Long live X

I started working with NLEs in the late 90’s and I quickly moved from Avid to the original Final Cut which I used all the way until it was discontinued. I was one of the many editors that was underwhelmed by the initial launch of FCPX as it lacked far too many features that were essential to my workflow. That was five years ago, it turns out FCPX is the most innovative NLE on the market. Being able to organize all of your media via metadata was a truly revolutionary concept and now with the implementation of roles and lanes, you can now organize your audio in your timeline via metadata which is a vast improvement over traditional patching of tracks as you go. The XML roundtrip with Resolve is second to none as the XML from X is far more advanced that the old XML that FCP7 spit out. The magnetic timeline, which many editors simply cannot wrap their head around, is the most innovative feature of X. Most NLE’s leave gaps, have clip collisions and throw things out of sync but X is the opposite, it is in a constant state of ripple and you have to tell it to leave the gaps and actually detach the audio to throw things out of sync. This speeds up trimming, sliding, rolling and slipping and being able to simply swap shots around in the timeline (with audio effects attached if need be) is a huge time saver.

The latest version is by far the most polished version of the software to date. It really shows that Apple is indeed listening to the community of editors that have embraced this controversial but extremely powerful NLE. There was nothing in the latest update that I would call “not pro”. What would a non professional need with roles based mixing or being able to monitor in Rec 2020 color space? This is the fastest, least expensive, most stable and powerful NLE on the market. Everyone who dismisses this NLE have fun patching tracks, running into clip collisions and paying monthly subscription fees.

Cinester88 about Final Cut Pro, v10.3