Long-term archiving projects for Final Cut Pro X

400I wrote this email to Larry Jordan, author of the famous + awesome training website for video editors.  I was wondering how the new Library structure in FCPX 10.1 would hobble the economical archivist in me.  Since I end up doing some explaining and pontificating, and his answer is very useful, I figure I should share it here.

It’s a big relief to know I can keep archiving projects in a way close to what I’ve been doing all along: minimizing the amount I need to backup, to the safest medium, with surest results and minimal work.

Libraries are noob-proof, but they are not power-user-proof.  That’s good.

Hey Larry,

I love your website and I’ve found it helpful as I finally switch over to FCPX.

One thing I will miss from FCP7 and my 2 years on Premiere is the ease of permanent archives.

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Backing Away from Adobe Creative Cloud

no-adobe_0For a number of reasons, I am leaving Adobe behind in all my production and teaching work.  I’m also going to stop telling people that Premiere is better than Final Cut X

Why the change of heart?  Mainly, I can’t recommend the monopolistic pricing practice of Adobe’s creative cloud.  And whatever the politics, it’s just too expensive for rentware. (Also check out the frightening TERMS OF SERVICE you are agreeing to..)

There’s a terrible feeling in my gut when I think how dangerous it is for a business, artist or student to rely on subscription-based software.

Because if you stop paying for an Adobe subscription, you lose all your work.  Not the final products, of course; the outputs stay put and stay exactly how they were when you finished them.  But the project files, the meat and potatoes, are locked into Adobe and are no longer usable when your subscription expires.  You could spend something like $75 for a 1-month subscription to Adobe every time you want to look at an old project; or you could just find other software with a perpetual license, i.e software that you buy outright.  I’ll recommend a better set of alternatives in another post, and link it here later.

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