Saying goodbye to Final Cut Pro.

Since I was 15, I’ve spent an average of 5 hours a day using Final Cut Pro. You could say I think of my editing software as a boyfriend or a close friend that I’ve gotten to know really well over the past 8 years and 300+ videos. I know it better than anything or anyone. We’ve had some really great times together. Everything from editing my first music video to putting together my first Miss Universe video on the plane ride back from India. I used Final Cut in the making of the video that landed me my current job. We’ve grown up together through the years and updates. It’s thrown me more problems than I ever knew were possible…but we worked through them…together.

In 2011, Apple announced they would discontinue the Final Cut Pro series and continue with Final Cut X. For those non-editors out there, Final Cut X is basically iMovie on crack. It’s awful. It’s very basic and more for the amateur movie makers out there.

Knowing that FCP was being discontinued a lot of editors jumped on the bandwagon and switched software. Some went Premiere, some went Sony Vegas, and some just switched entirely to Avid (Media Composer series).  I didn’t want to accept that FCP was retiring and denied it for the past two years thinking, “There’s no way media professionals are going to allow this….Apple will change their minds….They’ll see.”

They didn’t see.

So now I’m left with the dilemma: What’s next?

Premiere Pro:

I have to be honest, I worked a little bit with Premiere about 5 or 6 years ago and I absolutely hated it. I’ve spent this last week checking out their new software and all the updates they’ve made and I’m very impressed. Incredible integration with FCP and Avid. I use After Effects and Photoshop a lot which also integrate seamlessly. It’s also very affordable. The adobe products I’ve used seem to be a lot slower and very glitchy when it comes to video. I’ve always prided myself on my editing speed, and I think Premiere will be a little bit of a setback. All the shortcut keys are different, the layout is different, and if it takes as long to render/export a video as After Effects does….there’s going to be a problem.

I’ve always considered Premier behind the game…but I’m willing to give it another chance.

Avid:

Avid plain and simple is a workhorse. From what I’ve seen, it’s amazing and I’ve always wanted to get my hands on it. Although they have made it a little more user friendly and affordable over they years, I’d still have to drop a few grand to get what I need.  TV networks use Avid because of its ability to have multiple people work off the same project and access the media database from any computer. It’s fast. Very fast.

It’s also a giant. As in I need to be on a newer desktop to run the software .  I almost entirely do all of my own editing. I think I’ve had a co-editor twice in my life and I often edit on my laptop when traveling, so I’m not sure if Avid really makes sense for what I do. It’s a great program and I hope to use it if I ever work for a TV network or bigger editing house.  I think it’s really important to learn so I downloaded their demo today.

It’s always good to have that knowledge for a future interview.

So for my day-to-day small project editing I’m going to start integrating Premiere. I’ll let you know how that goes….

I’m going to start learning Avid on the side and it’s always good to have a backup if I end up not liking Premiere.

Technology changes fast. We must adapt. To Final Cut Pro and our 300+ videos together: Thanks for everything. You made me fall in love with editing.

To the next 300…