How would you deal with this – long clip with multiple takes

[Bill Davis]

Michael,

Honestly, it seems that nearly all of your issues comes down to what seems to be your unwillingness to change your practices to fit this version of the tool.

You’ve elected to shoot continuously rather than starting and stopping for each take. (a practice that would likely solve 90% of your issues right there.)

You’ve elected NOT to choose selects early in your workflow – but to outsource that to your downstream editor.

You’ve elected to compound for sync audio at the beginning of your workflow, rather than waiting till later in your workflow to compound just your selects.

All of these choices are reasonable – but at the same time, all of these choices are largely what are making your workflow particularly difficult.

Over and over again, it’s been discussed that trying to shoehorn X to fit a pre-conceived workflow is nearly always a bad idea. The better course is to learn what the program does particularly well – then design a workflow based on THAT.

If it was me, I’d simply ignore the sync sound stuff until the end of my workflow. I’d design a workflow around using my original camera clips for all my keywording and take sorting/assembly.

Even DSLR audio usually is OK for clip assessment – but if you don’t think yours is OK, then a cheap wireless rig feeding your DSLR woulld likely improve your “camera track” audio plenty enough for assessment and would give you something an editor can legitimately work with up to the final edit stage where you’d replace it with your 2nd system audio.

Or, as you noted yourself, if you want to work with original clips that don’t have these sound issues, you can “pre-comp” your clips to make the double system tracks NATIVE to new clips. But you don’t WANT to – which is fine – but that decision is what’s making you have to work so hard to find ways to get everything you want.

You have a specific distributed workflow where you need to prep things one way – then pass them along to another editor for finish. As has long been noted, X wasn’t initially designed to be THAT KIND of program. It’s more monolithic than collaborative in it’s present state. Precisely because more of today’s editors work as individuals rather than inside collaborative workflows.

The “large shops” that are using it – have resources to make these issues go away. (e.g. an assistant to pre-comp final clips if needed)

It’s no more or less collaborative than Legacy was in it’s first iteration. Legacy grew. X will as well. But right now I think you have to accept the fact that if you want to use it to do something that X wasn’t purposed designed to do in this version – YOU have to adapt to it.

If your needs are specific and not negotiable – then you likely need to turn to different software.

FWIW.

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.

[Oliver Peters]

[Bill Davis] “Honestly, it seems that nearly all of your issues comes down to what seems to be your unwillingness to change your practices to fit this version of the tool.”

Isn’t that assessment tantamount to saying “you’re holding it wrong”? I get what you are saying and I, too, have suggested changing software. But Michael is trying to make this work for him. To make a blanket suggestion of changing your entire workflow isn’t realistic for the vast majority of editors.

– Oliver

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

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Oliver Peters] “[Bill Davis] “Honestly, it seems that nearly all of your issues comes down to what seems to be your unwillingness to change your practices to fit this version of the tool.”

Isn’t that assessment tantamount to saying “you’re holding it wrong”? I get what you are saying and I, too, have suggested changing software. But Michael is trying to make this work for him. To make a blanket suggestion of changing your entire workflow isn’t realistic for the vast majority of editors.”

I completely agree.

Also, the FCPX software can do what is needed by MIchael Garber in a variety of methods.

If the user doesn’t want to, that’s another story, but it will do what is needed.

Duplicate the clips, as does FCP or any other software that makes subclips, and away you go.

The other methods make use of FCPX metadata capabilities.

This does point out a few areas where X could have a few more controls, but as it is stands, there is enough control to get this done.

I do have to see what is meant by the audio bug, though. Still not quite tracking on that one.

Jeremy

[Michael Garber]

Hi Bill,

I didn’t shoot this footage. A lot of my clients use this shooting method. I don’t think it’s wrong to shoot this way since it makes sense and is used for film, reality, documentary-style shoots, and commercials. The footage I’m working from is for a national commercial.

In response to your ideas about audio, I just disagree. I would never sync audio after an edit. In addition, I also have a reel with 3-channel mono audio that needs to be broken out during the edit. The stereo is just for reference.

The spirit of this thread was that I wanted to determine if I could make a particular thing work (or workaround) in X and not debate the merits of the program. I can’t dictate the workflow for all my jobs. That’s the reality I live in. I was looking to this community for help and answers.

Thanks,

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Bill Davis]

[Michael Garber] “The spirit of this thread was that I wanted to determine if I could make a particular thing work (or workaround) in X and not debate the merits of the program. I can’t dictate the workflow for all my jobs. That’s the reality I live in. I was looking to this community for help and answers.”

Well then the answer is YES on all counts except for dealing with the fact that from your original post you appeared to be unwilling to concatenate the double system sound into new clips.

If you do that – everything works just fine.

It was your stated unwillingness to do this on the OP that caused me to try and find an alternate workflow where you didn’t have to do this up front.

So there you are. Marry the sound and video as is needed to turn double system clips into single system clips during step one and everything works great. Don’t and you’ll continue to have issues.

Pretty simple.

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.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I think using multiclips in this instance will be best.

You’ll still have to dupe clips to assign unique clip level metadata if using range based metadata isn’t desired.

Multiclips allow the use of camera or double audio, they preserve all tc, and seem to be reliable fcpx containers.

They are also easy to change/add elements to each clip in another angle.

I wish PIOPs were more valuable, this would be a good place to use them.

[Andy Neil]

After exploring this a bit, and reading the other solutions in this thread, I’ve decided that it makes sense for an enhancement to the meta-data structure. I think it would very helpful to allow partial clips like keyworded selections to have independently adjustable meta fields. At least fields which make sense like Shot/Take, Notes, and others.

I would propose it works like this:

If you assign values to those fields on the master clip, then those values are transferred over to any keyword selections as you make them. For example, you injest CLIP001 int FCPX. You label the Reel field as REEL01. Then you make keyword selections of the different takes. All those selections will have REEL01 in their respective Reel field.

But, once the keyword selection has been created, you can change a field to something else (including the NAME field) and it doesn’t ripple the change to all the other selections and the master clip. So now you can have one keyword selection with Scene – 01, Shot/Take – 2a and another from the same master with Scene – 01, Shot/Take – 2b.

Then you only need a Show Master clip shortcut for any keyframed selections. Or better yet, you have a field that is populated by the actual master clip name (unchangeable), and then you have another name field that can be adjusted to whatever you want. Or both things.

This would be a nice, elegant solution I think and would make the meta-fields more powerful.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Michael Garber]

Jeremy-
Agreed that multiclips and duping are the workaround for now. Might introduce favorites early on so the I can view them as individual takes in the viewer.

Andy- yes, there needs to be some more flexibility here. My hope is that subclips are implemented again in some form, which I recognize might be different from my view of the way they should work.

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Garber] “Andy- yes, there needs to be some more flexibility here. My hope is that subclips are implemented again in some form, which I recognize might be different from my view of the way they should work.”

This is precisely where PIOPs could actually help.

Range a bunch of selects, select them all, “Dupe as New Metadata Master”, Rename all new clips with Scene/Take (or add Scene/take), Done.

As with a bunch of things in FCPX, the “framework” seems to be there, we just need a few more control options.