This is something i wrote in another forum about "Phenomenon" apple's new compositor.
it's sad. i trouble shoot fcp daily...actually..a lot more than that. they do such a sh*t job of making apps. really they do. I have NO faith in any major app they release with the spotty work they have done since i got into their proapps
fcp 4.5 was THE most stable fcp ever, 5.0 went down the hole, 5.1 showed a resemblance of coming back to ok, and to say that i've been happy with fcs2 and all that has happened around that is an overstatement.
I run fcp in a few worlds. I have a boot drive for it running in tiger and it's pretty good in a hard core THis is an editing system environment.
Color is absolutely absurd, great app don't get me wrong, but to say it "just works" is a flat lie, and to say it works with ease (not even talking about learning the app, which wasn't too bad i mean it's actual from fcp and back issues) is a miracle relying on any workflow bumps to go smooth.
Compressor is really amazing now in it's ease of use. TO say i don't deal with a crash about once a week, is a joke.
How about fcp in a semi pro environment. Running in suites where only people a year and a half into learning how to edit/make film etc at school so these kids, for the most part aren't dumb. (i did have to turn a deck on for some one the other day to get video out...)
the primary ingest format is panasonic dvc codecs (dvcpro-hd) about 2 or 3 times a week i have to go over and change a setting or adjust things for the simplest of editing.
I made a unix script to send out when a problem comes up to trash prefs. Saves time walking. I'm not sure what it is, but i find my self deleting preferences more and more as each new version comes out.
Ok so how about a full student lab, one where everything is set up to basic ntsc-dv and then frozen in a state where nothing can be changed, surely everything should work as planned? the horror stories i could tell would make you laugh so hard, but thats for The LA meetup.
color can't be run do to monitor size and no output card (funny fire wire is an option....) Dvdstudio pro crashes pretty damned often, motion..no one uses it. Live type is actually stable... soundtrack, well why use it with a protools on our systems.
Final cut has one major hole as far as I'm concerned...it does not support any image sequences...seriously WTF? it's not like we use them at all, or the Digital intermediate acquisition format of choice is a single image per frame thing...
and what about that new app they are making. ok, so lets look at everything apple has developed from 0, there's the I apps and then there is aperture... they ended shake, which worked well and was popular. and they expect everything to just fall into place after 2 years and having a 500 dollar app out. there is no way that what ever it is will blow people away so much that it will move enough to justify a 5k pricetag and pay for the dev work.
I'm sorry there is no way that every one is going to see this app (assuming it's a shake/nuke/fusion/flame killer) it's taken 2 years for an industry to slowly move from shake...part of it was the price point part of it was familiarity. This isn't a 1 horse show any more, this is a f*cking rodeo, and i doubt 'phenomenon' is going to buck hard enough to get people to look.
-zander
Digg it
Sorry dude
Sorry that you have having so many issues. Troubleshooting FCP daily? That points to a large issue of system/QT/FCP version compatibility issues, or third party application interference, or plugin issues, or something. There are of us running FCP and having NO issues. If FCP and all the Pro Apps were as bad as you say they are, no one would use them.
If you don't like Apple's Pro Apps, don't use them. Simple as that. Get Adobe CS3, or go the Avid route. But the simple fact is, if you don't like it, don't use it.
I find FCP to be very easy, and the most recent version, 6.0.2, to be VERY rock solid. Motion a breeze, I am learning Color (thanks to the Biscardi DVD), Compressor has always worked, I still use Shake on occasion. In fact, a company that I work for made the switch from Avid to FCP (took me two months to convince them) and they are amazed at how easy this workflow is, and how well things work.
This turned out to be longer than I wanted. I just wanted to say, if you don't like the apps, don't use them. Bitching about things doesn't solve anything.