Advice on docu workflow with SD tape footage, FCPX or not?

[Bill Davis]

Sorry, Maruicio.

I’m moving and my world is in boxes right now. We had a suburban acre with 3 buildings including my dedicated studio and a guest house – but my wife and I got tired of all the upkeep and maintenance hassles.

And as I noted in another thread, technology has changed the rules for video production. My dedicated studio control room had nearly 90 edison outlets around my edit position to plug everything in. Now my edit rig uses ONE quad outlet with ONE 6 position power strip – period. Times are changing.

I started writing that long post during a break, but then the storage POD transport truck arrived and I had to break off. I’d written a long post, but never had time to proofread it or make sure it said what I wanted it to. But in my haste, I hit POST before I wanted to. So I killed it and posted a quickie that didn’t need proofing.

Sorry for the confusion.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Mauricio Lleras]

No worries Bill, and thanks again for your replies

[Mauricio Lleras]

Hey Jim,
your approach seems pretty good
if your finishing in HD.
So now that you’ve done some tests
how are you finding Media Express?
I wonder how much you can organize your footage there
in a way that translates to FCPX,
can you send out xml’s?
Or can you create folders inside the app
that reflect on the finder so you could
then import them into FCPX and get them as keyword collections?
I haven’t had the chance to look at it myself,
so sorry if the questions seem a bit simple,
just wondering what I’ll be able to do with the software.

[Mauricio Lleras]

Thanks to all for your answers.
It’s a pity though that few of them addressed directly my initial questions,
so I’ll sum them up again in hope someone wants to chime in.
– How are you finding FCPX’s general performance
with longer projects these days? This worries me the most,
as I’ve seen a lot of mixed feelings about this.
– Has anybody had any issues working with SD material in FCPX?
If so, what were they?
– Has anybody used Media Express for capturing
and then going to FCPX? Any recommendations
for logging or tips for getting the most out of the app?
Or would you feel a more sensible workflow
would be to go with an NLE that can capture from tape?
Avid? Premiere? What are your preferences?
I for one have done a lot of these workflows with FCP7
so it would be an easy way for me,
but would really like to try FCPX.
I’m thinking capturing and doing a first level of organizing
inside FCP7 and then sending an xml of the whole project
through 7toX might be an interesting option,
so I’d get bins and notes logged during capture
translated into FCPX.
That would be fine if we proceed to capture all the material from the beginning,
as opposed to bits here and there…
I also ask about Premiere because I have yet to try it
but been following it also and getting a pretty good impression so far.

Again, looking for thoughts from people having had similar workflows.
I’m not particularly worried,
I think it will be pretty straightforward
regardless of the NLE I choose in the end,
just wanted to get a general feel
of what people thought on using FCPX in a project like this one.

Thanks again!

[Craig Alan]

I’ve never done anything on the scale that you are tackling. But I’ve had good luck using a KI PRO to copy the tapes onto hard drives which records in ProRes. I do loose clip devisions since it records them as a single capture. I began the practice because our canon cams (at the time) were hit or miss in terms of the Macs seeing them using firewire 800.

One advantage is u can continue to use the computer since the capture now is done with a different device and is completely ready for the NLE when finished.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Bill Davis]

A – X does just fine with long projects. Sure if you have a TON of material, you want a robust hardware configuration to support that – just as with any other system.

B – It’s super easy to go from tape into X. Just get a digitizer. I’ve used the simple Black Magic Video Recorder unit that costs under $200 and have gotten great results inside FCP X directlly to h-264. The resulting files look excellent – provided of course your source deck is putting out a clean signal. If you have very old tapes or similarly wonky sources – you need to do exactly what you’ve always done. Clean up the signal to the best extent possible. That might mean a full frame TBC or frame shaker in the path – or it might mean keeping multiple source decks around to see what “reads” the old tapes best. If you want to use a different digitizer to go directly to ProRes or another codec, that’s easy as well. One way or the other, you need to digitize your tapes. But it’s just not that hard a lift.

C – I can’t think of a SINGLE benefit to putting another NLE in your workflow other than perhaps on the export side where doing something like working through Resolve for color or as a bridge to another NLE that someone must work with downstream. Workflows based on finder folders manipulation is part of what X blew up when it centered the NLE on a database. Yes, it’s still a part of good practices if you are working with others in a network environment and who need to maintain finder/folder systems for collaboration – and that’s legit – but when you’re in X, non-network accessible folders are dead to the system – ALL that X sees are the smart collections and keywords etc. inside its internal database. If you’ll be working with a larger SAN or NAS topology with multiple users- fine. But without that, if you work with other X people – you’ll just be sharing your structured databases and desktop folders become largely unnecessary. So why mess with them? I’d personally rather use that time for better database organization.

Generally, X’s greatest strength is its ability to precision define ranges and attach instant-recall keywords to the results.That works directly with the magnetic timeline to let the editor call those pre-trimmed ranges directly to the playhead – instantly – so they can be magnetically assembled and simply re-ordered with all their vertical magnetic connections intact.

Anything that diverts too much of your attention from THAT system is a waste of time in a non-networked environment, IMO. And working in other software and messing over much with folders on your local desktop is precisely that – a diversion from getting the work done in X that most benefits you while working in X.

Others may disagree, but that’s my 2 cents.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Steve Connor]

[Bill Davis] “A – X does just fine with long projects. Sure if you have a TON of material, you want a robust hardware configuration to support that – just as with any other system.”

It does OK with big projects, it does struggle with long timelines

[Jim Wiseman]

Mauricio, I have used the ProRes files generated in MediaExpress in FCPX and they work fine. I have only created folders to export them to and moved them to FCPX where they were automatically assigned roles. I have put them on a timeline and they behave normally. I used MediaExpress software instead of FCPX for capture to ProRes 422 and HQ (test) as it is specifically designed to interface with the Blackmagic Teranex 2D and also the Ultrastudio 4K I have. This was using SDI out from the Panasonic DVCPro 650 VTR. FCPX seemed to me to be more of a file based acquisition program, and I have used it to bring in the EX-1 1080 HD and the Nikon HD files as ProRes 422. Those are also playing well with the tape based SD uprezed video I have tested. FCPX also plays quite well with SD footage on an SD timeline if you choose to go that route. That is about all I can tell you at the moment. Best of luck, let us know how it works for you.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.2, Final Cut Studio 2 & 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC: Mid 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 15″: 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500: Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro Retina 2015, i7, 500GB, M370X 2GB: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems

[Robin S. kurz]

[Steve Connor] “it does struggle with long timelines”

How do you define “long”. My current timeline is around 1:40:00 at the moment and growing, coming from an event with around 40hrs. of material and I have no (speed) issues whatsoever.

– RK

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[Craig Alan]

[Bill Davis] “B – It’s super easy to go from tape into X. Just get a digitizer. I’ve used the simple Black Magic Video Recorder unit that costs under $200 and have gotten great results inside FCP X directlly to h-264. “

Do you really want to ingest SD DV to H264? I understand that for export if that is the requested codec on a site.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.