A First Look at the Final Cut

Ohmyjeezus, the box for Final Cut Pro Studio is the single heaviest box of software I've ever seen in my life--by orders of magnitude. This is because, unlike most software purchases these days, there are actual manuals included in the package. Emphasis on the plural here--each component (Final Cut, DVD Studio, SoundTrack and Motion) has its own manual, and some are multivolume (the Final Cut manual runs to more than 1,800 pages over four volumes). There are seven DVDs of software (a two-hour install!), plus two more discs of tutorial.

So naturally, I didn't spend much time with the actual program because it took most of the night just installing. First there was adding memory (maxing out my iMac at two gigs), then installing the software, then downloading updates to the software, then copying project files for the tutorials. All this took so long that when Marc Rosenbush and our great good friend Buffie Groves (visiting from Boston) swung by around 8:30, I was only just getting ready to fire up the program for the very first time.

"Oh good," said we. "We can all partake of the program for the first time, together!" (No, we didn't actually say those specific words. No one really talks like that. Often.) So in my cramped office-that-is-not-an-office-according-to-the-IRS, we stuffed four chairs occupied by we four persons (Jamie was there too, bemused by the whole rigamarole), and I cheerfully double-clicked.

Short pause. We all stared at the screen. "Huh," I said. "Wonder what that means." Mind, we hadn't even reached the workscreens yet--this was just a window asking which video format and scratch disk should be set as defaults. Hijinks ensued, during which my brand-new 400 GB scratch drive seemed to disappear for a while, and we all stared at the spinning beach ball for an amazingly long time till I finally decided that maybe I should force-quit and then reboot the computer.

But at long last! The program opened! And we opened up the iMovie project Marc and I have been working on, and we marveled! (Marc: "Ooooh, now I can do superimpositions!") And then we noticed that the timeline had somehow inserted a great big gap between a couple of clips, which would result in a long stretch of black screen with nothing happening. "Well then," I said, "this will be my first edit on the new system." And I tried to drag the clips back into place, and something weird happened. So I tried to right-click in the gap, and the command for "Close the Gap" was greyed out and unavailable, and the only option available was "Fill with slug," which by that point we thought was extremely funny.

Suffice it to say that Marc and I will be finishing the current Alien project using iMovie. I got me an education to fit in before I can do any of that there fancy stuff.

Now if only the tutorial moved at something less than lightning speed...