How to Use the iPad as a Control Surface in Final Cut Pro

Written by Administrator

Thursday, 27 May 2010 22:42

OK, lets have a look first at the iPad in action controlling Final Cut Pro. Nothing is faked here apart from a couple of edits to show closeups.

Everything looks fine, but hit the read more button to see if this is a real solution to audio mixing.

I was aware of the Air Display app from Avatron as I had met the founder of the company at WWDC a couple of times, indeed he used to work in Pro Apps at Apple. So as it became available online, I eagerly downloaded it and tried to get it to work.

There are a few things you need for the app to function.

1) The iPad and FCP Mac need to be on a wifi network
2) You need to be running Snow Leopard on an Intel machine.
3) You need to buy the app and install it on your iPad. ($9.99)
4) You have to download and install support software for you Mac

Ok, first snag. My edit machine hasn't got a wifi card. No problem, my edit suite is all rigged up with ethernet and everything, including the iPad runs with static IP addresses.

The iPad showed up immediately in the new system preference that the software had installed.

Annoyingly though it did keep losing the signal and I had to repeatedly go back and reselect the iPad. I don't know if that was because my Mac was connected to my wifi router with ethernet or if it was just the way it works.

screen_arrange

What is cool though is the iPad becomes visible on the usual screen arrangement preference. You can drag the small screen around and position it anywhere you like in relation to your main screen. To start with I had two monitors and the iPad, but that caused some really odd graphic problems. Unplugging one of the screens fixed this immediately.

I think that the software automatically thinks you will be using this in portrait mode. I reconnected the iPad holding it upright but landscape and then locked the screen rotation so I could move the iPad around without confusing the desktop setup. I then placed the iPad 'screen' both electronically and physically underneath the main.

So I then fired up FCP, dragged the audio mixer over to the iPad and tried to use it as a control surface.

Did it work? No. Well that is a bit hard, it did work but it is let down by quite a few things.

1) There is a delay, not huge, but enough to doubt if you are doing anything.
2) You can't just grab a fader, they are not individual controls, you have to move the cursor to the other screen and then pickup the fader.
3) You can only move one fader at a time as the software does not support multi-touch :(
4) Although the demo in the video was faultless, I continually lost the connection and had to re-establish often.
5) (Don't laugh) As the iPad has a shiny metal back, any movement off centre causes the iPad to spin. You can see it moving at about 12 seconds on the video. This was with a tissue underneath the unit too!

So it does work, but you wouldn't want to use it in anger. I think the app is designed for people who want more real estate and don't want to use it for input. It would be ideal to have a calender or reference documents on it with a MacBookPro when you were drafting a letter for example. Or maybe even run some widgets on it.

It wasn't designed to be a tool for video editing and unless somebody makes a dedicated app that is hooked up with a cable, don't bother trying.

If you want a control surface for audio mixing, I recommend the the Euphonix MC Control, well it is designed for the job.

An interesting exercise for a few hours though. Maybe one day :)

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