Apple have sneaked two additions to FCPX with the latest update version 10.0.4 and I was unaware of it till I accidentally inserted a Canon C300 CF card into my MacPro and FCPX was minimised. The card was out of my Canon C300 and I was shocked when the thumbnails of the previous shoot suddenly came up on screen…FCPX to my understanding did not accept MXF files.

To prove a point I inserted a further CF card out of the Canon XF100 filmed at 50 Mbps, 720 50p and once again as you can see…thumbnails and the ability to import into FCPX.

The plot thickens as this only works on my MacPro and not my 27″ iMac, both have the same Canon V3 plugin and both have V10.0.4 FCPX update.

After further investigation I also decided to re visit 1080 50p and inserted footage shot with my FS100, NX70 and my Sony A77 DSLR, all 3 cameras footage is now recognised…fantastic.

The downside to all this positive information is that I still find FCPX unreliable as it has on occasions crashed and NOT come back to the same part of the edit as is supposed to happen, its still far to buggy for my liking but what I have seen recently gives me great hope that FCPX will mature gracefully and you can’t fault the phenomenal amount of 3rd party plugins being produced for FCPX.

MacVideo GURU himself Rick Young.

A good evening had by all especially this lucky chap Mr Crawford Brown who won an AJA Express worth over £1400.

Alister Brown…Mr Glidetrack himself giving us some background into making and upgrading sliders.

Matt Davis (Director/Editor) had a hard task trying to convince hardened FCP users that Adobe Premiere Pro might be a better path to take.

The Rick and Phil show…coming to a small screen near you soon on MacVideo, thanks to Matt for this picture.

Remember to come along to the first meeting of the Final Cut Pro Users Group in Glasgow city centre for 6.30pm at the Thistle Glasgow in Cambridge Street, SAT NAV G2 3HN.

Just by chance I was looking at an Apple APP when I noticed I had two updates, I opened them up to discover the first major update to FCP-10 and Motion 5.

Final Cut Pro 10 is a disgrace to editing in fact it’s now positively dangerous, I decided after leaving it for a week or so to watch some more of my Ripple Training video and have a positive look at FCP-10.

It did not take long to shake me to the core, this software is a joke, I have used non linear edit suites for about 15 years starting with an Apple Turbo Cube, Digisuite with Speed Razor then Premiere 6.5 onto Premiere Pro. I joined FCP at version 5 and still use version 7.03.

The first major flaw is this mini cine reel, I accidentally clicked on it and it brought up a new project, wiping away my 2 hours of editing I had been working on…this is unreal I searched for an hour to retrieve my edit to no avail…to all intent purposes it was gone, then came the second more serious part of this joke software.

The second clanger came when I was playing about with a duff take and I erased it from the timeline to discover that you also erase it from the bin as well…this defeats the concept of non destructive editing.

Now I know this software is not FCP-7 with bells added but my experiment proved one thing that Apple have lost the plot when it comes to non destructive editing.

I decided to use this software as I would FCP7 or Premiere Pro 5.5 and it not only failed badly but is NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE and is POSITIVELY DANGEROUS in its present state. I also had to buy a program called CLIP WRAP which is excellent I may add in order to get my 1080 50p NX70 footage into FCP-10 (PS. It also gets the 1080 50p footage into Final Cut Express).

It’s a shame that Apple have got this so wrong in fact what we now have is a direct response to the DSLR mass marketplace, solid state editing at the cost of professionalism. (PS. This is not a cheap knock at the DSLR rather Apple trying to worm their way into an ever-increasing marketplace).

I do realise that I have “NOT” understood the concept of this software and it works lightyears away from what I have been used to but even after reading your comments I do feel Apple have re-invented the wheel for the sake of it and added a lot of unnecessary confusion and bad feeling that could so easily have been avoided.

Ok so I was slack today and did not look out for Lion as I have done for the last week but as they say a watched kettle never boils.

 As you can see I am downloading this onto my iMac as I type so I can give you the low  down tomorrow evening.

I am not prepared or stupid enough to install this beast onto my MacPro as I have a  working FCP-7.0.3 and do not under any circumstances want to break it.

That is my main tip even if you are running FCP-10 do not download Lion as there has  never been an operating system to date that has not broken FCP in the past with various  bugs.

It seems to take an age to download the screen capture you see here was started at 8pm  this evening and it’s now 11.30pm !

Not sure how it will effect FC Express but thats a gamble I am willing to take if all else fails I still have the option to download FCP-10 onto the iMac but that would be a pig not to mention the £200.

I had alarm bells ringing when the genius and advocate of Final Cut Pro, Larry Jordan announced that the new FCP-10 was not ready for professionals, Larry was giving us a heads up but was probably asked politely by Apple to retract his statement.

Larry was 100% correct this new version sucks, Apple have assumed a lot and not bothered to ask the end user about losing important features that are essential for a professional editing environment.

When we first got a sneak peek back in NAB 2011 at the Supermeet the rat was already on the plate when it was reported that FCPX (10) looked a lot like iMovie, that was the first nail in it’s two years waisted development coffin.

A lot of people were very disgruntled at the iMovie likeness and the “best” news of all is the total dismissal off Apple developers that tape ingest was to die along with Soundtrack and DVD Studio 4.

How many edit suites across the planet are totally solid state, never to rely on ingesting tape of any format…it’s a joke. I run a solid state edit suite but must have the facility to ingest tape and have a £2500 AJA io HD box for that very reason.

As yet FCPX can not ingest 1080 50p from a Sony NX70 or a Sony FS100, two of the most up to date solid state camcorders and FCPX renders their footage useless.

Apple in my opinion have screwed up big time and I for one want heads to roll over some of the most ludicrous decisions ever to befall a great program like Final Cut Pro.

The so called chief architect of Final Cut Pro Randy Ubilos should be made to correct this less than useless program or lose his job !

All we wanted was 64 bit and some new bells and whistles not this fanciful bloated version of iMovie…well I for one will be sticking with FCP-7 and my old friends that come with Studio 3 and I am now so glad that I bought Premiere Pro 5.5, I can see many of us migrating to Premiere Pro…at least Adobe know how to treat professional editors.

Good old Larry took the bull by the horns and told it as it was…in his opinion…but must have caused a giant wave of horror to flow through Apple headquarters as he announced that Final Cut Pro 10 was “not ready for professional use”.

Larry is the guru of Final Cut Pro 7 and is a great educator for everyone who wants to anything about FCP, he is simply one of the best.

Larry takes up the story…

“There are about 85 emails in my in-box this morning with links to a speech I gave at the April Final Cut Pro User Group about my reactions to Apple’s presentation of Final Cut at NAB.

While I stand by most of my remarks, there was one unfortunate moment where I said, with a special dramatic emphasis for the crowd, that Final Cut Pro X was not ready for professional use.

I believed that then. I don’t believe it now.

When I made that presentation to the LAFCPUG, it was the week after NAB; a week after Apple presented the new version of Final Cut to the world. When I watched that presentation, I was watching it through the prism of my experience with Final Cut Pro 7 and all I knew about the application was what Apple showed on stage in their demo.

How could anything that radically different equal what we already had in Final Cut Pro 7?

I knew this new version was far more than iMovie – but, at that time, I didn’t think it was Final Cut Pro, either.

Its no secret that Apple gave me rare access to the software by inviting me to a demo of an early build of the software in February this year. However, what is not known, is that they also gave me permission to contact their development team to discuss the new version.

After NAB, and after my presentation at that April LAFCPUG meeting, I finally had time to follow-up on Apple’s offer. And I did. A lot.

I peppered them with questions:

• Why did Apple decide to totally reinvent the interface?

• Why did Apple feel they couldn’t simply do an incremental improvement to what we already had?

• Why did they only talk about Final Cut Pro?

• Why did they add the features they did?

• Why did they not mention others?

• What did they view as the future of editing, and who did they see doing the work?

While I can’t tell you what Apple told me until after the NDA lifts with the release of the product, I can tell you that what I learned during those conversations has completely changed my opinion.

Because so many of us base our lives on this software – both creatively and financially – there is a lot of stress whenever a new version comes out. Especially a radically different new version.

I understand, I feel the same stress.

But I no longer feel, as I once thought, that this is a step backward. Based on what I learned during my conversations with Apple, I believe this release provides us with an opportunity for a large step forward.

Now, we just have to wait and see what Apple ships.

For many of us, this will be a giant leap into something truly exciting. There is a lot of news to share and I can’t wait to tell you more about it.

That day can’t come soon enough.”

Well done Larry for giving Apple a good kicking, I along with hundreds of Professional editors are getting fed up with Apples insistence on keeping all of us in the dark about FCP-10, we deserve better.

We still do not know the following…

Soundtrack Pro V10 ?

DVD Studio Pro V10 ?

Compressor V10?

Blu-ray support or even DVD support ?

We do know the following…

Final Cut Pro 10 available during June 2011

Motion 4 has been updated to V5

You can see Apples insistence on keeping us in the dark if Abobe had a new version of Premiere on the offering but 5.5 is just out so Apple are playing a stupid and dangerous cat and mouse game in my humble opinion.

Poor Steve Jobs is ill and my best wishes go out to him but his temporary departure does not mean the rest of Apple becomes sick also !