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Made the switch….questions.
Hi There
Made the switch from Avid to FCP to start a doc series project in a few weeks. In the meantime i’m teaching myself everything I can, so far I am loving the FCP experience. Two things I’m having trouble getting my head around though would be motion effects and subclipping. I just want to check my workflow and see if there is a better way:
Motion FX (slo mos etc) in the Avid make a new clip and piece of media, as far as I can tell this isn’t the case with FCP. I find the Time Remap a little wierd and I am having trouble getting my head around these clips lengthening and shortening in the timeline, so I’ve been using the “speed” tool. What I’ve been doing is marking an in and out, subclipping, then making the speed adjustment on the subclip. I rename the subclip to whatever name and that sort of acts as the same thing as a new motion fx in avid. This seems to work all right in my avid head…but this doesn’t create any new media right? Just a render file once it’s rendered? Any faster ways or does this make sense? And also I can delete the clip in the bin, but if I try to make it offline, the whole clip it came from will go offline…this motion subclip still references the original file? So I should never make it offline, just delete the clip from the bin if i want to get rid of it?
Which brings me to subclipping: in this series i will be given large chunks of media, unlogged for me to go through. Generally in the Avid i would go through this stuff, subclip and rename, and organize from there. But in FCP it seems you can do this, but then if you want handles on either end to add a transition you have to remove the boundries of the subclip once you are in the timeline. This is kind of a pain, and from what i understand once i remove those boundries i would then, upon recapture of the lo res material, be recapturing that whole chunk of media, not the little piece I subclipped….do I have this right?
I’m thinking if there is no better way I could use markers, or make multiple sequences of takes of each setup, like an “Intros” sequence, then copy and paste the takes I want. Other ideas?Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for the help.
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4 Replies
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Well I have never been an Avid editor despite some experience with it.
To answer your speed change questions. I think you are doing it correctly. You can use the time remap function if you like or you can right click on a clip in the timeline and click speed. Then you can change the speed. The only annoying thing here is that it tries to ripple this clip so if there is a clip in the way, you may have to drag it to the end of your sequence and then bring it back. It is not making any new media. That isn’t really part of the FCP philosophy as it would use space on your drive. Obviously a render file will take up space though. I also recommend twixtor to do a bit nicer job with slow motion. This is a plugin made by ReVision FX.
The other way to handle speed change is to do a fit to fill edit. You mark the in and out on the source and timeline then hit shift F11.
As far as subclipping. You can mark the in and out in the viewer and then go to the modify menu and hit make subclip. This will add it to your bins. If you click on that clip when you rebatch, it should just do between the new ins and outs.
I would recommend to subclip with handles in case you need them. Subclips are not edits and shouldn’t be treated this way. Therefore don’t make a subclip as you want a clip to appear in your edit. Make it to roughly split up your large capture. Then just make edits with ins out outs, overwrites and inserts as you are used to in Avid.
I hope this helps.
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I haven’t used time remapping in FCP but jwedit is right with the speed change. Its a bit awkward but works. As far as subclips go; I hate them. Definetely subclip with as big of a handle as you would possibly need.
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Thanks for the info…so I think for subclips i’ll just subclip all the “host intros” let’s say with large handles and edit from that, and maybe use markers between takes. Makes more sense than each little clip.
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Yes, that makes sense. You can definitely separate takes into subclips if you want. As long as you have the whole take you shouldn’t have to worry about handles.
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