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Prayers from the Church of X
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[Oliver Peters] “It would be nice to have a collapse function like in Media Composer. You select a range of clips on the timeline (in X’s case, connected clips) and collapse them into a single container on the primary storyline, to which you can add transitions. This is different than compound clips, since it is only in that timeline.”
Interesting idea, though Compounds do, kind of, allow you to do that. I’d say having CC’s that expand in place would be cool and offer similar functionality., maybe with clips shown smaller, as they are when you expand components in a secondary, but still be editable?
[Oliver Peters] “Titles that you create should be storable in an event. This way you can simply edit it to another timeline from the browser/event when needed.”
Would be nice to have an option to save ’em somehow. Honestly though, the fact that PP does that by default drives me nuts. I use Titles for slates etc as well. After 6 months of dozens of spots with dozens of versions, it’s just a mess.
[Oliver Peters] “Replace needs to function both like Avid and like PPro.”
Yeah, that’s what i mean by “match frame replace” above. Really need that.
[Oliver Peters] “The effects applied on the timeline clips stay and the replace function simply replaces the clip..”
I like that, copy replace paste attributes works for me in X but it would be a nice option
[Oliver Peters] “Remove attributes.”
Yep, I’ll add that to the prayers. lol
[Oliver Peters] “Re-edit new media but leave the attributes (effects) in place.”
Yeah, that would encompass the replace thing too I’d guess..
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “Interesting idea, though Compounds do, kind of, allow you to do that. I’d say having CC’s that expand in place would be cool and offer similar functionality., maybe with clips shown smaller, as they are when you expand components in a secondary, but still be editable?”
Right, if you could expand and edit a compound within the same timeline, then it would more or less work like an Avid collapsed clip.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[David Powell] ” Its a pain not being able to line up bins next to each other. I should also say, that the match frame is problematic due to the nature of keywording since it opens up at event level which gives me no reference to the clips that were near it (which is often the purpose)”
Agree on the revel in browser not showing the collection, and share your “not sure if it could” thought as well. As to lining up “bins”, can’t you get that result with Event naming and/or Keyword Collections? Or am I misunderstanding?
[David Powell] “Extend edit (in Avid Parlance not FCP) or for PP users “trim to playhead”.”
SHIFT X or Option [ or } does that now. Or do you mean something else?
[David Powell] “And lastly multiple open projects so I can pancake edit.”
Don’t get me wrong, but isn’t that kind of workflow/style specific? Would be a nice option.
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
Regarding the bins (Ive never learned how to respond to quotes is forums)
FCPX only allows for one group of media to be open at a time. I can separate shots and locations with keywords as I do, but I cannot leave them open for a visual reference and quick access as I’m trying to add clips to the timeline from multiple locations but at the same period of time. In PP, Avid or 7 for 3 cameras I have 3 bins open side to side (or stacked) and I go from one bin to the other adding clips down the line as an event unfolds in several different locations. In X I’m forced to close down all other visual references to access one. Its far more time consuming.
Regarding “extend edit”. No this is not possible in X or 7. Both force you to select an edit point move to a location and then “Shift X”. In Avid and PP, with one stroke, wherever your playhead is when I hit “N” the edit rolls to the playhead without any selection. I have “Y” mapped to roll left to the playhead. This makes it so easy to go through your rough cut and roll edits. Its a huge time killer in FCP and carpal tunnel inducer I might add.
Regarding Pancake editing. This is huge for both doc and event editing. Avid has source side sequence play, so it can do the same thing without having two open sequences. If you want to take a long sequence and cut it down to a shorter one using selects that you’ve marked up, FCP X forces you to jump all over the sequence in time. And thanks to ditching I/O for “ranges” you can’t even use your inpoint as a placeholder to quickly jump back to the place in time where you want to place that clip from further down in the sequence.
Thats the problem with the simplification of the UI. It merely made if far more restrictive so as to make it easier for amateur and/or non-power users. And these “feature sets” are not there if you dig deeper as other “believers” tend to often spout.
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This is The list I keep sending to Apple. I try to update it and check off stuff when they added functionality to The program or squished bugs. Anyhow, this is my list, just a Quick copy and paste:
– Remove Attributes button
– Being able to give color labels to projects
– Another behavior when putting multiple dissolves in a timeline. In FCP 7, it would add a dissolve everywhere it could, but if there wasn’t enough media, it would not copy a dissolve there. This was very handy when you worked with a lot of clips that just follow each other coming from a recording device that splits long recordings in multiple files.
In FCP X now, you can only choose to create media for the transition, or just cancel and not have a a cross dissolve anywhere. If I’m not mistaken, the first releases of FCP X would give you more choices in this regard.
It’s nice to have a combination of the old behavior and the potential new one (with creating extra media) and just have options of both in the dialog window you get. Because if now, you have a recording split in multiple files, and put a dissolve in between those clips with FCP X doing the ‘creating extra media thing” you get a weird effect that’s not wanted.– A kind of batch export, and maybe support for kind of reference files?
– If you export for instance, 3 timelines in the background, you only see the first file by name.
The one below, awaiting, just say: ‘Master File’. Why can’t you say the name of the project or timeline? So you can get a quick idea of what you are already exporting and if you forgot anything.
If it’s the same timeline you are exporting multiple times, with changes, let’s have it say the name of the sequence with the date and exact time of the export?– If you click Expand All in the menu for expanding video and audio, that it expands every clip in the timeline, INCLUDING the ones you put in the timeline AFTER you pushed the Expand All option. It reduces the amound of clicking. If you want to edit with an expanded view of audio seperately, you click expand all, and edit the way you want. If you put new clips in the timeline, you don’t have to press again and again in the menu. The same goes for Components. Could be nice to just have it as a viewing mode.
– More RAW controls from REDCINE in the R3D Hud, including (big one) the eyedropper tool to very quickly and automatically set white balance.
– Have a simple white balance tool in your standard color tools, like the one from RED. Let it be a tool you can switch on or off.
– A timecode HUD with much more timecode options. Seeing in one view the timecodes of everything in the timeline (like the old timecode overlay in FCP7), optional of course. Being able to COPY and PASTE a timecode from a clip instead of manually having to feed it always, like you could in FCP 7. You could just copy the timecode from the viewer of canvas.
– A well made timecode reader/generator effect, not only a generator. (have both). Like the old one: read timecode, generate one, custom, … Now, we have to work trough compound clips with timecode generators above, which seems unnecessary. To be able to read source timecode.
– More options from Color, including but not limited to color wheels. Tracker. Sharpening, denoising,… Maybe have a seperate Color Room? (same with Audio?)
– If you click to have Proxy Media Playback, put a warning side if media hasn’t been converted to Proxy yet, but don’t have it be offline completely. It sometimes doesn’t make sense to transcode EVERYTHING in your timeline to Proxy Media. Only being able to transcode a portion of it, and just see a small subtle warning sign in the rest without hindering your ability to work with it, would be much better!
– In the preferences, have playback for Optimized Media or Original Media be 2 seperate options? Or just some more flexibility.
– ‘Break Apart Compound Clip’ back in the contextual right-mouse click menu.
– At Audio Enchancements, at the background Noise Removal option, have a small button to set the noise print, as you could with Soundtrack Pro. I don’t know if the technology now in FCP X is the same as in Soundtrack Pro, but I’m getting much worse results (frankly, I never get good ones, and thus never use it) when using the remove background noise option in FCP X. Maybe having the option to manually set the noise print, will get better results back?
– An audio mixer! Maybe have some seperate Audio Mixing ‘room’, like you could have with Color Correction. FCP X seems to have great technologies under the hood (some of Color, some of Logic, some of Soundtrack Pro, some of Cinema Tools), but just have the tools deeper would really make it a super-NLE. Not needing to round-trip, but still being able to do so much in an NLE that can seem so simple, but yet can get very deep, is VERY appealing, and would get many people to switch to Macs and FCP X. Look at Color… Yes, you could say Resolve is better, but not needing to round trip, and being able to do very good corrections in the same program where you do the finishing, compositing, editing, … is really tempting. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t need to. But I miss Color, and in the same way I think much more of Soundtrack Pro needs to return to FCP X.
Maybe audio mix trough color coded roles or so?
So you can change the chronology of Roles in the Timeline Index, and the Timeline shifts all those Roles together. So if you decide you want all your Sound FX under your video, and then all your Music, you do it in the Timeline Index with a drag-move, and the timeline groups them and moves them together? Marcus Moore wrote a great blogpost about some options:
https://disproportionatepictures.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/roles.html– Being able to give Color Corrections names, instead of just the automated numbers.
– Being able in a way to very easily put a video-only dissolve on a clip, without messing too much with detaching audio, secondary timelines, … Just have a cross dissolve video-only transition in the transition browser or something. Same thing with making an audio-only cross dissolve with a dedicated short cut (it used to be ALT+CMD+T in FCP7)! These little things suddenly can make FCPX a much more slow tool to use.
– Have a quick way of putting audio back to a clip after detaching it. (and if they are out of sync, maybe have a dialogue box or something to choose if you want to keep it out of sync, or put it back to it’s default?)
– Have out of sync-markers when detaching audio… Or have better solutions for working with a recording where all the audio is for instance 4 frames off.
– Have the Background Render option be REALLY background. So for instance, when you are working, it keeps rendering, but like with one core or something. So it’s low taxing on the system, but you can really keep working.
– Please make it possible to have your transform, and crop tools in the inspector change in stacking order together with effects. Being able for instance, to put a crop ABOVE or BELOW a 3rd party effect for instance. Now there are many work-around necessary (compounding) to do this. (and some things are just impossible)
– The background Dashboard hud dissapears when going into another application. Not that handy.
– This feature could maybe be a work-around for the dashboard dissapearing, although it would be nice to have both: In the Share Monitor program, have a look at what you are exporting in every program (FCPX, Motion 5, Compressor 4). They all share the same engine. Having the Share Monitor open and being able to see what you are exporting in FCP X next to your regular Compressor Batch would be great. Having a seperate tab or something like that.
– When making a new compound clip, being able to immediately say which keyword it needs to have. Now, if you need to make a lot of them, and you are making compound clips from clips in a keyword-collection (which we do, to have a timecode generator on them, because we miss having a timecode hud), you always get thrown back into your Event, instead of staying within that keyword collection, and then you have to manually search the compound clip and assign a keyword to the compound clip again.
– In an Event, in your viewing options, you can choose to display: “no rating or keyword selections”. I like that option, but it would be extra nice if you have an extra viewing option with separate: “no rating” “no keyword”, next to the excisting option of both.
– Being able to have a Proxy with Alpha channel (have the software detect that automatically? Make Prores 4444 in those cases?)
– Being able to adjust values of Loudness parameter in Audio Enchancements with numeric values. Now you have numeric values for the Loudness sliders (Amound & Uniformity) but you cannot adjust the numbers directly, you have to use the sliders.
– In the transform Tools, have full Rotation controls. So for instance, only with the Y axis for instance.
– The last view of your viewing modes of your clips in the timeline is very small, which makes it very handy if you are working with many layers and don’t need to see thumbnails. It would be great to have fade handles for audio in that viewing mode. And maybe also have an expanded audio components view in that mode, but I would consider that less important.
– Having Snapping also work with for instance, doing retiming (with Hold Frames) on multiple secondary storylines above each other.
– This is more for motion, but: In Motion5, in the Browser, also have column view like you have in the Finder. It makes navigating trough your files much easier.
– If you have for instance 4 layers of video, with each of them having 4 clips next to each other… Once you make a couple of clips in a layer of video into a secondary storyline there is a minimal height difference. This becomes annoying when working with multiple layers of video, and you want to check and go from one of them to the other. (for instance, by putting transitions between them).
– At this point it seems impossible if you use Match EQ, to apply the match with the same clip, but just an other audio component. If I have one clip with 2 tracks of audio components, and I want to match channel 1 with channel 2, I cannot do so. I need to copy the clip, and make sure it’s physically another clip on the timeline. This seems a lot of unnecessary steps and gets in the way of what the whole Audio Component feature is about.
– Being able to drop a complete folder in Compressor. And make Smart Folders or Quees. Compressor has Job Actions now, but it would be great if you could tell it to use every movie that arrives in a folder (including things you are currently rendering out in FCPX, but you are leaving the computer overnight), to compress that to a couple of things. I know you SORT OF can get that now by sharing in FCPX to multiple things, but it would be a nice feature for Compressor to have too.
– A way to ‘lock’ edits/Projects, with a simple lock-icon like in system preferences. Snapshot seems to be a way, I’m just wondering if a lock icon is not more universal and easily understandable.
– Another something on the wish list: it would be great if you could select all your markers in the timeline index, and make them into another kind of marker, with one command, or one click. Like making all your markers chapter markers, or making all your markers to do items, etc. …
– Having a way of seperately consolidating only your Proxy Media to another folder like you want.
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Wow. Lots of stuff in this thread. My wishes are relatively few (and echo what others have said). in approximately descending order of importance to me:
1. As several have said, connect or “pin” a clip to an absolute timecode in the timeline. For us promo guys, this would be huge.
2. Direct access to the clip opacity at top and tail. Hate having to “control-v, expand the opacity track, pull the slider” every time. Having the little slider thingy directly available, like in the audio portion of the clip, would be a huge timesaver for me. Being able to hot-key select “fade in” or “fade out” opacity with an option to directly enter the rate in frames would be even better. I loved this method back on the VideoCube, and found I could really work quickly this way. And this obviates the need for a video-only dissolve, which seems inexplicably difficult and/or unimportant to the folks at Apple.
3. Like Oliver said, an Avid-style collapse and expand in timeline function. I can live with compound clips in place of collapsing. But being able to expand the compound in the timeline would be a huge timesaver for compositing-heavy projects. And as Oliver points out, a timeline-specific collapse function is often more useful than having to make a compound clip. Usually when I make a compound, I want it by default to “reference a new parent” or whatever X calls it. So even switching the default behavior to make me choose to NOT make it an independent compound would be better than the current method.
4. Better match framing. Maybe I’m missing something but it seems like a simple “select clip in to out, go to head, match frame, clip appears in browser with in point selected, go to new location on timeline, insert/replace/connect clip” should be that simple and that fast. Is it? Am I just not seeing it? ‘Cause match framing always seems fraught with “oops, didn’t mean to do that” when I need it. And I’m almost always always in a hurry when I need it.
5. Really don’t think the “roles-based mixer” is ever going to happen…not sure it ever should. But roles-based bussing would be sweet. Something more friendly than “select a role from the timeline menu and apply an effect (compressor, EQ, etc) to all the highlighted clips” approach. An actual HUD or something that lets me select, deselect and manipulate the order of application would be great.
6. More flexible timecode windows would be nice. FCP7 really had it down. In Avid, I always make a custom TC window with master, V1 and in-out display. Having such an outboard window display in X would be fine.
It feels like a lot of the other requests I’ve seen in this thread (and over and over again in other threads!) are so firmly rooted in the “make X like Avid/Premiere/Legacy” mindset that I am leery of them. X is X. (Can I get a Hallelujah!) When I edit on Avid, I try to make the most of its trim mode. When I’m in X, I like the fact that trim isn’t a mode to go into and out of. I can trim plenty fast either way. Just different ways of accomplishing the same thing.
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Nice list Charlie. I do feel compelled to tell you that you should give up on round-tripping to Motion. Everyone has asked for that… if we were going to get that, we’d had it by now…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Mitch Ives] “I do feel compelled to tell you that you should give up on round-tripping to Motion. Everyone has asked for that… if we were going to get that, we’d had it by now…”
Honestly, that’s not a huge wish of mine, but I could have used it recently so I added it. 🙂 I like the way you can “round trip” with generators, effects etc. It’d be nice to have the same function with timeline clips, but not a deal breaker by any means. For me anyway. “Create Project From File…” in Motion works great, but often the “file” I want to mess with is a 2 second bit of a 30 minute source. I can, however, save it as a generator with lots of controls available for when I change my mind. I’ve done that exactly once, but it was kinda cool. 🙂 And fcpxml is getting quite detailed, so who knows what could be possible?
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[David Powell] “Thats the problem with the simplification of the UI. It merely made if far more restrictive so as to make it easier for amateur and/or non-power users.”
Really? I find Pr and FCP old more restrictive than X. I must be an amateur. lol
[David Powell] “nd these “feature sets” are not there if you dig deeper as other “believers” tend to often spout.”
You’re correct that not every feature set every editor could want is in X, For instance, as I don’t cut docs, features, or events, none of the the things you mention are that important to me. By the same token, there are likely things I use or would like to have that are of no use to you. And if we both want X to contain everything we could possibly want, I don’t think either of us will ever be happy. There’s a bunch of stuff that could be better, and some stuff that really should be there that isn’t though. Hence, my prayers. 😉
I’d prefer Apple add and improve things that are of use to everybody. I’m perfectly capable of operating complex software containing every possible feature under the sun, I’ve been doing it for a long time. But I really like it now when my NLE helps me do things quickly and easily. Being able to make changes and hit play so quickly you wouldn’t even think I’d had time to do anything is something that helps me. X lets me do that more than other NLE’s, and I can deliver the same quality product as anything else.
I sometimes need to do things differently in X than Pr or 7 or whatever, or come up with workarounds, and I need workarounds in other NLE’s to do things I can do in X. No big deal. Again… to me, for the stuff I need to cut. Everybody elses mileage will definitely vary. 🙂
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
I use it everyday. I didn’t say that users were amateurs. The IU is less customizable. That’s a fact. It takes away power from the experienced user and learning curve from new users imo. I’ve worked on trailers before in X (not on your level) and didn’t need the features I mentioned much. And for corporate vids I don’t need them either. But for other cuts, being confined to one bin at a time and one timeline really stinks, as does the lack of trim features which would not fly in the way of the design should they be implemented.
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