Out of Memory!?!

Well, you heard it here first. The inadequacies of Final Cut Pro can easily get you fired in L.A.Why we haven’t fired Final Cut for their software’s amazing ability to replace productivity with completely useless error messages (with no solution but to hit okay and pray for different results) is beyond me. The software is supposed to bend around my project; I shouldn’t have to bend my art-form around their software. It’s plain and simple! My computer is a beast and memory WILL NEVER be an issue. But I get this Out of Memory Error instead of an error that tells me all the speculative things I have to come here and find out. All of the people here simply want to know what final cut has a problem with now! Why is FCP holding my project hostage this time!?The answer to the customers’ problem is never, “We’re working on a solution to that.” It’s, “Well, good luck with that. Maybe you can figure out an annoying work-around that still doesn’t actually accomplish what you’re envisioning. I’m sure there’s some way you can change your proven workflow to accommodate our software engineering problems.” Apple is taking advantage of my loyalty as a customer and has no loyalty to customers who encounter problems with their products. Their solution is to get more desirable customers, with more conventional non-complicated edits. Fine! The first chance I get, I’m taking my business where my productivity won’t be a daily crap shoot and my education always insufficient.I simply cannot afford to continue begging Apple to do common sense things! Like (1) taking everyday SLR images of any size and working with them in an HD project without freaking out, (2) using audio that isn’t originally 48 freakin’ kHz and not screwing it up, (3) supporting me on something other than iTunes Sales until my expensive post production problem has been solved, (4) actually responding to the MANY complaints of thousands of potential Avid Media Composer customers (5) giving me assurances that when I upgrade to FCPX these problems will actually be solved (6) producing accurate error messages that mean something when I screw something up.

Or start by fixing 3-4 version old problems like jittery, embarrassing movement with keyframing FCP’s motion tab’s position property if using anything but even integers (odd and floating point numbers cause the problem). Fix it! How about checking my activity monitor to see that CompressorJobController and CompressorTranscoder aren’t responding and I can’t even type this stinking post in real time because of them. Go ahead and reformat your machine with a fresh install and you’ll find the problem repeats itself with no word or fix from Apple. But guess what! 2 years later, “You can now buy Final Cut 10! This time, if you buy it, we promise we’ll support the problems you’re having until they’re fixed!”

I can’t imagine staking my career on a complete new build with all the unforeseen problems on top of all the problems Apple doesn’t care I’m having on any previous version, RIGHT NOW! No pro will switch any time soon for that reason. So while all the amateurs are screaming “it’s awesome, there’s no problem here”, with their simple little iMovie type projects for the car dealer in town, when we switch we would still be the first to test it with our “weird” and complex projects and find out our needs still aren’t met. Perhaps the new price is achieved by all the money saved from not supporting previous versions. If I’m going to have to learn a new build, why not learn the competitor’s build, whoever has real customer service!

If I gave such poor responses to my customers, they would certainly fire me; especially with my competitor right down the road! But to do business with Apple, by continuing with FCP, I will have to make up for their lack of response to their customer (me) and my customers too.

Screw this! I’ll buy my iTunes from Apple, but I’m done buying problems for my post workflow. I want solutions that allow me to be artistic, not a technical Unix wizard. I want something that allows me to take control of my vision and my art comes out the other end; not some goofy hybrid squeezed through the FCP play-doh art factory.

Very sincerely,

John Hadwin

[Carol Phiniotis] ” It was all due to one image that FCP really didn’t like. I checked the image and it was RGB, but it was also huge at 7200×7200. I resized it to 1800×1800, dropped it back in FCP and it rendered. “FCP currently has a maximum pixel dimension that cannot exceed 4000 pixels wide, which is essentially a 4K image. So, that’s why that issue arose. Now you know, whenever importing images or video part of your job as the editor is to check every file before you import it.Here in Los Angeles, a simple miscue like that could conceivably ruin a career, because it could throw off an entire post-production schedule and thus cause a missed release date.David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
http://www.drwfilms.com