the first word on final cut x

My backpack-friendly editing system is now an 11” MacBook Air (Mid 2012, 2GHz i7, 8 GB RAM) and a few USB3 bus-powered drives. Editing 720p, and even 1080p, from those tiny little drives is a breeze. If the project is small enough, working straight from the flash drive is a dream.

In other words, it is more than capable of editing for some. Results will vary depending on what you are wanting to do. I originally purchased my MBA so I could stitch together a few GoPro videos while on vacation. For small edits it is the perfect machine, for anything more serious, no so much. To be fair though I didn’t max out the specs on my 11” MBA.

The dissolve is the oldest type of transition between shots, according to three film scholars from Cornell University, who assembled a useful, accessible 2011 study on the technique.

and

The first director to do this was Georges Méliès, with his 1899 film of “Cinderella.”

Fascinating, who would have thought that Cinderella was the first movie ever to use transitions between scenes?

Final Cut Pro X

Completely redesigned from the ground up, Final Cut Pro adds extraordinary speed, quality, and flexibility to every part of the post-production workflow. Revolutionary Video Editing • Assemble clips in the Magnetic Timeline without clip collisions or sync problems • Use Clip Connections to attach B-roll, sound effects, and music to the timeline • Reduce clutter by grouping clips into a Compound Clip. Easily expand it back to single clips • Perfect your pacing right in the timeline with the Inline Precision Editor • Cycle through different shots, graphics, or effects at one place in the timeline with Auditions • Edit multi-camera projects with automatic sync and support for up to 64 camera angles Powerful Media Organization • Work natively with a broad range of formats including RED, AVCHD, H.264 from DSLRs, and more • Content Auto-Analysis captures camera metadata and analyzes shots in the background • Choose analysis options for stabilization, rolling shutter correction, and audio enhancement • Create and apply custom keywords on the fly as you select ranges in clips • Smart Collections let you dynamically organize content and find any shot in a few clicks Incredible Performance • New 64-bit architecture uses all the RAM in your system for larger projects and richer effects • Final Cut Pro taps the GPU on the graphics card and all the cores in your Mac for speed • Background processing lets you keep working without interruption • A ColorSync-managed color pipeline produces accurate, consistent color across applications • Broadcast quality monitoring lets you route video and audio through third-party PCIe and Thunderbolt I/O devices (Requires OS X v10.7.2) Compelling, Customizable Effects • Preview effects to see how they look with your footage before applying them • Change the look of titles, transitions, and effects using intuitive controls • Control effects with precision using a keyframe editor that appears directly in the timeline • Adjust the Ken Burns effect with simple onscreen arrows for start and end points Integrated Audio Editing • Expand and edit multichannel audio files directly in the timeline • Let Final Cut Pro repair significant audio problems such as hum, excessive noise, and more • Sync DSLR video with separate audio in a single step, with instant audio waveform matching • Enrich your soundtrack with a library of royalty-free sound effects and audio effect plug-ins Intuitive Color Grading • Improve the look of any clip with the single-click Balance Color feature • Apply the Match Color feature to match the looks of two clips shot under different conditions • Manipulate color, saturation, and exposure with the Color Board • Fine tune color for a specific color range or area of the screen using keying and masks One-Step, Optimized Output • Deliver projects for playback on Apple devices and websites such as Vimeo, YouTube, and Facebook • Use themed menus to quickly author and burn a DVD or Blu-ray disc • Export customized audio and video stems using Roles metadata • Import and export XML to support third-party workflows System Requirements: 2GB of RAM (4GB recommended), OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later, 256MB of VRAM (512MB of VRAM recommended), display with 1280-by-768 resolution or higher, 2.4GB of disk space. OS X v10.6.8 or OS X v10.7.5 or OS X v10.8.3 or later. Broadcast quality monitoring requires OS X v10.7.5 or later and compatible third-party device. Some features require Internet access; additional fees may apply. Blu-ray recorder required for burning Blu-ray discs.

What’s New in Version 10.0.8

Happy day! Apple releases Logic Pro X and it supports FCPXML import! The Apple Production suite is back - Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Logic Pro X and Compressor 4! 

[...]

I’ve got to be honest with you, Final Cut Pro X is not that easy to work with.

Being an Communications Major with a focus in film one would think that I would have been taught how to work with editing software, but the fact of the matter is, I’m learning as I go.

Add in the fact that I have a minuscule USB (1.5 gb) and an SD card that refuses to let me copy anything onto it, I’m struggling to get the clips that I need to the Mac Lab at my college library.

However, if I have learned anything, it is that figuring things out on my own without being told how to do it is a much more rewarding experience. Which is why I will be headed to the local Best Buy in search of a new USB. And a “Final Cut Pro X: For Dummies."

The original post:

My friendly response:

Andrew: please visit this page for some Final Cut Pro X resources.  There, among a spattering of resources, you will find a link to this page, a more in-depth list of FCPX and general postproduction resources online.  Visit my blog and search for any Final Cut X-related topic that comes to mind: I've tried to cover all of the bases for making the site searchable by tagging religiously.  This blog is in no way able to offer a comprehensive set of resources, but it is a jumping-off point.

Most of all,

by all means please feel free to send me any questions directly!  I'd love to try and help!

And, last but not least, regarding your storage setup:

1.  You will need a FireWire-connected (or better) storage device in order to edit with Final Cut Pro X effectively.  Repeat, USB is not* a fast enough connection to run this software!  Get a FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt-connected device.  

2.  Make sure the storage device is bigger than 1.5GB.  The price point going from 250GB to 1TB is not huge and is only going down.  When editing with the default settings on FCPX you can expect to use somewhere in the range of 3X** the amount of storage the original source files (from your video camera etc.) used.  You can push that number down with some tweaking, but I won't get into that here.

Hope this is some help!

Best,

Eric

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*  I've had sales clerks at Apple, Best Buy etc. claim that USB 3.0 is faster than FireWire, but don't have any personal experience with using those devices with Final Cut.  Use at your own discretion!  Or look it up in the forums online!