Final Cut Pro X

When Apple released the latest version of Final Cut Pro this past summer, the professional editing community was outraged. I remember looking forward to this launch in the years leading up to it, but like most every other FCP user out there, my heart sank when it finally was released.

The Final Cut Pro user community had known that FCP X was going to be a complete re-launch, and I was looking forward to re-learning this piece of software from the ground up. Of course I wasn’t planning on implementing it into my workflow right away, as that would kill my productivity. But I was going to spend the next several months learning the software frontward and backward, and implement it slowly over time. Well, when FCP X was finally released, my plan of attack disintegrated.

This release was so poorly executed, and received such horrible feedback, that it made national news. Conan O’Brien even made fun of it on his show! It was that bad. And then to add insult to injury, David Pogue of the New York Times (not a video editor) wrote an article about how the editing community was completely overreacting to the release, and that we needed to step back and take a deep breath. I usually enjoy Pogue’s articles, but this one was just plain out of line. Apparently I wasn’t the only editor who thought that way, as David immediately issued a followup due to the unprecedented amount of negative feedback he received. After reading the followup, and the comments associated with it, I decided I’d hold off on the upgrade until Apple sorted themselves out. I figured that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and kept using Final Cut Pro 7 (yes, the version before FCP X(ten) was version 7. Apparently they decided versions 8 and 9 were worth skipping) or that I’d migrate over to Adobe Premiere. That worked fine, but as often happens with software and various forms of workflow, FCP X forced its way into my life. More on that in future posts.