Final Cut Pro version 10.0.6 came out recently. I haven’t touched the program since 10.0.1. It’s been a year since it came out and there are a few things they added back like a Browser monitor and persistent in/out points that don’t magically disappear when you click another clip. So I spent some of yesterday poking around it again.

Oh man (and not in a good way).

Just poking around that program still makes me want to tear my hair out. I am intrigued by it because there are editors out there who claim that they like it, and not iMovie editors, people who used Final Cut Pro from day 1. I understand that it decided to come up with new ideas for how editing should be done instead of just giving existing editors what they wanted. In a very Steve Jobsian manner, it’s telling people that they didn’t know what they want, but that this is it.

That said, does the program have to insult our intelligence so much? Seriously, no self respecting piece of professional software should have a feature inside of it with a name like “Ken Burns effect.” I understand that most editing program terminology originated from film editing (like “bins) but terms like “Events” just make no sense unless you’re coming from iMovie (which we all know is where FCP X originated from).

Changing the editing paradigm is one thing but was it really necessary to change the very language of editing software in the process? If someone is going to get started in FCP X and maybe move to other editing programs in the world (because face it, it’s much more likely that a FCP X editor will some day have to use one of the others than the other way around) then they won’t possess the language of the other editors out there.

I do still want to at least know my way around the program because I like knowing software, but after an hour or more of poking around the program I found myself reading rumors about Adobe Premiere CS7 rumors and just drooling over the tidbits I could find.

Yup, I’m an editing nerd.