FCP | Avid diffs/similarities

[David Bogie]

Welcome to the family, you’re going to hate FCP. All Avid guys and girls do. For a while.

Your best bet is to invest in one or both of the books targeted especially at Avid switchers. See the amazon.com link here at the cow via the Dairy Store.

We used to get Avid switchers weekly. Traffic has dropped off but you can still search the forum archives for posts from hundreds of frustrated Avid users.

You can struggle with FCP for weeks and post your questions here or you can get the books.

bogiesan

[Ron Dylewski]

Hi –

Thanks so much for the good advice. I’ll check out the books and the posts.
I think it’s going to take me about a year to stop trying to scroll the pointer through the timeline!

Ron

Photos, news, memories and musings on the great American Roadside experience
https://www.theamericanroadside.com

Are you a collector? Put your collection online for free at What A Collection.com!
https://www.whatacollection.com

[Blub06]

It took me about two 40 hour weeks to get up to speed after 8 years of Avid . There is no single item that stands out, what I do remember is that every few minutes I would ask myself now how do I do this and this and that, I wanted to do everything with FCP that I did with Avid and banged away it took about two weeks.

I think you have to do with FCP the same thing you do with other software, get on the horse and ride it. As you hit walls cone back here and do a search or serach the pdf of the instructions that come with FCP. Ask a few questions and get a few answers.

Chris

[Mark Raudonis]

ron,

Over the past two years we’ve transitioned over a hundred Avid editors over to FCP. We used Diana Weynand’s book, “Final Cut Pro For Avid Editors” to help ease the crossover. It’s the “rosetta stone” for Avid editors showing the exact same functions on the same page, but illustrating the different names and keystrokes. I highly recommend it.

My other piece of advice is “don’t rush it”. Two weeks, in my opinion is very ambitious. Keep in mind that not only are you learning a new system, you’re also “unlearning” years of habits and keystrokes. It’s gonna take awhile.

Welcome to the party.

Mark

[Ron Dylewski]

Hi –

Went online and ordered the book yesterday! I’ll just have to take it as it comes, I guess.

One more question though; am I crazy or are all the buttons in FCP REALLY tiny? On the 23″
monitor I’m using the “mark in” and “mark out” buttons (and many others) are miniscule. While
I’ll end up using keyboard shortcuts for most (with time) it just seems unnecessary to make them
so small. Strikes me that buttons you use more frequently, or have a “higher purpose” should be
sized up a bit, though I doubt that fits in with Mac’s GUI design philosophy…

Ron

Photos, news, memories and musings on the great American Roadside experience
https://www.theamericanroadside.com

Are you a collector? Put your collection online for free at What A Collection.com!
https://www.whatacollection.com

[David Dubois]

I have to back up the 2 week claim:

After 7 years on Avid I bought an FCP system and dived in without even a wetsuit!
2 weeks later I was cutting fine. Yeah I still had to think now and then about where stuff was but that’s to be expected.

I’ve been cutting on FCP for about 6 months now and have just gone to a place that uses avid… What a difference. I now cut quicker and more efficiently on fCP than I ever did on an avid. This is partially due to the fact that I read someones comment that said ‘DO NOT CUSTOMISE THE FCP KEYBOARD!’. Best piece of advice ever!!! As an Avid user, I had a highly customised keyboard layout but on FCP I use the basic layout and it’s fantastic.

There are a few niggles about FCP which everyone mentions: average media manager, the desperate need for ‘sequence decompose’ feature (Please add this in Apple!) but on the whole it’s spot on.

Read the books and hunt the web by all means but my advice would be to dive in and then read up on sections as you need to or when you get time.

Just a thought but I always learn a piece of software much faster when I have to…. obviously I don’t have a client with me at the time!

Happy cutting!

Dave

[Blub06]

I think the tiny icons are Apples answer to what they see as Avids ham handed interface “look”. The tiny stuff looks pretty, its all kind of jewel like, did I mention that its pretty. Its a mistake by Apple but what can you do.

Few things drive you to using the keyboard like those small icons.

With FCP 5 on a 30 inch monitor you do have the option of bigger icons, I think its called the less pretty look.

Chris

[Blub06]

Two weeks is very ambitious, I.m that good…;)

Chris