Re: FCPX from an Editor who used it on Iditarod 2012 (long again!, sorry!)

[Michael Hancock] " am curious, can you set up your own template to compress to a particular file type then immediately upload it to an FTP site? I've played with FCPX some but I haven't messed with the publish features. Are they customizable, and if so to what degree?"

As with most Apple software designs, you're given basic capabilities inside the program that fit the most common export profiles - particularly if those are satisfied by technologies that Apple owns and don't have to license from outside.

I suspect that the X designers felt that FTP will be dying out since there are so many more "user friendly" choices every day ala YouSendIt and Dropbox - the kind of services I see creative pros using today instead of the somewhat arcane FTP utilities.

So inside X, you get a menu of sixteen primary choices.

The first 4 are Media Browser, Apple Devices, DVD, and BlueRay.

(the Media Browser, btw, is very interesting to me - as it allows you to "publish" your video in various Apple friendly sizes (iPod to "Mac and PC" that are accessible to you regardless of whether the source media is present. It's a "published final" state. truncated from the original file, if that's what you need - very much like an "export" in Legacy - but one that the program indexes and manages from an internal media browser, rather than just randomly plopping it wherever you have the finder currently saving things.

Ignoring the podcast producer (since I don't do that), you arrive at email, this is a single choice interface that combines significant compression, and a message creation interface so you can shoot out approval copies via email simply and easily from within the program.

The major services block comes next. YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and CNN's iReport. These all allow you to store your account settings and do one click publishing to sites you choose with your account settings and passwords stored and auto-inserted to make recurring "publishing" easier.

Next is the big one, IMO. It's Export Media and lets you do limited customization of a standalone output file. Admittedly it's pretty Apple Centric centered on ProRes and H-264 - but that makes sense since these are all codec choices that Apple has the rights to use without further licensing arrangements. This is also where you can use Roles to create audio and video stems for some forms of collaborative work.

Exporting from Export Media is also the gateway to creating files that I pull into Episode if I need to transcode to something like WMV, FLV or SWF for older style corporate servers, etc.

There are also images sequence options for animation work, HTTP streaming, etc.

All in all, its a pretty modern array of choices centered around Apple's licenses that reflects their view of how people will generate and share work in the "connected" future.

FWIW.

"Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions."-Justice O'Connor