FCP-X: Thinking Differently?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Lawrence] “The problem with compound clips is that they rob you of your piece’s overall context. Any adjustments must be made inside their own little island. If you break them apart to see context, you lose any transitions.”

So you don’t use After Effects much? Precomps (nests, compound clips, whatever) are extremely powerful and help keep the myriad of layers organized. It’s so easy to step in to them in FCPx too.

[David Lawrence]

[Andrew Richards] “And I’d be much more willing to accept these statements if these advanced users supported them, which would help convince me their frustration was with a structural problem in FCPX’s timeline model and not that it doesn’t behave the way they are used to a timeline behaving. There’s a big difference if we’re debating the merits of the model. If you attempt to apply open timeline disciplines to the magnetic timeline it will be painful and frustrating and seem to be fighting you. You call that Apple arrogantly telling you how to work, I call that driving a nail with the cheek of a hammer.”

I invite you to read and consider Mr. Federline’s recently posted comment here.

[Andrew Richards] “Didn’t we just share an exchange recently where what seemed to take five clicks only took one or two? :-)”

Touché. 😉 Now let’s talk audio mixing…

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[Jeremy Garchow]

I wanted to post this before I left today, so it is incomplete. I spent about an hour trying to get this to look right, including naming all the clips in the timeline (which is separate form what they are named in the event/browser. Cool). This of course does not represent real time as there’s no clips to choose, watch, editing to be done, I was just simply trying to copy the layer structure and see how it went in FCPx.

This has nothing to do with the actual edit. Since I haven’t seen the final product of the timeline in question, this has nothing to do with the compositing aspect of anything, but I’m sure it would be fine if I knew how the commercial looked. There’s a lot of stacked video, so I am thinking there’s some sort of split screen happening.

This was fun, layering is a snap, and the more I dive in, the better FCPx gets.

Mr Lawrence, I know you are all about the “scratch” area to work, on, so am I. This is so easy to do above the primary storyline with connected clips to a gap. I do not miss the patch panel and auto select tracks one bit.

I hope FCPx is allowed to get serious with real hardware support and interconnection protocols.

This was not meant to misrepresent or represent anything, it was more an exercise for me to see what’s possible and I am glad I did it. I’ll finish it if I have time after next week:

Jeremy

[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “So you don’t use After Effects much? Precomps (nests, compound clips, whatever) are extremely powerful and help keep the myriad of layers organized. It’s so easy to step in to them in FCPx too.”

I use AE all the time. Love it. It’s a nightmare for editorial work — I’d never cut a show in it.

Here’s a true story: A client asked me to bid on posting a four-minute promo. It was to be shot with DSLR and required animatics, animation and motion graphics. In my bid I told them I was fine with editing, animatics on stills and simple motion graphics, but complex animation/motion graphics and original graphics creation would be better handled by a specialist because I’m not a graphic artist. The client did have an animator/graphic artist that they liked working with. To save money, they decided to have the animator/graphic artist edit the entire piece.

I think you know where this is going… Two weeks later, the client calls me in a complete panic. The animator was a nightmare to work with, refusing to make any changes from the original script. Could I please take over and make these simple fixes? I say fine, send me a hard drive with everything and I’ll dig in. I get the hard drive. It turns out the animator/graphic artist made his edit in the tool he uses for motion graphics. After Effects. It’s a mess of nested comps that perfectly match the client script. Making the simplest changes would take hours.

I took one look, called the client and told them I wasn’t sure I could help. I explained why they were getting resistance from the animator and offered to see if I could somehow get his work loaded into my preferred tool.

I would up going from AE to Premiere Pro, then XML out Premiere Pro to FCP. Once in FCP I had to unpack all the nests that the comps come over as, and fix the effects that render differently between AE/PP and FCP. Then I could start making the requested changes. The changes were trivial and took only minutes. Then the client viewed and came back with more changes which I easily incorporated. We even used iChat Theater preview so we could collaborate in real-time together. This blew the client’s mind. In the end they had a piece that they loved and I was a hero. This was my first job with them and they’ve been coming back ever since.

They wound up paying me thousands of dollars more than they would have if they had taken my advice and just had the animator do animation/motion graphics.

Moral of the story: use the right tool for the job.

AE is an awesome animation/compositing/effects program. For fast, fluid editorial work, it’s a bag of pain.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Mark Bein]

[David Lawrence] ” Each object was simply placed where it needed to be in time, like a note on a musical score.”

A musical score needs gaps (pauses) just like fcpx.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Lawrence] “AE is an awesome animation/compositing/effects program. For fast, fluid editorial work, it’s a bag of pain.”

Damn straight. I would never use it for editing, but I use precomps all the time and FCPx compound clips are even easier. You can also name them in the timeline to whatever you want so you can look at a glance as to what is going on there. See this:

Jeremy

[Aindreas Gallagher]

fair play. this is more like it – good stuff and game on.

I reckon possibly, looking at the original, that the stacking is a bit sedimentary as a live edit interacting with final post, with untouched original edits at the base, and then round trip assets and gfx iterating above but either way –

this is the first blood instance i have seen anywhere?, of skill/timeline situation matching between the edit platforms that has not been managed by apple. (in their now infamous NAB demo screenshot comparison moment)

being.. a tad bitchy for a minute.. do you find you need to enclose vertical layers within secondary storylines to this degree all the time? doesn’t that hint to conceptual shortcomings in their conception?

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[David Lawrence]

[Mark Bein] “A musical score needs gaps (pauses) just like fcpx.”

This is a non-issue in an open timeline. Empty space around media objects acts as silence, there’s no need for “gaps”.

In fact, to take the analogy further, if a musical score behaved like the magnetic timeline, it would mean you’d have to write special “gap notes” between each of your regular notes to indicate silence.

Gaps are one of the magnetic timeline’s biggest steps backwards. Not only do you have to keep track of the media objects, now you also have to mange all the space in between.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Jeremy Garchow]

I wish I knew more about the orig edit to make it more accurate. There’s a lot of layers, and I feel I am missing some efficiencies and details. It was really fun to do. I had to leave the office, but hope to get back to this the week after next.

I am not just saying this, this program is not for amateurs, it’s very powerful, but also accessible.

I can see why Apple left the translation alone for now. There were many decisions that needed to be made (by me) that could in no way be conveyed through a traditional XML. mostly, it’s the creating of all the secondary story lines to get dissolves/wipes on the connected clips. Making the audio into secondary storylines brings audio fade fuctionality back with a quickness. Layering and repositioning the stack is so easy with the connection points.

This makes me think that any translation program will have to be a bare bones affair. Maybe some assumptions will need to be made (like if two clips have a transition, they automatically are made into a storyline, but not necessarily the primary one) but it will still have some innaccuracies.

It is obvious this application is thinking ahead. I don’t equate efficiency with ease/ less skill.

By the way, for those not checking, there’s a screengrab on my last post that attempts to recreate the Federline spot. The link does not show up on the cow response emails.

Link to post:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/13465

[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Damn straight. I would never use it for editing, but I use precomps all the time and FCPx compound clips are even easier. You can also name them in the timeline to whatever you want so you can look at a glance as to what is going on there. See this:”

I get it. But it doesn’t help if you need to have everything exposed and at your fingertips. And you lose any transitions if you break them apart.

I invite you to read and consider Mr. Federline’s recently posted comment here.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl