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Deal-Breaking FCPX Issues. Is My Info Inaccurate?
I am a FCP 7 user (since 2006), and switched to X (10.0.9) in late December, 2013. I watched several courses by reputable instructors, not random YouTube quickies. I committed myself to FCPX, and started some important projects on it.
But you really learn as you go — when in the trenches. Over the weeks, I learned a few things that have made me want to give up on FCPX. If I am wrong, please correct me. But this is what I believe to be the case as I share this.
1. In FCP 7, I would lock my audio track and edit videos on other tracks. In this Storyline environment of X, I read that using a gap clip on the main track is the workaround.
2. If the clips are on top of a Gap clip, then to do simple things like add transitions, I have to create Storylines.
3. The audio drops or peeks randomly on playback but renders fine. Playing it again sometimes resolves the issue — sometimes not.
4. You cannot simply select in and out points from the storyline. You have to create a Compound Clip and then select a Range? Seriously?!
5. I can’t just grab a clip like a video clip and move or delete it without the audio (detached but attached via stem) being effected. So I have to use the tilda key to move a clip independently while making sure the previously stem-attached clip is connected to something (like a Gap Clip) to avoid magnetic slipping…headache just describing this.
6. To get the latest version with major updates, I’d have to upgrade my OS. As a pro with multiple third party plugins and apps, there’s no way I’d upgrade my OS on an early release. Neither do most businesses.
7. I experienced a MAJOR scare when FCPX didn’t recognize my external drive containing my project. On FCP 7, you just open the FCP file. FCPX is trying to be so ‘cool; with its no-saving, auto-open features that it scares me that when something goes wrong, what should be a simple recovery becomes very complicated. In my case, disconnecting then re-connecting my drive solved the issue, but not before a heart attack.
I know that no NLE is problem-free. And I sincerely wanted to love FCPX because there are a ton of super cool features and plugins. I even told my team at work that it was my software choice. Now I can’t do that because who wants to deal with workarounds for simple tasks?
At this point, I am looking to go to Premiere or Avid for the above noted reasons. But again, I have only used it for a short while. I kind of still want to be convinced that my information is inaccurate, so if I am wrong on any points, please let me know.
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39 Replies
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Seems you’re not using current version of FCPX which is 10.1.1 or you haven’t gone through tutorials yet.
[Lillian Young] “1. In FCP 7, I would lock my audio track and edit videos on other tracks. In this Storyline environment of X, I read that using a gap clip on the main track is the workaround. “
Tilda key or modifier plus tilda allows you to move primary storyline clips and the connected clips and secondary story line clips stay in place. There are no tracks.
[Lillian Young] “2. If the clips are on top of a Gap clip, then to do simple things like add transitions, I have to create Storylines.”
There’s a keystroke that does this assuming you mean a transition between two connected clips.
[Lillian Young] “4. You cannot simply select in and out points from the storyline. You have to create a Compound Clip and then select a Range? Seriously?! “
Sure you can. This has been possible for a while. A year or so at least. Again it sounds like you’re not using a current version of FCPX.
[Lillian Young] “5. I can’t just grab a clip like a video clip and move or delete it without the audio (detached but attached via stem) being effected. So I have to use the tilda key to move a clip independently while making sure the previously stem-attached clip is connected to something (like a Gap Clip) to avoid magnetic slipping…headache just describing this. “
Tilda key. You don’t have to describe it. It just works. One key. You can delete and replace with gap clip easily too.
[Lillian Young] “6. To get the latest version with major updates, I’d have to upgrade my OS. As a pro with multiple third party plugins and apps, there’s no way I’d upgrade my OS on an early release. Neither do most businesses. “
Apple may tie features and improvements to the OS. Unlike other NLE makers they also make the OS. Actually with any NLE there’s the choice between staying with the OS or not. As a long time Avid user I was often hit with not being able to use other “latest” versions of programs because Avid hadn’t certified an OS update.
I’ve used Avid for more than 10 years. I’ve used FCP “legacy” for more than 10 years. I see FCPX as just another variation which kills the other two for some jobs… and there would be workflows where Avid would kill anything else.
Personally I find patching tracks a major drag. I find it structurally awkward to use tracks for layering and use them for organizing. The result of which involves adding tracks, avoiding patching things to wrong tracks, lots of empty tracks when tracks are needed at one point and not another.
FCPX involves new thinking and new muscle memory but for most repetitive functions (but not all) it seems to be fewer key strokes. I like not having to do complex lassos for moves and I like not having to deal collision avoidance.
You may want to go through Ripple Training tutorials.
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you’re not wrong – I personally think the timeline itself is utterly ridiculous, but it has many practitioners and everyone is polite about it at this point.
go to premiere: all else aside, its where the wind is blowing.
FCPX is a total mess of apple’s best practise thinking about the OS and application structure. Including saving. It’s basically irretrievable.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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Responses (I’m on 10.1.1):
1. You cannot lock tracks (no tracks in X). Using a gap clip on the main storyline allows you to freely move connected clips around with less impact of the “magnetism”. It’s not a solution to the locked issue, merely a different way of working.
2. You can add fades, but transitions between clips require a storyline or a secondary storyline.
3. Haven’t seen that. It’s not normal behavior. But, as you can see from my audio thread below, X does have some random issues.
4. Incorrect.
5. Not completely correct. There is both delete and ripple delete (depending on which key you use). Different behavior. Also different depending on which clips (audio, video or both) are selected. Tilde also changes behavior and something you do have to change where the connection point is located first.
6. 10.1 requires Mavericks (10.9). If you want to stick with Apple, you have to get on the treadmill. Just the way it is.
7. This behavior has completely changed with 10.1, which is why you should upgrade the OS if you want to stick with FCP X.
Premiere Pro and Media Composer are both great. No reason to use X if you don’t want to.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
EDIT: I guess I’m the slowest typist here. I’ll leave my somewhat redundant info here though in case it’s clearer by describing it differently.
The majority of your issues come from attempting to make FCPX work like FCP7 or Avid, or another track based NLE. If you try to approach problem solving from the result backwards using FCPXs strengths, then you’ll (eventually) have more luck working with it. If, on the other hand, you simply can’t fathom working without tracks or track-based paradigms, then X is probably not for you.
I’ll try to address your issues one by one:
[Lillian Young] “1. In FCP 7, I would lock my audio track and edit videos on other tracks. In this Storyline environment of X, I read that using a gap clip on the main track is the workaround. “
There are numerous ways to handle a scenario like this. They include combining audio into compound clips or secondary storylines (depending on the situation), placing the audio in the primary or using the gap clip as you mentioned. The best workflow will depend on the specifics of the project. If you’re doing a music video for example, you can put the music in a secondary storyline where there’s only one connection point to worry about and edit to your heart’s delight, the video in your primary. You don’t need to worry about “locking” tracks because trimming in the primary won’t affect a connected clip.
[Lillian Young] “2. If the clips are on top of a Gap clip, then to do simple things like add transitions, I have to create Storylines.”
This is correct. But you can simply apply the transition to a connected clip and FCPX will create the storyline for you. This works even between two adjacent connected clips.
[Lillian Young] “3. The audio drops or peeks randomly on playback but renders fine.”
I don’t have this problem. Perhaps you have a corrupt user or bad install.
[Lillian Young] “4. You cannot simply select in and out points from the storyline. You have to create a Compound Clip and then select a Range? Seriously?! “
No. Not seriously. I’m not even sure what you’re having a problem with, but you can mark INs/OUTs, jump to those INs/OUTs and everything else you’re used to doing in a typical NLE. If you’re referring to secondary storylines, just use the range tool and you can select with I and O there as well.
[Lillian Young] “5. I can’t just grab a clip like a video clip and move or delete it without the audio (detached but attached via stem) being effected.”
This is not that hard. Detach audio from video. Select video. Hit shift+delete to delete the clip and replace with a gap. Also, you could simply select the clip. Hit matchframe (shift+f). Swap to audio only edit (shift+3) and replace (shift+r). If you want to move the clip, hold tilde and lift clip to replace the video with gap, or swap clips to keep audio in temporal place but change which clip is connected to it.
[Lillian Young] “6. To get the latest version with major updates, I’d have to upgrade my OS. As a pro with multiple third party plugins and apps, there’s no way I’d upgrade my OS on an early release.”
This is true. It can be a headache if you’re not ready to upgrade so tread carefully here. What I did was to create a Mavericks partition where I could load FCPX and test my other plugins and programs. See what breaks and what doesn’t. Still, to be safer, you can wait for a couple OSX and FCPX updates before upgrading. Changing with the tech is the nature of the world these days.
[Lillian Young] “7. I experienced a MAJOR scare when FCPX didn’t recognize my external drive containing my project. On FCP 7, you just open the FCP file.”
Sure you did, except when the FCP project file was corrupt and wouldn’t open. Then you had to hope that one of the autosaves would open, or that you had it set to autosave enough that you didn’t lose much work. This is a non-issue. There isn’t an NLE on the planet that won’t scare you from time to time and X is better than some. I’ve force quit in the middle of transcoding, transferring and had crashes after finishing edits or after hours of tagging and organizing. And when I brought it back up, I lost NOTHING. It’s recovery system is actually really good and has been solid for a few versions now.
I hope this helps answer some of your questions. In the end, only you can determine whether or not FCPX is going to work for you.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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None of the things you listed should be deal breakers, since things just work differently sometimes in FCPX. Don’t worry, I’ve finished many many projects on X now, and there’s nothing you can’t do in it that you can do in the other NLEs. As you say, they all have their quirks.
[Lillian Young] “1. In FCP 7, I would lock my audio track and edit videos on other tracks. In this Storyline environment of X, I read that using a gap clip on the main track is the workaround. “
If you mean just use an empty gap at the front of the project and attach a piece of audio to it so that you can use the primary for cutting, well that’s just how it’s supposed to work. I will do this for a music video for example, where you just attach the music track at the top, and then just cut using the primary/secondaries/attached/whatever you want. The music is attached at the top, so it will never move whatever you do down the line. Some people just like using one large gap clip and then just attaching clips or storylines on top of it which is also fine.
[Lillian Young] “2. If the clips are on top of a Gap clip, then to do simple things like add transitions, I have to create Storylines.”
If you add a transition to a connected clip, it will turn it into a storyline. But it will do it automatically, so it doesn’t slow you down or anything. What’s the problem here? You can have a storyline with just one clip in it that just dissolves at the head, for example. A storyline is just a container for clips really. Why do you think this is a dealbreaker?
[Lillian Young] “3. The audio drops or peeks randomly on playback but renders fine. Playing it again sometimes resolves the issue — sometimes not. “
Are you talking about the audio meter? Hm, i haven’t seen this behavior. One thing you should make sure of is to have audio with standard samples rates like 44.1 or 48 kHz. Perhaps this is more to do with your I/O card and its drivers, not sure what you’re using.
[Lillian Young] “4. You cannot simply select in and out points from the storyline. You have to create a Compound Clip and then select a Range? Seriously?! “
No, you can use the range tool to select an in to out in a storyline. You don’t have to make it a compound clip at all. In the primary storyline, you can always select in and out or use the range tool. It’s true that FCPX has more focus on the primary, but secondaries are pretty easy to use.
[Lillian Young] “5. I can’t just grab a clip like a video clip and move or delete it without the audio (detached but attached via stem) being effected. So I have to use the tilda key to move a clip independently while making sure the previously stem-attached clip is connected to something (like a Gap Clip) to avoid magnetic slipping…headache just describing this”
You can press “delete” (the other delete which is fn-delete on laptops) to delete the clip without deleting its attached audio. Holding tilde is not that hard, and audio is ALWAYS attached to something. It doesn’t magnetically slip anywhere, it stays in the exact place it’s connected to in the primary.
[Lillian Young] “6. To get the latest version with major updates, I’d have to upgrade my OS. As a pro with multiple third party plugins and apps, there’s no way I’d upgrade my OS on an early release. Neither do most businesses.”
Well I can’t say anything about this other than that the latest version uses a lot of optimizations from Mavericks to get performance improvements, so it wasn’t really avoidable. That said, Mavericks is pretty stable right now and is not really an early release anymore. I remember working on Avid systems on Jaguar (!) while Tiger had been out for a while, so it goes both ways.
[Lillian Young] “7. I experienced a MAJOR scare when FCPX didn’t recognize my external drive containing my project. On FCP 7, you just open the FCP file. FCPX is trying to be so ‘cool; with its no-saving, auto-open features that it scares me that when something goes wrong, what should be a simple recovery becomes very complicated. In my case, disconnecting then re-connecting my drive solved the issue, but not before a heart attack. “
You can be sure that you’re looking at things through rose-colored nostalgia. What about the crashes when FCP7 project files got too large? Sweating when you think the project file has been corrupted… or large still images causing crashes? FCP7 weird audio glitches galore. I loved that program, but it had its share of problems. Avid can only add on things, making it more and more complex over the years, since it will make a lot of people angry if they change anything substantially.
Anyway, I say stick with it for a few more projects with decent deadlines, and you’ll see it’s pretty good.
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[Lillian Young] “7. I experienced a MAJOR scare when FCPX didn’t recognize my external drive containing my project. On FCP 7, you just open the FCP file. FCPX is trying to be so ‘cool; with its no-saving, auto-open features that it scares me that when something goes wrong, what should be a simple recovery becomes very complicated. In my case, disconnecting then re-connecting my drive solved the issue, but not before a heart attack.”
You can have the exact same issue with FCP7. I work on 7 in a shared environment and have to deal with regular crashes, corrupt project and offline Autosaves a lot. And the moment that footage is moved, and sometimes the assistant doesn’t pay attention, has the flu, can’t be reached and nobody knows where he moved everything? I had a wonderful time dealing with a hysterical client in December (one hour before presentation) because nobody could find the drive where the footage had been backed up in, and the guy who knew was not available…
X is better in managing media and gives you more options. I really like the fact that you can have footage and projects in a library. So everything stays in one package, moving to another drive and connecting to another mac is just a little faster.
The other issues you point are things that you will get used to over time. When I stared out using FCP 10.0.0 I wondered why I had to use a storyline, or compound something, or why the heck is this clip moving up or down into a gap. At first it really did feel like X had to be wrangled into place. But pretty quickly I realised that storylines can be very practical when you need to move b-roll around. Working with clip connections and magnetism in my experience is faster than having to make sure you have everything you need highlighted on a complex timeline before moving stuff around, making sure you don’t delete something when moving or adding clips, and patching your tracks to the right track… Roles are so much nicer.
“Always look on the bright side of life” – Monty Python
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “you’re not wrong – I personally think the timeline itself is utterly ridiculous, but it has many practitioners and everyone is polite about it at this point.”
Many of us FCPX-FCP7 editors, and in my case also Avid, prefer the magnetic timeline because it actually is faster than a classical one, especially when doing fast turnaround projects. And the 60 min experimental I edited almost two years a go was so much nicer to deal with than similar previous projects on FCP 6 and 7. And I still make more money on Avid and FCP7…
“Always look on the bright side of life” – Monty Python
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[Nikolas Bäurle] “Many of us FCPX-FCP7 editors, and in my case also Avid, prefer the magnetic timeline because it actually is faster than a classical one”
In fairness, that’s very subjective. I find it faster at the front end and then slower as the project gets more complex, simply because the magnetism requires its own workarounds. But YMMV.
[Nikolas Bäurle] “especially when doing fast turnaround projects”
That’s really X’s sweet spot.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Lillian Young] “3. The audio drops or peeks randomly on playback but renders fine. Playing it again sometimes resolves the issue — sometimes not. “
This was a major problem in earlier versions of X. Steve Martin and I discussed it last year at the SuperMeet.
For no apparent reason, playback would occasionally blare (peak). I’d hit the space bar to stop… move the playhead… hit the space bar and it would playback perfectly. Drove me crazy!
It was repeatable on far too regular of a basis. I showed it to at least half a dozen people.
The good news is… I haven’t seen it recently with the new version… so NO, you’re not crazy. Upgrade and get past it…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Lillian Young] ” but not before a heart attack.”
hahaha this line made me smile : )
I have to say though, I have had X crash many times on me and when I bring it back up it’s all there to the last edit. I have to give it to them on that.
I have not used PrP, but have worked in Photoshop for hours and had it crash and lost all my work.
Grrrrrrr
I had a rough transition with the whole Mavericks deal to 10.1 and was on here complaining loudly abut it, but things seem to have settle for me.
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