I recently got to play around with Apple’s Final Cut Pro X. With all the buzz surrounding it, I decided to see how fast I could learn the new program and produce a music video within 24 hours.
Video after the jump.
The Challenge
Conceptualize, shoot, edit, and learn Final Cut Pro X in 24 hours.
The Tools
Final Cut Pro X
3 Cameras: FujiFilm X100, iPhone 4, Canon Vixia HF S10.
Black Mobius performing “Narcout”
Most of the handheld footage used in this video was shot with the Fujifilm X100. I love this camera more than life itself.
Final Cut Pro X Review
Final Cut Pro X is not without its bugs. There were frequent crashes which had to do with various effects used in the program. FCPX has a nice feature that saves your work constantly. Every time the program crashed, I was able to pick up where I left off.
There’s one big disadvantage to this. One effect was causing the program to crash. Every time I clicked on the parameter to edit it, the program would crash. This effectively meant that once the effect was applied, there was no way to remove it or modify it without losing my work. The solution was to drag a copy of the same clip onto the time line, cut it to the same length, and remove the old clip from my timeline. If I had put much more work into this project, I would have been seriously annoyed.
The program itself is friendly, and easy to use. Don’t expect it to be anything like Final Cut Pro of yesterday. It’s more like iMovie. If you don’t like iMovie, well, tough.
The FCPX interface seams to have been designed in favor of a much large screen than my Macbook Pro 15″. It felt VERY claustrophobic. That’s to be expected, I suppose, but I felt that there was a lot of wasted screen real estate.
