That Final Cut Pro (FCP) had lately been showing its age is no secret. Most of the innovation was actually taking place in the consumer field with iMovie, and there were many features that professional editors were eyeing with envy.
These were features such as: skimming through thumbnails to get a preview of clips to greatly speed up the selection process; being able to label clips with various keywords to make it easy to find the right one in seconds; giving each project its own scratch disk as opposed to having one set for the application; a more up-to-date font and text architecture instead of the antiquated one that hadn't changed since FCP's introduction; and being able to see when an audio clip is peaking just by glancing at the waveform in the timeline, rather than having to listen to it proper.
All these were added to FCP X (pronounced 'ten'), along with many others including a 64-bit architecture (meaning you can feed it as much RAM as you can cram into your Mac, rather than be limited to only 4GB), background rendering and the ability to work with any files from SD to 4K – even within the same project. All this sounds good, so why all the fuss online and even on comedy shows?
It's because Apple decided to remove a lot of what many professional editors depended on and never thought about until it was taken away from them.
Take the main column in the browser window, which used to remain anchored on the left-hand side – no matter how far down the right you'd scroll to see more of the clip's metadata, you'd never lose track of its name. Well, that's gone.
And what about adding keyframes to animate any parameter, which was automatic each time you modified its value after having set the first one? Missing in action. Then there are the clips in the browser that kept the last In and Out points you'd set; the free creation of chapter markers along your timeline; the ability to drag any clip anywhere on the timeline, creating gaps if you needed them (or not); and the projects that could be of virtually any dimension.
None of these – nor many others – are possible with FCP X. Larger omissions include: a complete lack of multi-camera support; an inability to natively export to OMF, AAF or EDL files to move your project to other programs for further manipulation; no option to send a clip to Motion from the timeline to add effects to it; no proper support for connecting to a broadcast monitor; and no possibility of importing projects created with an earlier version of FCP.
This is all because FCP X isn't an upgrade but version 1.0 of a completely new program. What's confusing is that Apple kept the same name and discontinued the Final Cut Studio suite when FCP X was released, forcing people to move to the new application. And if they couldn't, they had to consider their options – hence the anger and confusion.
Curiously enough, Apple kept the older version alive when transitioning users from Mac OS 9 to OS X and even iMovie 6 to 7, so why they haven't done so this time is a bit of a mystery. But if so much is missing, what does this new software offer aside from the above?
For one thing, you can edit more files in their native format, such as AVCHD, avoiding the lengthy transcoding process and saving you a fair amount of disk space. You can finally work with AAC and MP3 audio files without having to render them first, and clips shot with any iOS device now display as expected.
FCP X can also import iMovie projects, creating a clear and easy migration path for up-and-coming editors.
The new magnetic timeline keeps your clips together, avoiding unintentional gaps and making sure you never overwrite clips by mistake, or move the audio and video out of sync when moving things around (unless of course that's your intention).
There's no such thing as layers anymore: clips can be added above existing ones as you wish, but all are linked to the main Storyline, which is essentially the first layer. This is an entirely new editing concept that will take some getting used to.
The whole process feels like you're being looked after, which is great for first-time editors, but veterans may well feel constrained because they can't work the way they're used to. Many keyboard shortcuts are the same, but quite a few are different. Thankfully, there's a powerful shortcut customisation option, but this can't disguise the fact that you're having to learn an entirely new program.
There are a lot of things to like in this release, such as the ability to mouse over an effect and see how it changes a selected clip prior to applying it (holding down the Option key as you do so intensifies the effect), and the new colour correction tools are impressive, but too much is missing for professionals.
Since it's so cheap though, you should consider purchasing it and running it alongside FCP 7 (which will still work with Lion), then learn how to use it as you keep earning money with the older version.
Apple's promised to update its new program fast and you don't want to get left behind when younger editors can do things better and faster thanks to the changes in FCP X.
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