Superb walk through tutorials on making trails with Final Cut Pro X on shared storage

Whatever you had planned for the next hour, cancel it. These superb walk-though tutorials from Magic Feather Inc show the workflow from start to finish of cutting a TV trail. See Final Cut Pro X up close and in action working on shared storage. Great information, great tips and a great watch.

When we got an email from John Davidson asking if we would like to feature his tutorials on FCP.co, we jumped at the chance. His company, the Los Angeles based Magic Feather Inc produces promotions or trails for networks and he thought that it would be cool to share his editing workflow for using FCPX on shared storage.

We also asked John some background questions about using FCPX and we thought that interleaving the answers with the videos would make a great combination. Enjoy...

FCP.co What is Magic Feather Inc?

Magic Feather is a company I founded in California in 2004 after I had worked as a freelance writer/producer in LA for about 3 years. We had some great clients at Disney who helped us start up and grow. Magic Feather is a nod to Disney and Dumbo, the Disney film that always appealed to me as a kid. Clients come to us with projects and we take care of the entire process from concept to delivery. We are not a post house, we just make stuff you see on TV.

FCP.co When did you switch?

We have been working with X since May, when a client announced they were reviewing X and eager to switch. This client should remain nameless as they aren't ready to move yet, but it was enough to get us to switch to X, which we had been experimenting with at the time.

FCP.co How much broadcast work have you done with X?

Since switching, we've made about 50 unique spots for over a half-dozen television networks with no complaints. Of these spots there were a ridiculous number of versions, so this was an excellent primordial goo that helped us come up with our own 'real world' application of FCPX in our environment. We use a combination of mac pros, a mac mini, and even the new Late 2012 iMac, which is magnificent btw.

We're all big apple fanatics here, and this helps us to adapt to FCPX. We understand Apple-centric concepts the media browser, we trust them, and this made the transition easier.

Everything we do is geared toward building a workflow that simplifies the editing process. Whether it's building our own transitions and effects, creating slates as built in generators, or just folder structure that makes logical sense, we do our best to stick to this goal. The result is that now we go back and see old FCP7 project folders and realize how messy they were.