Have now learned Final Cut Pro X for a job, and I have made a lists of my thoughts and the problems that I ran into

So I got hired for a job at a Final Cut Pro X only post facility, so I had to learn FCP X and used it for almost 2 months, but first I picked up a copy at home to learn the basics.

I am someone who loved Final Cut Pro 7, and purchased FCP X the day it came out, played with it for 2 weeks and returned it. It was just not for me, as I keep a very organized timeline and the magnetic timeline seemed to be something that I was always fighting.

To learn FCP X I picked up the Apple Pro Training Series Book Final Cut Pro X 10.4 by Brendan Boykin and went through the whole thing until I felt completely comfortable with the program. The book was a good start for sure.

I can certainly edit with FCP X, but I will never be a convert to it’s way of editing. This program has been out for 9 years and in many ways it still feels like a new program just filled with bugs, though I am sure they would call some of them features.

Here are some thoughts that I have had using it and bugs I have run into.

The nomenclature is insane! Why is a project called a Library. And why is a sequence a fucking Project! WTF! Project and sequence are pretty much terms across the industry and renaming them just screams of hubris, saying that you know better than anyone else. Epic Fail!

And you can’t tell me making V (the select key for Adobe) the disable clip key wasn’t a fuck you to Adobe users.

I hate the magnetic timeline. It was why I gave up on Final Cut Pro X initially.

For an initial edit and trying different orders of clips the magnetic timeline is great and very fast. Once you start using connected clips attached to your timeline it gets beyond dicey and I am always fighting it. And deleting clips getting rid of all connected clips is a disaster. I know that rolls work as it’s organization, but I hate not having tracks, and how things in and out of storylines don’t line up. It is just a mess to look at. And it makes something as simple as audio transitions so much harder. I never had a problem with old school timelines. I love keeping a project super organized, and being able to see stuff easily by looking at, but these timelines are a damn mess! And if you roll a clip with a connected clip, it moves too, wtf (I know it is the attach point, but it is almost never what I want to do)! And putting transitions on a clip that is attached automatically puts it into a storyline and adds transitions to both end. WTF, why? At times I want to put 2 transitions on, but not every time, in fact very in-often do I want transitions on both ends. And audio gets to be such a mess, especially if you are editing with music stems and stacked sound fx. I long for real tracks!

And what about zooming? If i click with the zoom tool I want to zoom to that point not wherever the hell it thinks I should zoom! It never seems to zoom where I clicked! Why?

The single viewer window I don’t like. Sure you can turn on an event viewer to get a second viewer back, but it is really the scrubbing that makes it confusing as if you move to the wrong area things change completely. I get that you can fast scrub a clip quickly, but I still find it awkward, and I know you can turn it off, but things aren’t as good without it either.

The fact that in and out points are not included in the undos blows my mind with it’s stupidity. I had a clip marked and lost it, but can’t get it back? Really? WTF! This is in every editing program and I think it is a huge mistake and a huge time waster.

Match frame is a disaster. Especially when your browser isn’t in list view. If you are in visual view you can’t see where it highlighted easily enough! In list view it is fine, as just one clips is displayed, but in filmstrip mode since all clips in and out points are shown, you are screwed! This has to be fixed!

And what about list view in the browser. It shows the selected clip on top as a timeline, which is great for short clips, but for hour long clips it is a joke. And yes you can then switch to filmstrip mode, but i would rather zoom in than have the clip over multiple lines.

And speaking of the browser, being able to only have access to one window at a time is not fucking pro! I love having many bins open at once instead of one at a time. Again this is such a slow way of working! And so un-customizable, you just have to work there way (which really seems to be the those here, we are smarter than you so do it our way or use something else).

And I don’t know if this is a server issue but when i click on a keyword collection, then quickly right click on a sequence (project) duplicate is grayed out and only duplicate as snapshot is available. If i click off and right click again duplicate is again available. Slow and weird.

And why if I drag a clip from the finder to a keyword does it jump to either that event or the next event? But if you drag into the window for the keyword it stays there? And it doesn’t happen all the time so is certainly a bug.

Multicam is another disaster! There needs to be a way to quickly flatten a multicam clip, since you can’t put image stabilization or speed changes on a multicam clip, and your in and out points don’t transfer if you go looking in a multicam clip. Also if you don’t switch to only cutting video, once you setup your clip to use your separate audio it will switch ever time you change angles. And you have to change angles at the head of the the clip or you cut, a minor quibble but annoying. The single viewer also means it is harder to find a clips timecode. And often at least on a multiuser setup you can lose your audio waveforms, particularly on the proxy media, which us hugely frustrating. And putting clips that are not ProRes just slows everything down. Like Premiere you should chose a render format and conform everything first before you begin editing, which is fine, but should be known going in.

There should also be more than 2 options for playback quality, and you should be able to lower the quality in proxy mode for really big multicam clips. Obviously this is meant for local files on an ssd and not for servers with many users sharing the same media.

And not being able to relink proxy media is a huge problem, especially when moving media. And I hate that it can’t use externally created proxy media either.

Trim end which is option left bracket seems to work strangely. If i put the cursor at 6:00 and trim a clip, it ends one frame back. That does not seem intuitive at all. And making extend a trim edit means you can only do it on one clip at a time unlike the trim end command. This is less useful for when I am working with stems. Honestly I would like both to be there.

And importing xml’s from DaVinci imports the sequence, but the clips don’t always show up, which is a problem for making proxies. I had to match frame each clip in the sequence and then they show up in the browser so you can then transcode proxies. And I have issues with a re-render in DaVinci with the exact same settings, overwriting the existing clips then some clips going offline and refusing to relink.

Something seems off with dual monitor support too. After being out of Final Cut if I click back into the second monitor it seems to only bring up that side with the other app still covering the main window. Is this purposeful to let you see another app or the finder on dual display systems. Seems like a bug to me. The second monitor is full screen, which means it has to take up the whole screen, not just part of the screen.

Also I don’t know if it’s another working on a server issue, but camera luts seem to randomly go offline, screwing up exports, and these are a special pain on multicam clips, as you have to dive into the multicam project and find the angle to fix the lut issue.

Duration. Ok I get that clicking on a clip in the timeline or setting in and out points brings up a duration window, but if i set in and outs in the browser, I want to see the duration without having to hit control d. An extra step is slower, not faster.

I miss tabs! I don’t like having to click on the arrows over the timeline to see which timelines are open, then select them. That is an extra step once again. All these extra steps do nothing but slow me down. And Final Cut often closes your open sequences as you open other ones (including muticam sequences).

And what about duplicate frame detection? Sometime you really don’t want to duplicate anything, but on a long show you need this. Final Cut Pro 7 had it, and so does every professional piece of editing software.

And some method for sharing projects should be implemented for sure for multi-user environments. Using separate projects and export xml files is not ideal. And copying over projects from another library is such a mess. Why does it bring in all of the keywords as well? Especially if you are working on the same project. Beyond messy.

No motion blur on moving text. I know Premiere Pro and Avid don’t do this, but Final Cut Pro 7 did, even if it was super slow. I guess there are plug ins to do it, but it should just be a default option. And what is up with the motion blur in Motion? It does not look natural, but like multiple frames badly composited together with shadow. And I have had issues with transitions having the last frame lose brightness if Motion blur is enabled.

And the curves on moves are a mess in Final Cut Pro. You should be able to control the bezier on the smooth and have an easier way to chose between linear and smooth. It defaults to smooth when I always want linear! And to have to right click and open show video animation, then have to select position because you can right click the keyframes is once again, slow!

Why does the viewer window not zoom with the scroll wheel on a mouse? Again this is slower and super frustrating.

So making still frames of clips, you hit option f and it puts a still frame in the sequence, but it is not in the browser as far as I can tell, wtf!

And you can have multiple clips selected and shorten then with a keyboard shortcut, how come you can’t extend them beyond their length? You can control d and type in a time for length, but again that is slower! Yes you can do it with a single clip, but not multiple which would be super helpful when working with stems.

So keywording is great. I always hated subclipping anyway. Being able to reject clips and parts of clips and have them not show up in your bins is awesome. As is continuous playback in bins (negating the need for selects sequences). And the ability to only see favorited sections. You can really log the shit out of stuff, and I love that. I do wish that there were more levels to favoriting. I like making cutdown sequences and lifting the best shots onto higher tracks. So I would love to gave multiple levels of favoriting.

The ability to create your own transitions in Motion is awesome (though it would be nice to have a way to easily share them with other teammates). Creating manual transition having been made harder by the magnetic timeline. You do have to be careful with layers with alphas, as they must individually overlap the transition and have the same transition applied. If they are put into a storyline the transition won’t work correctly. The transitions easily save and show right up in Final Cut Pro X. It is a very cool feature, though can have severe render problem if they are put onto any motion graphics. I had to put one on a title I created in motion to be editable in FCP X and a 2 minute render becomes 40 minutes! This is a major flaw! WTF!

And I am sure this is considered a feature, but I just realized every Motion project you open is a full instance of the interface. This can not be as efficient as tabs that switch between. And sure on dual monitors you can see windows to copy settings or drag and drop, but do you need this with say 7 motion projects? No. Maybe am just used to After Effects having 1 open project only, but maybe just one would speed motion up.

And you can’t stack motion titles. I was trying to create separate elements so that the retiming of elements didn’t screw things up and tried stacking multiple title templates but that cause Final Cut Pro to crash.

And why do Motion and Final Cut put things like the render indicator in completely different spots and the inspector on the opposite side. Sure different program, but more similarities would make things easier and quicker, but again I am pretty sure Final Cut is meant to be slow.

Just found another bug, I was trying to export an alpha matte from final cut so I turned off the video underneath the graphics, and transitions stopped affecting the image they are attached to. Any graphical elements still show up, but the alpha just pops in ignoring the transition, but it behaves correctly with video underneath, so I had to put black underneath and create a luma key by blowing out all of my graphical elements, but then transitions that were 100% white no longer showed up that way so I had to fix things with an adjustment layer and a 3rd party plugin. If the transitions still worked without video you could export a prores 4444 and use it’s alpha but this seems to be a bug.

And bringing in video of a different size than the frame is handled incorrectly. I am working in different web delivery formats and making 1920×2300 graphics, but if you put that graphic in a 1920×1080 timeline it scales it so that the 2300 is 1080 high, but says the image scale is 100%, when in actuality it is scaled down. Now if you switch from spacial conform  fit to fill it puts it correctly 1920 wide with the scale still reading 100%. The fit setting is wrong and should display the scale it has scaled the image too! Never should a larger image say 100% when it is not and their is no way to tell when it is at 100%. This is bad coding.

I do love that your color will pass through via xml to DaVinci, but I don’t like the color controls at all. I have also never loved Lumetri Color in Premiere (it was so much better when you could do a grade in SpeedGrade and have it come in as plug ins on clips), but like it much better than the color board.

And now having delved deeper into motion to create titles and generators for some things it is great, and others a nightmare. I was able to create editable subtitles with a background that automatically resized based on the text you type, this is great! And a huge time saver (if you don’t put a transition on it at least). On the other I created a generator title sequence that I would have normally done in after effects, and rendering it in Final Cut Pro X as a generator in full rez basically hung the machine. You basically have to render out  quicktime movies, which is fine once you realize that, but it is an annoyance. If Motion is the same rendering engine as Final Cut, you should be able to have complicated Motion projects as Titles and Generators, but do not do it!

And Motion is so clunky. Nothing I build plays back in real time. And putting a match move behavior on a logo connected to text and the logo moves and changes size after I sized and positioned it where it should be is insanity!

Audio is good and bad. The audio dissolves within the clip in the timeline is great, but for cross dissolves not as easy as dropping a transition on. Being able to quickly dissolve clips and extend as you put in does make for a quick mix, especially with the keyboard shortcuts for lowering and raising levels. I saw someone do a full audio mix that was very impressive within fcp x, makes me wonder how much of the audio workflow was stolen from logic.

Still there are huge bugs with losing audio waveforms (maybe a server issue) that make mixing next to impossible when it happens. And I have have even had it happen exported an xml and brought into a fresh library only to have waveforms go away 10 minutes later.

Overall for me this still like an unfinished in development program, and not one made for a pro environment, but for single home users who have never used AVID, Premiere or DaVinci. Yes it has some power, but it also has huge issues. And finding one cool thing means finding 10 faults. I also don’t feel like this was made with input from editors, but instead made by engineers who think they know better. This program is not pro.