ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

12 years, 10 months ago - Scott Clements

HI, there. Final Cut Pro Studio 3 (which includes FCP 7) is the last version of the software Apple will ever release. Officially, they're not selling it anymore. FCP X is actually quite good, but Apple upset professionals when they released it, because they left out a lot of pro features. However, it is a very powerful editing tool - especially for amateur filmmakers. A lot of pros are leaving FCP and moving to Adobe Premiere CS6 and Avid Media Composer 6. If you're serious about a career in editing, best to buy Avid, because it is so entrenched in pro film and TV post. If you'll just be making your own movies or working on corporate videos, Premiere is probably the way to go, because it's cheaper and has better integration with Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and the whole Adobe Suite. Best to rent it as part of the adobe cloud service. Final Cut Studio is a sinking ship and I've heard rumours it might cease working in updates to the Mac operating system.

12 years, 10 months ago - Felipe Madureira

I think that Premiere is really a good option right now, the way it works is very similar to FCP and if you get Adobe CS, it's already in the package.
Abou the FCPX does anyone really thinks in it in a pro or broadcast environment?

12 years, 10 months ago - Neil Lenthall

Which NLE you should buy depends really on what you'll be using it for. If you're just looking to cut shorts and stuff for the web, FCP X is fine. In fact, better than fine, and it's only £200. I wouldn't want to use it in a broadcast environment, but I've cut "pro" work on it, and while it's not perfect, it's certainly capable of doing the job on smaller projects.

Buying FCP 7 now would be a waste of money unless learning to cut with it will allow you to get work at all the production companies that still use it (and there are a lot out there), but realistically, I'd imagine that most of the FCP 6/7 user market will be switching to Adobe CS over the next couple of years, because that offers Premiere, Photoshop, and After Effects, and if you can see yourself becoming a serious After Effects user, that's probably the way to go. As far as I'm aware, FCP X, Media Composer, and Premiere are all available as 30 day trials, and as Scott says, Creative Suite is available on a subscription basis now.

12 years, 10 months ago - Connor Snedecor

Everyone above has pretty much got it, but I just might add that the FCP X situation is changing, slowly, from the big disappointment to professionals that it was when it was released. It's a bit like when FCP first came out - it's interesting but not quite professional. Then a couple years on, they kept adding to it and improving it and people started to switch. So while I wouldn't call it the end of the road for professional editing on FCP it is definitely not going to be an Avid-level standard again the way it was, for a long time.

12 years, 10 months ago - Christopher Lang

Thanks all for that. Much appreciated. I'll take a look at Adobe.

12 years, 10 months ago - Andrew Johnstone

That's all good advice and it really does depend on what you are planning to use the edit system for. There are still a lot of Broadcast TV shows that are cut on FCP7, but where these studios go from here now that FCPXis out, is impossible to tell. I'm cutting a piece at BBC this week that I have rough myself on FCP. This workflow will die if the BBC studio I work with change their edit systems, so I am keen to find out from them what their plans are. Avid have been offering sweetners for people to swap to Media Composer as have Adobe with Premiere. Both are worth investigating, though as per above of the two systems, it is only Avid that is widely used in broadcast post production.

12 years, 10 months ago - Bryce Groves

Looks like you have some good answers, but check out this blog post, I found it illuminating... http://philipbloom.net/2012/02/07/fcpxeditors/

12 years, 10 months ago - John Baker

Why not consider lightworks? It has a long history for feature films but used to be very expensive. The new company are charging only £40 for the pro version. Pulp Fiction and the Kings speech were edited in it. It is currently windows only but the linux release is later this month, then mac version a bit after. It is as full featured as FCP7 was. I have been trying it out and moving to lightworks once the linux and mac version is ready.

http://lwks.com

I also use FCPX and it's OK but has a few quirks and limitations still. Its good for knocking up something short and quick but not sure how much I trust it for something long (projects get quirky when bigger). I also got sick of not being able to get audio out into a DAW that I like for sound editing/design that I wrote some software to translate FCPX project into a Reaper project. If anyone is interested is is called Vordio and here.

http://vordio.net