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Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was released earlier today. I've heard a couple of people say they're not enthusiastic about it and, with features like Autosave and Launchpad, it's mainly geared at consumers. I completely disagree and here's my list of five features that are great for editors and video professionals (in no particular order).
Even in the 21st century, many people I know still use good old Sneakernet to distribute files between computers. People still use such a low-tech method of transferring files because the machines don't need to be networked to each other, there's no setup process and you're not opening yourself up to potential security issues (assuming the files and the drive are virus-free, of course).
AirDrop allows you to send files to people physically located nearby who are not necessarily on the same Wi-Fi network. When you want to send a file to someone, both of you click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar and you then drag the file onto the person's name. If they accept the file, it is encrypted and sent directly to their Downloads folder.
You only appear to other users on the network if you have the AirDrop folder open. This provides greater privacy and security than having regular file sharing running constantly.
Every Mac now has the potential to be a server for just $50, giving you a great deal of control over your system and the users that access it.
Lion now includes Xsan, a network file system popular with video editors. This used to cost $999 so it's a huge saving for large installations.
Love it or loathe it, you can't deny that Final Cut Pro X is built on a great technical foundation. AV Foundation ships with Lion and allows developers to utilize the same technology in their applications. It's something we plan to explore to improve future versions of Pro Media Tools.
It's also worth noting that the QuickTime 7 API is still there so existing QuickTime applications will continue to work. Final Cut Pro 7 runs just fine in Lion.
This feature has been part of Windows for decades and I'm surprised it's taken this long to make it to the Mac. If you drag a folder onto another folder with the same name, it now gives you the option to merge the two together. This is a huge timesaver.
We're big fans of incremental backups, which is why we created FCP Versioner. It's great to see something similar included in the OS for applications that support it.
Other nice features include the ability to encrypt an entire drive without a perceptible performance drop (according to Apple's marketing), OpenGL 3.2, Resume and Time Machine local snapshots, for recovering files when you're on the road without your Time Capsule or backup drive.
Lion seems faster too - I've seen noticeable performance improvements in all of our applications when run under Lion.
Of course, there are downsides too. Firstly, it's only available from the Mac App Store. If you are running OS X 10.5 Leopard, you will need to first upgrade to 10.6 Snow Leopard in order to access the store and download Lion. Apple will be selling Lion USB keys for $69 in August for users on Leopard or without broadband internet access.
Secondly, Rosetta is dead. This means that applications built for PowerPC computers will not work on Lion, including the Final Cut Studio 2 installer.
Thirdly, for some reason Apple decided to invert scrolling in Lion, meaning that dragging two fingers down scrolls up and vice versa. This would work well on a touchscreen but feels unnatural with a scroll mouse or trackpad. Fortunately it can be disabled in System Preferences but I don't know why Apple decided to make this the default.
Fourthly, features that some professionals have been demanding for a while, such as OpenGL 4.1, 10-bit monitor support and Blu-ray playback via third party drives still haven't materialized.
Overall, I think Lion is a step forward for professionals that provides much-needed additions to OS X. Driver and application support will likely take a while to catch up, despite the beta period, so as a rule I wouldn't recommend using it for professional use until the .3 or .4 update ships, even though I've actually found it to be quite stable in my testing.
Our flagship software, FCS Maintenance Pack, has been a big success and is in use at many of the top broadcasters in the USA and Europe. It is used every day to solve Final Cut Studio problems and get editors quickly back on track again.
We're proud to introduce the successor to FCS Maintenance Pack - Pro Maintenance Tools.
Pro Maintenance Tools is a 64-bit, Lion-compatible version of FCS Maintenance Pack that works with Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro for Mac. This is all included in one version - you do not need to buy different versions for each NLE. This means that you're covered no matter which application you decide to switch to after the obsolescence of Final Cut Studio.
FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin is not compatible with Pro Maintenance Tools. If you want to remotely administrate Pro Maintenance Tools, you must run Pro Admin. Licensed Network Admin users do not need to purchase Pro Admin as they can use their Network Admin licenses with the new version. There is more information on the future of Pro Admin here.
Pro Maintenance Tools builds on FCS Maintenance Pack with over 300 changes including many new log management features in Crash Analyzer such as color coding and annotations, many additional System Toolkit options, a rewritten version of Preference Manager, Autosave Cleaner has been replaced with Autosave Manager, countless bug fixes, tweaks and more.
We've prepared a short introductory video showing some of the key features of Pro Maintenance Tools:
Pro Maintenance Tools is $139 for a single license. FCS Maintenance Pack users can upgrade for $39, but if you upgrade before August 1st 2011 you'll be able to get it for only $29.
Customers who purchased FCS Maintenance Pack on or after February 1st 2011 are eligible for a free upgrade to the new version. We're going to be sending these out in batches over the next two weeks. If you need your upgrade license sooner than that, please contact us.
Pro Maintenance Tools is in indispensable suite for Mac-based editors. There is a 15-day trial here and we're keen to hear what you think of the new version.
Earlier this week we released a brand-new 64-bit rewrite of Preference Manager, an essential tool for managing the user settings of your editing application. (We also released a new version of FCS Remover that supports Final Cut Pro X.)
The first change you'll notice is the redesigned user interface. Each task (trashing, backing up, locking, restoring) has its own tab which makes it more intuitive to use.
Another big feature is support for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Compressor 4, Avid Media Composer for Mac and Adobe Premiere Pro for Mac. Avid preferences can be managed on a per-user level if desired (see screenshot below).
The third big feature is the ability to selectively restore files within a backup. This is great for restoring one application's settings without affecting others.
We've prepared a short demo video that shows some of the new features:
Other new features include automatic backups, keyboard hotkeys and the ability to set a default backup - a backup that is known to be good that will be restored automatically when performing a QuickFix. The full list of new features is available here.
Preference Manager remains completely free and can be downloaded here. For more information on the new features, please see the user manual.
We announced last month that we were replacing FCS Maintenance Pack with Pro Maintenance Tools which would offer support for Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro for Mac, due for release very soon.
With this in mind, it seems like a good time to explain our plans for FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin, the companion tool that allows you to deploy FCS Maintenance Pack over a network and remotely troubleshoot Final Cut Studio.
Network Admin is in use at many top broadcasters in the USA, Europe and Australia and is an essential tool for anyone with a network of Final Cut Studio systems. We're planning to replace it with Pro Admin which will eventually become a hub for managing all Digital Rebellion products, not just FCS Maintenance Pack or Pro Maintenance Tools.
In addition to 64-bit support and compatibility with the upcoming Pro Maintenance Tools suite, we're planning radical overhauls of the user interface and networking code. This will make the software easier to use, more reliable and will improve compatibility with corporate networks. It also enables us to do a lot of exciting things that we'll announce closer to the release.
These changes will require significant portions of the application to be rewritten and this will take time. We are planning a release before the end of the year.
FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin cannot support FCS Maintenance Pack and Pro Maintenance Tools simultaneously, so we will release an interim version of Network Admin that has been modified to support Pro Maintenance Tools. This version will take the Pro Admin name but will not have the new features. You will be able to run FCS Maintenance Pack and Pro Maintenance Tools side-by-side and use Network Admin and Pro Admin, respectively, to administer them.
Existing customers will be able to use their licenses with this interim version at no cost until it is replaced by Pro Admin 2.0 later this year. Upgrade pricing will be announced closer to the release but anyone who purchased the software from February 1st 2011 will be eligible for a free upgrade.
We've been paying attention to your feedback and we think Pro Admin is a great step forward for the software. If you have any suggestions to make for the new version, please let us know.
Now that Final Cut Pro X is out, you may be wondering which Digital Rebellion software is compatible with the new application.
As announced earlier, we are working on a new version called Pro Maintenance Tools. We have heard a great range of opinions on FCPX - some love it, some are sticking with FCP 7 for now and some are switching to Avid or Premiere. Pro Maintenance Tools works with all of these applications, so whatever you do, you're covered.
Update: Pro Maintenance Tools is now out.
Pro Media Tools was designed to be as independent as possible so it only needs a few minor tweaks in the next version. You can use it today on your FCPX projects.
The three XML apps in the suite don't work, which puts FCPX users in the same camp as Avid users who also don't have XML support. These remaining apps will be made compatible when/if XML support comes to FCPX.
Update: Pro Media Tools 1.0.3 now supports FCPX.
FCP Versioner depends on XML support, which is not present in FCPX right now.
Version 3.0 is now compatible with FCPX.
Version 3.0 is now compatible with FCPX.
Version 1.0.1 is compatible with Final Cut Pro X. Make sure you have the version 1.0.1 preference pane too.
We will update this page as more of our products become compatible with Final Cut Pro X.
A common problem on the Apple forums from Final Cut Pro X users has been the inability to hear audio from DV files imported from iMovie.
iMovie creates raw DV files (.dv) which contain video and audio data but no metadata or other information. It's essentially a DV QuickTime without the surrounding QuickTime structure.
This means that Final Cut Pro X can't find the audio because it's mixed in with the video data and there's no index or track structure to point it in the right direction.
To get around this, you must convert .dv files to QuickTime movies. Here's how to do it:
1. Open up the .dv file in QuickTime Player 7, which should be in your Applications/Utilities folder. If you don't have it on your system, you will need to install it from the Snow Leopard DVD.
2. Go to File > Save As and make sure the option to make a self-contained movie is checked.
3. Click Save. It shouldn't take very long because it is restructuring the data rather than recompressing it.
Yesterday we released Editmote 1.0.1, which brings several new features to our iOS app for remotely controlling nonlinear editing applications.
We're now offering support for Adobe After Effects for Mac and Final Cut Pro X when using the default keyboard layouts.
Another much-requested feature is the ability to connect directly to an IP address from the Actions menu. This is useful in negotiating some corporate networks. There are extra options in the preference pane too, including listening on a particular IP address and port and disabling Bonjour broadcasts.
To install the latest version, download it from the iTunes App Store. You'll also need to download and install the latest version of the Editmote Preference Pane.
If you use the built-in Software Update to install the latest preference pane, please note that you'll need to open the preference pane in System Preferences once to launch the latest version.
For more details on Editmote, please see our introductory video.
I have heard several people on Twitter say that they are thinking of switching to Adobe Premiere or Avid Media Composer after the release of Final Cut Pro X.
As we announced earlier this year, we will be releasing a new version of FCS Maintenance Pack soon called Pro Maintenance Tools. This will support Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro for Mac, so whatever decision you make we've got you covered.
And if you're an existing FCS Maintenance Pack customer who purchased the software on or after 1st February 2011, you will be eligible for a free upgrade to Pro Maintenance Tools upon release.
Are there features you like in Final Cut Pro X but wish they were in Final Cut Pro 7 or Adobe Premiere Pro? We've got you covered there too with Pro Media Tools.
Pro Media Tools adds support for Quick Bins (Apple calls these Clip Collections in FCPX) and you can see a complete overview of the media, effects and markers in Project Overview (Timeline Index in FCPX). Project Overview is more advanced than FCPX's Timeline Index because it allows batch modification of the data, printing, import and export to marker and Avid locator lists and more. A 15-day trial is available here.
We're interested to hear from anyone with requests for other Final Cut Pro X features they'd like to see ported to earlier versions or other NLEs.
I've already mentioned The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Final Cut Pro X but when it comes to developer features, there's a lot more to like.
Chris Kenny has been doing some delving and discovered that there are references to Python and AppleScript in the Final Cut Pro X app. This would be a big step up from the current method of sending commands via Apple Events.
There are also references to XML import and Final Cut Pro XML import, which implies that they will be two different formats. This makes sense, as the structure of FCPX projects has changed significantly (no more bins and no concept of tracks for instance) and there is a greater focus on metadata.
Neither of these are publicly accessible right now but they show that Apple has at least experimented with these functions and it is likely that they will be enabled in a future release. There has been speculation that import of FCP7 projects or XML may never come as the project formats are too different, but I think it's likely that we will at least see an FCPX-specific exchange format at some point in the future.
Final Cut Pro X now uses the Motion engine to render effects, which means that plugin output is now consistent between Final Cut Pro and Motion - something that was not the case in previous versions. Developers need to wrap their Motion plugins as Final Cut Effects in order for them to show up in Final Cut Pro X.
Other notable changes include more control over plugin user interfaces, support for multi-threading, keyframing, undo and bezier paths. These have been requested for a long time so it's great that they're now here. Thanks to Darrin Cardani and Paul Schneider at Apple for listening to the needs of developers.
Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5 require plugins to be compiled as 64-bit so most users' plugins won't be compatible. This is only a temporary problem until plugin developers catch up and the benefits of a 64-bit environment and FxPlug 2.0 will make it worthwhile. (There are, of course, some bugs in the implementation as would be expected in a 1.0 release.)
Just before Final Cut Pro X was unveiled at NAB earlier this year, I wrote a post about my Top 5 Developer Requests for the Next Final Cut Pro.
Storing settings in preference lists was number one and, as expected, this was implemented. While the reasons for wanting it so badly (mainly for programmatically changing scratch disk locations) are less important in Final Cut Pro X, we can still do a lot of things with it.
Making the Final Cut Pro project format more open was second on the list. This one is a little more complex because on the one hand, it's in SQLite format which makes it readable by the sqlite3 Terminal command but on the other, Core Data assumes that no-one other than the owning application will ever touch those files and so it's very easy to corrupt it if you're not careful. Also, while the SQLite format offers some predictability, Apple are free to structure the database any way they see fit and change it without notice in future versions. I've written a basic filename parser but I'm going to wait for official documentation or an API before doing anything more substantial.
Third, fourth and fifth on the list were requests for more API control. This is not in the initial release of Final Cut Pro X and remains to be seen if it will be in future versions.
Of course, I wrote this on the assumption that FCPX wouldn't remove any developer features that were in the previous version. While the developer features are sparse in the current version, the future looks bright, especially as it appears that Apple is expecting third-party developers to fill in many of the gaps in FCPX's feature set.
This list will document the bugs in Final Cut Pro X as they become apparent.
This one is scary. There are several reports of people losing work due to FCPX's autosave function (which is the only way to save) not working.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15469208
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15460282
When you add media from another drive and choose not to copy the files to your Final Cut Events folder, FCPX adds symbolic links to the Final Cut Events folder that point back to these files.
Some people have been reporting that they relaunched FCPX to find all of their media offline. When they looked in the Final Cut Events folder, FCPX had either deleted the symbolic links or failed to save them in the first place.
You can reconnect them by going to File > Import > Files but this causes another bug to surface: the files will always be copied to your Final Cut Events folder even if you deselect the option to do so.
Some people are reporting that Undo is disabled for them. What makes this an especially big problem is that FCPX saves automatically and so any mistakes they make are immortalized forever if they can't undo them.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15467240
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3136611
There are reports of projects disappearing from the project library.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15497434
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3136040
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3136124
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3133840
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3133760
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3134562
If you experience problems with media, I would recommend updating to OS X 10.6.8 which "Fixes an issue when importing certain media files into Final Cut Pro." I don't yet know if it solves these particular issues though.
Apple recommends only running FCPX on machines with one graphics card.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3842
This can be caused by templates from previous versions of Motion residing in the ~/Library/Application Support/Motion folder. To get around this, move the templates from this folder. More info here.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15582977#15582977
This can happen if certain folders exist on the drive. The poster in this forum thread says folders called "private" and possibly "backup" can cause this issue:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15794411#15794411
I'd be interested to hear if anyone finds any other folders that can cause the drive to disappear in FCPX.
More bugs will be listed as they surface.
Update: There are more bugs listed in the comments of this post, on LAFCPUG and at FCPX Quirks.
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