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Post work-rush thoughts about FCP-X
I’ve delivered 5 separate corporate projects out of FCP-X and/or Motion 5 in the past three weeks. Short schedule, tough deadline stuff for large national or regional clients.
Some thoughts.
1. X produces much better looking video than Legacy did.
Was it jettisoning Quicktime for AV Foundation? The 64 bit floating point thing? The Core engines? Dunno. But for whatever reasons, graphics, type, composites and high rez assets in X look WAY better then what I was used to seeing out of Legacy. Colors hold better. High rez is truly high rez. And I didn’t have to work with proxys just to make things go smoothly enough to meet my deadlines.2. X is actually more “edit friendly” than legacy.
Yes, I understand it makes you think and do things differently. But when you learn how it works, in addition to all the same basic cutting tools you’ve always had you get, new, exciting, useful and very, different ones. I’m editing significantly faster than before. Turns out the major things X is currently missing (multicam, OMF interchange, etc.) are things I rarely do. I get that if you depend on those daily, your mileage will vary. However, I find the current version to be a better general editing system than Legacy by a mile. For every thing that the “magnetic timeline” makes tougher, there are 5 things I find it makes WAY easier. I get that others hate it. I love it. Deeply. I’ll take connected clips over tracks, vertically locked relationships over exclusively horizontal any day now that I’ve gotten used to the difference. Perhaps I’ll find different kinds of projects in the future where it’s more pain than pleasure. But for now. This is a much better daily editing tool than what I had before. Period.3. The database inside X absolutely rocks.
This is truly transformative. Some projects don’t need it at all. But for the ones that do – this can make all the difference between frustration and delight – missing or hitting a deadline. I had a project last week that had 400+ high rez still photos as source files. Without keywording, that would have been an absolute nightmare. With it, not just during the initial build, but through the dozens and dozens of client change orders during the review process, the DB saved my sanity and my delivery deadlines.For what it’s worth.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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64 Replies
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Thanks for the report Bill. Nice to see some positive stuff here, I too find the more I use FCPX the harder it is to go back to other NLE’s.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
“X produces much better looking video than Legacy did.”
How are you determining this? Especially since there’s no broadcast monitoring output yet. I haven’t seen the same thing, but maybe it’s dependant on media type.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
export the clip out as source codec
put into fcp7 timeline
watch out to external video monitor
I did first week it came out
it looked a mile better than FCP7 renders
only place I saw issues on renders was the upscaling which is to be expected
the graphics looked very nice and very little aliasing
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[Ben Scott] “I did first week it came out
it looked a mile better than FCP7 renders”I understand HOW to do it. I asked how it had been done. All I can say is that if you are seeing this extreme of a difference, then you’ve been doing something wrong up until now in FCP 7. No offense meant, but I’m saying this from a POV of having routinely finished FCP 7 projects that have been submitted to pretty tight network QC.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “[Ben Scott] “I did first week it came out
it looked a mile better than FCP7 renders”I understand HOW to do it. I asked how it had been done. All I can say is that if you are seeing this extreme of a difference, then you’ve been doing something wrong up until now in FCP 7. No offense meant, but I’m saying this from a POV of having routinely finished FCP 7 projects that have been submitted to pretty tight network QC.
“Yup. I second that. Ben, if your FCP7 renders were lacking, I think you need to analyze what you were doing. I have to meet routinely the same strict standards as Oliver, and it is not a problem.
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I guess they look better because FCX is doing something to fix something you were doing wrong in FCP Legacy. Which is what it is designed to do…dumb down the technical stuff and do more things automatically for you. This is very good for those not technically inclined, but for those who want more control, who know how to properly online, this isn’t something we want.
But, I can see why many people do. Allows them to focus more on creative and less on technical.
When I played with FCX for 4 days, I didn’t notice any quality difference.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Bill Davis] “missing (multicam, “
Why not use the sync button?
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[Richard Herd] “Why not use the sync button?”
I assume that’s a joke, right?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Bill Davis] “3. The database inside X absolutely rocks.
This is truly transformative. Some projects don’t need it at all. But for the ones that do – this can make all the difference between frustration and delight “This is one of the main strengths of X for me. It’s ability to tag sections of long clips with such ease is what I like.
Let’s say you got a 3 hour baseball game. If I ran the zoo I would have our interns go through those games and tag by player, HR, Ks, steals or what ever.
Once you have the players name in it’s down to a one click and drag. Drag click Drag click Drag click.
Use the skimmer (that rocks) to get through the game faster. Step in the box. Step out of the box.
adjust battling gloves. Step back in the box. Foul ball. Step back out of the box. Aghghhhhhh!!!!Get past all that crap to the play. Drag click Drag click Drag click
The whole game, heck the whole series could be tagged before lunch.
NFL
I’d have someone on all 22. Mo, HH, cart and low EZ just for starters.
It’s not just a three hour game, it’s no fewer than 10 cameras being recorded at the same time.
We keep ALL those angles.Think about how much footage that is for a whole season.
The play, from the player, from the game from the camera angle that you’re looking for in seconds.
Now THAT’S what I’m talking about.Some like X for small projects but the ironic thing is, the more footage you have to deal with the more
useful X is.I don’t need all that tagging for something small.
I need it for the entire season.
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Yep, same here. I get pristine output from FCP7. And output aside, with Colorista or even the regular Three-way CC, I find I can make things look better in FCP7 because I have more control. FCPX isn’t doing anything magic with rendering. If you see a big difference, much more likely your FCP7 settings are off.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
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