The Kremlinology of FCP-X

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Once upon a time, in a faraway land called The Soviet Union, the people in charge used to stage a big parade every year on May 1st.  The great leaders of The Soviet Union would stand on top of Lennin's tomb in Red Square and watch the parade.

Afterwards, they'd release an official photograph of themselves standing on top of Lennin's tomb watching the parade.

And then, Very Smart People in places like Washington DC would spend days and weeks staring very long and hard at this photo (possibly with a magnifying glass), comparing it to last years, attempting to discern what it meant that Gromyko was now standing to the left side, when he was on the right last year.  Why is Krustev in the middle rather than the side?  Is Molotov's mustache a little longer this year?

Finally, when they felt that  they had stared at the photo long and hard enough, the Very Smart People would make big pronouncements based on what they've divined from their excersize.

Most of what they learned was actually bullshit, by the way.

And, just for the record, the photos were often doctored to make it seem like everyone was standing in esthetically pleasing groups and, most importantly, that nobody was taller than Stalin.

And so, much more recently but not that much closer to my home here in New York, a bunch of people met in Las Vegas and were served a lot of alcohol and then shown a "sneak peak" at the next version of Final Cut Pro X.

And a shit storm of Kremlinology has followed in the wake of this event.

A lot of Chicken Littles among us have decided that is certainly a disaster and they will be forced to change to another platform because some particular feature that they did not see must not exist.

It only works on one monitor, just like Motion (which I use on 2 monitors, by the way).  There's no support for tape or external capture cards.  They've eliminated the Viewer window.  There are no keyframes (despite the fact that they actually showed and mentioned reframes).  They're killing off all of the other Studio apps.

By the same logic, I must assume that FCP-X will only work in Las Vegas.

A lot of other Chicken Littles among us have looked at the videos and decided that we will be forced to do things in exactly the way that they were shown at the sneak peak.

You'll be forced to keep everything in sync with the Magnetic Timeline that magically makes room for you.  You'll be forced to automatically color correct and stabilize your footage on ingest.  You'll be forced to use the Strip View when previewing shots in your bins.

And there are also the Chicken Littles who are pissed off just because it's different.  They've taken to calling it iMovie Pro.  I assume they've never seen a Smoke, which I think resembles the new FCP-X in a number of ways.

What does it all mean?  Probably a lot less than the Chicken Littles think.  After all, they're only looking at a doctored photo of a staged event.

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