[Andy Nickless]

It’s a trade-off as you say – but there’s no need to “bake” anything with FCP X any more. The whole idea is non-destructive editing.

[Andy Nickless]

Rather than “baking” other effects in, the non-destructive alternative is to make the clips into a Compound Clip and then you can blade and adjust as required without affecting effects already in the originals. Then if you need to adjust these clips, simply open the CC in the Storyline.

If you do go down the “baking” route, you don’t need ProRes 4444 unless you have transparent areas in the clip – use 422 most of the time.
Andy

[Andy Nickless]

I downloaded Pro Maintenance Tools Trial and neither the “Housekeeping” App nor “Quick Fix” managed to cure the snapping (and numerous other) faults on my FCP X system.

Maybe I did something wrong – I’ll keep trying the various apps within the package and report my findings here.
Andy

I’ve taught you all I know, and still you know nothing.

[Andy Nickless]

I had the exact same problem with snapping and other issues – like the viewer background randomly defaulting to checkerboard even though it still said Black in prefs.

I trashed the prefs, reinstalled the application (using Apple instructions) and repaired permissions (from the recovery drive) all to no avail.

I did a proper clean reinstall and everything ran smoothly so I thought I’d cracked it but after a while, snapping remained stuck (sometimes on and sometimes off) and other minor issues crept back.

This went on for weeks and was driving me mad, so eventually, in despair, I cleared and partitioned a drive on the MacPro and installed a totally clean version of Mavericks on it together with FCP X and Compressor (plus a few others such as FX Factory).

I then set that system drive up to my taste, with nothing in the dock except the tools I need to edit video. I named the drive FCP-Only.

I then cloned that drive to another so that I will always have a backup “Clean” System drive with FCP X on it and called it FCP-Clean. The entire system takes up 10.3 GB on a drive, so it’s smaller than a lot of my video files. I even have a second backup on a USB SD Card!

My original drive is still operational – but purely for all the other applications which are not video related. It’s a bit of an inconvenience having to restart the Mac and hold down the Option key if I want to change to the other system (or remember to change the Startup Disk in Preferences before restarting) but things have run near perfectly for weeks now and I’m really glad I took this action.

I’m sure others will say I used a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but it’s worth it – EVERYTHING works – and if (sometime in the future) it doesn’t, all I need to do is clone the “Clean” drive back onto the FCP-Only drive (takes about SIX MINUTES using SuperDuper) and I have a fresh install again!

Not only am I able to toggle snapping on and off, but all the other minor issues have disappeared and I’m sure FCP X runs faster too.

Lastly, the loss of toggling snapping first happened when I was running Lion, then Mountain Lion. I’d hoped Mavericks would fix it but it didn’t.
Andy

[Andy Nickless]

Interestingly, if you make a Compound Clip of your connected clip with the ‘adjustment layer’ attached, the adjustment only applies to the clip within the Compound Clip. Any clips below, revert back to their previous state.

Not sure whether this is of any practical use, but it’ 15.30 here and I’ve been up since 03.30 this morning, so the thought process is even slower than usual!
Andy

I’ve taught you all I know, and still you know nothing.

[Andy Nickless]

Thanks Mark – yes, I’m aware of the advantages of Compound Clips but I wish Apple would give us Paste Effects as in legacy FCP.
Andy

I’ve taught you all I know, and still you know nothing.

[Andy Nickless]

Brilliant – but limited!
What a great idea this is – it works a treat! The only problem for me is that it affects everything beneath the adjustment layer – that means any clips below the one I want to add an effect to, are affected too.
Despite this, I’m sure I’ll be using this a lot – (thanks)!
Andy

I’ve taught you all I know, and still you know nothing.

[Andy Nickless]

Such a good workaround – thanks for that.
Andy

I’ve taught you all I know, and still you know nothing.

[Andy Nickless]

Thanks Stephen, that’s finally given me the solution to a problem I’ve been trying to solve for three days!
If only there was a decent search or index facility on Motion 5 help it would have avoided all that.
Andy

I’ve taught you all I know, and still you know nothing.

[Andy Nickless]

I’m using Transfer with Lion – it’s quite glitchy and comes up with some long weird error message each time it opens a folder – but I’m getting my clips transferred reliably and fairly efficiently.

I’ve taught you all I know, and still you know nothing.