FCPX Third Party Tool Belt

One of the biggest complaints about Final Cut Pro X when it was first released was a lack of professional features that had been built into FCP Legacy for years. It appears when Apple re-wrote the program they tagged some features as "niche use." Why write in a feature that only a small segment of your customer base needs when the market has shifted toward editors who don't need those features?

That's certainly a discussion for another post, but as a result, many perceived holes in FCPX have been filled by third party developers. When you decide to embark on a long form project using FCPX, With FCPX having been around now for 2+ years, many third party programs have become reliable additions to a "third party tool belt."

But how much will it cost to fill gaps that other NLEs fill internally? Let's take a look at programs that I think are must haves when you are readying your feature film workflow on FCPX.

FCPX to Pro Tools (for sound editing/mixing)

In post, you always want to build your workflow from the end backwards. Before I began editing the doc feature, one of my biggest concerns was how we would get our soundscape out to Pro Tools for editing and mixing once we lock picture. One of the holes in FCPX is that there is no native export to OMF or AAF file formats.

There are two (maybe three) ways to get your sound out of FCPX and into Pro Tools:

1) Use X2Pro to export your sound edits as an AAF. How does this happen in a trackless work space? FCPX uses a feature called Roles to tag sound elements. X2Pro translates those Roles into tracks. There is a light version and a pro version.

X2Pro: $149.99

X2Pro LE: $59.99

2) Use Xto7 to convert your FCPX project back to Final Cut Pro 7 (or even to Premiere, I think). From there you export your sound to Pro Tools like you're used to. But this is the method we'd like to avoid since it involves an intermediary step to get our work to Pro Tools.

Xto7: $49.99

Apple updated FCPX, so I figured I should update this blog...

A new year. A new Final Cut Pro. A new machine to pair it with. More editors trying it out and beginning to take it seriously.

And yet... I haven't posted since October!

I underestimated my ability to edit a feature film on deadline while also teaching part-time AND keep up with what I initially imagined was going to be a week-to-week blog. In a single image, I can sum up what kept me away:

I'll clean up this timeline, promise.

Excuses, excuses.

Assembling Your 3rd Party Tool Belt: Two Key Questions

It's been well documented how many features were missing when FCPX was initially released. Apple has done a decent job of adding many features back that editors clamored for before they would remotely consider using X.

But Apple has still left many holes it expects third party developers to fill. It's possible Apple will eventually replace or modify features that editors live by in broadcast or feature environments. There's no telling really. I have a hunch that, from here forward, Apple will continue to let developers take on the features that either a) Apple still deems part of the "old workflow" or b) that Apple would like to have us think FCPX can take care of itself (a good example of this is color correction. FCPX's color correction tools aren't bad, but I wouldn't necessarily grade a feature with them).

Before launching into a feature film with X, we needed to determine we could take our edit to the next two stages of the post-production workflow: Export for a professional color correct and export our sound to Avid Pro Tools for a professional sound mix.

The first question was answered fairly quickly: Da Vinci Resolve can import FCPX's new XML file format natively. I've read in forums that there are have been a few issues that have come up for folks that have utilized this workflow, but that overall its fairly smooth.

Less straightforward is how to get your sound to Pro Tools. In FCP7, the editor would (ideally) organize the soundscape by placing different sound elements in designated track assignments. Then you would export directly out of FCP7 to OMF. Sometimes if a feature's soundscape is complex, it would require several, well-labeled OMFs to get the job done.

You can't export OMFs out of FCPX. Not without a little help.

The decision to go X

For the music documentary I'm editing in FCPX, I was introduced to the director Jesse Lyda by producer Jason Wehling. Jason and I have known each other for a few years now and had worked together on a previous project, but this was the first time I met Jesse. We hit it off and shortly afterward I was hired.

Jesse left the decision for which NLE to cut with up to us, but he did say that he had already bought a copy of X. I don't know how aware he was of the backlash against it at the time, but Jason and I were.

When Jason asked me what I thought of working in X, I lit up. "You're probably the only producer in town right now crazy enough to consider it," I told him.

We had to weigh the pros and cons carefully. I told him about my experience working with FCPX on a short profile I made about one of my film students. This video was something I made on my own specifically to see if I could adjust to X's new ways of working.

Lost In Transition: Key Differences Between 7 and X - Part 2

Media Management

In FCP7, media could be located anywhere on your computer or external hard drive. Your desktop, your documents folder, anywhere. An editor could keep media very organized on an external disk... or could ignore organization and import media from any number of locations.

Don't forget where you set your scratch disk

When capturing or transcoding, an editor would have to set a scratch disk in which to place the media that was coming in. They have the freedom to save the scratch disk anywhere on a drive. The scratch disk is a global setting and not tied to a specific project. So if multiple editors are accessing the same machine but for different projects, you could easily end up saving the footage of one project into the scratch disk of another project. (This is an area that Adobe Premiere has a leg up on FCP7. The scratch disk is set when you create a new project. The scratch disk settings remain project specific no matter how many users are launching Adobe Premiere.)

Sometimes when a project becomes large and complex, media might get saved several folders deep on a drive. If any of this media gets thrown offline, sometimes FCP7 has a difficult time reconnecting back to it automatically.

Lost In Transition: Key Differences Between 7 and X - Part 1

Editors expected a Final Cut Pro 8. There had been little reason to expect that Apple would radically and fundamentally change its flagship professional editing program. Editors expected the same software, only better.

Then Apple decided to re-write the code from scratch. In doing so, it decided to take its NLE in a vastly new direction.

What follows is what I think are some of the key differences between Final Cut Pro X and Final Cut Pro 7. These aren't the only differences between the programs that one could list. Also, there are lots of features that were not a part of X when it was first released that have since been added back or updated.  The differences I'm going to cover are more fundamental and will always be what separates X from its forebear.

Why make a compare/contrast list two and a half years after X's release? Because not every FCP7 editor has decided whether to add X to their utility belt, let alone try X at all. There may be some who are still curious about how different X is, and there may even be more who sat down for five minutes with it who don't know what the F is going on.

Editor Jonny Elwyn Does Us All A Solid

Launching a Final Cut Pro X blog while in the midst of editing a feature in Final Cut Pro X is... well... a bit more of a challenge than I thought. That's not true: I knew it would be a challenge and my time to write thoughtful commentary regarding FCPX and our workflow would be tight, but I ventured forth anyway. But boy, has it been tight.

So in between my longer, more project specific posts I will, from time to time, share shorter pieces to give the two or three of you who may have placed this blog in your RSS reader of choice something chew on or explore outside of what I'm bringing to the FCPX table.

To reiterate, this blog was never meant to become a home for tutorials on how to use FCPX technically. I will get into some of that, yes, but if you are new to FCPX and looking for that type of resource, or if you have already dived into FCPX but still need some advice to help you shortcut a technical headache, a good place to start may be London-based editor's recent, aptly titled blog post:

FCPX - Tons of Resources