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Am I old fashion?
With the new FCPX being out for over 2 years now, and all the mass debate regarding it, I find myself continually using FCP 7.
Even though I have Avid MC 6 and Symphony 6, Adobe CS6 and of course FCPX, I just seem to keep using FCP 7.
On the weekend one of my producers called me ‘old fashion’. Really?
I asked him if he had a ‘wired telephone’ at home and he said ‘yes’. So there you go…FCP 7 is a tool that works for me and earns me money. My clients want me to do quality work on a very fast turn around. I do that with FCP 7.
Funny thing is, I am now discovering over half my colleges are also still using FCP 7.
You would think that some clever software guys out there would grab hold of that model and take it where Apple should have, rather than saying ‘it’s all too hard, lets start again’….
Baz
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50 Replies
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Same boat as you. I know FCP X, Premiere, etc… But I’m still using FCP 7 99% of the time on a network animated show. I can’t see our workflow working in FCP X. It’s still working really really well for our needs.
Most other editors I know in both animation and movie trailers are still on FCP 7 as well. The Los Angeles scene (at least the one I’m a part of) just hasn’t really switched over.
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Baz,
I sell many of the most advanced editing tools on the market now, and yet the vast majority of my customers still use FCP 7 for much of their work. And, that includes editors in their bathrobes working at their kitchen tables, all the way up to enterprise level facilities.
Premiere is rapidly gaining a foothold however, simply because Adobe keeps making it more and more similar to FCP legacy, while continuing to improve its feature set.
Avid is hanging in there, neither seeming to grow or shrink its fan-base.
And, only a small handful of our customers seem to be cutting on FCPX.
David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.comSales | Integration | Support
David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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It’s totally up to each persons preferences and workflow.
I worked on Legacy FCP for over a decade, and after a year of working on X I hate opening 7 now.
But I’ll be the first person to admit it isn’t currently the best fit for every workflow (though there’s probably someone out there doing it).
Since it seems we’re headed for the first big revision in a couple of weeks, that will be the point at which it would make sense to re-evaluate the software and see what progress they’ve made.
But if you could keep doing what you’re doing on 7 and have no reason to move off, and save the cost of investing in new software and hardware- it’s certainly not the worst rationale to have.
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[Baz Leffler] ” My clients want me to do quality work on a very fast turn around. I do that with FCP 7.”
How are you doing fast turn around when you have to transcode nearly everything before you can even start?
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For us, the true death of fcp7 will be the Sony f55. Currently, the fcp7 workflow is a pain I the ass, or non existent with 4k.
Personally, I am editing in X when I know in the only person going to be working in that project as I am the only one taking time to figure it out at this point. fcp7 is used when more than one of us will be working on a project, as well as our extensive fcp7 archive of projects that we revisit time to time.
I am waiting for the next version of X, and a round of hardware updates before pushing X down on everyone else. Since I will have to field the myriad of questions that will surely come once Day X arrives, I have to have lived it for long enough to know some of the answers.
It doesn’t surprise me that many are sticking with fcp7. It’s not old fashioned anymore than shooting HD vs 4k is old fashioned.
Fcp7 is still relevant.
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Actually someone has taken the FCP 7 model and improved it – it’s called Premiere Pro CC – try it – you’ll feel very comfortable…
Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852 -
I’m in a similar situation to Jeremy. I prefer X, but if I’m on a job that requires lots of sequence swapping, I’ll do it in 7. Out of 6 Editors, I use X (or Pr or MC if I’m feeling like pulling my hair out, but that’s my problem, not the apps), 4 are on 7 and 1 uses 7 and Pr. I think there are 2 big things that keep folks from diving into 7… well, 3, if you count the never-ending FUD still out there…
One is the timeline. Arguably, once you’re used to it, it’s very hard to go back to a traditional NLE. It does, however, take some getting used to. Meaning you have to learn how to use it. 😉 That’s hard for a lot of people, and that’s the lure of Pr… it’s more or less the same-ish as 7.
The other, and I think the biggest, is the fact that, people believe it’s much harder to share “Projects” (the old meaning) between Editors. Which, in a way, is true. You can do it, it’s not really hard, but it seems convoluted compared to “here’s a project file (bin)” like 7 or Pr, or even MC.
Everybody can get behind the key wording, tagging, metadata goodness. It’s awesome, and a huge selling point for X. And while the timeline isn’t gonna change, it’ll (hopefully!) get better. It still requires time to get used to, but It’s worth the time. It’s very enticing to others here, despite the “weirdness” of it. But I think that if Apple can fix the ability to easily share work somehow, it will be very helpful for larger, collaborative workflows. Hopefully they’ve been reading the feedback we’ve all been sending! 🙂
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
I have to say I completely agree – CC is by far the best NLE I’ve ever used – far from perfect but really solid and very fast. While I keep an open mind for FCPX and hope Apple comes to their senses on the next rev, they’ve got their work cut out for them to top Adobe right now.
I’m on a TV special for the next month and had to install CC for all the Producer’s who were FCP 7 users…it took about 30 seconds for them to get comfy and start roughing out selects, something they could have NEVER done with FCPX which, sadly, has the steepest learning curve of any NLE ever devised. While my suite is Mac, for some reason the Producer stations are all HP and even though none of them were PC users, we could still work in CC and share projects, files etc.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
There’s nothing wrong with not liking change, especially if your current workflow works well for you. That’s why so many people like Avid
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Lance Bachelder] “While I keep an open mind for FCPX and hope Apple comes to their senses on the next rev”
And do what exactly? Put tracks back in? 🙂
[Lance Bachelder] “for all the Producer’s who were FCP 7 users…it took about 30 seconds for them to get comfy and start roughing out selects, something they could have NEVER done with FCPX which, sadly, has the steepest learning curve of any NLE ever devised.”
No, it doesn’t. I’ll agree that it’s hard for some folks who’ve worked pretty much the same way for a couple decades (including me) to get used to how X works. And that’s fine. But I guarantee you that a producer who wasn’t an FCP 7 editor, who had never edited on another system, would be able to learn X in about the same amount of time. FCP 7, Pr, MC?? NFW.
That’s not a putdown of any of those apps BTW, but X is really approachable if you don’t expect it to work a certain way, that’s all….
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~
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