[Ben Balser]

I’m testing Spellshot for Final Cut Pro. I can get a ton of rough cuts done, reframing, matching coloring in shots, it’s amazing. What used to take me two hours is now being done for me in fifteen minutes. Time enough for me to grab a sandwich, answer some emails, and down a couple of shots before doing the detailed trimming. It does grunt work, but that grunt work saves me hours, literally. Similar software is out there (by independent developers) that does this in the big four NLEs (Avid, Adobe, BMD, Apple).

[Ben Balser]

Ripple Training, CoreMelt, FCPX Full Access, Industrial Revolution, Simple Video Editing, LenoFX, Effects, they all offer freebies. I’ve not found transitions very expensive for the most part. Folks like MotionVFX are expensive (overly so IMHO). What specific transitions are you in need of? Oh yeah, don’t buy stuff cause it’s cool or download it just because it’s free. You’ll end up rarely using it. Get what you need, when you need it, specifically.

[Ben Balser]

Likewise, 2002 to 2008 isn’t much compared to the speed increases between 2008 and 2026. All the best to you.

[Ben Balser]

No, it is not. Storage throughput is so far beyond what it used to be, back when that was necessary. But the answer to your op question is, “No, it is not.”

[Ben Balser]

As for bugs, yes, there are several bugs in this latest 12.3 version. Standard troubleshooting:

Turn off Background Rendering in Settings.

Delete all Render files by selecting the library, go to File menu, to Delete Generated Library Files, then delete ALL render files.

Quit FCP.

Hold Opt+Cmd while launching FCP and when prompted delete pref/setting files. (perfectly safe, you won’t lose any work).

Then see how things work.

[Ben Balser]

To be honest, the Apple product forums here on CC have been very slow and quiet since just after FCPX was released. All forums have experienced the same. Apple’s FCP forum is the most active with the most knowledgeable users. I highly recommend going there first. I love CC, but not for Apple products. Apple has lost the high end professional market, it’s a YouTube editor now, hardly any TV station or film studio has it, almost no jobs ask for FCP skills (PPro and Avid are the top needed in job searches), so there you go.

[Ben Balser]

What you asked is about readily available information you can find super easily by visiting the NLE’s respective web pages. You’d have gotten your information faster and easier. And you would have found that there’s not much difference between NLEs. Some minor workflow differences, some major price differences, but there’s not much else different.

Fact is, there are thousands of features/tools/functions for every NLE. To list which have what is a LOT of work to ask someone to do for you. But you can go to the websites and compare side-by-side yourself in a matter of minutes. Simple fact. We don’t want to do the leg work, we just want to ask the Internet and be handed all our decisions on a silver platter, without having to make them or put in the effort.

First, decide what you want to devote yourself to editing. THEN, decide a budget. THEN decide which NLE is affordable to you, and which workflow appeals best to you.

These user forums are mainly for troubleshooting issues that we can’t find answers to anywhere else. Seems like you came here first, without doing any sort of work yourself. Pre-sales homework is not what we’re here to do. We are not salesmen, just simple end users. All the time wasted on this thread, when someone could have just taken 10 minutes to look at 2 web sites, and had answer.

[Ben Balser]

I don’t understand clearly what you’re doing and where you’re seeing duplicate. Some screen shots or a video would help.

[Ben Balser]

H.264 is a good quality codec. It’ll perform well in FCP and goes to social media really well. But as said before, if you don’t have to, don’t.

[Ben Balser]

“Can you tell me what features exist in Premiere Pro that don’t exist in DaVinci Resolve, and that would justify the huge price difference?”

So there’s actually two parts to your OP:

1- You can look this up in much less time than it takes us to look it up and post back here. No one has all these features for all these NLE memorized. Yes, this is a question of laziness, lack of wanting to do your own homework, and have us do it for you, and that is the simple truth here. We do it, and you get angry. Well, if you leave, who will miss you?

2- What huge price difference? One you pay up-front, one you have monthly/annual payments for eternity. If you use both for 2 years, PPro will be much more expensive. Is THAT the huge price difference you’re talking about?