FCP X road blocks

Digitalfilms by Oliver Peters

Final Cut editors have lamented big time about the missing features in Final Cut Pro X. For instance – no VTR i/o except over FireWire – and no broadcast video monitoring output. I agree that those are important issues, but they don’t necessarily hold me back from using the application. It’s the less obvious things that are related to the inherent design, which I find hard to accept. There are thousands of little things I do in every session that are not in FCP X or simply require additional steps. Not to mention that the overall application feels slower when you are really rocking, due to the horsepower devoted to the virtual glitziness of the program itself instead of to performance.

Here’s a just a short list of what I feel needs addressing.

Rolling audio edits. The kind of split edits you do as second nature in both Final Cut Pro 7 and Avid Media Composer are simply not possible in as fluid of a manner in FCP X. For example, it’s next to impossible to do an audio-only, double-roller trim (“rolling edit”) in the FCP X timeline.

Multiple trim points. There is no way to simultaneously select and trim several clip edit points at one time. Apple would argue that the magnetic timeline eliminates the need to do this, but that’s not true. read more...