My projects are normally not that complicated, and I publish to the web, so my requirements are more consumer then pro at the moment.  For those of you who have use FCP in the past and have looked at FCPX already know there is a laundry list of issues and shortcomings with Pro.  So much so that its really inaccurate to even call this Final Cut Pro.  It really should be called iMovie Pro.  That being said, if you are a consumer/amateur video producer, this could be a good fit. The snapping features is great, love the background processing and in general, its easier for a non-editors to use. Except for one thing… The Bloody Thing CRASHES!!!   A lot.  And its not like I have some old macbook I’m running this on either. My MacBook Pro is pretty beefy with maxed out RAM. (full disclosure, I’m still a PC Tablet Boy for everything else.)

I think once they get some of the bugs out of this thing, and believe me, there are a number, then we could have a nice product here.  But that’s not the end of my complaints.

One other thing that really annoys me in FCPX is that sooo much has been cut from the product that its rendered only useful for the consumer.  Heck, you have to pay extra just to re-size the a movie down.  Are you kidding me?  Uploads to vimeo?  Nope, not quite working yet.   Sigh…

For the time being, I’m switching over to either Avid or Premier.  Again, since I do not have heavy video production demands, I may go Premier.  However, will I ever switch back?  We’ll see.

I think its pretty clear Apple has decided to drop the Professional Video editing market all together and focus just on the consumer and perhaps prosumer market instead.  This will allow it to build a lighter weight program with optional features to keep the costs and hardware demand down. From a business perspective, this might make sense, but I know one thing, I would take a very care look if I was to trust anything on the professional level with Mac in the future.

So what triggered all this was a post I read on arstechnica.com.  If you have not already made a decision on FCP and do video editing, you may want to give this a read and gauge at what level of video capability you need.  Just home movies or little side projects? You should be fine.  Anything else, you may want to look elsewhere.

The video will be at the bottom of the post..

David Romhan Torres: “I just make iMovie for iphone 4 run on an iphone 3GS, it’s very simple just download it from iTunes, modify info.plist file and change the Minimum system version to 3.0.0 and front-facing-camera to false.”

Really, it just does not get easier then that. Now I have read mixed results from people both on iOS4 and a few who did it on 3.1.3.  I also read that you can grab it from Installous.app (free app from Cydia) and it will install it for you.  I’m checking into it now…  Will update when I know more.

Well welcome to Smooth Movie.  I have not tried this myself because I have not made the jump to the iphone3Gs, but based on the sample video’s from the site, its pretty darn good. Not perfect, but for an iPhone, good.  Now this will not fix major jolts or camera darts, but it will smooth out small bumps here and there and it does make it easier on the eye.  I’m actually bummed I cannot get this for the 3G, but I guess the frame is not good enough to work with the smoothing algorithm.

Here is the link to the site, keep in mind the movies that AWHILE to load.  Check out the second video, best example I think.

http://www.kabukivision.com/smoothmovie/#