5D mark ii workflow in FCPX (proxy editing?)

[Claude Lyneis]

It is a real challenge to use FCPX on an old computer. You need all the RAM you can get. The other problem is the video cards can’t handle the native H.264. I gave up on my iMac7,1 and went to a new 27″ iMac with 8 GB of RAM. Life is easier now.

Not sure on the 422 question though. I would try a very short part of your project to see if it is feasible, before getting to far in. My first project on my old iMac was nerve racking because of all the crashes.

What about getting a 500 GB portable drive to help with the project?

[Chris Frantz]

There are a bunch of options for you. Best would be to just get the necessary HD space, convert to prores and be done with it. Besides that, you could cut h.264, export to compressor, render the clips individually, relink in your original “project” (or maybe in your event) to the rendered prores, then grade if you’re doing the grade in fcpx. That way you’re only rendering what you need in the final cut, and saving on disk space.

[Jim Giberti]

[greg buick] “The problem is, this will use an obscene amount of hard drive space and take about 30 years on my old laptop.

most of the material will not make the edit of the final film and it seems like a shame to have a hard drive full of unused prores files.
“

Greg you’re a prime candidate for my “FInder Selex” technique, something that’s allowed for with X and while it isn’t as precise as log and capture in limiting files size, will probably help a lot.

We shoot a lot of multiple angles (5DIIs) and do a lot of outdoor action coverage for TV spots and promo films. We don’t archive the disks but instead just dump them into folders and usually do a first pass immediately, finding keepers and naming them.

Anything that gets a name then gets separated into actors or scenes and put into folders i.e., Zeke Keepers, Tara Keepers, Pete Keepers, they then get brought into X keeping the folders as automatic keyword collections to start the editing process.

In other words, if your concern is that the most of the footage won’t make the edit, then do your first or second selex pass before you get to the program and then just import your selex folders. We do it all the time, the file based 5DII footage is perfect for that with X just using OSX Quick Look.

Now, everything that’s in your event browser is already organized in a first round of keywording AND it’s in the small h.264 files size.

Now as you build your edit (no color correcting, filters or transitions) and you lock in your footage, you can right click the clips that you are going to use and transcode just those clips directly in the Event Browser. You’ll end up with just the clips you use, transcoded in Pro Res and ready for real editing.

You don’t even want to think about working with h.264 in the timeline. The Pro Res footage will make your system happy and make for much better color correcting etc.

Hope this helps.

Jim

[Paul Golden]

The Proxy/Online workflow is something that Apple had working well in FCP 7 with Log and Transfer, so its not as though this is a novel problem or approach. They had a very good workflow for re-digitising select material after Proxy material had been selected (including handles). This workflow dates back to offline/online practices in videotape (remember that?) where editors did not have D1 machines at their disposal for a rough cut.

The Log and Transfer Proxy/HiRes workflow treated each Media Card cloned as a .dmg file as a separate “reel” (virtual hard drive) which could be recalled for the purpose of digitizing just the media required for the finished cut. This is an efficient use of disk space and system overhead. Why bother bringing tons of high res garbage into your system when low res garbage will do?

Apple has (seemingly) taken the position that disk space is infinite and there’s no problem creating reams of high resolution media and populating your endless drivespace when you first ingest the project.

As we all know, Apple will allow you to cut with H264 media, even though its a less than satisfactory experience. You could choose not to create either HiRes or Proxy media and cut this way, but I don’t recommend that.

[James Taylor]

When you import the media just select proxy (no optimized media). Go into preferences and change Playback to use proxy media. As you select footage to use, make sure you mark it as a favorite. When you are done, do a search/filter for just the favorite footage. Now you can select all those clips and Transcode Media. When you are done with that, make sure to set your preferences back to optimized media. If you try to export your movie without changing back, it will use the proxy files instead of the optimized media.

Is there any reason this workflow wouldn’t work?

JT