Best (meaning, “fastest”) Way for a Professional Editor to Learn Final Cut Pro X?

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “”Well, I used to do X in my other NLE, how can I accomplish the same task / is there a comparable feature in this NLE?””

But that’s precisely the issue.

If you follow this thinking, you’ll be looking for traditional “slots” to fit your new knowledge pegs into.

The whole point of X – was that it changed the shape and position of many of the slots.

My best example is still that if you’ve traditionally done ALL your editing operations on a timeline – and now X gives you the Event Browser where you can do lots and lots of pre-editing that makes your timeline operations more efficient – but because you’re accustomed to an “all timeline” focus – you’ll be tempted to start out learning exclusively timeline operations – when it would be better for you to start at the TOP of the X flow (import operations) learn that thoroughly – then proceed into the Event Browser – from their to learning the proper database operations – then to bring all of THAT knowledge into the X timeline – so that you learn it in the context of where it lives and works.

This (in my opinion) is one of the BIG issues with the transition. If you SEE X is just another version of what you already know – it impedes your understanding of how it really operates and worse, you don’t start building best practices from the beginning.

I personally did a LOT of this 16 months back when I learned X. And I look back at my first dozen projects and I can see clearly now that I screwed up TONS of stuff through my ignorance.

Those projects are a mess. They have screwed up keyword collections. They have Events that should connect to Project A connected to Project C. They have assets that belong to Edit D living in Project J – and so forth.

ALL because I initially tried to operate X as if it was just an extension of my decade in Legacy.

FWIW.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Jason Jenkins]

This is what I used: https://www.dingdingmusic.com/DingDing/Manuals.html
The manual for 10.0.6 isn’t out yet, but these visual manuals are well worth the money.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.

[Richard Herd]

https://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/

[Don Scioli]

After editing for over 35 years, I took the Lynda FCPX essentials online curse and it did the job for me, Now i fly on the NLE.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “But that’s precisely the issue.

If you follow this thinking, you’ll be looking for traditional “slots” to fit your new knowledge pegs into.”

I’m not sure how you did it but you completely misread my post. I said I think the best way to approach a new NLE is to pretend you’ve never used an NLE before so you don’t bring any baggage with you (which can impede the learning process). I also pointedly talked about accomplishing tasks because in the end we need to be able to accomplish the same tasks (edit multicam, export for approvals, send out for coloring, etc.,) even if the tools/features/methodology used is different.

[Massimo Verona]

One thing I found useful as a pretty novice user was NOT to try to learn fast. There’s a certain amount of time needed to learn, for the neurons to make the connections. Feeling anxious and worrying about how fast it was coming just made me not want to practice.

I spent some more time just nosing around the interface, trying things out without feeling pressure I had to get this chore done right now… I learned some good stuff pretty quick that way.

Failing as fast as I can at writing producing.