Magic Bullet Looks for Final Cut Pro X soon ready to be released … and some thoughts on FCPX
Red Giant software was busy developing a version of their very popular Magic Bullet Looks suite for Apple’s controversial and not-yet-quite production-ready Final Cut Pro X.
They have released a video preview now which shows that the version is virtually finished – it looks just like we are used to Magic Bullet and seems to work like a treat – except for an annoying bug from Final Cut Pro X about which they can’t do a thing. Turns out, Final Cut Pro X hands over image data in a wrong way to the plug-in (but heck, what do you expect from a 1.1 release of an editing program?). All they can do is wait for Apple to release a bug fix, and Red Giant says the Apple guys are well aware of it and working on it.
Anyway, watch the little preview video for yourself – it’s great to see that one truly invaluable tool in the filmmaking toolset is soon to be released for Final Cut Pro X.
Talking about Final Cut Pro X, I still use Final Cut Pro 7 for 95% of my professional jobs, simply because I know it inside and out and I don’t have the time to spend a lot of time fiddling with new applications right now. However, I used Final Cut Pro X already on some tiny projects just to get a grasp of the software, and I have to say, it’s starting to grow on me.
See, I am a notoriously perfectionist and shoot often too much stuff, even for short clips. It’s something in me that prevents me to cut a shoot short, I always want to get the best images and performances out of people. But when I edit my stuff myself, which is happening a lot, I keep hating myself for the massive amounts of material to choose from. And that’s exactly where Final Cut Pro X’s incredible media management / tagging and scrubbing capabilities come in. Looking for footage has gotten so much more efficient with the tagging tools and the video scrubbing in the preview (and on the timeline), it works like a breeze as soon as you get used to it. Also, the application is freakin’ fast and therefore the workflow is not as easily interrupted as with Final Cut Pro 7 (when you have to render).
I know it’s far from perfect still, but I am absolutely positive now that it will become a major player in the editing world with the next major release in 2012.
Check out literally the first little thing I edited with Final Cut Pro X right after I shot it … it was indeed an event, so that tied in with the “Event” analogy in FCPX perfectly 🙂 – and especially for cases like this, the media management part of FCPX is saving me so much time!
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I agree with your thoughts on FCP7 and FCPX, initially i red the reviews and thought ..oh God what have Apple done, then i purchased it and again initially I thought iMove, this is a mess I cant use this !
But when you start to use it, you realise its new and has a new way of doing things and its very very powerful, in fact FCP 7 seems dated now.
FCPX has an certain elegance, I now do believe it is the future. The current version needs a few tweaks and you need to get your head around the timeline etc…but it all starts to makes sense after a while !
And for me anyhow.. FCP 7 and premiere which i have used look dated-
FCPX does look a bit sleeker and modern than Premier. However, A good NLE doesn’t need a sexy GUI to be good. Adobe’s take on interface is a little more of a utilitarian approach. It has smaller buttons. The able to resize and rearrange any panel is a great feature. Layout preferences can change depending on the user and even the project. (really hoping FCPX allows this in the future!). But it’s not as pretty. FCP7 definitely looks dated now. It’s like QuickTime 7; Old but we still need it because QuickTime X lost some features.
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totally agree on that. FCPX is not ready for a lot of editors but it’s another tool for fast editing and I mean FAST editing. I don’t usually try new software on paid jobs but I did it for the last 3 projects I worked on the last 3-4 weeks. I couldn’t have done it this fast with FCP7 and I’m surprised that everyone bashes FCPX because it doesn’t have functions it actually has. They’re just named differently.
I don’t trust it for all of my work, but after editing 26 Videos with it, I have to admit that I start to really like it.
And everytime I see the renderbar in FCP7 (which I’m working on right now b/c of older projects) I realize how old fashioned it is in some way.Don’t get me wrong, FCPX is far from perfect but FCP7 was never perfect either. I’m waiting for a lot of bug fixes and updates now
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Hi everyone. I started using FCPX from it’s release date. I was only using FCP7 for 18 months or so.
I got to say I will honestly never look back. I took the time to pay for tutorials simply to find out where all the tools were. I believe strongly in knowing every bit of software inside and out so that when it comes time to edit I’m not restricted in anyway. I also used say that it doesn’t matter what software you use it’s the story in the end of the day but because of FCPX slick user interface I found it so much easier to tell a story and I didn’t feel limited or sluggish or especially wasting any time watching render bars. After some time learning FCPX it became so easier to let my imagination flow.
Yes FCPX has bugs(especially before the update) but it’s exciting to know this is the foundation that apple will be using to build apon and make FCPX a leading editing software and will far surpass anything that they could have done with FCP7.
I would also like to say it’s fantastic to read that film makers of Nino’s standerd are actually seeing that FCPX is a great tool for the job
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The whole thing kinda reminds me of the release of the first ipad. Initially everybody was excited but when people started to get it into their hands, they went: “well, it’s nice, but what do I use it for” Today everybody and their parents have an ipad or other tablet.
I guess the same thing will happen with FCPX.
It looks nice, has interesting features and just now are people grasping the benefits of the increase in editing speed.
Good times ahead 🙂 -
I’ve just downloaded it literally this evening. For me the price point is the best thing about it. I have just got to the stage where i wanted to start buying plugins but i was running FCP6, i either couldn’t have the plugins or if i could it was money dead in the water straight away on out of date stuff. ok i can’t log and capture any more, but i’m running with my DSLR and using my uni courses z7s with the recording units. but on first glance it looks like i’ll find my way round it pretty fast. The biggest challenge i see is relearning events instead of scratch disks, a few internet tutorial will sort that out.
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If you’re a 1 man operation, and will never have to share your files, then perhaps using FCPX makes sense to use. I love so many things about FCPX, but until it matures and is able to play well with others, I’ll stick with CS5.
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Looking forward to Magic Bullet Looks for FCPX. While others are moaning, I’m excited to grow with this latest version. There are lots of bugs but it promises so much – I’m not throwing away my earlier version of FCP. However, I think once it plays nicely with my hardware and, as important, with the third party developers, it will once again be a software of choice for many.
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