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After a year has perception of FCPX changed?
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[Clint Wardlow] “Frankly what others think of my methods doesn’t worry me. You should see one of my shoots (wheelchairs & kiddy wagons as dollies, any kind of light that gives me the look I want, and a the possibility of a varity of cameras from JVC VHS, a refurbished pixelvision camera, an ancient sony betacam, a Beaulieu 4008 super8, etc, etc). Most pros would have a heart attack (and often do go out of their way to tell me everything I am doing wrong when they visit one of my sets….sigh). “
This applies to an NLE as well.
If FCPX doesn’t feel right to you, then really that’s all that matters.
If you look around, you’ll find people having success with it, but it might not fit your style or situation.
Jeremy
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Interesting thread. 🙂 Just thought I’d chime in here with some thoughts…This may end up being really long, so I’ll apologize in advance.
A bit about me… I cut trailers and TV spots for features. I’ve been editing full time for around 15 years, and for 5 years or so previous to that was a sound editor and post production mixer. I also was a beta tester for versions 2 and 3 of FCP and was one of the first, or maybe even the first person, in Hollywood anyway, to finish a TV spot cut on FCP (Version 1 point something – I like taking risks lol). I think it was for Duece Bigelow. 🙂 But I digress…
First, to answer the original question… Yes, my opinion has changed. I was among the multitude of “pro’s” who eagerly opened X when it first appeared, stared at it in horror, pressed a couple buttons, it crashed, and then I quickly downloaded the latest offerings from Avid and Adobe to see what I’d eventually be working with. They hadn’t changed much really 🙂 Some months later I downloaded the free trial of 10.0.3. Same process, but it took a while longer for it to crash. Then .4 came out, and with it 7toX, so I figured what the hell, and bought it. Got a spot that I had cut in 7 imported to X and started to mess with it…
That was around a month ago and I’ve gotta say, it’s pretty awesome. It’s got some quirks but when this thing gets dialed in it’s gonna be a killer. Yeah, it’s sometimes sluggish, is currently missing a few key things, and a bunch of things FCP 7 users are used to, but that’ll change. FCP 2 was just as clunky, if not more so, and look where we are now. 🙂 I’m still cutting in 7, but I’ve got 2 projects… uh… events… living in X right now. Real ones, with lots of sequences… er, projects, and clients and deadlines etc. It’s a little scary since they’re close to finishing… that’ll be fun 😉
I won’t rehash all the missing things we all know about, I’m confident they’ll reappear in time, I’ll just note some stuff on which my opinion has changed, since that’s what this thread is about… Now, if you believe Apple will abandon the “pro” market, which I don’t, then nothing I say matters, but…
The skimmer… awesome. Searchable, range based keyword collections/favorites, all the metadata stuff… really cool.. goodbye “selects”! Storylines? Don’t really get it, reminds me of old skool Avid cutting. Here’s my solution… I don’t use them. Well, I try not to anyway… at least ’til I figure them out a bit better. Trackless timeline… LOVE it! Seriously, I’ve always hated having to carefully assign my audio and video when I cut something into a sequence, and playing “Track Tetris” when I wanted to slip/copy a chunk of clips from one place to another. In X… just do it. F*ck tracks! And I’m originally an audio guy… lol Oh, and Roles… really, really, really cool… It does crash now and again, not that often, but it does. I have not lost a single edit. If I was trimming and it crashed, that trim was still done when I reopened it. *That* is amazing.
… There’s more, good and bad, but I’ll stop writing this novel now. Having actually used the app though, I realize how much FUD is floating around regarding X. It’s ridiculous. In a recent Variety article, the head of the ACE *tech committee* said; “Pros need dedicated dialogue, music and sound effects tracks, and Final Cut Pro doesn’t support that yet.” Yes, pro’s do need them, and …he’s wrong. Take a couple minutes to assign roles to your clips, and it doesn’t matter where they are in the timeline. There’s no reason to waste time carefully arranging (audio) tracks anymore. Soloing is super easy, and you can highlight, mute, export roles so easily it’s sort of mind boggling. This coming from someone who typically has between 16 and 24 tracks of audio in my timeline for a basic cut. And you can pile up as many video tracks as you want, create adjustment layers, really cool stuff.
Don’t listen to internet opinions though, even mine. 😉 It’s not all roses and kittens but give it a chance and you might be surprised. Playing with it on a fake project for a week doesn’t count though, dive in ya chickens! lol If you don’t like it, don’t use it. But if you think it’s not a pro app… you’re totally, completely, unequivocally wrong. IMHO of course…
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[Charlie Austin] “Don’t listen to internet opinions though, even mine. 😉 It’s not all roses and kittens but give it a chance and you might be surprised. Playing with it on a fake project for a week doesn’t count though, dive in ya chickens! lol If you don’t like it, don’t use it. But if you think it’s not a pro app… you’re totally, completely, unequivocally wrong. “
Sounds like you found your thing, man. That’s cool. Me, I like tracks. I like the organization. I also like multiple timelines. But, you’re right. With the latest version (.03/.04), its a matter of taste now, and not Toy v. Tool. I’ve been cutting some spots on Pr 6, this week, and am enjoying that, mostly because of the multiple timelines, which I like to use as bins. But, its nice to have some NLE diversity out there, and I’m happy to hear someone else in the promo world saying nice things about X.
Hey, I’m curious–when you cut that Duece Bigalow spot on ancient FCP–was it offline, or did you have one of those early Cineflex cards?
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[Chris Harlan] “, or did you have one of those early Cineflex cards?
“Cinewave is actually what I meant. Wasn’t that one of the first broadcast cards to work with FCP? I was on Windows at the time, and was using a DigisuiteLE, so I’m not familiar with what was happening on the Mac at the time.
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[Chris Harlan] ” I was on Windows at the time, and was using a DigisuiteLE, so I’m not familiar with what was happening on the Mac at the time.”
We had a Digisuite DTV, it’s why I still can’t bring myself to use Matrox hardware.
Cinewave was the main card with FCP in the early days I believe
Steve Connor
“Sometimes it’s fun to poke an angry bear with a stickl”
Adrenalin Television -
[Chris Harlan] “Sounds like you found your thing, man. That’s cool. Me, I like tracks. I like the organization. I also like multiple timelines.
I hear ya, And really, the only reason I posted here was because my experience actually using X has been much different from much of the crap a lot of folks seem to believe based on version 1 or a day or two of playing with it.
As a former audio guy, I like organizing my timeline too, and I see Roles as being able to actually do it for you. All they need is a button that groups clips by Role in the timeline… and I can’t see any reason they won’t do that. Everything would just get automatically organized. How cool would (will) that be?
Roles are really fricking cool even now… I have an FX project in 7 with well over a thousand clips, all organized nicely in bins. They’re just loose in one folder in the Finder, so using the media browser in X kinda sucked. I got the project into X (7toX), all the bins became KW collections so it’s exactly the same as it was. I spent about a half hour assigning roles (mono fx, stereo fx, etc) to everything… EZ. Now if I want to mute or solo my gazillion tracks of fx in the timeline… click one button. If I want to slide a couple fx in relation to one another I don’t have to scrub around to see what’s what in my timeline, just highlight the fx. I go back to 7 and curse it now lol 🙂
I also think the multiple timeline thing will be improved. X does do it it’s just sort of weird how it works now. I never really use timelines as bins, but I can see your point. I just make lots of markers in my source clips, do you cut selects into different timelines? If so, the smart collection feature might actually be able to do that for you too, Tag something as “explosion” or “good line”, whatever, and it just sticks it in a “bin” (keyword collection) for you. I’ll have to mess around with it… the metadata stuff in X is pretty crazy. I also like being able to play or skim through sequences without actually opening them in the timeline, makes looking for something I want to grab from an earlier cut of something much simpler than opening a bunch of sequences to look through them… to me anyway…
[Chris Harlan] But, you’re right. With the latest version (.03/.04), its a matter of taste now, and not Toy v. Tool… its nice to have some NLE diversity out there…
Yep… again, I’m not some wide eyed evangelist, I just forced myself to work through the “WTF is this?!” moments that I treated as show stoppers when messing with it earlier. I’m at a point where I can just cut without thinking about how the app works, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Also, having worked with early, buggy, sluggish, feature incomplete versions of FCP, I’m probably a little more forgiving than a lot of folks. 😉
[Chris Harlan] Hey, I’m curious–when you cut that Duece Bigalow spot on ancient FCP–was it offline, or did you have one of those early Cineflex cards?”
It was offline… I remember having discussions about those cards though. Ah, the good old days… 🙂 Actually, the only thing about X that I may be jumping the gun on is getting elements out for finishing. X2Pro will make AAF’s for protools… it works, but still needs a little fine tuning. And there’s an app coming out soon that’ll generate EDL’s… it works too but it’s still in beta. Worst case is I have to suck the spots back into 7 and export from there, not the end of the world…
Anyway, as you said… it’s nice to have options and, despite the “it’s a toy” FUD and “bad apple abandoned me” crowd, X *is* an option. in my worthless opinion of course 😉
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Charlie, I very much appreciate your post. Much of your organizational thinking matches mine.
I never liked that tracks had competing uses (and they do compete in my opinion). My timeline is for both horizontal and vertical compositing. I’ve always wanted (since my first use of Avid around 1989 or so) another method for organizing. Roles, while they still need much work as an organizing tool, is in the right direction for me. Ultimately assigning a Role should be no more work than targeting a track. Keep in mind Roles is still a work in progress but I do think it’ll get to the place I hope it’s going in.
Keyword collections and Smart collections matches the way my brain thinks much more so than bins. On any given day, depending on where I am in a project, a single shot might be “two shot” “exterior” “night” “NYC” or combinations of the above, depending on context. The same clip can be in all the above simultaneous. The same clip can have portions in any of the above. The clip never has to be copied and pasted in multiple bins. FCPX is malleable to my organizational needs within the same job.
Compound clips, in my Events, are my workspaces. Maybe it’s one reason “magnetism” doesn’t seem to be an issue with me. I create an empty Compound Clip and edit a segment and drop it in and break it apart in the Storyline. I don’t need separate “workspaces” within a timeline.
I think what’s missing on the stage of public information about FCPX is workflow creativity. I recently saw video author/trainer Diana Weynand talk about creative workflow (and why she likes FCPX). She brought up an example of a doc she’s working on. All her initial organizing and clip naming is actually done in Finder. That might be sacrilege with some NLEs. She does this because FCPX can import folders as keyword collections. Not only is a good part of her initial organizing done by the time she imports, she said she gains that much more familiarity by organizing in Finder. She can dig into the editing process that much more quickly, once imported. It’s not that this is the “right” way or “best” way so much as an option available to her.
Another creative workflow, for me, is creating empty Compound Clips in Events as workspaces. I can assemble segments and drop them in a Storyline to further rearrange then and, once happy, break them apart. Again, not a right or best way, just one of the flexible things FCPX makes easily available to me. Personally i think people tend to make the Storyline the workspace and sometimes that’s exactly what you want/need to do . . . but sometimes not. It depends on the project.
I’m sure there are other creative workflows I’m not thinking of (maybe even do subconsciously because of how my brain works) but I like having this kind of flexibility.
I think too much of what is written about FCPX is about “what the buttons” do and not enough about workflow flexibility. I think this is where FCPX shines, for me.
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Craig,
the scary thought is……..….we haven´t even touched it after 11 months. I find something new almost every day in FCPX´s workflow and I haven´t even done much compositing in it………it is a massive tool.
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[Steve Connor] “[Chris Harlan] ” I was on Windows at the time, and was using a DigisuiteLE, so I’m not familiar with what was happening on the Mac at the time.”
We had a Digisuite DTV, it’s why I still can’t bring myself to use Matrox hardware.
Cinewave was the main card with FCP in the early days I believe
“Yeah. My Digisuite used to overheat like a SOB, and it made me wary of Matrox for years. I did get one of those MXO2 minis for my laptop when Avid allowed it, and it works pretty well. Slow driver support compared to the other two, though.
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Yes, that’s why I’d like to see more sharing of creative workflow ideas.
Those of us using FCPX may be developing new ways to handle project organization (folders in finder) or editing stories (using Compound Clips in Events as workspaces) that we may not realize that others haven’t discovered the possibilities. Perhaps someone is using Smart Collections in a way I haven’t thought of. Maybe many of use are using Favoriting in different ways.
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