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Long time editor’s frustration with FCPX
Long time reader, a very rare poster. First off, thanks to the Cow Community. Without a doubt the most impactful change in my 30 plus years of editing is the online communities. Its not hard to remember when problems in the edit suites were fixed by calling in the video engineer (if you were lucky enough to have one on staff). The Cow community has been my “video engineer” for many years now and for that I’m very grateful. Hopefully, I’ve returned a few favors along the way as well.
Not sure why tonight is the night that my frustration with Apple has boiled over. Perhaps it’s waiting for a real update with a role mixer or roundtripping with Motion but instead seeing that Apple has decided to reintroduce Video Toaster-like 3D fonts circa 1990. WTF?
I’m actually a pretty strong proponent of FCPX. Once I mastered the magnetic timeline (took some real effort coming from all those years of tracks) I think its incredibly ingenious and I can edit infinitely faster than ever before. Editing became fun again and the flow I experienced once the lightbulb went off is addictive. Implementing the magnetic timeline was a conceptual breakthrough, the kind that I have come to expect from Apple.
What I cannot stand, absolutely detest about FCPX is the interface. It’s childlike and insulting.
Here’s why. I have spent the better part of thirty years staring at and working in nonlinear systems from Immix to Avid to PP, an FCP. And not one of them has made me feel the way that FCPX makes me feel . . . and that is CHEAP. It’s a toy interface, like iMovie, like something made for a high school videography class. I remember the first time I opened FCPX. I was furious. Not because it was different but because it was so so . . . immature. The interface just screamed “editor? bah! anyone is an editor now.” Seriously, I just felt so professionally debased. And after cutting dozens if not hundreds of programs, I am NOT a beginner. I am a professional and I deserve to use, hell, to live . . in a professional interface. Everyday I spend working in the FCPX interface makes me feel smaller, less professional. I jump into Resolve or AE and its like getting my mojo back.
FCPX is like sheathing a RED EPIC in Fisher Price plastic.
And its not about its capabilities . . not at all. Some elements of the software are just so damn elegant. I’m almost an FCPX evangelist, the way Apple has reimagined the timeline after all these years is groundbreaking but I am so ready to leave because of the crappy, two bit interface. I drool with envy when looking at Resolve 12 and I hope it lives up to its hype. I need my dignity back.
Anyone else feel this way?
Rant over.
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140 Replies
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David, what specifically in the interface makes you feel the way you describe? I get where you’re coming from and am curious about specifics and what you would change.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
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MY own single biggest interface complaint is the buffoonishly-named terminology. I’ve been told, “who cares what they call things, as long as it works” but it is in this area that I am made to feel silly.
I STILL find it nearly impossible to converse with a newcomer about FCPX without stumbling over the concepts, “When you start a new Project … er, what I mean is, when you start a new JOB…we can’t call it a project because that actually means a new sequence in FCPX.”
I maintain that the single biggest giveaway that Apple is pandering to “everyone else” is the concept of “Events.” If we can chuckle that the standard NLE is a mixed metaphor based on film & the editing bench or flatbed (Tracks), on tape editing (Play and Record ‘Monitor’ windows) and computers (Hierarchical Folders as “Bins”) … then we must laugh outright at the concept of “Events” which is based on the Kodak Family Scrapbook. The idea that you can or would sort clips as events comes straight from iMovie and iPhoto and presumes you are a hobbyist who hauls out your camera for a birthday or a wedding. And so you of course will chuck all these “events” into a family “library” and then on the weekend, open up your “make-a-movie” software and begin a new “project.”
No matter how many times I use the app, I must consciously read, think about and decide when I am creating a Library, or a Project or an Event. And given the way I work, I find that I must have an “Event” in every “Library” called “Edits” which contains all of my “Projects” for that Library. My head spins just trying to type that sentence!
To me, that is the Fisher Price aspect David alludes to.
Doug D
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I hear you. Had to watch a few videos to figure out what a library was and how everything interacted with each other. Then it made sense though my head felt like it was on a deranged merry go round.
I do like the interface, clean and not cluttered. Wish there was a way to save custom layouts but those keyboard shortcuts work, at least for now. There could be a few more buttons here and there. I do see how others would perceive the interface as a toy tough.
I am interested in testing Resolve once it is available but not ready to jump ship just yet.
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I feel your pain. I’ve written about this before. When I opened the interface and started playing with the app I was immediately struck by the feeling that Apple designed the UI for newbies who have never edited before. That’s fine. It just wasn’t for me. Nor was I enamoured by the idea of the magnetic timeline. I edit fast and effectively with tracks. And keyword collections, which most interested me, turned out to be a highly restricted version of how I integrate a text database into my editing. So I moved on. But if you love the under the hood functionality of X then my unsolicited advice is to use keyboard shortcuts and learn to live with the UI until something more appealing comes along.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
I actually like the interface and fell it has now a certain sophistication not to mention the most beautiful scopes of anything out there.
Funny but I feel the same way you do but about Premiere CC – the past couple of revs it’s gotten completely cartoony with weird chicklet style buttons and sliders in the newest announced rev. I hate the new look and am glad I made the switch full-time to FCPX. That said I too struggle with the whole Library/Event?Project thing – don’t like it at all.
It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
Great post David.
I actually feel, despite the 3D titles, that this is a major update in terms of stability and smoothness of operation. Anyone who has stuck with FCPX over the period must be rewarded with these benefits when one remembers the buggy, spinning ball, crashes of the early days when to even get out of an edit alive was an achievement.
I understand the points you have made about the the appearance of the interface and think that this one factor is what put a lot of people off from evan trying the software out.
I guess I’ve just got used to it now but in the ( almost ) four years I’ve been editing with FCPX the actual interface is the component that has changed the least. We still have very inflexible elements such as the audio meters, the way that the effects browser eats into the timeline, the inability to save different layouts as we could with FCP7 and for me the most frustrating thing is the clip duration and height settings frequently reverting to their default setting. ( anyone else have this problem? )
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Strangely enough I don’t really care if the interface looks like it’s for beginners, or what they call the elements as long as it functions the way I want it to.
I’d rather the “toy” interface of FCPX than the never changing 1980’s Avid interface!
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I get you Steve:) After moving to FCP X and PrPro CC from legacy, had to edit a project on MC. Jeez. This was after being a MC editor till 2002. The interface looked so old. Ancient. Felt like I was using a machine in a museum. I know guys using MC swear by it, but I’ll never go back to MC. PrPro CC it is:)
Kannan Raghavan
The Big Toad Films Pte. Ltd. -
If I’m having those issues I haven’t niticed.
Am I the only one who doesn’t notice any special performance increases? In fact it’s more like a 5-10 crash a day fest. Still as laggy as ever.
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Interface preferences are such personal things. I have a hard time looking at Adobe interfaces because they are so detailed and cluttered to me. FCPX is much more comfortable for me to look at and the app does what I want it to do, so I am happy. Qualifier: Editing is not my primary activity by a long shot, so maybe some things haven’t had a chance to get under my skin yet.
The nomenclature shift with FCPX was sort of a pain and I still find myself explaining it to my spouse who is quite a good editor with years of legacy work behind her. Once she has a library set up, none of it matters to her, as she is off to work. The word event was a bit troublesome for me, as in ‘event photographer’ but I think of events as things that happened on certain days and since I already tended to organize material by calendar date anyway, that wan’t much trouble for me in the end.
The reason why I continue with X is because I love how so many of the mouse clicky things in Legacy were squeezed out , simplified so that now I feel like the editing process lets me focus more on what I want to do as editor.
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