Re: A Cautionary Tale for the FCP Switcher

Walter, I have been a keen follower of your industry analysis for some time, on this topic I wonder if you didn't jump ship too soon? Especially since FCP 7 was doing the job you wanted it to do. Let me tell you where I'm at. I edit at least 50 hrs of television for the BBC each year, I'm a freelance editor, I've just cut a bunch of TV for the Queens Jubilee( yawn), The Royal Academy Summer Show, which airs tonight on BBC Two and I have been the senior editor for a BBC Two culture magazine programme, named funny enough, ‘The Culture Show’, for the last seven years. Working predominately for the BBC I have to admit I'm spoilt. You tech guys on the various blogs are always banging on about, codecs, AMA, transcoding XDCAM, Pro res, etc Im afraid Im a bit of a numpty when it comes to the tech stuff. At the BEEB, when I walk into the edit, the computer is turned on, the FCP 7 project is open, the media imported and the sequence settings pre- set. The director and I have a cup coffee, chat about the kids, bitch about the weather and then start editing. A bunch of nice people may have been working all night for all I know, but I guess I call myself a craft editor, all I worry about is making good TV.
What I find incredible about all the non linear chatter is the refusal by my fellow professionals to seriously include FCPX in the mix.
That said, I bought a copy of FCPX the day it was released, and like many people thought OMG what the hell was Apple thinking. Fast forward 12 months and there is not a day, I repeat, not a day, when I don't plead with the BBC to let me cut on FCPX. I dont care how they do it, I just want the tech people to make it work because in my humble opinion, this is a no brainer. FCPX is completely ground breaking, stupidly easy to use, incredibly intuitive and above all buckets of fun to cut on.
Take for example the fore-mentioned programme, The Royal Academy Summer Show, 1 hr special, the best part of 1000 edits.
With FCP 7, Avid and or Premier, most of one’s edit time is spent managing the timeline, During this massive edit, It must have added up to days, the time spent simply restructuring the timeline for the purpose of simply inserting a clip or changing a shot or lengthen an edit so as not to have clips go out of sync. The whole track based edit environment is SOOOOO outdated. the magnetic timeline in FCPX, alone should have editors singing with joy. During this edit I was actually taking footage home on the weekend cutting scenes on FCPX because I find it quicker and more creative as a craft editor, and then rebuilding these scenes in FCP7 back at work. Completely nuts.
If I was the FCPX team at apple Id be pretty miffed at the industry reaction to this software, I just hope Apple don't get put off, because I believe this is the way forward and I dread the thought of heading back to the future with old thinking editing platforms.