Who prefers FCPX

[Gerry Fraiberg]

For me it was love at first sight with FCP X. But like with any relationship, you have to work at it. Investing time and training tools – Ripple Training, Apple Pro Training Series, plus forums, is paying off. I bought into FCP X on day one, and had no thoughts of turning back even with everything that hit the fan. Yes, there were some initial bugs and hiccups. But I’ve just felt more comfortable editing in FCP X.

I shoot in HDV (Sony Z5U), Nikon D7000 and Contour HD. Recently I was hired to reshoot an interview for a college produced promotional for a local hospice. I shot in HDV, then dropped my clips into an XDCAM QuickTime .mov from the client on the timeline. FCP X handled the different formats seamlessly.

[Craig Seeman]

Love at first sight due to the paradigm shift.
I’ve been in post for over 30 years now and spent a decade on Avid and a decade on FCP legacy.

Fundamentally I had always felt tracks were a kludge since they had to take on two distinct functions most of the time. Tracks were used for both compositing and organizing and that was a dance I disliked.

Using connected clips and secondary storylines for b-roll and composites and Roles for organizing makes much more sense to me structurally.

Both still need improvement but seeing an NLE address that from the get go gave me hope that a developer finally saw things the way I wanted them to be.

The magnetic timeline is another great step forward as I’d also wanted to work in a mode where I could move “chunks” first and then work on trimming and alignment after the move. That seems much more intuitive than have to play the chess moves needed to avoid collisions.

FCPX is very young. It’s missing a lot a “mature” NLE would have but, for me, it was the realization that someone was growing an NLE in the direction I’ve wanted. It’s why I won’t go back to Avid and why, even though Adobe CS6 looks very deep, its style doesn’t fit my approach.

[David Battistella]

I prefer FCP X

One year in (I posted a film edited with it just two days after downloading) I can say I feel it’s getting better and it is one of the best NLE’s ive ever used.

Downsides:

Still no OMF support or logical interface with APPLE LOGIC (why?) to mix audio.
FCP X assumes you will finish everything in the NLE (but resolve support is really nice)
No Red support? Soon I hope.

besides those three things I think the bold move was smart and that the software is excellent.

David

______________________________
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Lord Herbert
https://www.davidbattistella.com

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I still prefer FCP7 by far.
I bought, installed and updated FCPX from day 1 with great expetations, but so far I am still at a stage where I don’t think I can really start a real project with it yet. I haven’t spent a long time on it because I have to shoot, edit and deliver for a living so I don’t have much time left for getting acquainted with new things unless the current ones get obsolete or do not fulfill my needs. So I think if the interface and workflow had not changed so much it would have been a closer option. OK for the roles, OK for the Events, OK for a lot of other things, but an option for disabling the magnetic timeline, an option to view roles as tracks, an option to open previous FCP7 projects, a more elastic organization, an easier and more intuitive way to work with complex audio and a few apparently simple changes would have made it a much more natural step up instead of a leave that and take this no matter what your time is worth. I take it nobody really cared about this, and I guess it would have been a not so hard task for the developers, so as a professional long time customer I feel abandoned. I think I’ll stick to my two early 2008 Mac Pro, Snow Leopard, FCP7, intensity Pro that have proven to be rock solid and perfectly effective for my line of work so far for one more year or possibly two (the satellite tv channel I work for still have IMX PAL SD delivery standards). In the meantime I’ll give further tries on my MBP and iMac, upgrading the SW until it is free and not a new paid release. Then I’ll decide how to go on. I’d really really hate to go back to Windows, so if Apple gives me an opportunity not to abandon the ship, like a new Mac Pro and a few other things, I will gladly give them more of my hard earned money, otherwise I’ll swallow my tears and be forced to look somewhere else.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Jason Jenkins]

I’ve been using FCPX for about 11 months. It’s been perfect for what I do quite a bit of: corporate interviews/talking heads. I love being able to ‘roll my own’ presets in Motion. Keywording/favorites have been great. Publish to YouTube? Use it ALL THE TIME. I’m editing native AVCHD on a 2011 Macbook Pro. Very nice. The whole system has allowed me to get my work done faster.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.

[David Burch]

I had a few reservations with the first version, and the lack of functionality at the time forced me to continue using 7 for a while on certain projects. However, I immediately fell in love with the magnetic timeline and the media management. 10.0.3 sealed it for me with the inclusion of multicam.

Today, FCPX is the only NLE I want to use, by far. I still have a list of features I would like to see included (batch export, anyone?), but by far it is the best, fastest editing tool I have ever used. I work in a small production company in which I am the only editor, and we work mostly with live documentation of events ranging from weddings to concerts and conventions. We also do a lot of things such as corporate training videos, promotional videos, and mini documentaries. Most of the editing I do is essentially finishing up a pre-switched show, but the ability to easily synch isolated camera angles and fix switching mistakes is essential (which is why I was forced to use 7 for a while). The auto-synch feature using audio waveforms alone puts FCPX way ahead of the competition, and after I learned how to properly use the magnetic timeline I find I can accomplish tasks in about half the time I could in other NLEs.

[Charlie Austin]

I love it. It’s got some issues for sure, but nothing that some updates won’t fix. The more I use it, the more I like it. Xto7 and 7toX have gotten really good, so it’s fairly easy to move back and forth and/or hand stuff off to editors who are still on 7. EDL and AAF export are pretty much there, Roles will get better, you *can* edit “legacy style” by just ignoring the primary storyline if you want. The benefits of the new stuff far outweigh the remaining issues for me. Now I just have to switch the rest of the editors at work… that’ll be fun. 😮

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[James Ewart]

Out of interest what is the advantage of editing native AVCHD instead of optimising/transcoding to Pro Res? re there no issues with editing natively such a compressed format as AVCHD (which I also use and really like)?

Been using FCP since version 1.2…it’s been quite a journey

[James Ewart]

Hello…as Logic can handle AAF files which we can create with X2pro and I am not an audio guy and do like to give my sound t a sound mixer on certain projects…is there any great disadvantage to using AAF files instead of OMF?

Thanks in advance

Been using FCP since version 1.2…it’s been quite a journey

[Jason Jenkins]

[James Ewart] “Out of interest what is the advantage of editing native AVCHD instead of optimising/transcoding to Pro Res? re there no issues with editing natively such a compressed format as AVCHD (which I also use and really like)?”

The advantages are; smaller file size, no transcoding time. If you are editing with multiple video layers and doing heavy image tweaking then you will probably get better performance using optimized footage.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.