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FCP-X and 20 bays..question
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Premiere can be weird on SANs due to the tremendous amount of caching that happens.”
I’m not sure that’s still true with Premiere Pro CC. You can turn off some of the caching/audio conform in the pref settings. I haven’t tested that though.
One thing also to consider … If you need to archive TRIMMED project media, FCP X currently is a no-go. I’ve done it, but it requires round-tripping through FCP 7.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I find the same with CC. It still happens and is not a deal breaker, but an annoyance.
Pr isn’t the best at trimming either.
With fcpx, you can very easily cull down a Project’s used clips to a single event, ditching all unused clips. Sure, it isn’t trimmed down to only the frames used, but it does help when needing to send as little as possible.
Also, FCPXML will allow one to import a Project with no Event, create a new Event in the process with all organization in tact. Unfortunately, there are things that don’t come over in FCPXML like templates and other data, but the cuts and organization do come over.
It’s far from perfect, but I find huge leaps in the right direction. It does take some getting used to and it has only been getting better.
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Eric,
We run 15 FCPX bays over XSAN (broadcast post for national television). We had very little trouble making the switch from FCP7 and seeing what we have been able to accomplish with FCPX in the past year we are definitely staying with it. If you have any practical questions feel free to ask. You can also e-email me directly: ronny(dot)courtens(at)mac(dot)com.
Things are evolving quite rapidly in editing land. It might be very wise to hold on to FCP7 for another 5 months and see what’s happening then. Having been around for quite some time now I know loads of people and facilities who are using FCP. Most of them are looking around but they have no intention at all to make any hasty decisions right now. And I think they are being very intelligent.
– Ronny
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[Jeremy Garchow] “With fcpx, you can very easily cull down a Project’s used clips to a single event, ditching all unused clips.”
Unless you have compound clips in the original event – even if those compounds are not included or the sequence was broken apart earlier. I just had a commercial job where I’d used compounds to build a selects reel as the “first pass”. When I went to dupe the project with only used media into a new event, it took all the media from the “unused” compounds, too. The media difference would have been hundreds of GB versus 12GB. The solution was to roundtrip through FCP 7 to media manage the sequence.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I’d wait..
We know 10.1 is due out very soon so I’d wait and see where it goes from there.
Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor -
[Oliver Peters] “Unless you have compound clips in the original event – even if those compounds are not included or the sequence was broken apart earlier. I just had a commercial job where I’d used compounds to build a selects reel as the “first pass”. When I went to dupe the project with only used media into a new event, it took all the media from the “unused” compounds, too. The media difference would have been hundreds of GB versus 12GB. The solution was to roundtrip through FCP 7 to media manage the sequence.”
It is certainly a bug, but it’s not the end of the world.
Simple FCPXML import/export of a Project works to shake loose those phantom compound clips and you can import it to any share or drive that you want, and then organize the media.
No reason, at least in my travels, to go through FCP7 unless you do want to trim the media. You could also use Resolve for this and render new media via FCPXML, or Smoke does lovely conforms all with FCPXML.
You can also delete the media out of the compound and dupe again. This will also delete the media out of the original Event compound, too, so you just have to know what the tool is doing.
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We have a larger san and plenty of seats. ~500TB total and +60 san hosts. About 35 of those are stations where editors sit.
We currently have about 10 users on fcpx. That’s up from 3 of us last year at this time.
There have been a number of threads on fcpx and sharing on xsan in this forum and the other one. Do a search in here and you’ll find it.
We are currently using the san location methods, but blend the two examples given in the white paper. Our san locations are folders that sit parallel to where the fcp7 projects go.
Last week, we switched up to try out John’s method of using sparse bundles. We like it. It’s nice and clean. The disk images basically equate to the fcp7 project file too. Just be careful with either san locations or disk images on your san. Make sure you put them in a beefy storage pool that can support holding renders and playing back renders. In the future we hope to see better network and collaborative sharing options.
Also, if you keep your media centrally located (which makes sense on a san), make sure you have the “copy media into event” preference turned off on every station. It is on by default.
The other thing you might encounter if you haven’t done any research yet and you have a big facility full of 12 core mac pro workstations, is that fcpx works better on new hardware (read: not old mac pros). Use it on the new t-bolt iMac with san links and t-taps, and you’ll love the speed.
One last piece of advice would be to wait till the new mac pro ships. If you are anything like me, I have an aversion to proliferating windows boxes on the san and in the facility. My job is way easier dealing with OSX only. I want to see how the new mac pro performs with each app. To me, the premiere route probably means PCs with nvidia cards or imacs with nvidia cards rather than new macs pros which seem to only have the AMD option.
Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D -
Hi, I’ve done the transition from FCP7 to FCPX now in two companies, corporate business mediahouses.
Both went really smooth, and both having FCPX on Xsan. We work on each others projects all the time, and backup is now bless.
We create a folder with a lot of empty predefined forlders inside, and just use Add san location to this folder.
For backup we just copy the project folder and all is in place. We do a lot of reference media, but to media that is inside the top project folder. If import from other projects we use “copy to event” on import.We also run it with DaVinci Resolve, and using Nuendo for audiowork. X2Pro works just fine here.
Don’t miss, tracks, renderhell, framerates problems, double viewer, saving, avid or adobe. Sometimes I use Photoshop. We still use AfterEffects for animation and stuff. But have done a lot with motion and building our own graphics inside FCPX/Motion.
Also, I’ve just done an exhibition video for 3xHD resolution, yes thats it, 5760 x 1080. Inside FCPX. Works!
/helge, norwayHelge
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It is certainly a bug, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Agreed.
[Jeremy Garchow] “No reason, at least in my travels, to go through FCP7 unless you do want to trim the media.”
Which I do. FCP 7 round-tripping is also, often an essential step if you get graded, trimmed media from an out-of-house colorist and need to relink. A current impossibility with X unless a new XML is supplied (not always an option).
[Jeremy Garchow] “You can also delete the media out of the compound and dupe again. This will also delete the media out of the original Event compound, too, so you just have to know what the tool is doing.”
Understood, but I want to keep the original session in tact, so deleting compound clips from the original event is not desirable.
In general, my feeling with X is that transportability is very problematic. Worse than 7 in fact. Sometimes very easy, sometimes it has you pulling your hair out. Relinking to media is frequently impossible, especially in the case of double-system sound. On the current film that I’m cutting, I find that on some days, X simply won’t relink to some of the audio files when I move the “dailies” event from the assistant station to the editor’s station. It seems to get confused – wanting to sometimes link to the real media file and at other times link to the alias. When it decides it wants the alias, there is simply no way to make it work as a relink.
I hit another bug today with LTO back-up. Seems that the alias files don’t copy over. Not sure if there’s something weird with the file itself or if it’s the illegal parentheses characters – (id) . In any case it hangs up the LTO transfer. Zipping the event folder is a workaround.
YMMV.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Here’s a real-world story about doing what you want:
Also, going back to Premiere is like going back to a buggy whip now that I’m fluent in Final Cut Pro X. I FLY on FCPX! Seriously, once you ‘get’ FCPX and experience its ease and speed, you’ll never go back.
Don Smith
NewsVideo.comNewsVideo.com
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