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Cutting a major Hollywood Feature on FCPX
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Michael’s point is that he sometimes needs to sort out a big mess. He feels that he can do that on a timeline with FCP7 easier than he can in X.”
What am I misunderstanding here, the files are coming in with existing numbering of SOME sort. That numbering will be sequential in the sense that it can be sorted largest to smallest, no matter what system created the original name tags. So it can certainly be sorted into a sequence of smaller to larger. Which is the order in which it was recorded.
That SAME process can be used on the field audio files. No matter WHAT system was used to name them originally.
in the naming suite in X, just create a renaming rule that uses an arbitrary Project ID, a 4 digit ID number (or a 5 digit if you’re working with more than 1000 clips plus an appended A for Audio clips and B for Video clips.
Let X apply those new names for everything shot on that card or session AS you import it via the BATCH renaming. Result: Audio files in the EB sorted in chronological order ABC-0001A to ABC-1000A
Then do video files the same way, but simply re-tag them ABC-0001B to ABC 1000B.
Sort by name and what are you left with? ABC 0001A (the audio file) and ABC 0001B (the video file) adjacent to each other in the list view and ready to make a Synchronized File out of.
This is what databases DO.
Hey, want the comfort of working with virtual REEL info? Just add R01 to the name convention on each side and you can sync stuff a virtual reel at a time.
I still don’t see the big deal here.
And I certainly don’t see how it’s possible for it to be easier to sort out a big naming mess using a system that does NOT have a robust re-naming process and a functional database – compared to a system that does.
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] “Sort by name and what are you left with? ABC 0001A (the audio file) and ABC 0001B (the video file) adjacent to each other in the list view and ready to make a Synchronized File out of. “
That will do the trick.
[Bill Davis] “And I certainly don’t see how it’s possible for it to be easier to sort out a big naming mess using a system that does NOT have a robust re-naming process and a functional database – compared to a system that does.
“Sorry, what you don’t see is that the contention is not about the underlying database but about the actual pieces of GUI on top of it.
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[Michael Aranyshev] “Sorry, what you don’t see is that the contention is not about the underlying database but about the actual pieces of GUI on top of it.”
THIS….
Is the custom naming system interface in X. It’s drag and drop for heaven’s sake.. It has the ability to generate your own custom text strings as PART of the naming suite and facility for accurate sort via leading zeros.
As a “UI” I simply can’t conceive of anything simpler than selecting a zillion clips or audio tracks in the event browser that have been pre-sorted via whatever metadata they were imported with (and ALL modern cameras or decks generate at least BASIC metadata that can be used for sorting things) and using the X simple simple spreadsheet format and column sort to put them in order, then setting up the name I want in this – then hitting OK (one click!) and having the system auto-rename an unlimited number of clips with numerical increments.
What you’re asking for is honestly insanely simple in the X database and metadata approach.
Honestly.
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, please calm down. I said this is the solution as soon as you posted it.
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[Charlie Austin] “These days, very few people bother anymore, “
Not that I’ve seen. People are expected to bother, and are castigated if they don’t. I bother for other reasons, primarily because I get a lot more out of the timeline if I organize audio as I work. I didn’t for years, and only after studio work forced me to, did I realize I was missing a valuable tool. Now, I organize my audio, whether anyone asks me to or not. I get a lot more out of it that way. And, I’d say that goes for the majority of the people I work with.
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[Bill Davis] “Sort by name and what are you left with? ABC 0001A (the audio file) and ABC 0001B (the video file) adjacent to each other in the list view and ready to make a Synchronized File out of.
This is what databases DO.
I still don’t see the big deal here.”
It’s not always that simple, especially when other people rely on the logged file names (not the names made in X), and sometimes, many times, the files aren’t in sequential order by name, or date. I take it you’ve never had to deal with a big wad of files that don’t exactly line up.
Also, you don’t have to convince me of the merits of FCPX.
I’m not the one raising the issue. I am also not one of the people who is in this forum that “trashes” X. I use X every day, and finally, with the library system, we have employed FCPX across all editors here.
I also don’t live in Europe, and I speak about these things in a very public forum and not on private message groups. If I did speak about things in private, I’d keep it that way.
I constantly weigh the pros and cons of X and find valuable information on this board, and I use X everyday, and plan on using it until it doesn’t make sense anymore.
I have no idea what an “insider’s mess” is, and I don’t know why this forum is belittled as such, and it’s weird that you would say eyeballs have largely moved elsewhere when you don’t even realize when people come to “trash” X there are also people that describe, sometimes in great detail, some of the mertis of FCPX, including this thread.
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[Charlie Austin] “It most certainly is not. I’ve gotten compliments from mixers on the track organization of stuff I’ve sent to finish. These guys get stuff from MC, and 7 all day every day, and most of it is completely disorganized because you have to do it manually. These days, very few people bother anymore, so mixers spend the first part of the session cleaning stuff up. “
I think that might be more indicative of the level of professionalism and/or experience of the other editors rather than the software used. I’ve seen some ugly organization on very simple timelines so it’s obvious that the editor either doesn’t give a crap or, through inexperience, doesn’t realize how much work it is for the mixer to sort everything out later. Either way, I’m someone is too lazy or ignorant to keep even the most basic of edit organized I doubt they would bother to use Roles either (assuming they even know what Roles were).
Every TV show and post house I’ve worked at had strict track assignments that every editor followed. The Post Sups certainly enforced the rules because having a mixer waste time cleaning up after a lazy editor was just money pissed away. The times I typically encounter lazy organization is either on independent projects or web-centric work. Typically these types of projects are done by self-taught people that have limited, if any, broadcast or collaborative workflow experience so they just kinda do whatever because they don’t know any better.
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[Andrew Kimery] “I think that might be more indicative of the level of professionalism and/or experience of the other editors rather than the software used. I’ve seen some ugly organization on very simple timelines so it’s obvious that the editor either doesn’t give a crap or, through inexperience, doesn’t realize how much work it is for the mixer to sort everything out later. Either way, I’m someone is too lazy or ignorant to keep even the most basic of edit organized I doubt they would bother to use Roles either (assuming they even know what Roles were). “
In X, the timeline is simply organized differently right from the start. Roles are great, I use them a lot because I am an organized person (and need multichannel audio outputs), but if you don’t use Roles, X2Pro does a pretty good job of organizing the timeline for the mixer, even without touching a single thing.
What I like about FCPX is that, even if you have a really super basic organization plan, that organization pays dividends at the end of the project. That is to say, as soon as you import files, add a Role that makes sense, Dialogue is Dialogue, Music is Music, Effects are Effects, DoubleSystem is DoubleSystem, SOT is SOT, or whatever other convention makes sense. That organization and delineation will follow clips around where ever you put them, and then X2Pro can make sense of them (you can also decide which Roles to send or not, in the X2Pro interface). If you need more detail, you can of course add more detail, like Dialogue (Role) > Character (subRole), but I find that even the simplest of tagging right after importing helps a whole lot. i wish you could tag Roles right in the import window, it would be even easier.
While I am not advocating messy disorganization, I do think that FCPX can help unorganized people stay more organized in very simple and effective ways right from the beginning.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I have no idea what an “insider’s mess” is, and I don’t know why this forum is belittled as such, and it’s weird that you would say eyeballs have largely moved elsewhere when you don’t even realize when people come to “trash” X there are also people that describe, sometimes in great detail, some of the mertis of FCPX, including this thread.”
I completely disagree with Bill’s thoughts on this, I look at a lot of FCPX forums and I’ve never seen this mentioned, people on here don’t needlessly “trash” FCPX anymore. They’ll comment on missing features for their workflow but the days of talking about FCPX as “IMovie Pro” are gone.
The only thing left from those days is Bill’s evangelical zeal for FCPX
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[Jeremy Garchow] “While I am not advocating messy disorganization, I do think that FCPX can help unorganized people stay more organized in very simple and effective ways right from the beginning.”
I’m sure it can, though there are people (and I have worked with some of them) that 1. love working in some sort of unorganized hell and 2. can’t be bothered to follow even the simplest of direction. For example, I worked with one editor that didn’t use bins in FCP 7. Everything from sequences to titles to SFX to raw footage was just hanging out at the root level of FCP’s Browser window. When you asked him, “Hey, do you have clip XYZ” he would just scroll, scroll, scroll looking for it even though that took a million times longer than if he used the most rudimentary of bin structures.
On another project I worked with a guy that actually organized things in bins, but had audio all over the place and all we had to deal with was 7 tracks of audio (dialog, nat sound, music, VO) on 10 minute videos. Super simple yet sometimes music was on 2/3, sometimes it was on 11/12. Sometimes VO was on 1. Sometimes it was on 6. That’s not “man, sometimes it’s hard to do an insert edit when you’ve got 32 tracks of audio to deal with” that’s “man, I just don’t really give a crap.”
If the mixer Charlie uses rarely gets organized timelines that’s not an NLE shortcoming, that’s an editor being unprofessional shortcoming. If you hadn’t guessed, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Being lazy, ignorant and/or just plain unorganized makes other people’s jobs significantly harder and it’s just incredibly rude and unprofessional to pass the burden onto someone else like that.
/rant
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