Advice on organising large FCP7 project in FCPX using 7toX

[Jeremy Garchow]

The good thing is, it’s super easy and fast to clean things up in X. You can manipulate large swaths of clips very easily and quickly in X.

Every bin becomes a keyword collection.

A bin within a bin will have clips in two keyword collections.

A bin, within a bin, within a bin….you get it.

In list view, you can see how many keyword collections are on each clip. It will then be up to you to figure out which keyword collections to keep/rename/delete.

Every sequence comes in as a compound and are placed in a collection called fcp7 sequences. Very convenient, but they are all in that one collection. You can make folders in Event to further organize your compounds (or kw collections). Even some effects come over.

All media gets imported in to the Event, so make sure you have the drive space.

There will be some work to do, but I, personally, happen to like what 7toX does. With X’s powerful data handling, it’s a pretty good experience considering how different the NLEs are.

This is worth the read: https://assistedediting.intelligentassistance.com/7toX/about.html

Have you played with X much yet? Meaning, do you know how the keywords work?

[James Bayliss-smith]

Hey thanks for you reply. Yes I’ve played around a bit and I’m ready to take the plunge in transferring this project over. I’m just getting into the edit so my sequences are pretty short right now. I’m planning on getting a long rough cut done then getting an editor onboard to help me make a fine cut. I’m worried I may be limiting my options by using X as some editors may have not learnt it yet but I really want to use X as I like the magnetic timeline and especially the browser. Thanks for your comments

[Jeremy Garchow]

Have fun, and let us know how the transfer goes, good or bad.

I’d suggest using the “save XML option” instead of the send to fcpx option in 7toX. That way you have a record of what was done.

Also, give yourself some time as the import can take a little bit depending on the amount of footage. Even after the transfer, give it a minute to build waveforms and thumbnails.

As far as the fine cut, there’s always xto7 if you need it. 🙂

Jeremy

[Ben Scott]

large projects need large amount of RAM
8gb is bare minimum, 16gb is recomended
fast storage helps if you arent working proxy from my experience with 10 hours plus of footage

also its probably a good idea once the footage is across to X to ask it to make proxies and work with that workflow

dont think the issue was with PAL on that software, it got fixed in 2st few days according to the authors

as the clips come across with log notes and comments and these can refined using smart collections I would say thats a good way to tame the project, if you havent been using log notes then I reckon that the bins to keywords will work OK

I would also make sure if there has been a lot of prior editing on FCP7 then look into where the software isnt able to work e.g. motion projects, freeze frames, generators, variable speed changes, codecs/file workflows yet to be supported e.g. red R3ds
On those sections of the timelines I would mark them and add notes and then get fcp7 to export a batch list which you can import into excel or openoffice and print out a list of where the errors are going to occur
then I would decide if they need an export of those sections of the timeline to get a better translation

also it always good to have a guide quicktime, in fact essential for a reconform like this. that there is no way to gang your guide quicktime to the project in FCPX is a major flaw, only way I can think to check is set project to correct timecode, cut guide in correct place and then do a scale on that guide to use as a pseudo guide

I would say for the Motion 4 projects I would try and get them across as fcpx effects/generators if this makes sense as you can then keep refining them in FCPX and motion 5

let us know how you get on, be interesting for lots of people to know I think

from ben

[Jeremy Garchow]

Just to follow up with this.

I heard from the 7toX team and if you save an FCPXML of the project (instead of sending) and choose to import the XML, FCPX will honor the import settings in the X prefs.

This means that if you don’t have “Copy media to Event” checked to any of the transcode options, your media should come in aliased to the original media which will save you some copy time.

Jeremy