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Why are you still here? (part 3 in a continuing series)
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[Steve Connor] “why are you still spending your valuable time here and what are you getting from it?”
A question my spouse asks me every time I open the Forum. Because the X-bomb is the Edsel, the new Coke, the DVORAK keyboard, Esperanto and the Titanic all rolled up into one neat, well, messy, gory, package. Its whale guts on the beach. Not the cocktail-on-the-beach at all.
I am a colorist by perceived categorization, and like another poster, I’m mostly interested in what fresh hell (thank you, Dorothy) is going to walk in the door next. On balance, I hear things from editors like, “It made me want to gouge out my own eyes and never edit again”, but OTOH, frankly, I pretty much only use NLEs for online and mastering, and would probably have never gotten involved with Final Cut if it had not been the entree for Silicon Color’s *Final Touch*, and we all know where that has ended. And thank heavens Resolve is more ecumenical. I have an FCPX-based gig arriving one hour and twenty-seven minutes from now. We’ll see how that goes. Its a composite green-screen, so wish me luck.
I am on record from April of last year as thinking that X has some good technical underpinnings, and certainly I can see where its organizational architecture suits it for unscripted, improvisational productions. Final Cut 7, is, at least in my opinion a disaster as far as fundamental video engineering is concerned. It makes me think that Apple doesn’t know what video is, and their OS, with respect to display technology, seems to support that notion.
I spent most of yesterday at a memorial service for the sudden and unexpected departure of a treasured colleague, a truly golden-eyed cinematographer. More than anything, my point in mentioning it is the sense of community that permeated the gathering — some of us competitors, some staunch allies — but all professionals, and passionate in pursuit of doing something meaningful. Especially in the presence of an immutable truth about the transience of life.
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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[Joseph Owens] “Its a composite green-screen, so wish me luck.”
I used the keyer in 10.0.2 and it worked perfectly. I was amazed at how easy it was actually with an AVCHD codec. The greenscreen was lit perfectly also. Then I used some background plates also and found the cropping tools to be actual tools. Normally I would do that work in After Effects, but I decided to try X, and was pleasantly surprised.
More importantly, my client loved it!
But I found exporting (now called “share”) to be very poor because there is no way to select a range and export it; I mean “share” it. The workarounds have been discussed in the FCPX Techniques forum.
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[Richard Herd] ” The workarounds have been discussed in the FCPX Techniques forum.”
I have often found the best “workaround” to be to use another program. This isn’t specific to X, but as a general bit of workflow advice.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Some more details: I cut the greenscreen footage into the sequence (which is not called a sequence, btw), figuring I could then set a range to export the greenscreen footage to AE. Alas, i could not get the footage into AE. So I said, “OK. I will try to use X’s keyer.”
Hey! It worked beautifully.
The problem Mr. Owens might have is getting a range of his footage out of X. It’s easy to get the whole thing out, just not a range.
Hope that clarifies.
If anyone is paying attention, that’s 2 issues I’ve sent to Apple:
1. We need to color code roles;
2. We need to export a range.I’m hopeful on 1. but I don’t think 2. will happen.
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[Richard Herd] “2. We need to export a range.”
Cut the clip to the desired in and out, “open in timeline” which will now have the range you want, export…sorry, Share.
Jeremy
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Oh, and why am I still here? Why wouldn’t we be?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERCzN91JicA
Jeremy
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But the clip must be its own project. My greenscreen footage for example was scene 5 or something like that. I wanted to only export a bit. But it exported the entire project! (I mean “share.”) But I’d already cut the footage for story continuity. I thought of other methods too, but they seemed silly: CC, Keyword it, new project, drop the cc into a new project, share it. Regardless, the keyer worked very well.
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[Richard Herd] “But the clip must be its own project.”
Maybe we aren’t speaking the same language, but cut/trim a clip, right click on it, choose open in timeline, the clip is all by itself on a timeline, Share.
Step back in to your Project.
Jeremy
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Thanks!
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[Richard Herd] “The problem Mr. Owens might have is getting a range of his footage out of X. “
To clarify, my part of the project is color grade. The X-generated XML imported very nicely into Resolve, layers unpacked where they should be, transitions did their thing (lots of dissolves), and although I did need to extract the alpha channels from the source footage to make the sync’d travelling mattes plus link them by hand, the whole thing functioned as advertised, and even the top layer exhibited the FCP-X mapped transparency. 30-sec spot, 1.5 hours, playing back something like 6 streams of 23.98p1080 ProRes4444, composited over top of each other, with Noise Reduction. The NR did kind of kick the stuffing out of my frame rate, but the end result was pretty silky looking. Automobile interior, night, collision with coffee cups flying. Should look pretty convincing on the big screen.
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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