Final Cut Pro X and the Road to Hell (and back again) by Rick Young

A very interesting article on Ken Stone's site by Rick Young, author of FCP books and founder of UK FCP user's group.

As to Hell and Back, it appears that the Devil is in the Compound Clips as others have mentioned on this forum.

Final Cut Pro X and the Road to Hell (and back again) by Rick Young
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_x_road_young.html

I'm amazed Rick returned to FCPX after the experiences he had.

I've had similar, not quite as extreme, situations myself.

No, it's not operator error, its beta software meltdown.

But now those situations with crazy spinning balls, trashing preferences, re-downloading the core software, etc etc , seem to have largely disappeared with FCPX 10.0.4.

I've learnt how to avoid trouble I guess, minimise compound clip use, edit with rendering turned off, keep project sizes to a manageable length, and then compile the finished programme. A bit like writing a book, working on individual chapters and then finally compiling it into the finish piece.

So a bit more love than hate at the moment.

I look forward to the next update - and the one after that.

[Oliver Peters] "None of this speaks well for a program that was supposedly re-engineered to take advantage of the latest machines and 64-bit horsepower. You're describing a program that acts like it's running 10 years in the past."

Yup.

And I've stopped using Magic Bullet because watching paint dry is more fun as they say.

But I'm still using it because it does things for me that no other NLE does!

And I'm just completing my 30th project on FCPX.

And it works brilliantly with EOS C300 Files.

And whens it working well you can see what the designers were getting at.

[Fredy Schwerdtner] "What is a good manageable length for you ?"

For anything complex about 10min.

However I've just done a 70 min multi cam.