Re: After a year has perception of FCPX changed?

I think that you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't look around.

I think the needs of most of the people here vary differently.

If you aren't locked to one way of working, or to one style of working, I would look at everything, no matter what the perception is.

The "film folks" you know, might have different needs, and therefore have different perceptions.

If you can throw out the perception, and throw out what FCPX can't do (like capture from tape), or Ae can't do, or any other content creation software, and look what it CAN do, and where it's strengths are, I think that's all you, personally, will need. Who cares what anyone else thinks? If you can get you projects done in a cost efficient and creative way, that's all that really matters, right?

You obviously need some sort of video capture device as well. Right now, the jury is still out on Pr CS6. I haven't seen drivers from AJA yet, so I have no idea how and when that will work. FCPX only works from certain firewire based tape capture. So either way, you might need a stand alone capture software, and if you have an io device, they all have free capture utilities.

Compositing and effects are capabilities that reside within FCPX, just like they are in Pr and Ae. It won't feel like Photoshop. I work in Ae fairly frequently, and every time I go to Photoshop, I have trouble. Ae is just makes so much more sense to me. I think they work very differently, even if they both share a levels filter and have a mask tool. Photoshop's weird non-direct manipulation I find unintuitive as compared to Ae, let alone the key framing which is much easier in Ae.

If you understand layers/composite modes, and understand FCP7s "well" system, I am sure you will be fine poking around in FCPX if you're interested. There's also scrubbable/renderless effects previews, which if you put down the FCPX stigma, are pretty rad if you ask me.

If FCP7 is working for you, you can always stick there. It still works in Lion, it sill works on modern Apple machines, and older Apple machines, and it won't cost you anything in time or money.

Jeremy