5 features I miss from Final Cut Pro 7 ?Classic?

PVC by Scott Simmons

All of these items would be welcome features added to other NLEs

I spent most of the last week of November working on a job in Final Cut Pro 7; or Final Cut Classic as we seem to call it these days. This was the first FCP7 job I had done in over a year (at least I think as they all run together after awhile). Cutting in FCP7 was at the client?s request and while I have tried to convince them to move to a more modern NLE this job was to be an FCP7 job. It went well and I made a note of five features that I miss when working in other NLEs.

I had worried that when jumping back into Final Cut Pro 7 (Classic) it would take a bit of time and effort to really get comfortable and reacquaint myself with the interface and the nuances that FCP7 has. This job was a music video and I have cut many of them in FCP7 over the years so I wasn?t doing anything I hadn?t done many times before. But it was really more like riding a bicycle as I was quickly reminded what buttons were where and what features I had to work with. FCP7 is very similar to Adobe Premiere Pro CC and I have a similar keyboard between the two (and Avid Media Composer as well) so it was really a matter of just remembering what features FCP7 does have and what is missing. The media was all ProRes LT as this was an offline edit and FCP7 has always handled ProRes very well. FCP7 was also very stable, only crashing once in the four days I was pounding it. I ran FCP7 both on my old MacPro tower (which I had done many times before) as well as on a fresh install on my Macbook Pro Retina that was running Yosemite.

As good as all the modern NLEs are there?s still a few features that Final Cut Pro 7 Classic has that the others don?t. Some are small, others are big while some are just convenient timesavers. I often miss them and was reminded how handy they are while working FCP7. read more...