Apple asked me today how I liked my Final Cut Pro. Aside from a few multiple choice questions about apps and formats and what I do for a living, these were the essay questions:
Why are you very dissatisfied with Final Cut Pro X?
I have used Final Cut Pro 7 for years in a professional broadcast editing environment where I need to interact with other team members who take care of different parts of post-production, from assistant editors to people doing specialized parts like color grading and audio mix. Final Cut Pro X has, until very recently, made it almost impossible to insert into this existing workflow in a sane manner.
Aside from the “working well with others” consideration, I am often in the role of an online editor, and with the lack of functionality I have seen to be able to relink and replace footage in a sane way, I simply cannot perform my online editing duties.
Using FCPX what little I have outside of my daily pro editing work (I say this having seem the demo and REALLY wanting to like it), I have not found myself able to get into any sort of flow with FCPX that I still have with FCP7. It seems, in many cases, that it now takes more steps to perform the same editing functions than it used to.
What are the primary reasons you upgraded to Final Cut Pro X?
I saw the demo at NAB, and was very intrigued by the new editing paradigms that Apple was trying to introduce. I REALLY wanted to like FCPx, so I gave it a shot. I have, however, mostly reverted to continuing to use FCP7.
Please share any comments and suggestions for improving Final Cut Pro X.
Final Cut Pro 7 had evolved into a tool that I trusted to help me get my daily work done. FCPX has stripped away a lot of those seemingly minor features that made FCP7 so powerful, and at the moment, it has seemed as if Apple is uninterested in restoring them, throwing it all off to focus on the “prosumer” editing market and allowing 3rd parties to fill in all of the Pro gaps. Maybe. Someday.
I hope that this survey signifies a change in that outlook.
I would encourage you to look at the broadcast video market to see whose needs are not being addressed. I can imagine, as FCPX stands, how those who work in film and corporate video might find it useable, but with the strict time contraints our edited video must fill, FCPX currently makes it harder to get precise timecode-dependent work done.
I really want to like FCPX, but at the moment, it’s very hard for me to do so. Clients I work with on a regular basis (e.g. NGT) are considering abandoning FCP. Please give us back our tools.
Thank you again for your participation.
If you have any additional comments about Apple, please include them in the space provided below.
Whatever happened to Final Cut Server? It was the germ of a good idea, and seemed to be a promising step toward increased professional video support, but it never seems to have gone anywhere. Why did that die?