[Andy Neil]

[Walter Soyka] “I am not seeing advantages to the magnetic timeline in my work, so I’m legitimately curious to hear how others are using to improve their editorial process.”

For me, I don’t feel like I get much of a measurable improvement with the magnetic timeline. At least on short, uncomplicated projects. In larger projects with more complicated edits, sfx, music and such, moving elements from one place to another in the timeline or inserting sections from elsewhere tend to be quicker than splitting the timeline and reattaching clips where there is overlap. Not a huge difference, though. Still, on the other hand, I don’t miss tracks at all.

I suspect a large portion of those unhappy with the magnetic timeline are really unhappy about how the magnetic timeline is more or less an offshoot of the lack of tracks. If FCPX had a track-based paradigm and yet still contained a magnetic timeline, I wonder if there’d be more complaints or less complaints about it.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

Ok. Based on your particular workflow you can do this a couple of ways.

Workflow number 1: DIY method

This method will be similar to the method that you outlined. FCPX does not have to manage your media for you if you don’t want it to. For the purposes of being clear, I’m going to use FCPX’s terminology, meaning that “event” is analogous to an FCP7 “project” and a “project” is analogous to an FCP7 “sequence”.

• Create an event folder in the finder.
• Save original footage into a RAW folder
• Convert footage to ProRes and save into a CONVERTED folder
• Create additional folders for other elements: music, gfx, etc.
• Inside FCPX, hit CMD+SHIFT+I to open the import dialogue.
• Make sure the “Copy Files to FCP Events folder” is unchecked.
• Make sure the “Import folders as Keyword Collections” is checked.
• Make sure “Create optimized media” is unchecked (not really necessary if you already converted footage to Pro Res.

This method will create keyword collections for the folders you created at the finder level allowing you to maintain all that organization you did before hand. When you’re finished editing, just archive the entire folder as you did before. The one caveat is that you’ll need to archive the Project folder which will be inside the FCP Project folder on the root of the drive you edited on. Each sequence or “project” will have it’s own folder so if you duplicate sequences to avoid losing work, you’ll have a lot of these. However, in the project browser inside FCPX you can create a folder to house all of these projects and then when you archive, just archive the one “MyProject” folder.

Workflow number 2: FCPX organizational method.

This method stores everything in one place, but can maintain the same level of organization inside FCPX.

• Create a new event inside FCPX.
• Hit CMD+SHIFT+I to open import dialogue.
• Make sure that the “Copy to FCP Events folder” button is checked.
• Make sure that the “Create Optimized Media” button is checked.
• Import all your footage, music, gfx, whatnot.
• Create collections to organize footage and edit away.

In the Events folder (on the root of the drive you edited on), FCPX will create a folder for that specific event. Inside will be a folder for original media (the untouched raw footage), as well as a transcoded media folder for all the prores media that it transcoded in the background while you were editing. To archive, you need only to save that event folder and the corresponding project folder (see above).

That, in a nutshell, is pretty much how it works.

Good luck.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

True. For that you’d have to create a keyword instead as mathew suggested.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

There could be numerous things wrong. Can you post the template?

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

Creating favorites is analogous to creating subclips. When you sort by favorites, all you see are the segments defined as a favorite.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Mark Morache] “I stand by my statement that students should learn a traditional track based NLE first, then if they can handle it, be introduced to FCX.”

It’s funny because I used to train editors all the time. Most of the hires I made were kids just out of school. They hated the fact that their first two weeks were spent on a DVCPro deck to deck machine cutting linear tape.

You see, all these kids already had FCP or Premiere on their computers and had effectively (if not EFFECTIVELY) been non-linear editing for years. Some of them had FCP in their elementary schools, but they all seemed to have had it from high school on. College was their first real training, but they had already built bad habits and colleges are more concerned with the student’s overall knowledge of editing rather than reversing bad practices.

I mention this because I suspect that the next generation of kids will already have a working knowledge of FCPX before they get to college. The $300 price tag, and lack of serious software security will probably ensure that. So colleges who teach Avid, or Premiere, or Media 100 will end up having to teach them about bins and tracks and such, not the other way around.

Whether that poses more of a problem or less of a problem is unknown. It probably won’t be a problem at all. A lot of the students I teach editing to these days are also in Maya and After Effects classes. Those are completely different programs that are extremely deep, but it doesn’t seem to faze my students in the least. I can’t imagine trying to pick up a 3D modeling app at this point.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “But I’m interesting in software that does more than simply “not prevent me” from working in a preferred way – it should aid and expand the possibilities of my workflow.”

The problem is that the workflow you explained above was built upon the features AND restrictions of the NLE you worked on. You didn’t come up with this manner of working and then go looking for an NLE that allowed you to do it.

Similarly, workflows will emerge for FCPX that take advantage of its features AND restrictions. The question is, are you willing to spend the time to discover what those workflows are?

Your workflow, in my opinion, is a workaround. You don’t care for the browser and bin structure of FCP7, or you don’t want to click 20-30 clips searching for a shot; you’d rather just have everything available in a sequence. That’s fine.

But if you consider WHY you work the way you do, and then apply that to FCPX instead of just trying to make it do the exact same workaround you use in FCP7, you might have better results with X.

Some of your workflow, as suggested by others could be accomplished with compound clips which would have a great deal more flexibility than sequences in FCP7. You mention that you dump all your raw into sequences. You could do the same in X, by simply selecting all your clips and hitting OPT+G to create a compound clip from all that media.

Now you have one clip that you can mark INs and OUTs just like any other clip, or open in timeline mode for blading, copying and pasting if that’s your thing. And since compounds can live in an event, you can have them all within easy reach, or choose to to organize them further with collections (read: bins).

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Chad Thurman] “It takes away most of the professional features and replaces them with… tinker toys?”

[Chad Thurman] “FCP now stands for Frickin Crud Pile.”

Forgive me, but you don’t sound like a person who wants to be proven wrong. You sound like someone who just wants to start another FCPX bashing thread. I mean, why call it “iFCP” if you’re mind isn’t already made up on the subject?

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

Usually you see the “…” in a name in the finder when the OS is truncating a longer name. If you drag the name column edge out does the name lengthen?

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

Pros:

New media organization works well for facilities where students carry their own personal drives.

FCPX likely easy to learn for students not tied down to a specific NLE workflow.

Agnostic timeline and render speeds very helpful for students who are under deadline and not well organized. Media handling can help here too.

Cons:

FCPX works in a SAN environment, but I don’t think is workable in a NAS environment at this time.

FCPX has likely low market penetration in the post field and its unclear how much that will change in the next couple of years. If the goal is to prepare students to cut in the “real” world, its a gamble.

FCPX is still on its first version and therefore not very stable. Be ready for LOTS of tech support.

I’m sure there are plenty more pros/cons out there…

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com