still driving me nuts

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Steve Connor] ” I don’t know how Avid handles playback so I can’t explain why it seems to perform better.”

One of the ways is to bust it down to a common 8 bit codec that is less than or equal to 1080i.

…

.

..::

[Craig Alan]

I’m confused. Render files can take up a lot of space. It’s true you can delete them for projects you are not working on and FC will regenerate them when you go back to edit one of these inactive projects. I just did a test and I added a color correction to a short clip in a new project I am working on.

The cache folder increased in size after this short clip was color corrected by about 1 gig. On a large project this could add up quickly.

I’m also not sure how the system drive would be faster than a fast media drive. What I had always read is to store your applications and FCP project backups on your system drive (which should be cloned on a regular basis). Leave the media and render files on media drives. Not saying you are wrong, just haven’t heard this advice before. I get that rendering does slow things down. Nothing new about that.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

On a Mac that is ancient compared to yours.

Thee internal 2 TB drives raid 0.

The OWC drive enclosure I showed you will accept the drives you are currently using (its empty) and you can take out those drives when you are done with a project and store them and add new ones. So for $500 you are now using thunderbolt 2. Bingo speed problem solved. And you can always use your usb 3 drive for other stuff like photos or backing stuff up. USB is great for that but not so much FCP or some other editing programs.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Dean Neal]

[Bill Davis] “The reason they have Storylines and call Projects Projects instead of calling timelines projects isn’t an accident, IMO. It’s a calculated decision to construct a new set of ideas and adapt the existing the language to reflect that. “

Bill is correct, IMHO.

Getting hung up on the nomenclature for the sake of comfort to me is missing the premise of X.

To suggest editors can’t collaborate because you refer to your edit as a ‘project’ instead of a sequence is just rubbish.

“Here is my project of string-outs for you to manipulate.”

“Project? Whats that?”

“Oh, sorry its a Sequence or Timeline.”

“Ok, thanks….”

End issue. For some in here that the naming of Projects is the end of meaningful collaborations in post production using FCPX is just… funny.

I used to chuckle in the days of FCP 7 etc. when editors I worked with would Name a BIN ‘ZEQUENCES’ in the list. Why do you ask? Because they wanted to find the Timeline Lists quickly and easily… and naming it with a ‘Z’ ensured it would always be at the bottom of the list in the Browser window. I know some renamed it ‘_Sequences’ etc.

So, here we are in FCPX 10.2 and the new in-build Smart Collections do that for you, by grouping projects for you.

With the Keyword control and Metadata foundations in the software, life has never been easier.

But as is usual in this forum, we tend to get hung up on things that simply don’t matter. Yet the big incremental workflow improvements are selectively ignored by some…

Final Cut X’s premise was to be a superior content management system in the digital age.

I agree, the editing elements were thin at the start but content management was always its strong suit. The other elements seem to be developing well.

Now we are seeing major Film releases that aren’t actually shot on film, the strong embrace of digital theories and nomenclature.

I am not saying the X is the golden goose, however in the words of H.G. Wells:

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.”

Dean Neal…

[Dean Neal]

[Mike Warmels] “Tell me then how to make an MXF broadcast mate from FCPX?”

I have delivered personally over 30 Television shows here in Australia as XDCAM HD422 25i MXF Masters as digital files and/or on XDCAM Optical Disc.

Its never been easier with FCP X.

Some masters I have sent have required Multiple Audio Stems (M&E etc) and some just a straight stereo out.

This software is more than up to the task on a MXF Front.

You will need to use Compressor however if you need multi-track audio.

Dean Neal…

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Craig Alan] “I’m confused. Render files can take up a lot of space. It’s true you can delete them for projects you are not working on and FC will regenerate them when you go back to edit one of these inactive projects. I just did a test and I added a color correction to a short clip in a new project I am working on.”

For me it was born out of necessity. If you really watch all the little tiny things that FCPX does when it’s working (the constant autosaving, all of the caching with waveforms and other) it’s really never sitting still even when you think it’s sitting still. The Activity monitor shows very little activity, and you’d think nothing it happening, but it usually is, especially at the start of a new library. All of the little read and write actives, while trivial computationally, cause a lot of problems on a SAN due to the amount of metadata called to the server and managing tall the very small files. I order to combat this, I moved the cache to the boot drive, and performance went up (there was a time when this wasn’t possible with FCPX). Instead of buying a USB 3 SSD that will only be limited by the USB3 bus, I put the cache on the boot drive because it’s crazy fast.

[Craig Alan] “I’m also not sure how the system drive would be faster than a fast media drive. “

Here’s speed tests from a rMBP laptop:

and a trashcan MacPro:

The SAN I work off of gets about 650MB/sec per 8GB fibre client, so even the laptop beats each SAN client in raw power (of course, the SAN goes faster at the server, but that bandwidth has to be distributed among multiple users).

So, this is a new day. For most people that have new PCIe SSD Macs, the boot drive is faster, sometimes much much faster, than the fastest of single spindle media drives, and usually faster than multiple spindle media drives (small RAIDs).

As far as rendering, I find that X requires much less rendering than FCP7, so the render files don’t bloat too much. If they do, they are very easy to delete within FCPX or the Finder. The only real reddening I do is usually with Neat Video, and some other effects when get is involved. Other than that, for most effects and color correction, I find that I don’t have to render nearly at all, but I’m also lucky enough to have a pretty fast infrastructure to allow that convenience.

[Walter Soyka]

[Jeremy Garchow] “So, this is a new day. For most people that have new PCIe SSD Macs, the boot drive is faster, sometimes much much faster, than the fastest of single spindle media drives, and usually faster than multiple spindle media drives (small RAIDs).”

This is a very, very important point.

None of the classic reasons for keeping assets/media/cache/whatever off your boot drive (except perhaps capacity) are valid anymore. Rethink your disk use.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Andy Neil]

[Dean Neal] “Getting hung up on the nomenclature for the sake of comfort to me is missing the premise of X.
“

I seriously doubt anyone’s really getting hung up so much on the nomenclature that they’re unable to work. However, it’s not unreasonable to acknowledge that changing the name of sequences to that of “project” which already had an existing definition within the editing community was needlessly confusing. The mere fact that you might have to have a clarifying conversation with a person about whether you meant ENTIRE PROJECT (all assets, sequences, video, etc) or just the PROJECT (sequence) is strong evidence that they probably could have chosen a better name.

And if you’re making the argument that the names were meant to be clear within the program itself, a way to distinguish the various containers X uses, let’s look at the name Event. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with the word Event being used to mean a container holding clips and sequences and other assets. But the name Event implies a specific workflow. You shoot an “event” and all the files for that “event” go in that container. Bin, on the other hand, is completely generic. It implies nothing about the workflow and as such is used in varying ways.

Of course, just because Apple calls a container, an “event” doesn’t mean we have to use the container the way it’s implied. I’m merely pointing out that the nomenclature they’ve created isn’t always the most clever or improved way of handling it.

Upon reflection, I don’t necessarily think they should’ve kept the name “bin” to mean events or collections. They work quite different from Avid or Premiere bins and should have a different name. I also don’t have an issue with Library or Event or Collection as a naming convention either. You have to call them something, and at least those names don’t have a pre-existing meaning in the editing world. But in my opinion, there was never a good reason to change timeline or sequence to Project. Particularly when many people work on single projects that require multiple sequences in the final output. It was a bad decision.

Will they change it? No. I don’t expect them too. But I can love editing and working on FCPX (and I do) and still acknowledge that calling a sequence a “project” was dumb.

Andy

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos

[Jeremy Garchow]

I keep wanting to write more about this, but here’s one of the reasons why I think a Project is an apt name.

Here’s a Project:

Simple, right?

Well, here’s what’s in it after breaking most of the clips apart. I had to make a gif as I couldn’t fit it in to one screen grab:

In that what seems to be simple timeline, it holds a multitude of capability. Since I have pre organized (and this type of scene/take program allows for it) all of the takes and banded them together, as well as all of the sync sound, and potential music options, I can store a lot of decisions in one single Project. When editing in this style, I rarely have to hit the Library, and mostly stay in the (ahem) Project I am working on. I then Snapshot any different versions, and I don’t even need to move to another windows, I simply keep working on the current…Project….and if I need to go back to a previous cut, I go back to the appropriate snapshot.

Personally, I think this was a conscious decision by Apple to think about all of the capabilities that are available to you in FCPX. It could very well be that Apple wanted to match names of other Apple applications (photos has Projects, for instance), but I also think that Apple re-thought what a timeline can be, and therefore needed to give it another name. I can have multiple Projects (like different timelines of different content) in one Library, and it all makes sense as the Projects are different, but also related to the same media. It’s not simply another timeline or sequence, the Project is it’s own entity, and if your particular jobs allow for it, once everything is setup and organized, you can add a whole lot of media to your Project without having to go back to the Library very often. When you add the magnetic timeline capabilities in to this, where you can adjust timing on the fly to allow for time discrepancies between takes, or putting something in a secondary storyline outside of the primary to keep the primary timing place, it becomes a very capable system. But (and it’s a big but) you have to like how it works. If none of this is important to you, then perhaps, Apple made a colossal blunder in the eyes of the edit deities.

[David Lawrence]

Jeremy, this is very helpful, thank you.

I get where you’re coming from but as you might expect still disagree. 😉

[Jeremy Garchow] “Simple, right?

Well, here’s what’s in it after breaking most of the clips apart. I had to make a gif as I couldn’t fit it in to one screen grab:”

OK, but even though you get some nice new features like snapshots and auditions, I can still do pretty much the same thing on an open timeline with nests.

Compound clips are basically fancy nests, and as far as nests go, I only use nests when I absolutely have to. I don’t like nests because they make the timeline unreadable, just as your first screen grab doesn’t give any visual indication of the complexity buried inside.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I can store a lot of decisions in one single Project. When editing in this style, I rarely have to hit the Library, and mostly stay in the (ahem) Project I am working on.”

I do this all the time with sequences. If I string out five different versions of a scene or piece on a timeline and use I/O marks to export each, is that sequence by your definition now a project?

[Jeremy Garchow] “it becomes a very capable system. But (and it’s a big but) you have to like how it works. If none of this is important to you, then perhaps, Apple made a colossal blunder in the eyes of the edit deities.”

Yep, the latter would still be me. But thank you for taking the time to explain your thinking. From your perspective it does make sense.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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