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FCPX Newbie – is learning FCPX worth the time?
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[Mark Dobson] “Well you have to evaluate things from how they will serve you and yes for me FCPX works well. It does not easily fit into the world of large production houses or with people who need to collaborate a lot with other
editors.But for editors working on their own and small production companies FCPX is a self contained and powerful piece of NLE software.
Going back to the original question of this thread – is learning FCPX worth the time? – Yes, definitely if you are prepared to learn how to use it properly. You can’t just dip in and get a good workflow going immediately.
It is very different.
But if you want to be able to quickly organise, color correct and edit and output file based media it’s definitely worth investing the time to learn how to use it.
“Mark, I agree with everything you are saying here.
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FCP X is certainly not going away, so it’s definitely worth learning. OTOH, the market is very fractured right now and gun-shy of Apple, so it may or may not be productive for your job prospects.
The paradigm is different enough that in some situations its advantage and disadvantages become a wash. Yesterday I was in an agency-driven session. 6+ folks in the room all telling me to do different (and sometimes contradictory) things. This was in revising/re-cutting a complex, finished corporate piece, so lots of surgical changes. Some of the re-arranging went better due to the magnetic timeline and some resulted in a complete mess of a timeline.
That’s something I still wrestle with and it’s one of the weakest aspects of working with X. You find that you spend a lot of time juggling among the A (magnetic), T (trim) and P (position) modes, as well as having to manage the position of connecting points. This is completely different from other NLEs, because if you don’t, timeline changes often have unintended consequences.
None of this is a deal-breaker, but it will have you longing for FCP7, PPro or Media Composer at times. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to deal with this and that’s after a year of working with the program. I persevere because of the things I like about it, but I am REALLY hoping for big fixes in the next update.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Mark Dobson] “For someone working with file based formats, doing everything ‘in-house’ and delivering a file based end product what possible advantage is there in returning to FCP7 or Premier Pro?.“
I’m not sure if your question is rhetorical, but I’ll answer it simply by saying that you can do a lot more with the Creative Suite than you can with FCPX… even if you add Compressor and Motion.
“FCPX does everything I need to a really high, broadcast quality, standard with a minimum of fuss and complication.”
Fair enough… does this mean that others can’t do what they need to do using software other than FCPX?
Shawn
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Learn FCPX and Premiere CS6. They are both awesome and worth learning.
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[Paul Jay] “Learn FCPX and Premiere CS6. They are both awesome and worth learning.
“I like the middle road approach.
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X exists for one reason and one reason only.
Editing has largly changed from something that a few specialists did in expensive hardware dominated shops – into something that now can be done on simple, affordable consumer systems and produce the same quality given the appropriate editing skills.
Editing has been untethered.
So the tools need to be similarly untethered from the approaches of the past.
If you see your “career” as working simarily to the environments that were prevalent in the prior era – contributing as a role player in a shop environment. Then you should probably prepare yourself for that with traditional suite-friendly tools like PPro or AVID.
If, on the other hand, you think that editing will continue on the path toward individual empowered editing over collaborative “shop based” editing, then you owe it to yourself to explore and understand how the most successful video editing software tool creation company, Apple, sees the future of editing.
And that means taking the year or so of study required to really understand the new X approach.
Choices, choices.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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In case you haven’t read any of my posts, you need know I’m no fan of X.
In this forum you will find a small cluster of fans who will no doubt extoll the virtues of of movie hero, and talk about how they use it on project after project with excellent results. All of which is subjective to say the least.
If you are asking if you should stick with tried and true software like FCP, which is a suite of applications that cover several disciplines, and translates easily to most other proven editing platforms or go with movie hero which is essentially imovie on steroids, just look at jobs posted in the year and a month that X has been around paying careful attention to the rate offered for FCP, Avid, Premier editors vs editors who know X.
If you do that you will find the real answer to your question.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
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FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT…
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[Shawn Miller] ”
Fair enough… does this mean that others can’t do what they need to do using software other than FCPX?
“I believe that 70% of editing is brainwork with the balance made up of technical editing ability. Stick any good editor in front of any of the main NLE systems and they will produce a good result.
Editing is at the end of a chain of a lot of production decisions and by the time a file or tape is ingested into the system the editor should have a pretty clear idea of what needs doing to complete the project.
And as with many creative exercises editing is a process of reduction, of picking out the best material and
working with that.And it’s this side of the job, dealing with metadata, that FCPX really excels at. Within the event library It is now really easy to quickly organise a ton of clips into a clear structure, to hide rejected material, to even create sub edits, using compound clips, before even opening up a project to start editing in earnest.
FCPX is definitely not the most comprehensive package, nor the most developed and at the moment it has made little impact on the broadcast market but based on Apples commitment to the product through the 5 upgrades within a year I think it’s got a bright future.
One day an insider will spill the beans on what really happened to produce the abysmal FCPX launch and also on the impact the vitriolic criticism had on the development team.
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[Bill Davis] “If you see your “career” as working simarily to the environments that were prevalent in the prior era – contributing as a role player in a shop environment. Then you should probably prepare yourself for that with traditional suite-friendly tools like PPro or AVID.
If, on the other hand, you think that editing will continue on the path toward individual empowered editing over collaborative “shop based” editing, then you owe it to yourself to explore and understand how the most successful video editing software tool creation company, Apple, sees the future of editing.
“I still think that’s a false dichotomy, Bill. CS6, for instance, offers quite a few more tools to a one-person-bander than X does. I mean, way more. Beyond not-even-in-the-same-ballpark more. And, its design lets it play with other tools, like DAWs, that that one-person-bander may also own, but, since it also has a DAW, that might not be necessary. And, it fits on the same laptop as X. Your rather constant ploy seems to be that anything that is not X is about big, last-century video and is used by cogs or “role players” in someone else’s machine.
If I had to choose a single piece of software for a video editing business it would NOT be FCP X. Its far too limiting. Of course, in other arenas, it could be all you need.
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