Apple’s Final Cut Pro X: A Story of Mixed Reviews

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X has arrived and it went live in Apple’s Mac App Store yesterday. This has officially replaced previous versions of Final Cut Pro: both the Studio suite and Apple’s pro-summer Express product. The software is available for $300 at the Apple’s Mac App Store and weighs 1.33GB.

Features worth mentioning are as follows:

Magnetic Timeline: This offers an exceptionally fluid and flexible way to edit. Whenever you drag a clip or item nearby a neighbouring counterpart, the software binds them.  This automatically keeps you from de-synchronizing parts of a project due to user error and is a big plus but when manoeuvring intricate sequences with carefully placed audio and video, this can act as a hassle.

Progress bar: The loop style progress bar placed in the middle of the screen provides you a breakdown of exactly what it’s doing to each clip including rendering, transcoding and analyzing clips. This is a background activity viewer and helps in keeping an eye on what’s going on behind the scenes.

Auto-analysis features: This is able to analyze your footage and determine if there are people in the shot, how many they are, and how close is the camera. The accuracy is a little dicey though, and it can miscount the number of people.

Auditioning: With this you can collect multiple alternative shots at a single location in the timeline and quickly cycle through them in context. You can also use this to create multiple versions of your project for different deliverables and venues.

Export feature: There’s an Apple device-specific export option to send it to an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. You can also preview what it looks like on each device. You can also jump to an individual scene to make sure it is scaled right.

Despite all the new features added, there are still a few glitches. Users are posting threads up on the Mac App Store, complaining about the software not opening up projects made with older versions of Final Cut Pro. Some are unimpressed by the fact that the software is not supporting numerous legacy Final Cut Pro features like multi-cam editing, and external production monitors. Also Apple seems to have removed stuff, moved stuff, and hidden other stuff from a well-established pro tool.