Final Cut Pro X – Well I was tempted!

I really like doing video, mainly to share with you on YouTube and I have done quite a number of video podcasts as part of my podcasting work with Mac20Q. I have Screenflow with which I can record a screen cast. I have video Q which is an application also from Telestream which has a teleprompter and will also do green screen. Of course being a Mac user I have iMovie available to me, although I admit to not being a big fan of iMovie. This is despite the fact that iMovie is actually pretty good and very fast if you want to do some quick and simple green screen. Last year I decided to go upmarket with video editing and I got Final Cut express. It would have been very nice to get Final Cut Pro, but the price of it last year, was way out of my league. Now we have available Final Cut Pro 10. The price is much more affordable.

Final Cut Pro X First Impressions and Motion First Impressions

I started off first of all by buying Motion, as part of learning how to use it, I went to the Lynda.com website and looked at some of the videos that demonstrate its use. It is a great place to learn how to use any application, in particular the Pro end applications such as Final Cut Pro 10, Motion and Logic pro. The videos for learning motion were interesting and I couldn’t help but have a look to see, if there were also tutorials available for the new video editing suite from Apple, Final Cut Pro X. If I hadn’t gone to have a look at the training for Final Cut, perhaps I would have saved myself some money. To cut a long story short, after watching the videos on Lynda.com about Final Cut pro X, I couldn’t help myself and splashed out the €235, so that I could have it available for my use. Well in truth, I did open up Final Cut Express and I did a comparison between the two applications. Although Final Cut express is a very good video editor, it is nowhere near as capable as Final Cut Pro 10. Here are some of my Final Cut Pro X first impressions.

Using Final Cut Pro X to put together a video

During the last week of August, I went on a trip to the French side of the Pyrenees and there is a railway called the Little Yellow Train. This railway starts at the lower part of the Pyrenees and climbs to fairly high up in the mountain region. It is possible to take a train ride for two or three hours to enjoy spectacular views, going across bridges spanning the valleys and to experience the way the train follows the contours of the mountains. So I had some video in my camera waiting to be edited, of the Little Yellow Train and it was the first video clips that I brought into Final Cut 10. The first impression of Final Cut, was that it was very fast in importing the video from the SDHC card, much faster than using the Final Cut express. This could be because it is a 64-bit application and also because the rendering of the video is done in the background. It shows a lower resolution of the video, while the rendering is being completed.

Skimming clips, selecting, dropping into the timeline

I like having a timeline in a video editing application, which is why I don’t particularly like iMovie, which has no timeline. With Final Cut 10 it was easy to select the video by choosing in and out points and then simply dragging the selected video into the timeline. You can use the I and the O keys to set those points, or you can use your mouse or trackpad to set those. I use the trackpad with my iMac and it was very easy to select the video. Not only can you just drag-and-drop, there are also keyboard shortcuts which will take your selection to insert into the timeline. I quickly found that by pressing the E key, the selection that I had made would be appended to the end of the timeline.

Final Cut X First Impressions and Motion – Learning more

I decided to go to iTunes and do a search for information about Final Cut X and Motion. This was after a fairly fruitless search in YouTube for some screencasts by users demonstrating how to use the video editing software. As part of my search in iTunes, I found a couple of marvellous applications, that give the basics of how to use Final Cut X and Motion, in an application that has a number of videos. These two applications are free, how good is that? I have learnt a lot already from these videos within the applications, and I am tempted to buy the paid for version of them.

Nonlinear educating by Mac pro video.com

From the main menu of the application, you can choose from a number of options, such as play tutorial, which will start at the beginning and work its way through all of the videos in the application, one after the other. Or you may click on the chapter list button, top of the list is Shake for Random Video. Give your iPad a bit of a shake and one of the 13 videos will start playing. The videos work their way through from a general introduction, through basic editing, connected clips, audio enhancements, to the final output from Final Cut 10. Each of the videos last 3 or 4 min, long enough for enough points to be put across, to have a good learning experience.

Will I buy the paid for tutorials?

Well I might buy the tutorials. It rather depends upon what is included in the full version of the iPad application, I would like to assess if I think it is worth spending the €7.99. That is the price for the tutorials for one application for example Final Cut Pro 10. I would like to compare it with the tutorials that are available within Lynda.com. I could buy a months worth of Lynda.com for $25, I know that the courses there are good and I would be able to view the tutorials for both Final Cut Pro 10 and also for Motion.

Final Cut Pro X First Impressions – Paid for tutorials

I really don’t mind paying something for learning these two applications, as it really increases the speed with which I can become good at using them. When comparing them against each other, it really depends upon the depth of tuition in relation to the overall price. One of the good things about using the tuition within an iPad application is that, once I have it I can watch them over and over for the one price. With Lynda.com I would have to devote the month to watching as many tutorials as possible, and maybe, recording them locally, so that I could watch them again. I just went to have a look at the website for the tutorials that come with Macprovideo.com and they are more expensive than if I were to use and Lynda.com. They do have some prices where you can buy all the videos and that was working at around about $68, that was just for one application. And to buy them online per video basis the cost was around $20 per video. They do have another option were you can pay $25 a month, using automatic billing and there are 248 tutorials that are available. Then they have a one-time payment option where you can get a one-month pass for $49.50 or $99 for 3 months. The automatic billing version does seem a little bit like the Lynda.com tutorials. Just having a look to see was included, there are quite a lot of applications available, with regards motion 5 and Final Cut 10 there is about 16 or 17 hours of tuition. And then on top of that there are probably a couple of other areas that I would be interested in, such as finding out more about iWork and iMovie and Garageband.

Final Cut Pro X – First impressions of the training with MacProVideo

And within the Lynda.com there is the Final Cut Pro essential training and a Motion that is only 5 hours and 20 min and 4 motion there is 8 hours and 40 min of training. So with comparing the 2 training options it does seem that the Macprovideo.com does go into more depth and the $25 for a month does look quite interesting. It seems also that it is possible to cancel at any time. Another good thing about the Mac pro video training is that I would be able to pay with PayPal which I would prefer rather than using a credit card. I will just have to see if I can clear some time to be able to devote to learning these video pro applications.