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How do I roll Video Only in FCP X
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[Neil Goodman] “Pretty much standard practice there Bill, no matter the app. If you used to work that way in 7, maybe thats why you think X is such a revolution.
“No Neil. I knew all about Bins in Legacy. What was so dammed frustrating looking back is that no matter how much prep work I did there – it all functionally disappeared the moment I closed a Legacy project. There was no persistent visual representation of what I’d done when the project was shut down. And I could only open one project at a time! Perish the idea that I was working in one project and realized an asset that I’d used in another one could help my edit in this one. Walled garden firmly in place. If it’s outside the project, all I can do is go find it an re-import another reference and make sure I remember that I now inefficiently had it in TWO capture scratches. (I never worked on a SAN system) Going back to Legacy in those first months, that’s something I deeply missed. The “without an open project you have nothing” reality felt to be a huge step back for me emotionally.
Legacy after X felt like having to work on islands, rather than a cohesive editing continent as I’d gotten used to.
I know I could developed complex arrangements of multiple Projects and timelines and nested clips, and the like to handle the organizational necessities of complex projects. And I’ve been very impressed at how people in Legacy have created those arrangements of options to make their editing lives easier.
But Legacy wasn’t designed to relationally connect assets to data and vice versa. And X is. Legacy’s management was nearly totally a flat file construct.
Legacy’s Bins are honestly a pretty far cry from X’s Event Browser.
That’s not that they weren’t useful and even flexible. But there wasn’t a way to go much beyond what it was because (IMO) of the limited structure of the data management IN the projects.
I know you’ve kicked the tires with X a good bit, so you should be well aware of those differences if you think about them. If not, you likely haven’t explored much of X’s organizational depth.
In Legacy I could color code my clips of a particular type. I could copy them into multiple Sequences and manage those – but I could never virtually reach into a those sequences and search out asset classes by agile distinctions that I was allowed to create and manage on the fly , and with X you can.
That’s a pretty big distinction IMO.
I’m 1.5 years into X and I’m STILL finding new things I can do with the database nearly every week. I never explored trying to be super creative with bins or the limited color codes or folder names in Legacy because there wasn’t much capability under the hood of that system.
And at one fundamental level, more limited the tool, the less creative you can be with it.
My view anyway. I’m open to hearing an argument a countering view if you like. And I’d certainly be interested in how you see the Legacy approach to asset organization as equal to or even superior to the way it’s done in X.
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.
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I would agree that asset organization on the front end is better in nearly every way in FCPX than Legacy. Depends on if you throw things like buggy Favorites creation, spinning beach balls on large projects etc, but definitely a step up so large its hard to ever go back.
However, I would say its asset organization on the back end leaves quite a lot to be desired currently, particularly for sizable projects. For one, FCPX doesn’t respect the folder structure media was originally nested in. Yes, I know you can leave media right where it is, but the alias’ that are created in the Original Media folder are made all the same. The problem comes into large projects that very likely have same file names here and there. Due to its all in one folder methodology it can’t have files with the same name inside so it appends these aliases with (fcp2, fcp3, fcp4, and so on). All well and good, but there becomes management issues, for instance in importing XML from other programs like Plural Eyes or Resolve. Only when media is imported into one event does FCPX handle the same file name appending. If you import XML which always makes a new Event and then try any flavor of merging the two (many reasons why this would be desirable) FCPX says there are two files with the same name and operation can’t be performed.
And this doesn’t even get into the whole “addressable objects” issues and others that comes along with that.
I’m all for FCPX trying to make media managing “dummy proof” but I wish there was almost some kind of Advanced user On/Off switch or slider than let you turn off some file management efficiencies and data loading in exchange for better navigation performance which FCPX completely struggles with on huge projects.
I’m sure everything I said is arguable, but I must be on to something since I was contacted directly acknowledging the very problem and the film I ran into these problems with is now the guinea pig in their labs for a hopeful eventual fix.
Director, Editor, Colorist
http://www.trsociety.com -
No argument there Bill.I was mainly just pointing out that the approach is very much the same while in any NLE. X is great at organizing on the front end. Its on the timeline where it falls apart for me a little bit. What can i say, i like tracks.
Neil Goodman: Editor of New Media Production – NBC/Universal
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I’m a 30-year veteran of shooting and editing for the major networks in the U.S. I worked as a freelancer that mostly worked full-time. If you watched the Branch Davidian compound burn on any CBS station you were watching my camera. I’ve edited hundreds of pieces for NBC’s Nightly News and Today Show, CBS Evening News and Morning News and ABC’s World News Tonight. I worked at the Dallas bureaus of the nets.
I could write a book about my network news travels but all I have after years of thinking about it is a title. Not a kiss-and-tell book but a network news adventures book.
Going back to the original post of wondering if X can be used to cut news I’m here to tell you yes, yes yes.
Some well-intentioned posters here talk about prep and organization and how it can help and while that’s true, it’s not so practical when crashing a piece for national broadcast. If I missed a Nightly News deadline, for example, it would be the last time I edited for that show.
The fastest way to build a news piece is to first build the primary storyline, and I mean that in a generic sense. Build the primary sound first; narration, soundbite, narration, standup, soundbite, narration close, for example.
Start covering the narration with picture. Long pictures at first if you’re looking at a looming deadline. Then insert some sound pops between narration and soundbite or wherever appropriate. Try to catch levels and color as you go.
The idea here is that if all goes to hell in a hand basket, then you have complete and covered sound to put on the air.
From there its a matter of pretty-ing it up using what time you may have left.
But, back to the answer on whether X is good for crashing a news piece. Absolutely! X, once you ‘get it’, is an extension of your thoughts and doesn’t get in the way. I thought I was fast on 7 but I FLY on X!
Starting three and a half years ago the freelance money from the networks shrank considerably. Now I do a lot of corporate editing and I do it in a department where there are about six others. I was the first to move to X. Before X and now after X I’m considerably faster than anyone else. I point to all the years of making drop-dead deadlines and believe me, some days were nail biters. I mean, have you ever been asked to take the word “the” out of an edited piece six minutes before its the national lead story on NBC Nightly News? When you were still using tape-to-tape? It’ll shorten your life span!
Don Smith
NewsVideo.com
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[Bill Davis] “And I could only open one project at a time! Perish the idea that I was working in one project and realized an asset that I’d used in another one could help my edit in this one. Walled garden firmly in place. If it’s outside the project, all I can do is go find it an re-import another reference and make sure I remember that I now inefficiently had it in TWO capture scratches.”
However, you can/could have more than a single project open. And drag sequences or bins from one project to another. So reusing assets in a project was doable and you don’t need to copy the files, it simply points to the same files in the same location. But maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by reimport it and having it in two capture scratches?
I don’t say this to be combative just to point out that that isn’t new. I’ve implemented X into our workflow so this isn’t a “Legacy is better and X is flawed” argument.
Jon
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[Jon Cairns] “And drag sequences or bins from one project to another.”
That might be the rub.
If you rely on finder copying for things. You are constantly shifting the location of assets, and that’s precisely what breaks the power of the X relational database.
At least the way X is structured right now – you can’t have BOTH the power of the relational database in the Event Browser (and it IS very powerful nearly everyone acknowledges) and preserve the concept of dragging assets around in the finder at will.
They’re incompatible approaches.
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.
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Bill,
But it isn’t a finder copy. It’s all done within FCP 7. You stated earlier that you couldn’t have more than one project open in Legacy which meant that you had to reimport footage so you wound up with multiple copies in a scratch folder. What I am saying is that you can have multiple projects open and move elements from one project to another, all of which will reference the original file.
Yes X saves the step of having to open an earlier project to access the element compared to Legacy. Of course if you’ve moved the Event that media is in out of the Events folder then you need to go an put it back online…
Not arguing that the old way is better, just reacting to the impression that you give that you couldn’t move media (references since it’s just the pointer in FCP) before FCPX.
FWIW
Jon
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C’mon guys, your arguing pretty stupid shit here. Anyone who bothers to come to this board is well aware of the extremely rudimentary feature set of FCP Legacy your talking about. Its just semantics and no one else educating anyone anything here.
Director, Editor, Colorist
http://www.trsociety.com -
Thanks Noah for giving a direct answer to the question David posed. I am certified in FCPX and understand it pretty well but once in a while I run into a FCPX shortcoming that reminds me why I called it iMovie Pro when X was first released. You’d think a pro software editing package would allow you to animate the color board via keyframes and I would certainly think a roll edit on a connected clip would be possible. Thanks to Noah I now know the secret code that allows me to do something that I should be able to do directly in the timeline oh crap I mean storyline or is it a project?
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