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Timecode Reader anyone?
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Not sure I understand why you make compounds here?
Just string your clips out in a project. Drop a timecode generator as a connected clip on the first clip – and stretch it out down the entire timeline.
Share and you’ve got a Window Dub. Simple as that.
No need to compound anything.
And as I mentioned before, if you want your window dub to match a field tape, just go into the Project Library – click on your project. Open the Project Properties and make your initial timecode value match your field reel.
This software is designed to be easy and direct to use. I think people sometimes make it much more difficult than it needs to be.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Hey Bill,
Your idea works if my client uses FCPX also. These 139 clips are time of day coded. That means each shot has a time code that may not be sequential. Shot 12 may be 9:25:00 and the shot 13 could have 12:23:44 tiomecode, so your timeline timecode will not work in this case.
Bruce Wittman
Executive ProducerEagle Video Productions, Inc.
2201 Woodnell Drive
Raleigh, NC 27603-5240Website: http://www.eaglevideo.com
Email: bruce@eaglevideo.compho: 919-779-7891
cel: 919-818-5556 -
[Leo Hans] “I had a Free Timecode Reader, but sadly It has stopped working since 10.0.4. I don’t know if its a FCPX/Motion bug or a deliberate change in the filter I was using for it, but It doesn’t longer work.
“What’s weird is that clip skimming tc broke in .4 only to be fixed in .5.
Maybe they are related somehow.
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As said above, the TCR died with 10.0.4
I think quite a lot of people have filed that as a bug, so there is some hope it will be fixed.Only chance is to make a copy of each of the files with burned in TC using Compressor or to use FCP.
-Andreas
Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools -
Bill, my goal is the same as your method with the Project. If I want to window dub all the clips of Dave Smith, I highlight the first one in the Event Lib, make a compound from it, name it Dave Smith window dub, and then append all the rest of the Dave clips to the compound. This puts the compound in the Event Library and the default is to match the timecode to the first clip. Drop the TC generator on and stretch it and I’m done. Seems like the only basic difference is that you store a Project and I store a compound clip in the Event Library. That makes it real easy for me to see that I have created window dubs of all the source clips–usually interviews in my case. It works with sequentially coded clips–would not work with the time-of-day coded clips that Bruce has.
When I get the selects back from the client, I just use the original clips and Favorite the selects as I mark them.
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[Bruce Wittman] “Your idea works if my client uses FCPX also. These 139 clips are time of day coded. That means each shot has a time code that may not be sequential. Shot 12 may be 9:25:00 and the shot 13 could have 12:23:44 tiomecode, so your timeline timecode will not work in this case.”
Bruce,
Yeah, I get that. What I’m actually saying is that the way I used to think about timecode when I started back in the analog era, was that whatever the timecode was that the camera stamped onto the tape – that was the timecode that followed shots down the entire production pipeline. With few exceptions.
What’s changed for me is that once I got into the realm of digital files, where (depending on your workflow, of course) virtually lossless digital cloning of media is possible, I had to re-think things in the face of the fact that there’s really no functional penalty for making an early stage clone of my field stuff – and making THAT my new master source. And if you can do that. You can make changes like timecode application and scene order at that point.
I couldn’t do that back in the day, because every generation WAS a degredation and the goal was to keep as close to the original quality as possible.
Today I don’t worry about that.
So I’m saying that if I *KNOW* that I’m going to be working in ProRes exclusively after camera ingest, then there’s not as much value in trying to preserve links back to the camera master timecode – I can just distribute my clone to EVERYONE in the production chain – with the timecode I specify – and everyone can proceed from that new starting point.
Again, I don’t understand your workflow so there could be ample reason that you need to match back to a tape on a shelf or even the clone of a field file in an archive somewhere. So it’s perfectly possible that you can’t use my suggestions. And that’s fine. But I just seem to run into a lot of folks who follow the older traditions when those don’t “necessarily” always make quite as much sense in the new digital era as they did in the old.
Only you know your workflow well enough to know whether something suggested here will work for you.
Along with everybody else, I’m just guessing and trying to help.
Good luck.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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You’re right.
Same difference.
I seldom put compounds in my Event Browser – but thats no reason not to do it that way.
In fact I’m not sure there’s any real huge difference between storing a Window Dub as a Event or as a Project.
Both are available to you whenever you need them.
I suppose I think of Events as stuff I draw on for projects, and Projects as expressions of Events for export. Since sharing is typically what I do with window dubs, my brain thinks it should be a Project, not an Event – but there is absolutely no actual reason I can think of that your way doesn’t work every bit as well.
One of those differences without much distinction, I guess.
Carry on!
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Alex4D tweeted that he might have a work around for this, but he hasn’t posted the solution yet.
“It’s more about using a generator to display the source timecode of a clip on the clip itself, … Broken since #fcpx 10.0.5”
He also called FCP X, Final Cut W for Workaround. 🙂
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Since the plug-in I had doesn´t do this anymore I have a workaround if it was one camera….
Enter Multicam, throw all he clips in there and let them be arranged by timecode.
Set the timeline Timcode to start with the first clip´s timecode.
now drop a timecode generator and render it out.import again and remove all the black-holes.
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The workaround is better than some but not as convenient as applying an effect to a clip.
The problem is that clip timecode is no longer passed to effects. This means setting up the timeline the clip is on to match that of the clip. So, open a clip in its own timeline and add the timecode generator. It reads the timecode of the timeline it is on – which is correct when opened from within the Event.
However these ‘timecoded’ clips don’t display properly in projects. The generator in the clip timeline gets the timecode of the project, not the clip. So the workaround workaround is to make a single angle multicam clip of your timecoded clip. When this multicam clip is used in a project timeline, the timecode generator in the clip timeline gets the timecode of the multicam clip. Luckily multicam clips default to starting with the timecode of the clip they are based on.
Not a great solution for 136 clips, but perhaps better than nothing.
An advantage of multicam clips is that every instance of the clip in all projects links back to the same multicam clip, which means that if you want to turn off the clip timecode, you need only open the multicam clip in the angle editor and open the single angle clip in its own timeline and either delete or disable the generator. Once you do that in the multicam clip, the timecode disappears in all uses of the clip in all projects.
To see more screenshots and more detail on this method, visit my blog.
Hurrah for ‘Final Cut Pro W’!
Hope the need for this workaround is short-lived and will be obviated in the next update (which is due by the end of the month given the frequency of previous updates).
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Alexandre Gollner,
Editor, Zone 2-North West, Londonalex4d on twitter, facebook, .wordpress.com & .com
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