Does Final Cut Pro X Satisfy?

Apple released the updated Final Cut Pro yesterday, and like normal, whenever does anything of note, it’s big news. In case you’re unaware, Final Cut Pro is a movie-editing software suite, one that promises users the ability to make professional movies from the comfort of their homes. A great pitch, especially when you consider just how many people are uploading videos on a daily basis. No longer is such software only for the movie-making geeks with ultra-expensive recording equipment.

Naturally, when Apple updates any of its stable of products, the world takes notice. The update of Final Cut Pro to the X level was no different, either, as social media acted as a big staging platform for these reactions. Unfortunately, there isn’t much value at the Facebook page for Final Cut Pro, and so we’re concentrating on Twitter.

By and large, the reaction seemed fairly positive, although, there is some surprising dissent. Nevertheless, the new price point for Final Cut Pro X is a fan favorite:

However, word soon got out that updated version wasn’t getting fantastic reviews, which, if you’re used to following the Cult of Mac for anything of time, brings a “gasping for air” kind of response. Nevertheless, not only were some of the reviews negative, but some people enjoyed watching Apple take slaps over its update movie-making software suite:

While the backlash was indeed present, not everyone was dissatisfied with the new Final Cut Pro product. In fact, some of them loved it. Noted Internet celebrity/WebProNews blog partner Robert Scoble loved Final Cut Pro X, and wasn’t afraid to tell the world about it and it’s sweet price point:

The video in question. It does have nice production values:

Although Scoble actually practiced what he preached, and seemed to really enjoy the new version, the criticisms of Final Cut continued unabated:

Perhaps this last one gives a more honest idea of what the update was all about:

But it wasn’t all lemons in regards to Final Cut Pro reviews. Some seemed to appreciate what Apple was trying to do:

Over at KenStone.net, Steve Martin, a Final Cut Pro user since 1999, offers his take on the upgrade. There are things he enjoys:

I love the organizational intelligence of FCP X and frankly it’s long overdue. If you think about what a computer was born to do, it excels at chugging through and making sense of huge amounts of raw data. This is something a machine should be doing, otherwise it’s something I have to do myself or pay someone else to do. I also like the smart analysis, background rendering, the skimmer and the Precision Editor. These features make the editing experience feel fluid, organic and less mechanical then track based editing applications.

And things he doesn’t:

While FCP X is very promising, it still lacks key features for professionals. (I’m cutting it some heavy slack because I’m taking into account this is essentially a version 1 product built on an entirely new foundation). But the fact remains that there is no professional audio editing capabilities. With many of the features of Soundtrack Pro now rolled into FCP X, I still long for a full featured waveform editor to perform bread-and-butter audio editing chores. This coupled with the fact that there is no built-in way to collaborate with sound editors using ProTools or other DAWs is problematic.

But in the end, the lower price wins out for Martin, as it does with a number of people who reacted to the update news. It should also be noted, Martin’s quotes come from perhaps the most extensive one-day/first look review for a software suite you’ll ever see.