EDL in Final Cut Pro

[Kevin Monahan]

Make movies out of the stills by round tripping out of FCP via Quicktime. Reimport and re-cut them in. See if that will work.

Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Shane Ross]

Also do you have any stills? They don’t have reels. Video that you imported from no-tape sources, like AE or Motion exports, web video that you converted to QT.

Shane

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[Nicole Bramley]

Thanks for the responses!

The chief concern is that the EDL doesn’t include some of the clips- both stills and video.

All of the stills & video are on a single track, and I copied/pasted into a new sequence with just that video track before exporting the EDL.

Anyone run into something similar?

[Bob Flood]

Hi Nicole

time for my usual “history of video” thing 🙂

an EDL was designed to allow a linear tape editing system (controller, switcher, 2 or 3 vtr’s) to recreate the edits you made from video tape based sources.

as such, anything without timecode is just going to confuse things, since the edl does not know from picts, tiffs, tgas, quicktimes, aiffs, renders, etc (anything other than tape was designated AUX)

My suggestion would be to seperate the Non timecode clips (movies, stills etc, ) from the timecode clips so that all your tc sources are on video track one, and your non tc sources are on video track 2. then export an EDL based on video track 1, and generate a seperate edl based on track 2. this way you will have a clean list of your tape sources, and a second list of the Non tape sources

(if you used tape sources to make Non tape sources, like captures exported to AE or something) you may want to put the tape sources back into Track 1.

Also, if you are getting an error message regarding a key, that probably means you have a graphic on V2 over an image on V1, and final cuts EDL generator cant deal with it, so go through your timeline and make sure all your “keys” are gone.

also try turning on or turning off waht appears in your “notes” such as clip names, source names etc.

FWIW, Usually FCP will report these errors, but continue to genrate as best a list as it can

I know this is a long explanation, but its important to know the limitations.

hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[James Sullivan]

My favorite part of making EDLs in Final cut Pro is if you have any freeze frames from video sources. In FCP 5.14 it will not export an EDL. Period. It looks like it does it but creates no file. You have to remove all of the freeze frames and magically and EDL comes out the other end. Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of the EDL, 10 second preroll and punchcard editing but FCP really needs to step up the “Pro” come NAB this year. Until the post industry decides to make up and support “open sourceness” we will be stuck with one video layer EDLs to be able to switch between bigger and better sandboxes.

James

[Bob Flood]

James

I knew something was missing when i got my system! where is the punchtape reader-writer/teletype console? or for that matter the 8″ floppy drive?

Actually, EDL’s wouldnt be a problem if all the systems actually were able to read and write them all the same!

(One of the last great linear edit systems, the Axial, had support for multiple tape sources, multiple switcher moves, video tracks, etc. but no one was making edl’s that would take advantage of that, or could be read by the axial.)

FCP’s EDL handling IS pathetic!. I tried to Import an edl with nothing more complicated than dissolves, and none of the dissolves would import! i tried pre-read style, b roll style, all the variations, and it only came in as cuts! Obviously the reason they put it in at all (avid left the EDL part to a third party converter) was so that could say IMPORT EXPORT EDL in the hype!

my vent…carry on….go about your business 🙂

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Ah, how I miss the days. Axial 20/20, Abekas A83, 2 internal DDRs, A53D, A72 CG, D/Esam audio…

The last great linear bay in Chicago (if you didn’t mind D-2!). Everything talked to everything else. Auto-caching. Direct control of everything from the editor (even corner pinning on the A53). You name it. I loved that room. It just worked.

Sigh. Guess that makes me an old man.

[Bob Flood]

Jeff

“Sigh. Guess that makes me an old man.”

Not really

I read in a trade mag that laser pacific still uses their linear bay for finishing.

For a show thats mostly fades and cuts its still a faster way to conform than having to digitize into an NLE, then play out.

Gee, so i guess sometimes newer isnt always better?

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Pretty sure lots of broadcast HD finishing is still done in linear bays (Level 3, Complete Post, etc.)

I wonder how long until disk-based camera capture makes tape (and the linear bay speed advantage) a thing of the past? I know, people have been predicting this for years and it’s still here…(just like film!)

[Neal Lathia]

I am not sure how much hard drive space would be required to accomodate 20 hours of 4K anamorphic footage…

i have to edit a film soon..

Neal

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