[Randall Wurster]

If you like X so much, maybe you can help me use it ;)….

FCPX performs better than legacy, no doubt about it.

I’ve been using it a lot more recently – and there’s a lot to like about it.

Multicam is great. Performance is great. Setting up, logging, bringing in footage (which you reference) – its all faster than 7 (by a wide margin) – and faster than Premiere. Its ability to sync clips is a huge timesaver, and I like it way better than PluralEyes at that.

But the actual editing – it falls short when you need to really work things.

I’m currently using it on some two-camera compliance scenarios, which is the first time I’ve opted for it on this kind of project over FCP7. It had to cut done fast, and X seemed like the way to go.

BUT:

Any fine-tune editing is a bear. I can’t manipulate the video the way I am used to.

A simple L-cut in FCP7 was achieved by holding down the option key or locking the tracks with a simple keyboard shortcut. Now I have to hit Ctrl+S on both clips just to create a little L cut? Then I have to do it again just to clean up the timeline to look right? And I can only push one clip over another until it reaches the nearest edit point? That’s all just silly.

You simply cannot manipulate the timeline in X the way you can in 7. The program does not respect me enough as an editor to allow me the freedom to move clips around the way I need to – it assumes I can’t keep anything in sync if given any freedom.

I’m currently trying to do a typical edit that would take me 2-3 seconds in 7. I can’t even figure out how to do it in X. I have character A speaking, they butchered their line. I chop up their clip until its a coherent piece of dialogue. There’s three or four edit points in there. I need to cover it with the reaction leading into the next shot of character B. Problem is, in X, it’s just not feasible. For starters, with multicam “break apart” or “detach audio” clips is greyed out, even if I wanted to go through this laborious and silly step. I can separate audio & video (which again, is silly), but I can’t roll the outgoing shot past the closest edit point. It’s asinine. A simple edit in FCP7, and I have to come up with “workarounds” just to do it in X.

FCPX has handcuffed my creativity as an editor.

It works wonderfully for certain projects – and its great for multicam until you need to get in there and tear something apart and wrestle with it. I just wish the people who wrote this program wrote it for us, and not for amateurs. It’s a great program when it suits your need (I cut 12 hours worth of 2-cam presentations in probably half the time I could’ve in FCP7), but when it doesn’t, it’s unusable, a time-killer, and leading to worse edits.

Please help me if I am simply not getting something in X. I would love that to be the case – but its fundamental failure is its lack of tracks, its silly connected clips gibberish, and its insistence that everything must be in sync…it’s a creative nightmare…just when you start to love it, it gives you another reason to hate it.

[Randall Wurster]

Very interesting post, thanks. Great point about the exporting and FCPX re-compressing, that’s good to know.

[Randall Wurster]

Got it – thanks Jan, that’s very helpful.

[Randall Wurster]

Thanks Jan & Brett for the replies.

Brett, re: FCP7 – I’ve used XDCam Transfer in the past with FCP7, but had not used the Log & Transfer plugin for it, and that seems like a good way to go.

Jan re: FCPX – this also seems like a good way to go. How quickly does it handle a card worth of material? XDCam Transfer with FCP7 could be a little slow, but I’m imagining it’s gotten a lot faster.

In both cases, do you then treat your rewrapped XDCAM sources as your original sources going forward? I’m thinking about storage and archiving requirements.

Thanks again for the input.

[Randall Wurster]

Fair enough… apologies if I seemed to be putting words in your mouth. It just struck me as another “FCPX is just a fancy iMovie and is not a real pro app” post. There’s a lot of that going around. 😉

Understood – granted, I can see why you’d come to that conclusion reading some of my posts so far. And I apologize if my post seemed to insult other areas of the pro editing world. I wouldn’t want to do that – especially given the wide variety of jobs we get up here in my area. I just wanted to make it clear that my opinion on FCPX is not cemented yet, and that these were my gut reactions to using the program in a limited fashion.

In my opinion, the idea of FCPX was to make an app that, setting aside the new interface etc., Would work for people who didn’t need all the bells and whistles and for people who do. I think they’ve succeeded. And I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about Apple’s intentions toward the “pro” market.

We’ll probably just have to agree to disagree on this point – time might tell, but I have way less faith in them than several years ago.

What type of thing do you think it would be hopeless on? Honestly curious. 🙂

We do a lot of industrials (technical training) and then scenario based compliance training (typical two camera shoots, occasionally three).

For the latter, while multicam in FCPX actually looks pretty promising, the editing just looks too cumbersome to me. I use timecode to sync, so I don’t need the nice sync features that come with FCPX. I don’t need magnetic timelines for it, I’m not grouping pieces together and moving them around in bulk, and if I am, simple in & outs will do. I can do L & J cuts far simpler in FCP7 than in FCPX, despite being advertised as otherwise, I don’t understand what people felt was so difficult about it in FCP7. I don’t like the video being so literally attached to the audio as it is in FCPX. Among other things that slowly drove me nuts in my FCPX trial.

For the industrials, there’s two problems: one we have twenty to thirty sequences per project, that we’re working on, grabbing pieces between and exporting at the same time. From what I experienced, that’d a nuisance – and prohibitive – in FCPX. Also, for technical training like this, the most important thing is the continuity of the cuts. The traditional viewer-canvas in FCP7 let’s me do that.

Again, I can see FCPX being awfully useful in several implementations, and I was a little harsh in dismissing it so rashly. I still, however, would find their change in verbiage, interace, & workflow a nuisance – and a step down from FCP7.

[Randall Wurster]

Where did I denigrate or say that any of those industries were not pro?

In fact, I rather explicitly said those were pro applications of the product in my post.

And no, what I work on isn’t more “professional” than any of that.

And I also never implied that FCPX users were incapable of dealing with tracks, only that the writers of the software wrote it for a target audience that was.

If a capable editor happens to enjoy the trackless workflow, as in your case, I’d guess that this is a happy coincidence and not Apple’s intentions. Every bit of evidence of where Apple is headed in terms of production suggests this to be the case.

I also said I hadn’t made up my mind on FCPX, which is why I was here. I said these were my feelings after cutting two projects on it. There’s really no need to put words in my mouth, I’ve said enough as it is.

iMovie and FCPX share the same verbiage, some features, similar workflow, similar interface and – and this is the arguable point – the same basic principle: to hide an awful lot of control from the user with the assumption that the program knows better. If you have found a way around that, or not found that to be the case, then more power to you. Obviously the power behind FCPX trumps the outdated FCP7 and I truly wish it could work in my workflow. There are certain projects where maybe it could, but others where it would be hopeless.

[Randall Wurster]

Search my posts. There are quite a few other “pro’s” here as well who use X. But honestly, if you can’t let go of traditional tracks, then X probably isn’t for you.

Willdo re: the search. Again, this is from two trial experiences from FCPX, so I continue to hope I’m wrong. But at the same time, I’ll continue to make my opinions on my experiences with FCPX rather clear.

I don’t think trackless editing as seen in FCPX is actually new.

The standard Movie maker, iMovie, whatever free editing app is on your system, etc. all feature what amounts to “trackless” editing because its geared towards the average user that the creator of said software deemed incapable of dealing with a track system.

Again, purely my opinion, but “trackless” editing is just watered-down editing. It’s been around for a while, and FCPX repackaged it as something revolutionary because it fit into the iMovie crowd they were targeting.

Now, it might so happen that it has use for specific pro or prosumer workflows (music videos, wedding videographer, and maybe, maybe some documentary stuff spring to mind).

Bottom line, if you edit with the keyboard, if you know all your shortcuts, if you know your footage inside and out, you don’t need the gimmick that is the magnetic timeline. Crap like that just slows you down.

[Randall Wurster]

“In legacy, we had to constantly guard against inadvertent destructive actions like putting a long music cut on an audio track and failing to notice that we’d left a SFX down the timeline. If you did, the new import could easily KILL the SFX leaving no trace of it’s prior existence. So it was easy to literally destroy elements in other parts of your timeline , precisely because the program couldn’t know any better.”

Is that really a concern for you? I don’t believe it. In over a decade of editing on FCP or similar NLEs I have never made this mistake, nor feared making it. Keep track of your tracks. It’s your job as an editor.

I’ve now taken two stabs at using FCPX and seeing if it could ever be helpful in my workflow. I downloaded a trial at home recently and gave it a go. I loathed it more than the first time.

The conclusion I came to is that it spends too much time trying to police stupidity…no offense to those that like it. To me, all of its features are geared towards making life easier for non-editors who don’t understand best practices and who don’t implement them.

Apple doesn’t care about editors who make a living off of this craft. The ad airing now where they have an Apple Genius help a passenger on a flight do an emergency video edit pretty much says it all. They want everyone to be able to edit. As a professional video editor who was educated and trained in this field, we should probably all be offended that they think so little of our profession.

Still, I could care less about that if it still had value in my workflow. I’ve tried twice now to adapt and change to FCPX. I really like to think I am able to learn and adapt to new programs and NLEs. I’ve used Avid, FCP and Premiere. FCPX just seems worthless to me. It’s iMovie Pro. Except iMovie might even suck less.

But I would love to hear/see others that feel differently. I can’t use FCP7 forever and it’s going to be time to move on soon (maybe it’s past). I, honestly, would love to hear a differing opinion and see how FCPX is working in professional (or honestly, even prosumer) environments.

[Randall Wurster]

Hi Daryl – curious if you can elaborate on that issue at all, I seem to be having the same problem. What was your fix?