Exporting a reference file

[Steve Connor]

1) Sadly no

2) In my experience it seems to be a benefit to render first, but not by much.

Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure”

[Julian Bowman]

Hmmm, bugger.

Ok, cheers for letting me know Steve. This feels a tad frustrating. Exporting is taking ages. Only silver lining is it is happening in the ‘background’ (unlike rendering 🙂 so at least the App is still usable.

Kind of going to miss the quick and easy export ability of FCP7 to get a draft out of the app though.

Have to say I hope they stop adding things to FCPX that look good on marketing bumph and start addressing a lot of the little quality of life and common sense issues FCPX has. We shall see.

Thanks again.

[Steve Connor]

[Julian Bowman] “Exporting is taking ages.”

Sometimes it can yes, however as current NLE’s go FCPX’s export is one of the fastest!

Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure”

[Julian Bowman]

That’s great and not doubting it, but export reference file was a brilliant and beautiful thing 🙂

[Steve Connor]

[Julian Bowman] “hat’s great and not doubting it, but export reference file was a brilliant and beautiful thing :)”

That it was!

Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure”

[Mike Drew]

Couldn’t you just go to Share and select email as an export option?? You could bypass all that exporting and end up with an email-sized “reference” movie.

[Bob Woodhead]

By reference, they’re referring to a Quicktime 7 reference movie; it only contains audio, and has “pointers” for it’s video assets. Full resolution & quality at a fraction of the size of self-contained. Veyr handy. Not possible in QT X.

[Andreas Kiel]

It’s not totally true.
A QT 7 reference can point to any media, and more references can be added easily, like crop masks or subtitles.
From there you were able to send them to compressor and making different versions and use an end script to upload or email.

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[T. Payton]

Regarding your OP on getting proofs to clients. I did a quick comparison test:

Project:
1:30 timeline, 55 psd stills over 1:30 of SD video. (i.e. SD timeline)
MacBook Pro 2007, 6GB ram, GeForce 8600M 128MB vram (i.e. a really slow machine, not even qualified for FCP X)

Results:

FCP X
————
1. FCPX Share non rendered timeline, to email small, faster encode: 1:23
2. FCPX render all of timeline: :52
3. FCPX Share rendered timeline to master file with current ProRes settings :40
4. FCPX Share rendered timeline to Export to email (small fast encode) rendered: 1:09

FCP X could accomplish my little test 1:23 by rendering and h264 compressing at the same time. Less time than the 52+1:09 = 2:01 it would take to render and then share to email size.

FCPX BEST TIME: 1:23

FCP 7
————-
6. FCP 7 render to ProRes 422: 40.5 seconds
7. FCP 7 export self contained (PR 422): 31 seconds
8. FCP 7 export to reference: 2 seconds (wow!)
5. Quicktime 7. Share the Prores file created in 7 to Mail Large (436×32): 2:34

FCP 7 actually outperformed FCP X in rendering, and the reference export is blazing fast. But it would be 40+2+2:34=3:16 to render, export a reference file and then share via QuickTime 7.

FCP 7 BEST TIME: 3:16

Of course your milage may vary but in my experience it has been much faster to get proofs to clients via FCP X than it was in FCP 7. At my shop we use private YouTube or Vimeo to proof to clients. Secure and very fast.

About those reference files. They are great for quick exports and transcodes, as long as you don’t move anything! Move a reference file and you are hosed. We made it a policy at our shop to stop using them years ago because of the problems they created. I think Apple ditched them as a FCP X export to avoid a world of potential hurt. However they are phenomenally useful. I had to show a film in a theater this past fall and was handed an extra video to show after the credits. I grab a the film and extra credits and created a reference file in seconds. Worked great.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I think Apple ditched them because a reference movie was a feature of Quicktime, and FCPX isn’t based on the Quicktime framework anymore, but on the new A/V Foundation.

That being said, on one hand they could be very handy in times, and having the option would be great.
But rendering in FCPX can be very fast, if you work with Prores Media (it helps a lot), and in combination with background rendering, it makes the pain of missing reference movies a lot less.