I hate it!

[Lance Bachelder]

If you’re happy with PPro and not having any crashes there’s no reason to switch at all. Whatever tool helps you get the job done…

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California

[Mark Morache]

Was there anything that you liked about it? Anything positive?

I found that it took me about three times as long to edit a project my first time out, and it’s progressively gotten faster and faster.

There are things that are faster from the get-go. Dealing with various formats without the need to transcode. The keyword filtering. The skimmer and the event browser.

The other things, like manipulating things in the timeline, take a bit longer to get used to.

I too was screaming (literally screaming, out loud) every time I got bitten by the new paradigm. After doing a few projects, I started understanding the way it was designed, and things started snapping into place, and I got energized.

I’ve cut a few things with people watching over my shoulder, and it’s very cool to see them get excited and energized by what I’m doing.

Don’t sell it short yet. If you have the time to try a few more projects, I expect it will get better.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if there are some very capable editors for whom it will just never click.

As for me, I’m not going back.

———
FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.

Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com

[Steve Connor]

I feel the same way when I have to use Avid, to me it feels counter intuitive as well, but thats only because I haven’t used it for a while and I need to get used to the way it works.

If you’re happy with PPro then there’s no need to change

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television

[Jack James]

Can anyone comment as to whether the recent updates have made much of an improvement?
I tried FCPX at launch and shortly thereafter got a refund on it. I am still using FCP7, but I’m certain that won’t last for much longer. So it means either I’ll have to suck it up and go with FCPX or invest some serious time with Premiere.

Synaesthesia 1.0 production data tracking and Red footage logging for Mac now available
https://synaesthesia.surrealroad.com

[Paul Jay]

The FCPX multicam/audio sync feature is freakin fantastic.
And i hated FCPX 😛

[Lance Bachelder]

Download the 30 day trial and see if you like it any better than at launch – there have been many improvements both in features and bug fixes – still needs some work for sure but much better than original launch version.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California

[Alex Hawkins]

Thanks for your responses.

I’d have to say overall there wasn’t a whole lot of positiveness gleaned from my experience. And I was only editing a grabfest interspersed with montages and overlay.

My whole thing was just that the timeline did things I didn’t want it to do and I couldn’t get it to stop. Is that really something you get used to?

As you say Mark, I too was literally screaming and banging the desk during my session. This is interesting to me because you obviously persevered and have now seen the light, as it were. Mmmm maybe I should do the same but I keep getting shivers down my spine when I think about it.

But what is the real change of thinking you have to undergo to figure out how and why it was designed. The audio I found annoying with funny looking waveforms and didgy small green tracks.

At the moment I don’t really get the skimmer. For me I just couldn’t ‘feel’ it. Maybe that’s something that comes with time?

Interestingly though I just found it not very responsive. I kept getting the beachball and Im only editing SD XDCam. 4 discs worth. Approx 2 1/2 hours worth of footage. As time went on it became quite sluggish.

The timeline thing is the biggie though. To me a timeline is an open canvas where you ‘paint’. It should not be restrictive in any way at all. You decide where, when and how things go on it. Now I know that people will say, well of course you can still do that, but it seems to me that you have to jump through too many hoops to get what you want.

Anyway it was an instructive experience and I am intrigued by guys here whose initial experience was similar to mine and have pushed on and now are loving it.

Mmmm we shall see.

Cheers,

Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia

[Mark Morache]

[Alex Hawkins] “screaming and banging the desk during my session”

Yeah, it was frustrating. I’m not sure when I turned the corner, but it makes sense to me now, and I can focus on my decisions and not the interface.

I think just making sure you understand the tools, and muscling through the edits. Practice using the Q-W and E tools. Get used to lifting clips from the timeline and overwriting back to the timeline. (I frequently connect clips, then use opt-cmd-down to overwrite them into the primary storyline.) Practice making secondary storylines, compounding clips and breaking them apart. Get used to opening clips in timeline mode, to mis multiple channels of a single clip. And above all, get used to expanding the audio of clips, and even the entire timeline. Map a keystroke for “expand” and “collapse” all clips so you can see and hide all of your audio split edits. Learn how to avoid breaking apart the audio from the video when you don’t need to. Get used to the speed tool. Learn how to add and adjust gaps to leave holes and adjust the size of those holes, then fill them with video.

Anyone else have that “turn the corner” experience?

If you didn’t get around the corner, start a new thread.

I was editing in 7 the other day. It was a project I needed to be able to share with other editors, and I didn’t want to do that to them. You know what I mean.

I was surprised how much I was missing X. I missed the snap of the skimmer. I missed the audition function when I wanted to audition some different clips of music. I missed the quick searching in the eb (event browser). I also starting to get annoyed at the track patching in 7.

[Alex Hawkins] “audio I found annoying with funny looking waveforms and didgy small green tracks”

You can expand the audio tracks. You can also use roles to expand and minimize audio tracks you aren’t working on. And I absolutely love the waveforms that reflect the output level of the clips. I use that to adjust my audio levels and get them close to where they need to be.

[Alex Hawkins] ” I just found it not very responsive.”

It can be sluggish if there’s background analysis and other tasks going on. Transcoding is a core hog, and should be avoided at all costs. Often it’s worth leaving background rendering off if you don’t need it. There are also some things that can cause serious project bloat that should be avoided, like creating long compound clips, and editing them into many small bits. 2 1/2 hours of footage shouldn’t be a problem.

[Alex Hawkins] “It should not be restrictive in any way at all. “

I don’t consider it restrictive. I think of it like gravity. We’re used to gravity. You put something somewhere and it generally stays there. Move away from Earth’s gravitational field, and things seriously change. Things may not stay where you left them, but to be weightless is fairly awesome, and you need to use the magnetic nature of the timeline and the ability to connect things to each other to get around the lack of gravity.

And frankly, without the gravity, there also isn’t alot of friction, so things move around quite quickly and freely.

I say watch some tutorials, practice with the tools, try some different strategies for navagating the new paradigm, and don’t let it beat you. It’s kind of like riding a bicycle. After falling and falling and falling, you eventually learn to balance and once you learn to ride, who wants to go back to walking?

———
FCX. She tempts me, abuses me, beats me up, makes me feel worthless, then in the end she comes around, helps me get my work done, gives me hope and I can’t stop thinking about her.

Mark Morache
Avid/Xpri/FCP7/FCX
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com

[Steve Connor]

[Mark Morache] “[Alex Hawkins] “It should not be restrictive in any way at all. ”

I don’t consider it restrictive. I think of it like gravity. We’re used to gravity. You put something somewhere and it generally stays there.”

I agree, when you are used to it it doesn’t restrict you at all. FCPX is not something you can judge easily based on a relatively small amount of time with it. You’ll notice the word “joy” bandied around on here by people who are using it, it’s not often a NLE will make you use that word!

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television

[Simon Ubsdell]

Great post!

[Mark Morache] “(I frequently connect clips, then use opt-cmd-down to overwrite them into the primary storyline.)”

I’m interested to see that someone with your experience is doing this too – I find it a really good way of working that definitely gets the best out of the magnetic timeline. A clip stays floating and connected, almost in a transitional state, until you decide it definitely belongs as part of the spine of the edit and then you can upgrade it to the primary.

I think generally the old 3-point editing paradigm is starting to look increasingly cumbersome and unnecessary for a lot of work. Doing a lot more editing in the timeline is a much quicker (and I think better) way of working and FCPX really moves this idea forward.

Conversely I can’t seem to get friendly with fine-tuning edit points in the browser. Something about the interface just doesn’t “feel” right. I think the major factors is not having a long linear representation of the clip which we’ve always had before – a visual aid which for me was far more “tactile” and intuitive. The “filmstrip” mode seems to mean a lot more constant scrolling and zooming in and out, at least for me – too many keystrokes or mouse clicks. And that’s despite the convenience of the skimmer.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com