If you are a professional, FCPX is unusable

I thought it was just me but I tend to agree. Ease of us with this new timeline seems to have removed accuracy. As a long time Media Composer person, I was sceptical of FCP but after a while I could appreciate some of it's usefullness. For a few years Avid was definietly playing catch up to FCP. However, over the last few years FCP has seemed long in the tooth and Avid has caught up and in my opinion, passed FCP with some of it's newest features while still retaining (!!!) it's most useful aspects.

New:

AMA, Avid Media Access. Bringing files into a Avid bin without import or transcoding. Edit with them directly in the timeline. This applies to most Quicktime files, Red files, H264, XDCAM, AVCHD, P2 and Apple Pro Res. No render in the background using up valuble processor power or hard drive space. Why create files again? Work with them natively, output what you need. That's Media Mangement.

3rd Party hardware:

Matrox MX02 mini for HD monitoring $450 US. Cailbration tool included. We bought this and the MAX option to encode H264 for Blu Ray.

Aja IO Express for HD SDI input and output.

Old:

Avid's Media Management. Tells you exactly what's on what drive. What renders (precomputes in Avid) are referenced in a sequence and what are old and can be discarded. Avid sequences are version and up and down compatible. I can open a MC 5.5 sequence in MC 3.x.

Decide how want to manage your media. FCPX puts renders with project files. WHY? I want my project file to remain on my system drive (safest place plus it;s the drive that has a time nachine backup) but I want all my media to be on external drives. Their usually more problematic but their faster. Filling up my internal drive with renders slows it down and I would trust to have my project file on an external drive. With Avid as long as I have the sequence I can redigitize the media. 6 months ago I redigitized a sequence from 1997 !!

Petter....You think FCP7 to be superior to Avid today? That's not rhetorical. I've never used Avid but it's time for me to get a new computer. FCP is important to me...no...editing is important and I've used FCP since 1.0. I have both tape and flash based camera's and output to both tape and web and DVD etc. I'm a very low level professional but I value the power and flexibility of FCP. But I don't want to buy a new computer and continue on a dead end. I loathe Windows ( I work on both platforms regularly) but I always tell friends and clients to decide on what they want to do, pick the best app and run the computer that works best for them. Taking my own advice is hard. I will have to look further into Avid and Premiere. FCP is fine for me now but FCPX would not be and I balk at the idea of investing in another new MacPro. The next OS after Lion might not even run FCP7 for all I know. Sadly shaking my head....

Apple is looking to redefnine the word 'professional', with their technology, they aim to make everyone capable of delivering the same quality, using the same skill and facility, making almost everyone to be qualified to get the same job.

If the expense of Avid is too much take a look at Premiere. It works a lot like FCP7. It's Media Management is the Finder like FCP and most of the hardware that works for FCP works with Premiere. Encore that comes with Premiere can create Blu Ray and the Adobe Media Encoder is in my opinion better than Compressor (which is still 32 bit). The OS X version is Quicktime based and Adobe has worked out some better workflows with graphics visa vie Photoshop and AfterEffects...because they own them. They also have a good FCP>Premiere project transfer method via XML. We bought the Master Collection that came with Flash. All these programs from Adobe are 64 bit and they work the same as their 32 bit versions. I was very impressed with Premiere. It played AVCHD files from a Canon 5D on one of our old MacPro's without a dropped frame. FCP7 and FCPX dropped frames like crazy on the same system. I'd put it above FCP for professional editors and it's definitely more professional than FCPX.

By the way....Apple may have re-written FCPX from the ground up as a 64 bit program but they stopped off on the way and made iMovie.

By the way....Apple may have re-written FCPX from the ground up as a 64 bit program but they stopped off on the way and made iMovie.

...borrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnngggggggg! 😉

It's a great app today and will soon be an awesome app just as FCP 7 has been

You should be happy, you are exactly who FCPX has been designed for! Two problems though: Firstly, if want to move into a higher level of work (say broadcast) and to make editing your main source of income, you are going to have to move to different software. Secondly, I don't believe that FCPX can ever become the awesome app that FCP7 was. FCP7 reached the level it did because it was driven for many years by professional use and the requirements of the professional market. The professionals are now being forced on to different software and the only people left to drive FCPX forward are amateurs, serious hobbyists and semi-pros like yourself and obviously this is the market that Apple is now catering for, Apple is no longer interested in the Pro market. Lastly, even if Apple does eventually bring back all the functionality and in a couple of years make FCPX as good as FCP7, it will be too late for it to be a competitive professional tool. Apple has destroyed the trust built up with the Professional community and of course in the couple of years it takes Apple to get back to where it was two years ago the competition will have moved on.

You are becoming such a martinet. Or marionette?