[Mark Dobson]

Bill,

Your experience mirrors mine. Going back to FCP7 after working for a sustained amount of time with FCPX was for me a disorienting experience.

After a period of hitting Q and W on the keyboard, trying to skim clips in the bins, and getting nowhere whilst dragging clips around on a demagnetised timeline, I too found the rendering time excruciating.

Sure at the end of the day everything has to get rendered but at least in FCPX work can continue until you take a break and the background tasks start.

[Mark Dobson]

Simon,

A video would be really useful. Also do you have any tips as to how I can establish a white balance which was a doddle in FCP7 (or FCP Legacy as people are now referring to it which makes it sound very dead )

At the moment if I need to check the white balance I use the crop tool to select / isolate a white or near white area in the image and then using Vectorscope together with the colour board I adjust this area – How would you go about it?

Mark Dobson
Producer and Director
Alembic TV
http://www.alembic.tv

[Mark Dobson]

Hi Simon,

thanks for that. It all looks really useful especially the blur inside or out function. Just need to learn how it all works now.

Does this replace your previous grading filters?

If so I will remove them from the Motion Effects folder.

Again, thanks for this and all the other filters/fx you have published.

Mark

Mark Dobson
Producer and Director
Alembic TV
http://www.alembic.tv

[Mark Dobson]

The way I reinstalled it was to drag the application into the trash and empty it and then reinstall it through the purchased apps page on the app store.

If you have other versions of FCPX on your computer as I have it is also necessary to eject or disable the drive where the other version is. For some weird reason even though you might be booted up on a totally different system it still picks up that FCP X is residing on the computer.

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and have FCP X on one drive running under Snow Leopard ( with Legacy FCP running on the same drive.)

I now operate FCP X from a partitioned 1TB drive running under Lion. FCP X is not a stable piece of software yet and to use it is to embark on a series of workarounds and requires a fair bit of patience.

I have found 10.0.1 to be generally more stable than the original release.

One thing I have never done, and i’d love to here from those that have, is to phone Apple Support with my FCP X problems. Apparently they have a dedicated FCP X team.

[Mark Dobson]

Hi Alex,

I had a lot of weird things start to happen when I upgraded to 10.0.1. Difficulty in switching between the Event Browser and Timeline amongst them.

The far more serious fault was cmd Z, undo, not working. In fact as I slowly discovered from a point where cmd Z ceased to work nothing I did was saved at all.

I was in the middle of a job at the time and was reluctant to do anything dramatic apart from trashing the preferences.

So I learnt to work around even a problem as serious as that through constantly checking cmd Z.

What solved the problem, and what I recommend you do, is to completely trash the whole application and do a fresh install from the app store.

Everything started to work correctly again. Well in as much as FCP X works correctly.

[Mark Dobson]

Hi Herb,

Sorry for the delay in responding – what i would call a timezone delay as I’m here in South East England.

The thread has moved on a bit since your post and now we the contributions of Oliver Peters himself which is great.

To answer your question – Have you given the same consideration to any of the other NLE’s out there, or just to FCPx, and if it’s only FCPx that your looking at, my question is why?

The answer is no – not in any great detail – I know what’s out there and I know the decisions that many of peers have made – mostly shifting over to Adobe Premier Pro.

I’ve been using Apple computers for 27 years now and editing on them for the last 10 years. I’ve been using FCP since Vers 3 and in some way I’ve built up a lot of trust in the brand and the thinking that goes on behind it.

The sad news of Steve Jobs death and the subsequent plethora of articles about both Apple’s business development and the philosophy behind what they do has been fascinating and has in many ways reinforced my commitment to giving FCP X a really good try out.

And the only way for me to actually assess the software is to use in the real world, on actual commercial projects with real deadlines and real expectations from the clients I work for.

In many ways the work we do is not that complex. They would in broad terms fit in with Oliver Peters first criteria of workflows he feels are viable for FCP X. Projects that are basic news packages.

The programmes are basically documentary format using interview material to provide the narrative structure together with graphic sequences to top and tail the programme and provide section / chapter sequences. With FCP7 is was able to produce all the programme components within the app. I learnt about composite modes and layoring clips and was able to produce pretty sophisticated graphic sequences and stings. Audio likewise was reasonably easy to handle through using the different layers for different functions.

My big gripe with FCP7 was the amount of rendering lockdown time, its inability to handle different formats on the same timeline without rendering, and the dreadful crashes that occurred from time to time. And basically how slow it was when asked to anything vagually complicated So FCPX addresses many of these issues. On a recent job I had 5 different formats coexisting quite happily in the same project.

For me to move to another editing system such as Premier Pro would involve a large investment in time and being a bear with a small brain I would get pretty confused if I was to start using different packages to do different jobs.

So to go back to the original question about shifting away from this new Apple software. Well I guess I still have faith in the smart thinking that has underpinned my experience with the company over the years.

If this time next year a lot of the issues about the functionality of this software have not been resolved I might well start looking elsewhere or think about a different way of making a living. Maybe one that doesn’t require electricity.

Mark Dobson
Producer and Director
Alembic TV
http://www.alembic.tv

[Mark Dobson]

Great question Herb,

The truth is there is no right or wrong, its a matter of consideration and choice.

Oliver Peters like many of us has developed specific workflows within FCP 7. I understand he does a lot of Feature Film editing and has developed a very structured approach to dealing with scenes, multiple takes and complex structures.

It’s not possible to precisely emulate many of these in FCP X. However I’ve found that it’s possible to find workarounds, sometimes quite convoluted, to most of the jobs I used to do in FCP 7.

One point that he makes that I agree with relates to the speed of the GUI. Opening any event, project or clip and you are also opening a filmstrip or series of filmstrips. The lag is frustrating.

Another is the limitation of the Copy/Paste/Remove Attributes function in FCP X. It’s really selective in FCP 7 and also splits the Audio and Video functions. In FCP X it’s all or nothing.

I know that I’m giving myself a lot of extra work, and at times stress, through using FCP X. I also know that at any stage I can simply switch back to FCP 7.

I have dipped back into FCP7 on a couple of occasions and it all feels very old fashioned and clunky, kind of square.

So for the moment I’m with FCP X and enjoying the ride.

[Mark Dobson]

File Z = cmd Z

[Mark Dobson]

I’ve been using FCPX exclusively since it was released in June.

My opinion of the software changes constantly as I get more used to it. Basically I think it has a lot going for it. I also think it will take a fair while to get totally up to speed on it. Every movement still requires thought.

I spent years using and learning FCP 7 and always felt I was still only scratching the surface of it’s capability. On the surface FCP X seems a lot simpler – but I’ve found this to be an illusion – it’s possible to to accomplish extremely complex editing tasks but only through adopting a different mindset.

Initially I installed it on the same drive as FCP 7. I’ve got a 2009 2 x 2.8 Quad Core and upgraded the memory to 14GB. I found the performance really unreliable – spinning wheels, crashes etc and with the launch of Lion decided to give it it’s own partitioned drive.

Well things didn’t improve that much. So my whole experience of the software have been tempered with frustration. Following the upgrade to 10.0.1 my latest set of problems involved the undo function not working. I eventually realised that that also meant that nothing I was doing was being saved. I would recommence work and get into a Groundhog Day loop of re colour correcting etc.

My workaround for this was to File Z after every action and quit as soon as it stopped working. That together with constantly trashing the preferences, initially manually and more recently using Digital Rebellions excellent Preference Manager. Allowed me to get the job out the door.

With no deadline looming I then decided to trash FCPX and do a clean re-install from the App Store. Well, fingers crossed that seems to have resolved the issue. So maybe that’s a lesson learnt, to not install an upgrade over existing software but go for a clean install.

Despite all of these problems I have produced 5 or 6 productions using FCP X. There are lot’s of things I really like and dislike in equal measure.

I find organizing clips in the Event browser really quick. I don’t use any of the built in analysis tools and I also only reference files on their drives rather than have the software re-transcode and duplicate them. If data storage were not an issue I might just let it get on with it but with HD material taking up roughly a 1GB a minute it is a real issue.

I don’t miss having tracks in the timeline and if one wants to emulate FCP7 one can do through using the P function and layering files in a similar fashion. I find the trim tools and the precision editor really easy to use and editing audio has become a very precise task now.

The ability to create and manipulate Compound Clips is one of the biggest plusses for me. It declutters the workspace and makes moving programme sections around really easy.

FCP X has to be seen in tandem with Motion 5 – and I’m sure that in the future the two programmes will actually integrate. Why the roundtripping function between FCPX and Motion is not active is a complete mystery.

It really is early days still with this software. Anyone using it professionally is acting as a beta tester. We ‘ve had one upgrade already with another one due in a few months time. I think by this time next year most of the core problems will have been resolved and some of the missing features and problems, I/O issues, external monitoring, multicam will have been resolved.

But I think that for many this software will never cut the mustard. Oliver Peters has really nailed some of the issues in his FCP X road blocks blog;

https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/fcp-x-road-blocks/

But for someone like me I feel FCP X can only get better with each upgrade. Like many small production companies we do everything in house now. Music production, graphics, color correction, etc. And that’s what FCP X has been designed for. I can’t see it being used in the Broadcast market place apart from one off documentaries and shorts.

I feel that Apple are committed to redress many of the shortfalls identified after the launch. I feel they really upset a lot of people by giving Final Cut Studio the EOL sticker. Adobe Premier Pro and Avid have already benefitted greatly from this change of direction.

I think that by now most people will already have decided which direction to go in.

[Mark Dobson]

That’s a shame Denver.

I thought you had the inside info on an imminent MBL 2 – FCP X release date.

I’m sure this will happen soon.

Thank’s again for your really clear tutorials.

Mark