FCP 7 vs FCP X: The Bottom Line: I’d like to know what you pros think

[Andreas Kiel]

Here just my 2 cents.

I like FCP X for certain workflows and one of the developer guys who build several tools to make these workflows even better.

For other workflows which are more my daily work I don’t like it. Having several bins and sequences open at a time, having a “real” viewer and canvas is essential in these cases.

Lot of people are talking about the “metadata approach” with FCP X.
Okay, it’s there, but it’s poor compared to legacy FCP. Funny thing is that most of the people never used the metadata in legacy FCP since they where not that obvious.

Same with Motion. You always had been able to create templates but with less options for the published parameters. One thing which was better is that with “old” Motion the templates were published for the whole system/all users.
Another thing with Motion Templates: if you change one, you won’t see it immediately within FCP X, the original version is still displayed for the stuff you used it before. You now can use the modified version for new stuff — it will look like expected. Once you quit FCP X and relaunch it all of your older projects will be changed. This can be considered either as good or bad. Was somehow the same with legacy FCP.

Coming back to metadata. As said, the approach of FCP X is more obvious compared to legacy FCP and it works fine with more options in most cases as long as you play in the sandbox of FCP X (“sandbox” doesn’t mean FCP X is bad or kind of kindergarten). When it comes to interchange these metadata (data about data) there is still a long way to go with FCP X.
Take XML. Export your project with effects and templates as XML and re-import — all of your settings are set back to default, most of the keyframes are gone. It even gives links to files which don’t exist.

I don’t say FCP X is good or bad. It’s just an app which may fit your needs or not. It has a lot of potential for sure, but sometimes I have to work today and don’t want to wait for a tomorrow.

BTW: I really love the “Go” thing above, it’s such a good comparison. When I was younger I was an “every day all night amateur player” and one day I met the German champion, and I won four times in a row. As with the given “Go” example, rules are simple. You have to make the best out of it for you.

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Joseph Owens]

[Andreas Kiel] “When I was younger I was an “every day all night amateur player” and one day I met the German champion, and I won four times in a row.”

Wow. That is an achievement. Out of curiosity, there must have been a kyu adjustment — did you start with handicap stones and did that number change? I used to be able to tie the club champion occasionally at 9 stones…

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Andreas Kiel]

There was nothing. I played Go with 2 of my friends just for fun for many years — didn’t care about anything special rather than having enough wine for the nights.

The “champion night” happened by chance and was fun. I was visiting an old girl friend of mine after a real long time and her husband said “sorry, me and my friend do have to play/train Go in the living room and must stay focused on the game — so please stay in the kitchen with my wife, or go out for a beer”. I answered “Wow you play Go – cool”. He said “You play Go?”, I said “Yes, quite often — just for fun, I love it.”

So they allowed me to watch. Then the other guy asked whether I want to have training session — so why not. I was allowed to be the first to set a stone and I had beaten him within a few minutes. All following games he was the first. He didn’t win any of those games.
It turned out they both were playing in the “champions league” which I didn’t know that it exists at all.

But as said with all this stuff with FCP X there are some simple rules — understand them and make the best out of it.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Alban Egger]

Bottom line: FCP7 is a dinosaur and IMO not feasable for professional work anymore unless you
a) have very specific workflow that only FCP7 does ( although I can’t think of any)
B) are paid in hours and your customers haven’t realized you are ripping them off
C) simply ignore modern production-circumstances and stick to what you feel comfortable with

FCPX is out for 2 years. With 8 revisions since the first shitstorm against it. Premiere has advanced a lot, AVID is in a new priceclass….. There are no arguments for FCP7 left. It is slow, clumsy, 32-bit and needs a lot of help from Colour and Soundtrack to be taken serious. Tools like that are built into the other Nle’s nowadays.

That’s the bottom line.

The topline: i use FCPX for 23 months now, 22 of those it has been my main choice of NLE. I tried PP, but it seemed a step back ( although a step forward from FCP7). I still get funny oneliners like “but it can’t export more than 2 audiotracks” or “I don’t want it to look for faces” and that tells me Apple is still not marketing this properly. But so far I have yet to see a director or editor who watches me using it , who is not going away with the determination to give it an honest and serious try – and most sticking to it unless one of the above 3 reasons stops them.

[Andreas Kiel]

Yeah,

Bottom line: FCPX is a modern, streamlined and IMO feasable for some/several professional work unless you
a) have very specific workflow that only FCP7 does (I can think of several)
B) are paid in hours and your customers haven’t realized you are ripping them off
C) simply ignore modern collaborative production-circumstances and stick to what you feel comfortable with

FCPX is out for 2 years. With 8 revisions since the first shitstorm against it and it still needs a lot of improvement.
That’s the bottom line.

The topline: I use FCPX for 23 months now, 23 of those it has been not my main choice of NLE. I tried PP, but it seemed a step back (although a step forward from FCP7). I still get funny oneliners like “why I can’t export and import a XML with all metadata”, “why are my parameters reset”, “but it can’t export more than 2 audiotracks” or “I don’t want it to look for faces”and so on and that tells me Apple is still not marketing this properly and has a lot of work to do even in development. But so far I have yet to see several directors or editors who watches me using it , who are not going away with the determination to give it an honest and serious try – and some sticking to it unless one of the above 3 reasons stops them.

😉 Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Mario Rodriguez]

Used FCP 7 for years… loved it….

Used PP CS6 & CUDA and loved it… amazingly fast on mix formats on same timeline, no transcoding, everything is real time, effects, changes… you name it that is really very impressive… but… very slow in other things and buggy as hell… Adobe Media Encoder can become your worst nightmare. I had to reboot my MacBook Pro 17″ more times in the weeks I was using PP CS6 & AME that in the last 5 years together…

After the PP CS6 fiasco I decided to give FCPX a try… I have used it a couple of times since it’s launched, but my iMac was too slow for it… so I wondered how it would be in my MacBook Pro 17″ i5 2.5Ghz 4GB RAM.

The funny thing is that I tried it just before jumping to PP CS6 and FCPX was too slow. To use CUDA with PP CS6 I had to upgrade the MacBook Pro Nvidia driver, well after the Nvidia driver upgrade FCPX suddenly just flies…

So now I must say I’m blown away by FCPX 10.0.8, it is fast, responsive, easy to use, it feels like natural, everythingjust flows… building titles is easy, transitions are easy, stabilizing clips is just one click away, it closes and opens fast, exporting is really fast… it is funny but now PP CS6 feels like old stuff…

I’m very impressed with how stabile FCPX has become… I guess many FCP7 users will make a similar trip like me, try FCPX do not feel at home, go to PP CS6 (or Avid) be impressive at first with CUDA and then see that mmmm… it is too buggy or slow in many other things and then try again FCPX and see… woauuu… FCPX is a really cool software to use.

At that end the best is to try for yourself and not just believing what others people say.

I’m also amazed how opinions are changing again about FCPX. At the beginning many editors hated it and now I see very positive opinions and reviews about it… I would say FCPX will slowly again conquer it’s lost ground, it is a matter of time, and the new Adobe CC will help FCPX to get back adopters… not to speak about the huge internal Avid issues with the company close to bankruptcy.

[John Skye]

I am debating whether to spend the time to learn final cut X over Final cut 7. Many people are positive about the new version, but everyone says you need to get your head around the different way it works. Are there any tutorials out there that focus on that? Every tutorial I look at take 5 minutes to explain fairly obvious stuff. I just want a quick summary of how workflows will change from FC7 to FCX. Any suggestions out there?

[Steve Mcmillan]

New to the forum (as an active member)… but have long appreciated the wisdom and experience herein. I moved to Premiere several years ago from FCP 7, and have felt like I’m dating my sister ever since. Just doesn’t feel right. It works, has a number of robust features (one obviously, it’s close link to AE, and Adobe products), but nothing to get excited about. It was simply the default choice as FCP7 sinks slowly out of usefulness.

Recently, I saw a colleague’s project produced in FCPX, and was staggered by the production. Perhaps because (while he’s been a long-time producer in broadcast TV) he has limited NLE experience. While he’s used to having the story in his head, he’s usually whispering in the editor’s ear. As stated, and excepted in this forum, there’s no technical advancement per se, that lends greater visual or storytelling ability in FCPX, but it does seem to lend to a more creative environment than other nuts-and-bolts NLEs with there good ol’ spreadsheet-like efficiency. This same producer had previously fumbled with FCP7, and produced the usual yawn-worthy vanilla packages that I would expect in this situation. Not that one experience is any proof of a trend, but it caused me to jealously take another look at X.

Don’t like the file structure for managing clients/projects, but I’m willing to put up with that for what now appears to be a viable and refreshing advancement in the ability to focus more on creativity, and less on admin. I’m starting a few projects exclusively in FCPX to get my feet wet. I’m excited for the first time in years.

If I get egg on my face, I’ll let you know in a few weeks.

I really admire the professional conduct in this thread; it really helps me/us glean objective info about things that we rely on to enjoy our craft, and pay the bills…it’s a big deal.

[Charlie Austin]

[Steve McMillan] “Don’t like the file structure for managing clients/projects, “

Get Event Manager X. Best $5 you’ll spend. FWIW, I create a Master Project Folder in the Project Library for each Event (job in my case) All cuts/versions go in their own subfolders within that Folder… EM-X can Hide/Show master (root level) Project Folders, so for each job, I just open the Event, and the Master cuts folder associated with it. You could just as easily have each cut in it’s own “root” folder so you just open what you want to work on. I just like having everything available. I actually find the Event/Project structure to be very flexible. You can manage it all manually, But EM-X is much easier.

————————————————————-

~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Steve Mcmillan]

Thanks Charlie, downloaded it and studying it now.