FCPX and The Great Misnomer

[Herb Sevush]

Winston –

Your responses are perfectly reasonable for your situation, but I’m going to respond to them to show why others might not follow suit.

1. The cost. $300 is cheap, but if you actually are interested in the promised functionality I/O upgrades, be aware that many will not be free. That $300 can easily start approaching the 1K you’re trying not to spend, once OMF, XML, EDL, Tape In / Out and others are provided.

2. I use Motion as well, but quite frankly AE + Photoshop is way better. If you spent the same time on training for them as you did with FCPX you would have a far better graphics toolset and be a more marketable editor.

3. FCP hasn’t evolved, there is not an iota of FCP in FCPX. The 2 products have nothing in common except for the name, parent company and Randy Ubillos.

5. As for loyalty, I’m in favor of it as long as it cuts both ways, with Apple it obviously doesn’t.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Winston A. cely]

Great points on all counts! My turn! My turn!

1. True, but we’re not sure how much the incremental upgrades will be (I get the impression Apple’s planning some incremental upgrades sans charging for them). Not to mention, a little money here, and a little money there, is a lot easier for smaller companies and individual editors to handle than a couple grand all at once. Plus, from my limited experience (only 7 years in the broadcast field) buying additional plugins and software is pretty standard, at last it seems that way. Of course, you can also say that at this point in FCPX’s infancy, being required to spend a little extra to get what most people consider standard tools to be double dipping, and I agree.

2. Maybe someday, but at this point there’s nothing I’ve needed to do in the last two years that I couldn’t do with Motion. With previous versions there were huge deficits in Motion’s abilities, and it hampered the creative process somewhat, and in some of those instances required hiring an outside party. However, once it got to version 4 it covered my bases, and has prolonged any immediate need to learn other software. Of course, this is in my case only and the limited breadth of work I do. (90% infomercials and 10% other).

3. I misspoke. As I mentioned in my post as well, FCPX is nothing like FCP7. What I should have said is, I’m interested in Apple’s take on the evolution of NLE software.

4. I don’t see it that way, but I completely understand why so many do.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

17″ MacBook Pro | 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 3 | FCPX | Motion 5 | Compressor 4

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[Scott Sheriff]

[Winston A. Cely] ” I can’t wait to start using FCPX for actual broadcast projects.”

How do you know what your video levels are without an I/O card and a calibrated monitor/scope?

Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair

Where were you on 6/21?

[Craig Seeman]

[Scott Sheriff] “How do you know what your video levels are without an I/O card and a calibrated monitor/scope?”

If the scopes in FCPX were designed to be accurate, you’ll have levels, generally. Having a calibrated monitor is mission critical for color grading though. Also if there’s potential issues with interlaced video you want to see it on a monitor that will make that obvious. Of course having outboard scopes is good but, in theory, the built in scopes should be accurate. In fact that was supposedly one of the more significant improvements in FCPX. They don’t in any way replace a calibrated monitor looking at video out.