Finalcutpro_7toxYes, very well. But also, not quite. With Apple's 10.0.3 release of Final Cut Pro X, they added multicam support and a host of other features, but more importantly for some, they finally made it possible to move projects from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X. Well, that's not quite true. Apple didn't actually make this possible - they are promoting the product of a 3rd party, Intelligent Design, to facilitate upgrading old projects. Here's a quick overview of the process:


There's a great write-up at ProVideo Coalition that details the process of taking a fairly complicated Final Cut Pro 7 project and bringing it into Final Cut Pro X. From their blog:

As different as FCP7 and FCPX are I don’t think anyone would expect prefect [sic] fidelity when moving between the applications unless Apple had designed some type of conversion in from the start. Yes they are different but they both have timelines that pretty much stack clips vertically, both have different camera angles grouped into one clip and both have places to store that original footage so they are similar enough that a good conversion is possible.

Intelligent Design seem to have really done their homework and have created a product that actually does what Apple has thus far refused to do: allow us to carry over our projects from Final Cut Pro 7. If you've got a relatively simple project, 7toX should work almost perfectly. If you've got a complicated multicam project, you may run into a few issues. But as Scott Simmons at ProVideo Coalition points out, this is partly the fault of Final Cut Pro X and the way that it deals with audio. There is a detailed list of everything that does, and does not translate on their website.

7toX costs $9.99 and is available in Apple's Mac App Store. While I don't like paying money to introduce functionality back into software that should already have it, $10 is a small price to pay for those of us who would like to add FCPX into our arsenal, but require the ability to open FCP7 projects.

If you're already using the app, feel free to share your experiences with it in the comments.

Link: 7toX for Final Cut Pro - Mac App Store

[via ProVideo Coalition]