What’s Wrong With FCP

[David Roth weiss]

Dylan,

I think you’ve got it right about some things, wrong about some others. I’ll just mention a couple and leave others for anyone should they wish to respond.

No doubt about it, onlining in FCP, whether from Avid or even from within FCP, is certainly not the strength of FCP. More importantly, why is anyone today doing an online/offline workflow anyway, much less offling on Avid and onling on FCP and what exactly does any business actually gain from it?

Also, no one uses the FCP text generator. Why are you using it? Boris 3D is the text tool you should be using in FCP.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Dylan Reeve]

[David Roth Weiss] “No doubt about it, onlining in FCP, whether from Avid or even from within FCP, is certainly not the strength of FCP. More importantly, why is anyone today doing an online/offline workflow anyway, much less offling on Avid and onling on FCP and what exactly does any business actually gain from it?”

I’m fairly sure that the majority of serial work (especially scripted drama) still follows the online/offline workflow process. In this case for only a short series (6 eps) we’ve got over 150 tapes, even at the DV25 res we’re using for offline we’ve got over 1TB of media – at full DNxHD or ProRes resolution it would be fairly impractical.

Certainly for our music video, TVC and DV work we seldom follow the offline/online workflow.

In this case we’re editing on Avid because it’s the product we’re most familiar with, and in my opinion the best option for offline cutting with a project of this sort.

[David Roth Weiss] “Also, no one uses the FCP text generator. Why are you using it? Boris 3D is the text tool you should be using in FCP.”

Thanks David, I will look into the Boris tool again. I did look at it as an option before, but it seemed a little overkill for what I’m seeking and a little too focused on 3D-looking titles (sort of like Avid’s Marquee, which I’ve never really liked). I’ll give it another go soon.

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Dylan,
You’re right, many things to improve in FC.
Just a little contribution about RENDER MANAGEMENT. When you say:

” FCP warns me that my renders will be lost – makes sense, I’m changing the layering by switching V4 on – but if I turn V4 off again, then the render is still gone – despite the setup being exactly the same as when the effect was rendered, the render is lost”.
Instead of turn the layer off again, just undo: Com+Z. You won’t loose your render.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Steve Connor]

Ahhh the perennial “what’s wrong with FCP” thread, comes back like an old friend to visit the forum every now and again.

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Andy Mees]

Hi Dylan

The usual mantra is “FCP is not Avid, and Avid is not FCP” … you seem to have grasped that concept pretty well so I’ll leave that without further comment other than to say thats its always worth bearing in mind.

Regrading your specific issues:

Title Tool: When I first used Avid’s Title Tool I thought something along the lines of ‘this is crap, oh god’

And most Avid editors I know still do believe it’s crap!
FCP’s Text Generator, as already noted, is pretty much a no go zone for any real tilting job. I wouldn’t recommend using it for any more than throwing up a basic slate or placeholder (insert gfx here etc). FCP ships with Boris Title 3D which is a quite powerful title generator … but you need only use as many of the controls as you need. Similarly it ships with LiveType, and once again, just because it can be used to create creative and complex title animations does not mean you have to use it to that effect … ditto Motion.

Capture Tool: The FCP capture tool hasn’t changed in the last 7 years. What it does well is offering the opportunity to add more descriptive data at capture time, but that’s where the benefits end.

I think every professional editor working on FCP has declaimed the lack of running timecode in the capture window. Goodness knows its only the FCP developers who seem to believe we don’t need it. I think maybe the developers ate mired in a low end mindset where things like rack rooms and edit suites without a physical VT don’t exist … that said, with tapeless systems gaining more and more ground the world of ingest is changing rapidly. We may have to resign ourselves to this never happening.

Changing settings on the other hand you can do easily from within the standard Log and Capture window. Just click on the Capture Settings tab to change your device settings.

Effect Editor: The Avid effects paradigm can seem pretty weird when you first encounter it, and perhaps it is – but one thing I think it does better is the editing of existing effects

I couldn’t disagree more on this one. I wouldn’t trade the effects paadigm of FCP for Avid;s for all the tea in China (and I like tea). Press Optio-T to toggle the Clip Keyframes directly in the timeline. Read more on how this works in the manual. If you need to work with filter adjustments directly in th etimeline then you’ll like this… personally I like to load my timeline clip into the viewer and adjust the keyframe in the timeline that is displayed there (to the right of the parameter controls). As for needing to have a different clip open in the viewer … well I can have as many viewer windows open as suits if necessary. (option double-click to open a clip into a separate viewer window).

No option for copy and pasting keyframes tho, entire attribute collections yes, but not individual attributes or keyframes 🙁

Render Management: Okay, this one really seems mental to me

It is mental, and again I’d wish it were more intelligently handled. But as already noted by Rafael, a simple undo will work assuming you have made no changes whilst you had toggled off the upper layer (and if you made changes then you’d have to re-render anyway, right?). Another useful trick in dealing with this limitation is to use the Control-B shortcut to enable and disable specific clips in the timeline without enabling/disabling the entire layer. If you need to see what is below a clip why disable the whole layer, just “turn off” that clip. Again, you can Undo to re-enable that clip and maintain any associated render, or just re-enable and re-render the specific clip

Media Management: If you haven’t used Avid, this tends to make no sense, but the way Avid manages it’s media is brilliant.

No doubt … we live in hope in FCP-land.

Trim Tools : … but there are some scenarios that I struggle with in FCP. Now to be fair, I haven’t fully explored this stuff yet …

weeeelll, horses for courses I guess, but where you struggle to do what you’re used to in Avid, I find the tools comfortable under my FCP adjusted fingers … to me the seem very intuitive. I love the visual feedback that the slip slide trim gives you, letting you “see” exactly where in the clip you are … but I still really miss the ability to slide multiple clips as a group and wait with baited breath at each update to see if such things surface. in vain.
if you’re still in the voyage of discovery phase (and aren’t we all to greater or lesser extent) this tip may be useful to you: select the clip you need to slide, change to the slide tool (ss), press the trim keys to slide the clip in the timeline … doesn’t work for the slip tool tho 🙁

[Tom Matthies]

If you’d like to see your video while in the effects editor mode, simply click and hold on the tab you are adjusting (control, filter, motion, etc.) and “tear” it off of the other tabs to a clear part of your screen. Then just select the video tab to see that’s happening. Also. while adjusting things, just click on the timeline and you will see the updates on the timeline in real time while you adjust parameters in the viewer.
Tom

[Shane Ross]

The offline/online process is MUCH easier if you do both in FCP. Mixing platforms, despite comfort level, always leaves you open to more issues than if you stuck with one platform.

Have your editors use FCP…learn FCP. It isn’t all that hard. The place I am now has 4 editors, two of us proficient in FCP and two coming from Avid. THe first two weeks were confusing to them, and my door was always being knocked on…”How do I do this?” But now they are flying and having fun.

Yes, FCP not linking a small chunk of a clip to an online version that is larger and contains that TC is a bit of a pain. But Apple is working on it. Gotta realize that Avid was DESIGNED around media management, and FCP was designed around editing at full resolution and outputting right then and there.

Shane

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[James Sullivan]

Howdy, I have been onlining hour long programs for Discovery Channel for a year now. I hope to post a longer set of suggestions to the cow when I can compose them in a readable manner.
I will add here that I really like offline/online. I am very concerned that FCP is moving into an “Online Only” world, and that producers will no longer think they need to do an “Online”. Anybody who has worked proffesionally knows there are numerous pitfalls with this trend when strict delilverable requirements are required to get paid. (I have several ideas for FCP in this regard as well) Also, no executive is looking at Full HD on their Blackberry or iPhone when they review your show while driving to work. (Where else do they have time to give you notes?) Why cut at full resolutioin when you are rough cutting a show? Everything takes longer…(Renders, screeners, previewing effects, etc.)

As we go tapeless I really want FCP to downres to codecs of my choice inside the Log and Transfer window. Not just ProRes. Especicially as Red comes down the road. I will save the rest for another date! ( I know that you can mix and share and whatever in a timeline. I am oldschool at 27 years of age and want everything accounted for and repeatable)

James Sullivan

[Shane Ross]

[James Sullivan] “Also, no executive is looking at Full HD on their Blackberry or iPhone when they review your show while driving to work. (Where else do they have time to give you notes?)”

Then you use Compressor or the Elgato Turbo.264 to compress your cut into something they can watch on their iPhone or blackberry, or computer.

Wait…you said while DRIVING TO WORK? I hope the HECK they don’t do that. That means another SIG ALERT on the 405…

[James Sullivan] “Why cut at full resolutioin when you are rough cutting a show?”

Because full resolution really doesn’t take up that much space, and drive storage is cheap…much cheaper than paying someone to recapture the footage…and to rent decks AGAIN. DVCPRO HD 720p, for example, is 5.6MB/s…22GB/hour. I can get a 14TB storage rack for under $10,000…so I can spread many shows on that. We have that right now for a History Channel series we are doing.

[James Sullivan] “I am very concerned that FCP is moving into an “Online Only” world, and that producers will no longer think they need to do an “Online””

This also depends on circumstances. We have a LOT of archival footage that we are bringing in at lower resolution, and so that footage will be upconverted later…onlined if you will. So in certain circumstances there are parts that still need to be onlined, say your show is still Standard Def. But if your show is ALL DVCPRO HD or XDCAM or HDV, there really is no point. IMHO.

[James Sullivan] “As we go tapeless I really want FCP to downres to codecs of my choice inside the Log and Transfer window. Not just ProRes. Especicially as Red comes down the road.”

Using the RED transfer tools, you can keep the RAW masters, and convert them to ANY codec you want…offline if you want…then match back to the RAW files and reimport at a higher resolution. That workflow is in place now. P2 and XDCAM need to be converted after import. But as I just witnessed, I downconverted EX1 footage to DV and really only haved a couple GB…40 min of XDCAM was 16GB, and it downconverted to like 12GB.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
http://www.LFHD.net
Read my blog!

[David Roth weiss]

James,

First, nobody would ever argue that the issues with FCP’s onlining abilities and media management capabilities, should remain broken as they have been forever. Trust me, I was onlining video systems that worked a whole lot better before you were out of grade school. However, since these issues are well-known, struggling against them and arguing in favor of continuing the online/offline workflow is just downright ludicrous. Any time that might be gained from working with lower resolution files is more than eaten up by doing the same job twice, then having to QC the entire project to find out where issues were introduced, and then fixing them.

Also, your argument in which you said, “no executive is looking at Full HD on their Blackberry or iPhone when they review your show while driving to work,” is kind of moot, as no one is editing MPEG4 offline anyway.

The bottom line is, the offline/online workflow was necessary when computers were slow and hard drives were expensive, now its just a big unecessary wase of time, at least it is in FCP. While it may become necessary again for those cutting stuff shot with Red, Red has an entire system designed around cutting proxies and that apperently has its own set of issues right now, so there’s no compelling reason let that paradigm set the standard for workflows at this point in time.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.