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7 after X – an emotional toll?
I’m curious about whether anyone else has experienced the same thing I did last week regarding cutting in 7 after a sustained block of time cutting in X.
I had two crunch deadline jobs this past week. One for a biotech firm in California. The other for a large national steakhouse restaurant chain as the opening piece for the annual franchise owners meeting.
I had a week on the biotech piece, so I elected to cut it in X to further my learning. It was a great experience, but not a “stress test” in any sense. But it performed well and I was really happy with the results.
The steakhouse chain gig came to me on a drive via FedEx and the producer had already pulled selects and put them on an FCP-7 timeline. So I naturally started to cut it in 7.
The problem is that I became almost INSTANTLY frustrated at a deep emotional level. As soon as I started doing the initial opening composites, the need to wait and render stuff started driving me CRAZY.
I was on a brutal deadline (literally 24 hours to cut the piece and deliver via YouSendIt!)
I literally got so frustrated that jettisoned 7 and moved the drive to my laptop and X, intending just to get the opening composited scenes up and running without all the rendering crap – but once there, I found myself simply continuing on the X timeline – and delivered the entire project straight out of X.
I’ve heard others say the same thing here. It’s tough to get into X. But once you do. Legacy just seems very old, slow and, well, kinda boring.
I don’t want this to be a “feature war.” We all know that some people have feature needs that preclude them from using X. This is about a personal experience that seems akin to me to driving a sports car then being asked to go back to driving a limo.
They are VERY different experiences.
Just wondering if anyone else has had the same impression?
For what it’s worth.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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41 Replies
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I haven’t gone back to FCP7 since swithching to CS5.5. I’ve used FCPX a few times for simple edits. Can’t say I got emotional about my choice of NLE – though I did kick the cat when I tried and failed to get an output from FCPX on my Grade 1 monitor…
Liam Hall
Director/DoP/Editor
http://www.liamhall.net -
Well…
I guess asking a guy who drives a Rolls Royce how he likes driving a Cadillac might be instructive, but I was actually kinda asking how a guy who drives a limo daily liked driving, say, a Miata.
That’s not at all the same question, is it?
If you have to drive six people around, the Miata is stupid. But that doesn’t make a Miata, ipso facto, stupid.
And in this case, some of us are hoping that the Miata may get “upgraded” to becoming a Porsche given development time.
But you’re correct that it’s NEVER likely to be a Fleetwood Brougham. And if that’s what you need, you’re correct to have switched.
Happy Motoring.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Just the opposite. I cut a couple of low profile videos on FCPX this summer, after going through a course on it, so I knew it fairly well. It was a learning experience…not as bad as I thought, not as good as I hoped. When a couple of bigger profile projects came in, I went back to FCP7 and it was like the cliched ” fit like a glove”, where everything felt right, smooth and I wasn’t hamstrung by the stupid new conventions of FCPX.
As far as the rendering time goes, FCPX still takes time to render, in the bkg, but you can’t leave the program either when background render is going on. On FCP7, it’s rarely more than a few minutes on my computer and I use that time to think about my next cut or check email and the internet. -
Well Bill, I’ve vacillated over the change and the PrP option for a few months and decided to put X into real action this week. I’m starting a series of three TV campaigns and made the call to start them in X. I can honestly say I was pretty comfortable in 24 hours and really comfortable in 48.
I have a series of spots ready to finish that are all in 7, so I’m in a similar situation as you.
Even with learning while building the new projects the new work is flying.
Going back to 7 today was the same for me as for you. To me, it feels older and much slower – after a couple of days.I also see an image quality bump, and to me the color grading looks nicer than the 3 way in 7 and I’ve been using lot’s of secondaries and masks…very fast. Lot’s needs to evolve, but what a nice start.
Seriously, it’s taken a couple of days with X to move just as fast as I could in 7 after 10 years and the interface is much faster, rendering is great on an i7.
Also not a single crash in all of the heavy usage.
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I’ve found myself trying to drag video clips over the ‘a/v divider line’ in 7 after using X for a while. Also forgetting to save…
Noah
Call Box Training.
Featuring the Panasonic GH2 and GoPro HD Hero. -
I had a clip catch on fire in 7 when I mistakenly tried to drag it over the line.
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Bill,
Your experience mirrors mine. Going back to FCP7 after working for a sustained amount of time with FCPX was for me a disorienting experience.
After a period of hitting Q and W on the keyboard, trying to skim clips in the bins, and getting nowhere whilst dragging clips around on a demagnetised timeline, I too found the rendering time excruciating.
Sure at the end of the day everything has to get rendered but at least in FCPX work can continue until you take a break and the background tasks start.
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I think that what Liam was responding to was your statement about frustration with rendering. In that context, Premiere Pro has been the $200k sports car for some time.
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It seems obvious by now that people using FCPX for paid jobs
are using it as a tool for cutting small DSLR projects onto their laptops.That’s fine for me BTW, but once they hit the “undo” wall or “reconnect” wall
(or many other walls that are part of a beta program)
they can just start over from scratch, and all for the speed, right?If only these DSLR-three-minute-jobs were the entirety of the industry…
Life would be easier with FCPX, indeed.Thank you all beta-testers and Knights-errant out there!
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[Christian Schumacher] “It seems obvious by now that people using FCPX for paid jobs
are using it as a tool for cutting small DSLR projects onto their laptops.
“Obvious to you perhaps but not exactly true. I’ve been using it for a number of projects, large event documentaries for DVD release shot on XDCam422, Corporate and Promotional films for blue chip companies like IBM shot on XDCam and Sony F3’s. None of which were cut on a laptop.
and yes it is a beta because it’s a V1 programme, ALL V1 programmes are betas including PPro and Avid, I wouldn’t recommend everyone tried it.
Next month I’m starting a feature on it.
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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