Well according to FCP Towers, my article on the subject above had some good hits/tweets so I thought it might be interesting to write an update after digesting the FCP Sneek Peek.
After a week of thinking (and dreaming) about FCPX, I am very excited. I am primarily an editor, a cutter; and the changes to the timeline alone seem to be immense. There will be naysayers of course but when I moved to FCP from Avid in 2002 there were a lot more naysayers than there are now!
Change in this industry is an inevitability. I think the initial learning curve of FCP just got a lot less steep. The price certainly just got a lot less steep. So the two main barriers to entry to FCP for a lot of people have been lowered even more. This means more students, more kids (the future), more journalists (shudder), more artists, more bosses (the pursestrings), more everyone using FCP that ever before.
Tips 10 – 8 Saving
Well strangely enough, I think these tips will still stand as they just involve the simple saving and naming of files, common to all good computer practice; the actual procedures may change a little but overall the concepts should remain.
Tip 7 Importing
No hint from Apple yet on “ingest” apart from that it will be a background process but if this follows the iMovie principles, there will be media automatically created/transcoded on ingest. This may be a lot more prescriptive about where it goes in terms of scratch disks and probably a lot simpler. (See Tip 2 below).
Tips 6 & 5 Rendering
Bye bye RT Extreme (it seems). My one comment, I do hope we will be able to turn off automatic rendering and that there is a good render file clean-up tool. I suspect real time audio track playback may remain as a preference.
Tip 4 Rountripping
No idea how we get into and out of Motion at the moment, but I suspect that roundtripping may remain with us a while longer.
Tip 3 Speed favourites
Speed changes seem to have been completely redesigned, certainly at the front end. This looks amazing but as yet no sign of any keyframe graphs, (much-loved by professional editors).
No hint about saving favourites and/or preferences yet either or the extent of customisation potential.
Tip 2 User accounts
My user account tip for different projects is probably the single most useful tip I ever tell people. Even if FCP is a complete rewrite, this tip will remain gold.
Tip 1 Maintenance
I imagine steps 1 and 2 will remain the same but we may be saying goodbye to the FCP Prefs file.
Alex Snelling
http://web.me.com/slackalicefilms/AlexanderSnellingTraining/
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
