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

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.