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So where are we in the game?
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[Oliver Peters] “What Bill is talking about is source-side color correction of the master clip before it’s on the timeline.
Ah, thanks for the clarification, Oliver
[Oliver Peters]
I will add though – as someone who does color correction all the time with every edit I do – source side correction for anything other than an overall setting is pretty pointless. Color correction is contextual from shot-to-shot. Yes, you can do it in X, but why? Range-based correction of the source would be unnecessarily time-consumming for riding iris changes and most likely incorrect once it’s on a timeline. But heck, if that floats your boat I guess it’s fine.
“I’ve tried source side a couple of times in special circumstances and it hasn’t worked out well for me either. Even for simple interview setups all it takes is a reframing of the shot or nervous talent shifting towards or away from a light and your grade has to change.
[Marcus Moore] “You can do this in FCPX too. Though it’s not an advertised feature, you can make “adjustment layers” which effect everything below it with whatever filters you put on it.”
Thanks for the info Marcus, I did not know that. Being able to apply a filter globally like that certainly comes in handy at times.
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Back in Legacy you only had to innocently change the clip name and if you did not “rename file to match clip” the game was up for relinking in my experience.
I am probably not using the software in nearly as advanced a way as a lot of you but for me just being able to rename clips in the browser without FCPX “caring” because all the other metadata maintains the link has been bloody marvellous.
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[Herb Sevush] “Can other NLE’s handle this situation – yes. Can FCPX handle this situation – if the answer is no, then that’s a weakness in X.”
It can certainly be seen this way – particularly from someone who has little or no appreciation of the many other benefits you get from the same “rigid ID/Location database” requirments that may be causing you not to be able to work the way you have in the past.
A decent analogy is escaping me right now, but as more and more people here are coming to understand, the database nature of X is a nearly astonishing strength. It allows the clever editor almost unlimited access to their footage, sliced and diced, tagged, sorted, bucketed, and ORGANIZED via overlapping keyword ranges that can be anything from one letter or number simple, to huge text strings complex – and can accommodate nearly any organizational scheme you can dream up. And they allow you to call up what you like truly INSTANTLY.
But the ability to have this amazing structure is that the software MUST, MUST, MUST, know where every clip resides and the size, scope and nature of it and ALL the potential tags and pointers that the database must maintain right down to the FRAME ID level – It’s the underlying REALITY of what the database is referencing and pointing to. So to simply SWAP one version of the CORE CLIP, with another that might be 10 frames shorter – likely encourages DISASTER. After all, if you have numerous whole clipTAGS that currently store frame 1:05:05:03 as their end point – and you go try to re-link that database to a clip that now stops at 1:05:04:25 – what exactly is the database supposed to DO about that? It’s referencing a nonexistant location. You could conceivably have dozens of such database pointers being pointed to a digital locations that NO LONGER EXIST.
Sounds like an excellent recipe for disaster to me.
If you’re building a database – and allowing everything in your entire metadata system to REFERENCE that database – then CHANGING it by gleefully re-inporting assets that used to have ONE dimension with ones that have different dimensions, is likely a nightmare to protect against.
Legacy didn’t care, because you really weren’t building much linkage between the Capture Scratch and the Timeline. Your clips didn’t really TALK to anything. Now in X, you’re clips seem kinda sorta like referential HUBS that the database tracks via ranges, pointers, references and markers.
So I think clip substitution with little regard to maintaing the nature and length of that clip is understandably a really BAD idea for a referential system like the one in X.
My musings anyway.
Heck, maybe they’ll prove me wrong and find a way to seek out and alter all the reference numbers that use to be there but aren’t anymore after wanton clip subbing.
Anything’s possible, I guess.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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There are articles on how to roll your own adjustment layer (it’s basically a blank title or graphics template generated in Motion) or if you don’t want to bother, Color Grading Central and (I believe) Alex4D both have free ones you can download and install. CGC has two: an basic adjustment layer AND a pre-built Broadcast safe one- which is great, since ideally what you want is a BS filter which blanket covers everything, including effects and titles, which wouldn’t be covered by dropping the effect on individual clips.
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[Bill Davis] “It can certainly be seen this way – particularly from someone who has little or no appreciation of the many other benefits you get from the same “rigid ID/Location database” requirments that may be causing you not to be able to work the way you have in the past.”
It might well be true that the overall strengths of the data base model are more significant than the weakness of it’s inflexibility in re-linking, but that doesn’t stop that inflexibility from being a weakness.
Every NLE has strengths and weaknesses, often the weaknesses are caused by the strengths, but when evaluating an NLE they are what they are.
One weakness doesn’t abrogate X as a tool, but constantly denying the obvious lessons you as a defender.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Adding to this, it’s probably why media management doesn’t yet split clips.
There’s metadata that’s held, often at the head but I believe sometimes at the tail of certain formats that would then have to be copied to the split clip and then pointed to throughout all instances using the split clip.Apple may get there with process of duplicating and linking to that metadata throughout but it’s not as simple as retaining used media was in FCP legacy.
My guess is once they do that, they’ll then have the wherewithal to handle something akin to a “forced” relink in which the new metadata can be “rippled” throughout all instances.
I can even imagine people complaining how “slow” it is when that’s done given that, depending on the complexity of the project, it may take some time other than “instant” to update the entire database.
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[Bill Davis] “But the ability to have this amazing structure is that the software MUST, MUST, MUST, know where every clip resides and the size, scope and nature of it and ALL the potential tags and pointers that the database must maintain right down to the FRAME ID level – It’s the underlying REALITY of what the database is referencing and pointing to. So to simply SWAP one version of the CORE CLIP, with another that might be 10 frames shorter – likely encourages DISASTER. After all, if you have numerous whole clipTAGS that currently store frame 1:05:05:03 as their end point – and you go try to re-link that database to a clip that now stops at 1:05:04:25 – what exactly is the database supposed to DO about that? It’s referencing a nonexistant location. You could conceivably have dozens of such database pointers being pointed to a digital locations that NO LONGER EXIST… So I think clip substitution with little regard to maintaing the nature and length of that clip is understandably a really BAD idea for a referential system like the one in X.”
When I finally get around to releasing Keen Edit 3000, it will track clip relink history as metadata.
Just because re-linking is destructive now doesn’t mean it should be in the future. A clip is an abstraction of a media element, and there’s no reason why you couldn’t associate multiple media files with a single clip, almost like a source-side audition.
This would be enormously useful in the contexts of versioning and grading — especially if the active item in the clip could be programmatically selected in a given context via metadata.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Oliver Peters] “When you only have 1 1/2 engineers working on it anymore, the lid is pretty tight ;-)”
and they stole the half one from Avid last week! Now they have none! 😉
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Walter Soyka] “Maybe it would help if there were some metadata system for identifying unique frames in unique media containers.”
This is why we still use Reel/Tape metadata in file based workflows. What you’re talking about is content ID not just file ID. In our system every frame has a content ID that is a six digit Reel number followed by the TC. For example 123456_1023212. If that number is present in another file it’s the same frame content wise.
Panasonic’s global clip ID is the same except it’s essentially a reel number for every master clip. The difference between this and a file UUID is that when subclips are made that ID passes to the subclip just like reel.
Content ID is essential when you do something like partial file restore which can generate multiple clips from the original. With our reel_TC, the content is known despite the file name changing. We don’t rely at all on path or filename… just the content ID.
Reel gets a bad rape because people still think it means tape. Sometime things work just they way they are.
John
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