Notes from Editing-for-Real

[John Fishback]

A couple of thoughts. In Prefs you can set a default length for stills. I think it comes with 4-sec as the initial value. Have you tried that? For inserting pix in the storyline I position the PH at the edit point, highlight the clip in the Event Lib and W inserts a 4-sec clip. For moving stacked clips I select them all and use the Position tool to slide. That seems to work. The way I select an entire clip in the Lib or storyline is to click outside the clip and then drag over it, and the whole clip is selected. Also, the left & right arrow keys let you move around inside a clip a frame at a time and I use I & O to set exact points. I’m still very new to FCPX so I hope I addressed some of your issues.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.3, Motion 4.0.3, Comp 3.5.3, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.3)

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[Andy Neil]

[Don Smith] “I had about six short animated circle effects above the primary storyline. I would lasso them all and attempt to slide them down the timeline a little, and on release, they would all flow out end-to-end.”

This is confusing to me Don. Are you saying that you have 6 graphic layers stacked as connected clips atop one another above the primary storyline, but when you lasso and attempt to move them, they spread out end to end? I’ve never seen anything like that except when you attempt to move connected clips over a place in the timeline where there are no clips. I lasso and move connected clips all the time without any issue at all. If you are trying to move connected clips over the end of your timeline and don’t want them to be laid into the primary storyline end to end, then hit P on the keyboard and use the position tool. The position tool will automatically create a gap clip underneath the connected clips you are moving.

[Don Smith] “I often need to take a clip and tuck it between two existing lanes. I found it easier to do with the Position tool but it’s still a cat-and-mouse game.”

Use the selection tool instead (A). Hold down SHIFT when you select the clip you want to move. SHIFT will constrain the clip to vertical only movement. I find it’s much easier to do it this way.

[Don Smith] “I’m used to FCP7 and how it gives me a preset number of seconds. I can’t just drag the still into the timeline. I get some random range for its length.”

Stills in FCPX work in much the same way. There is a preset in the preferences for stills. In FCP7 it’s default to 10 seconds. In FCPX it’s default to 4.

[Don Smith] “My workflow for the moment is to put the primary effect above the presenter, make it a composite clip, and then go into the composite clip to add other things like timed bullet texts, but I often have two problems there; timing and difficulty seeing the graphics with alpha channels if they’re the same color as the default black background.”

Why are you making a compound clip? Can’t you just attach all your graphics and text effects as connected clips to the green screen footage? Keep everything in the primary project timeline until you’ve got the timing all down, and then collapse everything into a compound if you want to make sure the timing stays in one place. You can add the background as a connected clip BELOW the green screen in the primary storyline as well.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Don Smith]

Hi Andy.. you’re very kind to write back with such detail.

To shorten a message that was already too long I left out some circumstances of my copying-pasting multiple (stacked) generator effects. I had six of them in two stacks of three effects above a clip in the primary storyline. The two stacks were close to each other. I needed to move them into a composite clip (having changed my mind as editors often do). I lasso’ed, copied, stepped into the composite clip and pasted. They pasted just fine but weren’t quite in the right place. I lasso’ed the six effects and moved the group slightly. They were still over and connected to the same clip below. On release, the group of six effects went to the end of the clip below and spread out end-to-end. Undo. Repeat. Same result. Only when I made the six generators into their own composite clip could I get the group to move and the effects inside stay in their relative positions. I apologize for the more brief description yesterday. I thought that all that would be needed to know was that I attempted to copy and paste a group of effects. Clearly, all the detail was needed because there’s something else at play here.

Thank you for the tip of holding the SHIFT key with the Selection tool to reposition clips vertically in the timeline.

I knew that the stills had a default length of 4 seconds but thats not how I was getting them into the storyline. The FCP7 act of just dragging them in wasn’t working, and selecting them to use Q or E would give me a random range. I guess I must double-click on the clip first so I get the full range.

You are certainly correct in saying that I should build the effects above the primary clip and THEN make those effects into the composite clip and I can’t tell you why, sitting at home now and away from the work computer, I had to do the composite clip first. I’m thinking that I had the idea at the time that I knew I would be applying an effect to the composite clip and so would need to build inside the composite, but away from the computer and seeing your good advice, of course, I need to build first and then composite.

Call this workflow-birthing if you would. As I said in my original message, I’m a huge fan of FCPX/Motion and the boundless creative possibilities.

Thanks, Andy, for your time. Your solid advice sometime back to solve a problem in my Motion project where I wanted the segments of a VU meter to blink on fully instead of just wiping on (like I had seen in other VU meter effects) allowed me to create this: https://newsvideo.com/vud/

Don Smith
NewsVideo.com

NewsVideo.com

[Don Smith]

Experimenting further, you’re right, of course, Andy.

I can see now that in lasso’ing and moving the group of effects, the effect to the furthest right must have ‘slipped off the end’, meaning it’s connection to the to the clip below was left pointing to nothing. That causes ALL the clips that were lasso’ed to go to the end of the clip below and line up end-to-end.

While it caught me by surprise, I’m sure that, somewhere, we can make use of that quirk.

NewsVideo.com

[Andy Neil]

[Don Smith] “The FCP7 act of just dragging them in wasn’t working, and selecting them to use Q or E would give me a random range. I guess I must double-click on the clip first so I get the full range.”

Yeah, this is a strange behavior. It feels like a bug to me, but perhaps it’s just non-intuitive behavior. When you import a still, that still exists at a default length of 10 seconds. It doesn’t matter what your still preference is set to. However, if you click on the thumbnail, a range is automatically selected based on that preference (default 4 seconds). So if you are viewing clips in list view, you have to select the clip in the list and then click on the filmstrip to select the preference range. If you’re viewing the browser in icon view, you can simply single click the thumbnail to set the range and then use the W or Q keys to insert or connect the clips. This is how I’d recommend adding lots of photos to a project.

BTW, you can’t select the clips with the keyboard or else it will add the entire 10 second clip. But if you just want to get them in your timeline, you can just lay them in there at 10 seconds, select them all in the timeline afterwards and hit CTL+D and adjust their length to whatever you want at the same time.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com