I don’t actually have that many video editor friends who I can nerd out about editing software with. But I’ve been filled with a burning need to talk about Final Cut Pro X. I was trying to think of analogies that would work for people who don’t edit video. And of course all I did was swap one complicated pro app with another one. But still, if you know Photoshop, this is a little bit what Final Cut Pro X is like compared to the previous version.
I spent a lot of yesterday reading and watching people who liked Final Cut Pro X in an effort to understand why they liked it. One very telling thing I found out is that it seems in iMovie there was no possibility of having empty space between shots. Whenever you deleted a shot, the following shot would move backwards to fill the space. In FCP 7 and all other editing apps, when you delete a clip it leaves a space, because there’s a specific tool or command you’d use to delete a clip and leave no space. But it seems that iMovie editors think exactly the opposite. Leaving a space is the special case scenario and leaving no space is what you’d always want.
