If You Gave Up on FCP X, It’s Time For a Second Look

When Final Cut Pro X was originally released in 2011, many editors were extremely disappointed with its new features, significant interface changes and what seemed to be lack of professional tools compared to its predecessor (Conan O’Brien even did a comedy segment and poked fun at it.) But that was 6 years ago. To this day, I’m shocked by the number of producers, directors and editors who approach me at conferences or after a class who still refer to Final Cut Pro X as though it’s the same software launched back in 2011. At the time of this writing, Wikipedia has highlighted 23 updates since its official release. (At the rate technology is changing, I wouldn’t be surprised if another one were made while you read this article). Regardless, Final Cut Pro X has a robust number of features in it, and you might be surprised after giving it a second look. Dealing with Change As production and post production professionals, we all develop workflows and patterns to which we perform tasks. Without these workflows,  we could easily become disorganized on a project and lose our most valuable resource—time. Now imagine being presented with what promised to be a new professional tool to make your job easier but that looked radically different from anything you’ve ever worked with. As you started to use it, nothing seemed familiar.  There were different names for common tasks and the “glue” that kept your project together vanished before your very eyes. Oscar-winning editor and sound designer Walter Murch shared his disappointments with FCP X at a Boston SuperMeet in October 2011. I believe this is how many video editors initially saw FCP X. The workflows and terminology with which they had become comfortable, no longer existed; and key features were gone forever or still had to be built into the application. This was enough for people to turn their backs on the software and never look back. But as I taught Final Cut Pro more over the first few years and s... Read more