[Andy Neil]

I was the chief editor for the Fox affiliate in San Diego from 2000-2007. In that time I oversaw the use and integration of both Avid and FCP edit bays, 7 years of news and stock footage archives for a facility that was one of the first news operations in the country who operated with a tapeless to air workflow. I think I know a little bit about the issue asked by the OP.

I say this so you know my suggestions regarding the FCPX database are not suggestions in ignorance. I know EXACTLY how a news operation works and I still believe, FCPX can be a valuable asset in that workflow (depending on whether it can overcome the issues I stated above).

[Joseph W. Bourke] “News producers called the first instance of the story “Hanover Robbery”. As soon as a suspect in the robbery was nabbed, the story, and clips were called “John Doe Suspect”,”

That happens everywhere, but it also has very little to do with what I was talking about. The news stories themselves (written, not video) as well as connection to their respective airchecks were archived in our iNews system. We also had an independent search engine that could parse the iNews database an return stories to users which would give date and aircheck info based on simple boolean keyword searches.

What I was talking about was the creation of a stock footage library which is very necessary in the cutting of news. Generic footage of city buildings, police, money, locations, etc. in which many news stories rely upon. That kind of database, controlled and maintained by the edit staff themselves can be easily created, and organized. I did that myself with the help of my staff of 9 editors. We came up with a system and stuck to it (more or less). It wasn’t all that difficult.

And having a sports system with collections containing plays and players over the course of a season is not only doable, but an excellent way to quickly access shots for a daily broadcast.

You talk about how difficult a proposition it is to do something like this when you have Photogs and producers cutting packages, but the problems you mention are the exact same issue you have with tape based archives, except for one thing. If someone forgets to put a clip into a keyword collection in FCPX, you can still find that clip in the event, or events, or search with metadata automatically created upon injest. What do you do when a reporter or producer decides to hide a tape on their desk?

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Brian Mulligan] “No one in Local News has time to keyword clips and database before they edit.”

Maybe not while editing a news story, but you could organize an event of stock footage with keyword collections to easily browse and find video broll for news stories. FCPX’s database structure could make that extremely useful.

Also, there was a post somewhere on the forum here talking about how FCPX keyword collections were being used for sports IN GAME for quickly organizing plays and players for finding and cutting teases and promos.

There seems to be this persistent thought that creating and maintaining keyword collections is hard, or requires a lot of typing. Neither is true. If you have time to drag and drop, you can organize with keyword collections.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

There are a couple of elements that actually make FCPX a worthwhile choice for editing news.

The primary storyline paradigm is well suited to cutting news quickly (using it as a voiceover track). The database structure can make broll hunting quite a bit easier. But the key advantage is how graphics packages can be integrated through Motion and easily attached to stories in FCPX.

Obviously, FCPX doesn’t currently have video output for either monitoring or edit to tape so once it’s in FCPX it has to stay digital. Presumably that isn’t an issue for your news operation.

The biggest disadvantage would be it’s instability since it’s a fairly new program. It’s not a big disadvantage since I’ve had lots of experience working in a news environment with new and unstable technologies, but it’s something to be aware of.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

One thing I noticed is that the zoom issue (with CMD +) crops up whenever any tool other than the arrow tool is selected.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

I would do this with masks. Imagine two complete versions of your graphic. The bottom version has white text and grey graphic on a black background. The top graphic has black text with a blue graphic on a yellow background.

You then create a rectangle mask for the top layer in the shape you show in your image. That will reveal the yellow/color graphic only within the boundaries of the mask. Then you can animate the mask to reveal the other parts.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Motion (and even more so Motion 5) is badly lacking in some fundamental pro features – the inability to manipulate/combine/recombine individual RGBA channels is a very big mssing piece. Apple obviously don’t think their users are were ever going to want this and tellingly we have now even lost the basic Channel Swap filter out of Motion 4.”

I thought we discussed this before, Simon. The channel mix filter in Motion 5 does what the channel swap filter did in Motion 4.

Also, can you elaborate on what you said about the image mask? I actually find that to be one of the most powerful features of Motion. In my opinion, if Motion is limited anywhere in compositing, it is in its inability to pre-compose layers.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Oliver Peters] “Lack of dual monitor support.”

Motion never had solid dual monitor support. There were loads of issues stemming from Motion not playing well over 2 monitors.

[Oliver Peters] “At the loss of a true effects API for FCP X itself.”

That is a FCP issue, not a Motion issue. Plus, there is much room for improvement in the effects building capabilities of Motion for use in FCPX.

[Oliver Peters] “For me, keyframing in the keyframe editor is a mess compared with AE, but that a very subjective issue, of course.”

You won’t get an argument out of me regarding the keyframe editor, but that is clearly not a step back since its essentially the same as previous versions. Besides, I was pointing out that behaviors don’t limit your ability to keyframe or maintain control of your animations; quite the opposite.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Oliver Peters] “Motion 5 took several major steps backwards from previous versions…Motion’s big marquee feature from the start has been Behaviors – the epitome of removing control and finesse from the user.”

I couldn’t disagree more with you about Motion, Oliver. The only major step back in my opinion with Motion 5 is the lack of round-tripping. The new keyer, 64 bit rewrite, the rigging and effects integration with FCPX are all really high-quality upgrades to the program.

Also, I don’t consider behaviors to be the epitome of removing control. Especially since behaviors are merely another way to animate in Motion, not the only way. And since many behaviors can also be keyframed as well as work in conjunction with keyframed parameters. Behaviors make animating in Motion easier (in my opinion), but easy is not the same thing as a loss of control.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

[Helmut Kobler] “when you literally choose the “Send to Compressor” menu item in X, you get a spinning rainbow for 10, 15, 20 seconds before the project appears in Compressor. And then, if you want to set In and Out points for your encoding, there’s another spinning rainbow for about 15 or 20 seconds.”

The secret to recovering some speed from the Send to Compressor command is to open compressor on it’s own, and then hiding the preview window. The majority of the lag comes from that.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Andy Neil]

I’ve always felt that when people talk about FCPX being fast, they’re really just comparing it to FCP 7, not necessarily Avid or Premiere.

I haven’t really played with the newest version of premiere, but it’s been 64 bit for awhile now, making good use of the mulitple cores. Avid has always felt fast from an editing point of view (with the exception of loading the project, and drawing waveforms).

I could get good performance out of 7, but really that’s due to best practices rather than an inherent speed in the program. You learn to work without waveforms, or filmstrip view, or too many sequences. You break up projects to keep down project bloat and keep load speeds down.
In FCPX, filmstrip view and waveforms are on all the time and it still feels pretty snappy overall.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com