So I was editing in some projects that were started in Final Cut Pro 7 in 2011, and today was the day to put them to bed, get them uploaded to a website that’s launching soon. After about 4 hours, I was getting frustrated with waiting for FCP 7 to finish rendering, the time it took to export a QuickTime conversion, having to move clips around manually to avoid collisions and so on. For the fifth and final video, which was A-rolled with a little B-roll, I wanted to work faster. After working exclusively in it, I knew that using Final Cut Pro X would make my life a lot easier. Prior to that, I’d spend maybe 65% of my editing in FCP 7, the rest in FCP X. It was time to use 7toX, Philip Hodgetts and Gregory Clarke’s terrific new app.
So I exported an XML file from FCP 7, did the conversion in 7toX — it happened fast, then opened the project in Final Cut Pro X. (Here are detailed instructions on Assisted Editing’s website.) Pretty much everything transferred over without a problem, except some Boris Title 3D credits I did. No problem, I deleted them and used FCP X’s titling feature to take care of it. It had to render, of course, which it did in the background (and was very fast). I finished B-rolling, and even let FCP X do some intelligent color correcting, which I then touched up manually.
I know, I know, why did it take me so long? I guess I just resisted the temptation to start transferring legacy FCP 7 projects to FCP X, because there’s always that worry that I may end up having to do more work to clean things up, which I didn’t on this particular project. I resisted at first, but I’m glad I finally did. 7toX works, and it works great.
