Re: After a year has perception of FCPX changed?

In one way or another everyone's covered all I want to say, particularly Walter. I've dealt with the growing pains and still use FCP 7 alongside X. The first week of X's release I saw my editorial productivity skyrocket - no comparison. I could edit and organize faster in X. Within months FCP 7 felt old and lethargic. I recently downloaded PrP 6 and MC6. I ran back to both FCP 7 and eagerly want to cut on FCP X more.

I consider the scope of what Apple's been doing in recent years - Core Animation, Core Graphics, Core Audio, Core Data, GPU leveraging, cleaning and streaming code with OS updates and FCP [classic] updates, mobile devices and their desktop-software counterparts, buying, rebranding/repackaging, improving, feature-merging (Shake-Motion, Logic-Soundtrack), and the massive undertaking of AV foundation and frankly I think we're starting to see the fruits of a lot of labor that we hadn't yet had the chance to fully exploit; thank you 64-bit.

I follow the developers as they find hidden gems of FCP X yet to be "activated", it's color capabilities, the awesome relational database structure it uses and how that metadata will help us later (when more hooks are available to get it out) and I see a bright future for X. I do believe that there's "one more thing" perhaps we'll see this year or early next; either a feature or separate app.

Someone demoes PrP6 on a massively beefed-up system recently at an LA event and it occurred to me. Apple seldom demos (publicly) on a MacPro. We all know the MacPro's gonna shine. They demo on things like...wait for it...iMacs. That speaks volumes when you consider when you look at the performance based on their code, the core technologies, and what can be done on non-extended hardware.

My perception has changed since the release of X. It went from "this is fun, let me see how i can use it" to I want to cut everything in X now.

PrP6 is really nice, but it is very much like FCP7+ (and I mean that in a very positive way for Adobe).Though now I find myself not looking for a FCP 7 or anything like it. In my personal recent test, just a basic AVCHD (from Af100) open archive, edit, draw the thumbnails for the skimmer/hover, playback and skim/hover playback, transcode (to ProRes), etc., FCP X outperformed PrP6 by a huge margin on one of my older systems (Mac Pro 2x2.26 Quad-Core Intel Xeon/ 16 GB RAM/ ATI Radeon HD 5770/Blackmagic Multibridge Pro 2).

At the end of the day we'll vote with our dollars. FCP 7 still works for me. FCP X is increasingly working out for me. Cutting my first 4K RED project in it (ProRes of course for now). I am looking forward to checking out the new Smoke too.

Tangier