Thoughts on Final Cut Pro X

The backstory.
The core actions of non-linear editing haven’t changed much in 15 years.
Insert. Trim. Lift. Overwrite.
We’ve enjoyed incremental software improvements year to year, but rarely a giant leap forward.  If anything. the trend was steadliy towards ever more features, at lower prices.  Avid, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere had far more interface similarities than differences, and they were eventually all priced within reach of anyone serious about editing for a living.
As recently as the Spring of 2010, I was asked to edit a primetime television show on an Avid Meridian editing system from the 90’s.  It was more of an ‘edit box’ that a full-service modern computer, but it worked perfectly.   As television editors, we just make choices about picture, music and story.  When the choices are complete, our assistant editors make EDLs for online and coloring and export OMFs for the audio mix.   We suffer no consequences for using ten-year-old technology.
But editing the ‘television way’, with teams of assistants and days lounging at the audio mix with a steady stream of fresh baked cookies, is a niche workflow and, in my opinion, an ever decreasing method for creating great content.  Today, most editors work independently and need to perform their own ingest and media management as well as titling, motion graphics and even coloring.
Since you are reading this on Philip Bloom’s blog, you are likely one of these media ‘master of all trades.’  Shooter, editor, mixer, colorist.   You also likely know that last summer there was an earthquake in the non-linear editing world.  What many had expected to be a long overdue update to Final Cut Pro, ended up being a full-scale application rewrite with a completely new interface –  and many missing features.   The feedback from editors was overwhelmingly negative.  We editors aren’t exactly known for our sunny dispositions to start with but with FCP X, Apple unleashed a hornet’s nest of professional users who understandably felt confused and betrayed.
Working in film and television for 20 years I’d personally seen editors unhappy with change many times before:
In 1995, I knew a flat-bed film editor who was resistant to non-linear editing and said ‘if I wanted to work on a computer, I’d be an accountant!’  In the years that followed, he worked less and less.
When Final Cut Pro came along, I trained many seasoned Avid editors how to use the new software  More than a few said  said it was ‘not suitable for professional use.’  But in 2001, my first primetime television editing job was on Final Cut and, as recently as 2011, I edited Project Runway on FCP.
When FCP X came along.  The grumpy and resistant editor was… me.  While the new approach and interface intrigued me, I felt totally disoriented and was unable to perform even the most basic editing tasks.  Mind you, I beta-tested version 1.0 of Final Cut in 1999 and loved it.  Since then, I have spent more than 20,000 hours editing, mostly on Avid, but with healthy doses of FCP and Premiere as well.
In the 90’s, I was an aspiring editor, but now I am a grizzled veteran. So, with version X, I said “why should I bother to learn yet another interface? Where’s my FCP 8? What can X do that I can’t do now? What’s in it for me?.”
However, having witnessed the waves of resistance to change in the past, thinking ‘I may be missing the next big thing’, I’ve forced myself to work through the discomfort and learn Final Cut Pro X.  Now, I wanted to share my impressions, so far, with you.
Trouble in the timeline.
We have seen an escalating arms race of buttons and widgets and dials at the head of our timelines.   In an effort to allow us to mute and solo and patch our tracks and view waveforms, all at a single click, Avid went off the deep end in version 5.5   Check out the interface widgets at the head of the AVID timeline in this review.    On a laptop screen, these controls can obscure a significant portion of timeline real estate.  Here’s Avid 6 compared to FCP X:

FCP X has gone to the opposite extreme.  No widgets, no tracks, and the timeline just emerges from the dark, left edge of the interface.   This is a monumental change.  Those widgets are there for a functional reason, so removing them means you must weave that functionality throughout the timeline interface.  In my experience, Apple has pulled this part off.  Patching tracks does not apply any more, and the audio adjustments in the timeline are, if anything, an improvement.
But those widgets are also there to identify tracks.  Which leads to the fact that… there are no ‘tracks’ in FCP  X!  In my opinion, this is the single biggest shift non-linear editing since its inception.
At first, editing without conventional timeline tracks felt unnerving.   I did not like it.  Like driving on a busy highway with no lane markers.   As my first FCP X deadline approached, it was as if that unmarked highway was now rain-soaked and lit only by moonlight.  It induced waves of panic.  I typically organize my audio tracks by content.  Natrual sound on tracks 1 and 2.  Interviews on 3 and 4.  Music and FX on 5 through 8.  When working with other editors, it makes it easier to collaborate with these standard track assignments.
In FCP X, that’s gone.  No track numbers.  Just metadata.  There are automated solutions for identifying music and dialogue, but the tracks are gone.  Instead, there are storylines and clips that tack on to storylines.   It’s a departure from every major editing platform currently available.  It’s taken months to feel familiar, but the panic is now gone.
It’s very hard to break sync with the default settings in FCP X.  But, as much as Apple is trying to prevent us from losing sync, my editing habits are formed around breaking sync constantly,  and then repairing it.  That’s how I edit.  Broken sync indicators often help me track my edits in progress.

After months of editing with FCP X, I am still aware of the ‘missing tracks’ but now, instead of driving a car, (bear with me, I am jumping metaphors)  it feels more like skiing or surfing.  There’s a freedom, a flexibility.  Now, ‘tracks’ seem out of place.
If you think this sounds like flowery hyperbole, you may be right.  It’s hard to think of ways to convey feelings about software.  So, I am merely trying to express the small sense of elation that I felt when I realized the upside of losing my trusted track framework.  I felt encouraged to experiment more.  I felt slightly liberated in my timeline edits.   For someone who grinds away in editing interfaces day after day, year after year, for more than a decade,  this was a notable change.  There is something new here; a different way to edit.
Where’s my source window?

Another source of uneasy tension was the removal of the traditional ‘source’ widow from the interface.  Three point editing has been synonymous with the professional non-linear interface since day one.  With FCP X, it’s still there, just not as obvious.  As it turns out, the default clip view is my least favorite.   When I switched to List View for Event browsing,  I found that I actually liked it more than any source window I have used.  I can easily skim the footage and scan the waveforms for audio indicators.  This is a specific feature I miss when I edit on Avid daily.   A huge improvement, in my opinion.
The unfortunate Event.
You may have seen me refer to ‘Event browsing’.  This is the new alternative to bins, folders and source clip viewing.  It’s also tied to how Final Cut X organizes and  interacts with media on your hard drive.  By default, FCP X wants you to ‘wrap’ all of your project’s media in Events.  Basically the iMovie and iPhoto way of managing media.  The objective seems to be to ingest media into the program and eliminate the obvious file structure that relates to the original clip.  If that’s confusing, let’s call it baby-proofing your media.  I don’t like it.   One thing I preferred about the previous versions of FCP was that I could import a clip and it would have a direct relationship to a file on my computer that I could break and relink at will.  Avid generally wants to organize your media and have you interface with it through a ‘Media Tool’.  FCP X takes this to a whole new level.  Until their 10.0.3 patch of this week, there wasn’t a way to relink media that had lost it’s way.

Whatever the intention, this is the feature I dislike the most about the new Final Cut.  I’d like to put files on any drive and move them at will – then, relink them.  This ‘baby-proofing’ of media  seems so out of place in a professional program.   I understand the upside of keeping files in a project linked and organized,  but for me the tradeoff in flexibility is not at all worth it.
Plus, even with the new relinking option in the  10.0.3 update, you get the dreaded yellow exclamation point with no direct way to fix it.   For me, something seems off in an Apple interface when you can’t right-click an alert and have an option to take action.  To relink the file above, I have to go to the File menu and choose ‘Relink Event Files.’  When I found that, it felt like Apple saying “Ok! We will let you relink clips, but  we don’t like it… and we’re still calling them Events!”  I can’t click on that offline file to fix it.  I don’t get it.

The smallest Aha! moment.

I’ve had a roller coaster of emotions with FCP X.   Yes, when you are editing, creating, screening, and outputting, it’s an emotional experience.  There were so many times I was cursing this software.  But there were many small moments where I was loving FCP X as well.   One small Aha! moment happened recently, when I was using the ‘precision editing tool’. – aka ‘trim mode’.   I was tweaking the A and B sides of an edit.  At the same time, it was impacting the titles and graphics on the layers above.  In FCP X, you can access all of timeline clips while in ‘trim mode’.  In the screen grab above, the red indicator on the top left is me adjusting that clip while in trim mode.   I know this is obscure, but it surprised me.  When it happened, I actually launched my Avid software as well as FCP 6 to make sure I wasn’t crazy.  Sure enough, when I tried to adjust a title while in trim mode, both platforms exited that mode.
I’ll be the first to admit that this is the smallest, most insignificant feature, but it was one of the moments that made me stop and look at this new software.  In fourteen years of editing, this was something I had never done.  Something that felt off-limits and too demanding for the software.  I wasn’t in trim mode.  There was no mode.   Modes are part of my workflow.  Every day I work in edit mode, trim mode, overwrite mode (Avid) and effect mode.  If the barrier between modes are gone, and I am free to adjust effects while I am trimming,  then perhaps it’s time for me to rethink how I am editing.   And that – rethinking how I edit – is the Aha! moment.  Suddenly, this new, dynamic timeline made my Avid timeline tracks feel like layers of sediment that buried my clips like fossils (sorry for yet another metaphor).   When you get over the frustration, there is something fast, fluid and flexible in FCP X that I haven’t experienced before.
Again, I know this is flowery stuff.  Not a compelling argument if you own a post production house with 40 editing stations sharing many terabytes of storage.  But for a veteran editor, who has spent tens of thousands of hours editing, it was sort of exciting.  Without tracks, without rigid  modes, there is something that emerges that is a more freestyle, intuitive, instinctual experience.  And I liked that.
With any tool you grow to like; your favorite camera, or trusted software,  it comes down to little moments.  Small interactions that add up to create a feeling of comfort and familiarity.  You can compare features online, but your feeling about any software will emerge from a thousand small interactions.  Like modifying a title while in trim mode.
I encourage you to download the demo of FCP X.  Try it.  Get frustrated.  Work through the frustration.  Get angry.  Be surprised.  Keep going.   In the end, it may not be a good solution for you.  But, if you spend some time with it, you are bound to find some small, new way to to approach editing.  And you may find it exciting, like I did.
When editing first became non-linear, it afforded the luxury of experimentation without consequences.  New styles of editing emerged.  For me, this version of FCP X feels like a peek into the next wave of editing possibilities.  Gone are tracks and timecode. Now, there’s metadata and storylines.  You can mix frame rates and formats without dire consequences.  This feels like the beginning of a leap forward.
But don’t expect to figure it out intuitively.  It’s a different paradigm.  I don’t read manuals but thankfully, there are great training resources available at Lynda.com or from Ripple or Larry Jordan.  I would not have been able to progress with FCP X without those resources.
This is very deep software.  It’s really hard to cover much in a guest blog post.  In short (I suppose it’s too late for that), I will say there are many things to love, and many things to revile in the new Final Cut.  What makes it worth trying (and working through your frustration), in my opinion, is the prospect of seeing a new way to approach to the way you cut.
The way forward.
You can’t reasonably make a choice about a professional software platform without considering the path forward.  Whether you are a designer, audio engineer, or a film editor, you need to have faith that you are on a viable platform for the future.  You’re bound to invest money in plug-ins, hardware and countless hours of workflow knowledge.
So is FCP X the ‘next big thing’? Are you ‘missing out’ if you don’t get on board.  That’s where things get very murky. Whereas the editing software platforms were on parallel courses before, it seems like the introduction of FCP X establishes a fork in the road.   Let’s look at if from the perspective of three types of editors:
The independent creator: Master of all trades.
Adobe’s Production Bundle just got a lot more appealing for editors who utilized wide ranges of the former FCP Studio.  Round trips to the very powerful After Effects and Media Encoder can take the place of Motion and Compressor.  If I was starting today, building my first editing station, I would likely opt for Adobe’s offerings.  (Interestingly, my first editing platform was Premiere 5.1).  Also, Adobe software is cross platform – meaning that you can build a lower cost PC tower with all of the hard drives and tricked out video cards you want.  Apple has not exactly inspired confidence lately with it’s Mac Pro line, and if you bought a new tower today, you’d be getting a pricey machine that was first released in 2010.   However, if you only dabbled in Motion, Color and Soundtrack Pro, there may be enough in FCP X to meet your needs and you can run it on an iMac or MacBook Pro, like I do.  And, get this, the Apple option for FCP, Motion and Compressor is the much less expensive option.  The full version of Premiere, on it’s own, is $800.  If you want the bundle including After Effects and Media Encoder, double that.  Final Cut X, with Motion and Compressor is $400. At this point, I know I won’t use the features in the Adobe bundle that make it four times the price, but you might.
Most troubling for an independent or aspiring editor is Apple’s commitment to the professional platform.  When I started editing, this ‘Pro’ page from Apple had amazing stories about people making cool things with Apple pro software.   The page has not been updated since 2009.  That’s not good.  If you are committing thousands of dollars into hardware and software, and thousands of hours of your life into a platform, you don’t want it to be neglected or abandoned.  I’ve never owned a PC in my life and the lack of a Pro roadmap from Apple is troubling for me.  Options to switch computing platforms,  at this point, are good and by moving forward with FCP X, I am definitely limiting my options.
The professional television and film editor.
With FCP X, it would appear that we are headed for an Avid monopoly of Hollywood editing again.  FCP had made some inroads into production companies and commercial trailer houses, but it was still an uphill battle.  I know several editors who refused to work on certain shows because they didn’t want to work with Final Cut.  This new version of FCP X is likely to make their heads explode.  It’s just too different.  We also get back to the argument of ‘what’s in it for me?’.  For studios and production houses, there is little reason to resist the gravitational pull from Avid.  In fact, the most notable show I cut on FCP, Project Runway, is now headed back to an Avid workflow as a result of their disappointment with FCP X.  For production houses, the Avid user base is there, and it’s the safe choice.
For me..
When I show up to work tomorrow, I will be sitting in front of an Avid.  But for my independent projects, documentaries,  DSLR shooting, basically, for everything I am working on in the future, I am sticking with FCP X…for now.  It’s fast, flexible and worth the time I am investing.  It has all the features I used in Color.  I can do light mixing and FX and export using Compressor. Also, outside of television, I don’t intend to ever shoot or deliver on tape again.   I suits my specific needs, just as an ‘edit box’ from the 90’s still works for some TV shows.
I do reserve the right to complain about FCP X, or give up on it in the future.   For now, ‘what’s in it for me’ is a renewed excitement in the fundamentals of editing and an opportunity to rethink the way I cut.