Macworld Forums: Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 - Macworld Forums

Final Cut Pro 6 is a solid upgrade featuring greater ease of use and enhanced workflow flexibility. For users of previous versions, the decision to upgrade will be a no-brainer, as the new ProRes and Open Format Timeline features alone are worth the price of admission. more

Just wanted to point out a video overview of the new FCS2 features here:
http://macmediacast....ac-mediacast-2/

I'm curious if FCP6 does real time updates of live type files? I read a review comparing Avid to FCP and one thing they pointed out (granted this was a year old review) was how Avid could update a live type file in real time w/o re-rendering. FCP had to re-render the file in older versions.

For the life of me, I don't have a clue why Apple doesn't have the Dock icon do a live update of renderings in any of their pro apps. How far along is that MPEG2 encoding job in Batch Monitor? I don't know unless I switch to the application!

As a long-time Avid Media Composer editor and a more recent FCP user I constantly weight the pro's & con's of both programs. Probably the biggest problem Final Cut has is the media management. Basically using the finder is a recipe for trouble. Every FCP user knows that you constantly lose media. A good editor is organized but Avid's media folders with their database files is a much better way to keep track of media.
Here's my con's list:
Timeline, separating the audio and the video into sub-timelines is such a pain! Too much control!
Rendering, I have a fairly fast cpu and gpu. FCP gives me basically real-time for all my media. Even if it plays stutteringly. Animation codec for example. FCP 6 brings it right in to my HD project but what plays great in QT Pro stutters in FCP and for the life of me, it will not render if I want it to. I feel like I'm editing in Word!
Color, great program....if you want to spend the time. It's not really a color corrector as much as a colorist tool. The 3-way color corrector wasn't strong enough but Color is way overboard if you're cranking on the editing. Avid's CC is much more powerful and it's real-time while Color just sends the correction render info back to FCP.
Pro's list:
Open format timeline, I love it! HDV 24p, DV 30i whatever it plays them together.
ProRes422 codec, great and really fast. I'm not sure if it's color space is up to Avid's DNxHD ( I won't touch that argument) but it's very useful and the way it helps to link all the different footage together in the renders is very powerful.
Compositing, has always been one of FCP strengths. To have the ability to do compositing in the composer window...if they'd just immprove the keyframe window.
Overall FCP is a great program and has some very powerful tools but needs some cleaning up of the UI to make it a more effective editing tool plus geting a handle on media managment.
My choice of workflow will remain Avid for the time being but I will make extensive use of the other members of FCP Suite, namely Motion and DVD Studio Pro. I use both of them a lot and nothing really take stheir place for me.

Color used to be a $25,000 app! Yikes! I'm going to tell my buddy to stop complaining about his Final Cut upgrade cost.

Is FCP 6 really compatible with Mac OS 10.4 (tiger)? I read in Apple site that Final Cut Studio 2 was only in 10.4.9 or later. If I get only the FCP 6 I'll be able to instal in my Mac OS 10.4?

It will work with Tiger. I used FCS in Tiger with no problems. As long as you are above 10.4.9

Thanks!