FCPX On Air. Coming Soon

Creative COW by John Davidson

As many of you know, Magic Feather Inc. has been swimming in the FCPX pool for about 9 months. In that time we've grown to love FCPX. It's changed the way we edit, how we look at editing in general, and had some pretty interesting effects on our creative. How on Earth did we get here? First, let's look at some history.

When FCPX was announced, I was seriously excited. I am a huge Mac fanatic, and X seemed to be exactly what I wanted. Then the app dropped on 6/21 - I couldn't sleep the night before. As soon as it was available, I downloaded it and started to explore. Where were our plugins? Where were OMF exports for audio? Tape deck control? What's this magnetic thing? We were all filled with terror. We couldn't get audio out - this was shocking. Immediately we started posting on forums. Someone at USA saw a post I made and called me for a quick interview. The article ran, and in my lack of sleep haze I made a comment that was picked up on and published.

So I, like many others, sat back and speculated in online forums. Despite my frustration, many people seemed to be taking an over-the-top philosophy towards FCPX, Apple, and their plans for the future. Oddly, this was from people who, during previous FCP updates, had said they weren't updating from the current version for months until bugs were worked out. Suddenly, if FCPX didn't work on DAY 1 just like they wanted, they were abandoning ship. At the time, I believe my resolution was that we would keep playing with FCPX as time allowed, that it would mature, and that missing features would come back. We would sit back and continue to use FCP7 until X was ready. Many in online forums would have none of it. Many moved on.

That week I attended the Promax convention in New York. As part of a small group of people allowed to meet the former Vice President, I got a crazy idea. While everyone was thrilled to shake hands with the VP, I saw an opportunity to speak directly to an Apple board member. My voice squeaking, when my turn came, I stammered out that people in broadcast really needed some idea of whether FCPX was going to move more towards broadcast creatives, or was it going to be more of an iMovie pro? He assured me he would look into it. The next day, Apple released their road map for FCPX. Awesome. read more...