A Brief History Of X

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Editors can be a whiny bunch. I know because I’m an editor and I whine all the time. In a sense, we're paid to whine, whether it's out loud or to ourselves.“Who shot this? The eye lines aren’t right!” “We locked that scene last week. What do you mean you wanna open it up again?” “That’s not what I would do but, hey, it’s your movie.”

There was a whole lot of whining back in 2011 when Final Cut Pro X was released.

At the time, editors were anticipating something like a jump from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro 8 - same interface, same shortcuts, but hopefully a 64 bit makeover and a few more bells and whistles. Nothing that would upend what had become a reliable, versatile and affordable alternative to Avid.

Instead, Apple released what was essentially a whole new editing program with a whole new interface and a whole new way of managing media and projects.

Initially, the easiest insult lobbed at Final Cut Pro X was to call it “iMovie Pro.” I’m guilty of this myself. I fiddled around with it for about five minutes before declaring, “I’m out!”

Professional editors across the industry balked. It looked different, it behaved differently, it introduced a new timeline, there was this annoying thing called a Skimmer that no one knew how to turn on or off. Plus it didn’t include multicam editing or XML support.

Walter Murch - who single handedly gave Legacy FCP legitimacy and respect when he used it to edit Cold Mountain - famously declared, “I can’t use this.”

NLExtreme Make Over

The program we had been working with for ten years had been given a page one re-write. Any industry built on familiar workflows is not going to react well to a seismic shift to the program at the center of said workflows.

There was no easing into this transition either. Editors wondered, “Okay, I’ll take a look at this on my next vacation, but in the meantime, where’s the real update to FCP7?”

This video is a good illustration of editor expectations... and editor whining

In a nutshell, when Apple wanted to update FCP to be 64 bit, they had to use a whole new code for the program. FCP 7's code was outdated. Apple figured since they were writing software from scratch, maybe they should also look at the video editing landscape and base their concepts on who in the marketplace they wanted to target and how do we organize our media nowadays.

Where Apple made the biggest misstep with professionals was how they introduced this entirely new piece of software. Apple cut the cord with FCP7 and released a program missing key features they relied on. Editors also couldn't update Legacy projects even if they wanted to. In typical Apple fashion, there was no smooth transition from the old version to the new. Simply, "This is how it is. Get on board."

There is a simple business reason for this: The market has changed. Final Cut Pro X was - at first - not directed at “professional” editors. It was directed at all editors, pro or not. 

The Pro Gave Way To The Hobbyist, The Hobbyist Becomes The Pro

When the very first Final Cut Pro was released, video editing was still fairly new (many filmmakers were still cutting on as many flatbeds as Avids) and was performed by “professionals.” Ten years later, the term "professional" has become looser. Or - hobbyist editors have caught up to the pros.

A personal example: I’ve been editing feature films for seven years. On projects I'm a part of we'll often hold feedback screenings. Conversely, I'll also attend feedback screenings for other filmmakers.

Who invites me to the most feedback screenings of anyone I know? My father - who edits all his home movies on iMovie. He’s edited enough vacations and business trips together that he even put a company logo in front of his movies. His editing has steadily improved and at times, exudes flashes of amateur sophistication. I’m actually jealous of his output. 

My point is: the market is saturated with editors of all experience levels because the technology is so accessible. People are creating home movies and skater videos on the same equipment that indie filmmakers are assembling their masterpieces for Sundance. 

More than ten years ago, Apple appealed to pros who cut on Avid by introducing the intuitive Legacy Final Cut Pro. Today, the market has expanded to include the hobbyist editor. This is who Apple targeted first, at the surface level. Instead of hobbyists catching up to the pros, Apple wanted hobbyists to feel like pros as soon as they started a new project. The complexity of most NLE's is stripped away and much inspiration comes from iMovie, the program most hobbyists (like my father) have used on a weekend-to-weekend basis. In hindsight, it was a shrewd - though risky - business move.

This move alienated pros despite the fact that if they looked closer there were pro features under the hood. Not as many as there should have been, I'll give you that, but in the last two plus years since its release, Apple has been updating X fairly regularly, adding many of the features pros asked for. They even improved on a few, while some updates came with a caveat. Multicam is back - and it’s pretty fantastic. You can export XMLs now… but a new kind of XML, which yes, has been a bit problematic. There's no export to OMF, but there is this amazing feature called Roles.

Apple now welcomes and relies on third party developers to fill in the gaps for them, which keeps the program affordable at the moment of initial purchase and injects new ideas into a workflow that is still in flux. Plus, if there’s a feature you don’t need, you don’t have to pay for it. (However, when you do need it, you could wind up paying the same amount that you once did for Final Cut Studio... but more on that in a future post).

In the process, more and more editors have been giving X a try - and not hating it. In this post, Bill Davis gives a great assessment of his experience, FCP’s history, and the moment X changed for him. Also check out "Apple's Definition of Pro."

There's still many concerns about working without tracks, can you work on a server, working with multiple editors (we'll get to all that in future posts). But... more editors are coming around.

Why Bother With A Radical Paradigm

Many post-production houses around Austin have switched to Adobe Premiere. The University of Texas has returned to Avid. I knew to survive I would have to gain experience on Premiere and jump on to an Avid project now and again to keep fresh with it.

But something nagged at me earlier this year. It was a combination of two things: First, at the risk of sounding sentimental, I grew up with Final Cut Pro. I developed as a filmmaker using FCP. I couldn’t shake this notion that maybe I should give this X a chance. I had read and seen enough about the magnetic timeline to be intrigued by its virtues and the possibility that maybe it is time for the paradigm to shift.

The second thought that nagged me: I remember a story Joe Bini told, who edits for Werner Herzog. In the early days of Avid, before Avid became an industry standard, he was pulled into Herzog’s editing room because Herzog had lost his initial editor for some reason and, at the time, Bini was the only one at this particular post house familiar enough with Avid to finish the movie for him. The fact he had knowledge of a program few others did at the time changed the course of his career forever because he's been working with Herzog ever since.

Maybe Final Cut Pro X will never become that entrenched in the industry for me to have a moment like that. Maybe Apple has forever lost professionals and X will remain what its perceived as now: At best, an alternate editing program for short projects and single-editor projects; at worst, it’s an insult to a craft that’s over a hundred years old.

I want to be ready anyway. I want to give it a shot. This way, if I want to whine, I’ll actually have the experience with the program that justifies the whining.

Or maybe I'll discover a tool that, as Bill Davis notes,  "is an extremely compelling alternative to the status quo." Maybe instead of whining I'll end up with something to preach about.

And hey - even Murch is coming around.