Any way to remove a common attribute shared by multiple clips?

[Andy Mees]

You can do it via manipulation of an XML copy of the clips.

[Jesus Pedrosa]

Can you explain this a little further? I am a total newbie in both OSX and Final Cut.

[Andy Mees]

Select a clip in the Browser, open it into the Viewer window and adjust some of the Motion tab properties
Now choose File menu > Export > XML… accept all following settings options to save the resulting XML to a location of your choice
Open the saved XML file using Text Edit and examine it, if you search through the clips attributes you will see its attributes are described there as text
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out which element describes the single attribute you wish to change, and then to apply that knowledge by modifying a similar XML export of the clips or sequence you wish to target … you can then use File > Import > XML to reimport the changed XML so as to apply those changes within your project.

Sounds complicated? Its not that bad in practice but its not for the feint of heart. Question is tho, whether you really need to do it at all … if you told us specifically what attribute it is you need to change it may be that there is a much simpler solution.

[Jesus Pedrosa]

I have a lot of clips with different effects applied. At one point I added a Basic3D effect to all the clips at one. I continued editing and applying effects here and there on different clips. Now I realize I need to remove the Basic3D effect from all the clips… 🙁

Is there a simpler way than having to go through every single clip removing one at a time?

[Jeff Greenberg]

Select the clips you want to remove effects from.
Right click (or edit menu) – Remove Attributes (CMD-Opt V)
Select filters.
Say ok.

You’ll lose ALL The filters on those clips.

Best,

Jeff G

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[Jesus Pedrosa]

Cool. That’s exactly what I DON’T wanna do. Losing tons of effects I applied and fine tuning.

I hoped that there will be an option for this kind of issue. There is other softwares that allow to do this. From the top of my head I remember now 3dsmax (nothing to do with video editing, I know), where you can apply an effect to a selection of elements and you can remove the “shared” effect at any time without losing all the other effects.

[Dan Monro]

Hey Jesus,

There is a third party plug-in by Edit Mule that will allow you to select specific filters for removal. Its $40, but that might be well worth it depending on how many clips you’re talking about, especially if you’re being paid for the job: time to remove individual filters at $x per hour vs. $40 for the plug-in…

That being said, I have never used Edit Mule, don’t know anyone who has, so take my suggestion with a caveat emptor. Maybe some kind soul will post here who has actually used it, with good or bad results. Or the Edit Mule folks themselves may chime in.

I’d try Andy’s XML suggestion. Nothing to lose, right?

Good luck with it.
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
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– OR –
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Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Andy Mees]

Dan’s spot on (and thats exactly why I asked you to supply more info). If you just want to remove entire specific filter(s) from multiple clips then I’d recommend Edit Mule’s Filer Remover … much more straightforward for the average user than messing about in XML, and it’s always worth supporting the FCP development community.
https://www.editmule.com/pages/plugins/plugin.php?id=3

But If you just want to manipulate a single attribute then XML is the only way.

Cheers
Andy

[Diego andres Delfino]

So, I decided to download EditMule Filter Remover, and it worked great, but now I’d like to add color correction again to all the clips – just one setting for all instead of the multiple ones I had before. And I can’t do that!! The effect will appear in the filters tab in the viewer, but changing the settings doesn’t do anything to the video. Is there any way of adding color correction again? Please help, I’m desperate! 🙁

ps: Btw, it’s my first post! I really need to thank everybody for their help, since I’ve been silently reading the forum for quite a while.

[Andy Mees]

Hi Diego

Welcome to active forum duty 🙂
Make sure that you have placed your playhead in the sequence so that it is parked on the clip on which you are applying your color correction. Its actually surprisingly easy to miss that step, which means that you might be tweaking the settings but not actually looking (in the Canvas window) at the clip you are effecting. A good trick is to set the “Playhead Sync” mode to “Open” … in this mode you can be sure that what you see (and tweak) in the Viewer is going to be the same clip that you are seeing in the Canvas window.

Hope it helps
Andy