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FCP Codec Question
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[matthew bradshaw] “I have worked with many talented “preditors” who would really rather not spend their time nerding about with codecs when they can get somebody else cheaper (me) to sort it out for them.”
Right, and that is what Ken should do if he is a pre-editor. That, or get some proper “No-Lineal-Pre-Edit” suit to avoid the mess.
You can be very bad for whatever task, but letting a mess behind you is not professional in any field.
And being radical: Please a bit of respect for our profession and our tools.
If you are an amateur, do it as you want. If you are working or a client, do it well or don’t do it.
rafael -
Not “pre-editor”, preditor.
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[Alexander Kallas] “FCP will ask to automatically set the matching codecs for the imported media without revealing them,”
I’ve seen that cause a lot of problems when for example, your first clip is a title clip rendered as a quicktime animation from after effects.
I can’t remember how many times my former motion graphics guy did this and was wondering why the real time playback wouldn’t work and everything needed rendering.
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[matthew bradshaw] “Not “pre-editor”, preditor.”
Rafa, it sounded like you were thinking of a “pre-editor” as an assistant — a preditor is someone who both produces and edits.
Or an extraterrestrial warrior with advanced weaponry who kills for sport (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/).
Or some combination thereof.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
It just seems a shame to me that soooo much time is spent by soooo many people struggling with codecs and codec settings/mis-matches etc. Recently I have been back on Avid for 6 months and so have been checking out the Avid board more often than this one. I may be wrong but it does seem striking to me how few posts there are on that board about codec hell, audio drifting out of sync due to mis-matched settings etc. There are far fewer posts full-stop despite there being many more Avids out there (is that correct?). FCP is great, but I know many people find it ability to deal with so many formats gets in the way of creativity rather than the other way round. I know this is a tech forum so I shouldn’t have used the geek word or the nerd word for which I apologise.
Matt. -
[matthew bradshaw] “w few posts there are on that board about codec hell, audio drifting out of sync due to mis-matched settings etc. There are far fewer posts full-stop despite there being many more Avids out there (is that correct?). “
FCP sales VASTLY outnumber Avid Media Composer…a HUNDRED to 1. 1.5 million REGISTERED FCP users. Add to that all the downloaders using it illegally. Avid user base is not at 1 million…more like 100,00.
And the Avid user base is primarily high end professionals. Places that have assistant editors who handle the technical aspects so the editors can just edit. System administrators that do all the technical stuff. or editors who know the tech stuff themselves. That user base is highly professional, with people starting out as apprentice editors, or production assistants…learning on the job as they progress up the food chain. Learning production as they go.
FCP, being as cheap as it is, opened itself to a new market of people who have never worked in video. People leaping in head first and editing without basic knowledge of video at all. Other than “Hey, my camera shoots video, and I put it in this application and I can edit that video.” They don’t know what format their camera shoots. This, I will venture to say, is easily one-half to three-quarters of the FCP userbase…
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[matthew bradshaw] “It just seems a shame to me that soooo much time is spent by soooo many people struggling with codecs and codec settings/mis-matches etc. Recently I have been back on Avid for 6 months and so have been checking out the Avid board more often than this one. I may be wrong but it does seem striking to me how few posts there are on that board about codec hell, audio drifting out of sync due to mis-matched settings etc.”
Sure, the version of Avid you’re using is a complete modern rewrite. The version of FCP you’re using is ancient technology.
I assure you, FCP X will do this entire codec thing better than anything on the market and better than anything before it. Apple has dissected every other NLE there is and “borrowed” all of the best form every other NLE on the market.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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Just going on personal experience of post production in London where Avid seems to be far more common than FCP. It is is also less than half the price, much less demanding on equipment (it runs on my 7 year old PC quite happily) and I am afraid to say far easier to get illegally. I don’t agree about the assistant thing either. In my experience of broadcasting in the UK there is no such thing as an assistant editor. I haven’t had an assistant since they were called tape-ops and that includes working in high-end facilities. In Avid I just choose my frame dimensions and frame rate then click 2:1 compression and off I go. There are less posts about codecs in Avid because it just isn’t an issue.
Matt. -
I was using Media Composer 3.5 today. No codec issues.
Matt. -
Avid forces you to do things their way. Import video files? Capture them? OK…to what format? 15;1? 2:1? DNxHD 115? 145? Right there, at the start, you choose a format. An AVID format. It wanted things it’s way, or it wouldn’t work. FCP was open…you could, and can, import just about ANYTHING. But most of the things it allows you to import, FCP won’t like working with. And because people don’t know that you can’t edit H.264, or PhotoJPEG, or Animation files…or Sorenson 3…in FCP without issues, they just start out doing it and go down the wrong path. They paint themselves into a corner. If you don’t pay attention to what you are doing, you will mess up. I like FCP because it is so open. But this open-ness means that you need to know more about things. Like Linux. It is open source, and VERY customizable. But really for those who know what the heck they are doing. I don’t…I’m not a computer geek. So I use MacOS.
Avid does everything for you…converts it to formats it wants to work with (although AMA is opening it to the same issues FCP has..people thinking they can work with H.264 native, and Red Native without any problems at all. wrong). It does this from the start so that all you need to worry about is editing…not what codec things are.
As for assistants…they are a dying breed. It used to be the way to learn things, but now, more than ever, the editors are doing everything. And because of that, they’d better darn well know the technical stuff! If not, SOMEONE there should. Editing isn’t 100% creative. It’s an equal share creative and technical. You need to know things like timecode, when to start the show, how to get proper show time, what drop frame and non-drop frame timecodes are. Basic video stuff. Editors who don’t, who are primarily creatives, don’t last too long if there isn’t an assistant to cover their ass. They might cut well, but if they dont know the technical, then someone has to come in to clean the mess.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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