So is FCPX earth shattering, or should I just move on to Adobe?

[David Mathis]

Alright, so X is not perfect. Neither is any other NLE on the market. We are human. No matter how much your NLE of choice is improved it will never be “perfect”, that is how I see it.

I will say in many aspects X has made much progress. Yes, it would be nice to have a “Send To Motion” command but it does not. I would not consider it a complaint but rather an area where Apple can make an improvement.

The same goes for the color bar. It is certainly, at least some degree, more intuitive then the color wheel. The lack of individual sliders should also be addressed. Then again no NLE is going to have the best set of tools for color correction. I rely on Resolve for that task and color grading as needed. This is not to say the tools are bad in Final Cut Pro X, they need some improvement.

One thing to remember is that even though an NLE may lack in certain areas it makes up for it in others. Perhaps we demand to much out of our NLE of choice, not paying attention to its strong points, how it makes our workflow easier. I find that trying to working with it rather than against it makes me a more efficient editor.

That is my opinion and those are my thoughts. I think it really comes down to which tool is most appropriate.

[Erik Lindahl]

I’m not sure the notion of “if you rely heavily on effect and animation – go with adobe” I correct or even true. Dynamic link is extremely flawed and lacking, consistency between AE and PrPro is poor and just working in PrPro in general give sub-par results to FCPX’s engine.

Yes, for animation, compositing, motion graphics etc AE rules but in this area I really don’t see PrPro very strong. Adobe real f:ed up not taking their amazing animation package into their editor.

That said FCPX isn’t perfect and I’d always go to AE for detailed controlled work. But for example color correction is vastly better in FCPX given it does have its limitations.

I think the main / only hurdle for FCPX is it’s new workflow. That can set a lot of people off – my self included.

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Loren Risker] “being able to use all 16gigs of ram.”

ok thats hard to argue with.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Andy Field]

When did you last use Premiere or AE dynamic link between the two? They work fine for is in the last several CC versions. Why would Adobe duplicate it’s AE effects(compositing app) in Premier(editing app)? That’s like complaining Apple didn’t put everything from Motion in FCP X. In fact Apple removed that Dymamic link it had in 7 in this new version.

[Bret Williams]

I would take Premiere’s keyframing over Final Cut every day. And dynamic link to AE works, whereas there is none in FInal Cut anymore.

And in 2013 Premiere added a soft edge crop to their arsenal while X added the drop shadow effect. Obviously both are on the cutting edge of motion graphics. 🙂

[Willy Pimentel]

Use the p buttom and move freely!!

Willy Pimentel
Motion Graphics Editor/VIz Artist/Trio/Camera Director – Univision NY
Macbook Pro 2011 thunderbolt/ TBolt Display/ 2 SSD Hds /Lacie Tbolt

[Erik Lindahl]

I’ve used AE since version 3.1, I think, and started testing PrPro as an FCP 7 replacement at, I think, CS 5 or 5.5. Even the latest CC-release had me quit un-impressed. Dynamic Link is virtually useless for us in general and the times I have stared an edit to later move to AE for final composite / effects work, well most of not all sketched effects aren’t transferred. PrPro is extensively buggy / renders out poor results with every project I’ve thrown at it the last few years.

I guess I was expecting AE inside of PrPro and / or complete transparency between the apps which isn’t the case. File management is also horrible with dynamic link since we often require the use of Mocha for tracking and masking work. On top of that, renders via dynamic link are way slower than a proper AE render to file since you’re stuck with ONE thread for the task. Also it’s not uncommon we want to break down a spot and send various elements to multiple compositors. Again, dynamic link to AE doesn’t do us any good what so ever.

I’ve had extensive talks about this with a Swedish Adobe-rep and all in all the hooks between the apps aren’t there for my so called advanced workflows.

[Erik Lindahl]

It all depends on what you do. Just cause an app CAN hog memory doesn’t make it necessarily more efficient. FCPX has been extremely un-efficient in the past, given 10.1 was a major boost in speed. That said certain workflows are virtually always realtime in FCP7. I’ve even encountered a lot of the scenarios in the past where X was way slower than 7 (file imports for example). Not sure how these are today however.

[Andy Field]

Surprised you are having those problems. We’ve had the opposite experience. Maybe your hardware set up or remove and reinstall may help?

[Bret Williams]

Being able to actually use the photos your client hands you without downscaling them first. Or, for that matter, the video they hand you without having to run it through a converter. But any app can do these things. Except FCP 7. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that it’s time to move on from FCP legacy. Not neccessarily to X, but to something.