Is this list of crucial functionality seriously missing from FCPX?

[Craig Seeman]

[Omar Nabulsi] “1. No way to name tracks? (I.E. Audio Dialogue 1, Audio Dialogue 2, SFX, etc.)”

You should probably buy the Ripple Training series but there are many free tutorials, including their basic one in the App Store, to get you going.

There are no Tracks. There are Roles and you can name roles just as you listed them.

[Omar Nabulsi] “3. No bin structure support”

Bins are limited in my opinion, compared to what FCPX has. Keyword Collections and Smart Collections. The same clip can be in multiple “bins” (keyword collections) and Smart Collections can have combinations and by dynamic.

If you look at a car and say there are no hooves or you if you look at a multiline highway and say it has no train tracks, that would be a (very) loose analogy. Given your comments don’t even touch FCPX until you watched some training.
If you get in car and expect to drive it like a horse you will have a train wreck.

[Andy Neil]

I agree with Craig that it might be difficult for you to proceed until you’ve discovered how different, yet intuitive and powerful the FCPX workflow can be. Ripple training or Lynda.com tutorials will help. To address some of what you’re talking about though…

1) There aren’t tracks in FCPX. Clips are connected via a Storyline and clip relationships are based on other clips rather than specific tracks. IMO, this makes FCPX a much better workflow for doc style work. An example: You have an interview clip talking about Pearl Harbor. Sometimes, he’s on camera, sometimes you’re covering his bite with footage from the attack. Broll clips (footage from the attack) connect to the storyline clips (interview). From the perspective of watching the cut, it’s the same as having your intv on track 1 and your broll on track 2. But if you decide to move the bite forward or backwards in the story, all the connected clips go along for the ride, without having to create add edits, open up the timeline, parse the items that belong with the intv and open another hole where you want to place the section. This makes FCPX very powerful when doing structural edits, late in the game.

Also, not having tracks has the side effect of speeding up workflow.

2) OMF/AAF export can be accomplished with a plug in. If it’s a necessary part of your workflow, then it’s a necessary purchase. But considering FCPX is a one-time purchase of $300, it still puts it much cheaper than its competitors over the course of an edit. Also, you can export FCPXML format to Resolve for color.

3) FCPXs organizational structure is stronger than bins. Keyword collections, smart collections, favorites, folders, events, and libraries are all different levels of organization. The closest analogy to bins in FCPX is actually keyword collections where you can store clips or parts of clips very easily. You can even add clips to collections at the injest stage. There are a lot of different ways to organize your clips which makes it better for long format IMO than bins.

But seriously, read up, watch up on at least the organizational capabilities. Hopefully, you’ll see just how powerful they are, and how useful they could be to your production.

Andy

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos

[Omar Nabulsi]

Guys, thank you so much for the responses! Both of your posts really helped me out, and got me to realize that I cannot map my experience with previous NLE’s onto the FCPX architecture. I have been watching lots of youtube tutorials on how FCPX works, and am excited to continue trying it out. I do however wish that they would one day add OMF/AAF export into the NLE by default without having to use external plugins, but at least we have the plugins available.

Thank you!
Omar