Posted by Spex on 04/13/07 06:59

Since we are top posting....

FCP Studio is really looking its age compared to other offerings such as
Adobe's suite of applications. But, you'd have to be living up your own
ass if you weren't aware that Apple are making a big announcement at NAB
just a few days away now. If you are interested in FCP wait until Apple
have done one of "their look at us aren't we great" presentations at NAB
then make a decision.

It has been heavily rumoured that FCP has been given a drastic rewrite
to make use of GPU and multi-core processors along with QT itself. The
new 8 core Mac Pro is showing little or no improvement in speed over the
4 core Mac Pro in FCP so if Apple want to keep selling its Mac Pros for
editing they had better have got FCP multi threading like crazy.

You might just get a free grading system thrown in too. Apple bought
Final Touch so that might end up in the FCS box.

Other applications in FCP Studio, IMO, are excellent. Motion and DVD
STudio Pro are the two apps I bought FCS for. Motion is not an after
effects and it is not meant to be. It is much more useful than Smarty
indicates. I use it for pre-viz, DVD menus, 2d animation and IMO it is
almost superb. It lacks some features that prevent me using it more
e.g. a tracker.

FCP - Showing its age.
Motion - Good start but lacks some really useful features like a tracker
and 3d! Still work in progress.
Soundtrack - Looks nice but fails to deliver and feels like a beta
release. Logic Pro is well worth the money though.
DVD Studio Pro - IMO still second best to Scenarist.

Luis,

My advice would be to look at PremPro2 and its productions suite,
certainly have a _serious_ look at Edius and its HD accelerator boards
which are superb.

Vegas has a very poor GUI. Ideal for educators...

Wait 'til NAB before jumping.

Smarty wrote:
> Luis,
>
> I have the same opinion as nappy. Using the very latest version of FCP
> Studio HD on the very latest / fastest Apple Desktop workstation (Xeon Quad
> MacPro 3.0GHz) I have found the rendering and previewing of content to take
> far longer than the PCs I use here which are much less expensive and have
> much less expensive software. I am seriously considering dumping the entire
> system in fact, although there are situations where this Apple solution does
> make a lot of sense, namely, if you are in an already established Apple
> environment, or if you do mostly multiple camera NLE. The program called
> Motion is a lot like After Effects but to me is less appealing. The
> Compressor software in Final Cut is terribly slow. Most irritating to me is
> the Apple pre-occupation with their Quicktime formats and the lack of
> support for mpeg2.
>
> I use the Vegas / DVD Architect suite, Premiere, and several other PC tools
> which get the job done very efficiently, and I almost never turn the MacPro
> on. I think a laptop running this suite would be even more disappointing in
> terms of performance to say nothing of the screen space limitations unless
> you also add a big monitor. Even if you did, Motion and other Apple software
> uses the graphics processor card(s) for rendering, and even the extra cost
> very high performance $450 card I added to this MacPro is still
> marginal.....and I hate to imagine how a laptop's graphics card would waste
> a lot of waiting time.
>
> I hate to get into this Apple versus PC discussion at all, because it sparks
> a lot of discussion with a lot of heat and smoke, but very little "light". I
> would only caution you before spending many thousands of dollars as I did
> for FCP Suite HD and Apple hardware to get a lot of opinions before taking
> the plunge.
>
> If this is Apple bashing, so be it...but I readily admit that I have owned
> many Macs starting with the 512K machine over 20 years ago, have owned Apple
> stock, etc......but I just do not think FCP and the hardware to support it
> make the most sense for many if not most users.
>
> Smarty
>
>
> "nappy" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
> news:atzTh.23$Yo2.2@newssvr19.news.prodigy.net...
>> "Luis Ortega" <lortega@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
>> news:eTyTh.499$633.495@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net...
>>> I value the advice that I have been given here on many occasions. I
>>> recently took a course on Final Cut Pro 5 and I was very impressed by what
>>> I saw.
>>> The studio version includes a music creation program and a special
>>> effects program that some say is comparable to After Effects, plus a dvd
>>> creation program and some sort of file format converter, which I think is
>>> called Compressor..
>>> My current software is Avid Xpress DV HD and Premiere Pro 2 on Windows.
>>> FCP seems to have all of the features of Avid and Premiere Pro plus a few
>>> more very interesting workflow features.
>>> My question is what people who are really familiar with these programs
>>> think about the idea of getting a macbook pro and FCP studio 5 as opposed
>>> to continuing with the Windows series of programs that I already own.
>>> I didn't have enough time to really get into all of the programs of FCP,
>>> and I am not that familiar with how stable Apples and FCP are.
>> Don't be swayed by the hype PPro2 is vastly capable. As is the AVID
>> offering. You would be wasting money. IMHO.
>> Get After Effects.
>> I never saw any realy use in the music portion of the Soundtrack Pro tool.
>> Others have. But as a composer.. it was useless to me.
>>
>> YOU would be spending a great deal of money for hardware and software for
>> minimal benefit.
>>
>>
>>
>
>

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