We’re living in a digital age in which the moving image and the ability to create moving images are now as common as the still image. Just about everyone has a video camera of some sort, whether it is in a camera phone, a dedicated video camera or some other device. Video literacy is the foundation of mass media in the twenty-first century and being literate in producing edited content is found from schoolchildren to professional editors.

Whether you edit at the professional level or for other reasons, Final Cut Pro X provides the means to produce content exceptionally quickly with top-level results. The tools are there to draw on, it depends how good you are, as the editor, to pull it all together and really make it work.

I started editing on a Mac way back in 1998. Before then I was working in tape suites. I’ve been exposed to many systems from film editing to multi-machine tape editing, the original Final Cut Pro and many other computer-based editing systems.

Final Cut Pro X is different. The approach is different to many of the other editors on the market. The benefits are clear if you can absorb this way of working and refine it to your own needs.

In this book, I have outlined many of the work methods I use to get results using Final Cut Pro X. I’m a professional editor; I produce content daily and weekly for paying clients. I use Final Cut Pro X because it works for me, and more importantly, it produces results my clients are happy with.

When Final Cut Pro X was released in June 2011, amid a firestorm of controversy, I said to someone at the time: “Can it do a cut? Can it do a dissolve? Can it separate audio from video?” The answer was obviously yes! “So what’s the problem?” was my reply.

That’s it! Go and edit. The way to learn Final Cut Pro X is to use it. The tool is good, now make it work, so you hit the mark, dead center, bull’s eye, every time.