FCPX and AAF Support

Recently a post came up on Twitter with my name mentioned and it was asking if FCPX supported AAF support yet. My guess is that this post won’t get much traffic because the VAST majority of my readers and followers don’t know or care what AAF is. 

What is it? Well… in high end production workflows it is very common that various parts of the work be devided up between differently specialists. Graphics are done by the graphic artists, color is done by a colorist, effects are done by the effects department and audio is done by a guy who has magical ears and better plug ins than the rest of us. If you want to interface with these people there is a long history of standardized workflows that have worked for a long time. 

So the other day when this Twitter post came up about AAF support came up for FCPX I just sort of rolled my eyes and here’s why.

1. The installed user base of FCPX users is vast and growing. 

2. MOST of them don’t know what AAF is and they aren’t missing this “vital feature”.

3. For the high end guys that DO need it, there are simple to use plugins that solve this problem that cost less than 3 months of Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

4. If you were REALLY serious about getting this answer you’d actually ALREADY KNOW about this plugin. 

5. You’re probably just unhappy with something else in your life and you want to kick the dog, which in this case, is Final Cut Pro X. (and yes… its pronounced 10 and not “ex”) 

Then my friend Dave Valencic on Twitter chimed in and said, “it’s still a function that should be included”. Maybe Dave but frankly… I like the way that the development of FCPX is going. It’s a VERY strong tool and Apple constantly chooses where to put it’s efforts and resources. To do AAF support right would take resources and frankly… IT’S ALREADY DONE… its cheap to implement and again… the VAST majority of FCPX users DON’T need it so let the specialists take care of it.

And again. I want to say, although I have good friends that work at Apple none of them have shared ANYTHING with me about this topic this is PURELY my own opinion.

Later Later. 

Comments

[Govt Jobs in India]

Great information in the post

[DavidMHewson]

I agree Chris, AAF even in Pro Broadcast environments is becoming less of a thing, generally only used on productions with significant sound design elements. As a broadcast editor working on Fox8, Arena and Comedy Channel in an Avid environment (editing in FCPX on the sly) we rarely use AAF. The general workflow for Avid, Final Cut Pro Classic (and FCPX) has been to kick out a Quicktime Multi-track clip along with a prox reference mp4, drop the files into the folder on the network email your sound guy or Girl no XML required. This is the same workflow used in Pro Tools when editing from digital betacam tape not that long ago.