Offline Workflow in Final Cut Pro?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Austin Ray] “In general, FCP quits unexpectedly all the time, we get hang ups, FCP gets a lot of “General Error”, and FCP make mistakes (relinking on playback). Well, as far as I´ve figured out- all the usual problems there is, when it comes to working with QT-wrapped XDCAM. “

We’ve only cut one show here in XDCAM, but didn’t experience any weirdness with the XDCAM clips. We had 40 discs of SD footage and the project cut normally so I’m not sure what’s going on with your system. Sounds like you either have a conflict in your system with FCP or you have a problem with your media array. Is it optimized for compressed video formats? With our arrays, there is an optimum setting for working with uncompressed media and another for compressed media. All of our arrays are optimized for compressed media.

I’m setting up a local broadcaster with 8 suites for cutting XDCAM HD and they’re not experiencing any FCP unstable issues that I’m aware of running through a Fibre Channel SAN environment.

FCP has a terrible offline / online workflow so it’s not recommended, especially since you’re only running 50mbit XDCAM, that’s a very small file size. My thinking is there is some stability issue being caused by your setup and not the XDCAM.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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[Victor Perez]

Our shop edits about 80% XDCamHD Disc media running at 35mbps VBR between our 4 national series and other various projects. Although we do not have the 50mbps cameras the only issues we have with error messages is due to render files mistakenly being placed in the wrong place (system drive) mainly into a folder inside the FCP Application File itself.

I have found this to happen from time to time if one of our MacPro’s was forced quit. Sometimes when relaunching Final Cut the Scratch Disc is reset to the system drive. I make it a practice to check all our edit suite machines each month by checking the Applications folder for renders gone astray. It usually does the trick.

Other than that I would;
Check sequence settings, create new sequence and drop a XDCam HD 422 clip in it.
delete prefs
Check your media array like Walter described
Check for XDCam Transfer updates

hope some of that was of help,

Victor

[Shane Ross]

[walter biscardi] “FCP has a terrible offline / online workflow so it’s not recommended,”

I have to disagree here…and I know Mark Raudonis of Bunim/Murray will too. They have employed the offline/online workflow for many many years, on dozens of shows and hundreds of episodes. I have used it myself without much issue at all. Capture at Offline RT then online at higher res later. Have to redo still moves and graphics due to frame size differences, but that is all minor stuff.

The only issue here is that you are now using a TAPELESS format. So import all the footage at full resolution, then store those on separate drives…transcode (Media Manager in play here) to Offline RT and put that on your media drives. This will retain the timecode and reel information. When you are done cutting, reconnect to the high res masters, adjust your sequence settings to match the high res footage, and adjust any graphics and still moves.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[Austin Ray]

I´ve never been working offline in FCP before, but I´ve had a few harddisk crash and have had to rebatch a lot of material before. So when it comes to tape, this works most of the time.

Something that was disturbing when we still were on tape was that FCP doesnt care about timecodes. In my perfect world the TC is holy. Timecode is the only thing you can realy rely on. IN point and OUT point of a clip. What I remember FCP was doing if it found complications on the tape (dropped frames or drop in TC or whatever) was to just change IN and OUT point of the clip to something else later in the TC. This didnt really help much and you of course lost the original IN/OUT and had to get it from a project file backup.

My experience is that reconnecting in FCP works very fine, if you keep a good routine on clip naming (short titles, no symbols, no spaces and so on). But if you´re making mistakes here, everything gets complicated. Any quick recommendations on how to keep this work right?

Is there anyway to automate the Media Manager transcoding? Is it possible to make a Watch Folder or something, so that it will be easier for the editing assistants to digitize (not all of them are all too good with technical operations).

I am not too familiar with the XSAN system we have as we just installed it, and the computer guy in our company is on holidays anyway. Where do I find these settings on compressed material?

Thanks for so much thoughts.

Sorry all FCP-lovers. When I´m on deadline I just happen to miss Avid a lot.

[Shane Ross]

[Austin Ray] “Something that was disturbing when we still were on tape was that FCP doesnt care about timecodes.”

That’s wrong. FCP does care about TC…replies on it like any other NLE.

[Austin Ray] “What I remember FCP was doing if it found complications on the tape (dropped frames or drop in TC or whatever) was to just change IN and OUT point of the clip to something else later in the TC”

You must have had some setting wrong, or chose WARN AFTER CAPTURE on timecode break. For reliable timecode you have to have either ABORT or MAKE NEW CLIP chosen. Otherwise FCP will breeze over that break and continue adding code to the clip so that the output will be wrong, and the footage after the break will have the wrong TC. This isn’t the default setting…it is set to abort on dropped frames and make new clip on TC break, so that is something that was adjusted later.

[Austin Ray] ” Any quick recommendations on how to keep this work right?”

Do what you said, no odd symbols and short names. – and_ are fine, but nothing above the numbers. Unlike Avid that assigns its own naming scheme, FCP names the clip what you name it, so avoid the obvious things like symbols and long names. Change the DESCRIPTION if you need more descriptive information.

[Austin Ray] “Is there anyway to automate the Media Manager transcoding”

Such as…how? It just start transcoding after you capture, or while you do? No, you need to manually do this. You would on any NLE. But you can get ProxieMill from https://www.imagineproduct.com and that will create proxie files in any codec you choose as soon as your files offload or are converted. If you want automation.

[Austin Ray] “Is it possible to make a Watch Folder or something, so that it will be easier for the editing assistants to digitize (not all of them are all too good with technical operations). “

Nope…and if you have assistants who aren’t good at technical operations, why did you hire them? That is their job, to handle all the technical stuff.

[Austin Ray] “Where do I find these settings on compressed material? “

What settings?

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Austin Ray]

About the settings in the last question: I was refering to Victor Perez comments on XSAN settings for compressed media (as far as I understood him).

The reason why we have a few “non-technical” assistants is that we combine the positions of being a editor assistant and being a person transcribing/logging the material.