[Adam White]

Thanks!

[Adam White]

I did a couple training series (the Larry Jordan one was good) at first and later lots of day to day cutting on various different kinds of projects. It wasn’t really a case of “learning by doing” as I was very hesitant to cut with it for any paid jobs for quite some time…but ultimately tutorials only get you so far…there are so many little intricacies and nuances that I would never have found out about until a real world situation demanded it.

I don’t think it’s an easy piece of software to get to grips with by any stretch. I genuinely found FCP7 and, to a lesser extent, Avid, easier to pick up in the early stages. The paradigm shift is doubtless the main factor.

Not that any of that matters too much now…I’m starting to reap the rewards – of which there are many.

Audio is still a perennial issue that causes headaches…especially when sending edits out for a sound mix – I’ve had some ridiculous situations with X2Pro Audio Convert – it’s let me down a couple times when I really needed it to “just work”. That was fun. Hoping for both feature and maintenance upgrades to make the back end of the process far less stressful when it comes to audio.

[Adam White]

The LUT Utility has been part of my tool kit for a little while now.

I love how it works. And for those jobs where speed is of absolute essence, it means I don’t have to sacrifice so much when it comes to finishing.

Thanks once again for this great tip!

[Adam White]

By the way Robin, in both scenarios where I came up against this the original material was 2K ProRes 4444 files – both of which were shot on a camera that natively shoots in that format. It was an Arri Amira I believe…but I don’t know squat about cameras (expect that GoPro is the devil)…so that may be entirely wrong.

[Adam White]

Jeremy,

OK…so you are a hero for solving this.

It worked perfectly.

Not only is this a solution to my immediate problem, but it presents an actually VERY useful feature when used in the right way. In fact, its fantastic. Clients hate looking at flat footage in an edit…I’ve even been asked to do a quick pre-grade on some edits to stop them griping about it looking “washed out”. This little feature means I’ll never have to bother with that again…just whack on one of the appropriate log processing options.

As much as learning this software has infuriated me beyond belief over the past year or so…little things like this make me think maybe I wasn’t a total nut job to give it a chance.

Thank you!

[Adam White]

Thank you Bret! Greatly appreciate your advice on this…I couldn’t find a way to achieve this anywhere else online.

This is going to save me endless amounts of time and frustration.

As part of a future upgrade, some kind of option to the limit the copied media to within specified “handles” (i.e. only copy the portions of clips used in the sequence plus a handle of 2 seconds) would be even better some point down the road (I won’t hold by breath) but for now this method will work great.

And it’s not really a problem to lose folder structure on the secondary drive being sent out, so this is the perfect solution.

Thanks again, I owe you a pint!

[Adam White]

I totally agree.

Audio in FCPX is still a mess if you ask me. In terms of how audio works within the timeline, and interchange with other software. Frustratingly, some of the built in audio tools and plugins are actually really excellent and can get you great results super fast.

It’s one of the many areas where the amazing potential and power of FCPX is annoyingly held back by some clunky design decisions and an inflexibility in how you can work.

I have so far refused to edit anything that requires anything more than fairly simple audio work in FCPX. I don’t think I can stomach the endless frustrations that would probably ensue. But for simple music/vo/interview/sfx timelines the built in tools are terrific and mean you can get your audio mixes to “sing” much quicker than any other NLE I’ve used in the past. For that kind of thing it rocks.

Start trying to layer up a more complicated sound mix though, and I find it a nightmare to be honest. So now if the edit feels in advance like it might require that, I’ll just cut it in something else.

But this does need to be addressed. A master audio mixer (a la Avid) would be my top request – I know there are no tracks, but surely this could function based on Roles assignments and playhead position? It shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man to get some more useful audio mixing tools into this thing.

[Adam White]

I have been using ProRes_4444. The footage on various occasions was shot super-flat for grading purposes.

The gamma shift is so bad that the footage almost looks graded when compared with how the super-flat shots should actually appear.

A pretty ridiculous problem for any NLE to have. This needs fixing.

[Adam White]

Many thanks to both of you guys for your helpful suggestions.

When I get a chance to look at this again and try to fix it, I will give your ideas a go and see if they help.

Cheers.

[Adam White]

Thanks both. Master Fader worked great this time around.