-
a proper “finishing” tool to compliment FCP…
General discussion —
So, I just worked on a music video and came across what I feel are serious limits of using FCP as a finishing tool:
-inability to render filters in 10-bit or higher
-animated masks are effectively useless
-lack of automated application of filters in timeline (i.e. “copy to all clips from same reel”)…among others. Are there any thoughts on tools better able to take advantage of the Blackmagic/AJA/Apple hardware platform for finishing SD/HD?
-
11 Replies
-
If you need a better color correction tool, then Final Touch HD is out there. We use it on HD broadcast work.
For using high quality animated mattes, After Effects is what I use.
As for placing filters, I generally use the Copy and Paste Attributes command. Simply copy the first clip that has the filter, then select all the clips you want to apply the filter to and Paste Attributes > Filters.
Or simply make the filter a Favorite. Highlight all the clips you want to apply it to and drag the filter down onto one of the clips. It will be applied to all of them.
I’ve been finishing with FCP over four years now and haven’t had any issues with our work being rejected by clients or network quality control in both SD and HD. Are you just looking for a faster workflow?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
-
[Bob Roberts] “-inability to render filters in 10-bit or higher”
I have done this more than once. How are you doing this? Creating a 10-bit sequence (either SD or HD) then dropping your cut into it and rendering? That is how I do it and it works fine. I have to resize to fit the sequence settings, but that is an option under the SEQUENCE menu, so that is easy.
[Bob Roberts] “animated masks are effectively useless”
Again…how so? What are you doing that makes these not work for you. I use the 8 point garbage matte and keyframe it on occassion, and it works fine for me.
[Bob Roberts] “-lack of automated application of filters in timeline (i.e. “copy to all clips from same reel”)”
It’s there. Click on the clip with the filters on it that you want to put on all the other clips. Hit APPLE-C for COPY (or EDIT menu, COPY). Highlight all the rest of the clips you want these filters to go onto and hit OPTION-V. A dialogue box will appear. Select FILTERS and all the filters will transfer to the other clips.
[Bob Roberts] “Are there any thoughts on tools better able to take advantage of the Blackmagic/AJA/Apple hardware platform for finishing SD/HD?”
Can you give us specifics? Because Walter Biscardi finishes all the time in FCP, I finish on occassion, and there are a good dozen post houses in LA that are entirely FCP based that finish DV all the way up to 4:4:4 Uncompressed HD to HDCAM SR.
Shane
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net -
wait a second.
I thought the color corrector could render up to 32-bit high precision?
there’s a preference in fcp for setting it to render everything at 8, 10 or 32 bit.
is this not so? that setting is terribly misleading if it is.
alot of the “DVE” kind of things in FCP are garbage and I wish there
was a way to turn them off so they were not even an option to see.Thank god they bundled Boris 3D titler. that stock title is useless.
-
Sure, let me give you a specific example…
I want to color correct and use the 55mm Skin Smoother filter on the face of a young woman in a 10-bit project. My understanding is that anytime Final Cut does an effect/filter, the element is rendered down to 8-bit. In critical areas, such as skin smoothing, the difference between 8-bit & 10-bit is perceptible. As a result, for certain shots, I have to kick out to AE, do the correction/filter and bring the clip back in as 10-bit. Is that such a huge deal breaker? Ofcourse not. But when you have 60-70, 10-60 frame clips it becomes a serious PITB. So then, the best option is to do a FCP>AutomaticDuck>AE>FCP trip. My biggest gripe is that you end up dealing in all these different environments for a seemingly relatively simple set of tasks.
Next, since I don’t want to “skin smooth” the whole frame I’d like to make a mask for her face…a face that’s singing a song and jumping around, etc. Try doing that with the 4-point or 8-point tool in FCP. Not going to happen. Enter Silhouette Roto/Paint. Yet another $600 environment for a relatively simple task.
Finally, I use COPY>PASTE ATTRIBUTES all the time. But when you have a piece with 300 clips in the space of 4 minutes, manually selecting becomes painful. A simple “select by property” function would be such a timesaver.
Am I asking a lot? Yes. But as I find myself getting into more advanced stages of FCP I run into walls where I feel like I’m wasting time and energy doing simple/repetitive tasks better left to droids. I guess in my mind what I want is a “distributed render capable Final Touch-meets-Combustion program based on XML and built on Blackmagic/AJA/Apple.”
Put my name on the preorder list.
-
p.s. I’m keeping my eye on what they are doing with the Media100/BorisFX/Red/Blue mashup…I think they are moving in the right direction.
-
[Bob Roberts] ” My understanding is that anytime Final Cut does an effect/filter, the element is rendered down to 8-bi”
Can somebody please confirm whether this is true or not.
-
It depends if the filter is 8bit or 16bit/float. The FCP 3way CC is float, so your image will then drop to 10bit without downsampling to 8bit. I assume that all of the FCP plug-ins are float (I only really use the CC). If you are running a 3rd party plug-in, there is a good chance that it is 8bit only, especially if it is an AE plug-in (I don’t think 16bit AE plug-ins work in FCP, but I could be wrong.).
As for finishing, you have found the missing piece in the desktop puzzle. There is no good solution like smoke when it comes to serious client supervised finishing. We have a smoke on a quad SGI Tezro for finishing, and a second SGI running flame to help knock out effects shots. The beauty of smoke is that it is a fantastic editor with flame’s effects tools for tracking , cutting mattes, 3D, etc.
We have finished some jobs in FCP, but these are usually design/effectts intensive conforms which are already “finished” in After Effects. Conforming most live action spots is done in smoke. FinalTouch is an amazing tool which has come a long way. We have been really testing it out hard with DVCProHD 24p, since this is a format smoke currently can not deal with in our pipeline. It potentially could be a great finishing tool and compositor. In it’s current state it would have definitely helped you out on your job, since it can track b-splines on secondaries or effects like blurs, and keep chugging away in realtime. It’s definitely a lot more limited than smoke, but far better than FCP.
-Matt Silverman
Phoenix Edit
SF -
Yes all 3rd party AE filters will only work in 8 bit also I’ve seen a couple of people report that choosing any composite mode other than “Normal” will drop processing down to 8 bit although I haven’t tested it myself.
Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps
NEW! BigTIme – resizable timecode display for FCP -
[Bob Roberts] ”
I want to color correct and use the 55mm Skin Smoother filter on the face of a young woman in a 10-bit project. My understanding is that anytime Final Cut does an effect/filter, the element is rendered down to 8-bit. In critical areas, such as skin smoothing, the difference between 8-bit & 10-bit is perceptible. As a result, for certain shots, I have to kick out to AE, do the correction/filter and bring the clip back in as 10-bit. Is that such a huge deal breaker? Ofcourse not. But when you have 60-70, 10-60 frame clips it becomes a serious PITB. So then, the best option is to do a FCP>AutomaticDuck>AE>FCP trip. My biggest gripe is that you end up dealing in all these different environments for a seemingly relatively simple set of tasks.Next, since I don’t want to “skin smooth” the whole frame I’d like to make a mask for her face…a face that’s singing a song and jumping around, etc. Try doing that with the 4-point or 8-point tool in FCP. Not going to happen. Enter Silhouette Roto/Paint. Yet another $600 environment for a relatively simple task.”
For high end color correction and masking of the face, Final Touch HD is the way you want to go. You send your entire timeline to FT, do your color correction and color FX (smoothing, glows, rotoscoping, etc….) then send the CC’d timeline back to FCP. Color correction in FCP is very good, but if you want to go to the next level, nothing beats 8 secondaries and the Color FX room in FT.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
-
there was a fairly lengthy thread in the FCP-L over at yahoo
https://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/FinalCutPro-L/it was back in April, & went by the name of:
“So I guess 10-bit is basically useless in FCP?”various people testing and reporting back
if that link doesn’t work, do a search.
cheers,
nick
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up