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why would anyone want to use FCPX (SERIOUS discussion – no bashing)
I do NOT want to attack or insult any FCPX editor here – I am just curious and I believe people do things for a reason. So why do you use FCPX? What are your reasons? What’s great about it? I have started to use it now so of course I am lacking experience in it. So far it doesn’t make any sense to me since I come from programs like Avid or Premiere. The main track is alright but I do not get why the track above (secondary story line or what’s the exact term) can’t be edited like the first track/main track. Having to group clips on the second clip/nesting them in order to gain editing features seems pretty weird as well.
There must be a reason why people use it and what’s great about it but so far I could not find any reason and when I ask people they just tell me “because we’ve already used Final Cut 7”. I do not think that you should use a software out of a habit. You should look for the tool that suits your needs the best.Anyways I am just really curious and I would love to hear it from you because the Apple page isn’t very convincing. It lists features like “you can add audio and EDIT your footage” – oh wow…
I’ve also failed to find a serious video on YouTube. Only little kids that don’t make a living with video editing and nothing actually serious. I also find that they edited ONE movie with it with Will Smith- a movie I have never heard of. -
106 Replies
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Bad link above. Try this:
-paul.
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[Michael Paul] “I also find that they edited ONE movie with it with Will Smith- a movie I have never heard of.”
For case studies, you might want to check out FCP.co. As far as feature films, in the US two major films (to date) have been released that were cut with FCPX. These include “Focus” (which was a major release, even if you didn’t hear of it) and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”. Different studios, but same directors/editor team. Also several international releases and plenty of smaller indie features. The reasons for why these editors opted for FCPX varies, but in general, they were willing to be adventurous and found it to be a software they liked and got the job done.
That being said, it’s an acquired taste and does require a bit of relearning to truly become comfortable with it. If you are happy with Premiere and Media Composer, why do you want to change? Do you have a compelling reason to switch? Have you gone through any of the many tutorials for FCPX? These will go a long way towards answering some of the operational “why” questions related to the app’s design. Browse through this forum and you’ll find 5 years of discussions as to the pros and cons of the app. Sometimes the reasons are that they like FCPX. Sometimes it’s because it’s an alternative to the subscription model.
[Michael Paul] “and when I ask people they just tell me “because we’ve already used Final Cut 7”. “
That actually seems a bit ironic, since Premiere is much closer to FCP7 than is FCPX. In fact, quite a few former FCP7 users shifted to Premiere because it was a more comfortable transition.
[Michael Paul] “So why do you use FCPX? What are your reasons? What’s great about it? “
In real broad strokes, the answers would include:
Powerful database foundation
Cost
Ease of use
Strong integrated feature set, including proxy workflows, wide camera support
Constant save
Large ecosystem of third-party apps and plug-insHope that helps.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Let me also suggest some of my own blog entries:
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/category/final-cut-pro-x/
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I understand the feature/TV and advertisement aversion. Everyone already knows hi-end, full-function workflows for Avid & Premiere — and even, previously, for Final Cut Pro 7 … used for example by the Coen Brothers for many of their features, which they cut themselves (presumably sending cut pix to more technically fluent post-production supervisors for audio and effects work).
Just look at one of Avid’s mini-docs on their editors doing “Gravity” or some such picture, to see the incredible depth of associated apps, custom controllers and other adaptations to pull off a “team-edited” feature. There is no need to know anything about FXPX if you do that stuff for a living.
However, for independent documentaries, web-docs and web-series, lots of other indie productions … where the editor is most likely NOT making a living by cutting, but rather is cutting their own material … FCPX is attractive because it is fun, easy, fast and … if & when you get to know it … very logical. AND with the available third-party apps, it can expand to play nice with other apps, with other pro editors.
I have just been assisting my 20-something son on a short he is making, a no-budget comedy, for his reel. He grew up using FCP 7, since my wife & I used it for documentary work. He has always been a very good cutter. BUT he is a writer/director type, not a gear head. He counts on collaborators for refinements of audio, effects, graphics and such. About the only area he insists on having absolute control is music editing, which he is also good at. He learned all of that in FCP 7.
He is now working in NYC, and has had to shift to Premiere Pro CC — because that’s what everyone in the indie and doc world is demanding that he know. The transition has been mostly logical, right down to the option of using FCP7 key commands as one of your PPro preferences!
He has worked for an indie narrative director, roughing out scenes in PPro. He is working for a serious documentary filmmaker in PPro. So now, he is cutting his short in PPro.
BUT … even so, on this short, FCPX on our iMac at home has proven a useful tool.
He shot on a Canon 70D DSLR, with additional double-system 4-tracks on a Tascam DR-70 (a pair of wireless, a Sennheiser shotgun, etc). He initially tried syncing and wrangling all the tracks in PPro … but when he asked me to help with his timeline crunch, as his “assistant” … we found it was actually faster, easier to prep all the footage in FCPX.
The syncing … especially when there was no slate … was easier. The splitting apart of all 6 or 8 recorded tracks, to eliminate empty tracks of a stereo pair, etc … the assigning of Roles (FCPX version of identifying “track” assignments) … all of it was easier. Just from a graphic interface perspective, everything was easier to look at, analyze and manipulate quickly.
We then transcoded the clips to ProRes 422, multi-track in a Quicktime wrapper, ready to import and edit in PPro.
Even when editing within PPro, we found it easier to do a difficult audio fix — finding the section on various tracks, deciding which sounded best, copying and replacing, fading, trimming etc — with the six audio tracks and video clip on a FCPX timeline. Why? Who knows? I think it is just the “object editing” mentality of FCPX makes it more like a word processor or other creative tool, less like a mechanical process (e.g. the old-school, film editing-bench metaphor of classic NLEs).
I myself am particularly attracted to this object-editing interface. Even those six-track clips can be brought into FCPX and cut as a single object on the timeline. You can expand and work on any given audio track, disabling it, key-framing it, applying filters, trimming, fading … then collapse it all, and just concentrate on cutting a sequence of clips. What you call “nesting” (compound clips?) in FCPX is just another way of saying: You don’t HAVE to see all tracks, all clips, all titles etc etc… laid out all over a bunch of tracks … during your content-editing phase, where you just want to see “this shot, that shot, the next shot” with wrangling and monitoring sync on acres of tracks & clips.
Hollywood and high-end documentary-wise, consider this: Walter Murch, editor, sound designer on features … and also editor of the recent “Particle Fever” documentary … worked for years with FCP7. He added on his own FileMaker Pro database. He showed me a track layout for Particle Fever, in FCP7, with dozens of tracks, video and audio. THEN, when it came time to review and manipulate basic are story points … he would render a collapse Quicktime movie, and lay it on top of the whole edit. He called it a “skin” — a single stream that represented his cut at that particular time, with all the actual tracks that make up his components, underneath that “skin.”
It occurs to me, he is making FCP7 work like FCPX! The newer app now has terrific, integrated database functions. And it’s basic graphic interface IS the skin. That is what you edit … only expanding to see all the pieces when you needs to slip, slide and otherwise work on those parts.
FCPX is not full-featured enough for a high-end artist like Murch … I’m just making a point, that there is a logic to working in the way FCPX works.
And for the indie filmmaker, writer, director, actor with NO ambition to make a living wrangling footage for someone else … FCPX can be a good space to work in. That doesn’t make it an “amateur” program … anymore than storyboards are “amateur” visualizations of final cinematography and editing.
You should solicit the opinion of Bill Davis on this forum, for a more forceful defense of FCPX’s capabilities and utility, for many media pros outside the small, couple-thousand-large pool of “Hollywood” and TV editors.
Doug D
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Not a big movie but selling well…
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 -
For me:
Easy to use
Magnetic timeline, no need to bother with patching or assigning tracks
You can choose what to output with the range tool and roles
EX: Output self contained movie with titles in English or Spanish
Great organizing
Ability to build custom effects, generators, transitions and title stuff in Motion
Better media management then old school FCPIn addition to some of the sites listed earlier you may want to check out Ripple Training, Steve Martin (not the actor) and Mark Spencer, a contributer on here in the Motion forum, have really great material. It is a one time purchase not a subscription based model. I also ordered Resolve training.
As others have pointed out there is a bit of a learning process but really is not that difficult.
My only beef is no native support for the Cinema DNG format. Hoping that will change in the next version. -
[Douglas K. Dempsey] “You should solicit the opinion of Bill Davis on this forum, for a more forceful defense of FCPX’s capabilities and utility, “Would love to- but I’m staring at this right now waiting for sunset with my wife. It’ll be a few days til I get back to you.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Haha, there is Reason #7: Bill finished his production quickly and masterfully in FCPX, and then had time for a vacation!
Doug D
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I’ve used all the main editors over the years, but primarily FCP legacy since the early 2000s. I use whatever editor clients ask me to use, but FCPx for me is by far the best and fastest editor I have ever used once I grokked its style and let go of my older habits.
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