip (ProRes) with two LUTs and NEAT video, the RAM was completely exhausted and there was over 32GB swap. Will creating proxy media and turning off background rendering help, or should I just bite the bullet and buy 32GB of memory today?

Turning background rendering off always helps, since FCPX loves throwing everything into ram. Leave everything un-rendered until you export your project. This won't affect your final render times dramatically from my experience. Proxy media are handy for 4K editing & multicams, but you need to switch to optimised or original media to color correct so it's inevitable to work on line before exporting to see what you are doing. NEAT is wonderful but kinda processor and ram hungry as it's output goes also directly into ram, so again switching off bkgr render helps. Also switch playback to "better performance". When you have no effects applied and you are working with ProRes, as you do, FCPX effectively streams data directly from your scratch disk, so an external ssd is a must for your libraries. According to your mac's specs you can choose through your workflow which part of your machine will carry the heaviest tasks, so if you have a weak processor for example, transcode H264 to optimised media, throw tour library on an external disk and turn off background rendering. Try these and if you have problems then upgrade your Ram to 32 gigs.

[Axel]

10 hours ago, jonpais said:

I've got a 2013 27" iMac, 16GB RAM. When editing my last video, a five-minute clip (ProRes) with two LUTs and NEAT video, the RAM was completely exhausted and there was over 32GB swap. Will creating proxy media and turning off background rendering help, or should I just bite the bullet and buy 32GB of memory today?

A year ago I bought the biggest 5k iMac, with the fastest CPU and the biggest GPU - but I didn't yet upgrade the 8 GB RAM (wanted to do that with third party RAM, because it's cheaper). Biggest library contained roughly 1 TB of footage, biggest project since then was 18 minutes (not long, I know, but rather complicated with compounds and subtitles). Never felt a bottleneck. Until then, I used to have a 2009 MacPro with 32 GB RAM, eventually. At the time I built in the new RAM I expected a significant improvement, but there was none! I guess the main bottleneck of this computer was i/o. Couldn't go over ~ 200 Mbits read speed. For 4k, particularly with ProRes, it should be at least twice as fast. Check that (the volume with your footage).

In my experience, Neat is a real real time killer. Should you turn it off (the checkbox in inspector)? I wouldn't. I would make CC the last step in the workflow. After you locked the edit. You could then turn on background rendering, or, if there are not too many clips with Neat, render them individually.

Another trick for improving performance is to limit the number of clips your Mac has to access all at once. In the browser by filtering. I never see more than 50 clips, mostly much less. In the timeline by splitting up the whole into shorter sequences (=projects). 

"A five minute clip" looks short enough, indeed too short to structure it any further. But it can be advisable too. 

18 hours ago, DaveAltizer said:

Now I am working for a production company with 12 people and I am still the only FCPX user in the house. Everyone else is stuck in Adobe. I have been trying to convince them all to switch but they wont.

Maybe in part because the media management frightens them off?

 

[jonpais]

1 hour ago, Axel said:

A year ago I bought the biggest 5k iMac, with the fastest CPU and the biggest GPU - but I didn't yet upgrade the 8 GB RAM (wanted to do that with third party RAM, because it's cheaper). Biggest library contained roughly 1 TB of footage, biggest project since then was 18 minutes (not long, I know, but rather complicated with compounds and subtitles). Never felt a bottleneck. Until then, I used to have a 2009 MacPro with 32 GB RAM, eventually. At the time I built in the new RAM I expected a significant improvement, but there was none! I guess the main bottleneck of this computer was i/o. Couldn't go over ~ 200 Mbits read speed. For 4k, particularly with ProRes, it should be at least twice as fast. Check that (the volume with your footage).

In my experience, Neat is a real real time killer. Should you turn it off (the checkbox in inspector)? I wouldn't. I would make CC the last step in the workflow. After you locked the edit. You could then turn on background rendering, or, if there are not too many clips with Neat, render them individually.

Another trick for improving performance is to limit the number of clips your Mac has to access all at once. In the browser by filtering. I never see more than 50 clips, mostly much less. In the timeline by splitting up the whole into shorter sequences (=projects). 

"A five minute clip" looks short enough, indeed too short to structure it any further. But it can be advisable too. 

Maybe in part because the media management frightens them off?

 

Here are the results of the speed test.

[Axel]

@jonpais

Then I think it's Neat. I think that the old saying that FCP X is hungry for RAM is nothing else but a myth:

I don't say, you don't need 32 GB. Just be prepared that you might not find the difference too dramatic - like doubling your RAM will double your performance or so.

[Dimitris Stasinos]

Actually the reason i upgraded my ram to 32 Gb was the lengthy projects i work on (usually tv shows). If you are working on 5 min projects or Vlogs (and you have bkgr render off) you won't see any difference. Every time you are tweaking a single clip in any way, a low quality preview clip is loaded into ram to smooth out playback (background render does the same but using ProRes HQ or any other intermediate codec, so your memory gets full faster). When you are out off ram, for example on a lengthy project, FCPX is throwing these data on you hard disk and is streaming from there, so you are experiencing lags on your playback. It's easy to know when you need a ram upgrade and thats when you see your mac's performance slowing down as you are progressing with your project. 

& Also: Never leave Libraries loaded on your FCPX's browser. It's important to have a single Library (the one which you are working on) opened ONLY. These are data that are also loaded into your ram and slow down your machine for no reason.

[jonpais]

12 minutes ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

Actually the reason i upgraded my ram to 32 Gb was the lengthy projects i work on (usually tv shows). If you are working on 5 min projects or Vlogs (and you have bkgr render off) you won't see any difference. Every time you are tweaking a single clip in any way, a low quality preview clip is loaded into ram to smooth out playback (background render does the same but using ProRes HQ or any other intermediate codec, so your memory gets full faster). When you are out off ram, for example on a lengthy project, FCPX is throwing these data on you hard disk and is streaming from there, so you are experiencing lags on your playback. It's easy to know when you need a ram upgrade and thats when you see your mac's performance slowing down as you are progressing with your project. 

& Also: Never leave Libraries loaded on your FCPX's browser. It's important to have a single Library (the one which you are working on) opened ONLY. These are data that are also loaded into your ram and slow down your machine for no reason.

So the next vlog I work on, I'll turn off background rendering, apply neat video as the very last step and use proxy media. Not sure I understand what you mean about loading libraries on FCP browser - I never have more than on library at a time, lately I've just put it on my desktop. My projects are seldom more than 8 minutes long, most of the time not even compound clips, just a soundtrack, a couple of LUTs at most...

48 minutes ago, Axel said:

@jonpais

Then I think it's Neat. I think that the old saying that FCP X is hungry for RAM is nothing else but a myth:

I don't say, you don't need 32 GB. Just be prepared that you might not find the difference too dramatic - like doubling your RAM will double your performance or so.

I guess I'm not expecting any improvement in rendering speed or anything, but I don't like to see my computer memory drop to 1GB RAM... I may go ahead and pick up 32GB tomorrow. I wish I could find Crucial here, but not sure if any shops carry what I need.