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An editor learns to love X
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Understood.
I get that it’s not just annoying, it’s downright unsettling to think about revising wholesale workflow patterns that have been successful in the past.
As you note, if you’re dealing with whole tapes, X is really no different than any other software as to how that happens. Insert tape, hit Create Archive – remove tape at the end of capture. Backup the Archive – done. Nothing more to do. And you are then set to make as many digital clones as needed so you never have to worry about re-capture. Those files can then get imported in to a X volume on a SAN or NAS as needed. It’s pretty easy today.
As to deck control, X again works kinda like anything else. You can usually control via Firewire or Thunderbolt. Patrick Southern and Darren Rourke did it for the OJ doc and said that at the end of the day – it wasn’t that big a deal at all.
That, of course, means somebody has to set up a proper workflow – and of course, there are way more people who know how to do this in 7, than understand it in X – but it seems like it’s being done elsewhere pretty regularly now.
I think I remember offering (if you’re interested) to spend a little time with you if you ever want to get to know X better. I’m probably going to come out to LA for the next FCPExchange workshop in March. If you want to sit down and talk X at any point, just let me know. Or not. There are lots of other people around today that could help as well.
Honestly, the X system is NOT that hard to learn if you have decent guidance. And an interest.
FWIW.
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.
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[Robin S. Kurz] “… says it all. Spot on. Mainly because it reflects pretty much exactly what I and 99% of the people I know that actually LEARNED X have said many times over.”
Sure seems obvious to me. I wonder if there is a division amongst editors that have to dig through a lot of material versus those that don’t.
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[Robin S. Kurz] “More and more I’ve been able to concentrate on storytelling, without worrying about pesky things like tracks or what bin a particular clip is in”
This is the key phrase for me too.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Bill, have you used a thunderbolt-firewire adapter to connect firewire devices into a modern mac? The last couple of gens of Macs I had a lot of problems getting certain devices to show up on our Macs. Canon Cams were really hit or miss (canon used a slightly different standard than others for firewire). What I do for tape is use a AJA Ki Pro. It transcodes it to Pro Res 422 onto a drive, which could be used like any external drive. But you loose stop start detection – aka clips. You can also connect the Ki Pro to a monitor to see the footage you are capturing.
A nice benefit is you can continue to work on other edits.
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.
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With the exception of firewire, FCPX cannot capture from tape.
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Craig,
For an old project I’m running a bunch of old Hi-8 and Digital 8 tapes into X right now. The camcorder I’m using (DCR-TRV310) has 4-pin Firewire out. I have a 4pin to Firewire 800 cable. That Cable plugs into a standard Firewire 800 to Thundrebolt to Apple adaptor and directly into my laptop.
Capturing to h.264 via a BlackMagic Video recorder.
The resulting digitizations look great and have no visual problems at all – other than what you’d expect coming off older era tape – which is to say stuff like some “bottom of the raster tearing” if the tapes weren’t stored perfectly and there are tape edge tracking issues. But the rasters are being digitized FAITHFULLY.
I just crop the edges a bit during the import stages and end up with a perfectly fine image that I’d happily matt into a modern program without hesitation. Colors are as good as viewing the tapes directly, and since the original tape rasters are just 720×540 – there’s nothing I can do about that now.Basically SD NTSC signals are pretty small and not very high rez. So digitizing them with basic tools like these seems to have more than enough signal bandwidth to do it quite faithfully.
I had that long discussion some months back about whether there’s any sense in transcoding 25Mbps vanilla DV (or VHS!) sources to a mezzanine codec with more resolution as an interim stage – and after talking to Adam Wilt and others who specialize in the technical aspects of digital signals – came to the firm conclusion that the signal loss of the original storage medium is such that running the signals through larger pipes or trying to keep them in more robust intermediate codecs just doesn’t get you a visual improvement. Period.
Thinking that way seems to be chasing an idea that comes from back when preserving signal quality during dubbing was an analog adventure and it was CRITICAL to keep everything in the chain perfect.
I spent years in master controls where engineers with precision calibrated monitors preached that everything needed $10,000 decks and TBCs to be “professional” – and now it just doesn’t. Today, even the cheapest digital stuff seems to grab everything the SIGNAL needs to preserve useful fidelity – so my thinking has changed.
FWIW
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.
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[Bill Davis] “As you note, if you’re dealing with whole tapes, X is really no different than any other software as to how that happens. Insert tape, hit Create Archive – remove tape at the end of capture. Backup the Archive – done.”
Wait…FCX can capture tape that’s non-firewire based? So I can connect my J-3 to my AJA IoXT and that via thunderbolt, and hardware upconvert that tape to 1080i…and use FCX to capture that? If so, that’s news! I thought that FCX was firewire only….DV and HDV (DVCPROHD too?).
[Bill Davis] “As to deck control, X again works kinda like anything else. You can usually control via Firewire or Thunderbolt. “
No…these decks aren’t controled via either of those. RS-422. Now I know you are only talking about firewire capture. I’m dealing with archive tapes that are betaSP and Umatic. So it looks like if I stuck with FCX only, third party capture tools like the AJA or BMD one…or Resolve…are still in order. Which is fine. But doesn’t allow for batch capture (Oh, Resolve does this I think).
BUT that’s neither here nor there. This is one very specific need that there is an alternative option for.
[Bill Davis] “I think I remember offering (if you’re interested) to spend a little time with you if you ever want to get to know X better. I’m probably going to come out to LA for the next FCPExchange workshop in March. If you want to sit down and talk X at any point, just let me know.”
I’ll get there when I get there. If I end up needing to know it, I, like David, will learn it then. As it stands I’m still heavily embedded in Avid, with Premiere being the app mainly in the wings. But now with my main client that I online for going to FCX, I might have to figure out some things about it. Unless I can finish the shows entirely in Resolve. But thanks! One day I might just have to learn.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I have a BMD device ( one of those ultra studio thingies) that has a thunderbolt interface, which I can connect to a J3 player and capture from Beta SP or digibeta. I was using the BMD desktop video software to capture Pro res from tape and then a utility that would make the captured pro res file appear as a file based capture structure to FCPX as a final step before importing into X . This worked pretty well for a heap of captures from legacy beta. For the first round of capture I was trying to get results quickly and this is the route I found. If I go back I may try to work right out of X and see if I can capture or create tape archives directly with X .
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[Mark Smith] “If I go back I may try to work right out of X and see if I can capture or create tape archives directly with X .”
You can’t. You have to use the capture app that comes with your video card as you found out. Tape capture is limited to FireWire based material directly in X.
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12743?locale=en_US
And as Shane said, there was no easy batch capture from Aja’s capture utility, although AJA Control Room supports batch capture today, and you can send an Event over to fcpx from it.
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[Brett Sherman] ” I wonder if there is a division amongst editors that have to dig through a lot of material versus those that don’t.”
Not much from my experience. Since the size of a project is only one deciding factor out of a long list of criteria. Whether just a few, hundreds or even thousands of clips, everyone is always telling me that, past having learned the mere basics, they are working a lot faster. Of course the more material you have to manage, the more apparent that becomes, yes.
– RK
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