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How would you deal with this – long clip with multiple takes
Breaking down footage. Long clip. Multiple takes. For this example, the shot is called Scene 101 and it contains Take 1A, 1B, 1C, etc…
If I favorite the takes, can’t add Scene and Take info. Selecting Favorite and renaming it and then hitting enter takes me back up to the main clip name. Frustrating when dealing with multiple favorites. Plus, the concept of favorite doesn’t work for me here as they are not that. They are just available takes.
If I Keyword them, same problem. Can’t add scene and take info. And then, this is an old one, there’s no way to “subclip” them to rename them unless I dupe the clips first. But duping the clip introduces more work and complication for me. Not an option as far as I can tell.
If I keyword all the clips “Scene 101” they all show up with the same clip name in the keyword collection. They also contain the same scene and shot/take info. No way to differentiate them.
So, what’s the workflow here? My end goal being this: I want to break down (in the quickest and easiest way) a long clip to separate the takes. I then want to be able to easily see a list of these takes so I can pass it off to another editor to sift through them.
Thanks.
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company -
29 Replies
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Going under the assumption that each long clip is a single scene, here’s how I might go about it. First I’d open the keyword editor (CMD+K) and create a keyword for each take in the shortcuts area like so:
Then in the event browser, you can meta-tag each clip with whatever scene it represents using the Scene column in the metadata. For example clip MVI_8082 is a long clip containing several takes in Scene 01 so you tag the clip as 01 in the Scene field. In fact you can pre-tag all your long clips with the proper scene before you get going.
Then scrub through your clip, mark IN/OUT for take 01, and hit CTL+1 to keyword tag it as Take 01. Then find your next take and hit CTL+2 to tag it as Take 02, etc. When the whole clip is tagged, create a smart collection using the search function and the following criteria:
This will return results for all takes in Scene 01. Label the smart collection: SCENE 01. In fact, you can make the smart collections ahead of time and they will populate as you mark and tag your clips. The keyword collections can also be put aside in a folder if you want to keep them out of the way of your smart collections like this:
I hope that doesn’t sound too complicated. It’s actually very easy and can be set up in about 5 minutes and then all you have to do is mark INs and OUTs and use shortcut keys to tag the clips.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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Thanks for taking the time to research that, Andy.
I tried your recommendation and realized that, while it could work in another situation, it’s not quite the solution for this because there are multiple clips for each scene (and not 1 clip per scene). Each clip was slated at the top as 101, Take 1, then the next clip was 101 Take 2 and so on… within each take there are multiple unslated takes, thus the need to label them 1a, 1b, 1c.
That means that I’d have to make new keywords for each clip and couldn’t use the standard 1, 2, 3. So the first clip would be Scene 101 and the keywords would be Take 1a, 1b, 1c. The second clip would be Scene 101 Take 2a, 2b, 2c, etc… By the end of the scene, I’d have over 50 separate takes (and thus 50 keywords).
Still searching…
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company -
Or for a completely different approach, last time I was in a similar situation I used Davinci Resolve Lite to quickly cut the footage up and then imported the new individual clips into FCPX for the edit.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Jeff,
I’m dealing with clips that have been synced. So I’d have to do that all over again. But great to know for next time.
When you did this, did Davinci export an xml referring to the subclips or did you export the clips out as new prores clips?
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company -
I thought I had a solution, but there’s an annoying audio channel bug which I’ve discussed in an earlier post that really complicates things. It produces basically what I want – minus original clip timecode, but that’s another issue for another post. BTW- These are synchronized clips that I’m working with.
1. I duplicate the clip and append the words “for subclipping”
2. Open the duplicated clip in timeline. That reveals the original clip and the production audio underneath.
3. Go to in point. Hit cmd-A to select all and cmd-B. Same for the out point.
4. Select the new clip with attached audio and create a compound clip. Label the clip 101_1A.
5. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.Now, I am able to go to each “subclip” in the event library and label the scene and takes in the columns (even though it’s redundant based on the filename, just still good to have it there).
Here’s the huge problem. The audio channel designation goes back to stereo. It should show 1 stereo and 2 mono (the connected synched audio). So I have to step into the clip, break apart the audio and then turn it into a compound clip. Too many steps to create a subclip. There must be a better way.
Also, what I lose by doing this is the ability to slip and slide the media to points outside my in and out range without stepping into the compound clip two levels. I also lose the ability to matchframe to the original. I can live without these, but it’s worth mentioning.
The good news, Davinci Lite saw the footage from test sequences. X2Pro also exported an AAF. But I have no way of testing it’s integrity right now.
So, this way too complicated even though it produces the results I want. As far as I’m concerned, it’s back to square one. Anyone else?
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company -
I just got Resolve to export a new set of clips. It just seemed like too much effort in FCPX to do it just with metadata. I always figure that sometimes, no matter what NLE it is, you just hit a weak area and have to do some extra prep before the edit.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
One last thought… if you highlight a range, you can create a compound clip from that range and that child clip can have it’s own name, and metadata. you can also change the audio configuration any way you want in a child clip independently of the parent.
I’m not sure how well a project performs with large numbers of compound clips since 10.0.6 made changes for the better.. anyone tried pushing the updated FCPX to it’s compound clip limit?
~jeff K
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Tried that, too. Similar issue with the audio configuration. Instead of 1 stereo two mono separated out. It shows up as 3 linked clips comprising of 1 stereo and 2 mono. However, the stereo has no audio in it.
Ai yai yai.
Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company -
How about using Markers? Mark the start of each take in the clip. Then select your best takes as favorites. Create a Smart Collection and set the rules so the Favorites show up in the Smart Collection.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Michael Garber] “there are multiple clips for each scene (and not 1 clip per scene).”
[Michael Garber] “That means that I’d have to make new keywords for each clip and couldn’t use the standard 1, 2, 3. So the first clip would be Scene 101 and the keywords would be Take 1a, 1b, 1c. The second clip would be Scene 101 Take 2a, 2b, 2c, etc… By the end of the scene, I’d have over 50 separate takes (and thus 50 keywords).”
Actually, this method will still work, with only a minor change. You won’t need 50 different keywords because you can tag a single selection with multiple keywords.
Go back to your keyboard editor and give over a few of the shortcuts to keywords “a, b, c, ect.” like I have below.
Then, select your take and apply both the take number (take 01, 02…) and the sub take letter (a, b, c…) to the same selection. Then just modify your SCENE 01 smart collection to take the new letter keywords into consideration.
Now, all the clips which are meta tagged 01, and have any keyword applied will show up in that smart collection. One thing that may be confusing is that you’ll be working solely from the smart collections. The regular keyword collections are only for organization purposes and are unneeded. This is because they will store every Take 01, Take 02 for every scene. If you ever need to find all the first takes, this could be useful, but in all likelyhood, you won’t be organizing your edit that way. So because of that, I placed all the keyword collections into a folder called takes which I can close up to tidy up my event browser. Below you can see all the clips in my SCENE 01 smart collection. Note at the bottom that there is more than one source clip in this collection. You said that you had multiple clips for one scene. Well, I just meta-tagged the additional clip with scene 01 in the inspector, so when I started making my selects, the smart collection just gathered those takes as well.
I hope this helps.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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