Final Cut Pro

[Macman45]

Before I shell out the £££ for FCP, I would like to hear the opinions of any of you out there who are currently using it. I have heard good and bad, and it's a lot of money to fork out.

Seems feature rich, and iMovie was never going to be enough for me....Just like to know if it's as good as it's cracked up to be before I hit the Install button!

 

[cgbier]

Depends on what you what you want to do with it. Can't use hammer if you need a saw.

This video shows you for whom it is good for.

 

[Macman45]

Thanks For That

I do need the features, what I was more concerned about was stability. I have heard mixed reports from friends, some are having issues, some not.

I need it to be rock solid....Nothing worse than spending hours working, only to find (and this is the most common complaint I have heard) that the burn process fails.

I shall hold off for a bit and see if any more advice comes to light!

 

[cgbier]

Uhm, burn process? You talking about burning a DVD/BD or rendering?

With me, it was very solid so far. Some beach balls now and then, but no crash so far. Haven't done too heavy composting though.

Important is that your hardware is 100% supported.

 

[zblaxberg]

I edit with Final Cut Pro 7 professionally and got my hands on FCPX only to be highly disappointed. The autosave feature is a load of ****. I could have a project I've been editing for hours and the program is supposed to save automatically as you go. I close out and open it up the next day to find a lot of my edits missing and any text or transitions I put on the clips are gone. Don't count on it being rock solid whatsoever because it is anything but stable.

 

[Macman45]

Many Thanks

You have confirmed what others have told me. I'm keeping my £££ in my pocket for now....Thanks for the heads up

 

[linuxcooldude]

I've been using FCP X ever since its come out. The only part that is a bit funky is when exporting. Sometimes when I'm dragging the playhead on the timeline it acts like its not moving, but when I release it moves it where its suppose to be. Besides that its been stellar for me.

 

[namethisfile]

I've been using FCP X ever since its come out. The only part that is a bit funky is when exporting. Sometimes when I'm dragging the playhead on the timeline it acts like its not moving, but when I release it moves it where its suppose to be. Besides that its been stellar for me.

i get the same issue. moving playhead on timeline gets stuck sometimes. then unsticks itself. i figured the program is busy with background processes and needed itself sometime to catch up. maybe i need to upgrade ram to 8 gigs or something to alleviate this. not a big deal. otherwise, powerful program. no deal breakers for me as i don't currently need multi cam support or the ability to export edl's and/or omf's. but glad that it's coming in future updates. the program crashed a few times but the autosave feature did its job leaving where i left off. seems to run well on mid2010 mbp. maybe even better once i upgrade ram to 8 gigs.

 

[cgbier]

namethisfile, I have the same machine with 8GB. Haven't come across this issue, yet, so, yes, 8GB seem to be advisable.

 

[namethisfile]

namethisfile, I have the same machine with 8GB. Haven't come across this issue, yet, so, yes, 8GB seem to be advisable.

good to know.

 

[CaptainChunk]

FCP X has a lot of cool new features, some probably ahead of their time. But where it succeeds in innovation, it lacks in other areas, notably its neutering of basic workflow features that professional editors need to earn a living.

But for some, this doesn't really matter. In fact, in many ways, it's a godsend for web video guys. So I think it's really going to come down to whether the new version will work out in your situation or not. Personally, it doesn't work for me yet (and it has yet to be determined if it ever will). I would say that FCP X is an excellent upgrade if:


1. You don't need EDL/XML functionality (for sharing edit data with other software and 3rd parties).

2. You don't work extensively with tape.

3. You don't need numbered A/V tracks and OMF export support (important if you work with sound mixers on ProTools and similar DAWs).

4. You don't work with professional raw video codecs like REDCODE or ARRI RAW (for which no plugins exist yet for FCP X).

5. You don't need professional video I/O for broadcast monitors and the like.

6. You don't have important projects from an earlier version of FCP in progress (FCP X doesn't open older projects AT ALL).


There's probably other things I'm not thinking about right now, but at least 5 of those things apply to me, so FCP X isn't ready for primetime in my situation. I can only hope in the future that it will be.