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How do I copy speed attributes from one sequence to another and ripple the rest of the sequence thereafter to maintain correct duration
I’m working on Final Cut Pro 7 on a Lion 10.7.4 on an early 2011 Macbook Pro
I am at the final stages of a project that has been sent to be colour graded and and now has arrived back at my desk. The sequence I sent and have received back (now graded) was altered such that it was compatible with the da vinci software they were using.
The alterations meant removing all speed changes and time remapping, which therefore alters the duration and timing of the film; knocking dialogue, sound and music out of sync. This was fine and I anticipated it because I knew I could just re-apply the speed changes when the sequence got back but there’s now a problem where pasting the speed attribute from an old sequence with the correctly altered speed over to the new sequence causes the clip I’m applying the change to, to correctly change speed but not duration. The clip should be at 54% speed but should also now be significantly longer from having its speed reduced. I need to be able to apply speed changes like this one and have the rest of the sequence shuffle forward down the timeline to accomodate the extra time this clip should now take.
Anyone know how to achieve this rippling effect and also have clips change duration in addition to speed when attributes are copied over.
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4 Replies
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Hi Jimmy
If when you change the speed of the clip you also make sure that the ripple sequence box is checked – you should find everything moves down to the correct duration as well as speed.
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Hi Neil, and thank you for the detailed explanation with screenshots. Unfortunately, I’m attempting to copy the speed attributes of one timeline’s clips to another rather than individually changing the speed of the clips, which means there is no checkbox for rippling the sequence as seen above.
Perhaps if I explain the reason for this though you might be able to help me and it won’t be necessary to work this way. I could just look at the value in the speed field of the motion tab in a clips properties, and enter that exact same value in to the clip on the timeline who’s speed I wish to change however I don’t do this because whenever I do, in any final cut project I’ve ever worked on, the speed I type is not the speed I get and sometimes it’s even different enough that the clip duration is not the same. For some reason, Final Cut seems to interpret my desired speed value to an approximation of variable accuracy but never exactly what I ask for. There seems to be no way that I’ve ever seen of correcting this behaviour and it wreaks havoc on a timeline that has been cut specifically and precisely with speed changes in mind because the differing speed values between timelines means that at best the clip looks wrong because the speed is not the same, but it’s close enough that the duration is unaffected, or the approximation that Final Cut comes up with is so different to what I type that the clip is now an actual different number of frames in length, which is a massive disaster.
As it happens and in the mean time I’ve worked around the issue by just living with the problem I described above. The difference was minimal and the approximations very close, the shots themselves were of the frame a few seconds after the subject has exited frame and I simply wanted to extend these shots to linger for slightly longer after the subject leaves before cutting to the next shot, because the content of the clips is therefore basically an image background with no action and no camera movement, the effect of the imprecise changes in speed duraiton isn’t really a big deal, but in future I mightn’t be so lucky.
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Hi Jimmy
yes I see your issue – I had thought that you could copy the speed attribute then check the box making the clip longer. However now that I have actually tried that it does not work of course. – Kinda silly of me to imagine it would. Teach me to say something while not actually in front of my machine. – Apologies.
I too see odd speeds happening, where you input say 49% and it becomes 49.08% or something slightly random. Speed changes were never FCPs strongpoint.I guess maybe the way to do it is the old school method of baking the slomo shots so they become “standard” QT files again. Not that that helps with your current situation.
I did not realise there was an incompatibility with speed changes. It was the same with older versions of Color and not until FCP V7.03 and Color 1.5.3 that was finally fixed and speed changes were translated correctly.
Hope you managed to get through it.
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Ah, so you don’t know how or why Final Cut won’t respect the user’s decisions regarding speed either? That’s a shame, yesI am glad I got through it too. It seems to me that even now the speed changes are not friendly with Color though they’re supposed to be. On another project I worked on, graded in Color, there were multiple shots only 3-6 frames in length sped up significantly and these seemed to confuse Color to no end.
As far as Da Vinci is concerned, I’ve never used the software but the grader told me that it was actually a recent upgrade which broke its ability to deal with speed changes which implies that it handled them fine before. Very odd, surprised they’d release an update that does something like that really.
I hope that one golden day, grading software will play nicely with editing software or better still, the tools available within edit software will be of a standard high enough to compete with the standalone packages.
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