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FCP X media management solutions?
Okay, so there are a few more core features coming to FCP X and Apple swears its commitment to Pros, promising that it’s not just a prosumer product. Sure. We believe you.
Here’s my holdback: media management. Let me explain.
The “event”-style approach in FCP X seems great to me if one has no more than say, 10-12 events (or projects) to deal with. I have hundreds of FCP 7 projects, many of which contain dozens and dozens of sequences, nested sequences, etc…. I probably have 35-50 main professional projects each year, all of which have their own .fcp file.
I send .fcp files to directors and producers out of state, they reconnect to media on their end, and revisions and tweaks are simple. A FCP X event -> XML -> FCP X event seems ridiculous, and the disk-end structure of FCP X events makes sharing very cumbersome.
Also, let’s talk about bins. I know that one of the selling points of FCP X is that the engineers have re-designed editing to meet modern needs. It seems that bins have been removed from the organization process in lieu of these auto groupings that neither meet my needs nor actually work in most cases (2-up shots, medium, close-up, wide, etc…). More commonly, I need to put 20-100 files from a scene into one bin, log them, and then create a new bin for the next 100 shots from the next scene. In FCP X the interface becomes ridiculously cluttered with even one such scene in the works, let alone the mandatory retention of every “event” (or job/project) that I’ve hypothetically ever used FCP X to work on.
I’m all about rethinking approaches and staying nimble. I’m 31 years old and have been learning new software at a rapid pace since the early 90s when I was 11-12. I wish that FCP X evangelists would stop using that criticism of anyone who dislikes the clunky, smalltown mentality that seems to have designed this event-based organization structure.
What I’m really interested in (and I’m sincerely interested, not just trying to complain about perceived shortcomings in FCP X) is how YOU are able to keep large numbers of projects, files and sequences organized in FCP X. If it’s true that this product is being used for broadcast and for professional work (and by “professional” I don’t mean getting paid $15 to edit your nephew’s bar mitzvah), I know that someone is finding better ways to use this app than I have.
Has anyone written up or posted a screencast that demonstrates a solid professional media management workflow? I’ve seen some attempts at that but so far I’ve seen nothing that addresses a high-volume client base.
Thank you in advance,
Garrett Gibbons
https://www.garrettgibbons.com -
36 Replies
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I’d check out jim Gilberti’s posts, he’s really been through the wars with X and he’s persevering. Ditto Seeman and Davis.
Also, personal plea – *please* don’t freak me out with premiere being a mac stability dog since ver.3 – adobe landing PPro 6 would be good for the sanity of the world in market option terms. Also the Conan guys seem to genuinely like the look of it…
On the upside however, digital film cameras are now going for the price of a second hand toyota corrolla with god’s own colour timing suite thrown in, and well, symphony is yours for buttons until june. As interesting times go, there are much much worse these.
Weirdly I wonder if this isn’t a better editing marketplace reality than the one where there was a competent FCP update (if one were to term it in that fashion).
Apple unleashed a loony firestorm of competition when they vacated their seat didn’t they?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
I agree that the competition for FCP’s top spot is spawning some awesome options. Smoke 2013 and Edius are great examples of emerging options for most editors, though the $3500 Smoke 2013 pricepoint is too high and Edius isn’t on Mac.
Thanks for the Jim Gilberti tip! I’ll look into what he’s written up.
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[Garrett Gibbons] “I send .fcp files to directors and producers out of state, they reconnect to media on their end, and revisions and tweaks are simple. A FCP X event -> XML -> FCP X event seems ridiculous, and the disk-end structure of FCP X events makes sharing very cumbersome.”
Garrett, have you looked into using disk images? Here is a good starting point: https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_x_managing_disk_image_martin.html
Each event resides in its own disk image, so it’s really easy to control what FCPX sees at a given time. When you want to backup, copy, or move the project, just backup, copy or move the disk image.Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!Check out my Mormon.org profile.
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Hi, Garrett.
It seems that you haven’t played much with FCPX?
Fist of all, you are not locked to the auto analysis Keywords. You can turn those off right away.
Secondly, keywords are similar to bins. They don’t have to be an auto search, they can be whatever you want them to be. You can setup separate “Smart Collections” if you want the auto search based on criteria that you choose.
If not, you can select mass grouping of clips in the Event and assign a Keyword to them which essentially puts them in a “bin”. You can then choose to further sort them out from there, or not.
FCPX allows batch renaming of selected clips with recursive numbering. If you have presets setup, it’s very simple and fast.
I would suggest downloading the FCPX demo and having a look.
You can swap Events and Projects as long as everyone has the same media.
If you have XSan, you can setup different SAN locations for different projects.
If not, use Event Manger X to manage what Projects/Events are loaded at what time. it’s very easy and fluid, and yes it’s different than FCP7.
Some people like it, some don’t. I find that the Event side of FCPX is quite powerful, but it does not operate like FCP7, nor should it be treated as such.
Jeremy
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hey jeremy – have you read the X rollercoaster post below? – honest to god – didn’t that scare the bejeesus out of you? It did me.
that was an editor camping scare story.
isn’t it possible that this is simply not yet primetime software? (which begs the question of when will it be? remember Jim’s nightmare post?) –
and I mean this – these qualms I state after listening to really interesting stuff on that post show about the power of the event keyword stuff. And my deep love of the attached CC power windows masks whatnot.
As in I’m personally pretty sanguine about the options at this point – hey, who wouldn’t be right?
its pretty much a glittering field really, and I’m all for FCPX staking its claim, but:
completely destroying all work in progress like FCPX is showing an occasional propensity for, makes for pretty unnerving reading.
You’d have to think they really do need a sacrosanct autosave vault.
this no more save stuff is just bupkis.
(I won’t venture back to the “can Apple actually, really, honestly do this class of software thing when they fired everyone who knew anything?” meme anymore.. than this sentence does….;)
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
Bejeesus perhaps comes to mind.
Do I think FCPX is young yet? Absolutely. There’s work to be done.
Even though it’s been getting better, we haven’t put it in to production quite yet, and like you, I dont know when that’s going to be. Maybe soon, maybe not. Cs6 appears to be a winner, but media management needs help there as well.
Right now Smoke looks like it has great media management, even a dedicated archive mode.
I would say to download the demo and see for oneself. I would also say to manually backup early and often.
Speedgrade seems to have an autosave feature, I think Lightworks does too. A save as for fcpx would be nice, or at least a better way to control the autosaves that is beyond “every 15 minutes or until FCPX detects a change”.
Project collaboration should be high on any NLE’s short list. They all do it differently and at varying levels of good to in progress. Avid is winning that race as it always been performing in that arena. Media100 had solid tools too, so I imagine it still does. And FCPX has decent tools too, actually. It doesn’t do well with parting pieces out, but it does do well at moving/copying large wads of data. And it also goes from low res proxy to original/high res with a pref change.
The recent FCPX “roadmap” seems like the are going to be focusing on the database in the form of native media support, along with the background media optimization. It sounds good, but we won’t know how good until the product is in our hands.
It’s all still very much up in the air.
I don’t know what makes things go bad. It is true that FCPX is too sensitive at this point, unless you are very careful.
In regards to Garrett’s post, I think organization is very nice in X, but it does require a modicum of know how and reeducation. It does not put everything in to auto collections if you don’t want it to, just as an example.
Looks like we will know more by the fall.
Still waiting for everything to change, I guess. For as much as we know, we don’t know anything.
Jeremy
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can claim a copy on a lappie that literally barely/does not run it, but yes – sure thing – its still really interesting software, and they worked like crazy on it, but some stuff i find it hard to get past – the scaling, not that I’ve really tried, but I feel, when I look at it, I feel deep down that it is intended for a finite number of clips, in a finitely complex situation. A few events – exposing one keyword at a time. A couple of shots of the Audi, in a promo spot, as it were.
I find it hard to shake the notion that there is a real limitation of use case scenario baked right into FCPX. But I could be very wrong.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “I find it hard to shake the notion that there is a real limitation of use case scenario baked right into FCPX. But I could be very wrong.”
We can only speculate.
Audio editing aside, and I’m not discounting that as its a huge part of picture editing, when new features have been added in FCPX, they are generally pretty good. Multicam (if using a simple audio edit) is really nice.
You are right that it feels sort of incomplete, and Apple’s announcements prove that notion. It’s what we have always talked about. It is brand new and it’s going to take a while to ramp up to a full blown system.
https://www.larryjordan.biz/app_bin/wordpress/archives/1800
Is it ready for primetime? I think it might be for some but not for others.
The fragmentation continues in a big big way.
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No mate;) Audi – not audio.
I was referring to apple’s reduced case, idealised, we all just have a couple of car shots with keywords to edit together thing…
It’ll be interesting to see if and when they drop that.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
Jeremy, thanks for the Ken Stone link. I read all of the articles on his page and found them highly useful (as always – I should have looked there first). The disk image solution is a bit clunky in many ways but in some ways it’s more elegant than relinking hundreds of files. It begins to fall apart when you’re working with proxies of R3D files and you need to reconform, but I’m sure there are ways to make it happen that I just need to learn. Thank you!
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