Need some seasoned FCP editor opinions.

Started on the backend of tape editing but for the most part I've worked on Media Composer my whole editing career. Just started to do some serious editing on FCP 6 over the past 5 months. Like it a whole lot but I've been holding off on the FCS 3 upgrade to see what FCP X would be like before making any purchases. After the announcement, and liking what Apple has to offer, I'm thinking I should still go for the FCS 3 upgrade and ride out the first version of FCP X. It seems like there are some nice features to FCP 7 that would make editing a lot easier than FCP 6. Am I making any sense????

Yep

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

in your position, i wouldn't be diving into FCPX right off the bat.

you might be able to pickup the upgrade a bit cheaper now.
not that i've seen that anywhere yet.

what are the things in FCP7 that appeal to you?
for me the "moving markers" in the timeline is cool,
and the new codecs.

but i don't think there's much that makes editing a LOT easier, though.


nick

Ha! Your right NOTHING makes editing easier. Let me put it differently, three features that stand out to me are, and PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong.

You can export and render your sequences in Compressor in the background while still editing in FCP

Add/remove transitions globally in your sequence. Can you adjust audio globally too?

Speed changes improved

you are right. it's been a while since i was on FCP6.

"Add/remove transitions globally in your sequence"

yes that does make editing easier!
i use that a fair bit.

there's no new way to remove groups of transitions,
but the old way still works.
that's where you do a search in the timeline (Command F) for "Cross Dissolve" say, and do a "Find All"
you can choose to search between in & out points to localise the search

"Can you adjust audio globally too?"

no new tools for that in FCP7. this is what you can do now:

you can adjust levels globally by selecting all in the timeline and using the keyboard commands:
control and - or = to lower or raise levels by 1db
control and [ or ] to lower or raise levels by 3db

these are also found in Modify Menu > Audio

Modify Menu > Levels (Option Command L) is another approach. i don't use it, so i wont comment on it


"Speed changes improved"

yeah, that's a timesaver too.
you have the option to ripple the sequence or not when you make the speed change.


"export and render your sequences in Compressor in the background while still editing in FCP "

this is something i haven't needed to use much,
but that's just me.
it's not really about background rendering, but exporting and compressing in one go.
even make a DVD direct from your timeline.
cool.



nick

>"export and render your sequences in Compressor in the background while still
>editing in FCP "

I can't remember too much about this one, but I think the issue is that it still will not make use of multiple processors. Background rendering? Simple. Launch another instance of FCP, but this may overload the system and you may crash more often. Only for the desperate.

What I like about FCP 7? The markers that can ripple with the timeline (so you can start edit amendments from the beginning instead of from the end of the cut. Colored tabs in the timeline. My working sequence is always labelled in red, and I do timeline to timeline editing a lot.

If you work with image sequences, you can import image sequences into Compressor to batch transcode. Mpeg 2 4:2:2 is also supported.

The verdict is still out on FCP X. None of us have seen the equivalent of a viewer (aka. Source monitor), so we still need to figure out how to cut on that thing. But otherwise, it looks pretty neat.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes Wrote:
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>
>
> The verdict is still out on FCP X. None of us have
> seen the equivalent of a viewer (aka. Source
> monitor), so we still need to figure out how to
> cut on that thing.


Track patching is such a PITA on FCP and copying and pasting between sequences in the Canvas such a breeze that I'd be happy with one window - just don't make me put all my sources into their own sequences to make them load in the Canvas.

The 'canvas' window would then work like a 'preview switcher' on a video switcher. Actually that analogy would be great - especially if we could choose to view 'source clean' or 'mixer out' or anything in between.

Otherwise I do need it for comparing sequences with 'Gang' and use the 'Open' mode to step through doing colour correction/DVE etc...

So, happy to give it up for insert/overwrite editing, not so much for everything else ;-)


And, to the OP, sending to compressor in the background is not so clever in FCS3... more success is had by exporting a QT (ref or self-contained) and running compressor (or MPEG StreamClip, Episode, whatever) as a seperate (but concurrent) app. If it were me I'd wait until June and try out FCPx 1.0. If there are upgrade prices then I think it'll be the same price from FCP6 as FCP7. But seems like there isn't an 'upgrade' price.

I'll probably still purchase FCP X but the fact that I can get FCS 3 for $200 just makes the decision easier. I appreciate everyone's input here, thanks!

rdedits Wrote:
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> I'll probably still purchase FCP X but the fact
> that I can get FCS 3 for $200 just makes the
> decision easier. I appreciate everyone's input
> here, thanks!

Actually, the announcement was that you can get FCP X for $299 - not FCS 3. While not confirmed yet, it seems likely that Apple is going to offer Compressor et. al. as standalones with their own pricing.

From what I am hearing, FCP 7 and FCP X will coexist on the same system...so that's what I will be doing. Starting off with no-so-important projects in FCP X to stretch it's legs. I would definitely upgrade from 6 immediately.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

My educated guess is no individual or shop will switch to FCPX for a good 6 months to 1 year. Don't expect V1 to ship with all you like. No V1 ever does. But then, who knows.

Michael Horton
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