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Newbie Rantings and Pet Peeves…..sorry
Having been a professional editor for the last 20 years ( last 7 on AVID|DS, Media Composer before that, and On-line before that
) I have a few things that are driving me crazy. Yes I have to keep telling myself about the great price point of FCP, but here are a few peeves. Actually, a desperate cry for work arounds or something I am missing.1. When slipping or sliding a shot, I like precise control and do it in frames. I don’t like the slip/slide by mouse as it is not precise enough. I know you can hold down control and get more accuracy, but still I want to do it in frames.
2. Like above, when I am moving the DVE around I like to increment precise values. I realize you can drag with mouse and enter exact values in box paramaters, but I’d like to use the scroll wheel on my mouse, or +/- buttons or some other way
to tweak and fine tune. This is especially nagging in the Distort function trying to corner pin shots into monitors.3. Come on….you can’t lasso or move a range of keyframes? This one kills me. If you want something sooner or later,
you have to move each individual keyframe. This appears in keyframe manipulation for audio functions and motion etc.
UGH4. When I import certain .psd / .tiff / .pict files into FCP, (often larger than 720 x 486) they show up in Viewer and NOT the NTSC monitor (this may be a function of my AJA IO box?????) This drives me crazy when I am discussing a graphic with a client who is sitting behind me and I thought they could see it on the 20″ Sony Client monitor.
5. I periodically save versions as I am working. Would like SAVE Sequence as and have it become my new current sequence. Now I duplicate it, re name it, open it and then close my prior version. Probably just me….
6. No granularity or quality options for DVE. This kills me on Hi Rez Stills. ( Use blur or pre-blur in Photoshop?)
7. Although Live Type and Motion seem like great little standalone apps. Why not have them more integrated into FCP. There is alot of back and forth between programs. ( Probably just me again.)
8. Have alot of “Collison on V1” type error messages when I am trimming multiple clips. Trying to learn more about locking / linking / etc. OK, Ignore this one.
9. The basic title tool is the worst I have ever seen. period.
OK, I feel better now. Thanks for letting me vent and I really do like becoming “one of you” after coming over from the AVID dark side. I feel the same buzz I had 7 years ago when I bought my Version 1.0 DS which was a Softimage product before it got AVIDized. BTW, my last price quote from AVID to upgrade my DS was over $70K and that was a favor. I see many more FCP’s at my shop in the future.
Sorry for the wasted bandwith.
Regards….
Rick Bennett
Naked Eye Editorial
http://www.nakedye.com -
14 Replies
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Rick I would suggest you either read the manual or pick up one of the FCP training manuals because just about everything you’re asking for is built in to FCP, you just need to either look them up in the Help window or in the manual.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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C’mon Walter, can’t ya just tell me 1 or 2.
I really do need to get a better book than the manuals. But I don’t think they are all addressed. Certainly not trimming multiple keyframes or incrmenting x, y, values in precise increments.
Thanks
Rick(I’m Not a Creative Genius)
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Let the trim edit window be your best friend. You can you can use JKL with audio scrubbing to slip, slide, ripple and roll.
Just double click between edit points.G5 Dual 2.5 160GB System 400GB Media Drive ATI 9800 256MB 6 GB RAM
Dual Gig Quicksilver 1GB RAM 80 GB System drive (3) 250 GB internal media storage
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OS 10.3.8 FCP 4.5, DVDSP 2, QT 6.5, Boris Red 3GL 1.65 TB External Stor -
I can’t help you with the distort tool but, if you hold down the option key while tapping an arrow key you can move an element in the viewer or canvas one increment at a time.
Tim
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Wow another DS-FCP convert! Welcome to the club Rick, I remember your name from the DS-L.
1) Yes you can do this. Select the clip(s), then with the Slip Tool (S) or Slide Tool (SS) active you can either type in a +-x frames offset or you can use the < and > to nudge frame by frame. Holding down the Shift key will nudge in X frame increments as set in User Preferences>Editing.
2) With the Canvas active (and wireframes displayed) pressing Option-Left/Right/Up/Down arrow will move the clip in 1 pixel increments.Adding the Command key gears down to 1/10th pixel increments but the Shift key thing for large increments doesn’t work.
3) Nope unfortunately you can’t. You want metakeyframes or whatever they’re called on DS which are sort of there at the top of the Filters or Motion tabs but you can’t actually do anything with them…I was hoping that FCP5 was going to get Motion’s curve editor but it didn’t.
4) That’s the way it is. FCP won’t automatically scale down something larger than the sequence size when it’s loaded into the Viewer in the same way that AE does. Personally I don’t find it a massive problem just one of those things.
5) You’re used to only being able to have one sequence open at a time in DS (or has that changed these days?). I do this many times every day and it’s only just occurred to me that one thing you can do to speed up the process is to duplicate the current sequence and then rename the ORIGINAL rather than the copy. That way your currently open sequence updates with the renamed version.
6) I believe some changes to this are on the way in FCP5 (certainly scaling quality options).
7) Yes would be nice but realistically I doubt this will happen. There are some advantages to having separate apps but with integration between them which is clearly the way that Apple are going with all this.
8) ignored.
9) no comment.
This is the page you’ll want to bookmark Rick for those feature requests:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html
they do read them.As I’m sure you’ve already found out FCP is very close to DS in many ways so it’s not as bad a transition to make as it is for some people. Good luck!
Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each -
Hi nicky,
this might be a helpful knowledge base for you:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_homepage_index.html
It’ll take some time to get used to FCPs way of thinking.Greetings
Uwe -
As to number 4…
Copy the clip before you slip or slide it… then paste attributes by control clicking on the newly slipped clip… That way the keyframes will just get remade right where they were before…
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
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Would like to know how to slip or slide with the jkl keys please. That’s a trick I’ve definitely never figured out. Haven’t needed it either. Sees like we’d have to be able to select two transitions at once and have a 4 up trim window to make this possible. Am I missing something? Are you talking about dyamically slipping a shot like you can a single edit point?
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3 thoughts. Follow the advice already given.
Get a Wacom tablet.
Adapt or perish. -
7. Although Live Type and Motion seem like great little standalone apps. Why not have them more integrated into FCP. There is alot of back and forth between programs. ( Probably just me again.)
Are you using the round trip procedure properly?
Drop your Motion or Livetype project file in the FCP timeline. And it shows up like a normal clip. Right click on it, and select open in editor. That Motion or Livetype project will open up and you can make your changes. Save it, Cmd-Tab back to FCP, and now that Motion/Livetype clip is updated with your changes. That’s a pretty tight integration!!! Curious to hear what you would rather have?
-CHL
Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Video Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer
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