Interesting article on using FCPX for Broadcast

[Daniel Frome]

I think it proves the point that FCPX is still worth learning, even if just for the novelty sake. Personally I find their post model more evolutionary than the software component of the article: almost everything is done “in house” – and that’s where the future is headed. It’s a small show and I think that is what’s making this show possible to do in FCPX in the first place.

[James Mortner]

I dont understand the little rant he has about HDV and HDCAM. We use HDCAM here all the time, its still rather important to us !

Haters gonna hate i guess

[Walter Soyka]

I liked this line:

I understand exactly what is needed from potential software and am fully capable of deciding for our company and clients if something will work for our/their needs or not.

Of course I have my own opinions, but just because I don’t think something would work for me doesn’t mean I think it wouldn’t work for others with different needs. Good for Dustin Hoye for finding something that works well for him.

I struggled a bit with the this line:

From our network, viewers, executive producers and clients- our shows continue to get better each season. We are currently editing this season, season 8, in FCPX and so far, everyone believes that the shows have never looked or sounded better. This doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the same level of quality with FCP 7, but it does mean you can achieve the same or better quality of project with FCP X.

I can’t tell if he’s crediting the software for the improvement or not, and I can’t figure out whether he believes FCPX enables “better quality” work than FCP7 or not.

There’s a lot of misinformation about color in that article. Simply selecting a Rec. 709 profile for your monitor will not make it accurate. Accurate color via ColorSync absolutely requires an accurately profiled monitor. It is not optional. Anything else may be a close approximation at best or a haphazard guess at worst — and without measurement tools, you’d have no way of knowing which one you’re getting.

Also, feeding “blue-only” monochrome color bars via RGB to a monitor that has no proper controls anyway will neither help you guarantee accurate color nor even roughly line the monitor up. See J.P. Owen’s outstanding post on blue-only as a monitor function for use with encoded color bars [link] for more.

There is simply no substitute for profiling a monitor when working in a color-managed system.

I’m curious about the 1080i output the author mentions — does it actually work? Can you use this to evaluate footage for field reversal?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Craig Seeman]

[James Mortner] “I dont understand the little rant he has about HDV and HDCAM. We use HDCAM here all the time, its still rather important to us !”

It seems the article was overly shortened. You almost have to infer some things. HDV as source (who would ever use if for delivery for any kind of work including on broadcast) is heavily compressed.

I think his point about HDCAM is that it’s only for final delivery these days and that can come from ProRes 422 HQ file playout, possibly offset dub house rather than purchasing a deck. Basically I think his point is they have no business reason as a post house to purchase and hook up an HDCAM deck to FCPX for output.

I can’t speak to current post facilities for broadcast as the last time I was doing that full time I was using DigiBeta (pre HD days) but just as ingest may be centralized away from the NLE, export for broadcast may also be centralized away from the NLE.

BTW this is one reason why I think FCPX is headed towards a media managed server control based system. To me, the metadata potential screams for it. The Event/Project management is fairly primitive because I think it may be handled elsewhere (although it badly needs to be improved in FCPX itself).

[Craig Seeman]

[Walter Soyka] “I can’t tell if he’s crediting the software for the improvement or not, and I can’t figure out whether he believes FCPX enables “better quality” work than FCP7 or not.”

I can’t help but think the article was overly edited so we have to infer things. I think the gist is that FCPX hasn’t had a negative impact on quality. There’s no qualitative downside to FCPX. That’s probably why he goes into Rec709 and color calibration as well as color grading because that would certainly be a quality issue.

[Walter Soyka] “There’s a lot of misinformation about color in that article. Simply selecting a Rec. 709 profile for your monitor will not make it accurate. Accurate color via ColorSync absolutely requires an accurately profiled monitor. It is not optional.”

I was under the impression he was talking about profiling but, yes, I can see where he might be saying either/or. Again it seems the article is overly edited and I think the interviewer/writer should have clarified this point. I thought the “wrong/correct” example might have been related to the difference between using a Rec 709 profile vs actual profiling.

[Walter Soyka] “Also, feeding “blue-only” monochrome color bars via RGB to a monitor that has no proper controls anyway will neither help you guarantee accurate color nor even roughly line the monitor up.”

Another fuzzy part of the article. I don’t see a blue only feature in FCPX (can I really not find it?). Since he makes mention of both Lion and FCPX perhaps he’s beta testing the next FCPX release and slipped something out.

[Marvin Holdman]

Craig Seeman – “BTW this is one reason why I think FCPX is headed towards a media managed server control based system. To me, the metadata potential screams for it. The Event/Project management is fairly primitive because I think it may be handled elsewhere (although it badly needs to be improved in FCPX itself).”

Just curious…

Do you think they might have some form of “open” media management? As in, the ability to export the metadata to other data management systems? Or import said data from other management systems? I’ve been very curious about what might become of their stated alliance with the Square Box folks. It would seem that that particular cohesion might be very promising. Perhaps this might fill the void that you are describing.

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv

[Craig Seeman]

[Marvin Holdman] “Do you think they might have some form of “open” media management? As in, the ability to export the metadata to other data management systems? Or import said data from other management systems?”

CatDV is already FCXP XML compatible.
https://www.squarebox.co.uk/index.html

BTW with CatDV Pro you supposedly move FCP7 Sequences (not projects) into FCPX as well. There are limits as to what info can be imported. I haven’t done this personally but CatDV overall does seem like a good complimentary product for FCPX.
https://www.squarebox.co.uk/fcpxml.html

My hunch is that Apple is going to be developing in this direction (file/metadata management), but it’s only a hunch.

[Oliver Peters]

The whole discussion of color space and video levels was either truncated or he was very confused. I had a hard time following it. There is no “blue gun” feature. You can turn off channels in the viewer, leaving only blue on, which probably achieves the same result, but still….

– Oliver

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

[Tony West]

I do NHL for this network but they used to be the Outdoor Life Network so they have hunting and fishing shows.

I talked to some folks that work on those hunting shows and they use a lot of Gopro cams in treestands and on boats and stuff.

Just last night one of our producer for FOXSPORTS brought in a Gopro and wanted it in the Hockey broadcast for bumps or whatever.

I hadn’t worked with that camera before.

I like how you can drag the raw camera files straight from the camera right into the timeline of fcp x

You needed a few more hoops to get it into 7

It couldn’t have been easier or faster.

The Gopro is moving more and more into major league sports so I’m glad X handles it with such ease.

This is the line that jumped out to me “it makes story telling fun”

[Craig Seeman]

[Oliver Peters] “There is no “blue gun” feature.”

That’s why I’m guessing he might be beta testing FCPX. It’s the only explanation I can think of regarding that comment in the article.

[Oliver Peters] ” either truncated or he was very confused.”

Just some wild speculation but he may well have been discussing beta features that had to be hastily edited. The article just seems like there was lots of hatchet editing done to it.

Stuff like this.
I am very impressed with the 1.2 update- proves to be very stable for a version 1.0 piece of software.

Either it’s 10.0.2 or maybe he’s using 10.1 beta. How does something like this get missed in proofing and editing the article? Something’s up here. Somehow I think 10.1 meant to be changed to 10.0.2 and became 1.2. There’s just too many odd things about the article, especially with so much on broadcast monitoring, lead me to suspect he was using the beta.

Given the comments that Evan Shechtman was making in November (he’s a beta tester) it’s likely in RC state now and getting some real world use. Apple would want the blessing of facility based users if they want FCPX to fly with some credibility as soon as it’s released.

Of course maybe the article was just not well edited.