FCPX metadata–how significant is it? And why?

[Oliver Peters]

Actually the fix is in the same area but a different part of that tools menu:

Thanks again.

– Oliver

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

[Jeremy Garchow]

Yep, you just beat me to it. Sorry I misunderstood, I thought you meant Events, not the media!

Jeremy

[Franz Bieberkopf]

Jeremy,

My own point of reference on this is Lightroom (though not in a “pro” environment).

Is there anything useful to be made of the comparison re: metadata?

Franz.

[Franz Bieberkopf]

I’ll chime in and add that slow search is one of my issues with FCP7 … so much so that it discourages me from using it. I use it most often with my sound libraries (and though they encompass many clips, they would certainly not be considered extensive).

Franz.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “Is there anything useful to be made of the comparison re: metadata?”

You mean between FCPX and Lightroom?

[David Roth weiss]

[Bill Davis] “I saw on the LAFCPUG website that you’re one of the Stump the Guru’s tonight.

When you see Mike Horton, if you remember say Hi to him for me.”

Actually Bill, I owe you one, because I would have missed the guru gig had you not reminded me that it was tonight. For some reason I kept thinking it was going to be tomorrow night, and your 5:15pm message is the only thing that got me there on time on the right day.

Thank you!

DRW

PS – I did tell Michael that you said hello.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

Don’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Christian Schumacher]

I believe Jeremy’s experience on searching in FCP legacy’s “Browser” is limited to a fat project with a massive bunch of clips in it. And I don’t think he is into long-form, as well.

A fast searching result is achieved when applied to specific Bins (and Projects) which should be organized beforehand. So, when working in the big ones that’s a necessary step to deal with. You have to know the best practices that go along with the tool you are working on. And I strongly believe the same applies to X as well, but in different scenarios, of course.

One more thing to consider is searching at a Sequence level when the “search command” is much faster and becomes a powerful tool to select a determined set of clips at once. When you combine searching in Browser along with searching in a Sequence, which can then hold those previous Bin results, you have both clean and organized interactions within your Projects. And there’s labels, markers, custom columns fields to add even more functionality to the tool.

I’m not saying FCP X Collections or its metadata capability are useless, mind you. But I think this came up after a fellow user argued if legacy’s searching functions even existed!!! So we had to chime in to point out that FCP 7 (when you know what you’re doing) can be capable of organizing big projects, hence its widespread use in professional and complex scenarios. But that doesn’t mean it was a simple or a perfect workflow BTW.

I believe FCP X is successful when allows a light user to achieve the same organizing results on its own simple way, and that’s a good thing to consider. But one has to equally consider the mileage that FCP 7 went through to handle those complex Projects that it did “in the past”. And it was far from buggy and useless, c’mon I think those adjectives fit in better with the new iteration of FCP, so watch out the language used at our beloved legacy software. It is prudent to wait until FCP X matures, until then use your helmets and take the heat.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Christian Schumacher] “I believe Jeremy’s experience on searching in FCP legacy’s “Browser” is limited to a fat project with a massive bunch of clips in it. And I don’t think he is into long-form, as well. “

Big project, lots of media, and lots of metadata. I will have to show you what one clip looks like when I get back to the office tomorrow. Every column is full, and not just with one field, but multiple, as FCP7s columns are very limited.

I don’t know what long form has to do with it except my sequences aren’t as long. While the sequences aren’t long, I make up for it in volume, I can assure you that. That sounds like some sort of euphemism.

[Christian Schumacher] ” It is prudent to wait until FCP X matures, until then use your helmets and take the heat.”

Dude. FCPXs searching is far better, more useful, more dynamic (and easier) than FCP7.

Combine that with the information that follows the clips in the timeline in the Timeline Index is great.

Got your helmet on? 😀

Jeremy

[Lance Moody]

While I am certainly growing to love X, I have to say that the way metadata is handled is CAUSING what I consider to be the biggest problem with X.

By apparently writing the metadata to the actual file, X chokes if the file is changed in ANY way.

This causes a myriad of problems by making stuff become unlinked (and worse, unlinkable).

I am not interested in doing any motion graphics or compositing inside FCP since the tools are always lackluster. So when I take a rendered item from After Effects and need to revise it, it is absurd that I can’t just render the changed file again without having the changed file become an unrecoverable orphan and having to painfully import the rerendered file and replace the clips throughout the timeline.

This all worked fine and magically in FCP7.

Lance

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Lance Moody] “By apparently writing the metadata to the actual file, X chokes if the file is changed in ANY way.”

This isn’t writing metadata to a file, this is changing the file, and FCPX has some super strict (and kind of ridiculous) rules in that regard.

Right now, modifying the file from an external application causes the file to go offline in FCPX, although you can modify still files externally and there’s no penalty. We should be allowed to modify these files externally and not have them knocked offline in FCPX. I agree.

Jeremy

[Lance Moody] “This all worked fine and magically in FCP7.”

It wasn’t until FCP7, that the “automatically connect to externally modified files” became an option. So it is relatively recent magic.

Jeremy