Organizational Tips For FCPX From Oliver Peters

[Oliver Peters]

Thanks.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Mark Dobson]

Thanks for that article Oliver.

I would hope that your balanced point of view would help detractors get over their prejudice and at least give the software a spin.

It’s amazing how many people I speak to are still highly critical of FCPX. Their opinion is still based on the initial ‘iMoviePro’ backlash against the software almost 2 years ago and they have yet to even download even the free 1 month trial.

[Julian Bowman]

See, i get the organisational side of things, which have a lot of advantages as well as some frustrating short comings. My main issue with X is that the magnetic timeline causes more hassle than it cures and the software as a whole is so fragile and has so little annoyances in ‘why on earth did they do that or didn’t they do that’ that I feel like an Apple employee is sitting next to me intermittently poking me in the eye just to make my day harder.

[Oliver Peters]

I try to be balanced in such posts as they are tips and not comparison articles. Personally, I’m still undecided. On any given day these days, I’m on FCP7, X, PPro, Sym/MC or Smoke. The appropriateness of the tools varies with the users – single editor, multi-suite facility, several editors sharing, etc. Plus there are phases within a production when parts of a tool are ideal and at other times, they get in the way. That’s how I feel about the magnetic timeline. Plus X is still quite buggy, which tends to color the attitude. But my point in the post was to help folks wrap their head around the way it works and how to relate those tools to what they already know from other NLEs.

Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Mark Dobson]

[Oliver Peters] “I try to be balanced in such posts as they are tips and not comparison articles. Personally, I’m still undecided. On any given day these days, I’m on FCP7, X, PPro, Sym/MC or Smoke.”

My brain just can’t cope with that many options with their different keyboard shortcuts and work patterns. I occasionally open up FCP7 and realise that I’ve forgotten most of the workflows I’d learnt in the 8 or so years of using it. So respect to those that can just switch between all these platforms and see them as tool sets to carry out any particular job.

[Oliver Peters]

[Mark Dobson] “My brain just can’t cope with that many options with their different keyboard shortcuts and work patterns. “

Well…. I didn’t say I was good or fast on all of them 😉 At least PPro and Smoke offer FCP 7 keyboard templates. They aren’t a perfect match, but it helps with a lot of the muscle memory.

[Mark Dobson] “I occasionally open up FCP7 and realise that I’ve forgotten most of the workflows”

The hardest is switching a lot in the same day. If you are on one or the other for a few days in a stretch, then after the first few hours it all comes back to you. I do find that I can’t get through a complex session on X without leaning on FCP7/FCS to fill in some gaps, so I’m still on FCP 7 a lot.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Brett Sherman]

[Oliver Peters] “Plus X is still quite buggy”

No doubt there are bugs. But I find it more solid than FCP 7 ever was. Much, much fewer crashes. To me that is a remarkable accomplishment for version 1 software. And I’m glad that I don’t have to continually redo things anymore. Or throw my mouse against the wall when I realize the FCP 7 preferences had reset and my last backup is an hour ago.

[Andreas Kiel]

[Brett Sherman]
… Or throw my mouse against the wall when I realize the FCP 7 preferences had reset and my last backup is an hour ago.

It’s a kind of personal prefs.
I nearly never used the automatic backup of FCP, but used the “save as …”
Doing something similar in FCPX is not that easy as “cmd-shift-s” it requires more clicks (and thoughts) cause of the way FCPX works.

Duplicating a project will give you some options which look easy and logical at the first glimpse — and do work in most cases. But there are things you have to be aware. This is not the way to make a backup unless to use “Organize Project Files …” after that.
Using “Move Project…” for backup can be resulting in a kind of disaster since all media files are really moved and other projects which rely on these media will loose the connection to these files.

Auto-Save and Auto-Backup are not well thought at the moment with FCPX, was better with FCP. And preference corruption does happen to both of them as with any other app as well.

Over the weekend I made some little changes to some projects, which turned out to be corrupted this morning, same as the backup files. I’m the lucky one who has his own backup workflow — therefore nothing serious happened.

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Don Bronn]

I am having a tremendous problem naming my Source Media in my external hard drive for FCPX to read
using a Panasonic P2 cards in a new HPX255 camera.

Unless the folder has the name Contents and having the sub-folders under it named audio, clip, icon, proxy, video, voice, lastclip.txt listed EXACTLY LIKE THIS FCPX will NOT read the clips as Source Media.

H-E-L-P ! DOES anybody have any solutions????

Thanks,
Don Bronn

[Oliver Peters]

I do not use FCP X’s import from camera. I use FCP 7’s Log and Transfer to import any camera files because it gives me superior control over media import and renaming. Once converted, I take these QT files into FCP X.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com