Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I have given FCP X the benefit of the doubt for almost three months now. I bought it almost the second it went live. In the beginning even though I knew it had some major issues and missing features I jumped in and started to learn the software. Early on I was really impressed with just how easy certain editing tasks were and loved the ability to just dump in footage from my 7d and go. Unfortunately, after having used it for 3 months...I have slowly started to realize that it is just not filling my needs as a pro grade NLE.

All of this came to a head last night when FCP X 86'd an entire edit I had been working on for a week. All that work, editing, color correcting, tweaking...GONE!!! It happened as a result of a combination of bugs and new features in FCP X. As I was editing along I selected every clip in my edit to make a move in the timeline. While all clips were selected I managed to hit the delete key. That was a mistake on my own part. Unfortunately, when I hit undo instead of bringing everything back to where it was...the application crashed, and since one of the new features in FCP X is that I no longer have to go through the 'hassle' of saving my work...FCP X did manage to save before quitting...and thus...the entire edit was lost. No hope of reverting to a prior save...nothing.

Now, I had already been seriously considering moving on to Premiere as I have been really researching the suite and really like what I see. It is the best of what I like in FCP X, but without what I can't stand. This was just the straw that broke the camels back. So today I emailed customer service and requested a refund for FCP X which they issued no questions asked.

Perhaps in the future when this new software has evolved and grown into what I think it has the potential to be I may come back, but for now...I have to move on.

For those that may jump the gun and say I made a rash decision and am throwing the baby out with the bath water please understand, there were a number of other issues and reasons that were already pushing me to make this decision and I am by no means a FCP X 'hater'. I love Apple products and will closely watch FCP X as it evolves. Right now, however, for my business and my clients it just simply doesn't cut it.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Perhaps when you move to Premier or whatever you'll carry this lesson with you.

Clearly you weren't backing up images of your drives. Remember back to that decision NOT to enable Time Machine and mirror the state of your drives? In retrospect, not such a smart move, perhaps.

You are now in the same place that many, many, many of us have been in over many years. We do things over and over again feeling "safe" until the moment we lose something important, then we realize that we've been working without a net for a long time.

Lost work has happened to me over the years with MS Word. With Pagemaker. With Filemaker Pro. And yes, it's happened to me with FCP where losing an hours worth of non-"autosaved" work came a hair's breath from causing me to fail on a show delivery to a client.

So far it hasn't happened to me with FCP-X but I've built workflow habits so that I'm ready for it if it ever does. The current version of Premier, or Vegas might be rock solid and NEVER crash for all I know. But that's NO guarantee that in some future update they won't. Software changes. Just like FCP did.

And I'll bet that while Premier and Vegas aren't changing to a more modern architecture right now - they will have to soon. Look at Windows 8. Looks pretty iOS like to me. I wonder how all that old code underneath those legacy programs will operate in the stripped down cloud centric world that appears to be coming on fast?

You're blaming the program and that's fine. It didn't save you from your admitted mistakes. I'm sorry about that. It sucks.

The point is, that there is NO foolproof system of guaranteeing that you won't do exactly what you did. Make a mistake, compounded by another mistake - that results in disaster.

So the lesson is that when you move to Premier don't make that same mistake again. Save image files of critical work. Turn Time Machine ON (or spring for a Time Capsule) Think about and develope the MOST foolproof redundant workflow you can. It's more important every month as your business grows.

In my seminar work, I remember a hotel crew guy laughing at me when I had a wireless mic on the presenter - ALSO took a feed from house sound, AND then took the time to setting up a tall mic stand with a stick mic under a room speaker during coverage of an important presentation. In the first 15 minutes a "pulled from a new sealed package" battery failed in my wireless mic (first time for THAT in my career!), the FOH guy hit some sub group switch that killed my board feed, and that stupid EV-635 A on the tall stand under the house speaker saved me from having to refund a couple of grand for that day's shoot - and many more thousands in follow up work from clients he referred to me based on that project.

Equipment is just a tool. It's how you weild it that matters.

Sorry for your hassle. My advice is don't forget the lesson. That's a thousand times more valuable than your frustration and lost work.

FWIW.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Bill,

You are absolutely correct in your posting. I have been wondering when NOT using time machine would come back to bite me in the arse...and this would be that time. It is a hard lesson learned for sure. As for the switch to Premiere this was just the issue that pushed me over the edge that I was already heading for. Either way I appreciate your insite and assessment of the situation. I will most definitely take your advise and get time machine running on my system so as to hopefully prevent future repeats.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

This is a big problem with FCP X. There is no good reason that the multiple backup restore system of FCP7 has been dropped for the single autosave system of FCP X. They could have done the autosave system with timed backups just for incidents described.

Fortunately I haven't had this problem with X although I have had crashes that erased the last couple of steps. Actually I have had this same problem with FCP 7 when I had the project backups set to every half hour which was a preference left over from my G4 days. Sometimes a half hour had a lot of good work in it. It wasn't until getting an 8-core Pro that the auto back ups didn't cause slowdowns in 7 so I set it to every five minutes.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

William,

I totally I agree. While some like the idea of not having to manually save their sessions etc, I have always enjoyed having the choice. I save then I need to, usually diligently when working in FCP 7. I agree that this feature did not have to be completely overhauled. Auto saving with the option to recall recent saves would be much more ideal, but alas this is not the case. Until this happened, as Bill mentioned above, I never felt the need to use Time Machine. Of course this changes things, and I now see its value, but its almost as if I HAVE to use it now due to changes like this and I am not a big fan of that.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Does OSX Lion solve this issue in FCP X with the new versioning feature? I can see myself very easily making the same mistake that Matt made, so I'm wondering if I should upgrade to Lion and set this up. Bill is this what you're referring to when you mentioned turning on Time Machine? Or is the versioning feature separate from Time Machine?

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

No, versioning does not work in Lion with FCPX, it's a glaring oversight on Apples part, FCPX doesn't seem to be very Lion friendly at all at the moment.

The autosave feature in FCPX was clearly designed for versioning.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I have just had FCP X crash my entire machine - yes, the "you are now going to have to push the silver button" thing. I reopen and it's completely removed any knowledge of my project - the other projects are there but my entire project is just GONE! I have time machine running, but what do I reinstall from time machine to get my project back? Anyone?

I must say - I'm loving the performance of FCP X, and the tagging of clips. Also in part magnetic timeline (for some things it's not great) but I am finding X to be soooooo incredibly full of bugs. It crashes my newish, well hopped up Mac Pro all the time, forgets to render clips and then freezes them - especially retiming with optical flow, and sometimes the color board totally crashes the whole program. I really do wish Apple would release an update!!

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Everyone, please make sure you notify Apple of the importance of versioning or autosave. My own hunch is that versioning itself has some issues which is why it may not be implemented in FCPX or some other non Apple programs.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I've lost minor edits in FCP X too and I too bought adobe premiere, but despite autosave being turned on in premiere pro, I lost major work when it crashed. So long and short of it, software sucks, build in as much redundancy as you can with backups, and in my case I still hit ctrl-s regularly since I don't trust the autosave feature.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Auto Save can be a dangerous security blanket. I think it was FCP4 or early version of 5 that had a deadly auto save bug that would stop working, cause a crash after hours of work and there'd be no auto saves to go back to.

I think the important concept behind versioning behind handled in the OS Lion is that there's be uniformity for both the user and the developers. I think there are bugs in how it's working in Lion which has resulted in some developers working around it until the bugs are fixed. I suspect at some point FCPX will support versioning though. In theory, anything written for OSX would support it including Premiere Pro I'd think.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Chris,

Despite your crash issue in Premiere as well, how do you like it after the switch? Did you use FCP 7 prior to FCP X and overall are you pleased after making the transition? Everything I am hearing from others that have made the switch coupled with my own research seems to hint that the change from FCP 7 to Premiere is a relatively smooth one. With FCP X, I certainly liked some of the time saver features and its simplicity in some ways, but in others I just felt so limited compared to FCP 7. Adobe seems to me to be similar to FCP 7 in that the suite still has that deep level of control that FCP 7 had, but without the hassle of still having to transcode all of my footage. That to me is the perfect compromise.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Premiere is a relatively easy switch, you can set the keyboard to FCP mapping, there are a few gotchas but certainly an easier transition than FCPX.

I'm editing on both at the moment, but I prefer the look and feel of FCPX and for my work it's certainly faster, I do hope they can iron out the major issues soon though.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

How do you do this Craig?

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Quite frankly the ability to play all sorts of formats in either Premier or FCPX hasn't impressed me terribly. The slow downs and dead stops with h264 footage when applying filters frustrates me and I end up transcoding everything. For me Premier is a decent (and powerful) program but is still behind FCP7 in terms of interface, other people like it but I think many would prefer a reved up FCP7.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Oh, just found it in the menu of FCPX

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Although it doesn't forgive the fact that there's no versioning, I'd have to ask, why were you selecting all the clips to move anything? To me it's a fundamentally dangerous workflow and it would seem counter to the advantage of the FCPX way of doing things.

One method would be to insert a Gap clip and alter it's duration as needed.
The point of the magnetic timeline line is that everything stays in sync as it's moved around.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Having skimmed through the entire thread, I'm still wondering why you didn't back up your work? All you really needed to do was to keep a duplicate of the project file on a separate drive. Which you should do anyway. Regardless of what editing software (or non editing software) you're working with.

I've always felt that the responsibility for saving, backing up & versioning really rests with the user. Regardless of what type of software you're using.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I understand where Matt is coming from, in FCP 7 selecting all the clips is a sanctioned and specific tool (key command tttt & ttttt). It's all part of this slow process of coming to grips with how to "think" in FCP X. You made an excellent point about gap clips and keeping everything in sync, the minute I read your post, I was thinking, yeah that's a great way to move all the clips in FCP X.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Isn't saying "you should have backed up your data" just adding insult to the injury? After all, it was Apple who removed the possibility of saving from FCPX. It was FCPX that crashed, it was not a hardware issue (hard drive fail, whatever), it was the software error, which resulted with a serious loss of data, which the manufacturer actually claimed was no longer possible (remember that?).

Therefore turning this discussion into the backup issue is a red herring. Instead of just saving a file I now have to have a backup watch folder or switch to Finder to make sure that my data stays intact after the software crash?

Saving, incremental saving, auto-saving - these are all first-line defenses against such a problem. While auto-saving on the go in FCPX is a nifty feature, removing a possiblity of manual saving seems to create its own share of problems, and this is precisely one of the cases where "automatic control" does fail, even though it supposedly acted correct - saving the file before the crash occured.

Perhaps the lesson there is rather to retain a possibility of manual control when adding automatic features, than having a backup of your data.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I too keep reverting to FCP7 techniques and find myself thwarted until I remember the X way or read up on the new method. The track tool was one of my most used tools in 7. The magnetic timeline is a great method of working but not without a few issues that either can be improved by updated programming in the software or in our heads.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Bart,

While I understand your thinking, I have to say that I learned LONG ago that when you have critical work on the line, no hardware, no software, and no workflow is totally safe. Over the 30 years I've been doing computer work, every single OS, drive, and software package has come to a failure point. And brand new software such has FCP-X is more prone to disaster than most.

In fact, looking back, FCP v1 was pretty flawless for it's day. Then they started expanding and updating it and there were some releases through version 3 and 4 on the way to 7 where things that worked very solid on Friday, then would crash constantly after the official Monday "update."

It's just how things work.

If your work matters, you learn to leave as little as possible to chance and to do your own safety backups no matter what any manufacturer says.

Simple as that.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Ironically was it the early versions of FCP4 or FCP5 that had a serious problem with the AutoSave feature. It would stop working and you'd go for hours not releasing it and the bug itself would cause a crash. You'd discover a day's work was gone because there was nothing new in the AutoSave Vault. It was at that point that I stopped trusting AutoSave. Of course you'd have your last manual save to go back to, if you were diligent and that's not an option in FCPX.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

on fcp7:

cmd s

takes no time and usually works well but even then, I keep a finder window open to check if the time on my saved fcp7 project gets updated. I had a problem once where cmd s would seem to work but actually not save anything. and no autosave. The only thing that worked and which I sometimes use when working with a large critical project is the save as feature.
Running a critical project without having complete control over the saves is indeed scary. Timemachine as a solution? maybe but - not sure - timemachine has screwed me over as well...

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

A couple of you have hit the nail on the head. Yes, after working in FCP 7 I developed habits, and habits are hard to break. This was just one instance where I found myself doing it the 'old' way. Its much the same with the save feature. Even though FCP X autosaves I would constantly find myself hitting cmd-s. After being so used to having software with manual saving in addition to auto save and a vault full of versions which I could revert to if needed I never felt the need to do a 'manual' back-up of a session.

Now, of course, I do see that there is an obvious benefit to it. In fact it is something I would always do when working with my music clients. After a day of recording we would backup the entire session folder to a different drive. However, call it what you want, going back to FCP 7 and also having worked in Premiere for a couple of days now I am perfectly happy manually saving, and constantly seeing that nice little notice pop up on the screen in Premiere letting me know when an auto save takes place. It is a constant comfort seeing that happen.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I still don't understand why people don't use Time Machine in this regard.

Assuming that "the straw that..." prompted Matt's move to Premiere, then the simple and critical use of TM in the background would have taken care of his issue in a moment.

It appears what this discussion should be about is the lack of professional care of people's work. Performing acrobatics without a net is just dumb. It takes absolutely no effort or time to setup TM it's instantaneous.

The ability to click on TM and call up the state of you HD at any given time for any given file going back hours days and months is simply great and exactly all that Matt needed.

Now I had a TM fail this year when I needed to restore the main drive that had also failed (A problem that Apple apologized for and amazingly overnighted my both a new TM and a new 2 TB redundant HD for that.

The point is, if you're doing any work that you take seriously, whether for clients or not, everything is your fault if you don't have redundant back up of any and all critical data (meaning a back up of your back up)

HDs will fail, everyone of them - and with no concern as to the bad timing for you. Not having an immediately available previous state of everything through TM is simply operator negligence and has nothing to do with the program that lost the data. Having that data redundantly stored costs a few bucks more and reduces the likelihood of aver losing anything critical to a very very small possibility.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Not to beat up on ya Matt because I know you've learned from this (we all had to go through it) but you'd get that same feeling of security looking up and seeing your time machine arrow spinning regularly in your menu bar.

Unlike you, I've continued producing in FCP7 waiting for bug fixes and refinement in an update and that just arrived. After I finish up the dozen or so spots and short films on the schedule I'm going to start producing in the new 1.1 this Fall

Waiting for bug fixes and updates before using a new program for any serious work is like consistently backing up - you learn the hard way, but you learn forever.

Good luck with PrP. I've been on the fence myself and now I'm leaning back to X with the new communication and direction from Apple

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I am on the fence with Avid regarding a potential job (the $1000 deal is tempting) but a few experiments with the new X will make that decision for me.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I'd be interested to hear your experience William.
I have to stick with FCP 7 till I get through my schedule and I don't want to get into X until I know I can do it justice.
It sounds a lot more stable already and hopefully better when I can really work with it.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

+1 and well said Bart. The software vendor makes a change that takes away functionality, removes redundancy and forces you to change your working habits of many years. After the inevitable lesson we all learn when we lose some work we put in place habits, dare I say systems of work that we use to avoid loss. Hard drives fail: yep. So we have raided, redundant drives which we save (auto save) our projects to. Then when the software crashes (when) we can always go back to the saved copy, auto or not and begin work. So now we have to invest in time machine drives, change our way of working. OK cool, you've expressed your opinion Apple and now we can express ours and go have a look at the competitors who believe in evolution of software and improving it by listening to the users instead of deciding the users don't know what's best and need to be told.

Sorry end of rant. I'm off to look at AVID which I haven't touched for 7 years.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I'll test it as soon as either software update or the App Store actually lists the FCPX update. I have already downloaded the Compressor and Motion updates.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

For some reason, the update to FCPX came in as an install instead of an update. So I had to trash 10.0 before I could download 10.0.1 thru the App Store. Anyway, that worked.

I downloaded CatDV and tried to convert a simple ProRes edit that had about a dozen still frames & titles with a little slow motion in the course of the mostly hard edit project. CatDV was running in trial mode with a number of features disabled but it is not clear what they are or if they affect the XML abilities of the program. The "send to FCPX" feature launched X and the project loaded with a corresponding events folder. The first thing that went missing were all the still frames and slow motion clips which were replaced by gaps. The music tracks also disappeared but they along with the titles never showed up in the CatDV database in the first place. Since X handles still frames and titles differently I would not be surprised to have them go missing even if CatDV recognized them. What was a little more disturbing was the disappearance of all the overlay video tracks which had their sound lowered. The audio portions imported without the video.

So I ran a second test of just video clips and confirmed that any video outside track 1 will not make the crossover. Also split edits do not make it either although the clips will cross over with a hard edit.

At this moment, CatDV, as demonstrated by the demo version, is barely useful to get simple edits with the cuts and the media into FCPX. A lot of work would be needed to get any but the most basic edit back into shape. Now I will admit that this conclusion came from 20 minutes of experimenting and my CatDV skills are the result of that 20 minutes. If someone can explain how to do this correctly I would be grateful.

Somebody will make a lot of people happy if they can figure out how to get FCP7XML to FCPX-XML. Now that FCPX can export XML I'm sure an enterprising individual will read the files and figure out how to do it.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

I've been using FCPX for a few weeks now and am really starting to like it, but not having automatic version backups is something that I miss from FCP7, and not just for recovering lost data. The Restore Project feature saved me a lot a work on more than a few occasions when needing to undo edits in projects that had already been saved. It was very handy.

That said, I've had a few crashes of FCPX so far and haven't lost anything. In fact, I was always surprised that changes that I made just seconds before the crash were there. But undoing the deletion of the entire project must have thrown the program for a loop.

As for backing up, I clone or update my entire scratch drive at the end of every day (I can't afford live redundancy) but even loosing an entire day's work is still no small matter. And it looks as though this is something that can happen, so all the backup lecturing seems to me a bit beside the point. The lack of versioned backups does to me feel like a loss, and apparently somewhat of a danger. But it's one I can live with for a new editing paradigm that I'm really starting to like. And hopefully Apple will iron out the bugs in future versions.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

If I was obsessed with re-creating 7's Autosave function, why not just set up an Automator function to copy, rename and "move to a new drive" a copy of one or more of your Event Libraries at pre-set intervals?

Unless you're using "import media" in every project, wouldn't that functionally do exactly the same thing?

Heck, if you have oodles of drive space available do it WITH embedded media. Big assed files, but lots and lots of mistake protection.

Just thinking out loud.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Guys, I think you're missing the point.

Yes, there are workarounds - Time Machine, backup watch folders, etc. But why the heck should we even be discussing them? It's such a basic functionality. Setting up a workaround for a simple save operation feels really wrong (at least to me). Remind me of the times when undo function was absent from word processors.

Apple, please bring back some control to the hands of a user. A machine will not outsmart a human being for a few more years at least.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

There was no saves in the auto-save folder of premiere??

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

My client's pay me to get the work done, not Apple. If a day's work gets lost, it's simply my fault, even when if it's not. If I don't have a practical backup solution in place, then I shouldn't be doing business with paying clients.

Client's don't care about your software's save & autosave features, they're not paying the software maker, they're paying YOU. If someone I dealt with told me that they lost a day's worth of work for any reason other than a fire, flood, earthquake or volcano, they'd no longer be my vendor. That's the end of the argument.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

This is of course true from the client point of view. It does not lessen the annoyance of a problem, nor does it absolve the software developer from releasing an unstable product, and making certain promises that turned out to be hollow.

And while client is most likely not interested in your safety measures, YOU are most likely interested in the tools that will provide you the optimal environment possible in terms of safety, productivity, and creativity. So far the discussion revolves around potential workarounds (various backup solutions), but also on what features should the software itself have to make one's life easier. Turning it into a blame game (it's your fault, no it's Apple's fault) does not bring us to any sensible conclusion.

Of course, the blame game is not the point here. The disappointment is. This thread started with a statement by the author, that annoyances of the software made him decide on a different tool. And with that I sympathize. There is a certain amount of limitations and workarounds that each tool requires, but some require more, and other less, and nothing annoys more than having one's creative process interrupted by glitches, crashes, and other mundane problems. When annoyances are too overwhelming, perhaps it is time to select a different tool. That's all.

Re: Saying goodbye to FCP X...for now...
 

Not to be argumentative or defend the new constant save feature vs autosave but anyone who loses a days worth of work is missing something. THe comment about not being able to afford live redundancy doesn't make sense to me. The same drive you're using to for daily backup can give you regular backups automatically with Time Machine and it's sitting right there on the Mac you're using.