About a month ago Apple released their highly anticipated update to Final Cut, called Final Cut Pro X.\u00a0 People either immediately loved it or hated it.\u00a0 Actually, most hated it.\u00a0 In the Mac App store, it has more negative reviews than positive.\u00a0 And this coming from the Apple faithful.<\/p>\n
I decided to ignore everything I’d heard about Final Cut Pro X, both good and bad, and spend some time with it before offering my own opinion.\u00a0 And rather than repeat what everyone else has already said about it (yea, there are plenty of reviews out there) I figured I’d give you a brief rundown of what’s positive, what’s negative and what the final verdict is…for the average web video producer who currently uses the “old” Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express.<\/p>\n
The Good <\/strong><\/em>– Final Cut needed updating and update it they did.\u00a0 The interface is slick, modern and intuitive, a load of effects are at your finger tips and it’s easy to find or figure out what you want to do.\u00a0 In other words, the interface is now like just about every other video editing app out there.\u00a0 There are no “breakthroughs” here, it’s just that now Final Cut is an application that the average person can figure out how to use from the get-go.<\/p>\n The Misleading<\/strong><\/em> – There were two big improvements touted for Final Cut Pro X; the ability to preview your edits in real-time without having to render them first and the ability to add footage from just about any camera without having to transcode it into another format first (again, something other video editing apps have offered for years).<\/p>\n For the real-time previews, this is a bit misleading because it’s not actually real-time…stuff automatically renders in the “background” while you continue working.\u00a0 That means instead of manually rendering edits like you had to in the old Final Cut, the new Final Cut does it for you automatically in the background…and you can continue to work while this is going on.\u00a0 But pre-rendering is still going on<\/em>…and it’s not fast.<\/p>\n For accepting footage from all cameras, again this is misleading.\u00a0 You might think that means you can copy files from your memory card to your Mac and then drag them onto the timeline (I did).\u00a0 That won’t work if for example you have an AVCHD camera.\u00a0 Instead you have to choose the import from camera option, where you footage is then copied from your camera into Final Cut.\u00a0 And during the import, you usually have to have Final Cut transcode the video into a different format anyway, if you want decent playback in the timeline.\u00a0 It’s a disappointment…I was hoping Final Cut Pro X would behave like it’s competitors on the Windows side of things.\u00a0 It doesn’t.<\/p>\n The Bad<\/strong><\/em> – Apple decided to change the way people edit video in the timeline.\u00a0 That’s to say instead of doing it like the old Final Cut (and like virtually all other video editing software), they want you to have most of you stuff on a single track in the timeline (like iMovie).\u00a0 Want to say exactly what video or audio clips go exactly on which tracks in the timeline?\u00a0 Sorry, can’t do it.\u00a0 This is a deal-breaker for most video editors, as their freedom has been stripped.<\/p>\n Additionally, Apple decided to do away with the freedom people have always had (both in the old Final Cut and virtually all other video editing apps) when it comes to organizing the media to use in their projects.\u00a0 Again, instead of having a choice or freedom in how you organize and import your media, you’re forced to do it the Apple way.\u00a0 And the Apple way is essentially a big library in Final Cut Pro X that all your media gets dumped into.\u00a0 Then you can access it for any project, whenever you want.<\/p>\n This isn’t a bad idea (Avid has pulled this library concept off brilliantly in Avid Studio), but Apple’s implementation isn’t quite there yet.\u00a0 For example, in Avid Studio, you can store your media wherever you want on your hard drive and Avid keeps track of it for you in the library.\u00a0 You always know where your media is and Avid Studio always knows where your media is.\u00a0 In Final Cut Pro X (at least by default), Apple buries your imported media in hard to find system folders.\u00a0 That means Final Cut Pro X always knows where you media is, but you don’t.<\/p>\n And finally there are the bugs.\u00a0 This is the first version of first generation software, so I’ll give Apple some leeway here.\u00a0 I’ll ignore how it routinely locked up while importing video and occasionally locked up while editing video.\u00a0 I’ll even ignore the few times Final Cut Pro\u00a0 X just vanished from my screen.\u00a0 But the old Final Cut never did this…ever.\u00a0 This makes Final Cut Pro X almost seem like a beta product that they rushed to market.\u00a0 Which leads me to…<\/p>\n The Verdict<\/strong><\/em> – I wouldn’t recommend Final Cut Pro X.\u00a0 At least not yet.\u00a0 Apple has some things to fix with it.\u00a0 Stay where you are with the old Final Cut until things improve.\u00a0 Or install Bootcamp and Windows on your Mac and run Sony Vegas or Avid Studio instead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About a month ago Apple released their highly anticipated update to Final Cut, called Final Cut Pro X.\u00a0 People either immediately loved it or hated it.\u00a0 Actually, most hated it.\u00a0 In the Mac App store, it has more negative reviews than positive.\u00a0 And this coming from the Apple faithful. I decided to ignore everything I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[19],"tags":[853,854,855],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions\/2416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}