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All the little things that I miss in Fcpx – that become a big deal
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Mauricio said, “I’m about to edit a low budget short
as a favour and it so happens they had a problem with the rental company
and so couldn’t get the gear to jamsync camera and sound,
and no sound was recorded on camera, so I’m left with an old-fashioned
manual sync on my hands; and although you could do this
without laying clips on the timeline, it is easier to check and perfect sync
if you do ( for instance nudging clips by subframe increments and such)
and may come in handy for delivering viewing dailies kemrolls.”Mauricio, there is a simple way to sync your cameras and audio. You have to use markers to do it. It takes a little longer but it works. In FCP X there is a multicamera view which is like a sync map but more powerful. In each of your video and audio clips add a marker where your clap is. Create a new multicam clip according to marker placement. Double clip on your multicam clip and it will open up in the multicam clip viewer. The markers will get you 99 percent there. This is where you can see your wave forms and nudge your clips into sync. This view is your sync map. So yes, FCP X can do that.
I did not think Ronny was condescending at all.
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I forgot this tip. Since you don’t have waveforms on your video you can’t see where they match. Select either your audio or video clip and while you play it you can nudge it and hear where they match. You may have to shorten one of them so you have room to nudge it.
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I use the spherico VCC app when I need to import footage that was originally captured on tape and has since been converted to QT’s and stored on a drive. VCC works well and fools X into thinking the QT movie is a camera card confering the benefits of being able to select a range or multiple ranges inside the QT movie for import as if it were a camera card.
This little app has saved me from brain damage caused by banging my head against the wall realising that I need to import 2 hrs of QT movie from an archival tape just to be able to get the 5 minutes of footage I want… -
[Mauricio Lleras] ” finding the playhead in filmstrip mode can be a nightmare. When you matchframe to an event full of clips it sometimes is nearly impossible to tell which clip you’ve matchframed to and where the playhead sits…”
Just enable Skimmer Info (CTRL+Y), then nudge the skimmer one frame with K+J or K+L. You’ll immediately see where it is. I always have Skimmer Info enabled, so this makes it easy to visually acquire it in the browser after matching frames.
Another tip: How to find your place when scrolling through a long list of thumbnails. Say you were looking at a clip, then did something else, then want to go back to your previous thumbnail in the browser. You don’t want to scroll up and down looking for it. You don’t want to do a filtered search which only shows the query results. You want a bookmark that jumps to your clip’s spatial location amid an ocean of clip thumbnails.
The easy solution: use markers. They not only work on the timeline, they can also act as a positional bookmark for clips in the browser. You can apply them to clips, do something else, then jump back to the marker you left. The marked clip will be shown in context in the browser with the adjacent clips before/after it. You can also step forward and backward to the prev/next markers, which could be on other clips.
Keyboard commands for markers:
M: create marker at current skimmer location on current clip in the browser
CTRL+M: delete marker at current skimmer location
CTRL+’ (apostrophe): Jump to next marker in browser
CTRL+; (semicolon): Jump to previous marker in browser
SHFT+M: Modify current marker. You can name it or make it a red “to do” marker -
[Ronny Courtens] “Option to easily relink proxies.
If you want this for remote editing with proxies, you never should have a need for relinking if your workflow is correct.”
My doc team uses a proxy-only distributed workflow extensively but it is a hassle. The proxy system is very fragile and clips can easily go off line permanently, which shuts down production. Here’s one way it can happen. The current proxy system requires the volume name remain unchanged. In a distributed workflow, the AE preps proxy-only data and ships a portable drive to the lead editor. Then another set of data flows in, proxies generated, and *that* drive is shipped to the editor. But both drives (by necessity) have the same name. If they are both plugged in, Finder shows two drives with the same name. Internally macOS appends a “uniquifier”. If the computer is rebooted and the drives come on line in a different sequence the proxies will fail, sometimes permanently.
Internally FCPX is apparently storing within the library the volume name when the proxies were made. Within the SQL tables ZCOLLECTION and ZCOLLECTIONMD this name is associated with each row set corresponding to a proxy file.
If the volume name differs, the proxies will be off line. In some cases renaming the drive to the original name will *not* restore the proxies — IOW they can become permanently off line. In this case even the “proxy cheat” method of recreating the symlinks by copying in Finder aliases won’t fix it.
FCPX proxy management differs starkly from regular media management, which is superb. Regular media management (within a given volume) is so resilient you can shut down FCPX, rename every media file, move each media file to a different collection, go inside the library and manually delete all symlinks, start FCPX and it will find each file and rebuild each symlink to the new location. FCPX apparently stores the inode of each file and uses that as a backup location method to rebuild the symlinks. Unfortunately this doesn’t work for proxies.
Inodes are only unique within a volume, so it’s understandable why media must be relinked when moving to a different volume name. However there is no relink provided for proxies.
Proxies have inodes like regular files, so it’s unclear why that functionality was not provided. Possible reason: When user-specified external storage locations were added in 10.1.2, this also included proxies. Up to that time the assumption was proxies were always inside the library, and the SQL table schema was probably designed around that. IOW the original design did not envision ever having to relink proxies, so it’s possible the SQL schema did not store proxy inodes or other info required for a relink. To avoid a schema redesign (which has various implementation and test issues), they just didn’t implement inode lookup or relink for proxies.
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I guess I’ll jump in with my short list:
1. Separate audio roles in a polyphonic file into discrete roles to be worked on like a track (for filters and such)
2. Batch export frames at markers with a certain tag
3. Markers stay when making a compound clip
4. Collapse roles into a discrete compound-clip-like track
5. Saveable export information presets (Description, Creator, and Tags)
6. Reconnecting of plugins as well (so we don’t need X-FX Handler)
7. Keyboard Shortcut for original/ optimized and proxy playback
8. Add multiple clips to the timeline in the same place (like audio) so they stack rather than insert
9. Ability to turn off offline items with one button like disabling roles. Particlarly important when titles or generators are offline , but they’re in the way of the frame below.
10. A hold feature at
11. the the beginning and end of the Ken Burns effect so you don’t have to keep adding/modifying a freeze frame after the edit.
12. Duplicate x amount of times sub menu so you can create several duplicates of projects with one click – great for prepping for reels to go to ProTools
13. Display export as time remaining instead of just percentage.
14. The ability to choose fonts from a font collection like in Motion
15. Transfer text in generators via XML
16. Work on chat text titles without frame moving up, or a way for the video clip to not move.
17. Visual marker (like lines or something) on a compound clip to show where the edits are inside the clip (useful for doing sound cues on the main storyline rather than inside the compound clip)
18. Built in LTC converter (for using things like Tentacle Sync devices)
19. Batch syncing
20. Display storage/space for projects, not just events and libraries. Helpful when telling someone how much space they’d need jsut for a copy of the project and it’s elements.
21. IGTV preset (actually this is for Compressor) as it stands I can only make IGTV video in FCP X from wide-screen formats.
22. Incorporate Motion behaviors
23. More keyframe smoothing options
24. Speed ramping the FCP 7 way
25. Make the basic title generator more like Alex 4D version where you can adjust carriage returns by dragging border handles.
26. Allow copy/pasting of custom generator attributes
27. Allow applying paramater values to multiple generators of the same type at once.
28. Ability to sort events (by creation date, alphabetical, or numerically)
29. Ability to keyframe the tracking of the Custom text generator
30. Select all clips of a role type and elevate them above other clips with a command key combination (like lifting all titles above adjustment layer) -
[Joe Marler] “[Mauricio Lleras] ” finding the playhead in filmstrip mode can be a nightmare. When you matchframe to an event full of clips it sometimes is nearly impossible to tell which clip you’ve matchframed to and where the playhead sits…”
Just enable Skimmer Info (CTRL+Y), then nudge the skimmer one frame with K+J or K+L. You’ll immediately see where it is. I always have Skimmer Info enabled, so this makes it easy to visually acquire it in the browser after matching frames.
Another tip: How to find your place when scrolling through a long list of thumbnails. Say you were looking at a clip, then did something else, then want to go back to your previous thumbnail in the browser. You don’t want to scroll up and down looking for it. You don’t want to do a filtered search which only shows the query results. You want a bookmark that jumps to your clip’s spatial location amid an ocean of clip thumbnails.
The easy solution: use markers. They not only work on the timeline, they can also act as a positional bookmark for clips in the browser. You can apply them to clips, do something else, then jump back to the marker you left. The marked clip will be shown in context in the browser with the adjacent clips before/after it. You can also step forward and backward to the prev/next markers, which could be on other clips.
Keyboard commands for markers:
M: create marker at current skimmer location on current clip in the browser
CTRL+M: delete marker at current skimmer location
CTRL+’ (apostrophe): Jump to next marker in browser
CTRL+; (semicolon): Jump to previous marker in browser
SHFT+M: Modify current marker. You can name it or make it a red “to do” marker”The essence of the view difference between X editors.
One focused on how X should do more of what *I* prefer.
Another focused on gaining a deeper understanding of what it actually does and how that can be leveraged for better results.Certainly doesn’t address “everything” people would like X to do differently. But I think it’s a great example of the “half full verses half empty” split in individuals approach to the software.
Thanks Joe. Another very nice contribution to the canon, IMO.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Well Bill, I beg to differ.
Although Joe’s tips are certainly welcome,
they are more kind of workarounds around
what seems to me a poor UI implementation
that is unintuitive and contrary to most of the FCPX experience.
It is not that I wish it to be more like Avid or Premiere or Fcp 7,
on the contrary, it’s that I want it to be better in the way it works.
In this precise example it seems to me it wouldn’t be
difficult to implement a more visible playhead,
to have a clip highlighted or better yet
occupy the first position in the clips in the browser when matchframed to,
or even be the only clip that shows for a moment after the matchframe…
Seems there could be many ways to enhance the user experience in that regard,
simple ways to make an already intuitive UI even more intuitive
for EVERY user right of the bat, not just me…And the same things could be argued about most of the points I raised.
There are many little enhancements FCPX could get
that would make the experience so much better for most users.Oh, but I keep forgetting, instead of listening and thinking about
how we could all help FCPX get better,
you seem to only be able to hear criticism as some kind of strange personal attack
and seem unable to get passed it…Well, hopefully FCPX engineers will listen a little
and make some enhancements over time for all the editors
that use and love the program but keep wishing
it got better.And yes, I have sent feedback.
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[Ronny Courtens] “Disagree. All clips inside the synched clip keep their metadata. It is impossible to port these data over to the synched clip level because you will have multiple values and possibly conflicts.”
Ronny, I get your point, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard to imagine
a way of resolving such conflicts.
There could for instance be a window asking you
which metadata you wish to be ported to the sync clip level.
Or a special command to extract a given set of metadata (such as scene and take info)
out of the sound clips and into the synced ones.
Would be a useful feature.
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