FCP X Updated, Magic Bullet Looks 50% Off

Final Cut Pro X was essentially version 1.0 of an entirely new app, and it shipped with enough features absent that many questioned the continued use of the “pro” name. Today Apple released a free update to FCP X that restores many of those missing features, including:

• Import FCP 7 projects via 7toX
• Media re-linking
• Multicam editing
• Video out via Blackmagic and AJA PCIe cards, as well as Thunderbolt devices

In this way FCP X is following the Apple pattern that is as hated as it is admired: if you can’t make it perfect, don’t release it. Some of these reinstated features are better than they ever were in FCP 7. Multicam tracks can be synced automatically based on audio waveforms, or even metadata. The new chroma keyer is greatly improved.

All these new and not-so-new features are wonderful to see, and I’m delighted that Apple is advancing FCP X so quickly. But what makes me happiest today is that this new release represents the collaborative effort between Apple and Red Giant to resolve the issues that were preventing Magic Bullet Looks 2 from working properly. Starting today, Looks users can download a free update that enables full FCP X compatibility.

Red Giant is so excited about this that they’ve put Looks on sale for 50% off (that’s $199). For every platform.

So if you haven’t tried FCP X or Magic Bullet Looks, today is a great day to do either, or both.

The 50% off sale (offer code LOOKSFCPX50) is for the next seven days. Magic Bullet Mojo already works wonderfully in FCP X, and is still 50% off—only $49.

What I Do With My iPad Part 2: Write With a Keyboard

The iPad is a wonderful focused writing tool. Both Harry McCracken and James Kendrick have perfectly described how its simplicity and one-app-at-a-time model encourage attentive productivity. McCracken writes:

With the iPad… You can devote nearly every second of your time to the task at hand, rather than babysitting a balky computer. I don’t feel like I’m “using an iPad to write.” I’m just writing. It’s a far more tranquil, focused experience than using a PC or Mac.

McCracken and Kendrick agree that using an iPad to write tranquilly and focussedly requires a physical keyboard (both like the Logitech Keyboard Case). I love using my iPad with my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. I really wish someone at Apple did too, because unfortunately, the device’s keyboard support feels like a bit of an afterthought. I can’t help but feel that if anyone on the iPad team was passionate about the physical keyboard experience, a few glaringly obvious shortcomings would be corrected.

• Command + Tab, optionally in concert with the left and right arrow keys, is the keyboard shortcut for switching apps on Mac. I want this functionality so bad on my iPad that I actually mocked up what it might look like. I hope this video makes it as clear to you as it is to me how incredibly useful this would be.

I know, first I extol the virtues of the iPad’s focus and single-app view, and then I beg for an easy way to bounce among my apps. What can I say—the only thing a writer likes more than a distraction-free environment is distractions. Now on with the gripes.

• When a search or other text entry, such as an email field, presents a list of suggestions based on what I’ve begun to type, I should be able to use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate that list, and Return to select—just like we do on OS X. iOS 5 added this functionality in a few places (address fields in Mail, for example), but there are still many text fields where it is frustratingly absent (most notably Search in Safari).

• If you purchased your Apple keyboard after July 2011, your F4 key is devoted to Launchpad, the iPad-esque app browsing screen in OS X Lion. This key, with its grid-of-apps icon, is just dying to function as an iPad home button.

It’s not just Apple that thinks of iPad keyboarders last, if at all. Most of my writing apps exhibit an understandable, but nevertheless frustrating behavior when used with an external keyboard. Writing often means adding text to the end of a document, so frequently the part of the screen that I’m focussed on is the very bottom, as far from my eyeballs as possible (especially when I’m using my Incase Origami case/stand). You can work around this by padding the end of the document with a bunch of empty lines (or, better still, raising the iPad closer to eye-level if possible—not easy, but if you can pull it off you’ve created something much better for your posture than any laptop), iA Writer in full-focustard modebut I do wish that some of these apps would recognize that without the on-screen keyboard naturally pushing my words up to the center of the screen, there’s utility in padding out the bottom of the screen and keeping your typing area near the vertical center—the way, say, Scrivener does on the Mac in its excellent full-screen mode. Of all my iPad writing apps, the only one that nails this is iA Writer—but only in its full-focustard mode.

McCracken wrote about using his iPad as a laptop replacement. That’s not how I see it. There are many occasions when the power to do anything that my MacBook Pro offers is exactly what I want. But there times where that potential creates such a distraction that I long for something simpler. The amazing thing about using the iPad for creative work is that the device goes away, and the task at hand becomes the entire experience. With a just little more of Apple’s characteristic attention to detail, the physical keyboard experience could be just as transparent, and the iPad would truly be the best writing tool I’ve ever known.

If you agree with all or any of this, consider letting Apple know via their iPad Feedback form.

See also: What I Do With My iPad Part 1: Storyboarding

Magic Bullet Looks in FCP X

Red Giant wasted no time in porting Magic Bullet Looks to Final Cut Pro X, but the all-new Final Cut is a young platform and there have been some hurdles. We’re almost there, but we’re working with Apple to resolve a critical bug (theirs, not ours) that’s preventing us from releasing. Aharon Rabinowitz explains:

Apple is taking this issue very seriously, and they’ve been very responsive. We know their team of developers is dedicated to giving you the best possible user experience in FCP, so we expect a resolution soon.

I haven’t fallen in love with FCP X yet, but seeing this preview has me hopeful. The realtime interactions and seamless background rendering are how everything we use should work.

The Misfits, the Rebels, the Troublemakers

This is long, personal, rambling, and a week too late. There are so many better things your could read about Jobs than this. I’m posting it because I didn’t want to look back at this year on Prolost and see just a hole here. If you decide to read on, this is as good a time as any for me to humbly thank your for your attention.

In 1985, i was learning to program BASIC on an Apple II in my 8th grade computer programming class. I wrote a Death Star trench flight simulator that was every bit as impressive as my ability to not ask girls to the dance.

That same year, a friend whose father worked at the local university took me to a special room where they had a Macintosh. Instead of our usual skateboarding and lighting things on fire, we spent hours drawing Opus the penguin in Macpaint.

In film school I used Amigas for filmmaking, but when I graduated I bought myself a PowerBook 170 with a black and white screen. I felt I could afford it because I was working at my dream job, using a $40,000 Silicon Graphics workstation to create visual effects for movies like Twister and Mission: Impossible. On the latter, I met John Knoll, who showed me how he was using his Mac to recreate space battle shots for the Star Wars special edition.

He looked like he was having so much fun. My SGI workstation felt like an incredibly powerful computer. John’s Mac seemed like a limitless creative tool. I started taking my own time to learn After Effects, Electric Image, and Photoshop. I spent close to $10,000 setting up a pimped-out PowerMac at home. I started writing screenplays and dreaming up short films. After a year of learning how to be a post-graduate human, I was back to making my own movies with computers.

John Knoll started the Rebel Mac Unit at ILM and asked me to lead it. The systems guys took my SGI workstation away and replaced it with a Mac. For a minute, I panicked. I was about to bet my career on the theory that I could create ILM-quality effects using a computer and software that any idiot could buy.

We made space battles for Star Trek, displays for Men in Black, a minefield for Galaxy Quest, and hundreds of shots for a new Star Wars movie. We had jackets made with the Rebel Alliance logo on one shoulder and an Apple logo on the other, stitched black-on-black because there were people at the company who genuinely hated what we were doing.

When I saw the first digital video camera, the Sony VX1000, I bought it immediately. I got my hands on an early prototype of a FireWire card and put it in one of the two Macs I had on my desk (that was Rebel Mac’s version of a multitaksing OS). I started writing a short film that would be finished completely on a home computer.

The name “Rebel Mac” hearkened back to the stories of Jobs starting the Mac division at an Apple that had sprawled out of his control. But we couldn’t use it in public, because ILM had an exclusive PR deal with SGI that ended the year I quit that dream job.

Rendering The Last Birthday Card in After Effects 4 on the blue G3 in 1999. Click to enlarge. Don’t miss the render time.

With my new blue G3 tower and version 1.0 of Final Cut, I finished my short and joined two friends in starting a company to make films and effects. We had grandiose ideas and “Lombard” PowerBooks. To promote our launch at the Sundance film festival, we made a promotional DVD with a pre-release version of Apple’s DVD Studio Pro.

We released version 1.0 of Magic Bullet. It was Mac-only and cost $999.

Our company grew, and our PowerPC-based Mac Pro workstations started to feel slow. We decided to switch to Windows, in part for access to faster Intel processors. Adobe and Intel worked with us on that transition, and I even took out an “advertorial” with them talking about our decision. We didn’t receive much in exchange for the promotion. Amidst rumors of a skunkworks division at Apple testing OS X on Intel processors, I had been considering writing a letter to Steve Jobs explaining the difficult position we were in. The advertorial was the easiest way to make sure he’d read it.

Apple responded by terminating our beta testing of Final Cut Pro, and retracting an offer to bid on the launch video for a new PowerPC Mac. I heard through a friend who got the video gig that Steve Jobs had referred to me as a “whore.”

I remember being so thrilled that he knew who I was.

Two years later at WWDC, Jobs announced that Apple would be switching to Intel.

That was 2005. Around this time, I was collecting my thinking about accessibility, creativity, filmmaking technology and post production into a book. It’s pointless to describe how essential my Apple laptop was to creating The DV Rebel’s Guide. Now you can read it on an iPad.

I directed the Second Unit on a movie in 2007. I had my 17” MacBook Pro with me every day. So integral to my process was it that the grip crew built a stand for it on my monitor cart. We called it the Nerd Station.

When we closed our company in 2009, I was once again left with nothing more than my Mac laptop. Now, when I walk into the offices of an executive who might be greenlighting the next phase of my career, it’s either that laptop in my hand, or my iPad.

Steve Jobs was instrumental in creating the tools that were not only the means of my creative work, they made me feel that there was no limit to what I could do. Everyone else makes computers for people who like computers. Steve Jobs made computers for people who like life.

He also made computers for people who can’t help but make things. When I’m working on the next Magic Bullet idea, there’s not a moment that I don’t try to imagine what Jobs would do in my shoes. How would he handle this idea, these products, this launch? On my best days I feel like I’m channeling a hundredth of a percent of his design principals—but in my own way, as he so eloquently reminded us.

As it happens, the day we all learned that Steve Jobs was gone, I had lunch at Pixar. A beautiful place full of amazing people using groundbreaking technology to do great work.

That’s the world I live in. That’s the world Steve left behind.

Shot with my iPhone 4 and processed in Noir for iPhone

Final Cut Pro X Is Here

I’m downloading it now for the first time.

So is the rest of Red Giant Software.

In the past two months, Red Giant has cancelled two products and one appearance out of uncertainty regarding Final Cut Pro X’s support for the cool stuff we love to build for you guys to get your work done.

Anyone care for a drink?