FCP-X for documentaries (with details)

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Bill Davis] “Seems to me the big win in the article is centered on X’s agile organization system and how that helped them sort and access a big, very complex array of project elements. “

but on a certain level doesn’t that make X, as is, the smaller part of the larger editing system Ubillos had in mind when he walked into the jobs meeting? It’s already stated Steve Jobs was looking at magnetic style basic elements intended for their earlier version of adobe prelude at the meeting, including the early tagging skimming stuff. At some point Ubillos should feel free to say what he saw as the editing system he had in mind out of those initial pieces. Because he definitely never got to build the editing eco-system he intended to build. Not if the Jobs meeting is true. Which it is.

FCPX is a malformed damaged child. Avid is the eternal moronic nappy emperor. And Premiere is a kind of tasty subscription hell.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Bret Williams]

You can’t ease anything in FCP X. Wait, opacity and things like blur. But wth would you need temporal easing of opacity?

Changing from linear to smooth has absolutely nothing to do with easing. One is spatial, one is temporal.

But Resolve 12 can’t do easing on position. But it does it on rotation, zoom, etc. Why is it Adobe is the only one that has a clue about keyframing? I assume they do motion blur on pushes, zooms, wipes and other transitions, correct? Do they do motion blur on transforms? Legacy did that. I love that transitions can have motion blur in X.

[Bret Williams]

Does the premiere skimming play out to the client monitor yet? It’s kind of a pointless feature otherwise.

[Bret Williams]

As much as keyframing sucks, the ability to publish motion templates trumps having some easing Keyframes which Inonly need once in awhile. I dealt with legacy a shortcomings in that area for 10 years and it’s no big deal in X. It just reminds me I should be doing my job in AE or Motion where I’ll do a better job anyway.

Are there plugins for premiere like mBehavior? You can do some awesome motion graphics with that right in X.

[Oliver Peters]

For me the slowdowns are a big issue. I’ve got a feature-length doc that I’ve been working on. I originally inherited an FCP7 in-progress project, which I migrated to Premiere Pro. Based on this article, I thought maybe I’d give X another shot with it. So I converted the sequence to FCP7 XML (from Premiere) and then 7toX, which surprisingly came across completely intact. But the UI performance simply isn’t there.

This is a 95 minute timeline with mainly DV footage and scratch VO audio clips. When I compare the responsiveness of the timeline in Premiere versus X, it’s night and day. This is equally true on my older MP tower as well as the new rMBP. When I resize the timeline up or down or resize to fit, Premiere is instant. X has a lot of lag in every action. This is with the X timeline in the chicklet view and “hide waveforms” in the browser view. Very disappointing.

While the organization tools in X are wonderful, the actual performance in large timelines continues to hold it back. I find that once you get a timeline that’s longer than about 10 minutes, the responsiveness gets a bit tedious. What are the workarounds to fix this?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Jon Smitherton]

I cut this 6 half hour doco series for Al Jazeera on 10.0.9 – 2 years ago:

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/wildlife-warzone/2013/09/2013917141359391317.html

There were 62 shoot days – the biggest hassle was syncing to external audio – I did tell them to get a clap!

I did have the Library corrupt a few times – not too sure how it is now – though I’d thoroughly recommend buy Pro Versioner (https://www.digitalrebellion.com/proversioner/) as it saved my butt.

It is such a fast cutter – in/out wham! (insert, overwrite, overlay or place at end). I could do cuts (and notes, audio volumes etc) to the timeline while it was playing!
Try doing that on Avid, it just stops dead. The last few jobs I’ve done in Avid I’m sure I’m pushing 3 buttons to FCPX’s 1. And that would compare to FCP7’s 2 button push to do the same job.

Now all I wish is for market saturation so I can use it; I have been showing a lot of people that were disdained from the release, and all of them have been suitable impressed with some of it’s features.

My tip is remember the shortcut shift-delete which is ‘replace with gap’ so you put a piece of black in when you delete a clip without the timeline assembling ala the magnetic timeline.

Cheers,
Jon.

[James Ewart]

I was gonna say the same thing. For that kind of work I’d be in Motion.

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] ” I still think the basic truth is do you want to hang on to where editing ideas have traditionally been – or do you see value in where those ideas might be going?”

The Mantra of X according to Bill.

There are many places where editing is “going” and X represents a slice of that – but not the entirety of it, not by a long shot.

I would suggest that before opining about where something is going it would help to have a clear understanding of the breadth of where it’s been.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Eric Santiago]

So I converted the sequence to FCP7 XML (from Premiere) and then 7toX, which surprisingly came across completely intact. But the UI performance simply isn’t there – Oliver Peters

Maybe its a conversion thing cause I too converted a FCP 7 project over to FCPX and it too was a little sluggish at the start.
New this was over a year ago and havent had to do that again, but I do have a massive feature on Premiere and will test that soon.

[Shane Ross]

Things I took away from the article:

1) If you spend months keywording and organizing media, it’s easy to sift through and find what you are looking for. TRUE…for most NLEs. Lots of places don’t like to do this. But yes, having an assistant spend gobs of time organizing media, it’ll be eaiser to find things. Now, the editor I know on this did say that searching for things was a lot easier than in other NLEs…and I do believe that. I do believe that FCX makes finding things easier across libraries than other NLES. But this also stresses the importance of organization, which is a big rallying cry of mine.

2) The need to OVERCUT master footage over temp timecoded footage still happens. No way to nicely link to the new footage, even if you modify the timecode to match. This would be a “killer app” in any NLE if they can manage to do it. Get a temp QT file….modify it’s TC to match the burn in, give a source name…and when the master comes in with that TC, give it the same source and relink. That would save TONS of time. But…alas, the overcutting is still needed in FCX like it is in Avid and FCP Classic. This is one of the biggest things when it comes to doc cutting…so if FCX can do something to streamline this, I can see more converts.

3) Still moves don’t translate to the finishing software. Which isn’t new. So one needs to either do the moves differently, or render those moves out as stand alone files and reimport and all that takes time. That was one of the biggest issues in the last online I had, going from Avid to Resolve…SO MANY STILLS. Reading this I see that in FCX, the issue remained. This is something else that needs to be addressed as stills are a big part of documentary cutting.

4) No mention of Lower third titling and other texting needs, like subtitles and end credits. RESOLVE is a finishing app, one I barely know, I’ll admit…so how well do titles transfer over? Credits? Credit rolls? How good of a job at titling is Resolve? A lot of reasons why people round trip is for this purpose…text. And building out various versions….seamless, textless at tail, etc.

Shane
Little Frog Post
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