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Archiving/Consolidating
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For smaller projects like blogs or event videography Final Cut Pro X is fine. However, multicam clips can be an issue. ???? Everything else I plan to use Resolve for. Apple needs to address consolidation and batch syncing — two areas were Resolve is great at. ???? Oh, don’t get me started on keyframing! ????
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I’ll preface this with saying that compression isn’t my specialty, but this is my understanding of why things can work differently depending on if you are using an inter-frame or an intra-frame codec.
[Bret Williams] “Yes very familiar. Here’s a new one though. I’m able to trim an h264 clip in Quicktime Player (everybody knows you can trim and edit in QT Player, right? ) and paste it to a new player and it seems I now have a standalone trimmed h264 clip. No transcoding seems to have occurred. “
When you save it you’ll create new media though right? And if the H.264 is inter-frame (inter-frame is most common, but the H.264 spec does allow for all I-frame/intra-frame variants such as AVC-Intra) then it will have to be re-encoded AFAIK.
Ex:
Original Inter-frame clip created from I, P and B frames: IBBBBPBBBBPBBBBIEdited Inter-frame clip: BBBBBBBB
An inter-frame clip cannot be all B-frames (B-frames contain the least amount of image information and rely on past frames and future frames to rebuild a complete picture) so it needs to be re-encoded to create I and P frames (I-frames are the only frames that contain a complete picture, P-frames rely on info from past frames to formulate a complete picture).
New (re-encoded) Inter-frame clip: IBBBBPBBBI
The obvious problem is that the new I-frames and the P-frames were created from the lower quality B-frames (garbage in/garbage out). This is one reason why generational loss can happen so quickly in inter-frame codecs.
By contrast, if you are working with an intra-frame codec:
Original Intra-frame clip created from all I-frames: IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Edited Intra-frame clip: IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
New Intra-frame clip (no re-encoding needed): IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Since each frame is a discreet, wholly self-contained image there is no compression ‘cadence’ to be fixed, so no re-encoding is needed. Think of it like reaching into a folder containing an image sequence and only grabbing the frames that you need, then placing them in a new order in the destination folder.
It’s not that you can’t trim inter-frame media, it’s that I don’t think you can perform a consolidate *and* trim function with inter-frame media due to the nature of it’s compression.
Avid MC and FCP Legend had the option to consolidate and trim media (assuming it was intra-frame). PPro only has the option to Collect media (no trimming) or Consolidate and Transcode (allows for trimming). I thought previous versions of PPro allowed for Avid-style consolidation w/trimming but maybe I’m mistaken. X, w/out third party support, will just consolidate media. I’m not sure where Lightworks and Resolve stand with this.
With that being said, Adobe does have a feature called Smart Rendering which means certain codecs (all Intra-frame codecs AFAIK) won’t be re-rendered upon export as long as your source media settings match your export settings. I think it means that, for example, if you are working with 1080p60 ProRes HQ files, you select Transcode and trim in PPro and your transcode settings are 1080p60 ProRes HQ then PPro will perform an Avid/FCP Legend-style consolidate and trim w/o any transcoding/re-encoding (even though you’ve picked the “transcode” option in PPro. Never tried it first hand though (just basing this off of how Adobe describes its Smart Render feature).
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This is definalty one of many short comings of FCPX for certain industries. I’d however claim most pros could use this as a media / project transfer and / or archive function, be it you’re doing Cinema features or vlog’s on YouTube.
Ping-poinging to Resolve tends to work like, sadly, garbage. Fcpxml in Resolve tends to end up with TONS of compound-clips which for the purpose of optimizing a project ruins everything. Decomposing these compound-clips tends to be a manual / time-consuming process.
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[Erik Lindahl] “Decomposing these compound-clips tends to be a manual / time-consuming process.”
Andreas Kiel/Spherico has a tool that removes effects out of an fcpxml and that will mostly get rid of the compounds in Resolve, but unfortunately it doesn’t work on Mojave. (X-FX Handler) https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/X-Files/X-FXHandler/
Resolve will still make Compounds out of retimed footage though.
For now, removing effects in fcpx before exporting the XML helps.
Even so, the XML jockey of X to Resolve and back is not perfect and does take some work and foresight.
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It sounds like this sums up some of the FCPX-head-aches. You need the app + a tool to get to a third party app to get sort of maybe the result you want.
I could also imagine the round-trip back to FCPX can be a source of issues as well if you use effects there. The whole idea is to consolidate a project to just retain used media with handles.
That said, no app is perfect. In this specific case, Resolve is very solid it it’s media management from my experiences where Premiere Pro is very hit or miss.
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[Erik Lindahl] “It sounds like this sums up some of the FCPX-head-aches. You need the app + a tool to get to a third party app to get sort of maybe the result you want.”
That’s generally the route Apple is taking overall and has, since at least FCPX – modularity. By not doing this function internally, they streamline the program’s code and can focus on the majority of features that “new media” producers want. I believe that’s their target user.
The second thing it does, is relieves them of any responsibility when a given feature doesn’t work 100% correctly. They don’t “own” the issue. Thus, they concentrate on FCPXML and then work behind-the-scenes with third-party developers to build the add-ons.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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