[Chris Kenny]

[Peter Blumenstock] “Are you seriously saying Apple didn’t have enough time to implement such “advanced” features and it will be added later on?”

This feature is very much like the other export features related to high-end workflows that are currently missing. Apple, as I pointed out, as a long record of shipping products when they’re useful to a decent number of people (which FCP X is), and not waiting around until they have all the features everyone might expect. The lack of support for high-end workflow features in 1.0 is so comprehensive that it almost has to be a consequence of a deliberate decision to put them off for a later update.

The alternative to to believe that Apple is walking away from the high-end market segment because they’re too lazy to ever add some workflow features that are, in comparison with what they’ve already done (the rendering engine, etc.) pretty easy. That doesn’t seem very believable, especially given that FCP X was first demoed at an event where Apple was actively bragging about its broadcast and post house market share.

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[Chris Kenny]

Yeah, it is somewhat annoying that you can’t switch modes while dragging. But this annoyance is a far cry from the ‘FCP X is not a pro tool because it keeps rearranging my timeline” talking point we keep hearing.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Jamie Franklin] “What would make perfect sense is if it warns you, which it doesn’t, and from the chaps I’ve talked to, it has deleted the source media, and *only* copy…”

I can’t replicate that behavior here. It’s possible there’s some intermittent bug, but if this is unintentional behavior then you can hardly read anything into Apple’s motivations about pro vs. non-pro use from it.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Peter Blumenstock] “FCP X isn’t something that can be fixed with a few updates; its ignorance for the most basic features and workflows is almost funny and grotesque.”

That’s absurd. What are the significant feature omissions right now? I count:

– EDL/XML/OMF import/export
– Video I/O through third-party cards
– Multicam

There is nothing about the way the app functions that fundamentally prevents these from being added.

The rest of this is mostly people freaking out about an interface without having bothered to learn how it works, as far as I can tell.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “yeah, its not good tho”

The Position tool appears to do exactly what you want. What’s your complaint here? That FCP X doesn’t overwrite portions of clips by default, possibly destroying information about editing decisions in the process?

I’m pretty sure that if it used to work non-destructively by default, and they’d modified it to work destructively (e.g. the opposite of what happened), people would be claiming this proved it wasn’t a ‘pro’ app because no ‘pro’ app would overwrite clips without asking.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Jamie Franklin] “Read this too…

Snip: On my initial project, I had 17 clips I brought in. I decided one was not needed for the project. I deleted it from the event. It deleted it OFF the disk as well.

Bad Apple!”

It’s a little more complicated than that. See my post here.

Basically, it only does that if you have it copy media into its own library on import. Which you don’t have to do. This behavior makes perfect sense.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “that is so funny. the whole timeline sliding around like jello. edits cut to music all going to hell. it’s hilarious.”

Try the ‘Position’ tool.

Not to put too fine a point on it but, this is a perfect example of the “FCP X works differently, I don’t know how it works, and I’m going to assume anything I can’t immediately figure out must not be possible at all” phenomenon I was describing in the other thread.

Basically, Apple has changed behavior the Select tool to enable automatic ripping, which didn’t exist at all in FCP 7. But the ‘Position’ tool still works in an ‘overwrite’ mode, and leaves gaps if you pull a clip off of a track (storyline) entirely. There’s also a ‘replace with gap’ command, to delete a clip from the timeline without ripping anything.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Who am I trolling Chris? Apple? I’m annoyed is what I am.”

Claiming FCP X is designed for editing three minute sizzle reels, when it clearly has the metadata management features to support long-form projects, is trolling.

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Anyway – you didn’t read what I said – It’s what Apple chose to present FCPX as – I’m not arguing it doesn’t have mind numbing lists of metadata. It’s how they’re pitching the product, and who it’s intended for. Did you hear? you can’t turn the magnetic timeline off apparently.”

The solution to that seems to be connecting clips. If the magnetic timeline could throw specific clips out of alignment that needs to remain in alignment, you just connect them, and they’ll maintain the same relative relationship.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of your criticisms seem to be of the form ‘if this feature were added/removed in FCP 7 it would cause the following problems’. FCP X is a very different app. Not only from FCP 7, but from other traditional non-linear editing apps in general. It has a set of editing tools that are designed to work in specific ways with each other, and many behaviors that seem like they wouldn’t make sense in the context of a traditional NLE do make sense in FCP X. You just have to kind of wrap your head around the way it works first, and Apple’s documentation is not great for this purpose.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Tim Martin] “What are your thoughts on work flow from transferring selects / elements from one timeline to another.

Example, elements from Episode One of a series to Episode Two?”

FCP X has one sequence per project. But you can still copy and paste things between sequences. More than that, though, clip management has been separated from projects. A project in FCP X is pretty much just a sequence. You manage clips as part of events, and all events are available from all projects. So it’s really, really easy to share elements between projects; you don’t have to manually import them separately into each project, and any metadata is shared across projects.

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[Chris Kenny]

[Aindreas Gallagher] ” I’m loving the fact that a deleted clip item in the browser now sends the corresponding finder item to the trash. If true, that is a deliciously, aggressively stupid move. Its basically Apple whipping out the megaphone and saying – “this software is as conceptually sophisticated as itunes, have fun, you crazy teenagers,”

Basically, it provides the option to consolidate all of your media as you import it (copy it to the Event Library, basically), at which point it’s managed by Final Cut, so it makes sense that it goes away when you delete in Final Cut. Otherwise you’d just have orphaned clips in the Event Library folder. But you don’t have to let Final Cut manage the files for you; you can have them in your own hierarchy, organized however you like, and just import references. If you do that, it doesn’t move clips to the trash when you delete them in Final Cut.

This all makes a lot of sense, and given some of the atrociously idiotic things I’ve seen editors do over the years, the consolidation behavior is probably a good addition. Particularly the fact that it’s enabled by default, which will prevent a lot of less tech-savvy editors from shooting themselves in the foot. (And in my experience onlining various projects, including feature films, just because someone gets hired as a pro editor doesn’t always mean they’re competent at media management.)

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Look at all the promo material – they’re basically saying this thing is good for a three minute sizzle reel of cars being driven.”

You’re just trolling at this point. In terms of timeline organization and markers, tagging, etc. FCP X is substantially more powerful than FCP 7.

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