Update 11/14/2011: Final Cut Pro 10.0.1 brought good updates and changed my outlook somewhat.

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After using the software for a few months now, I finally feel that I can write a well-informed Final Cut Pro X review. Let’s get right to it: don’t buy Final Cut Pro X. Not just yet.

This was a massive overhaul of the software and anyone should know that it’s risky to jump on the bandwagon with a 1.0 release. Don’t get me wrong – I like Final Cut Pro X and I think it has a lot of potential, but there are too many bugs right now. Extremely frustrating bugs. Bugs that make this software a huge waste of time and inappropriate for professional use.

The trailer you see below is one I made for With Nature in Mind using Final Cut Pro X, along with a full 7-minute video that is almost finished. It was fun to learn the new software while creating these videos, and there are a lot of great features in the software, but this is an honest Final Cut Pro X review so I have to tell both sides of the story.

The bugs are frustrating. The worst one happens when using the lower third templates (the little name and title animations for interviews). What happens is that I insert a lower third over someone talking, type in their name and information, and then move along with my editing. But after a while, the changes to the lower third get lost over and over again at different times in the editing process. Sometimes, I’ll have the video project completely finished in Final Cut Pro X and I’ll export it. Everything looks fine. Then I go back in to change something small – and completely unrelated to the lower thirds in the project – but what will happen is the lower thirds reset themselves and just say “Name” in place of the interviewees’ actual names! This has happened too many times. Often times the formatting that I have applied to the lower third is also lost. See pics below.

Another weird bug that happens that I haven’t read in other Final Cut Pro X reviews is that the audio becomes distorted upon export and upload to YouTube. When I export a video and watch it on my computer, it sounds fine, but when I upload to YouTube, often the audio gets very scratchy. I know this is a transcoding problem because I found a way to work around it. The problem disappears if, after export from Final Cut Pro X, I open the video in Quicktime and use that program’s “Save As” function and select “1080p.” This essentially re-transcodes the video file and somehow fixes whatever Final Cut Pro X is doing wrong. Very weird. And another time waster.

The funny thing is, I started using the software in order to save time, but this Final Cut Pro X review is sadly going to tell you that Final Cut Pro X wastes more of your time than it saves. Yes, it’s true that you can sync an audio track with a video track in one click (something huge for DSLR interview shooters like myself). Yes, you can edit h.264 footage without having to first transcode to something like Prores 422 via MPEG Streamclip. And yes, it’s true that you don’t have to wait for Final Cut Pro X to render (at all). But what they don’t tell you is that the program becomes quite slow during the “background rendering” that Final Cut Pro X uses, but this is probably not a big deal on newer machines. My Macbook Pro is from mid-2008, but still is generally quite fast and does great with the previous versions of Final Cut Pro. Also, in general, Final Cut Pro X is just slow overall compared to previous versions. Again, yes, my machine is older, but comparing Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X head to head … the older version is way faster.

So here is my advice – since you have invested your time in reading this Final Cut Pro X review, do you yourself another favor and save your time by avoiding Final Cut Pro X until 10.1 comes out. If you don’t like that, then switch to Adobe Premiere. Call me too patient, but I’ll wait to see if 10.1 works or not before I switch. Unlike many, many other photographers and video producers out there.