The Cupertino, Calif., company released Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4 on Tuesday, touting it as a "revolutionary new version" that "completely reinvents video editing." However, that complete reinvention may have backfired, as numerous early adopters of the program have complained that missing features, lack of compatibility with Final Cut Pro 7 and bugs have crippled the software.
Currently, 278 of the 578 ratings for the $299 software on the Mac App Store are 1 star ratings, while 143 of the ratings are 5 star ratings. The application current has an average rating of 2 1/2 stars. Motion 5 has fared better with an average rating of 4 stars from 67 ratings, while Compressor has a 3 star rating with just 30 responses.
Customer Reviews of Final Cut Pro X temporarily disappeared from the Mac App Store on Wednesday, prompting speculation that Apple was censoring negative comments, but the reviews were back up within hours.
The current "Most Helpful" reviews are skewed toward negative feedback. "I love the idea of 64bit editing and all of the other features, but the basics for pros are gone," Kevin Lewis wrote in a 2 star review. "The interface is big and chunky like iMove," wrote user Fraize, adding that the program is buggy and "blew up" within 20 minutes of working on a project.
Other reviews compared Final Cut Pro X to Windows Vista, calling it "no longer a professional application," while others took issue with the lack of backward compatibility with Final Cut Pro 7. "I run my business on FCP and my first impression of the new app is that it is horrible," wrote user dangerousdan, though the reviewer admitted that they "will learn to love it."
Reviews outside of the Mac App Store have take notice of the improvements to and streamlining of the software, while still criticizing Final Cut Pro X's missing or limited features. John Gruber of Daring Fireball compared the release to the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X: "a true ground-up rewrite with the intention of laying a solid foundation for the long-term future, but, in the short term, lots of missing features and frustrating changes compared to what current users were accustomed to."
Gruber adds that the Final Cut Pro transition has been more jarring, since the Mac OS transition was a "years-long transition." According to a person familiar with the matter, Apple designated Final Cut Express, Server and Studio as "end of life" as of June 21.
"Great design, like great music, is almost always foreign at first, if not disturbingly strange," David Leitner wrote for Filmmaker Magazine. "You have to spend time with it. But if it is great, and if you invest your attention, it will change the way you look at the world. After using FCP X for a week, Premiere Pro looks to me like the past."
"At version 1 Final Cut Pro X wonât support some professional workflows, but for other professional workflows it will be more than capable," post production professional Philip Hodgetts wrote on his site. Using Final Cut Pro X to cut together a story, Iâm struck by how fast it is to achieve a result, as if everything was designed to get a result a quickly as possible."
Hodgetts wrote that, based on his talks with company representatives, Apple is hard at work at adding features missing in the initial release. "During my direct briefing, the Apple folk made it abundantly clear that the ecosystem was very important to them," he said.
According to Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, many of the world's best Pro editors had their jaws drop when shown Final Cut Pro X. "Iâm blown away by what Apple has done with Final Cut Pro,â Apple quoted Academy Award-winning film editor Angus Wall as saying. Apple privately demoed the software to a small group of industry professionals, who reportedly pronounced the upgrade "spectacular."
AppleInsider reported last year that Apple planned to widen Final Cut Pro's appeal to include more prosumer and advanced home users. Apple reportedly responded with a comment, reassuring users that the next version of Final Cut is would be "awesome" and pro customers would "love it."
248 Comments
Mixed reactions??? It is completely unusable for many "professionals" - I'm dumbfounded why basic functionality such as omf/xml compatibility has been pulled. It's a slap in the face, perhaps a wake up call that Apple have simply moved on to wallmart grazing prosumer market.
Mixed reactions??? It is completely unusable for many "professionals" - I'm dumbfounded why basic functionality such as omf/xml compatibility has been pulled. It's a slap in the face, perhaps a wake up call that Apple have simply moved on to wallmart grazing prosumer market.
And how many users need OMF export? Not many according to Phil Hodgetts
It?s definitely not ready for broadcast work at v1. Nor was FCP 1-3. And the % of Apple?s 2 million installs of Final Cut Pro that need OMF is probably less than 50,000 or .0025%. OMF is desperately needed which is why Apple worked with Automatic Duck to get this ready yesterday.
There's a lot of hand wringing going on by the 5% vocal minority that depends on a feature. Therein lies the rub. FCPX is NOT iMovie Pro. It has a lot of functionality but in its current version one needs to understand what it is and what it isn't.
OMF/XML/EDL isn't there yet so if that's your workflow ..you must wait.
If you're heavy with tape...FCPX isn't the program for you
If you've moved to file based capture and do most of your work on a workstation you can likely get FCPX working for you now.
Incidentally there are plans to add missing features like Multicam and OMF/XML/EDL according to what Hodgetts and some others are saying.
I think the hype was built a bit too much and many thought they'd be able to download and start running but clearly it's going to take some evolving here but the codebase with FCPX is new and likely up to the challenge.
There are a lot of hissy-fits being thrown at the moment. If you think FCX doesn't support your workflow, keep using FCP 7. Apple probably erred in releasing it now, perhaps 6 months more development would have been better, but it's not the end of the world.
And how many users need OMF export? Not many according to Phil Hodgetts
There's a lot of hand wringing going on by the 5% vocal minority that depends on a feature. Therein lies the rub. FCPX is NOT iMovie Pro. It has a lot of functionality but in its current version one needs to understand what it is and what it isn't.
OMF/XML/EDL isn't there yet so if that's your workflow ..you must wait.
If you're heavy with tape...FCPX isn't the program for you
If you've moved to file based capture and do most of your work on a workstation you can likely get FCPX working for you now.
Incidentally there are plans to add missing features like Multicam and OMF/XML/EDL according to what Hodgetts and some others are saying.
I think the hype was built a bit too much and many thought they'd be able to download and start running but clearly it's going to take some evolving here but the codebase with FCPX is new and likely up to the challenge.
The issue is that when you run a "pro" creative business you don't tell the client to lower their expectations of what you can work with. I have no problem calling FCPX a great piece of software in its early stage. But there is a HUGE part of its user base that it is "no longer for", and it is a slice that I didn't predict Apple would treat this way given how it likes to tout its use by editors, but clearly, Apple has once again shifted a pro app lower in the spectrum. Nothing wrong with that as a company. But you don't take away a camera person's Arriflex a hand them a Casio as a replacement and not expect the Casio to end up sitting in the closet.
True, overtime perhaps a lot of the criticisms will be addressed. Though why should we apologise and make excuses for Apple? It'd be nice if places like this actually took hard, critical, editorial choices at times rather then simply being a mouthpiece for Apple...
It's quite a blatant statement for Apple to release FCPX in it's current form.