Final Cut Pro X Babbling

Almost exactly a year ago I started this here blog with a post entitled It Doesn’t Suck. So…  I thought it only fitting to revisit the topic, and see what has changed. In a word, in my little corner of the editing world, nothing. It’s as though it’s the first week FCP X came out. “Nobody uses it”… “If it only had tracks”… “It’s iMovie Pro”. It’s like Groundhog Day.

FCP X currently has dozens of unique, workflow and editing enhancing features, things you just can’t get or do in other NLE’s. It’s not the unfinished App that it was when it came out. And like every NLE, there are things that need work. Guess which aspect everyone here likes to talk about… Having never used FCP X for more than an hour of course. I’m still using it every day cutting spots. You’ve probably seen them. But, ya know… nobody uses it.

Meanwhile, in the world outside the relative handful of companies and editors who cut trailers here, lots of people are using it with great success. In L.A., a fairly large movie was just cut in X. There will be more. A lot of people in town are using it for a variety of projects, documentaries, cable shows, network promos. In the rest of the world, even more people  have begun to embrace it. The BBC and other large networks. Ad agencies, Music video’s and television shows. Tons of stuff.

A lot of this may be familiar to FCP X users, but for the “nobody uses it” crowd, here are some links:

Honda’s interactive commercial ‘The Other Side’

Editing a Hollywood feature cut on Final Cut Pro X

The BBC adopts Final Cut Pro X for news gathering

Editing the Tour de France on Final Cut Pro X

Adidas 2014 FIFA World Cup commercial edited in Final Cut Pro X

Sony Xperia commercial cut on Final Cut Pro X

Arcade Fire music video cut in FCPX

I could go on and on, and that’s just links from one website. Somebody is using FCP X. Lot’s of somebodies.

Anyway, the good news is that since everyone now loves Premiere so much (it has tracks!) If I need to use it I can run FCP X at the same time (7 and X don’t play well together). If there’s a gig I need to keep in Pr, I’ll do all my selects and stuff in X due to the fact that it’s just better for that. Then, get it all into Pr, and cut in there. When I need to find a random shot, I just go to X, skim around (Hoverscrub? I don’t think so.), find it in a heartbeat, note the TC,  then pop back to Pr and locate it. It’s actually faster to do that then hunting around in the morass of bins and folders and subfolders and tabs and panels and meaningless thumbnails that is Premiere. (and to be fair, most other NLE’s too)

I find SFX the same way. Pop into X, arrow key down the list and look at the waveforms as they instantly appear, find the one I need, and go search for it in Pr. Exponentially faster than playing through 100 whooshes to find the one I need. Like, not even in the same league.

Anyway, this post isn’t about that stuff. It’s about the fact that FCP X still doesn’t suck. It’s gotten really, really good in the year since I wrote my original post. It’s being used on some very high end work regularly, and there’s more every day. And yet, here in the little movie marketing world, crickets mostly. I know people are using X here and there, but nobody talks about it. It’s odd. Ah well, I’m happily using it quite successfully, people have no idea what they’re missing. 😉

I’ll end this “anniversary” post with a little quote I ran across the other day. I think it’s appropriate.  Happy Editing!

“Generals are notorious for their tendency to ‘fight the last war’ – by using the strategies and tactics of the past to achieve victory in the present. Indeed, we all do this to some extent. Life’s lessons are hard won, and we like to apply them – even when they don’t apply. Sadly enough, fighting the last war is often a losing proposition. Conditions change. Objectives change. Strategies change. And you must change. If you don’t, you lose.”

– Dr. G. Terry Madonna and Dr. Michael Young