Is ProRes codec better than what Premiere uses?

[Lance Bachelder]

Concur with leaving rendering off on timeline – the truth is FCPX seems about as fast as PPro with a qualified CUDA card so there isn’t really a need to render until output. The only stuttering I’ve found is using 3rd party FX – all the built-in effects and color run really smooth without rendering, even stack multiple Color FX and sharpen.

Not sure what you mean by PPro being much more of a Swiss Army knife than FCPX – unless you’re talking about how it works with other Adobe apps?

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California

[T. Payton]

[Lance Bachelder] “Not sure what you mean by PPro being much more of a Swiss Army knife than FCPX”

This is another can of worms. I’m sure Shane could speak at length about this. But FCP X just isn’t there as a serious production tool able to handle many different workflows. Features like broadcast monitoring, tape import/output, EDL, XML, OMF Import/Export, batch export, Proper handling of anamorphic Footage, etc. PPro also has extensive codec support.

I know FCP X could and will have some of these features (and I hope it does!) but it is not there yet.

BTW. I really like FCP X alot, and for my workflow it is working well (no tape, 90% of work ends up on the web, simple collaboration needs), but it is obvious that it is not as flexible as other NLEs.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Dominic Deacon]

What were the issues you came up against that made work on the feature film “painful”?

[T. Payton]

First let me clarify that this was not a feature film, but a feature length student film. About 2000 edits. 90 ish minutes long, so it is “feature like”. I got the assembly edit that was done in iMovie and tightened the edits (hundreds of l & J cuts), audio sweetened, color correction and a bit of looks. This was not a high end project by any means, but was still a large amount of work.

I’ll share a few of the benefit below, but to answer your question the thing that caused pain was what I call the “database bloat bug”. When a project/event gets over a certain size, between 40-60MB things in FCP X get very slow (at least on my MacPro). And since the database is written with every keystroke and click (hence ‘automatic saving’) , FCP X slows to a crawl while editing. (I was about to bail and go back to FCP 7 several times, but I figured out a few workarounds https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/21342#21399 .) I have confirmed this on multiple machines. Here is a bit more info where I outlined some of the issues specifically with this project:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/21413

On a positive note here are some good things I encountered:

1-Grouping sections in compound clips
Incredible time saver and helped to organize the project. There were about 25 sections. I could open one at a time and work as needed but still have an eye on the big picture. I can’t imagine working any other way. I see one big timelines of feature films in FCP 7 or Avid and there is no grouping of scenes. I can’t imagine the difficulty of working that way.

2-Adjustment layers for applying grades
This was again an incredible time saver. For each location, I applied a basic look to the adjustment layer and then tweaked an individual clip as necessary. When the director asked to make a flash back sequence look more romantic and less contrasty, it was a matter of changing one adjustment layer.

3-Roles
Since I was doing the sweetening in FCP X, I created audio Roles Dialog, SFX, Music, and Ambient. Video roles for Effect Shots, Adjustment Layer, and Titles. I could easily solo a role, or highlight as I made a sweetening pass. The roles can be turned on and off regardless if the role resides in a compound clip or not. Which meant I could be on the master timeline where I was viewing the major sections and still toggle roles. Very cool.

4-To Do Markers
These made revisions from the director almost fun. 😉

5-Magnetic Timeline
After the first or second full review by the director (I supplied those on DVD, no chapter markers for scenes was a big negative BTW). There was a scene that needed to be shortened and rearranged. In FCP 7 this would have been a terrifying task and taken considerable time. In FCP 10, it was effortless. It was so easy that it emboldened me to be very free in trimming a few frames here and there rather than thinking it was going to be a daunting task to make a proper selection to remove a frame from a shot. The only gotcha is that I needed to trim or extend the compound clip in it’s parent because the in out point of the compound clip is set in the parent.

6-Secondary Color Correction
I was a heavy Color user and while FCP X only has a small subset of features from Color, the secondary color correctors in FCP X are wonderfully easy and always real time. Correcting for light spill with a mask, adding a linear gradient to a sky and some tweaking a big of color with a range was wonderfully fast.

7-Using and Stock Footage, Music, etc.
In FCP 7 I have had to been meticulous organizer of assets for stock footage, needle drops or stills. Carefully copying them to the project assets folder and then importing them into FCP 7. I used digital haven’s “loader” in recent years to help with this. However in FCP X there is no need since I was letting it organize my footage with “copy to File Cut Pro Event” enabled. I would download whatever, drag it to my event or the timeline and get back to editing. I only had to transcode some public domain FLV footage, but all other media types came in without transcoding.

8 – Auditions
I used auditions on all my effect shots so I could flip back and forth between the original shot and the effect shot in the timeline. Kept things very clean and tidy in the timeline and it was a nice way to show the director shots.

In summary, I believe FCP X could handle a feature length project without much issue, that is when Apple deals with the database problem. Of course when it came to spitting out an ELD for conforming, that is another issue altogether.

I hope this helps.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque