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Academy Award-winning editor Walter Murch talks Final Cut Pro X

Academy Award-winning editor Walter Murch talks Final Cut Pro X

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Academy Award-winning editor Walter Murch took a good chunk of time on stage at Boston SuperMeet to give his thoughts on the Final Cut Pro X editing suite and its evolution from launch up until now.

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Walter Murch
Walter Murch

Final Cut Pro X and its simplification / "iMovie-fication" of the series hasn't exactly been met with universal appeal since launching in June — even Conan O'Brien satirized in a late night TV sketch. Academy Award-winning editor Walter Murch took a good chunk of time on stage at Boston SuperMeet to give his thoughts on the editing suite and its evolution from launch up until now. "I quickly looked at it and said, 'I can't use this'… I began to wonder what is the 'Pro' part of it." Murch singled out key features such as XML for organizing, shared area network support, and other professional features that were in previous iterations of Final Cut Pro but are only now slowly trickling out with updates. 

Murch — whose career spans 40 years and includes time using Moviola (Julia), KEM flatbed (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Part III), Avid (The English Patient), and earlier version of FCP (Cold Mountain) — is encouraged by the developments he's seen from as recent as the September update, but says there's still a ways to go. Though largely critical of the current state, he does caveat with some interesting observations — for one, that the fundamental FCP code base likely needed a refreshment to fix some glaring issues and that these or growing pains. For another, the Apple from a decade prior earned a lot more revenue on professionals (and a lot less on consumer electronics), whereas now sales of Apple's more mainstream business has grown exponentially.

Check out 12 minutes Final Cut-related highlights from Murch's speech below. We also embedded the Conan sketch below — just for kicks.