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FCP X features or lack thereof. Your opinion on the rationale.
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[Michael Gissing] “So stop wasting my time by telling me what limited tools that suit you are always enough. I get that you and Robin don’t get it. I’m used to working with editors that at least accept that I might just know what I need.”
I’m more of a post sup at this point, more assisting/finishing work than feature editing. For my clients I try and remove as many time/labor consuming redundant tasks as possible.
I do turn over an end product that is agreed upon, sometimes it has to be negotiated as you are right, no two places are 100% alike. Talent should always take priority over the tools.
I am able to offer to the colorists who are finishing in Resolve is a fully conformed drp project file in lieu of having to perform a cumbersome and time consuming EDL conform.
If they are using Resolve and it works as promised, there should be no issue in accepting that as providing the end result should be welcomed.
I also turn over an EDL via the 3rd party app (and Resolve) as many distribution companies require it in the deliverables.
On a $2mil and under budgeted film the two things always in short supply are time and money. Since they can rarely raise more money I’ve been able to buy extra creative edit time for the director because of saving time in finishing without causing an end rush.
Most places require several days to a week for conform and ingest time. I provide a fast RAID drive that they can media manage to their shared storage system with all the media linked and online in Resolve or if they choose they can work directly from the drive.
As far as DAW turnovers go, a recent feature I sent an AAF to a sound designer who works on Walking Dead, he said it was one of the best turnovers he has ever received and he has been in the business since the early 80s.
Each character’s lav had a bed of tracks, everything was laid out in advance and there was no conform of the ISOs to do. All I said was I wish I could have taken the credit for that but it’s just how it comes out when the show is prepped properly and the location audio person is on the ball.
[Michael Gissing] “If you think post facilities are wrong then you just aren’t doing your job.”
I don’t think post facilities are always wrong, having worked at enough of them the reality is the client makes a promise and then hands off a nightmare so they need to CTA. What I take issue with is them charging for conform services I do not want to hire them for.
So to clarify, I do provide all the requested turnovers.
I just don’t want my clients to spend the extra time and money when it isn’t necessary to use archaic formats.
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[Darren Roark] “So to clarify, I do provide all the requested turnovers.”
Apologies. My comments were misdirected. They probably only applied to Robin.
I find the majority of editors are absolutely professional and work hard to get handovers right. I am turning over mostly sub $400,000 broadcast docos where a day of mucking around a handover is a catastrophe.
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[Michael Gissing] “I am turning over mostly sub $400,000 broadcast docos where a day of mucking around a handover is a catastrophe.”
Every doc has it’s own set of variables don’t they?
Ideally if it’s a new to me vendor I try and offer a dress rehearsal turnover a couple weeks before their deadline that buys some time padding at the end when everything inevitably changes last minute.
The spanner that gets thrown in the works are the many places jumping the Blackmagic pirate ship to other color systems because they can charge more for them.
What is becoming a standard here is these places keep a Resolve system for conforming regardless of what NLE the show was cut in, then they send a FCP 7 XML from there to Baselight, Pablo or Lustre so all the FCP X timeline advantages in Resolve with mixed framerates becomes a moot point.
The irony..
I try to avoid telling anyone what the show was cut in if possible.
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[Darren Roark] “The spanner that gets thrown in the works are the many places jumping the Blackmagic pirate ship to other color systems because they can charge more for them. What is becoming a standard here is these places keep a Resolve system for conforming regardless of what NLE the show was cut in, then they send a FCP 7 XML from there to Baselight, Pablo or Lustre so all the FCP X timeline advantages in Resolve with mixed framerates becomes a moot point.”
Surely BMD pushing Resolve down-market factors in, but even if that’s the prime motivation for people to look at other color systems, I think that’s a good thing. Each system has its own approach and design philosophy, its own strengths and weaknesses — and a diverse, vibrant color ecosystem beats a Resolve monoculture in my book.
When you want to cut with FCPX instead of the “standard” Premiere Pro or Media Composer, you have good reasons other than “it costs less,” right? What if the colorist wants to grade with Baselight or Nucoda or Mistika instead of the “standard” Resolve? I can see why a colorist would want to prioritize the grading toolset over the conform toolset. Sometimes letting the creative talent work with their favorite tool is the best call.
To bring this vaguely back to topic, interchange exists to make this possible. Apple’s FCPXML interchange is a mixed bag, simultaneously brilliant and egotistical. On the one hand, it’s modern, extensible and admirably complete; on the other, it’s new(ish) and requires the rest of the world to adapt to it rather fitting in with all the pre-existing infrastructure.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Michael Gissing] “And that in a nutshell is why I want editors to own tools that (for whatever crazy reason to them) allows them to deliver what the next facility down the chain actually wants.”
[Michael Gissing] “At times I need xml, OMF, AAF and EDLs”
And again: so? Which of those are you not able to deliver with FCP X i.e. FCPXML literally within seconds? Odd how you’ve avoided that question over and over. But then… maybe not so much.
So basically all this lamenting is because of a whopping 30 seconds more (if even!) you need for an export? Because sorry if I feel compelled to call complete bs on your “a day of mucking around” hyperbole. Even if that’s actually the case, then FCP is most definitely not the spoke in your wheel.
[Michael Gissing] “I get that you and Robin don’t get it.”
Right. It’s most definitely us. :-)))
[Michael Gissing] “if I say I need an EDL to drop into a text editor so I can do a quick find on a file name when I am on the phone to the edit room to tell them which files are missing from the drive then bloody well should give me an EDL.”
So you’ve never heard of the timeline index nor e.g. Producer’s Best Friend (not to mention EDL-X). Okay.
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[Michael Gissing] “I find the majority of editors are absolutely professional and work hard to get handovers right. I am turning over mostly sub $400,000 broadcast docos where a day of mucking around a handover is a catastrophe.”
But this goes the other way too. If I get back something that I didn’t give you, I then have to muck around for a day getting it all back together.
The problem I have with EDLs is that they don’t describe everything that is going in the timeline. By the time projects get to you, the colorist or sound designer, it has been months and months of toil, changes, experiments, and collaboration. An EDL completely blows all of that up. When things were on physical reels, and you need to grab them from a specific place, sure, but now with everything that we have at our disposal, including a lot of things that can be done in the NLE and not in a specialized environment in terms of effects and composites, an EDL does not represent my final thoughts, decisions, and months of work.
An FCPXML gets really really close.
I too, like Darren’s folks, use Resolve to conform. I can make almost any piece of interchange from it, if that’s what is required. Most of the projects I work on get graded in Baselight, so it’s possible to go from FCPX to whatever you want if you have the right tools. Resolve uses fcpxml, and despite some frame size hiccups, the speed changes, even multiple speed changes within a clip, round trip seamlessly. There must be something within fcpxml that allows this as xml isn’t as good, and EDL is a joke. So why do I have to stick with EDL that won’t help me, or the finisher, see my intentions in the timeline?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “By the time projects get to you, the colorist or sound designer, it has been months and months of toil, changes, experiments, and collaboration. An EDL completely blows all of that up.”
My point exactly. Thank you.
Anyone that actually insists they need EDLs or actually think they are somehow a good idea let alone the best choice in any case in today’s digital workflow, has, at minimum, little to no respect for their own work imho (or just edits really boring stuff ????). Everyone else should do their best to get any and everyone they know off the harebrained idea of supporting it’s use any day longer, just “because”.
[Jeremy Garchow] “An FCPXML gets really really close.”
Why? What are you missing?
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Robin S. Kurz] “Why? What are you missing?”
Sometimes there are keyframes missing or out of place. Some text doesn’t translate (formatting/etc) but that’s not surprising. Pretty minor stuff, really. For the most part, everything is there and more accurate than xmeml.
Resolve has some weird bug where if there’s a variable speed change on the clip, it puts it in a compound clip that can’t be decomposed.
This effects me if I am editing 4k in 1080 timeline, those conformed clips render 1080 from Resolve, when they should be 4k. What’s weird is that Resolve lists all he clips as 4k, even the compound clip, but it will render it at 1080. You can’t copy/paste the variable speed change in Resolve, so you have to rebuild all those changes by hand, which is cumbersome when there’s a lot of them and everything is shot at 2500fps. 🙂
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[Walter Soyka] “When you want to cut with FCPX instead of the “standard” Premiere Pro or Media Composer, you have good reasons other than “it costs less,” right?”
It allows many tedious tasks to be automated, you can easily use production audio, faster outputs, and when the editor knows it the ones I work with all say something similar, they can work as fast as they can think.
Costing less and efficiency.
[Walter Soyka] “Each system has its own approach and design philosophy, its own strengths and weaknesses — and a diverse, vibrant color ecosystem beats a Resolve monoculture in my book.”
Absolutely. It’s when I run into places here in LA who use Resolve for TV work and use one of the other more fussy systems for features in the same rooms with the same colorist and refuse to budge, it can get irritating. (This is usually due to the insistence of grading DPX on features as opposed to camera native because of ‘proprietary color science’.)
Considering the movies I work on have about the same budget as an episode of network scripted TV, it gets a bit silly.
[Walter Soyka] “Apple’s FCPXML interchange is a mixed bag, simultaneously brilliant and egotistical. On the one hand, it’s modern, extensible and admirably complete; on the other, it’s new(ish) and requires the rest of the world to adapt to it rather fitting in with all the pre-existing infrastructure.”
I have turned over a few features where the finishing vendor had no idea it was cut in FCP X. I actually try and avoid that subject if possible. If they want an EDL or FCP 7 XML I can give them that.
I just don’t want to pay facility fees and spend the time for using them if they aren’t absolutely necessary.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “By the time projects get to you, the colorist or sound designer, it has been months and months of toil, changes, experiments, and collaboration. An EDL completely blows all of that up.”
Which is why it is just an additional tool that is sometimes the simplest way to find missing media. I never use an EDL to import a project unless nothing else works which is extremely rare. But it is an easy and simple list. Why do I sometimes want it? Because I still have a great tool called Shotlister that takes an EDL and displays it graphically. It ends up looking like an old dubbing chart. There are heaps of ways I can display timecode and reel information like relative and absolute offset which helps enormously when reversioning doco cut downs. Yes there are other tools but Shotlister has some amazing ways to globally adjust a timecode offset specific to a reel, handy when reconforming polywav audio where there is an offset between the code the editor has been working with on the camera sound and the iso recorded wavs which is extremely common.
I am not saying that EDLs should be used as the principal form of interchange but that interchange mix is sometimes necessary. And I know full well that using third party software that X can provide all those options. So I’ll say it again. My opinion which I am perfectly happy for you to just accept and not try to lecture me on is that interchange formats are core to NLE software.
The fact that it isn’t with X causes issues with some editors refusing to buy the third party software. Simple valid reason to argue my point. I really only care about getting the maximum time to do creative work and the minimum time coaching recalcitrant editors who think they know better.
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