Update: NAStastic adventures in FCPX.

[John Davidson]

That kind of touches on something else we’re running into. It’s a huge pain when you keyword tag a 2 hour movie that’s low res and then you get a high res clip that’s a few frames off – then you have to keyword all over again.

It’d be great to copy metadata/keywords to a new clip. Role sets and keyword sets should also be included in metadata on either the QT or Event. I’m sure it’ll get there.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Charlie Austin]

[John Davidson] “I’d hoped to be able to comment on X2Pro as they promised a v2 release in August, and then revised to a September release. They basically have a day to get the update out unless they plan on a weekend release. Perhaps there were some last minute issues with 10.8.2 that need to be worked out before release. I’d rather they take their time and get it right.”

FWIW, x2Pro 2 is just waiting on app store approval, so it’s done, apple has it, and it will hopefully appear soon.

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[John Davidson]

Good news! Although it’s weird they’re holding it up. Maybe it’ll come out in conjunction with an FCPX 10.1 update. #dreaming

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Charlie Austin]

[John Davidson] “Good news! Although it’s weird they’re holding it up. Maybe it’ll come out in conjunction with an FCPX 10.1 update. #dreaming”

It apparently takes up to 3 weeks for apple to approve things for the app store. Same thing happened with EDL X… 3 weeks. Who knows why. It’s worth the wait though…. 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~

[Craig Slattery]

[John Davidson] “Editing with FCPX has had some issues as we continue to avoid working in the primary. It’s great for building clips but hazardous when it comes time for revisions. “

Hey John, Craig here again. Why not edit in the primary story line?

[John Davidson]

Initially we thought it would be best to place voiceover as our primary track as VO is typically the ‘backbone’ of a spot. This was good until we needed to start shifting SOTS around and changed VO copy per client notes. Then end pages (title treatment and tune in time) started slipping around, final duration changed (because we don’t have visual timeline markers), and all sorts of havoc ensued. The position tool was also creating lots of little micro-gaps in primary that were distracting.

I feel that from a fundamental level the concept of a primary/secondary as a-roll and b-roll is excellent for just about everything except promos, because there’s really no a-roll track to define the primary storyline. Some spots don’t have voice over, some spots don’t have music, some spots don’t have much video – each promo project is different. Basically, everything in promos is B-Roll. Making a consistent system of avoiding the primary for 3 editors to collaborate with was much more difficult when the ‘backbone’ changed every other project.

While we CAN build a promo and wield the power of the primary storyline to great effect, it’s revisions that get us. To make many of these revisions we have to move clips out of the primary into secondaries, which creates issues with connected elements following the move into secondary, etc. As soon as we got the idea that all footage in a spot is b-roll, the use of our frankenstein style of editing in FCPX made sense – and alleviated worries of the ‘how in the heck are we going to make these revisions without destroying everything’ variety.

So we use the primary as a gap clip the length of our project and place markers on it at exactly :20 or :30 in the timeline, depending on the length of our spot. It is in effect a massively oversized marker container.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Charlie Austin]

[John Davidson] “So we use the primary as a gap clip the length of our project and place markers on it at exactly :20 or :30 in the timeline, depending on the length of our spot. It is in effect a massively oversized marker container.”

Same here. It actually works really well except, as I just discovered, keyframed video fades/dissolves etc, don’t currently come across in an EDL which, sadly, I still need to generate. I figured I’d just dump everything onto the primary with a couple secondary’s and put dissolve effects on the clips. Worked great, took about 2 minutes. Then I got some revisions. Ended up undoing it all to make the changes.

I’m thinking I might just create all secondary’s as needed for crossfades etc and continue leave the primary empty. Then they’d behave like compound connected clips and all will be right with the world. 🙂 On a side note… EDL X and X2Pro 2 are getting their first (for me) real world test today. Sending a bunch of stuff to finish without running it through FCP 7. So far so good… 😉

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~