Apple To Speak At LAFCPUG On June 27

I'm friends with his executive assistant. She told me it was about Smoke and has been refreshed to reflect it was now made public. It had nothing to do with Apple. Time to get some fresh tea leaves.

Oh well, the LAFCPUG event on June27 still stands.

I'm still crossing my fingers for an anniversary update this Thursday. It could happen.

I would LOVE to be wrong and see it on Thursday, but Apple isn't typically a sentimental company.

As long as they can say "A year ago..." and be in the right zone, that's all that matters.

Well, good to know I'm not going nuts. And they did move the date back a day, from the 27th, which made it seem like it was part of the FCPX event.

It could still be an elaborate deception. NEVER discount the possibility of an elaborate deception!

Disproportionate Pictures wrote:
But as far as FCPX is concerned, they've been remarkably consistent.

10.0.0 - Tuesday June 21st
10.0.1 - Tuesday September 20th
10.0.2 - Wednesday November 16th (this is the oddity)
10.0.3 - Tuesday January 31st
10.0.4 - Tuesday April 10th
10.0.5 - Monday June 11 (tied to Retina MacBook Pro launch)

I'd call that less than random. All things being equal FCPX updates happen on a Tuesday.

Now for some hair splitting, but bug fixes 10.02, 10.04, dropped in the afternoon around 3-4pm est. While the launch and feature additions 10.0, 10.01, 10.03 dropped at about 8am est.

None of this really matters since we don't even know what date it falls on or what it's included.

Hopefully there is a major update. There needs to be.1 year on and FCPX has been adopted by none of my big clients and only a handful of bleeding edge cut-at-home editors. (usually due to my persuasion)

I love this program but Apple needs to step up and declare that they are serious about professionals in terms of hardware and software, as well as get the big facilities to sit up and take notice by announcing something special.

Or not. And we all go along for the 5-7 year ride that will eventually see FCP return to the top of the pile.

What sort of operation would you consider "big client"?

I'm on record as being extremely skeptical about a 10.1 update this year. 10.1 would need to be a push FORWARD, not the reintegration of legacy features (as much improved as they have been); especially if it's going to mean an upgrade price OR another $299. I think any 10.1 without a good chunk of Richard Taylor's "wish list" X'd out would probably mean more bad press than good.

It may be the Apple has an annual major point release in mind, but I'd guess that will start next year.

As to when we might expect the next release? Here's the list I keep in notepad with update release dates and interval days.

10.0.0 - 2011.06.21
10.0.1 - 2011.09.20 91 DAYS
10.0.2 - 2011.11.16 57 DAYS
10.0.3 - 2012.01.31 76 DAYS
10.0.4 - 2012.04.10 70 DAYS
10.0.5 - 2012.06.11 62 DAYS

The average update cycle is about 70 days, which had me guessing that 10.0.5 would be released yesterday. If 10.0.5 was a regular release, then I'd say we'll be waiting until sometime in August for 10.0.6. But with it being essentially tied to the MBP hardware announcement, the thinking is that we should essentially forget 10.0.5 and assume 10.0.6 is the "regular" update and would drop either yesterday (nope) or next Tuesday.

A whole lot of Kremlinology, but a harmless distraction while Motion is rendering...

My guess is 10.6, with some sort of new audio mixing functionality (please) or hooks out into Logic. I am so hoping for selective copy/paste attributes.

A $49 paid upgrade.

We'll know in a week. As I said, I think the update drops in sync with the LA event.

But, what do I know?

Here is what we know so far.

June 27th Apple will tell us at the LAFCPUG meeting:
- Significant new feature releases
- In action case studies of real life deployments
- Extensive third-party integration
- Demo of the latest features

What we already know from the FCP web site:
- 3 production facilities on the "In Action" page.
Features coming in the next year:
- Multichannel audio editing tools
- Dual viewers
- MXF plug-in support
- RED camera support.

I'm assuming the FCP development team will be telling us stuff we don't already know Thursday. I hope they don't just talk about the companies already on the In Action page and the features already promised at the bottom of the What's New page. That would just S-U-C-K.

I'd like to see control surface support for audio and color controllers.

Well, I'd assume if the viewers, audio mixing, and RED support are in the next update- they almost certainly WILL talk about them- as there could be a lot to discuss.

I think we should assume that "Dual Viewers" isn't just going to be putting a preview monitor back ala FCP7. Having been working with X for months now, I can't imagine wanting a traditional preview monitor eating up space all the time. It will be interesting to see how that's implemented.

Likewise with audio mixing. There could be a lot to cover.

As great as they will be to have, things like copy/paste attributes or scrolling timeline take very little time to cover in a presentation.

Seanus wrote: Or not. And we all go along for the 5-7 year ride that will eventually see FCP return to the top of the pile.

Well we've done that once. But the competition is much more fierce now. But that's a GOOD thing. As an editor I like the ideas that companies have to compete for my business and I think Apple's latest updates to FCPX are a tremendous acknowledgement that they fully understand the pro market.

But yes, the backlash was so severe that I know not a single editorial facility in LA that uses FCPX with the exception of Evan Schechtman at @Radical Media. I guess to be fair, Apple has profiled a few on their site, but I still feel like the lone Shepard preaching FCPX's benefits to everyone.

Thank god for a board like this to confirm I'm not totally insane.

Oh and sidenote: the RED workflow with FCPX/Davinci is 10x better than it ever was with FCP7/Color. Just completed another commercial, which I'll post up soon.

fcpguru wrote:

Seanus wrote: ...I know not a single editorial facility in LA that uses FCPX with the exception of Evan Schechtman at @Radical Media. I guess to be fair, Apple has profiled a few on their site, but I still feel like the lone Shepard preaching FCPX's benefits to everyone. ...

I hear ya. Actually, i'm using it, at an editorial facility in L.A. and loving it, but there are a couple things that need to get sorted out before I (try to) switch the rest of our editors over. Since we cut offline and send everything out to finish we need to be able to get elements to places like New Wave, Stampede etc. who have very specific delivery requirements. There's an EDL app coming that's the picture piece of that puzzle. XtoPro will handle audio, but it has a couple bugs and issues that need to be sorted out, the biggest of which is ability to select handles. It currently copies the entire source file for each clip into the AAF. Fine if you're in house.... not so fine if you need to use FTP to deliver elements. :-o

Once those two things are in place, I'm thinking it'll get some more "pro" traction. Looking forward to Apple's updates as well, of course.

BenB wrote: What sort of operation would you consider "big client"?

Clients that have between 10-100 seats. They are all convinced that FCP X cannot share media like AVID or even FCP 7 can.

Well, even though it runs on top of the Final Cut Server engine, it can't, surprisingly. I sure hope that changes, too. Killing off FCSvr was really harsh on a lot of us...

It will be really interesting to see what sort of plan had for multi-user environments.

Shared Events is a wonderful idea. Each editor being able to access the media from shared storage- adding keywords and favourites without disrupting other editors.

As someone who works remotely most of the time from my clients, and who's slowing building a "soft office" of editors, producers, and directors- I'd love to see iCloud be able to be used in this capacity as well. The idea of two editors at different sites (with copies of the same Event files) able to add metadata to a common, iCould synced Events makes me giddy.

Some of my ex students are now in the position of running these facilities and I'm literally begging them not to switch to AVID. I know it will only end in pain. Ironic because that's what I trained them in back in the day.

Seanus is eeeeevvvvviiiillll...
"Get a rope"


This is a phenomena that I find simply fascinating. Legacy FCP days folks asked and wished for stuff that was nothing really spectacular, just refinements of what existed.

I'm finding now that since folks are getting used to FCP X, and learning these new tool and workflow paradigms, they are asking for features that nothing ever did before. Things that are simply out of the box and really imaginative.

Very interesting and refreshing to see.