Final Cut Pro 10.4.4 is out, and so is a reminder that Apple is ditching legacy media

Today Apple released Final Cut Pro 10.4.4, Compressor 4.4.2 and Motion 5.4.2

As always before upgrading, wait until you are in-between projects, and backup your current apps, and your current Libraries.

On the news release page you will notice this small paragraph:

Compressor, the advanced encoding companion to Final Cut Pro, moves to a new 64-bit engine that takes advantage of all the memory in a user’s Mac for improved performance when encoding high resolution, high frame rate video. Compressor maintains support for 32-bit codecs, so editors can continue to work with key legacy formats. And the app now supports SRT closed captions, which is an important format for delivering captioned video to the web and international markets.

Nick Montgomery @Merch_Media Tweeted another notice from Apple:

Legacy media files are compatible with macOS Mojave, but they won't be with future macOS releases. Legacy media can include footage recorded with cameras like Sony HDCAM-SR cameras, footage from GoPro cameras recorded in the CineForm format, video files in the Avid DNxHD/DNxHR format created with software, footage shot with many other older cameras, or files modified with older software.

Here we are confronted with macOs Mojave being the latest of the OSes to support 32-bit apps. With the next release of macOs in fall of 2019, 32-bit no more. That includes Quicktime7.

We knew this was coming with the 2013 announcement of Apple transition from legacy Quicktime to AVFoundation. So Quicktime Player 7 will stop working, and any legacy media files will need to be converted.

For understanding this transition, here is a great article by Larry Jordan: Media Doesn't Last Forever from July 2018.

And a in-depth article by digital Rebellion: Thoughts on 32-bit codecs being phased out in macOS.

What are the concerned codecs one might ask? Apple is vague at best. Luckily Charlie Austin comes to our rescue:

Here is the list on my machine:

ApplePlanarRGB

SorensonVideo

SorensonVideo3

AppleBMP

AppleCinepak

AppleH261

AppleH263

AppleMotionJPEGA

AppleMotionJPEGA

AppleMotionJPEGB

AppleMotionJPEGB

ApplePNG

AppleNone

AppleNone

AppleVideo

AppleGraphics

AppleTGA

AppleTIFF

AppleComponentVideo

AppleJPEG2000

ApplePixlet"

Most of these are obsolete and personally I have never edited with any of these in the past. I had many esoteric codecs coming from client, but the first thing for me is to always convert any exotic codec into an editing friendly codec.

I think this ditching of legacy codecs is a necessary move from Apple in order to make and keep FCPX fast and smooth. Just like I would not edit with h264, it makes sense to me that we need modern tweaked-for-speed codecs to work with. Not to mention codecs that are capable of more bandwidth to accommodate improvements in camera capture, although that's another subject.

That means yes, we will have to do more transcoding in the future. I am not too worried: there are tools for that, and there will still be tools to convert legacy footage into modern codecs to work with in FCPX for the years to come.

Here is a newer article by the guys at Latenitefilms/CommandPost: Legacy Media in Final Cut Pro that explains the situation even better, specifically the .mov wrapping part, and it confirms what I'm thinking.