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Apple – please focus on FCP X stability!
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[Helmut Kobler] “It struggles with titles, AND with still photos too, especially if the stills are bigger than 1920×1080. That gets annoying for doc work.
“Helmut,
I’m not dismissing what you say in any way. Just noting that when someone posts something like this – it implies that this is true for all machines, in all configurations, in all circumstances.
I finished a project two days ago that had numerous stock photos in a variety of resolutions up to 2716×1810 featuring largely move-on-stills action and had no problems whatsoever.
I know it’s very tempting to think that what any one of us is experiencing will be the same thing everyone will experience, but with FCP-X I find this to seldom be the case.
One user with one configuration can get excellent results and few if any crashes – and another user can try the same or even less taxing work and run into an ugly crash-fest.
I try to remember that as a high-traffic site, whenever I say something “definitive” about either the software or a workflow, I have to be sure it actually is a universal constant – or I could well be misleading folks.
YMMV.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Everyone, please post this bugs to Apple. My own experience has been pretty hit and miss too.
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[Oliver Peters] “It’s 64TB partitioned into 5 volumes – 4 workstations plus FC Server controlling the 5th. Each station has write authority to one partition and all others mounted in read-only mode. During most of this session time, I’ve been the only operator accessing the system. No particular ongoing processes occurring with FC Server, except what it might routinely be doing in the background.”
Probably not an HFS+ shortcoming then. Assuming that is a 32 disk array, I would expect it to perform better at small I/O than a Pegasus due to the higher spindle count. If you can take the same work to an iMac and a Pegasus and it doesn’t lag on you, then I’m stumped.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] ” Assuming that is a 32 disk array”
2 chassis with 16x2TB drives in each.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Bill Davis] “I finished a project two days ago that had numerous stock photos in a variety of resolutions up to 2716×1810 featuring largely move-on-stills action and had no problems whatsoever. “
Bill what machine are you running X on?
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I guess my point here is that I work completely different in the few projects I’ve done and the product worked as it should with really no problems.
How do you get timecode with your h264 to prores if you’re not going through log and transfer with the EOS plugin in 7? I definitely support that route, but I also think you should simply be able to add TC by hand and roundtrip to DaVinci.
You no doubt saw Walter’s comments about AMA and how it worked up until the conform/DaVinci run at the end, and how it threw them off 11 days, etc. And then how they decided that if they’re going to have to color correct a QT, they might as well use Premiere because it does native better than AMA.
So yeah, whatever works for the workflow. Times are certainly bizarre right now. It seems the application creators can’t keep up with the tech at all. The only thing crazier than being an editor is probably being a camera op!
The projects I’ve done are h264 multi cam. FCP X never flinched. Performed better than ProRes FCP 7 project on the same machine. A corporate project. I found the audio mixing to be much more efficient than 7 because you could do more without stopping the timeline, AND you could mix levels without hearing by looking at the adjusting waveforms. Cutting audio at the sample level was pretty dang handy too.
All the problems you’re describing I had with tests I did in 10.0.3 and earlier versions so I never gave it much of a chance back then. 10.0.4 was another story.
Can’t you round trip from X to DaVinci? I’ll have to try that with one of my projects. They were simple enough to color correct in the color board.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m just toying with X myself. 7 is still where my work is, and I have CS6 and thinking that’ll have to be the future for me, but probably with X around as well. Just kinda depends on where my clients go. I guess you’d say I’m freelance from home.
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Yes it certainly does. Especially since you can’t use h264 in 7 pretty much at all. But you certainly can mix compatible formats in 7. Just not frame rates. Not properly at least. It doesn’t’ add pulldown or interlace 60p in a 1080i seq for example. Just repeats or deletes frames.
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[Bret Williams] “How do you get timecode with your h264 to prores if you’re not going through log and transfer with the EOS plugin in 7?”
https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/42/qtchange
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Hello,
recently I read and tested the workaround for using FCP-X with NAS shares:
https://fcp.co/forum/7-how-to-tutorials/1083-getting-fcp-x-to-recognize-network-drivesI also read Apple’s Whitepaper on FCP-X and XSan:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5084The current workaround for NAS is to create a disk image with Disk Utilities,
put it on the NAS and mount it, so FCP-X recognizes it as local Volume.
The procedure for multiple users with XSan is to soft-import from the
original media folder in event ‘A’ into another event ‘B’ – not really convincing.When testing the NAS workaround I had an idea:
What, if Apple would make the workaround procedure a standard, but
– from a well designed GUI inside FCP-X for creating and mounting/unmounting the images– calling those images (still *.dmg files) “Final Cut Library“;
but hiding the “dmg” appendix;
and giving those Final Cut Libraries their own well designed icon– replacing also the XSan dialoge by the new GUI
– with the capability to mount a “Final Cut Library” from within FCP-X as
read/write exclusive (others could’nd mount it at all)
read/write (others could mount as “read only”)
read onlyI was inspired by SANmp’s GUI for permissions handling and
by Media100’s GUI for handling of volumes.Benefits:
– it would’nd interfere with Apple’s philosophy of events and projects
– for Apple it would be easy to implement (their own technology from Disk Utilities)
– we could create such images whereever we want to (NAS, SAN, DAS, local)
– we could create as many images we like to
(basically we could handle such an image as our new project ‘project’ file)
– we could have all data for a film project in one Library
– we would have more control which projects and events are displayed
– Teamwork: Apps like Motion, Compressor or Logic could mount the library with different permissions;
think of a Library mounted “read/write”, so other FCP-X user coul’nd write to it,
but a Motion user would be permitted to mount it and to write animation data / resultsDisadvatages:
– solution adds one more level of file structure complexity
(we will need to become familiar with either way; think of Smoke)
– if we want to access the movie files we would need to mount the volume
(but if it works from Finder, the disadvantage would be small; please think of the old iMovie!)I already wrote most of this into the Apple feedback form.
Best regards,
Bernhard -
[Bret Williams] “I guess my point here is that I work completely different in the few projects I’ve done and the product worked as it should with really no problems.”
I understand and appreciate that.
[Bret Williams] “How do you get timecode with your h264 to prores if you’re not going through log and transfer with the EOS plugin in 7?”
You can add TC using the EOS L&T plug-in, MB Grinder, QtChange or FCP 7 itself. I personally have had problems with the EOS plug-in where it messed up file durations for the transcoded files. My own process is this:
1. Convert to ProRes (or DNxHD) using MPEG Streamclip (a batch process)
2. Cinema Tools to conform speed to 23.98/29.97/25 (optional)
3. Better Renamer to alter file names (optional)
4. QtChange to embed TC and reel IDs (note – FCP 7 can batch-add/alter reel IDs to files with existing TC)[Bret Williams] “You no doubt saw Walter’s comments about AMA and how it worked up until the conform/DaVinci run at the end, and how it threw them off 11 days, etc.”
Yes and I would humbly suggest they tackled the task incorrectly. Or at least without doing enough testing beforehand. But, sometimes we have more faith in a manufacturer’s marketing pitch than they are due, so he certainly wins points for trying!
It gets back to my comments about the fallacies of “native” editing. AMA is intended as a L&T-style solution, not a “live-linked” edit solution. I’ve done the MC/Resolve roundtrip using MXF files and the workflow was flawless. Granted this was a limited test (:30 spot), but it did work. There are some workarounds you have to know and test. FWIW – I discussed them in this blog post (towards bottom):
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/avid-media-composer-tips-for-the-fcp-switcher/
[Bret Williams] “Can’t you round trip from X to DaVinci? I’ll have to try that with one of my projects. They were simple enough to color correct in the color board. “
Did that as well on a 2 min. web video. Worked fine, but I hit a bug on the “returned” file. The FCP X export clipped off the last :02 of audio once I added titles. This was fixed by copying and pasting to a new project.
[Bret Williams] “Don’t get me wrong. I’m just toying with X myself. 7 is still where my work is, and I have CS6 and thinking that’ll have to be the future for me, but probably with X around as well. Just kinda depends on where my clients go. I guess you’d say I’m freelance from home.”
Agreed. That’s why this for me was a proof-of-concept test. The good thing about this forum – aside from the rants and someone occasionally getting their nose bent out of joint – is that we are sharing experiences and workarounds that will help us all move forward. I certainly think Apple owes us all a small pittance for de facto beta testing and tech support 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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