I've read so much negatively about Final Cut Pro X I thought it might be nice to share some positive feedback. This week I used it on a time sensitive project for a huge International client and things couldn't have gone smoother.

I bought Final Cut Pro X on the day of release but was mid project at the time so didn't commit to using it fully until my FCP7 projects were completed. I'd seen a few tutorials online and read the manual through twice before I even opened the program, and completing some test edits over last weekend decided I'd use it as my main editor for an upcoming job. It's worth noting I had FCP7 with me in case I needed to use it but wanted to to fully commit to X and see what it could do.

The brief was to create a highlight video of a two day conference ready to play toward the end of the second day. All together more than 4 hours of footage were shot over the two days on a mixture of 1080p XDCAM, 1080i HDV and even 4.3 SD time-lapse footage that would need to be worked in - and Final Cut Pro X ripped through it all beautifully, all in realtime, no rendering, on a humble last gen MacBook Pro. In fact the only delay was waiting for the client to view the finished edit. We finished an hour ahead of schedule.

The software occasionally got some attention as someone glanced over my shoulder and I'd explain it was the new Final Cut. A colleague I was working with used to Avid couldn't believe it didn't need to render anything, especially as we started to add some colour correction and transitions/ effects late in the edit.

There was a learning curve. On a traditional timeline you'd put the music down, maybe lay down markers and edit accordingly to the beat. But with the magnetic timeline everything is so fluid you have to approach it differently and as soon I got my head into the new way of thinking everything came together beautifully.

Being able to work with footage as soon as it was copied from the XDCAM disc was a huge time saver, as was being able to skim through footage so quickly and have it automatically grouped into two shots and wide shots ect. I'm not saying the job couldn't have been done in FCP7 but using FCPX I was much more confident about the edit and felt I knew the material much better.

So, that's my story. FCPX may not be right for everyone and I might not even be classed as a 'professional' any more for using it. But it worked great for me. And where appropriate I'll be using it as much as possible.

Sorry, but I shoot now with Canon XF and right now there is no way of getting the footage into the program. Also there is no way of sending audio for proper edit, it might be fine if you have one audio track, but the explanation that I need to buy $500 software to export independent tracks for proper audio edit is a complete bs.
For me right now this software is pretty much useless.

Fair enough. I didn't say it was perfect. I just said it worked great for me. As I said at the end of my post 'It may not be right for everyone.. Use it where appropriate. Clearly it's not appropriate for you to use it.. so don't. But for myself and i'm sure others, it's amazing software that works incredibly well.

"Being able to work with footage as soon as it was copied from the XDCAM disc was a huge time saver"

Hi CB.

Thanks for the in the field review... was intrigued by the above comment tho.
I've been cutting with XDCAM HD for 4 years or o now and have always been able to work as soon as the footage was copied from the disk (indeed, even while it was copied from disk as its always been a background process with XDCAM Transfer). Can you just clarify what you meant by that comment, and if you've the time, maybe go into a bit more specific detail on the advantages you found with the new workflow in this regard, would be great info to share.

Thanks again
Andy

1) The whole 'pro' thing seems to be a bit of a misnomer: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional

2) Very happy to see that you're getting good results with FCP-X in the 'fast turnaround' corner of our market. I've been cutting an Event Summary on FCP7 last week, and was missing skimming and easy media management (when you're getting AVCHD and SxS cards thrown at you, plus DSLR timelapse and H.264, all just raw stuff and no shot logging).

3) I hope Apple work with camera manufacturers and we get support for things like Shot and Essence marks - i.e. the metadata we can record TODAY that marks whole clips as 'good' or 'use' and also mark points WITHIN clips where something good happens (these are the 'Essence' marks - separate from the Shot marks). Of course Vegas recognises these with Sony camera footage, but if FCP-X is all about Metadata, this is data we can USE!

CBlakeston interesting that you posted this. At the moment myself is doing some slow steady training in FCPX and will be talking a project from the beginning to the end. So I will also post my experience here or maybe in a new tread.