Industry-grade alternatives to Final Cut Pro

[miguelmorin]

I have had three problems with Final Cut Pro that beg the question whether it's still fit for purpose of professional videos.

I imported one MTS clip and Final Cut Pro converted it to MOV. In the process, it compressed and mangled the image in a few frames around the eyes of this puppet:



I solved this problem by deleting the clip, drag-and-dropping it in the library (without conversion), and placing it again where it should be.

Another problem was that I added images, say A and B, where B is A plus a halo around one object, and added cross-dissolve transition between them to make it look like the object was glowing. The export from FCPX did not show monotonous transition from A to B and back to A, e.g. the amount of image B going from 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% over five frames; instead it was 0%, 50%, 25%, 100%, 75% (or something like it). I solved the problem by deleting all images and transitions and adding them back again.

Finally, I included a clip of a few seconds that I cropped and had to be transcoded. My computer worked overnight at around 200% CPU and the background render still did not complete, it was stuck at 1%:



After several days, I decided to delete the clip and add it again, and then the video exported in a few minutes.

These problems were not only annoying and time-consuming; the real issue is the loss of confidence in the output, the many reviews to catch these, and the risk that some may have slipped through.

I remember my film-making teacher a few years ago saying that Final Cut Pro is no longer industry-grade (although it was still what he taught). I installed the latest version last month, 10.4.8, and am on macOS 10.14.6 (Mojave).

Am I unlucky or is Final Cut Pro no longer industry-grade? What alternatives exist to it?

Note: cross-posted from StackExchange.

[sophisticles]

I guess it depends on what you consider "industry grade". If you are working with ProRes or ProRes RAW files, especially with the latter, it's a must have as nothing else supports ProRes RAW.

To me, the problems you describe sound a lot like user error.

[Cornucopia]

AVID Media Composer supports ProRes Raw on both Windows & Mac computers. So does Adobe Premiere.

FCP isn't my favorite, but I think most people would still consider it "industrial grade", along with the two I just mentioned, and probably also Edius and DaVinci Resolve (the paid version). Vegas Pro - sort of, but it never really fully supported collaboration and now doesn't have Sony putting its weight behind it.

The issues you are experiencing seem to be source decode & render errors. This could be a fault of the software, or of minor corruption in the source files, or in the nesting of effects not being conducive for proper rendering. Or a combination of these. Something may be corrupt in the sequence due to over-taxing of resources. With a few very hard, very large projects that had similar resource issues, I. found it helps to break them apart into smaller, more easily manageable segments (by time or by layer) and then create a master sequence that assembles them, or alternately render out and assemble externally.


Scott

[miguelmorin]

Thanks both! I'll stick with FCP for my next production batch in the coming weeks and then advise.

[super8rescue]

DaVinci Resolve for me, never anything else.