What's the most you can get out of FCP X/Motion?

[Richard Cavell]

Hi, everyone.

I'm in the unenviable position of having hours and hours of relatively boring footage and needing to make exciting video and television out of it. I'm gonna really need my editing suite to come through for me. In particular, I'm going to have to design some snazzy graphics and compositing. I can make things more interesting with picture in picture, voiceovers, etc.

Adobe Creative Suite is $2800. I'm very familiar with Premiere and After Effects, and I have also used Inscriber extensively to create broadcast graphics with tremendous success (although I hate the software).

My workplace owns FCP X and Premiere Elements, and no compositing software. So far, I have only played with FCP X. I'm going to have to spend weeks to get familiar with it. But I'm wondering whether FCP X and Motion together are enough for what I'm doing. My boss will definitely buy Motion for me, becuase it's so cheap. My boss might buy Adobe CS 6 for me if I can convince him that we can't get the job done without it. And because my workplace is a charity, I want to make every dollar count.

Can anyone give me an example of some footage that was put together with FCP X and Motion? I'm looking for an example of graphics and compositing, to see how much you can squeeze out of these packages.

Richard

[Simon Wood]

FCPX is an accomplished editor, and you can do fairly complicated compositing and keying work within it. Motion 5 will do pretty much most things After Effects can do (maybe a bit less, but it is a more intuitive program in many ways). What do you actually want to do; basic compositing can usually be accomplished directly in the editor.

For projects with lots of archive footage then FCPX might be a good choice as it has a very powerful keyword organizer to arrange all of the clips.

First off I would recommend you get Ripple Trainings FCPX course; it has easy to follow videos that show you the workflow step by step. It really opens your eyes to the power of FCPX and the new more efficient workflows. In 1 or 2 days you'll be up and running.

[Philip Fass]

I'll add my vote for Ripple Training. I got the DVD version from Amazon, and it's not too expensive. Even though I have a couple of good books on X, it really helps to see someone actually doing the various steps.

I've also been impressed with the capabilities of X and Motion 5, but it's really like moving to a country with a very different culture. I work hard to cast off old habits from FCP 7.

[Robert Turchick]

The deal killer for me with FCPX was they did away with the easy round trip from FCP to Motion and back. Unless I'm missing something. Used to be able to highlight a region in FCP and send it to Motion. From that point, anything you did in Motion would automatically update in FCP.

You didnt say if you had experience with Motion. If you are used to using AE, Motion will feel like your hands are tied. I still use Motion on occasion as some of my clients use it but every time I get into it, I wish I had started the project in AE.

FCPX works fine as an editor and some of the features really are cool. Premier and AE just seem to play nicer together.

[Caleb Reynolds]

I absolutely love FCPX. At first, I wasn't sure...but I invested in some training books and now I know where a-lot of the controls are, my workflow has greatly improved.

Adobe is nice and I have Creative Suite also....but I keep finding myself in FCPX and Motion more. Just because I love the new workflow.

I'm a FCP editor since 2003 btw.

[Bill Davis]

Originally Posted by Richard Cavell

Hi, everyone.

I'm in the unenviable position of having hours and hours of relatively boring footage and needing to make exciting video and television out of it. I'm gonna really need my editing suite to come through for me. In particular, I'm going to have to design some snazzy graphics and compositing. I can make things more interesting with picture in picture, voiceovers, etc.

SNIP

Can anyone give me an example of some footage that was put together with FCP X and Motion? I'm looking for an example of graphics and compositing, to see how much you can squeeze out of these packages.

Richard

Richard,

In my opinion you simply don't have enough time to learn FCP-X sufficiency to succeed at this.

You also don't have enough time to learn PPro6 sufficiently.

Both of these are extremely detailed, extremely robust and actually VERY complicated editing software packages.

Everyone can get their hands on pots and pans and spices. Learning to COOK is what's difficult.

If you've editing right now - no matter what software you're currently using, my advice is to keep using it to do this project.

Seriously.

I'm a 20 year editor and I've been using FCP-X nearly daily since the day it was released - and there are still significant parts of how the software operates that I'm still learning about.

When I learned FCP-Legacy it was at least a couple of years between when I cut my first show - until I felt that I really could control the full range of it's tools.

I suspect the very same thing is true of Premier and AVID.

"I'm going to start learning it next week so I can cut a TV show on it" is a recipe for disaster, IMO.

That's my 2 cents, but your mileage may vary.

[Richard Cavell]

Bill,

I completely agree with you. I guess the question should have been rephrased as "Should I bother trying to learn FCP X/Motion really well when I'm already pretty good at Premiere/After Effects".

Now that Adobe Creative Cloud is here and it's so cheap, I think the answer is "no".

Richard

[Simon Wood]

Bill,

I agree with you in principle; its often a bad idea to start learning something new on a project (often better to ease into it).

However; I find that FCPX streamlines a lot of editing tasks and takes the thinking out of a lot of processes with helpful automations (unless you want to do everything manually in which case you can delve into that).

I only made the switch to Mac and FCPX recently, up until then I had always worked with Adobe on a PC (I had worked with FCP7 on other peoples projects so I had some experience with it).

I found that with the Ripple Training course I was up and editing projects in FCPX within a day. A few days after doing the course I edited a short that went on to win a competition (partly due to the edit).

Richard mentioned that he is going to be doing a long, potentially boring project, that will involve a lot of logging footage. That sounds like a good project to get his feet wet with FCPX, especially as it will make use of its very powerful keyword organizer.Sounds like there is no big rush for the deadline either?

I say get your boss to buy Ripple Training (its really cheap - heck of a lot cheaper than Adobe Suite) and then make a decision based on that. I guarantee that course will open your eyes to FCPX's power, and you'll be able to make an informed decision.

[Philip Fass]

Bill and Simon, if you also made the switch from Motion 4 to 5, I'm curious how much relearning that took compared to FCP 7 to X.

[Neil McClure]

If I might chip in... It's not so much about fcp7 to X. Motion 4 & 5 are very similar, however, it's more about using Motion 5 with FCPx, if your not using X, there's not much to gain in upgrading... and you will be driven nuts by the new layout. While I have many grumbles about X and Motion 5, the potential is amazing, It does take time learn the tricky bits (Ripple training and the like do help) but you can get up and running fairly quickly to do the basic stuff.

[Simon Wood]

Originally Posted by Philip Fass

Bill and Simon, if you also made the switch from Motion 4 to 5, I'm curious how much relearning that took compared to FCP 7 to X.

I never really used Motion 4, but I find that tutorials made for Motion 4 work with Motion 5 (so the tools are pretty much the same). I don't think there is much of a jump between the two programs.

However FCPX is quite different to FCP7; I recommend the training as it is very inexpensive and takes all of the stress out of the equation. Like I said, I was up and running after 1 day, and have never been cutting as fast as I have with FCPX. Once you know the workflow you can whip out rough cuts in no time. I find that short projects only take 2 days from start to finish (first day to scan all the footage while its rendering and then do a rough assemble edit). Then the second day fine tune the edit, mix the sound and add the effects.

Previously those edits would drag out longer, due to less efficient workflows, and having to keyframe effects that now can be done automatically.

[Caleb Reynolds]

If you go with FCPX Richard,
I suggest Larry Jordan's training discs. The lessons are short and to the point. You can reference them easily when editing.

He covers how to do voice overs quickly.

I came from FCP and the switch was frustrating until I used his lessons. Now its much easier. I think your going to learn FCPX FASTER than any thing else.