Five Ways I Think FCP-X is Changing Editing for the Better.

DVinfo.net by Bill Davis

In the past half-year, I’ve used FCP-X nearly exclusively for my corporate video editing. In that time, I’ve had to to deliver a wide range of work for a very diverse group of recognizable national clients – often under very tight deadlines. I doubt I could have hit these deadlines while delivering the same quality without FCP-X. That’s based on looking back at what I’ve done, the deadlines, the programs and client requirements and how FCP-X often helped me work faster and more efficiently than I was working before.

Here are five things about FCP-X that have improved my life as an editor.

1. The Event Browser
In FCP Legacy, editing took place almost exclusively in the Timeline. In X, the timeline sits behind a new workspace called the Event Browser. The event browser is a viewing, naming and project organization area – sort of a virtual workspace where you can do a lot of very powerful “pre-editing” work. It’s also the gateway to X’s new “database” engine. Work you do in the event browser “persists.” Trim a clip once in the EB, and that trim is available for use in all your subsequent projects. Apply keywords, audio adjustments, or color corrections in the event browser, and use the result again and again from that point on. It’s a powerful, time saving arrangement that works along with…

2. Metadata Flow.
In FCP-X there’s a “flow” that’s important to understand. Imported or captured media arrives as clips attached to an event. Events are displayed in the event browser. Clips from your events are then arranged in storylines – and all storylines reside in and are reflected to a space called the project library. The “flow” is important because at each production stage prior to the project library – metadata from the previous stage will be “inherited” by the next. And in X, everything from where you place a cut to the font you choose for a title is all stored, expressed and manipulated as metadata. It’s no overstatement to say that a good FCP-X editor – working exclusively in the event browser, can do a huge amount of useful editing and preparation before they ever open a new project. read more...