FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF FCPX

When Apple launched Final Cut Pro X in June 2011, the reaction from professional editors was fast and furious. “iMovie Pro,” as it was often referred to at the time, looked nothing like its predecessor in look and function.  After reading all the negative opinions about FCP X, I pretty much made up my mind that I was moving to Premiere Pro.

But after a cooling off period (and two FCP X software updates), my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give FCP X a try. After all, you can’t say you don’t like broccoli if you’ve never tasted it.  

The learning curve was a little difficult based on the fact that the entire FCP X interface is much different from legacy FCP.  I also had to get my head around different terminology: Event Library, Connected Clips, Primary Storyline, etc.  Once I understood the concept, things went much smoother.  Here are my overview of FCP X.

Native Support

I shoot on P2 cards. On legacy FCP, time would stand still while the MXF media would be transcoded to Pro Res during Log and Transfer. This could take a while depending on how much media you shot that day. Now the waiting game is over. FCP X lets you import your footage and start cutting immediately. While you are editing, FCP X is transcoding your media into Pro Res in the background. Huge time saver.

Background Rendering

Option/R, Option/R, Option/R. I get carpal tunnel just thinking about it. Before FCP X, rendering clips on the timeline was a manual process which took over your timeline while that thin render bar casually moved to the finish line. The new Final Cut has eliminated this by adding background rendering. You no longer need to stop and wait for a render to finish before editing again. If you add an effect to a clip or place a transition in the timeline, FCP X automatically starts rendering in the background so you can keep on chugging along editing your project.

Skimming

At first, I didn’t really like it. But after editing several projects, I can’t do without it. Instead of double clicking on a clip in the browser (as with FCP 7), an editor needs to just move the mouse horizontally over the source thumbnail to scroll through the clip. By the way, you can kill the audio while skimming (SHIFT/S). Visually searching through source clips has moved into “light speed” status.

Metadata

Anyone who works with me will tell you I am organized. What can I say? I’m an efficiency fanatic who likes a smooth workflow. FCP X is a welcome tool for those of us who like to label, sort, and organize our media. Final Cut makes it very easy to label clips to search them later during your editing. And because of FCP X’s native support, you can start organizing your media before you can say the word “transcode.” Don’t be intimidated by the new lingo (Keywords, Smart Collections, Favorites). Spend time organizing on the front end because it will save you lots of time on the back end.

Just call up your waveform window and go to work to improve the contrast by adjusting the highlights/midtones/shadows. You can even copy the color correction and apply it to other clips. Like Apple Color, you can also apply secondary color corrections to the same clip. This can be helpful if you want to alter the color for part of the image using a built-in mask (ex: make the sky a richer blue) after you have already adjusted the clip’s contrast for the entire image. All of this is possible without having to leave the FCP X application. That is a big improvement.

Stabilization

I’ve used it on several clips and it does a good job. Just select a clip on the timeline, click the Stabilization button in the Inspector and FCP X does the rest. The clip is even auto-scaled. This function is a massive improvement from its FCP legacy predecessor, which processed the entire raw clip (not just what appears on the timeline.) I’ve noticed that the Stabilization works best on excessive shake (ex: hand-held dolly move) as opposed to moderate shake (ex: stationary hand-held shot).

CONCLUSION

Based on my workflow and project delivery, FCP X works very well.  It definitely improves the overall speed of editing over FCP 7.  It does resemble iMovie in its layout but is nothing like iMovie under the hood.   Does FCP X need improvement?  Absolutely.  But it provides the tools I need to edit my projects.