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FCP Legend/FCP 10/Personal Use/Facility Use
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completely – I’m still mostly on a fairly ancient MBP rigged up to a monitor storage and speakers – and I was on 6 for the longest time – there really isn’t that much in 7 at the end of the day – the speed re-timing fix was the only one you’d really truly hanker for.
If it works it works right?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Chad Brewer] “I got past your sarcasm, but how’d you know the one VTR we don’t have?”
I’ve worked in very similar circumstances. I was the one who had to go out of house to a facility with a Quad machine (was one of the few who knew how to work one) and do D2 transfers. I’ve been involved with a number of preservations projects. Actually did have someone walk in with punch cards once and an 8″ Floppy another time.
If you’re a facility accepting that kind of work you have to know what to do. I wouldn’t complain about a single NLE that couldn’t handle something done from another NLE potentially using a years old workflow. I’d find a solution for the client. If the main issue is software compatibility, software is cheap these days. That’s my point. If a new version of Avid MC can handle the batch than that’s what you get. Jeremy pointed to another solution.
That Avid is backwards compatible with old projects and FCPX is not backwards compatible with old Avid projects as the latter never supported batch tape capture isn’t really a serious flaw in FCPX. Avid is the tool for that job.
[Chad Brewer] “For a place like the one I work at, it’s a must.”
That’s absolutely unrealistic. All modern equipment at some point limits or terminates backward compatibility in some areas and each developer does it at different times and for different reasons.
Just as one may have to maintain an old Quad machine (you can’t buy a new one) you’re going to run into the same thing with software.
Even Avid had file issues when they switched boards and formats. Of course the answer at the time was batch digitize.
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[Craig Seeman] “Of course one can create illogical workflows and say “there, look, it doesn’t work””
If a workflow that works without issue in FCP7 but becomes laborious with FCPX means it’s illogical… Ok.
[Craig Seeman] “You don’t have to change a facility to have an individual Avid work station for an individual job.”
Almost all our jobs require at least a few shots be brought in from tape. I see linking all the captured shots as a bigger issue than capturing.
[Craig Seeman] “Sorry but coming up with, what I consider, a convoluted situation and blaming modern software…”
FCP7 allowed creative solutions, sorry I mean “convoluted”, that are wide spread and diverse in the large facility space. FCP7 dominates in this space because of this ability. Apple clearly geared FCPX to a smaller “one man band” or even “quartet” with really no regard to large facilities workflows. They really slammed the door on enabling custom solutions in favor of Apple “one size fits all” in a clear nod to Avid. Creating innovative workflows with FCP7 is like playing on a wide open field. Avid is like a straight jacket. FCPX is looking like a padded room.
We are certainly a big ship that turns slowly. Believe me I have the rudder full to port but it just doesn’t turn fast enough.
You wrote FCPX doesn’t lose much when it comes to tape… I respectfully disagree no matter what you think of our methods.
Seems I get dissed every time I describe how we’re struggling with FCPX. Is this forum not interested in a large facility’s persecutive?
John
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[John Heagy] “Seems I get dissed every time I describe how we’re struggling with FCPX. Is this forum not interested in a large facility’s persecutive? “
That’s all part of the fun here… right?
I, for one, am very interested in hearing about your facility perspective.
You fret about tape; I’ll fret about image sequences. Here’s to illogical workflows.
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 -
[John Heagy] “Seems I get dissed every time I describe how we’re struggling with FCPX. Is this forum not interested in a large facility’s persecutive? “
I am.
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[John Heagy] “If a workflow that works without issue in FCP7 but becomes laborious with FCPX means it’s illogical… Ok.”
Because FCP7 is EOL and FCPX is new code. Yes as I said, at some point developers, hardware or software, cut off backward compatibility. All do it at different points for different reasons but it is inevitable.
I’d be surprised if Premiere Pro CS6 could open an old Premiere 6 project from 2001.
Avid probably keeps backward compatibility going very far back but even they had cutoffs with their hardware based codecs when they changed board technology.
Compatibility has a life span, Some longer. Some shorter. Every developer cuts off at some point. Everyone hitting that point in any software goes “ouch” at that point. Again, that’s why people keep old computers, old software, old decks alive.
In most cases for most people Blackmagic and AJA have solutions that can handle tape for those who need to pull from that. Blackmagic Media Express can handle CMX EDL for example. That doesn’t help if you don’t have CMX EDL file from the old Avid project though.
[John Heagy] “CP7 dominates in this space because of this ability”
Good reason for keeping old software alive as I said above
Repeating again, every software drops backwards compatibility with some things at some point… unless the software itself dies… What would you do with an Discreet Edit project?[John Heagy] “Seems I get dissed every time I describe how we’re struggling with FCPX. Is this forum not interested in a large facility’s persecutive? “
I spend many years at facilities like yours as I allude in some of my previous posts. It’s very easy for a big facility to keep an old workstation going.
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I too am interested.
The tape issue is difficult. John, I think you said “no mam” (media asset management system). We are looking to centralize here.
We are looking to overhaul our tape capture process to make it NLE or video app agnostic. The idea that we are leaning towards is using tools on air justin, the softron stuff or aja vtr exchange or even bmd media express and gleaning tape metadata from the app and keeping that in the mam. Then when or if the source asset has been deleted and we need it back, we are looking for a clever means of pushing that data back from the mam to the capture program for recap.
My thought process here is that we use assets in more than just the nle. IE after effects c4d etc. if a tape sourced asset is missing from AE and I used fcp7 or whatever to capture, but have no means to recollect which project was used, what good does it do? I recall that some reel metadata was stored in the QT, but I’m not certain that would be found in offline info in other apps outside of fcp7.
So we want the mam to look backwards and forwards. It should be able to say, this came from tape and here’s the bar code, and this went to lto6, and here’s that barcode…
Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D -
[Craig Seeman] “Because FCP7 is EOL and FCPX is new code. Yes as I said, at some point developers, hardware or software, cut off backward compatibility. All do it at different points for different reasons but it is inevitable.”
I would argue that tape is far from EOL and Apple, as is typical, forced the issue. I swear Apple engineers must get bonuses based on cutting “legacy” tech from apps.
We’ll find a way around it, but again, to say not much is lost as far as tape goes is not true from our stand point.
John
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[John Heagy] “I would argue that tape is far from EOL and Apple, as is typical, forced the issue. I swear Apple engineers must get bonuses based on cutting “legacy” tech from apps.
We’ll find a way around it, but again, to say not much is lost as far as tape goes is not true from our stand point.
“John,
See my other post with explanation. I don’t want tape capture married to an NLE in the future. I want it separate in a centralized location and stored as metadata and exportable to other tape capture mediums in the future. Having said that you know as well as I that we have tons of old tape from the 80s and 90s that is rotting. Those need archived digitally. Further reason for me to want tape capture, and just as important, “tape capture metadata” stored outside of the nle. It’s now clear that an NLE also has a “shelf life”.
I’m actually seeing lack of tape capture inside of the app as a positive rather than a negative. (I know some people are cursing me saying to put the kool aid down.)
Keith
Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D -
Hi Keith,
[Keith Koby] “I recall that some reel metadata was stored in the QT”
Ah… now your talking my language. Yes there is “reel” metadata that comes along with the timecode track. In the QT API it’s call TCSource. This is the old FCP7 reel metadata that inexplicably is not read by FCPX. Hoping that will change in the next version. It’s like reading history… never an excuse not to do that.
Luckily FCPX embraces QT’s extended metadata model. The reel in FCPX is read from QT when it finds a com.Apple.ProApps.Reel key. Arri uses this model a well as the old TCSource. It supports custom keys which you can punch into QT with Digital Rebellions’s QTEdit. FCPX will read any custom key if entered as a custom metadata field using the same com.xxx syntax.
CatDV excels at reading any an all com.xxx entries out of the box.
Interesting you are looking at Just:in we use B4M’s Fork extensively but it does not include any embedded metadata. I’ve been meaning to try Just:in for this reason.
John
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