Now I did try and use FCP X right from the start with lessons, and I don’t think it is a professional program at all. Yes it might be faster to teach to someone with no previous editing knowledge as Larry says, but that is because it forces you to edit in a very specific way, and for me not a way that I find faster or better at all. And yes I am biased by all the horridness of Apple’s launch of FCP X and killing of the Final Cut Pro 7 suite, and that may bias me, but I also think that Larry making his living doing Final Cut Pro lessons may bias him.
And I hate how no one ever talks about the things that Final Cut Pro 7 is not setup to do, like working in a multi-user environment on an X-Serve or Edit Share. He does mention it is not that good at going to Pro Tools, which is a deal breaker, but also the inability to organize tracks makes for a mess of a timeline when I often use 15-20 tracks on a commercial, all for different elements or graphics to keep it organized, and to have that all haphazardly put randomly into the timeline is insane and a mess, and not at all professional!
Now I do love the ability to mark clips by keywords and make it all easily searchable, but that could have easily been ported into a Final Cut Pro 8 and made it a really powerful 64 bit editing system instead of a mixture of 64 bit tech with iMovie conventions.
Even with all the additions I still see Final Cut Pro X as a mess and not-professional. It has too much wrong with it, and has so many weird bugs (see previous posts on Red Giant software and FCP X), and I just don’t see the magnetic timeline as being professional in a commercial environment or any graphics heavy environment where timeline organization is more important that clip organization, which I am perfectly capable of organizing myself.