-
Combining projects in FCPX
-
[Phil Lowe] “I work in text (list) mode. Always have. Always will.”
Ah, I begin to see the problem. If your goal is the fastest possible survey of the material and making selects, I suggest you use the browser’s filmstrip view. It is optimal in that case.
As a test I just re-imported 200GB of a documentary I recently worked on, which was about 20 hr of 1080p material to produce a final 17 min product. With “leave files in place” it took FCP X about 5 min to import. Using filmstrip view I blitzed through the material making selection ranges and marking favorites and rejects. I cannot imagine a faster way to work. You can then append those to a timeline and start adjusting it.
For documentary work I would normally do more extensive keywording but I can understand in a time-critical news gathering situation that may not be possible. However you can accomplish your goal — making a rapid 1st-pass selection to the timeline — by working from the browser in filmstrip mode, marking favorites or just appending ranges straight to the timeline. Whether the material is selected from the browser or from an intermediate timeline, the issue is how do that the fastest possible way. Generally, that way is using the browser in filmstrip mode, not making selects from the browser to an intermediate timeline and then more selects from there to a final timeline.
List view is provided for cases where you need to access clip metadata — say enter notes, rename favorite tags, access keywords, etc. I think you said you don’t have time to keyword anything so you may not need list view.
[Phil Lowe] …check out this link at the 3:08 mark and watch him scroll down and drag, scroll down and drag, and scroll down and drag. This is the workflow I’m trying to avoid by having all the clips on one sequence:”
The editor in that video said: “What I like about the browser in FCP X is you can just whiz through everything. I used to work with one big timeline with all my rushes on it….but with FCP X I don’t have to do that because I can just see everything nicely (in the browser filmstrip mode), and just drag across it.”
He said he’s only been using FCP X for one month, but he has already grasped the right idea.
-
[Phil Lowe] “I work in text (list) mode. Always have. Always will.”
Ah, I begin to see the problem. If your goal is the fastest possible survey of the material and making selects, I suggest you use the browser’s filmstrip view. It is optimal in that case.
How much faster can it be than CMD-A>New Compound Clip at which point I don’t have to scroll down through anything?
If browsing is all you need to do, yeah: that editor had the “right idea.” But everything else he was doing was painfully slow. In the time it took him to lay a couple of shots and a single track, I could’ve had ALL his tracks cleaned up on an Avid timeline!
Another thing news editors have to deal with: we generally can’t edit packages without a script, which means nothing gets “selected” (or edited) until a script is finally approved, at which point the reporter tracks the script and we cut all the sound together, so that the producer knows how long the finished package will be. B-Roll at that point MUST match the script, so it’s almost useless – in many cases – to try to anticipate what will or won’t be used before you get the script, at which point the focus turns immediately to editing, not “browsing”, “making selects” or all of the other exercises people NOT under news deadlines get to do on their shiny new Apple NLE!
I routinely turned 1:30 news packages around – from script to delivery – in 20 minutes or less on an Avid Newscutter, using the workflow I’ve described above (sequencing everything using an intermediate sequence). Maybe that workflow isn’t necessary for documentary filmmaking, but news isn’t the same animal.
Apple never designed FCPX as a news editor. The fact that news stations are using it says more about its price than its features as a news NLE. That said, news editors are incredibly resourceful and can find workarounds as needed. Creating a compound clip from all my b-roll looks like it will be mine.
-
The only thing I’d do differently from the video, is zoom into the clip a little more – maybe a thumbnail every five seconds or so, so that I could easily see where I was in a clip. As to the scrolling up and down… I can’t see how moving vertically is any harder than moving horizontally. It’s a flick of the finger whichever way you go.
One of the things that’s often a stumbling block for new users is trying to hang on to the way they’ve always done things in other NLEs. It’s an approach that almost never works, makes the whole FCPX experience awkward, and often leads to the verdict that “FCPX sucks”.
Those that take the “never have, never will” approach are almost certainly going to find using FCPX to be a fairly miserable experience.
I guess the bottom line is that navigating and skimming the browser window is fundamental to how FCPX works. It may seem awkward at first but from my experience, and the experience of thousands of others, once you get used to it, it’s just as fast as any other method.
Using FCPX doesn’t come naturally to everyone, so hopefully your workplace will bring someone in to do some formal training about the optimal workflow when they make the switch.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
I can’t see how moving vertically is any harder than moving horizontally. It’s a flick of the finger whichever way you go.
It’s not just a “flick of the finger.” It’s finding the right clip, which – in his case – may have been at the bottom of the browser, then scrubbing for the shot, then scrolling back up to the next shot, which may be at the top of the browser, and repeat ad nauseum. That process is to editing what hunt and peck typing would be to a secretary. Meanwhile, having all the clips in a compound clip means I only have to scrub for the shot I need: no scrolling up or down through the browser to find the clip and then find the shot. I can see why people here might think the first process is no big deal, but every second wasted trying to find a clip just to find a shot is a second closer to missing a deadline, and in news, every second often matters.
One of the things that’s often a stumbling block for new users is trying to hang on to the way they’ve always done things in other NLEs. It’s an approach that almost never works, makes the whole FCPX experience awkward, and often leads to the verdict that “FCPX sucks”.
And, as I stated at the outset, while I have to learn FCPX for my job as a per diem news videographer, it will never replace Media Composer for my paid and pro bono freelance work, therefore I need FCPX to work – as closely as possible – to the way I use Media Composer. So I will find workarounds – including remapping the FCPX keyboard – to make that happen. Will I ever be as fast on it as I am on Avid? Probably not, but I’m being forced into this situation and I don’t particularly like it. Yes, I think FCPX sucks comparatively speaking. I hate the magnetic, trackless timeline and “skimming” in the “bin” is annoying as hell. But, I will be able to make it work, though probably not as well as people who have “bought into it” will.
-
[Phil Lowe] “…People who have never edited for news don’t understand how critical every second can be. A few seconds can mean the difference between making or missing deadline… Apple never designed FCPX as a news editor…every second wasted trying to find a clip just to find a shot is a second closer to missing a deadline, and in news, every second often matters.”
Here is the largest broadcaster in Detroit using FCP X in their news operations. When doing hands-on evaluation of other options, their editors preferred FCP X due to speed and ease of use. It has been so successful that E.W. Scripps Co. is now rolling out the same workflow to all their stations in the U.S.
One of their field reporters said his tight schedule means he must edit and complete every piece on his MacBook Pro in the truck before sending it back to the station. He said the speed and flexibility of FCP X makes it easier to meet his severe news deadlines. There’s a photo in the below articles of him editing in the truck using FCP X.
I suggest you gives these guys a call; they might be happy to share ideas on using FCP X with another news professional.
https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/in-action/scripps/
https://www.tvnewscheck.com/playout/2014/07/wxyz-chooses-apples-final-cut-pro-x/ -
Here is the largest broadcaster in Detroit using FCP X in their news operations. When doing hands-on evaluation of other options, their editors preferred FCP X due to speed and ease of use. It has been so successful that E.W. Scripps Co. is now rolling out the same workflow to all their stations in the U.S.
First of all, depending on whom you ask, WXYZ-TV, Channel 7 in Detroit (studio actually located a mile-and-a-half down the road from the station where I worked in Southfield) isn’t the “largest broadcaster in Detroit.” Secondly, I saw that article. It’s a “puff piece” on Apple’s FCPX marketing page. You can literally find the same kind of breathless hype on EVERY NLE website! For instance:
“We need speed and stability for editing daily news from the work site, and recognized a clear need to transition our editing systems to file-based workflows to meet the growing challenges of our day-to-day operations, like up to the minute editing. We chose Grass Valley’s EDIUS because it supports real-time editing for growing clips, supports the latest file formats, provides excellent real-time editing performance, supports XDCAM and edits tapeless media efficiently, is engineered in Japan and offers support services and products which meet our needs.”
Tsutomu Okazaki, Technical Manager, Engineering Operations Division, Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation
You get these same kind of testimonials from every company, with their customers all saying how great and fast the company’s products are. Avid has 18 pages of customer stories all praising its products!
But I digress. Before WXYZ (I used to know some of the guys working there) used FCPX they used FCP7 and said the same things about it! Meanwhile, WDIV (Channel 4) and WJBK (Channel 2, where I worked) were using Avid systems and we were hitting our deadlines, just as quickly, too! Reading some of the remarks here, you’d think fast, non-linear editing hadn’t even been invented until FCPX came along!
So no, I don’t put any stock in a company’s marketing materials. They’re like any movie trailer of a bad movie: they’re only going to show you the parts that make the movie look awesome!
To paraphrase what I wrote before, I may have to “do” FCPX, but I don’t have to “dig” it. I have too much time and money invested in Avid to throw it all away for “iMovie Pro.”
By the way, I once cut an entire news package on the history of the death penalty in Michigan in After Effects, because the piece consisted of anchor track and historical stills. So I’m not impressed to hear that someone cuts news in FCPX: I did it in After Effects! It doesn’t change the fact that neither is designed for cutting news!
-
That would be a simple copy and paste operation.
Select the clips that you are wanting to bring into the timeline on the other timeline.
Switch to the target timeline.
Put cursor where you want the clips to start.now all that you had selected gets pasted to the target timeline.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up