Re: After a year has perception of FCPX changed?

[David Lawrence] "Yes, that's would certainly work. But what if you're building your soundtrack and your video channels all at the same time? What if you need to create and manipulate interrelationships between all channels simultaneously?"

Well, how would you do this in a track based system? That's how you'd do it in FCPX the only difference being you might have to move some things in and out of the primary and perhaps reattach some connection points just like you might have to juggle some clips around to different tracks in FCP Legend. X does not mean you don't have to think about what you're doing, you still have to think about it. Once a person learns the system, you react instead of think just like we're all used to doing in 7.

If you need to see everything on the screen at the same time you can either go back to the nested comp, or if you're building everything scaled down in to one comp, you'd have to do the same in FCPX.

[David Lawrence] "Well, as you know, I'm a big fan of the spatial approach to editing. I think of multi-channel video works like "Primetime" the same way I think of a multi-track musical composition. So I would compose the piece using tracks and open space as a blank canvas. Each track is fully independent but all tracks share the same sync reference. It's perfect for the job."

OK. So don't use FCPX. I, personally don't see a problem with using FCPX for this. Sometimes, I don't start in the primary. I'll start as connected clips to a gap. Then nothing moves unless I want it to. Once things get further refined, I can then move them in to the primary with either a keyboard shortcut, or the 'p' key if it's audio only. And sync points? FCPX has selectable sync points, I understand that you don't like it and it doesn't make sense. That's perfectly fine as it isn't exactly as easy as everyone claims it to be, especially when it comes to audio.

[David Lawrence] "Again, I'm sure FCPX is capable of doing multi-channel work. But are you working with the design or fighting it? It's all about having the best tool for the job and using the tool as it was designed to its best advantage. "

If I am trying to get it to work like a track based system, I'm fighting it. If I am using it as designed, I'm working with it. Just as if I wanted to move stuff around with tracks, I'm fighting the tracks, when in FCPX I simply grab and move what I want and everything else gets out of my way without losing sync, or any relationships. It's all a matter of perspective. If we can get better reliability (10.0.4 is much better, but we need more yet) and some multichannel audio controls, I'd start slowly employing it today and grow it's use as it grows in capability.

Apple can take more time and keep refining it. FCP7 is still working just fine for now.

Jeremy