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Exporting an EDL from FCP X to another OS
My editor is currently working on a print of our short film in FCP X on his Mac and due to workflow issues we’re trying to transfer the session we’ve been using on his computer to my own.
I have all the footage we’ve worked with on another drive so having access to that shouldn’t be a problem but I want to make sure that the time code for the print we’ve got now transfers without a hitch.
Would an XML EDL be able to work just as well in something like Premiere or Resolve on, say, a Windows OS w/o too much in the way of format issues or is there another step involved that I’m missing?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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5 Replies
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Yes, EDL is the common language every editing system shares. So there should not be any problem going from Mac to PC or into Premiere or any other editing/mastering program.
XML is a more advanced format, that contains more information than an EDL – EDLs only containing the sequence and source timecode information for every edit. An XML can also contain information about filters applied to certain clips, split-screens and colour-grading information. But due to this extra information they might create problems when exchanging a sequence across certain types of software.The most basic and common EDL is the CMX 3600. One thing to watch out for is that an EDL can only contain one video track, so if your editor spread clips across multiple video tracks, it all needs to be reduced to one track.
Head of Postproduction
Motherlode -
Thanks for the input! We’ve had a lot of problems in the past trying to work transfers so I figured this would act as a good work-around.
In practice, how would this work if I were to acquire the exported EDL file? Theoretically, would I just be able to upload this to – say – DaVinci Resolve and just plug in the raw footage into the “skeleton” acquired from the EDL or is there some third-party program I’d have to use to do this?
My editor isn’t very experienced and I can only do so much remotely but he told me that there was an entirely separate FCP extension that costs $100 to export the EDL. That didn’t sound right to me….
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Yes, that is how it works. You import the EDL into DaVinci, which creates an empty skeleton. Then you link the media files to it. (like you do in FCP when it says “Media Missing”)
Both, FCP and DaVinci support EDLs, so there is no need for any Plug Ins.
Head of Postproduction
Motherlode -
Thanks for all the great advice! I’ll keep you posted if there are any further anomalies but I think we’ll be in the clear after this!
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So it looks like we’ve hit another snag.
I spoke again with my editor just now and in order to export a straight CMX3600 EDL we need this (https://xmil.biz/EDL-X/EDL-X.shtml).
I did a little more scrounging and found that apparently the EDL import/export was an early issue with FCP X but was later fixed via these add-ons (see “Myth No. 6” in link: https://www.macprovideo.com/hub/final-cut/fcp-x-busting-the-myths).
That said, is there still any way to work around shelling out for the former XMIL software linked above?
The latter link mentions that DaVinci Resolve will “roundtrip” with FCPX directly. What does this mean?
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