Learning Final Cut Pro X
Given that you can download a free trial of FCPX there’s no reason not to give it a go. If you want a helping hand in getting started there are plenty of resources available to teach you everything from the basics through to complex in app colour correction and compositing.
Free Tutorials
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_plfPrmrfEs
Izzyvideo.com has nearly 3 hours of free video tutorials on working with FCPX and probably presents the most comprehensive free tutorial series on the web.
Creative Cow is probably the premiere film production website around today, and if you can’t find an answer (or a link to an answer) on the cow you probably won’t find it anywhere. There is a massive archive of video tutorials on the Cow including a healthy selection of FCPX video tutorials and walk throughs.
Ben Balser has a really useful article on getting started in FCPX but taking the whole workflow into account rather than just explaining one particular feature or function. Ben also shares some useful keyboard shortcuts as he goes.
Fcp.co is ‘aiming to be the number one fcp resource on the net’ and to that end has a constantly updated list of free tutorials which is worth browsing if you’re after more FCPX resources.
Finally Apple have also just published a FCPX FAQ. The first question answered is how to pronounce FCPX’s name…
Paid Tutorials
Larry Jordan is the granddaddy of FCP guru’s and has a whopping collection of tutorials available on his site. For $129 you can get over 19 hours of video tutorials on getting started with FCPX including FCPX: Effects, FCPX: Workflow and editing, and FCPX 10.3 New Features.
Ripple Training also has a large collection of tutorials covering topics such as multicam editing, compositing and audio editing in FCPX. Like Larry their tutorials offer great value for money and they have free preview examples so you can ‘try before you buy’.
Macprovideo has a huge and diverse collection of tutorials (a bit like Lynda.com) including a free 44 minute quick start guide from Michael Wohl on editing in FCPX. You can also find 40+ sample tutorials on their MPV FCPX Youtube channel.
All three of these sites are well worth checking out and worth trying if you want to increase your learning in any software package. Ultimately though with any video tutorial series you’ll only get out of it the time you put in to sitting and watching and sitting and following along with the software and then developing their examples into your own day to day workflow.
