FCPX Decisions

Crews.tv by Dylan Reeve

The new Final Cut Pro X is now available to the public for less than a third of the price of the discontinued FCP 7 suite it replaces.

But if you had to edit a television show with FCP X today, you would probably be struggling because, aside from the name, the new application doesn’t really share a lot in common with the Final Cut Pro we know.

This a Version 1.0 – a completely rewritten 64-bit application designed to work for the future as Apple sees it.

Gone is support for tape-based formats – no batch capture, no print to tape. Interchange between applications is also currently unavailable – no EDL, XML or OMF export, and even Final Cut Pro projects can’t be imported (although iMovie projects can).

Project based media and bins have been dumped. Instead, all media is visible in all projects and sorted into Events in the Library – which could quickly become problematic if you have multiple projects for multiple clients.

FCP X also shifts the editing paradigm we are used to. There are no longer source and record monitors (or viewer and canvas). Instead source clips are previewed in place in the Library or within the main video window.

The concept of tracks has vanished too, replaced by the Storyline. When new clips are added to the timeline the old ones are either shifted out of the way, or the new ones create a new layer on top – move a clip around the timeline (Storyline) and other clips will automatically move out of the way – a feature called the Magnetic Timeline. read more...