![]() In hindsight, we should have remained in FCPX. It was a huge decision, but we felt strongly that it was the safest route for our team to delivery a feature at the time. The decision was made to make FCPX our logging solution, Adobe Prelude the transfer method for the FCPX generated metadata, and Premiere the main NLE. To be perfectly honest, we weren’t ready to completely trust FCPX with such a big job. At the time, FCPX had yet to deliver on some essential features, particularly in the color management and sound departments. We knew the organization tools of FCPX would be perfect for the heavy volume of footage, but were nervous about the stability, lack of features, and growing pains associated with changing to FCPX right before a feature length documentary. Mystery Box was on the fence about FCPX in 2015 when Iron Cowboy headed into production. You can check out the documentary on iTunes now at this link. The insane logistics that went into James’ journey is something you must see to really understand, and we are truly proud to have been able to document the ride. Note that Simmons starts the video by showing the FCPX workflow as, in his words, “the standard bearer” of fast and robust organization. A good demo a FCPX-esque workflow in Resolve was detailed by Scott Simmons in this video. For every 5 keystrokes it takes to tag something in FCPX, it takes 10 in other NLEs. Recent versions of Resolve have made good progress towards “range-based keywording” but lack the finesse of FCPX. Until now, FCPX has been the only NLE to offer this powerful tool. In the Event Browser, if a clip has in and out points set, keywords can be applied to that specific range (not the entire clip). This, in and of itself, was a game-changer for media organization, but FCPX took it a step further by enabling metadata tags for ranged selections within a target clip. These tags can be organized in user-created “Smart Collections”. Within this database, users can apply any word or phrase as a keyword tag. For FCPX, the magic happens in an advanced database system Apple calls the “Event Browser”. Avid’s Media Composer, Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve, and Adobe’s Premiere Pro all make limited use of metadata organization, but none come close to the fluid UI, flexibility, and granularity of FCPX’s solution. It has been an essential part of FCPX since its initial release in 2011, but as a result of the extremely polarized reviews during its launch, this powerful feature has taken several years to really hit the spotlight. FCPX and its keyword workflow has proven itself as the fastest workflow and most reliable NLE for our needs. Less time spent fighting the software and searching through endless folder structures for needed footage means quicker turn-arounds, which makes you and your production more valuable. In the end, an NLE is simply a tool for building a story. It’s the feature that sets FCPX apart from the competition, and the feature everyone else is now scrambling for. Instead we want to focus on organization with keywords, smart collections, and our experiences with them. This post is not intended to be a “Battle of the NLEs” comparison. Our choice was not an easy one there were many debates at company meetings about the pros and cons of each software, but the overwhelming advantage of FCPX, which ultimately pushed us over the edge, was organization with metadata tags Apple calls “keywords”. After 8 years of streamlining workflows and building muscle memory, last year Mystery Box made the decision to jump the Adobe ship and make FCPX our NLE of choice. Mystery Box started on Apple’s Final Cut 7 and changed to Adobe Premiere in 2011 as we found it was the closest match in tool set and UI to Final Cut 7. A lot has happened in the last 8 years, and FCPX has climbed back up the ladder as a main competitor in the NLE game. Many industry pros who had, for years, relied on Final Cut Pro 7 had trouble making the leap to a magnetic timeline and found the new software lacked many fundamental tools. ![]() In 2011, when Apple officially released Final Cut Pro X, the reception was less than stellar.
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