-
Force relink
-
[Morten Ranmar] “Being unable to force relink is the reason I abandoned FCPX and fled to PrPro.”
Man, it’s going to take a lot more than that to force me to Premiere!
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “Man, it’s going to take a lot more than that to force me to Premiere!”
What about breakfast in bed and a gift basket on your birthday?
-
Ha! You’re speaking my language, Shawn.
It does beg the question, why would I put up with that shit? Well, I enjoy using fcpx, and I hope this particular workflow gets easier.
Right now, it’s a pain. It’s fine for :30 spots, but anything longer than about 3 minutes is very tedious.
-
[Charlie Austin] “FCP X reads TC, but doesn’t use it internally. So… there are no frames in FCPX, it’s just time increment cadence. So a clip isn’t defined by frames, it’s like this for master clips:”
So I don’t know how far in to the weeds anyone wants to go in XML, but I would argue that probably all NLEs don’t use “timecode” internally, and Quicktime didn’t either. It does REPORT timecode, though.
Timecode is simply fractional time, and FCPX does that in spades and it is broken down to the frame.
I don’t know anything about your Master Clip or timeline, but I could tell you this:
Most likely, your first clip is either 30 or 29.97 frames a second. If you look further in the XML, you’ll see that format id for “ft2” and it would list something like 1080p29.97, a frame duration expressed as a fractional tc (like 1001/30000, which would equate to .0333 seconds per frame or 29.97 fps) and it would also give frame height and width. Any clip that matches those specs could also get the same “ft2” id. The duration of your clip is 1m54s26f assuming the format of the clip is indeed 29.97 ndf
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “The duration of your clip is 1m54s26f assuming the format of the clip is indeed 29.97 ndf”
I’m sure you’re correct, I can “read” XML, but the timing part of it really is gibberish to me. I was just idly speculating, as I often do… 🙂 I’m curious as to why it doesn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t work too…
————————————————————-
~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Andrew Kimery] “FCP Legend certainly gave you enough rope to hang yourself with”
I really miss that feature.
Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!Check out my Mormon.org profile.
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “Ha! You’re speaking my language, Shawn.
It does beg the question, why would I put up with that shit? Well, I enjoy using fcpx, and I hope this particular workflow gets easier.
Right now, it’s a pain. It’s fine for :30 spots, but anything longer than about 3 minutes is very tedious.”
As a long time AE user, I know exactly what you mean! I hope Apple fixes this soon. 🙂
-
Ok, so we had this issue also when we first ran into a need for relinking. It’s actually not totally painful if you accept a few concessions, and I should say there is a way to force relink using a little XML hack, I’ll see if I can find it but we do something different. Say you download a proxy from a stock site, it’s some crazy low resolution, audio is basically garbage sounding, and there’s a giant watermark. That’s pretty standard. You make your edit, decide to purchase and download the clip. Or if you’re us, you download tens or hundreds :). So you have a new folder in finder, and drag it into fcpx which creates a new keyword collection (let’s call it replacements). Then you start the replacement process down the timeline. I’m sure you managed tagged your proxies in some way (right?), so you can sort that in a list in the timeline view. Now is the tricky part, but you don’t even have to take your hands off the keyboard. You can bounce down your timeline list, and open all proxy clips individually in the timeline, and replace from the bin with shift R. Bounce back to the master with command [, make sure the clip plays/looks correct and you’re all good. Effects, color, even transforms should ripple through. As a reminder to ourselves, we will drop a golden tooth (chapter marker) on the clip, just in case we need to jump back to it for any reason.
Force relinking should be done one by one anyway, you should always check and make sure nothing got lost in translation, so I really don’t see it as much slower than even Premiere. Works for us, day to day. 🙂
-
[Chris Frantz] “Force relinking should be done one by one anyway, you should always check and make sure nothing got lost in translation, so I really don’t see it as much slower than even Premiere. Works for us, day to day. :)”
Your method is great if you are lucky enough to be swapping out clips that have the same start frame, which is presumably going to be the case with most stock footage – one would hope.
Sadly it doesn’t fit the bill when the clip you are wanting to relink to has a different start frame to the one you are wanting to swap it with, as is very frequently the case for what we do, as when someone has added or removed a leader or a slate or a logo, etc., etc.
Now imagine that you are having to replace a hundred edits or more, all from the same source with non-matching start frame – and you can see why the FCP 7 method was so attractive and why Premiere solves the problem too, but where FCP X can make life quite difficult.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
You’re right, if the start frame has changed then the above method will not work. But if the last frame has not changed, it still will work if you backtime the replacement with shift Q. Now if both the end and start frame have been changed, things definitely get messier, but they also would in Premiere right? Maybe I can play around with this when I get into work, but if I force relink a file from the bin with premiere and the original clips is 10 seconds (cut to 5 on the timeline) and I replace it with one that is 3 seconds cut from the middle of the original 10 second clip, how does Premiere handle that? The cut in the timeline no longer matches what you’re relinking to, so it seems that you would have a similar issue that you do with the same sceneries in fcpx where you will have gaps and trimming to handle.
Either way, force relinking should be done meticulously because things can get messy quick in any program.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up