Why is FCP7 still around?

[Christoffer Glans]

I'm surprised that I still get job offers that demand I cut on FCP7. Why is this still around? I know it's possible to use it but no professional editor who oversee large workflows use it anymore so why do some companies keep demanding you to cut on it? Some of them, when I'm asking if it's ok to use Avid instead since it's, you know, updated a lot the past 7 years, gets anxious and feels the need to find another editor because of it. Seriously? Finding another editor based on the fact that few of us use FCP7 anymore. It's not that it's impossible to edit on it, but I cannot garantuee safety for workflows past editing if I do. I have been forced to help other so many times because clients edited on FCP7 and now they are stuck in other parts of the workflow because of it.

So why is it still around? Why can't the industry just bury FCP7 once and for all and trust professional editors to manage the workflow for them?

 

[Brian Pascale]

I use it for old jobs that need updating. Some old FCP7 jobs simple don't import properly into FCPX. Also use it to import my P2 cards. Otherwise, don't use it. Love not crashing because a photo is larger than 4,000 pixels!

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

because editors tend to be focused more on the craft of storytelling than on technology and find it inconvenient and expensive to upgrade to every new tool. many are not geeks. if it ain't broke, they don't fix it. not saying this is right or wrong. just how it is.

the opposite of camera owner-operators....

also, a lot of features have been cut on that system, and if they need re-cut, it is a lot easier to re-work the edit in the original NLE. since it can take between 1-7 years to complete the inital life cycle of a film, it's better to hang on to old systems.

 

[Brian Merlen]

It's cuz there crazy same way I'm using archaic tape formats still

 

[Santos Ramos]

It costs a lot to upgrade! We have 7 edit stations at work and use we use SANmp‎ ( fibre net work)
We can't update the OS because of the cost of SANmp‎ upgrades. Because of that we are are still using FCP7.
I think they will upgrade all the computers, software and network next year. I think it will cost over 100k for all.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

It costs a lot to upgrade! We have 7 edit stations at work and use we use SANmp‎ ( fibre net work)
We can't update the OS because of the cost of SANmp‎ upgrades. Because of that we are are still using FCP7.
I think they will upgrade all the computers, software and network next year. I think it will cost over 100k for all.

THIS

And because it is actually very stable and robust.

If you're in an offline/online workflow, it's not a bad tool.

 

[Santos Ramos]

You got it! We don't have many problems, it just works!

THIS

And because it is actually very stable and robust.

If you're in an offline/online workflow, it's not a bad tool.

 

[Peter Stelzhammer]

Because with FullHD ProRes timelines without fancy stuff/effects and/or special requirements it still does an excellent job...
I know exactly what it does, how it works, how to handle my online-offline roundtrips... For me it's just 'solid' and good to work with because I've gotten used to it over the years (and even 'learned' cutting on this program-architecture, final cut express 2 - many years ago).

Of corse it's not good for workflows above 2K, of corse it's not good for native RAW-Workflows and the newest codecs, of corse it's not the best tool when it comes to fast renders/exports...

But as said - it still does the job if it fits the requirements (which is still the case for me sometimes)...

 

[Mark Toia]

I still think its faster the premier PRO..
if it could play mutilple formats like the FCPX and PP... I'd still be on it.
Actually no... FCPX is way quicker.

 

[Brian Merlen]

How does SANmp cost that much? SNS Evo will sell you it with a pretty good server full of drives for 30k! Large enough to edit on for quite some time... FCPX can be loaded on all the bays with one license is my understanding. Resolve lite is free... Yes if you buy non student Avids or sign up for Avid or Adobe month to month the costs are pretty high, but they benefited from the eventual death of FCP7... I can't see why people want to use a 32 bit program though using 4gb of ram unless all their bays are equally out of date? Yes it makes sense for an offline/online workflow to keep the old bays kicking as long as you can, but I think there is synergy to the new editing versions/newer bays in that you can cut fast, output fast, background render, etc. All kinds of reasons you want the new stuff, output in 4k, XQ Prores, etc.

I understand a lot of cable giants are still living in the tape/interlaced world but its kind of scary when the deliverable they ask for isn't even an option in Redcine cuz no one is asking for 60i besides them any more, and I get that the masters of the older shows I encode live on Beta or HDcam or whatever, but I sure hope they aren't laying out the Red/Arri jobs to those tapes still, though I suspect they authentically are? These companies are so invested in decks and old software/bays they would rather give a fat bonus to the leaders then consider getting anything new hardware/software wise it seems...

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I am actually pretty surprised that it still works on El Capitan.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

because editors tend to be focused more on the craft of storytelling than on technology and find it inconvenient and expensive to upgrade to every new tool. many are not geeks. if it ain't broke, they don't fix it. not saying this is right or wrong. just how it is..

As a professional editor you cannot just divide between technology and the craft. The craft is the most important, but the regular work, the workflow, the ability to provide solutions to clients is not at all dependent on craft but on the tech you have. I have been involved with numerous screw ups because of editors without any regard to the tech they use or the workflow that comes after them. I've seen money totally wasted on stupid workarounds because some producer or editor demanded to cut on FCP7 instead of something far more suitable for collaboration with others.

I understand the reason to use it on older projects and I can see some instances it cost a lot to upgrade but I'm talking more about freelancers here. I'm not rich, far from it, but I have both Premiere and Avid licenses which keeps me up to date without costing pretty much anything for what I can give clients in return. People who work with me knows that they will never have workflow problems because I actually give a damn about knowing my tools and workflow, not just the craft when editing.

My point being is that it's easy for freelance editors to speak for themselves about their choice to use FCP7, but I've been helping people sweeping up the mess of such editors for a long time and I'm a bit tired of the arrogance of just dropping something in the hands of someone else to fix. I've actually seen assistants break down because producers demand them keeping deadlines while trying to fix problems created by editors with too much pride upon their way of doing things.

But to get real on the cost of things, some hardware doesn't need to be upgraded in order to upgrade into another NLE. The cost of the other NLEs are a fraction of the cost when you boggle down the system with a 32bit program while trying to manage the workflow demands of today. You can in most cases just keep the hardware as it is and upgrade into Premiere or Avid or even Resolve which is free and better than I expected,

The truth is that it will probably cost you more by holding on to FCP7, both in hardware performance, client demands and workflow collaboration with others. Speaking out of years of editing experience, just stop using it, it's over, it's dead, finito, there's no future in it. If you want to stay in the game as a professional editor, not an enthusiast, I cannot recommend enough to jump into a more modern NLE. I'm not talking about FCPX here. While I don't think it's the best NLE for professional work, it works fine.

I'm gonna stop helping people who tries to deal with FCP7 problems. Anyone who says "don't fix something that ain't broken"... well, sorry to say, but my opinion is that FCP7 is very broken. Maybe not in your personal machine, but in the professional sphere.

 

[fred gasc]

I would add that the FCP7 phenomenon has been
Mainly a north American affair.
That's because of the specific local reality. In the States
There are a wider range of productions, spread-out in all the
Territory where FCP made sense for many houses.
Avid was expensive, more difficult to master.
In Europe, and I believe Japan too, FCP never was that big
Except in indy.

The shock wave of the FCPX tsunami was very sweet
Here. Almost nobody was mentionning it. But for what
I was reading in English forums, it has been another story.

 

[Kyle Gentz]

It costs a lot to upgrade! We have 7 edit stations at work and use we use SANmp‎ ( fibre net work)
We can't update the OS because of the cost of SANmp‎ upgrades. Because of that we are are still using FCP7.
I think they will upgrade all the computers, software and network next year. I think it will cost over 100k for all.

They have changed the Licensing with the transition from SANmp to ShareBrowser, I feel its cheaper to upgrade. Ive been using SANmp for 4 years now, we have 2 EVO4's and an EVO5. Totaling 192TB's. we started on FCP7 then transitioned to Premiere with minimal hickups. I'm not quite sure what your hold up is. We have 8 Edit stations (some older and some newer) and upped the RAM and got some kickass GPU's and our old systems are cutting 6K dragon footage with out too much trouble. I run the whole system at my post house. If you need some advice PM me.

 

[Zack Birlew]

I too mostly use FCP7 for the older stuff and I haven't done much 4K work so for 1080P Prores with VDSLRs it still works just fine. However, I currently use Premiere Pro on Windows and I do appreciate the added speed and seemless integration with After Effects. If it's just cutting together video, I could do fine with either one but if it's 4K or needs effects then I would use Premiere all the way. One thing to consider too is that companies may have a lot invested not only in hardware but plugins as well. Even with all the plugins I have for Adobe, I still miss some of the stuff I had in FCP7 like the Coremelt plugins. I could use Adobe programs on my 2007 Mac Pro or my new Hackintoshes I built over the summer but none of them are as powerful as my Windows workstations. I understand what you're saying about people using old software, I have a copy of Shake that I bought when it was heavily marked down as EOL. It ended up being a waste of money as all the power of Shake was in the plugins which nobody makes anymore. If I could have gotten a copy of Sapphire Plugins for Shake then maybe I would have had more of a reason to use it or to even keep my Mac situation more up to date. But maybe other studios did and they have more of an investment. In that case I could definitely understand, even though it would limit things in the long run as Shake won't even install on the newer Mac OSX operating systems past Lion, I believe. There's also the matter of folks not liking the subscription method software companies are taking these days. Aside from FCPX related collection of apps, there isn't a modern NLE that offers the one time purchasing and licensing power of Final Cut Studio.

 

[C. Burkhart]

To answer the OP, the reason why is because FCPX is crap. It has taken them years to bring it to a stable place. There are still issues for multicam and audio and a host of holes in terms of its usuability. Premiere Pro has largely mopped old FCP7 users by insuring the migration and compatibility of old projects, but I have never liked the interface which seems clunky by comparison and qpparently I am not alone. Avid remains very pro and many editors prefer it for its facility in making notations and simplicity of use, but it never achieved the penetration of the market that FCP had and thus is difficult in terms of integration with other workflows. FCP7 therefore remains a core reference for a lot of users. It will be interesting to see how Blacmagic Resolve plays out over time with its expanding editing tools, easy integration with color correction and of course most importantly being that it is free.

 

[Marc Wielage]

My point being is that it's easy for freelance editors to speak for themselves about their choice to use FCP7, but I've been helping people sweeping up the mess of such editors for a long time and I'm a bit tired of the arrogance of just dropping something in the hands of someone else to fix. I've actually seen assistants break down because producers demand them keeping deadlines while trying to fix problems created by editors with too much pride upon their way of doing things.

Oh, that never happens in color-correction... :banghead:

We often have to pick up the pieces of endless messes when we conform large projects for color. What makes it particularly difficult is when the editors use complex effects -- speed ramps, warps, multiple timeline split-screens, etc. -- which basically do not translate in most color-correction systems like Resolve, Pablo, Nucoda, and so on. We warn the editors every time, "if you have a complex shot or a scene with a lot of VFX, you're going to have to flatten the file and render it out as a single layer." Many do not listen; they cling to what they know and can't see beyond their own internal facility.

FCP7 is still workable in a situation where they're just editing proxies and then the original high-res files are reconformed in color and final delivery. FCP still works, it's paid for, and people are gonna use what they're gonna use. Not too long ago, I worked on a project edited in Avid 6, which is at least 4 or 5 years old. I asked the editor why they hadn't upgraded, and he said he had a small shop and was always in the middle of multiple simultaneous projects. He was busy enough that he didn't have the time to just shut down, upgrade everything, and hope it all translated correctly.

Freelance editors generally do not have the right to dictate to their clients how something is going to be done, whether it's sound or picture or VFX or anything else. If the client wants it done in a certain system, you may be in for a fight if you dig in your heels and demand that it be done a different way. To me, good work can be done in Premiere, Avid, FCP7, FCPX, hell, even Lightworks. As long as the creative results are good and tell the story, and there are no unsolvable technical issues, anything can be made to work. There are some brain-dead editing systems out there that just make me wince, but as long as it can output a reliable XML and we can create a reasonable workflow, in the end it doesn't matter.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Oh, that never happens in color-correction... :banghead:

We often have to pick up the pieces of endless messes when we conform large projects for color. What makes it particularly difficult is when the editors use complex effects -- speed ramps, warps, multiple timeline split-screens, etc. -- which basically do not translate in most color-correction systems like Resolve, Pablo, Nucoda, and so on. We warn the editors every time, "if you have a complex shot or a scene with a lot of VFX, you're going to have to flatten the file and render it out as a single layer." Many do not listen; they cling to what they know and can't see beyond their own internal facility.

FCP7 is still workable in a situation where they're just editing proxies and then the original high-res files are reconformed in color and final delivery. FCP still works, it's paid for, and people are gonna use what they're gonna use. Not too long ago, I worked on a project edited in Avid 6, which is at least 4 or 5 years old. I asked the editor why they hadn't upgraded, and he said he had a small shop and was always in the middle of multiple simultaneous projects. He was busy enough that he didn't have the time to just shut down, upgrade everything, and hope it all translated correctly.

Freelance editors generally do not have the right to dictate to their clients how something is going to be done, whether it's sound or picture or VFX or anything else. If the client wants it done in a certain system, you may be in for a fight if you dig in your heels and demand that it be done a different way. To me, good work can be done in Premiere, Avid, FCP7, FCPX, hell, even Lightworks. As long as the creative results are good and tell the story, and there are no unsolvable technical issues, anything can be made to work. There are some brain-dead editing systems out there that just make me wince, but as long as it can output a reliable XML and we can create a reasonable workflow, in the end it doesn't matter.

This is partly what I'm speaking about. I've been working primarily as an editor and colorist for the last 7-8 years and I've been on both sides and also both sides at once. My point being that there are far too many douche-editors doing just this, editing and then just leave it for someone else to pick up. Works fine if you have a great and big post production workflow, then it's not the editors job of doing it but the assistants, but when they edit and deliver by themselves there are far too many people not knowing the tools. It's like a carpenter who knows exactly how to build a house but only knows how to use a hammer, never gonna happen. But in this industry, "craft" and "knowledge" seems to be the only thing that counts. Not knowing how to perform basic delivery to colorists and such doesn't seem to be a criteria for being an editor.

That being said, during these 7-8 years I've also seen things happen to post in which we went from a "high cost upgrade" environment into a subscription model of low cost upgrades with third party gear available on all NLEs. This means that while it was true some years ago that it cost a lot to upgrade a system, it isn't today and there's no reason for boggling down the system both for yourself and clients when editing. We are moving into a new phase in editing where it's more and more done on the original files instead of offline files. While I do still think it's better to edit offline files, even on my 5 year old system the software algorithms have been improved so much that I'm able to edit R3D 6K files without much trouble. What this means is that five years from now it will probably be much more common to edit complex footage files in high resolution directly in the NLE. It then becomes a question of how much time you want as an editor to learn a new NLE in order to stay in the game by that time.

So, I don't see any reason to stay in FCP7. It's both creating problems with deliveries, migrating projects etc. while it holds you back as an editor in a slower workflow than others. It's also unprepared when you all of a sudden need to access original files within the NLE, things that's easy for any other software.

All projects where I as a freelancer was demanded to use FCP7 I've actually steered the ship onto Avid or Premiere instead. Every time a producer has approached me and said I needed to use FCP7 I actually said, no, I don't need it and here's why. After telling them why we should use another NLE they all just agreed with me. They are miss-informed because FCP7 is the only software they know and no editor they worked with have told them why something else is better by real numbers and reasons. Maybe to keep the job or because they don't care I dunno, but it's my job to oversee the editorial process, even if I have assistants I must be aware of what is going on. An editor is a teamleader for the editorial department, so it's you job to manage the workflow.

Because of this, I do not agree that freelancers should use what the producers want them to use if it's not a question of let's say, a dynamic link workflow with AE compositors. Demanding pure editorial to be something other than the tools of expertise the editor use is in all accounts stupid. No, this carpenter shouldn't use his own tools and organized toolbox, use mine instead so that you don't know exactly where everything is and what tools we have. What rational, sane producer would force an editor to use something else than what he knows best? In what way is this good for the time frame, deadlines, technical struggles and tempo of editing? But speaking of FCP7 is from out of the editors perspective. How can you stay in the game when the only thing it's good for is offline? A producer should not demand you to use something else, but too many times I've been solving issues based on the fact that FCP7 is old and outdated, which means you can't really argue for solid reasons why it should be used on a project, just as producers shouldn't force you to use it when you know something else and more up to date. If you know that you can deliver, solve any issue and not be a problems to others, use whatever you want and no one should complain. If they do, they ARE stupid. But try and deliver that service with FCP7 compared to the other NLEs... problems arise.

The bottom line is that FCP7 is rather dead or crippled. There is no real reason for professional editors, who work on a daily basis with editing, to not stay up to date. And to those who don't want a subscription model, you want to have it. If you don't work as an editor you might disagree, but for anyone who regularly do edit jobs, it's the best way to keep you up to date and organized. Both Avid and Adobe works great in this way and it costs you the same amount to upgrade your software each year as to subscribe to it so it's the same cost anyway. It's also such a small fee for what you gain back for the work you do. If you can't bring in more money on work than the cost of the subscription, then I wouldn't really call you a professional editor.

 

[fred gasc]

...snip...
hell, even Lightworks...

Yeah...it seems that a bunch of dudes are cutting their low-end indy stuff in Lightworks...


just to say...

 

[Björn Benckert]

I disagree, I think an editor should be aloud to use what ever he wants for editing even if it´s a pair of scissors and tape. If it later becomes a huge mess downstream from the offline edit, well then somebody need to sort it. It´s nothing that should stop the creative process or force some new tools upon the editor, normally or hopefully, he is likely to have be chosen for the job upon other qualities than ease of workflow. And I do not see that XML´s or EDL's from FPC7 is any worse than from premiere, FPCX, avid or any other NLE they all got their fuckups. But ofcourse some editors see their job as finished when they made a nice edit and some when they delivered something that can actually be conformed without hassle down stream. But to me the editing is the important part, sorting out the timecodes or having a good workflow I find to be a secondary thing.