Thinking about making the switch to FCPX

[Lawrence Eaton]

Cal,
I’d take a look at this mini series https://youtu.be/nHIePdFi-iU

Maybe it’ll answer some of your questions?

Lawrence

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[Cal Thorley]

Awesome, thanks. Will check it out!
A lot of the videos I watched weren’t aimed at more long form editing so this looks ideal.

Cheers.
Cal

[Oliver Peters]

Here’s a link to the full set of videos:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgFm0z5RkLU2rEd4TTRst_A/videos

This is also good:

https://youtu.be/H883qIGV48E

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

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[Joe Marler]

[Cal Thorley] “…2017 5K 4.2i7 with the Radeon 8gb GPU and 24gb ram…I don’t need 4 streams of 4k backwards but the ability to edit 4k with a mix of native XAVC, H.264, and ProRes is more my deal. Does my setup sound like it’d do that with FCPX? And not just 2 min clips. Hour long timelines if need be.”

I have the same machine, and have edited large documentaries pulled from 130 4k multi-camera interviews, mostly 4k XAVC-S.

While FCPX is a lot faster on XAVC than Premiere is, that is simply a difficult codec. XAVC-S and XAVC-L are Long GOP and just difficult to decode. XAVC-I is faster and smoother. Of course ProRes is lightning fast.

In general XAVC Long GOP needs transcoding to proxies for the smoothest performance — even on FCPX. The FCPX proxy system is somewhat fragile since the original disk volume and pathname is burned into the library and there is currently no relink. However it is usable. You can also externally transcode and re-link to manually-created proxies, then re-link back to the full res material for final export. Anything like that should be carefully tested before committing.

I have the latest versions of Premiere and Resolve Desktop, but mostly use FCPX. Resolve has been greatly improved in recent versions and is nearly as fast as FCPX on certain things.

FCPX is very strong at skimming through lots of media and content organization. But you must understand the overall design philosophy and intended workflow. You don’t throw a bunch of stuff on the timeline, rather carefully curate the material in the Event Browser, marking rejects, favorites and keywords. Then you use the database & query features to pull the clips you need. Only *then*do you put those on a timeline.

The magnetic timeline has its own behavioral characteristics and it’s important to understand the overall design intent, not try to wrestle it into submission.

The previously-listed video tutorials are a good place to start.

[Oliver Peters]

I would add, based on my daily experience with Premiere and a lot of experience with FCPX and Resolve, that mixed codecs on the timeline will always be an issue depending on your expectations.

Premiere in particular has issues with the BMD i/o hardware. You might consider turning off Mercury Transmit playback, which feeds your external display, and see if that helps. Depending on the display, you can connect it as an external desktop display and feed video directly to it for external monitoring. This still uses Mercury Transmit, but bypasses the BMD i/o hardware. I do that with both Premiere and FCPX and it makes a world of difference.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Cal Thorley]

[Joe Marler] “While FCPX is a lot faster on XAVC than Premiere is, that is simply a difficult codec. XAVC-S and XAVC-L are Long GOP and just difficult to decode. XAVC-I is faster and smoother. Of course ProRes is lightning fast.”

Hi Joe. Thanks for that.
I use XAVC-I and that’s been the one PP actually does seem to get on OK with. Well, in 1080 anyway, not so flash in 4K.

Thanks for the feedback re the timeline. Yes, certainly a different means of approach although I can see it working for me from what I’ve seen on those earlier posted tutorials.

[Cal Thorley]

[Oliver Peters] “I would add, based on my daily experience with Premiere and a lot of experience with FCPX and Resolve, that mixed codecs on the timeline will always be an issue depending on your expectations.

Premiere in particular has issues with the BMD i/o hardware. You might consider turning off Mercury Transmit playback, which feeds your external display, and see if that helps.”

Hi Oliver.

Thanks for the reply.
Interesting re the BMD i/o. I have tried it without but not too much difference. It was a similar experience with my last Matrox i/o too so I still wonder if a lot of my gripes are with Premiere’s performance on the mac. Especially as the experience seems to change every second PP update!

I’d hoped I’m not expecting too much with mixed formats but maybe I am. 4k in any form is unusable once you get over 10 min mark or so. And in 1080 any H.264 is the same. It just starts acting up any time the playhead gets anywhere near it.
It’s frustrating when you watch multiple streams of 4k clips on youtube playing flawlessly on what I think are lesser machines. And I can’t get it to do fairly simple 2 track edits without wanting to throw it out the window.

I guess I’m at the stage where if I still like what I see at the end of these tutorials. I’ll just have to pick a project and dive on in.

[Mark Suszko]

FWIW, some people *do* just throw stuff onto the FCPX timeline, ignoring the very detailed pre-logging process. And it works pretty great. I know that’s not the official paradigm, but a lot of what I get to work with is short, news-cutting type work with a very limited pool of shots, a setup that doesn’t benefit as much from the “pre-grooming” of the ingested material, and for that kind of thing, FCPX in trained hands is lightning-fast, the magnetic timeline really helps and the positioning tool is intuitive as well. A point in Adobe’s favor is, my premiere setup renders the same prores files a lot faster than FCPX seems to, and I can’t figure out why.

I’d def agree you should also check out Resolve. But I was in exactly the same boat as you were; I just stuck it out as Apple kept iterating FCPX and now it is quite mature and capable. I dabble in premiere but it feels like grandpa’s Buick to me. Every time I wanna add a transition or crop something and have to go thru Premiere sub-menus, I grimace and say: “oh, come ON!”.

[Eric Santiago]

[Joe Marler] “You don’t throw a bunch of stuff on the timeline, rather carefully curate the material in the Event Browser, marking rejects, favorites and keywords. Then you use the database & query features to pull the clips you need. Only *then*do you put those on a timeline.”

So true. I see this practice in Premiere with all my colleagues and clients just drives me nuts when I inherit their projects 😛
In FCPX I sometimes use subprojects (timelines), secondary and even compound clips as an artboard for scenes. Still not as easy as legacy timelines and sadly you can still make a mess of things 😛
I get in the habit of creating temp compound clips from the assembly and tinker in that to avoid messing up things.

Back to this subject.
Give FCPX a trial run.
Keep an open mind and don’t get caught up with old habits.
It’s an awesome tool 🙂

[Joe Marler]

[Cal Thorley] “I use XAVC-I and that’s been the one PP actually does seem to get on OK with”

You generally shouldn’t have major performance problems with XAVC-I — IF that’s the only codec you’re running. You previously mentioned using mixed codecs including 4k H264 from GoPros or drones. Those are highly compressed and difficult to edit.

When problem solving it’s important to “divide and conquer”. As a test remove all BMD video hardware, external audio hardware, and any associated drivers, use only XAVC-I, and try the same project or editing steps which previously caused problems. If that works, then add either the H264 material or BMD hardware — one step at a time, carefully testing and examining performance at each stage.

If it is slow with XAVC-I and no BMD hardware, then examine what effects are being used.

First disable background rendering in FCPX Preferences. Then delete all cache files with File>Delete Generated Library Files>Delete Render Files>All. Then select your timeline clips with CMD+A and do a one-time render with CTRL+R. Examine the performance then.

If it’s still problematic, make a snapshot duplicate of your project (aka timeline), open that and strip all effects using Edit>Remove Effects. If that is fast, then repeat the process but strip effects from 1/2, then 1/4, then 1/8 of the timeline — each time rendering the timeline with CMD+A and CTRL+R — until you locate the problematic region and what effects are in use.

Some compute-intensive effects like Neat Video can slow things down, no matter what codec is used. There are also some cases where certain combinations of effects preclude FCPX from using cached render files. If you ever see a case where a fully rendered timeline (ie no render dots) is sluggish, it could be that situation.

Excluding any issue from effects or BMD hardware, certain material will be sluggish to edit on any Mac. This includes 4k H264 from a GoPro or DJI drone, Sony 4k XAVC-S or XAVC-L, Panasonic 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 All-Intra from a GH5, S1, S1H, etc, 4k 10-bit 400 mbps HEVC from a Fuji X-T3, etc. Panasonic’s 8-bit 4k H264 is considerably smoother, esp on a 2017 or later iMac which uses Intel’s upgraded “Kaby Lake” version of Quick Sync.

The latest version of Premiere on the same Mac hardware is much slower at those difficult codecs, esp. regarding lag time to JKL input. Resolve Studio 16.2.3 is generally equal to FCPX or even faster in some cases. But even Resolve on a 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro will struggle on the difficult codecs.

For a brief shining moment around 2010 it seemed like Adobe’s Mercury Playback Engine on then-current hardware was going to eliminate any need to transcode material to a mezzanine codec. Then 4k arrived along with a bewildering variety of Long GOP codecs, some of which can bog down almost any machine. This is further exacerbated by the diverse “zoo” of hardware acceleration techniques – Quick Sync, UVD/VCE, NVDEC/NVENC, T2 — each of which has multiple versions with varying capabilities, used in various ways by each NLE.