What is a professional editor going to do with FCP X?

First off let me say that I love FCP X. Next, for the record I've been a professional TV commercial/advertising video editor for 11 years. I have a decent reel of national spots and have worked for many agencies in several different cities. I've used FCP since my start and used Avid for 3 years while living in LA. Currently I am freelance and love it.

As much as I want to use FCP X now, no post facilities will even consider letting me. I constantly argue with Avid guys as to how much better FCP X handles organization, audio, effects, color etc. Yet there is one side of their argument that always makes me think... "Apple doesn't care about the professional anymore and will kill your career and livelihood by suddenly ending it's support for you like they did with Shake, Color, Soundtrack, DVD Studio, and so on." Also as a freelancer you have to work with the house's infrastructure. So right now I can't work anywhere with FCP X and not one place I frequent will listen to my praise for FCP X. They just laugh at me.

I'm beside myself with grief because using Avid makes me want to go out and kill. Premiere is a joke, and Smoke? Well I don't really know enough about Autodesk's child to comment.

I need to pay my mortgage like the next guy. I'm not sure how to win this argument with my peers. As much as I do love FCP X and want to be the guy who makes everyone else realize what they're missing, I'm not sure possibly hurting my career is worth it. I don't know of a major post house that is using FCP X yet.

Anyone else having this moral dilemma? I want to win this argument but not sure I can.

Don't argue. Some post houses are picking it up, some aren't. Use it for your own work, have Avid around for the contract work that requires it. If you want to support yourself as a freelancer, you should have FCP 7, FCP X, PPro, Media Composer all on your workstation. That's not anything new, either. Post houses did not 100% across the board use one app or the other. But it does seem to be more obvious now than in the past where FCP 7 and Avid MC was all you had to know.

Just learn it and add to your portfolio of stuff you can edit in. Use your Avid and Premiere skills to get work to pay the mortgage and use your Final X skills to do jobs on the side. You might be fighting a losing battle trying to convince a lot of dyed in the wool editors that something's good when it's more fashionable to say otherwise. Some Editors seem to quite enjoy slating Final X, it's like a sport.

I certainly can edit in all of the others it's just annoying and reduces the work quality IMO.
For years pretty much any house would be fine with FCP unless they were hardcore Avid places because of shared media/drives. Thing is I cut very little at home for pay. Clients are generally always in the bay with me on spots of course. It's really a bummer to have to use tools you don't enjoy.

Difficult to argue with your detractor's salient points. Apple has heard this for the last couple of years. Tim Cook responded with a "just you wait & see" type of hint about what's in the pipeline. However, we're all hanging on Apple's long awaited & promised Mac Pro update, a machine that's supposed to come soon. With it, Apple will hopefully reconnect with professionals & show their loyalty to the faithful followers of so many years. With that new Mac, there will most likely be a resurrection of the accompanying professional industry standard software packages. At least... that is our hope.

I'm absolutely in love with FCPX as a product, but if I were running a video business there's no way in hell I'd trust Apple's dedication to it. The track record is abysmal and the launch of FCPX was among the worst in history (imo) and unlike maps they couldn't even bring themselves to apologize for that crazy transition.

It's still an awesome product though...while it exists.

I get your reticence to trust Apple David, but I'm curious, which company would you trust if you were running a video business?

As track records go all three of the "Big As" have a somewhat spotty track record as far as total commitment to supporting some of their products long term. Adobe pulled Premiere off of the Mac and Avid's at one time appeared primed to do the same. Avid's current financial state ought to give a business owner a little pause as well.

If you really want to get reconnected with Apple and have them show you loyalty buy their stock. Those are the people Apple is loyal to.

I used to work at a boutique house in Chicago that was launched by a couple of guys that had worked at some of the mega post shops of the 90's that got bloated and eventually imploded in on themselves because they couldn't adapt to the model of the 2000's.

The company in the beginning was three guys working in a single room on a pair of fold out card tables. They had a box with Final Cut Pro and a compositing station and they did battle against the big guys and have come out a decade later like gang busters. They went the Final Cut Pro route because it was scalable and cost effective and got the job done. I never asked, but I think they would have gone the Avid route if cost weren't the issue.

I bring this up because the only way to "win" the "FCP X is a professional editing application" argument is to prove it by using it in a professional atmosphere.

John Davidson did a great job with his series illustrating how they use it and talking about why they use it and I suspect as FCP X matures after another year we'll see and hear more stories about it as people start their own shops and make Final Cut Pro one of the heavy lifters in their toolbox.

I spent 6 years of my career in Chicago too. At the time I was able to convince the owner to move to FCP. Chicago was much more friendly to FCP than LA was. I'm currently pushing the agency/shop I regularly cut for to let me show them why X works perfectly in a professional environment. The engineer just rolls his eyes and editors from other cities that come in to work, gang up on me with smirks and constant comments. Yeah I saw the Conan skit already guys.

All it takes is an editor to win an oscar who edited with FCP X, and I think that could definitely happen in the next few years.

FCPX gives you the tools you need to create professional broadcast edits- and deliver them. Lumbering old giants are simply that- and only time and crowds will slowly change their minds. (HDCAM much? ) And WildGiles, to your point, I couldn't agree more.

While you should never deny yourself access to all forms of software relative to your craft, rest assured that it is better to be an engine than a caboose, especially if you are qualified enough to know when and why to do so.

I have owned my own production company for 7 years and I work internationally, from Arbor Vitae, WI- not Chicago, L.A. or N.Y. If I need to shoot in Sweden, I fly there. Same with Florida, etc. We use FCPX heavily in our editing toolset and interact with several agencies and networks in the United States and abroad.

Everyone's needs are, of course, different, same with tastes-but it's our jobs as editors and animators to know what software currently works and why- if you truly want to be on top of your own game. I can say this- Many people are working very hard on FCPX in Cupertino.

Happy Editing.
Dustin

FCPX Editor
Mac Pro 6-Core/8-core/MBP
Flanders Scientific via AJA T-Tap over Thunderbolt with Promise Pegasus R4.

"I'm beside myself with grief because using Avid makes me want to go out and kill."

I understand exactly what you are talking about.



I just can not do it PERIOD.

Believe me I have tried. And I admire and respect people who say I do not care with what I edit. No can do!

Which in one way makes me not professional!!! Or maybe a highly specialised professional :-o

Personally I find the whole "professional" debate like walking on eggs.

It degenerates very quickly into a well my tool is more expensive than your tool discussion etc.

And people inevitably end up with egg on their faces!

I am convinced that FCP X will have its day and then when the old Avid Dinosaurs say…

"maybe FCP X is not so bad"

you can just smile knowingly at them

If you are having a good day you can give them some little FCP X power tip and watch their jaw drop and walk off into the sunset...

Back on topic, as long as FCP X can't multi group properly, can't produce a sync-map/layup It can't make inroads into the TV industry, specifically Reality TV which is (unfortunately) the mainstay of a lot of Production coming out of L.A. and the like. Coming from someone who LOVES X but uses Avid every day as an Assistant Editor and Online Edits on big Reality TV shows, X is a non starter in that field. Plus good luck trying to get established Avid Editors to jump over to it. They'ed rather gnaw their arm of with their teeth. They don't like change. Leave an Avid with your settings on by mistake after you'd used their suite and see how much they like change :whistle:

I run a business, I am using FCP X exclusively, I've trusted Apple for over a decade professionally, I trust them today as much as I trust Adobe or Avid or IBM or Cisco. I may not be happy with them every day, but I trust them enough to keep my business running their stuff. I know several lager businesses here in Louisiana that have switched to FCP X as their core, and a couple of university departments. I have three more scheduled to train over the next three months, too.

So, in my actual, professional experience, businesses and universities are using it, it is professional, argument is over.

If someone tells me otherwise, I simply say, "You've obviously not learned it." And walk away.

There is no "built-in" collaboration tool, but PPro and legacy FCP didn't have that either. You can collaborate with a well thought out workflow. It is not elegant, but neither were legacy FCP or PPro. Avid requires another Avid app to work in a large facility with shared storage. So does PPro and it requires a third party solution. Legacy FCP required Final Cut Server, or a third party solution. CatDV allows for collaboration. A "built-in" collaboration tool is coming, from what I'm told.

Avid is in financial turmoil, too. So how much can you trust them at this time?

I don't care what other people use. If I have to use Avid to get paid, that's what I'll use, I don't care. FCP X is gaining ground, and is being accepted more and more. Slowly, but steadily, and it is picking up. In time, things will be alright.

Last point, when legacy FCP was around, there were still a good number of MC and PPro users that would bad mouth it and would never dare touch it. That isn't new, I simply don't have time for them. Use what you need to use to make money, use what you want for your own work, stop worrying about what others use or say. It doesn't pay the bills, it doesn't contribute to your health.

Done.

I think there are a lot of early adopters around who are quietly getting on with using the software to cut things quicker and more creatively. I know we at my production company are. Things like the simple Red workflow and multicam will hook more people in and the numbers of corporate and non-broadcast users like us will swell over time.

Doesn't help the OP though. Keep your chops up on Avid/Premiere/FCP7 and learn X in the background, I guess.

Trust me I'm with all of you. I feel very confident in X now and honestly hate having to go back to 7 when I run in to cut a spot or two at my mainstay shops. A lot of my work is at a national agency's in-house facility. It houses 6 edit bays, 2 flame and 4 A Effects/3D bays. Since we work on the same clients year around it makes having events and keywords feel like a gift from a higher power. There is so much reusing of footage, especially when pitching new clients and having to make "brand" vids that reuse footage from large collections amassed of the years. But the TV commercial world can be very rooted in tradition because so much money is at stake.

I had a guy say "do you want to put your career on the line with a $300 piece of software?". Well sure we're all doing it right now with a $1000 piece of software.

I actually prefer being a "pioneer" and showing others why X is professional and faster too. I've even had some of the Avid guys try to say the XMLs don't work or you can't export audio for a mix. So I guess they stopped looking at X after version 1.0.

I'll brush up on my skills on Avid and Premiere. That only makes sense of course. You have to have a wide base to be viable. But you also have to stay relevant with new tech as well.

FWIW, I'm in the exact same situation here in LA, and I'm sure I'm not alone. If I could *reliably* export EDL's and OMF/AAF's, it would be much easier convincing people to move to it. Yes, we have X2Pro and EDL X (both of which I beta tested) but since FCP XML is still evolving those apps are kind of hobbled. Hoping the next X update is a biggie, and addresses this with better XML, internal tools, and API... something. Oh, and beefier, groupable, mixable roles so the "I want my tracks back" folks will STFU. Keep plugging. Like with the original FCP, it's gonna take a while for people to accept it, even though it currently runs circles around other NLE's in many ways....