FCPX is easy

Last year, I launched FCPX on my laptop for the first time. I had never used it before and in fact I had never used any of the previous versions of Final Cut before. I started toying with some footage for a film I was working on. I came up with this little sequence:

vimeo.com/117512176

I’d never say this is good - and if you could see my event management structure and project timeline you see what a mess I made and how clumsy I was in constructing this. However, my point here is to say that I think FCPX is perhaps the most accessible and easiest piece of software to produce acceptable results that I’ve ever worked with - from day one.

After that it’s all about discovering about how powerful FCPX can be and learning to unlock that power. Of course, that’s a bit harder.

Good job! Thank you for sharing!

Joseph,
Good job. Glad you're rockin' with FCPX.
Thanks for helping providing a voice, interesting vid.
Greg

It's a beautiful film. You're too modest, you should add some credits in the end with your name

Thanks, guys for the very kind comments.

As they say, you've got to crawl before you can walk - in this case, you've got to swim first.

I've been teaching software to end users for around to 25 years now. I began teaching FCP with version 2 on my own to other videographers. I became an Apple certified trainer with version 4. I've taught lots of software, not just Apple's, to lots of people all over the US, Puerto Rico and Canada. I will say that FCPX is by far, by eons, the easiest and most fun application I've ever taught. People pick it up right away. Yes, it is super accessible. And you can get trained online for very little or no expense these days.

The ONLY issue I run in to when teaching my classes, is when someone knows another NLE, even legacy FCP, and insist on comparing them. "In Brand-X we used to do xyz, so what is the equivalent in FCP?" My stock answer, "There is none, forget Brand-X, you're learning something from scratch." Seriously, when you learn FCPX, throw everything you knew about anything else out the window, it will help things move along easier and faster. Projects are NOT equivalent to Sequences, Collections are NOT the equivalent to Bins! Geez...

The video itself is wonderful and yes, put some credits on it, put your name on it, very beautiful piece of work.

You're right, Ben, and that may be why I found it so easy to pick up FCPX - I had nothing to "un-learn."

Reading all the helpful posts in this forum and doing some online training has made me appreciate its power.

Joe-

That film is beautiful. Very well done.

Final Cut Pro X is the first NLE I've ever used that really gets out of the way, allowing me to focus on storytelling. Not having to patch tracks or worry about overwriting your clips or pushing things out of sync or... The list goes on and on. In my previous weapons of choice (Avid Media Composer, FCP 2.x onward) I always felt like I had to add a layer of technical workarounds to my thought process as I was cutting. Gotchas that I knew I had to be aware of as I went so I wouldn't paint myself into a corner or cause the system to crash. I've been able to switch that channel off and use my re-claimed bandwidth to craft a story.

I can't wait to see what you come up with next.

Bill

Thanks, Bill

I think I was frightened by a video switcher at birth because I was always intimidated by all the patching of tracks and such too.

But you nailed it with your statement: FCPX just gets out of your way.