So it's been about a month since the new release of FCPX (8 or 10?) and I've had some time to process. Lots of thoughts coming....
SOME BACKGROUND
I work at a boutique post production house (with editorial and finishing) in a large market, NYC, focusing mostly on commercial work for broadcast. We have roughly 20 edit stations for purely offline editorial. We then have another 5-10 stations purely for finishing work (Flame, SoftImage, Maya, After Effects). For editing, we used to be an all Avid shop because it was the only real option out there. We didn't love the dongles, the shared storage Unity re-scanning volumes endlessly before being able to open a project, and we certainly didn't like the price. We were also starting to get projects coming in shot in HD on new camera formats (DVCProHD & RED) which did not play at all with Avid which was limited in resolution and frame-rate support. Enter FCP Studio....
When FCP Studio came out we were very excited but also cautious about if it could fit into our professional workflow that required media and project sharing for editorial and a pipeline for out-of-office color correction and audio mixing, and then back to Flames for finishing. I personally pushed for the change to FCP at my company knowing we could make it work. The upside was obvious - we already loved the Mac ecosystem, it was way cheaper, license based vs. dongles, supported HD resolutions and new camera files/codecs. There were 3 issues we had to solve:
1) Re-training seasoned editors and staff
2) How to share media & projects in this new environment
3) Creating a new workflow
The first issue was solved by hiring Larry Jordan and have him come to teach us the ins and out of FCP. This was worth the money and it gave everyone the same basic playing field of knowledge. It also required a lot of openness from all the editors and assistants to embark on this.
The second was solved by Andy Liebman at Editshare. They had created a NLE agnostic SAN system they proved could work with FCP. It also works with Avid Projects and media. We looked at some other companies including Facilis, but at the time they had no software implementation that allowed for easy project sharing. Editshare was great to work with and they continue to have amazing customer service which is essential in these higher-end working environments. Time is money and we make money editing and delivering spots, not trouble shooting SAN/NAS issues.
The third was solved by lots of meetings and trial and error. This had everything to do with our company and less as a technical issue with FCP. It could make OMFs for mixing and EDLs for color/finishing. It could also create XMLs. Getting PDF print-lists off for telecine was a pain in the ass, but eventually a nice little bit of software from Digital Heaven (Final Print) fixed that. This was more about 35 people agreeing to work in a new, unified way and abandoning old habits and preferences.
Cut to the chase. We loved FCP and no one wanted to ever go back to Avid. Everyone in our office was looking forward to a new release of FCP. Our only real issue was just make it faster (especially in regards to accessing memory) so the software wasn't the bottleneck to our productivity. Well that didn't happen.
ENTER FCPX
I'll keep this part short because others have already written more detailed breakdowns. We wanted to love this new version. We downloaded it immediately, tested it out. The potential for metadata centric workflows is exciting and probably the most striking thing. I can see that having some impact. The performance with Mac hardware looks amazing. The magnetic time-line and overall iMovie-Pro look doesn't bother me much. But for our company, it's just not currently viable in any workflow where you need to leave the FCPX ecosystem. No OMF, no EDL, no multi-cam editing, no clear path for sharing projects and media. Missing any one of those elements makes it a non-starter for us and more broadly makes it not suitable for most professionals. Also, no auto-save with versioning???
What is a professional? Is FCPX "professional" software? I don't really care. This definition is always changing, especially in my industry, and true professionals are always updating their knowledge, tech, and workflows. As far as I am concerned FCPX is not a tool to do high end editorial and finishing work. No one is an amazing editor, colorist, mixer, conformer, retoucher, VFX artist all in one. We have specialization for a reason. And even if you were amazing at all those things you can't do most of those things in FCPX. What happens when you need send an OMF to a mix house because FCPX audio tools aren't up to the task? What happens when your client wants to color grade at the Mill for their expensive super-bowl spot? There are already established ways to make those things happen that have been around for years. Apparently Apple didn't think they were necessary. Currently FCPX can't work for us. It is literally just missing essential features/tools that are need for our higher-end workflow.
CONCLUSION
It is not good when Conan O'Brien is doing comedy skits about editing software. It is all a little sad and infuriating at the same time. All Apple had to do was update FCP7 to 64 bits and improve performance. Instead we have a new paradigm from Apple...Sigh.
For now we are going to ride FCP7 into the ground and then evaluate in a year or two and see what options are available. This whole thing also makes us wonder about Apple's direction in regards to professionals (Shake compositing anyone...). I'll be curious to see what Avid and Adobe due over the next year. I'm guessing they are about to have a lot of new customers.
