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Workflow to Pre-Render select clips.
Hey guys,
Came across a need and thought I’d toss it out to the ether to see if anyone has something cool they’ve come up with.
I have some clips that I would like to Pre-Render down, because they are relatively heavy with FX and whatnot, but at the same time the clip isn’t FINAL, so therefore I would like the ability to go back and edit the various settings of the various clip later on down the line, but be able to retain a connection with that and my Pre-Rendered file. That way, no matter where I drop in my Pre-Rendered file, I could follow the meta-data breadcrumb trail back to the “live” clip with all the parameters editable.
In After Effects this is a concept known as Creating Proxies, which is implemented slightly different conceptually than FCPX’s “Make Proxies” in that, in After Effects, a PROXY can be any file you’d like, whether it be a lower-rez version of the same file, FULL QUALITY render, which is the equivalent of the “Pre-Render” that I’m talking about. That way, with the toggle of the button, a piece of material in After Effects goes from “Rendered Down” to “Live” all in one clean place.
What I came up with in FCPX was to select my clip and CREATE COMPOUND CLIP, export out the clip via the ‘Share to Master File’ function, and then bring it back in and place it on top of my original un-rendered clip in the Compound Clip, and then deactivate the LIVE clip.
All of this works out well, if not for a few too many steps, yet the issue I ran into was where to save the rendered Master File in order to be the most optimal with disk space. Where would I export via the share function, that would allow me to then import back into an Event right away, and not have any kind of duplicate media anywhere.
That all make sense? Appreciate any badass tricks from the collective.
Peace!
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5 Replies
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Have you tried making a compound clip, opening it up and rendering it? That’s how legacy worked. Of you rendered a nest from the inside, it would utilize the render file of the nest as a source file for other renders. Destructive compositing if you will.
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This points to another issue that I have yet to be able to solve.
Every time I launch the program when it hasn’t been opened, I no longer have any of the render files. I know they’re still there, because they are still taking up space in the event and project folders, but in my timeline the dreaded orange bar of dropped frame doom and darkness hovers ever present.
This is very frustrating when I am trying to show something to a client, and I didn’t have it opened in FCPX, ie: I have it hidden via Event Manager because navigation between so many Projects is insanely slow. —So, therefore FCPX has to relaunch the app, and voila, now all my rendered down projects are back to orange, and I try and play them down and have the frustration of either playing a timeline that drops frame across cuts or other heavier clips, or I have to ask them to just wait and waste time on their cell phones while I re-render what we just rendered.
This thing alone is the biggest reason why FCPX is still not ready at all for the client room, unfortunately. It makes me sad too, because as far as app user experience, I far prefer FCPX to any other editor…
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It should be fairly obvious that isn’t the norm or the entire community would be screaming. I have seen it happen though. In legacy as well. Something is corrupt. A preference, a render file, a plugin, etc.
If anything, X is pretty amazing usually at dealing with renders. Even if you changed something and lost the render, if you happen to return to that state the render files will return if they’re still available.
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I would love it if I could figure that out.
The few “out of the norm” things that my timelines have on them, as opposed to perhaps the standard out of the box user, is that most of the clips have a CoreMelt LockNLoad Stabilize filter on them, and also there is an Adjustment Layer stretched across the whole timeline with a global Color Correction. There is also a Grain stock footage element that has been looped over and over and rendered down in a compound clip laid across the top, and a PNG 2.35 Matte Image with Alpha for a Global 2.35 Matte.
I’m assuming that it has something to do with the fact that the Render Data is somehow residing with the CLIP, and since I have Adjustment Layer style “clips” overtop of them, there is something that isn’t connecting back up.
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[Dustin Bowser] “The few “out of the norm” things that my timelines have on them, as opposed to perhaps the standard out of the box user, is that most of the clips have a CoreMelt LockNLoad Stabilize filter on them, and also there is an Adjustment Layer stretched across the whole timeline with a global Color Correction. There is also a Grain stock footage element that has been looped over and over and rendered down in a compound clip laid across the top, and a PNG 2.35 Matte Image with Alpha for a Global 2.35 Matte.
I’m assuming that it has something to do with the fact that the Render Data is somehow residing with the CLIP, and since I have Adjustment Layer style “clips” overtop of them, there is something that isn’t connecting back up.
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No way the arcane third party processing pipeline could be causing any problem cuz nobody around here has every heard of third party software that might not be X compliant causing anything not to work with X. Right? … RIGHT? …. Anybody?
My recommendation is that if you want to process the bejeezus out of your clips – you do that FIRST. Then simply export the clips the way you want them as standalone files – and re-import the “perfected” clips and work with those. Asking X to keep all the metadata links to that many third party software implementation live is just asking for trouble. X is about to get a huge update. The only thing we know for sure about it is that it likely WILL cause trouble with third party software until those companies can tweak their code or come out with new drivers over the coming weeks or months.
If it was me, I couldn’t depend on any “process” not directly sold and supported by apple unless there was no alternative. At least not for a while after this next release.
YMMV.
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