Final Cut X: A Diamond in the Rough.

   Change has always been something difficult to digest. Whether social, environmental, habitual or even technological. Change is always a challenge. It maybe because we need to reprogramme our mindset and actions to adapt or we are afraid of learning something new. This holds true in the film and video editing circles too where the technology keeps on evolving at a rapid pace.

Film and video editors are always working under a lot of pressure and stringent time lines. More often than not we are a cranky bunch of people confined to our editing suite, cut off from the world at large. So every hundred years when we do decide to leave the confines of our Den we find that there are changes happening all around us. This makes us mad, because we have to learn a new tool and its going to take us a long time to get back up to speed.

Let me give you a short history of the evolution of editing tools:

In the beginning, 1903 to be precise there was the plain old Scissors and Glue. The film was precisely cut with a scissors and stuck to another piece of film with glue. If you watch the movie "The Great Train Robbery" by Edwin S. Porter you will see the results. It was the first film that introduced the art of editing to the world. This was the time 'editors' were known as 'cutters' and mostly consisted of women.

The Great Train Robbery

Then in 1924 Iwan Serrurier adapted his invention the upright Moviola as the first Linear upright editing system. This machine allowed editors to view the film and mark out their cuts with a marker, then take the negative film to the splicer and cut on the marks. This allowed more precise editing. Another feature that the Moviola allowed was to synchronize Audio with the visual. This system was used as the main editing tool until the 1970's and some editors used it till as late as 2005 (Michael Kahn edited the Steven Spielberg film Munich in 2005 on the Moviola). 

To give you a better understanding of what a Moviola is you can watch the video below:

In 1930s Hamburg, Germany, Wilheem Steenbeck created the popular Flatbed editor that bore his name. The Steenbeck featured a large, flat table-like surface where editors could lay down their reels horizontally on separate plates and thread them through its mechanical guides and sprockets. Eventually, many came to consider the Flatbed superior to the upright Moviola film-editing machines in terms of speed, sound quality and monitoring.

Below is a clip demonstrating the Steenbeck.

In 1971 Sony released the U-Matic players which played magnetic tapes. Videos were edited using two U-Matic decks. One as the source and the other as the main edited Tape. This was mainly used in the broadcast and television industry since it was cost effective and the tapes could be viewed instantly after shoot unlike 16mm or 35mm film that had to be processed. All the edits were based on time codes that were embedded in the tapes. 

Below is a video that will give you an idea of what a U-matic player is and does.

Throughout these changes the editors were a happy bunch. Going about doing their daily edits. 

But then the digital ghost slowly starts to creep in, starting with the CMX systems in 1971 the first Non-Linear Editors (NLEs)  that used mainframe computers that took up a lot of space followed by the Edit Droid by Lucas Films and a few others.

These systems did not last very long as the computers at that time did not have the processing power or the storage capacity to handle large amounts of footage.
At this point many editors exclaimed that no computer is ever going to replace the good old Linear systems (Moviola, Steenbeck etc).

But in 1989 the mothership of Non-Linear Editors was born. It was called the AVID. The Avid slowly grew into this very powerful and pure NLE. A few editors reluctantly switched to the avid and realised that it made life a whole lot easier and faster. Although some editors did stick to Linear systems till about 2006. I still rate the Avid as the best NLE for its stability, accuracy and purity.

Most editors got very comfortable with The Avid and enjoyed its work flow. Even today most feature films are edited on it.  NLEs were pure offline systems till this time. This meant that you could only do your cut or edit and the finishing like Colour correction, Effects and other finishing touches had to be done on other more advanced online editors like (Smoke, Flame, Inferno etc) or in film labs. 
Click on the link to know more on Online editing 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_editing 

This all changed in 1999 as Apple computers launched Final Cut Pro. This was a non-linear editor that let you do a bit of online too. It streamlined the whole editing process. FCP too was met with a lot of scepticism and nobody wanted to learn the new software. But then it slowly grew on the editors and most Studios, Channels and production houses used FCP. A few films too were edited on FCP.

In 2011 Apple decided to completely revamp Final Cut Pro with the launch of FcpX. This move caught the whole industry off guard and Apple was severely criticised for the move. The reason was that a lot of the functions of Final Cut Pro 7 that we grew to love were discarded and the new interface was really hard to digest. To add to that old project files from Fcp 7 would not open on FcpX and the magnetic timeline was tricky. This started a chain reaction of editor quitting Fcp and looking for alternate NLEs.

Many editors switched back to Avid which has evolved over the years. Adobe used this opportunity to make Premier pro a force to reckon with. And since Adobe Premier had a similar interface to FCP7 it was easier to adapt to. There were many others who stayed with FCP7 and were hesitant to try something new. I was one of those people, the hesitant one.

As the years went by and Fcpx received update after update and the software slowly started to take shape just like a diamond in the rough. 

So I decided to give it a shot and see if it was really as bad as most editors made it out to be.

It was a struggle at first to get the hang of the new interface. But once I got the hang of it, I found it to be a really great tool. Though it still has a few flaws they can be overlooked as it makes the editing process a whole lot faster. I am so hooked on the software that going back to other NLEs makes them seem obsolete. 

But on the downside Fcpx unlike Premier pro or Avid does not have good support for an ecosystem. No EDLs and the XML Files too don't link up too well with Online setups. But there are plugins that do these jobs.

That being said before you decide to write off FCPX give it a shot and I guarantee you will like it especially with the new update 10.3.0.