FCPX The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[Steve Sherrick]

One "ugly" I have is, when clicking on a clip, my FCX sometimes jumps back to another project (timeline), is that a known bug...?

That's a good one and on my list.

 

[Christian Schmitt]

That's a good one and on my list.

One more ugly: I still can#t believe they haven#t brought back the color picker for fast levels and cc. Even if the "new way" might be better, it wouldn't hurt anyone to bring that feature over from FCP7.
Or would it?

 

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Steve,

if you want 'criticism' on FCPX, of course everyone has his own wish list, and priorities.

I have this wish list for FCPX that I send to the Apple Feedback button and update it when Apple updates the app too:

- Remove Attributes button

- If you export for instance, 3 timelines in the background, you only see the first file by name.
The one below, awaiting, just say: 'Master File'. Why can't you say the name of the project or timeline? So you can get a quick idea of what you are already exporting and if you forgot anything.
If it's the same timeline you are exporting multiple times, with changes, let's have it say the name of the sequence with the date and exact time of the export?

- - If you click Expand All in the menu for expanding video and audio, that it expands every clip in the timeline, INCLUDING the ones you put in the timeline AFTER you pushed the Expand All option. It reduces the amound of clicking. If you want to edit with an expanded view of audio seperately, you click expand all, and edit the way you want. If you put new clips in the timeline, you don't have to press again and again in the menu. The same goes for Components. Could be nice to just have it as a viewing mode.

- More RAW controls from REDCINE in the R3D Hud, including (big one) the eyedropper tool to very quickly and automatically set white balance.

- Have a simple white balance tool in your standard color tools, like the one from RED. Let it be a tool you can switch on or off.

- A timecode HUD with much more timecode options. Seeing in one view the timecodes of everything in the timeline (like the old timecode overlay in FCP7), optional of course. Being able to COPY and PASTE a timecode from a clip instead of manually having to feed it always, like you could in FCP 7. You could just copy the timecode from the viewer of canvas.

- More options from Color, including but not limited to color wheels. Tracker. Sharpening, denoising,... Maybe have a seperate Color Room? (same with Audio?)

- If you click to have Proxy Media Playback, put a warning side if media hasn't been converted to Proxy yet, but don't have it be offline completely. It sometimes doesn't make sense to transcode EVERYTHING in your timeline to Proxy Media. Only being able to transcode a portion of it, and just see a small subtle warning sign in the rest without hindering your ability to work with it, would be much better!

- 'Break Apart Compound Clip' back in the contextual right-mouse click menu.

- At Audio Enchancements, at the background Noise Removal option, have a small button to set the noise print, as you could with Soundtrack Pro. I don't know if the technology now in FCP X is the same as in Soundtrack Pro, but I'm getting much worse results (frankly, I never get good ones, and thus never use it) when using the remove background noise option in FCP X. Maybe having the option to manually set the noise print, will get better results back?

- A Role-based audio mixer. Giving Color codes to Roles.

- Being able to give Color Corrections names, instead of just the automated numbers.

- Have a quick way of putting audio back to a clip after detaching it. (and if they are out of sync, maybe have a dialogue box or something to choose if you want to keep it out of sync, or put it back to it's default?)

- Have the Background Render option be REALLY background. So for instance, when you are working, it keeps rendering, but like with one core or something. So it's low taxing on the system, but you can really keep working.

- Please make it possible to have your transform, and crop tools in the inspector change in stacking order together with effects. Being able for instance, to put a crop ABOVE or BELOW a 3rd party effect for instance. Now there are many work-around necessary (compounding) to do this. (and some things are just impossible)

- The background Dashboard hud dissapears when going into another application. Not that handy.

- This feature could maybe be a work-around for the dashboard dissapearing, although it would be nice to have both: In the Share Monitor program, have a look at what you are exporting in every program (FCPX, Motion 5, Compressor 4). They all share the same engine. Having the Share Monitor open and being able to see what you are exporting in FCP X next to your regular Compressor Batch would be great. Having a seperate tab or something like that.

- When making a new compound clip, being able to immediately say which keyword it needs to have. Now, if you need to make a lot of them, and you are making compound clips from clips in a keyword-collection (which we do, to have a timecode generator on them, because we miss having a timecode hud), you always get thrown back into your Event, instead of staying within that keyword collection, and then you have to manually search the compound clip and assign a keyword to the compound clip again.

- In an Event, in your viewing options, you can choose to display: "no rating or keyword selections". I like that option, but it would be extra nice if you have an extra viewing option with separate: "no rating" "no keyword", next to the excisting option of both.

- Being able to have a Proxy with Alpha channel (have the software detect that automatically? Make Prores 4444 in those cases?)

- In the transform Tools, have full Rotation controls. So for instance, only with the Y axis for instance.

- The last view of your viewing modes of your clips in the timeline is very small, which makes it very handy if you are working with many layers and don't need to see thumbnails. It would be great to have fade handles for audio in that viewing mode. And maybe also have an expanded audio components view in that mode, but I would consider that less important.

- Having Snapping also work with for instance, doing retiming (with Hold Frames) on multiple secondary storylines above each other.

- If you have for instance 4 layers of video, with each of them having 4 clips next to each other… Once you make a couple of clips in a layer of video into a secondary storyline there is a minimal height difference. This becomes annoying when working with multiple layers of video, and you want to check and go from one of them to the other. (for instance, by putting transitions between them).

- At this point it seems impossible if you use Match EQ, to apply the match with the same clip, but just an other audio component. If I have one clip with 2 tracks of audio components, and I want to match channel 1 with channel 2, I cannot do so. I need to copy the clip, and make sure it's physically another clip on the timeline. This seems a lot of unnecessary steps and gets in the way of what the whole Audio Component feature is about.

- Another something on the wish list: it would be great if you could select all your markers in the timeline index, and make them into another kind of marker, with one command, or one click. Like making all your markers chapter markers, or making all your markers to do items, etc. ...

- Having a way of seperately consolidating only your Proxy Media to another folder like you want.


I share this for people who would think that fans of FCPX don't have any criticism of it but I love editing in it, even with those faults. No NLE is perfect. Let's get the thread back on track. Regards,

 

[Alex Doctor]

Totally agree, I also think that if they allowed you to switch between the magnetic timeline and the more traditional track based editing. That would be revolutionary. Quick edits with magnetic, or great sequence editing. But then refined changes when clients/producers provide timecode based edits/revisions you could switch to track based. There are obviously work arounds, but this would totally change the way I approach the use of fcpx.

 

[Scot Yount]

One more ugly: I still can#t believe they haven#t brought back the color picker for fast levels and cc. Even if the "new way" might be better, it wouldn't hurt anyone to bring that feature over from FCP7.
Or would it?

Unless I misunderstand your question, the color picker is still there. Click on the color box of the parameter you want to effect in the inspector. This will open an OS X color wheel, and you can then pick your color from there. However, you can also click on the “search” icon to select the Color Picker tool. Now you can click on the color you want in the frame of the video to pick your desired color.

 

[Douglas Underdahl]

@Douglas... that is correct! fcpx will import and allow you to drop all the mentioned files/codes on a timeline and begin editing right away with no rendering necessary. You can also sync external sound, with the click of a button, with the many different codecs/files mentioned, and begin editing in second with sync sound. It does not need to render at all and if your machine is fast enough with enough ram, you are running 5k r3d's with no drop frames.

Built from the ground up, and built to take advantage of apple's own hardware, FCPX is the most optimized and fastest NLE available for mac hardware.

Here is a test running FCPX vs Premiere on a new Macbook Pro, for common rendering and processing task (1080, 4k, multicam etc). FCPX trumps the competition with 2x-3x faster speeds and stability. The results are impressive. (scrub to the 4:50 mark)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=291&v=ecqVGeocgSo

Thanks Kalechi. That all sounds good to me.

 

[Alex Doctor]

FCPX is super cheap 1/10 of FCP Suite HD but there are heaps of third party plugins that cover lots of missing elements. Magic Bullet Colorista III has wheels a color picker and many more options that FCP7 didn't have.

Unless I misunderstand your question, the color picker is still there. Click on the color box of the parameter you want to effect in the inspector. This will open an OS X color wheel, and you can then pick your color from there. However, you can also click on the “search” icon to select the Color Picker tool. Now you can click on the color you want in the frame of the video to pick your desired color.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Mathieu, great contributions. That's the kind of list that will help me cross reference some of what I'm experiencing and know what is me and what is actual issue.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

If only Apple had added X to the product line while still developing track based editorial under the Final Cut banner. I think each product would have sold enough licenses to make them independently profitable, not to mention that popular media software often has a secondary effect on high end hardware sales. But what do I know...

Cheers - #19

 

[David Battistella]

Just to make a point:

If Apple assigned a team to develop FCP8, which was FCP7 with improvements that don't change the basic approach to editing with tracks - and took advantage of many of the "under the hood" technologies that make FCPX faster - how many do you think they would sell?

Cheers - #19

They actually did this, fired the team and developed FCP X

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

What Hrvoje is asking for is me to complete what I set out to do which is mention what I like but also provide the things that are lacking or need improvement.

The comment was reflecting responses in the thread analogous to this.

It was not related to your postings.

@Hrvoje SimicWhy do you keep derailing this thread...?Why not just take the high road and let your arguments speak for themselves?Now it seems the other way around: You have opinions and general assumptions about how editing is supposed to be and how FCX falls short in that category, and when someone answers with evidence-based arguments or even visible proof, like the pictures of complex FCX timelines, you keep derailing and choose to answer like a a greek oracle.Please, let's just collect the good, bad and ugly as the thread title intended - even if in the end there's mostly good, some bad and very little ugly opposed to an equal division by thirds...One "ugly" I have is, when clicking on a clip, my FCX sometimes jumps back to another project (timeline), is that a known bug...?

Christian, we obviously don't speak the same language so I suggest ignoring my posts from now on.

If there is no understanding or even will to achieve one, about why every other professional audio and video editing app, not catering mass market but specific professions, uses fully non-linear timeline, meaning full ability to freely work in X & Y axis on a 2D plane, and when that is brought to attention some react as if their world is being attacked, what ever I'd write further would bounce off from a wall and likely cause more drama.

Since that effect is not the intention and writings made to improve this tool have been ignored, misinterpreted and ridiculed, I gave up.
With a valuable lesson about human psychology.

So...you can rejoice. On with the show.

They actually did this, fired the team and developed FCP X

Why am I not surprised.

 

[Bruce Allen]

I work for mOcean, a large entertainment marketing company (trailers, TV promos, etc). Our job is basically competitive editing, since the studios will give multiple trailer houses the exact same footage and the person who quickly cuts the best trailer wins... in theory at least

RE: tracks vs magnetic timline: if FCP X's magnetic timeline were a ton better, we'd have switched to FCP X. Or, you know, the other companies would have and they'd be kicking our ass and we'd be out of business.

That hasn't happened. I'm not saying the magnetic timeline is bad. It's just, well, not enough to make a significant difference. It's also not the worst idea in the world. In some ways it's great.

We don't have a big problem with the IDEA of having some sort of magnetic timeline system... IF it can be well organized into lanes / stems. Personally, FCP X doesn't really get it right enough yet for me though. Too much of a mess. I actually proposed a more organized system to Avid years ago - I'll see if I can dredge up my mockup, haha! Maybe FCP X will nail it in the future. Or another app may just leapfrog it.

#1 "ugly" for me by far for FCP X would be the lack of collaborative multi-user editing.

In Avid, everyone can work in the same project, writing to different bins simultaneously, reading from a bin someone else is writing to, etc.

So we can be on fiber with a big studio and want to show them a cut from another editor and can just load it up from their bin. Client wants a quick tweak? No problem.

Meanwhile the assistant editor or machine room folks can be bringing in and breaking down new footage, going through stuff, etc. Some of the shots in the trailer for The Avengers were found by a guy in the machine room, who just flagged a take from the dailies. The idea of all of the editors being hooked up to a nice big collaborative database where they can work simultaneously is, to me, a revolutionary thing.

The stuff Avid is doing with extending this to the cloud is promising, of course. I wish it weren't so corporate and stodgy... but that can be fixed. I'm surprised Adobe and Apple haven't done more in that regard. Maybe Avid will flub it again and let Adobe and Apple steal their lead though. We'll see!

This is all far more revolutionary to me than tracks vs lanes. They both have pros and cons and both could be way better implemented. And hey, if you want to talk editing finesse, let's talk about trimming! That is another big reason for the loyalty to Avid but FCP X and Premiere are catching up. What they really need to do to perk up my ears is comprehensively surpass though

Anyway, back to collaborative multi-user editing: the interesting thing is that FCP X seems to actually have the database back-end needed. There are even icons buried in the original FCP X that suggested it was being developed... before they canned it for some infernal reason.

So let's see what they do in the future. And for the love of all things holy, can FCP X stop calling a Sequence a Project? It's a small thing but kinda shows a bit of an inflexible our-way-or-the-highway mentality on Apple's part. Also it doesn't make sense in terms of, you know, the English language. It seems like arrogant change just for change's sake.

But yeah. I tried to like FCP X and used it on some small projects. I've also used Premiere since, oh, 1996 or so, and was playing with that more too recently. But then DaVinci Resolve 12 came along. It has a heck of a lot of issues too but boy is it promising. Kinda stopped me using Premiere and FCP X because now I can just use Avid which is a juggernaut for big narrative stuff... and then bring into Resolve to finish... AND for little dinky projects just use Resolve. The value for money and power of a little portable gaming PC with a fast nVidia GPU and Resolve is just AWESOME INSANE LEVEL.

But hey, all of this competition ultimately benefits US.

Bruce Allen
www.twitter.com/bruce_allen

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

They actually did this, fired the team and developed FCP X

So far as I can tell there is no evidence to back up such a claim and that the article which hinted on it is based on the following quote. "There was a Final Cut 8 and it was 64bit and it was done and they looked at it and said 'This is not what we want to do, this is evolutionary, this is not revolutionary' and they killed it." though the same person later went on to say "I do not have explicit knowledge of FCP8. Wasn't saying I did. Wasn't implying I did. Just repeating rumors I had heard multiple times. I had been told many times that there were efforts to bring 64 bit to the type of interface used in FCP7."

I found some information that a lot of the final cut pro team were fired but it did not say if it was linked to the development of FCP X or a FCP 8.

 

[DJ Meyer]

I've got a Final Cut Server disc lying around somewhere if someone wants it...

 

[Terry VerHaar]

FWIW - there is ample information out there about how FCPX can be and is being used for "collaborative" editing. I am sure it's not exactly like "the old model" that some insist one, but it does seem to be quite workable. I don't tend to do this very much myself but Sam Westman (him again!) is the guy to Google if you want to find out more.

 

[Bruce Allen]

FWIW - there is ample information out there about how FCPX can be and is being used for "collaborative" editing. I am sure it's not exactly like "the old model" that some insist one, but it does seem to be quite workable. I don't tend to do this very much myself but Sam Westman (him again!) is the guy to Google if you want to find out more.

Terry, with all due respect... please open your mind. It's not about old or new model. I don't know why you don't understand that there are things that FCP X isn't great at and not just dismiss people as backwards if they don't blindly accept FCP X is better at everything. Why are you so blindly loyal to an app that, like any other, has good and bad points?

I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people passing a project back and forth, like a feature film editor and their assistant. We need MANY people working on stuff SIMULTANEOUSLY. In the same project.

You have no idea how competitive and insane our industry is. There is no time for handing off a project.

Just because people use Avid it doesn't mean they are closed minded, dumb or stuck in the mud. Perhaps they have evaluated the options carefully and found it works best for them. If FCP X were actually better at this, we'd jump on it and use it to win more jobs and sit on our bags of money.

And it must be completely integrated. Which Avid is. Not saying it can't be better but at the moment Avid is ahead, no question.

If there is new information, like Apple unveils massive collaborative editing support, we will of course re-evaluate. If there's something new that I've missed, please post a link! Much appreciated.

Bruce Allen
www.twitter.com/bruce_allen

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Well... Just from setting up workflows for broadcast series where thing is edited, VFX is done and everything is done in parallell in at least 5 suites "in-house" and from a couple to many "out of house" and the editing and vfx/post - process goes from first shooting day until the show airs over a year or more...

Collaborative functions have a lot of meaning in just normal drama productions and is essential to make them effective.

I agree 100% with Bruce on this.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

They actually did this, fired the team and developed FCP X

If only Apple had been willing to keep the FCP8 train rolling down the tracks (pun intended) with regular updates for new formats and better XML compatibility. IMO, FCP 8 and beyond could have continued to support thousands of editors worldwide with only modest improvements. Just keeping it stable and bug free would be all 90% of editors would care about as long as it could boast most of the speed of the 64-bit X.

Apple could have taken the most creative and forward thinking engineers off of FCP and put them on project X. They could have released it as iMovie with artificial intelligence, whatever, and positioned it as the editor for everyone.

Perhaps it's really hard to separate one's frustration with the killing of FCP7 and the requirement that in order to access snappy performance one has to change the way they work. Yes, I understand that change is the one constant, etc - but it would have been so easy to offer both.

Cheers - #19

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Hi,

I read this thread with some interest.

I'm not a FCP-X user, was an avid FCP user (pun intended) since version 1 and since 2009 use Smoke as my NLE of choice. Like the vast majority I never got familiar with the new architecture of FCP-X and was missing important features when it was released.

I now switch to Flame, the golden VFX standard ist nowadays also a good NLE since it has Smoke incorporated and reads/writes ProRes and Avid files. The Apple platform changed a lot, in many ways in a good way (love my MacBook Air) but when it comes to workstations and an OS that can be tailored to a specific application Linux has some advantages.

Great to hear that FCP-X has so many friends and a happy user base. BTW Flame loves to eat FCP-X XMLs.

---

IMHO, the "professional" argument is moot. I don't care which film, which "pro" is using what. Take what ever you are familiar and happy with. On my iPad I have iMovie. I'm astounded how good it is and what I can do with it considering the platform it is running on. If I were in a different market I probably would use FCP-X as well. But then there is Resolve becoming a proper NLE with a big edge in colour (isn't Resolve the natural NLE for redusers?) and of course Avid which did a good jump down price-wise recently, plus Premiere Pro that matured a lot lately.
There is many competition going on. Interesting where things are heading.

Hans

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Terry, with all due respect... please open your mind. It's not about old or new model. I don't know why you don't understand that there are things that FCP X isn't great at and not just dismiss people as backwards if they don't blindly accept FCP X is better at everything. Why are you so blindly loyal to an app that, like any other, has good and bad points?

I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people passing a project back and forth, like a feature film editor and their assistant. We need MANY people working on stuff SIMULTANEOUSLY. In the same project.

You have no idea how competitive and insane our industry is. There is no time for handing off a project.

Just because people use Avid it doesn't mean they are closed minded, dumb or stuck in the mud. Perhaps they have evaluated the options carefully and found it works best for them. If FCP X were actually better at this, we'd jump on it and use it to win more jobs and sit on our bags of money.

And it must be completely integrated. Which Avid is. Not saying it can't be better but at the moment Avid is ahead, no question.

If there is new information, like Apple unveils massive collaborative editing support, we will of course re-evaluate. If there's something new that I've missed, please post a link! Much appreciated.

Bruce Allen
www.twitter.com/bruce_allen

Let me respond briefly and then turn this back to Steve to avoid further derailment.

You said "#1 "ugly" for me by far for FCP X would be the lack of collaborative multi-user editing."

My only response was to point out that it is possible to collaborate with FCPX. If you didn't like my use of the term "old model," then let me rephrase with "the model you are familiar with and prefer" or "the model that works best for you." If the way it works doesn't work for you, then you clearly won't use it. I just make the point so others don't assume that collaboration isn't possible at all.

Much of the criticism of FCPX comes from people who say "it can't do this" and many, many times, it CAN do "that;" people just haven't figured out how (and often without trying). I am not trying to say that is the case with you. You seem to be very well informed.

I have never tried to make the case, in any thread on RU (or anywhere), that an individual should abandon their NLE of choice if it is working just fine for them. The only positions I try to advance are that:
1) FCPX is a perfectly viable editing platform for many, many kinds of projects, and
2) Much (certainly not all) of the criticism leveled against it are from those who are unfamiliar with it and thus, as I pointed out above, talk about what it can't do when, in fact, it turns out it CAN do that thing.
3) A new paradigm can open up new ways of getting things done, sometimes more efficiently (certainly not always).

FCPX is not perfect. I am sure it is not even "good" for some projects. I don't (and couldn't) criticize other NLEs because I don't use them. I abandoned Premier in the 90's and have never been an Avid user. I used FCP through 7 and gave it up for X. The only comment I ever make about Avid is that the company, itself, looks to be on shaky financial territory. It does, of course, seem to be the editing platform of choice in Hollywood.

I hope that is clearer than, apparently, my pervious post was.