[Mike Warmels]

BASIC changes… there’s your problem right there. The things they need to change are BASIC…

[Mike Warmels]

Ah, well maybe I didn’t explain the fact that I work in a television environment where a lot of directors do their own rough cuts. And FCPX has always been the one to claim it’s so great because it’s easy to learn and handle. And most love it, because of it’s ease and speed for rough cuts.

I am a director myself, and I do my own (pretty detailed) rough cuts myself, but I also like the rest of the process to runs smoothly. Most directors start their Libraries and Projects that editors then have to finish. However, when it comes to discipline, the majority hasn’t got a clue what their doing. So they cut away, add music etc.

So when an editor comes in, he automatically cleans up the timelines. Now, in FCP7, PPro and AVID you have a direct overview: what video layers are there, what audiotracks, what kind of audio. And moving them into the ‘proper’ tracks is some work, but not a lot. You can easily color code all the tracks or source clips and within less than an hour it all looks decent.

The problem with FCPX is that you can change the role of your audio, but when it’s in the project/timeline, you have to change bot the audio roles in the timeline AND in the Library. Now, in the Library it’s extremely easy and fast, but in the timeline you have to do it again. Plus often editors have to unselect the audiotracks NOT used and for that they have to go clip by clip by clip to check if anything is selected or unselected. There’s no way to see that in one glance by looking at the timeline. The lack of immediate overview of what’s there and how it’s used or has to be used, is just lacking.

So imagine getting a 40 minute rough cut for for a 30 minute show (fairly standard).. a lot of work that could be prevented if the roles assigned to or tracks (un)selected) in the original clips would automatically be changed in the project.

It’s just one of these typical programming things where I find FCPX quite immature. And there are a lot of them, and they show up unexpectedly when you have to do something FCPX obviously considers “complex”.

[Mike Warmels]

Well, I don’t find the workflow very complex, myself. I’ve been doing stuff like this for twenty years. So that’s my biggest question mark: why does an advanced, brand new NLE like FCPX have so much trouble with it.

AVID runs faster on external hard discs with half the speed of the Thunderbolts I am now using to get FCPX moving at least.

But I am an independent. I work on both AVID and FCPX (and FCP7 although that one is pretty dead). I’d work on PPro is any client would require that of me. So my biggest client has decided to go full blown with FCPX, using SAN. But the development on that end is so slow (they’re about to implement Yosemite so they can move to FCPX 10.2 with the El Capitan coming out any moment) that we’re not really moving ahead.

Again, one of the advantages of AVID is that it’s downward compatible. It makes no difference in what version I or my clients work on, they all communicate. Would be nice if FCPX could do the same (if not imperative).

So yeah, there are gripes about AVID. But for me it runs fast, project and media exchange is flawless and when I hit my spacebar it plays immediately. Not 2 seconds later. To me that is pure bliss… If I have to chose now (I mainly do bigger projects) AVID all the way.

[Mike Warmels]

Well, using tracks includes a certain discipline on where you place your audio. And I prefer that, especially because I have most of the audio for my documentaries and children’s television show mixed in a sound studio.
When you order the audio on tracks, the sound editor gets the very ordered structure as well. Crucial for him because he uses particular filters, panning and levelling for the various types of audio (dialogue, narration, music, FX etc.). So all dialogue goes on one track, so does narration, music etc etc.

If an editor already does that, it saves a lot of times there.

In FCPX this is another story. I have seen audio timelines from FCPX (using X2Pro) showing with 96 tracks!!! Where normally an export from FCP7 or AVID would just be something like 12-16 tracks. But since FCPX is clips based, it sends out ALL audio belonging to the clips used. So the sound editor has to start cleaning up a lot AND put everything to the proper tracks before he can start doing anything.

The roles system in FCPX seems to be developed to kinda do it differently. It’s kind of a nice approach, I use it a lot and it works well with proTools for instance. But what I find bothersome is that you have to assign the roles BEFORE you start using them. If any audio is already cut into the project and you reassign the roles in the audio source clip, it’s doesn’t change it in the project. It’s one of those many little things in FCPX that haven’t been properly thought through.

AVID however does do that, if you change anything in the source clip (or you decide to give the music track of FX track a different colour) it also changes it in the used clips in the timeline.

[Mike Warmels]

I’ve been cutting a lot of television shows on FCPX this last year and I must say: it’s rather underwhelming.

When I do a documentary series or a children’s series (meaning a lot of footage available for all the episodes and a lot of the same formatted elements (sequences, graphics etc)), I find FCPX clogging up very quickly. As soon as it gets complex, there’s trouble: using a lot of synchronised audio, 6+ audio tracks, graphic layering etc etc… FCPX gets enormously SLOW! I find working with it in a bigger environment (with a facility house and a network) is only posing a lot of problems that take ages to resolve.

Relinking a project for instance when sending off a project file to another station with the same media… FCPX has a tendency to lose its links to media, causing the editors that finish the shows that I make rough cuts for, spending lots and lots of time doing that.

I just had an issue with synchronised clips. 80% relinks perfectly, the other 20% relinks well but there’s no audio audible when cutting it in the project. All the footage is from the same source, synchronising is exactly the same, yet FCPX always finds little things it can’t hack. I found out that having separated audio where some have 6, some have 7 or 9 tracks, causes problems. Took me 1,5 day to get everything right. In AVID the exact same work takes me an hour max! Including checking the occasional one frame delay correction.

Now, this is just one of those typical complex things that FCPX doesn’t seem to handle properly on a larger-than-one-clip-or-video-scale, things I find absolutely horrendous. Asking myself WHY… Why does FCPX have so much trouble handling large libraries (for six 30 minute shows for instance)? Why does it have so much trouble with handling or processing audio? Why does it have such a hard with basic stuff we’ve been using for ages and that FCP7, AVID or PPRO doesn’t seem to have major problems with.
For instance: I had to cut a MUSIC EVENT in two, because…there were TOO MANY CLIPS in it. It crashed all the time when I tried to open the event. I mean: what is that all about? Too many clips???? I often need a lot. FCP7 could handle it, AVID can handle it just fine. I suspect all the audio and waveform generation is something that bears heavily on CPU and sic speed… too heavily to my taste.

But for me the worst is bloody beachball showing up all the time, slows the entire process down. There are days I find myself working more with FCPX than the show I have to cut, finding another of the 1000+ workarounds that FCPX obviously needs.

Support?? Where? There is none.

No, I prefer AVID all the way at the moment. It’s a solid beast, it’s fast, it always knows where its media is, it always handles all it’s imported media super fluent and it’s great for exchange between different locations and sets.

FCPX looks nice, has some nice features but it is too underdeveloped for me. The programming is faulty when it comes to complexer projects. It’s an NLE that is far from finished yet it claims to be professional. It’s too bad my biggest client uses it now as their only NLE, but it is gonna cost them. Because, and most editors working there agree, it’s in the end for regular tv work slower… slower than AVID, slower than PPro… and it has nothing to do with the way it looks or how you cut, I can work around that. I can work around the fact that a lot of things take more actions than in does in AVID, as long as I can do it quick. And FCPX just isn’t very quick on larger projects.

Oh and for those who like to rant to people not liking FCPX: I work on a trashcan 6 core for MacPro, I use Thunderbolt external drives, libraries and cache on my internal SSD etc etc… I did everything the avid FCPX fans said I was doing wrong and it is still Final Cut SLOW…

So AVID… yes, why not! I like it a lot!

[Mike Warmels]

Well, I am having a similar problem. One that is costing me loads and loads of time everyday and I suspect it’s the bloody waveform stuff on FCPX.

I have 21 XD-CAM discs from a one week shoot converted to Apple Pro Res in separate clips. I have then made 21 synchronised clips with all the separate 8-track audioclips belonging to this video. That was a bit of a hassle, a number of bugs showed up (4 out of 21 synchronised clips of 40 minutes didn’t register the 8 tracks of audio, the other clips did. (Workaround: cut them up in bits, but WHY do a few have that problem and others not???))

I have turned off the original audio, but now everytime I click on one of these synchronised clips to edit with them I get a beach ball. Sometimes 1 second, sometimes 5 or even up to 10, all day long!!! I suspect FCPX considers these synchronised clips as one big file (and not a collection of smaller separate files: video clip and 8-track audio clip). But editing with it is HORRENDOUS!!! I suspect FCPX has to check all the audio everytime I click on it: 8 tracks for 45 minutes each.

Now, I would suspect FCPX to be smart enough to see these synchronised clips as a collection of a lot of little clips. But I doubt it does. I tried to consolidate a two minute clips
and the consolidation turned out to be 78GB big. I checked the separate library I made for consolidation and noticed it had included ALL the clips from the synchronised clips from the two discs I used… in total 90 minutes of HD Apple Pro Res material. Why doesn’t it just include the two original clips I used????

Now I have had run-ins with avid FCPX fans, but I am sorry to say: the programming of FCPX is not thought through yet. And I run into that often enough. And again: synchronising clips and using them normally works fine on other NLE’s. Whenever a project gets big (like a series of six episodes and you have som 20 hours of footage, and now with synchronised audio) FCPX is slow slow slow… Final Cut SLOW would be a better name for it. I work 75% of my normal speed, the rest is just waiting for that darn beach ball.

I agree with Chris on this: you can’t work when you’re on a time schedule with the audio handling of FCPX.

(Oh I am on a 6 core MacPro trashcan, using Thunderbolt discs, local Library on internal SSD etc the works… I been through all that.)

[Mike Warmels]

As I said: I tried both ways, and on both settings FCPX slows down.

And BTW, it’s not just me. I work on three different sets and they all had FCPX 10.1.4 slowing down. It’s pretty smooth in the beginning, and after 1,5 hours it begins to slow down. After about two hours it gets to be annoying, so I close down and start up again. I’m not the only one doing that.

[Mike Warmels]

I just did: it’s around 120 Mbs read and write. It varies a tad each time it runs it through, sometimes 118, sometimes 122… So around 120Mbs.

[Mike Warmels]

Both the same.

[Mike Warmels]

On the G-RAID: 120 Mbs.