The Next FCPX Update

[Bill Davis]

Isn’t this X’s Consolidate Media function with the “Include used media only” option selected?

That’s pretty much what the manual says it does.

What am I missing here?

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.

[Bill Davis]

I guess I don’t understand, then. My friends Sam Mestman and Mike Matzdorff in LA somehow managed to do this for Focus, and while they had a few issues related mostly to working before the 10.1 Libraries were in place, in my conversations with them since then, they’re more committed to X than ever and are crystal clear that it’s their preferred tool for feature work on multi, multi million dollar A-list features.

Seems weird to me that they got picture, sound, EFX, and all the scenes they needed to Lightiron without any big problems – and Michael Cioni – before he sold it – also said the same metadata based workflows I’m referencing are precisely what he sees as one of the brightest spots in the future of Hollywood post.

Maybe I don’t “get” this stuff. But you’ll have a hard time convincing me that they don’t.

You guys seem to be saying that X has fatal workflow flaws for big time productions. But they are doing them right now, so yes, I’m confused.

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.

[Marcus Moore]

As has been the entire topic of this section of the thread, this is all about trimmed media- nothing more or less. It may not be pertinent to your workflow, or usually mine, but dismissing it outright is, I think, a mistake Bill.

And while Mike M, or LightIron might praise FCPX Media Management (and there’s lots to praise- see Oliver’s new thread above)- this does not implicitly mean they’re happy that there’s no trimmed media function available (when it’s applicable).

Actually, I realized last night that I DO used trimmed media, as I suspect many Pro FCPX users do- when creating their AAFs from X2Pro. Why should it be any less relevant to trim video media when sending it downstream to VFX or a Colourist, when we do it for Audio Engineers.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “Seems weird to me that they got picture, sound, EFX, and all the scenes they needed to Lightiron without any big problems – and Michael Cioni – before he sold it – also said the same metadata based workflows I’m referencing are precisely what he sees as one of the brightest spots in the future of Hollywood post.”

Any links to the discussions about the workflow Bill or is everything you’re referencing private communications? From what I’ve read sound coming out of FCPX can be trimmed w/handles so it’s just a question of why can’t picture be too.

[Bill Davis] “You guys seem to be saying that X has fatal workflow flaws for big time productions. But they are doing them right now, so yes, I’m confused.”

Fatal? No. Could be better? Yes. It’s shades of gray, not black and white, like finding a really great pair of shoes best suited for the task at hand. Could I go running in a pair of high tops? Sure. Would the all around experience be improved if I was wearing a pair of properly fitting running shoes? Yes.

Oh, and careful Bill, you are close to sounding like Hollywood movies are the epitome of post production workflow. 😉

[David Mcclellan]

[Bill Davis] “Isn’t this X’s Consolidate Media function with the “Include used media only” option selected?

That’s pretty much what the manual says it does.

What am I missing here?”

You are missing the fact that X’s Consolidate Media function with the “Include used media only” option does not TRIM the media to just what you are using. It just takes all of the clips you are currently using – includes all of the extraneous material on those clips – and it moves that entire clip – the used part ant the unused part – to a new library. So if you have long takes – you are stuck with them in the library.

Do you understand it now? There is no option or way in X to TRIM or DELETE UNUSED MEDIA from your project. And for various reasons that have been touched upon here in this thread – there needs to be.

-DM

2013 MacPro 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 64BG Ram
LG 31MU97 4K Display
2013 MacBookPro Retina

[Michael Gissing]

[Bill Davis] “Isn’t this X’s Consolidate Media function with the “Include used media only” option selected?

That’s pretty much what the manual says it does.

What am I missing here?”

A critical function for many workflows where fast turnaround or remote working with others is normal.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I think with FCP Legend this was much easier. All formats were consolidated in to some sort of .mov, usually ProRes, along with other available codecs.

This allowed, as Quicktime does, to reach in to files, grabs the necessary frames, and make new files that were trimmed.

Now, with FCPX supporting so many native formats, this process is a lot more difficult. If your program had Red Raw, Sony MXF, Panasonic MXF, quickime .mov, AVCHD transport streams, FCPX would have to know how to reach in to every one of those files, and then recreate with 100% accuracy, the native file formats of those files. This is a very tall order.

Adobe Premiere can not do this either. If you have native file formats, Premiere simply does the exact same thing as FCPX, and this to copy all the files, in their entirety to a new location.

What Premiere can do, is consolidate and transcode, and this will take all of the native file formats and move them to a “mezzanine” codec. This is fine for some workflows, not fine for others. Here’s a video.

[Bill Davis]

I run across Mike most weeks on back channel chats. He’s been working on an iBook about the Focus workflow. I’ll ask him about how it’s coming this week. I’d ask him to drop by here to answer questions directly, but the reputation for a heavy dollop of hostility to X (deserved or not) around here is still a thing around the X community. There aren’t all that many folks like me who are OK with continuing to hang in places where every time you stop by the default is to need to spend energy explaining why your editing choice isn’t fundamentally stupid. ; )

Also, regarding the “handles” thing – here’s Richard Taylor’s process for adding them in X.

Yes, I know. Its surely a HORRIBLE kludge. It’s not like you’ve done it in the past. Or how you want to do it. And FCP X can’t get THIS right either. And yes, it will likely eat up a few minutes of the hours you’re currently saving as an X editor in your average week. And yes, it will be better once we can all simply whisper “all clips – add 10 frame handles.”.

But if you’re one of us silly fools who actuallylike editing in X, and you just want to get this done to your clips before exporting them – Richard shows a clever and pretty fast way to do that as a batch process with minimal keystrokes using dashboard trimming, and, cleverly the reverse retiming function.

https://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_fcpx_batchaddhandle.html

Have a nice day.

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.

[Michael Gissing]

I understand the issues with proprietary codecs Jeremy. This whole discussion has been a reaction to Bill’s assertion that Media Management that allows file trimming is just unnecessary. It is a reaction to his lack of understanding of some workflows.

All NLEs have degrees of limitation in this area. For me it isn’t a biggy as so few editors I work with have moved to X but it is fair to criticize surely where X is behind the game, rather than just leap in and say no-one needs such a feature when discussing what would be nice in an upgrade. It is hard to have an adult discussion under such circumstances.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Gissing] “This whole discussion has been a reaction to Bill’s assertion that Media Management that allows file trimming is just unnecessary. It is a reaction to his lack of understanding of some workflows. “

I think you have to take it further than that and wonder why X doesn’t have this capability built in, especially when comparing it to what FCP Legend was doing.

Premiere just added this capability not long ago, and that software is much more mature than X.

With FCPX right now, it is very easy to make a copy of the untrimmed media that is in your cut, and hand it off. It won’t necessarily be internet deliverable, but X does have this capability.

Jeremy