FCPX Speed and workflow increases ? Real World examples?

[Bill Davis]

[Neil Goodman] “Where are the power users finding there speed increases from? “

Not from where I expected.

I don’t find that much increase in speed in timeline operations either – tho I suspect some will depending on the type of work they do and how they come to assemble their assets in terms of stacks and groupings. This is also true if an editor has content that can use Auditions and builds their own Motion templates that they can so easily modify show to show.

But some editors come to every project as a blank slate and are conditioned to build everything from scratch. And for those editors, I suspect X will reveal it’s efficiency slowly.

For me, the speed has come from two places. First, learning a series of strategies for using the Event Browser database to drive grouping behavior. Not just “here are my assets for this project” but using ordering labeling to shuffle clips into the edit order I prefer before I begin my cut. Then when I import the batch, they appear on the timeline magnetically – cut into something like the right order very rapidly. Again, this pre-supposes you have the type of program that is designed for orderly progression. But anything script driven will be like that. I commonly use simple paragraph numbers combined with ordring tags in the Event Browser to load my trimmed scenes into the Storyline IN ORDER – to begin an edit.

The second big speed increase for me is in Export. Building my system of client review portals and email “in progress” targets makes it super easy to do the back end stuff with a click.

And in the main storyline, I suppose part of it is that it just seems so fast and easy now. It’s as “reflexive” as Legacy ever was for me. It just took a year or so of use to become this fluid. Not becuase I struggled for the entire year. But because even when I had learned 50% the deep edit functions of X, I had to stop and think about things whenever I ran into something in the other 50%.

For me, that’s down to maybe 15% of my time that I have to stop and think about anything.

The rest of the time I just make the program, reflexively. And it FEELS really, really fast when I do that.

X presents some new tools – the integrated database being a prime example. But it doesn’t present any more efficiency than a name and address file – UNTIL you put names and addresses into it. Once you do that, you start to think, Hey, I can also put notes in this. And sort them. And so it becomes a new way of viewing what used to be a simple thing. I guess I d say the longer you have the tool, the more things you discover you can do with it. And that’s what drives the efficiency for me.

Hope that helps.

FINAL NOTE: I wan’t going to promote this overtly, but for whoever is interested, the Arizona FCP Users Group I host, is doing a test live webcast of our meeting tonight.

It’s at azfcpug.org if anyone wants to tune in and chuckle at whatever I screw up. Tonight at 7pm Mountain Time. Be kind. It’s a trial and I’ve never done anything like this before.

Agenda is on the website.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Nikolas Bäurle]

To me one of the main speed increases comes from the way X handles FX. Most of the time you don’t even need to render as long as you have the SSD iMac setup, unless of course you start adding in third party FX or several layers of color correction, but even then rendering is very fast.

In FCP 7, whenever I add a title or a corner bug or add a simple color correction I need to render most of the time, on a 12 core. If I ever dare to use basic Magic Bullet presets rendertimes increase drastically, and FXFactory effects are very clunky on 7, especially after using them in X

Rendering a 6 second lower third on a color corrected ProRes Clip takes about 2 – 3 minutes in Legacy, in X about 10-20sec. Exporting a 6 minute unrendered sequence in Legacy takes about 25 minutes, in X about 7 to 10.

The cool thing is skimming fx, and if you click on the fx icon you can hit play and preview the effect. Very fast if a client wants to see what the effect actually looks like.

As for the magnetic timeline, I wouldn’t say that I’m that much faster as on Legacy. The nice thing though is you don’t ever have to worry about overwriting something in X. In Legacy whenever you want to move a clip with corresponding audio, say you move your clip up a track and over a few cuts the audio moves down the audio tracks, most of the time you spend time making sure you don’t overwrite anything, and most of the time you start moving video and audio seperately. If you leave your audio connected in X you never have this problem and disconnected audio will never delete another audio portion, unless you use p and move it into the primary.

In my opinion roles are faster than tracks. Audio from imported footage gets the dialog role by default, audio from the effects library is labeled as effects and music from iTunes is labeled as music. So before exporting seperate tracks all you need to do is make sure your clips are labeled correctly, unless you are using clips not inside Apples libraries, the you need to do some re labeling. Turning roles on and off is very fast. Even the last experimental feature I cut, which was a mess of sounds and footage from different sources, I never had a problem knowing where my clips were. Of course, at times a sound effect is under the music, the next one happens to be over the music and the next one I just put over a lower third generator… X shuffles clips vertically not horizontally, just a matter of getting used to where things are going.

“Always look on the bright side of life” – Monty Python

[Aindreas Gallagher]

Ok – I *have actually tried it out on a few fairly low key corpo pieces where I got a drive handed to me –
I haven’t really put enough real time in, but I have been at it for a while off and on – I think interrogating the footage is actually faster?
simply because they’ve short circuited double click stamping a clip into the source – I’m not kidding – just that alone.
skimming and tagging across the material feels pretty accelerated.

My problem is still the enforced, from mars (for current editors) timeline vocabulary/methodology Apple decided on.
It’s still just in too much of a bubble. I get that if you grok it you reap rewards –

but, and for the millionth time, there is the issue that pretty much no one (yes bar the BBC doc guy) is employing it my way.

ESPN london shut today – I took a photo leaving the suite – BT taking over the sport, in their setup, have gone for twenty avid suites. Four for promos.
ESPN was pure FCP.

Hogarth went PPro, W&K are going avid – there is genuinely some great stuff there in FCPX,
but the problem is that apple are still dancing nearly completely by themselves .

You just cannot get paid to cut in X. not corpo, not broadcast, not anything here. Ronny Courtens can speak differently to parts of the EU tho. there are pockets.
Established shop owning editors, of which there are many here, can make their own choices entirely.

but that’s my broad problem with apple’s editing system. Its not FCP, and its not in the environment early FCP was in.
There is no buy in so far.
It’s very very hard to see this software as some unseen early 2000’s pro editing up and comer.

If things changes, watch me recant.

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

[Brett Sherman]

Finding footage is sooo much faster. I tend to edit 5 minute videos out of hours of material. Since this is where I spend the bulk of my time when editing it speeds up the entire process.

Why is it faster at this? The way it handles thumbnails, skimming, the filmstrip view, speed of the interface – all these combine to speed up the finding that needle in the haystack.

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Nikolas Bäurle] “In my opinion roles are faster than tracks. “

I’m not sure the two things are comparable. One demands a tagging process to impose order, the other actually is extant order you walk into.
I’m OK with that distinction being discarded with bins v tagging –
-but I still think the way X forces you to pre-construct timeline audio order via pre-tagging is a bag of unnecessary cats.
Timeline functioning order is not supposed to require meticulous preparation.

the timeline, to argue, is supposed to formally set the absolute minimum number of clearly delineated rules possible.You know, like that dude occam with his razor. It enforces broadly understood logic of operation for any scenario.

I don’t think the FCPX timeline of primary, secondary, connected, roles, you can make a dissolve, you can’t make a dissolve now etc…
quite succeeds in that task.

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

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Brett Sherman] “combine to speed up the finding that needle in the haystack.”

for sure – no question. As plenty of people have said – apple cracked a ton of things in X.
You’d just wonder if they didn’t over-do it in the end, in horse and water terms.

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

[Charlie Austin]

[Neil Goodman] “Picking up huge chunks of clips and dropping them wherever, while FCPX moves everything else out of the way and back into place is a huge timesaver. Great use of magnetism in the timeline. “

Love this. Also love being able to rough cut using connected clips, with all the freedom that entails (like 7, PPro etc). Then, pop bits of the cut down to the primary when its “locked” for transitions and all the ripply goodness (Like MC) And then being able to pop stuff out and back in again as needed.

[Neil Goodman] “Ive heard some say the lack of tracks saves time because of no track assignments but i think it takes less time to properly patch tracks in the first place with a key command (ALA AVID), then to drop stuff wherever, and then later to select roles”

Assign the Roles in the event before you cut stuff in. Insanely easy, even with multichannel sources that need separate Roles. If you forget you can always do it in the Project as well. Ultimately way faster than patching, even using the KB.

[Neil Goodman] “Also key-wording, and favorites, takes the the same amount of time as properly labeling clips and subclipping does in any other NLE at least in my findings, although i do like how the events can be sorted to show only this or that, etc. “

The actual process is pretty similar time-wise. But what you can do with the data you enter is a huge timesaver.

[Neil Goodman] “that theyve increased there productivity tenfold. Id like to do this too.”

I dunno about tenfold lol. But honestly, a lot of the stuff folks don’t really crow about is what really sppeds things up for me. Searching, selecting clips from the index. Enabling/Disabling/Highlighting Roles from the index. Skimming in general is great once you get used to it, but Clip Skimming? I LLOOOVVE that. Makes things so much faster for me. Whats this clip? no need to solo, just skim the clip.
Also, Once you get all the KB shortcuts in your muscles, cutting really screams. For me anyway…

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Michael Garber]

Speed Increases:

1. Not necessarily having to transcode (R3D + Alexa 4444). Background transcoding doesn’t slow me down too much if drives are fast or left overnight.
2. Skimming. Huge. Not having to 2x-click each clip.
3. Making fixes / working with producer/director in the room. MTL makes that process very fast.
4. Batch renaming in X over 7. Can this be done in Avid?

Slowdowns:

1. When you make one itty bitty teeny tiny mistake on import or in creating roles or keywording, can complicate things down the road when timelines have been made.
2. Multi-user issues
3. Slowdowns in the timelines due to unexplainable issues or complex timelines.
4. Other little bugs/glitches due to early days on development or OS-based issues.
5. Making quick audio dissolves. Not necessarily a slowdown though. I find it slower but that I generally get it right on the first try, whereas I would futz around with an audio dissolve in 7 a lot.
6. Exports don’t use rendered clips to build QT (AFAIK). That would be a nice speed increase if it worked that way.
7. Having to stop and thing, “how would I do this in FCP X vs another NLE?” Although I do consider that a good thing since it forces me to think about how I’m going to organize for the edit.

Areas of questionability that are supposed to increase speed – Roles. Just make sure that you’ve done it right to begin with and test everything before getting it out to an AAF.

Logging channel names for multichannel audio. Takes a little longer, but it really helps you out in the timeline.

I’m finding that I do every edit in X slightly different. Slight differences in how I keyword or group clips, etc… It’s all based on how I see the edit going. Getting better at this with each edit.

I find the process of building the edit to take roughly same amount of time. That process tends to work at the speed of my brain making mental connections to what I need to place in the timeline.

Hope that helps.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP
My Moviola Webinar on Cutting News in FCP X

[Charlie Austin]

[Michael Garber] “7. Having to stop and thing, “how would I do this in FCP X vs another NLE?” Although I do consider that a good thing since it forces me to think about how I’m going to organize for the edit.”

Once you get past that point is when it really gets fun, though it’s true of any new thing right? Honestly, lately I find the opposite to be true. In other NLE’s I need to stop and think how this “used to work”. 🙂

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Charlie Austin]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “My problem is still the enforced, from mars (for current editors) timeline vocabulary/methodology Apple decided on.
It’s still just in too much of a bubble. I get that if you grok it you reap rewards – “

I’m tellin ya man, once it clicks, it’s pretty sweet. Honestly, i’ve been cutting real work in X since 10.0.4, and I’m still having little “aha!” moments. and like i said, When I go to cut in a “traditional” NLE, that’s where I feel “enforced”.

I’ll agree it’s hard to get used to coming from decades fo doing it pretty much the same in all NLE’s. I’ll agree that it needs polish and enhancement. But it’s not a mess at all.

I’ve been porting some spots today for the technophobes. This nice, clean, easily searchable (to me, and anyone familiar with use of X’s index) sequence, that’s fits in my screen with a decent sized Edit Monitor window:

Becomes this, busy, ugly, mess, that I could only fit all of by making the Edit Monitor the size of a postage stamp and overlapping it.

Yes, i could play Track Tetris and compact it, but the it wouldn’t be all nicely split out and organized. It would be a big mess, with dialog and FX all mixed up etc. The X timeline can be muted, soloed, manipulated with a mouse click. It may look like a mess, but it most certainly is not. Anyone who knows X could sit down in front of it, and in 10 seconds figure out what everything in that timeline is. Just like the 7 timeline taking up all that space with it’s tracks.

Sorry, just on a tear today because i have to take my nice X spots and waste time making them accessible to Luddites. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~