I'm normally one to upgrade to new software at the earliest reasonable chance, but I've delayed the 7 to X move since I haven't had a ton of video work in the past couple of years. I know the 7 environment very well like many of you here, keyboard shortcuts are second nature to me, certain workflows just happen naturally. I used FCPX soon after it first came out with a previous job, just to test the waters. I took a FCPX with Larry Jordan, but this was all back when the debacle was still pretty fresh. I understand that with the updates over the past couple of years, FCPX is a lot more usable than it was initially.

So I'm getting ready to start cutting a project, and I've been thinking over the past couple of months about whether it's time to make the leap. While this particular project is very much like ones I've done before in 7 (with a complex workflow that makes sense to me in 7), this project is a little unique in that the deadline is a bit loose. So, there wouldn't be the same schedule pressures that most projects have, freeing up time for learning new software.

For whatever reason, I'm just having a hard time making the leap. Maybe it's because X still seems so unfamiliar/unknown, especially when I have a great workflow in place for this particular type of project.

What do you folks think?

I think it's well known that I and a bunch of other people here went to Premiere - the chief reason being that it was so similar to FCP7 (but in many ways now better). It even has an option to turn on the FCP7 keyboard shortcuts. So I personally would say check out Premiere. Full disclosure, I am an ACP now, but I really am saying this as a person you (sort of) know, not as an Adobe mouthpiece.

However, the fact is that FCP 7 is aging and will not be updated, so eventually you will have to go somewhere. IF FCPX is your choice of where to go, then the sooner you get started, the sooner you will be up to speed and working efficiently again. There's really no reason to stay with FCP7 any more, and lots of people are using FCPX and are very happy. Maybe check out some new tutorials and see if it suits your workflows?

And check out our FCPX forum too - the people there are using it on a daily basis and might be able to help more than the ones in this forum.

7 still has one major advantage over Premiere and that is, it renders Pro Res material light years faster; while it is less important for short projects, for longer projects (consisting of Pro Res material) 7 saves so much time.

Recently, I had a project where 80% of the project was Pro Res, 20% was another format. I could have just thrown it all into Premiere but I choose to transcode the 20% and work in 7 and I'm glad I did because when it came time to export the 2 hour project it took 10-20 min vs 3-4 hours. Then if you discover a mistake afterward and it has to be corrected or you have to render out multiple versions, you can imagine the time saved.

Do you work in ProRes timelines, Joe? I typically work in PRoRes HQ sequences, and export via the Media Manager when ready, which leaves Premiere free to keep working while that's churning away in the background.

I don't use it religiously, but you still have to render it correct? Then use previews upon export.

I recently tried this albeit with Red footage with a scale applied, made my sequence Pro Res 422, rendered previews,
opened Media Encoder, check match sequence settings, and use previews.

It still took almost 10 minutes for a 45 second sequence.

I don't render before export - I don't think you need to, although if you're using scaled R3D I can imagine it would be more of an ask for the processor. Something to watch - check the setting on Match Sequence Settings - I've found sometimes I'm not getting what I actually want by doing that.

The export times are def longer than FCP7, but I'm not usually seeing times like those.

I'm just doing some tests here - I've got a 10.29 native xdcam timeline that I'm sending out ProRes LT and it's reporting about 6 minutes.

I'll give it a shot with some Pro Res footage at some point.

>it still took almost 10 minutes for a 45 second sequence.

Either you are working with RAW formats or you are doing a lot of effects work, or your machine is seriously under performing. If you can let us know your machine specs and the effects you are using so we can try to find a bottleneck for the exploded render times you are seeing.

On a decent system, I would expect exporting to be around 1 to 1.5x real time which is actually faster than exporting a self contained QT movie and transcoding to h.264/XDCAM HD 422.

One of the things that fcp7 is able to do is to export a reference movie. But that function seems obsolete and limited to the QT7 architecture. On the other hand, I have seen very fast prores to h.264 transcoding times with Premiere, especially if I need to do timecode burn ins. So I tend to render when I have the time and use those previews for the final output.



www.strypesinpost.com

I would move to FCP X, the best way to learn is with a proper project

Derek