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This doesn’t seem possible in FCP X
Walter Murch’s timeline in this article – 50 tracks of audio effects – (he’s still using FCP 7)
unless the promised multi-track fix is on it’s way – there seems to be no way to do this inside the application with FCP x…halfway down the article is a screen shot of the timeline
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12 Replies
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Join us here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/41738
You can speak to the article’s author, Oliver Peters.
Jeremy
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[Andy Neil] “Why not?”
Try keeping track of it all. Sure, FCX can have that many tracks of audio. Absolutely. But how about YOU, the editor, knowing what is what, and what is where? Knowing that tracks 1-16 are dialog, that 17-24 are b-roll or SOT, that 25-40 are sound effects, that 41-50 are music. Knowing by LOOKING, and seeing what is where. That to find the sound effect that you want to tweak, you look at 25-40 to see where it might be. In FCX, with the magnetic timeline, that sound clip could be ANYWHERE. There’s no rhyme nor reason to it.
Yes, you have ROLES, but does that help you see what you have where? When you have 50 tracks of audio, and I have been known to have up to 48, it really helps when you know what is where. The magnetic timeline just makes a mess of things.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I was disputing the fact that it was not possible to have a timeline that complex. And you agree, it’s entirely possible in X.
[Shane Ross] “But how about YOU, the editor, knowing what is what, and what is where?”
[Shane Ross] “Yes, you have ROLES, but does that help you see what you have where?”
Yes, as a matter of fact, Roles DO help you see what you have where. By organizing your footage into roles (custom or otherwise) you can isolate specific roles in the index. They highlight what you’re looking at, and darken what you don’t want to see. You can even minimize the clip track height of the roles you don’t need to see, while keeping the clips you DO want to see at their maximum clip height. Furthermore, you can select isolated clips from the index and jump the timeline view instantly to that spot in your timeline. So, in fact, I would suggest that as an editor I would know what is what and what is where even better than Murch’s spreadsheet look.
It may not be how you (or he) want to work, but that’s a far cry from saying that FCPX isn’t capable of it.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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[Andy Neil] “By organizing your footage into roles (custom or otherwise) you can isolate specific roles in the index.”
Help me out here, because I’m not specifically an editor (mastering colorist who has to figure these things out from scratch from time to time with no Rosetta stone)…
What if the associated audio is not specifically “footage”, but is independently imported? Do you assign it a Role and visual identifier as being Foley or ambience or music or LtRt/5.1 layback or….? Or who needs more than 4 channels of audio? (winky)
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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[Joseph Owens] “What if the associated audio is not specifically “footage”, but is independently imported?”
I did a tutorial a while back that serves as a primer for the Roles feature. You can view it here:
The simple answer is that FCPX assigns a role to all footage, digitized or imported. Depending on certain factors, it will assign specific default roles to imported audio (ie: dialogue, fx, music)
However, Roles are customizable, and you can create whatever roles you want to satisfy whatever organizational structure you want to work with. Clips can easily be assigned roles in the browser at any point in the editorial process. So, if you like, you can have an LFE role and assign it to individual stems (although I probably wouldn’t use roles that way since X can handle surround audio as a single clip).
You can even have sub-roles which are roles that are within a larger category of roles. For example: Inside the FX role category, you can have a sub-role called “ambience.”
Hope this helps.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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Here’s some juicy quotes:
Dave [Cerf] really handled most of the FileMaker jiu-jitsu. It works well with XML, so we were able to go back and forth between FileMaker Pro and [Apple] Final Cut Pro 7 using XML. This time our script supervisor, Virginia McCarthy, was using ScriptE, which also does a handshake with FileMaker, so her notes could be instantly integrated into our database. Then we could use this information to drive an action in Final Cut Pro—for instance, the assembly of dailies reels. FileMaker would organize the information about yesterday’s shooting, and then an XML out of that data would trigger an assembly in Final Cut, inserting graphics and text as needed in between shots. In the other direction, we would create visibility-disabled slugs on a dedicated video track, tagged with scene information about the clips in the video tracks below. Outputting XML from Final Cut would create an instantaneous continuity list with time markers in FileMaker.”
Another trick he mentioned to me was something he referred to as a QuickTime skin. Murch continues, “I edit with the complete movie on the timeline, not in reels, so I always have the full cut in front of me. I started using this simple QuickTime skin technique with Tetro. First I export the timeline as a self-contained QuickTime file and then re-import the visual. This is placed on the uppermost video track, effectively hiding everything below. As such, it’s like a ‘skin’ that wraps the clips below it, so the computer doesn’t ‘see’ them when you scroll back and forth. The visual information is now all in one location on a hard drive, so the system isn’t bogged down with unrendered files and other clutter. When you make changes, you ‘razor-blade’ through the QuickTime and pull back the skin, revealing the ‘internal organs’ [the clips that you want to revise] below, thus making changes like a surgeon. Working this way also gives a quick visual overview of where you’ve made changes. You can instantly see where the skin has been ‘broken’ and how extensive the changes were. It’s the visual equivalent of a change list. After a couple of weeks of cutting, on average, I make a new QuickTime and start the process over.”
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Whi am I to doubt Murch’s workflow, but really why do you need 50 SFX tracks? Do you ever hear 50 SFX at once? And if you do and you have to do it in an NLE instead of a proper audio-program, FCPX offers compoundclips, which in the end are only one Track on your videotimeline.
So yes, it can be done and it might look tidier than in FCP7 or other trackbased NLEs.
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Here is a snapshot from a friend of mine´s edit. We shot this with the London Symphony Orchestra.
It was less than 50 tracks of video but it is possible and with secondary storylines and compounds we can package certain scenes into one track in the process…..https://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/523364_379141292125623_431812861_n.jpg
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[alban egger] “really why do you need 50 SFX tracks”
Well, some SFX are layered, stereo or even already in 5.1. In FCP7, each stem requires its own track. But in FCPX, stereo and surround audio are expressed as single clips not 2 or 6 or 8. You don’t even need to use compound clips and it could still look more tidy in the timeline.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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