• Sound mixing and stem export
• Multi-cam editing
• External monitor support
• Native RED, Alexa, XDCAM, DSLR footage etc
• XML in/out
• Multiple in/out selections recalled on each clip, export between in/out on timeline
• Network editing (but currently still with many limitations)

New features are being added roughly every 3 months in free updates.

Don't give up!

• Read FCP.co's list of things to do after you bought FCP-X, and this overview from the DigitalFilms blog
• Read these pages of tips on FCP.tv
• Watch this explanation of the contrast between FCP7 and FCP-X's use of project files & folders
• Find out how Events work before you start haphazardly importing stuff, moving folders in Finder etc. This will prevent a major Code Red in your brain later on.
• If you've got an old computer, and Background Rendering is not making you happy, you can disable it in Preferences and go back to Ctrl-R to render a specific clip
• Do your sound/picture synch before you start cutting.
• Add metadata tags and multiple clip I/O selections before you start editing
• Enjoy being able to recall multiple in/out selections for a clip, but watch this FCP.tv video before you start
• Use compound clips for everything - interview selects, reels of your film, complex discreet chunks like titles or fancy graphics & compositing etc - until you're ready to export the final product. As you edit, copy & paste whole timelines from one Compound Clip to another to create multiple versions - don't use Projects. Use scene-sized Compound Clips in Auditions to try different cuts or running orders. Then use a Project for your final version.

Here are some workarounds:

• Through edits: see this tutorial by Richard Taylor. Hopefully it'll get fixed in an upcoming update. Incidentally: "You can do the whole thing with keyboard shortcuts which makes it even faster - with the playhead on the edit point, press [ (left-bracket)-'(apostrophe)-S­hift-X-C (selects the clip to the right)-Delete." - Mark Spencer
• FCP7-style replace edits: see this edition of MacBreak Studio
• Export only used portions of camera files (with handles) using free ClipExporter

Want to edit like FCP7?

• Press P (the Position tool; turns off the magnetic timeline).
• Next, hold down the ~ key, then hold down shift. Release the ~ key, then release shift. That ignores Clip Connections, so your stuff on extra "tracks" stays put when you move items in the main timeline, instead of moving with the clip below it.
• To get back to FCP-X land, just hit P and ~
• If you're feeling really luddite, you can make old-fashioned Final Cut Pro 7 tracks!

Depends what style you like:

• Thorough, professional, with humour: Larry Jordan; check out his free YouTube videos (and LACPUG demos) first
• Relaxed and light: MPV's course with Michael Wohl. Check out MPV samples and Michael's LAFCPUG demos
• Nice & crisp with slightly better examples: Ripple Training with Steve Martin and Mark Spencer. Check out MacBreak Studio
• Fun and fast: FinalCutKing from Zach King. Check out his YouTube videos and accompanying how-to videos

• And watch these FREE lessons on Colour Grading in FCP-X from Color Grading Central (or on YouTube)

On the whole, people are moving to Premiere. In the UK, as far as I know it's only me and this guy called Alex Gollner (of whom more elsewhere) who like FCP-X :)

In the US, it's a bit more popular, but there's little pro market penetration. Last time I visited the National Film & Television School, they were considering Premiere or just sticking to Avid, and the editing instructor didn't know anything about FCP-X except that she'd heard it was evil. In fact, most people I talk to haven't tried it, and say "I haven't bothered, because I heard it was crap", or they tried it for 10 seconds and found the FCP7 processes didn't make cool things happen.

Some people call it iMovie Pro. In the way that Logic is Garageband Pro, I suppose it is, a bit. It's not anything like iMovie, mind you - I'm fairly sharp in FCP-X and I can't work out how to do a damn thing in iMovie. And they wasted a lot of time with all that RED/Alexa/broadcast monitor etc etc support if it's for amateurs, didn't they? The fools.

Is it iMovie because you can handle DSLR footage, or export to Vimeo? Personally, I'm snobby about DSLRs, but loads of professional jobs use a 5D or two (hopefully not as main camera!) - and GoPros, come to that. And I upload client approval vids to YouTube or Vimeo all the time. Although admittedly not FaceBook…

Is it iMovie because you can import an iMovie project? That's useless for pros (unless you want to train your producer to do interview selects in iMovie), but doesn't subtract anything.

Is it iMovie because FCP-X's media "bins" are called Events? Well, you've got me there. That's some irritating shit.

Educational establishments are therefore not teaching FCP any more, despite the fact FCP-X is cheaper for the school, and more accessible for students to own personally, because they worry that the students won't find it in the workplace.

Why?

Apple hadn't finished rebuilding enough features in 64-bit for the release. I imagine the development team didn't want to release yet, and wept themselves to sleep every night as their efforts were universally derided. The first time I tried it, with my FCP7 habits, it made me really cross. But later, I got MPV's FCP-X training to watch on my phone during rendering breaks on jobs, and gave it another chance. Most of the missing stuff is back in, sometimes with a better design than everybody else (e.g. Roles, multitrack audio or multi-cam).

Now, if you're a pro editor, you probably use Avid. Now that MC7 is cheap enough to buy for your home laptop, what do you care what Adobe and Apple do? If you want to cut features (especially in 3D), or work on big TV jobs, you need to learn Avid anyway.

If you were an FCP7 editor, and you can't stop working long enough (or don't have the available brain-space) to learn something new, that's entirely fair enough, and you should probably go to Premiere. It looks and works like FCP8 would have done. Has much the same functionality as FCP-X, plus or minus some stuff that you could probably add to whichever NLE is lacking with plugins. Adobe's on the up. They seem about to fix the network editing gap very elegantly, and before Apple. Premiere's very nice, but… it has an old-school "tiny-buttons and joyless disclosure triangles" interface, and you're always a couple of steps away from fun. Here's a nicely balanced comparison from the DigitalFilms blog.

If you've got time, give FCP-X a go. It's a breath of fresh air. To pick a random example, if I want to see if I like an effect, I have to add it to the clip, then play before I can even see what "Dream Effect" does. In FCP-X I just skim over the effect thumbnail and it previews my timeline clip with that effect on, in real time. There aren't many buttons because most controls only appear when you're trying to do that task (moving near the edge of a clip, a transition, opacity or volume handles…)

That said, I think the other NLEs will start to adopt more of FCP-X's innovations (I suspect with the exception of the magnetic timeline) - it's already happening with some of the metadata features. And FCP-X will add features their competitors find success with.

What do you want? If you want round-tripping between lots of apps, Adobe's good. If you want one über-app with millions of panes, windows, menus etc, then Avid's good.

If you want to do all the "simple" colour and audio tasks in your editor, and then export to ProTools or DaVinci Resolve for posh projects, FCP-X is great, especially with a couple of choice plugins.

Broadly speaking, the NLEs each work from a different premise:
Avid - $$$$, one app does lots of stuff in depth. Expensive, big upgrades.
Adobe - $$$, contains lots of apps to do each job. Good continuous upgrade path through Creative Cloud. 3rd party effects plugins released fairly frequently.
FCP-X - $ for 90% of the functionality you need, then add $ plugins for the specific extras your workflow requires. Total cost probably still noticeably less, unless you do every kind of job from weddings to reality TV shows to feature films. Speed of updates & new features is massive: Apple update every 3-ish months, and 3rd party plugin developers release new stuff every day - not just effects, but workflow tools, and whole new features.

The truth is that editors increasingly need to know all the main NLEs. As they're all fairly similar, and getting cheaper, why not learn Avid, Apple and Adobe, and increase your employability? I dare say each does something better than the others.

Here's a really interesting video of some big-time editors discussing this subject: