Today I finally had the chance to use Final Cut Pro X. Final Cut Pro is a video editing software made by Apple, and it has quite the legacy. It's been a favorite of editors for nearly a decade in both television and film.
Final Cut Pro X came with some revolutionary changes than most people in the industry didn't like. They claim it dumbed down what was once a brilliant program.
The vast majority of broadcast quality content at MPT is edited by professional editors who use Avid software. Recently, the MotorWeek crew staff purchased an iMac with Final Cut Pro X to edit short web-only videos. Recently I was asked to do some behind the scenes work on Goss' Garage. Rather than take the easy way out and edit on my own laptop with Adobe Premiere, I decided to expand my horizons and tackle Final Cut Pro X. It's always a plus to be able to use multiple editing programs. Saying you're fluent in both Premiere and Final Cut is a bargaining chip on your resume when applying for jobs.
So I set about my work with gusto, and immediately I was taken aback. Apple has done an excellent job of making complex tasks simple, and making simple tasks complex. While advanced video motion stabilization is only a button click away, it took me a full two minutes to find out how to make text appear on screen without any fancy animations. I just wanted it to look normal, which should be that hard.
(While fancy pre-made titles do look cool, it's very much an iMovie gimmick, and using any default settings for text on a professional video makes you look like an inexperienced editor with bad taste.)
Part of my inherent resistance to the software comes from my ingrained bias toward Adobe Premiere. I've been using Adobe software to edit since 10th grade, and old habits die hard. In an attempt to be as unbiased as possible, I would legitimately argue that Premiere is more capable, more precise, and more stable than this version Final Cut. The computer "beachballed" while making quick edits and it had trouble playing back some footage smoothly. It was also very hard to zoom in and make frame-by-frame edits of clips. The last version (Final Cut 7) could do most of these tasks with ease.
It's not that Final Cut X is a bad program, it's just that there are so many better programs out there, including the last version of Final Cut. Editors still refuse to give up the legendary Final Cut 7. (It always confused me how they skipped from 7 to X.) Despite it's shortcomings, I hammered out my video and I was quite pleased with how it looked. I will say that Apple has brilliant stock background music.
Thankfully, the rest of the staff was quite pleased with my work. They wanted to show it to John Davis before it went up on the web, but they thought he would like it too. I hope they were impressed by my short turnaround time as well. I plan to have a link of it on here, soon.
After that, I worked on editing some stock footage of the new VW GTD for Brian Robinson. At the moment, all we have is official VW press video, which is very professional looking. I think the video was in an odd format though, because Final Cut had trouble playing it. European broadcast standards are different than American ones.
All in all it was a good day. My goal is to keep volunteering to do little web video and behind the scenes projects. If I can prove myself as a master of Final Cut, perhaps I can carve out a little niche here for myself as the intern. Also, it's a great chance to get some free training on what is still a very popular editing program.
Final Cut Pro X came with some revolutionary changes than most people in the industry didn't like. They claim it dumbed down what was once a brilliant program.
The vast majority of broadcast quality content at MPT is edited by professional editors who use Avid software. Recently, the MotorWeek crew staff purchased an iMac with Final Cut Pro X to edit short web-only videos. Recently I was asked to do some behind the scenes work on Goss' Garage. Rather than take the easy way out and edit on my own laptop with Adobe Premiere, I decided to expand my horizons and tackle Final Cut Pro X. It's always a plus to be able to use multiple editing programs. Saying you're fluent in both Premiere and Final Cut is a bargaining chip on your resume when applying for jobs.
So I set about my work with gusto, and immediately I was taken aback. Apple has done an excellent job of making complex tasks simple, and making simple tasks complex. While advanced video motion stabilization is only a button click away, it took me a full two minutes to find out how to make text appear on screen without any fancy animations. I just wanted it to look normal, which should be that hard.
(While fancy pre-made titles do look cool, it's very much an iMovie gimmick, and using any default settings for text on a professional video makes you look like an inexperienced editor with bad taste.)
Part of my inherent resistance to the software comes from my ingrained bias toward Adobe Premiere. I've been using Adobe software to edit since 10th grade, and old habits die hard. In an attempt to be as unbiased as possible, I would legitimately argue that Premiere is more capable, more precise, and more stable than this version Final Cut. The computer "beachballed" while making quick edits and it had trouble playing back some footage smoothly. It was also very hard to zoom in and make frame-by-frame edits of clips. The last version (Final Cut 7) could do most of these tasks with ease.
It's not that Final Cut X is a bad program, it's just that there are so many better programs out there, including the last version of Final Cut. Editors still refuse to give up the legendary Final Cut 7. (It always confused me how they skipped from 7 to X.) Despite it's shortcomings, I hammered out my video and I was quite pleased with how it looked. I will say that Apple has brilliant stock background music.
Thankfully, the rest of the staff was quite pleased with my work. They wanted to show it to John Davis before it went up on the web, but they thought he would like it too. I hope they were impressed by my short turnaround time as well. I plan to have a link of it on here, soon.
After that, I worked on editing some stock footage of the new VW GTD for Brian Robinson. At the moment, all we have is official VW press video, which is very professional looking. I think the video was in an odd format though, because Final Cut had trouble playing it. European broadcast standards are different than American ones.
All in all it was a good day. My goal is to keep volunteering to do little web video and behind the scenes projects. If I can prove myself as a master of Final Cut, perhaps I can carve out a little niche here for myself as the intern. Also, it's a great chance to get some free training on what is still a very popular editing program.
RSS Feed
