An open letter to Tim Cook about Final Cut Pro, signed by editors and post-production pros around the world 5
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Ronald Sussman

I think they are pissing into the wind. Just look at the other NLEs out there and the move to collaborative editing solutions and cloud/remote workflows. FCP is way behind and 11 years on, it actually feels old. I know I’ll probably get flamed for stating this but it’s a fact if you look at recent updates and announcements from the big 3 players in the market. Apple has bigger things on its mind than pleasing a very small segment of its market.

Howard Silver

Signed the letter. It made me consider how hopeless it’s been the last 10+ years praying Apple listens to professional FCP users. 10 years to get dupe detection and everyone is cheering. It’s like forgiving a habitual wife beater who brings home flowers after the last incident. I’d hate to go back to selecting tracks but DVR is making so much progress.

Ralf Verbeek

I’ve actually edited a bunch of feature length documentaries and short fiction films with FCPX, but in the end I had to leave, because too often there was trouble with the post production and Producers wouldn’t let me anymore… I agree with Ronald: 11 years ago it was a revolution, now it feels frozen in time. A bit like my trashcan Mac Pro, which I had to sell off too, because it could not be updated.

Julio Garcia

Apple has dropped support for tape based camcorders but not thru FCP but instead its hopeless MacOS Monterey. The operating system should not dictate the power and capabilities of FCP I feel like they are shooting themselves in the foot Such miscommunication with their tech teams is very noticeable. Blackmagic Designs are leaps and bounds over the retards working in Apple bubbles Goodbye Tim Cook you have dropped the beachball literally

Bob brown

Love it!
Reduced to begging the same company that scrapped FCP7 (for no good reason) hoping that Apple grace their concerns with a caring ear.

A lot of masochists and gluttons for punishment it seems.

The sensible thing to do is to walk away from this abuse.

Last edited 2 years ago by Bob brown
jeff arballo

I did a 2 hour documentary “SCRAMBLE THE SEAWOLVES” originally we were going to use a group up in Hollywood. But things didn’t work out. So instead I edited about 90% of the documentary myself. I did have some help for a few weeks. Eventually, I needed help with color correction and grading and took my project to a studio in Hollywood. I had to teach them how to use FCPX and how to use third party apps to get it into Resolve because they had no clue about FCPX. The post house were very surprised that FCPX had these apps which allowed them to take the project over to Resolve, I believe no fault of theirs. When they asked me how many people I had on my editing team I sad it was mostly just me, they were surprised. I have used all the NLE’s and truly believe FCP was the only platform that I could use to be that organized on a 2 hour documentary and get the edit done as fast as we did. Would love to see better collaboration. I remember at one of the events at NAB when they showcased Resolve I was surprised at how many features were from FCPX. What Resolve did, was continue to make improvements where FCP fell short. I love FCP, but will admit I just did a short class on Resolve. Don’t want to switch but my company is growing, so are our projects, I need FCP to grow with us.

Miles

This letter is a huge waste of time. When Apple killed FCP 7 they got what they wanted. More YouTubers, and such. The primary complaint from the vast majority of users of FCP 7 was that it was “too hard” to learn. Apple fixed that with FCP X and they made a ton of money doing it. It was their number one selling app for a while.

You can cut something yourself in FCP X! Absolutely. I’ve done it and it works great. But! That is not how 99% of shows/movies are created… by one person in a room with one computer… People tout the speed at which you make edits like that’s an actual thing in our industry. It really isn’t. Any working film/tv editor or assistant editor cuts fast enough with track-based editing. Trust me.

As long as Apple cares not about collaboration – and only about speed/power – it will remain years behind its competitors in film/tv. Who really cares if you can cut 18 streams of 8K video in a multicam if you have to do everything else by yourself?

Film and TV post-production is highly collaborative and becoming more so thanks to the tools Avid, Premiere, and Davinci are developing. Put another way, those companies are actually helping to change the way the world works in post. Bringing us together through timezones, coasts, and countries. Apple wants nothing to do with that future, and I for one will not wait another 10 years for them to join us.

David Logan

Hmm…if FCP has been good enough for a major talent like Walter Murch for years, case pretty much closed. We also cut Fortune 500 commercials at our in-house ad agency facility here in Chicago…no problem. Lot of myths and non-sensical conventional wisdoms in our industry, always has been…usually folks protecting their fiefdoms. Just sayin’.

James O Nicholls

I can imagine that Apple have given up on FCP in light of BMD’s massively disruptive Resolve NLE suite.
I am just wondering if the “writing is on the wall” from their point of view that Resolve is taking or going to take over. Maybe if not already???
After all BMD are super committed to using and leveraging advanced MAC hardware, so Apple is still going to sell its PC platforms.
And… lets face it, Apple have already immensely dumped on its user base with the (even shocking to this day) walk away from its FCP professional eco system of 11 years ago.
You’ve got to ask yourself, would you really be surprised if they did it again?

Carlos Garcia

Funny. I am in the process of writing an letter to Cook about fixing FCPx’s UI (now that they’re actually listening to pros again) and you guys are asking for better marketing.
Asking Apple to increase marketing and promotion of FCP X completely misses the mark: the whole “storytelling” paradigm, the magnetic timeline that gets more in the way than anything else, no “tracks” and therefore no track level controls, the almost complete inability to make bins/to do proper sub-clipping, in other words, all of the iMovie/UI deficiencies of FCPX are the real reasons that pro’s should avoid using it. Resolve is doing all of this right.

The inability to really organize a project with custom made bins is one of the most glaring omissions. Please spare me the arguments that: this is a new way of doing things, so stop fighting it and adjust to it, or that you use keywords/etc to organize and find everything. Basically, working with FCPx seems like constantly finding ways around the almost useless UI rather than just working. No, keywords ARE NOT the same as organization, and if you look at the level of bins/organization that editors have to do on major projects this “story” paradigm just doesn’t cut it. Resolve has smart folders that lets you do what FCPx does with keywords AND lets you bin/subclip/organize to your heart’s content. If you want some real change, ask Apple to bring back tracks, bins while keeping FCPx’s solid foundation (faster than other NLEs, background rendering, rock solid stable). I would NEVER use FCPx on a major project that requires extensive bin organization (a feature film, for example, where Resolve/Premiere/Avid let’s you break/organize everything into Acts, scenes, shots, etc).

I only use FCPx for 4k Multicam work at this point because it is far better than other NLEs for this, but I would not use it for anything else.

Stop asking Apple to better market a product that has serious UI issues that need to be fixed.

https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/inside-professional-editing-timelines/

Notice how FCPx is noticeably absent.

Carlos Garcia

” if you want a lot of those things you mention that FCP doesn’t do then all you need to do is move to an NLE that DOES do those things.”

I think my point is that a lot of professionals have done precisely that OR won’t use it for the reasons that I stated. Asking for better PR is not going to fix any of that.

Carlos Garcia

Valid points Scott, but what are the common complaints from those that refuse to use it? The things I mentioned come up over and over again whenever people discuss why more pros aren’t using FCPx. Those complaints are not going away, and it just so happens, that those are the reasons why a lot of pros won’t use it. Get rid of the unified window/iMovie UI (a violation of Apple’s own GUI guidelines btw, love that I can break apart almost every window in Premiere and put it wherever I want) and if you really want more pros to adopt it choose function over form and redesign the UI. They admitted they made a mistake with the trashcan mac pro, hopefully they’ll listen and come around to addressing these UI complaints. No one using Avid media composer for major work will EVER switch to what is essentially iMovie on steroids. Even Premiere is better, and Resolve is everything Apple has failed to do with FCPx.

There’s no way around any of this, and at some point Apple is going to have to address the UI if they are serious about giving pros what they want. Trust me, I tried to bend, twist, and conform my workflow to the UI, but it’s just not worth it when Resolve (and even buggy as hell Premiere) are available options.

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