[Ben Balser]

The do in fact allow you to make bootable backups, which is exactly what CCC does. I’ve been using CCC for many, many years, it’s the best. TimeMachine is legit, too, you just don’t have the control that you get with CCC. But CCC’s backups are 100 percent bootable backup (clone).

[Ben Balser]

FCP and FCPX rely on timecode from the tape you’re digitizing. The problem is DV tape was always notorious for timecode drop-outs. Any drop-out and FCP/FCPX starts a new clip. Capture using QuickTime Player, it doesn’t care about timecode, and just captures like you’d expect.

[Ben Balser]

The difference between 30 and 38 cores for video editing is a non-issue. You’ll never in a million years use 30 CPU cores (or 30 GPU cores) fully at once for anything outside of scientific research.

I have an iMac Pro maxed out and a M1 Pro Max MacBook Pro. Some things are faster on the MBP, other things are faster on the iMac Pro. It’s not 100 percent across the board M-serie is totally faster and more powerful. Each M-series chip gets slightly better, not drastically better. We’re talking small, very small steps up in performance for each iteration of Apple Silicon.

Don’t overspend on RAM and cores you’ll never use, but be sure to get what you need. My iMac Pro has 32GB RAM, I’ve never, ever, ever come anywhere close to eating it all up. Not even when doing 3D modeling work. I have 10 CPU cores and my 16GB of VRAM has never come close to choking.

So, just throwing that out there. Moving from Intel to Apple Silicone is not a drastic leap, it’s a small step. Trust me.

[Ben Balser]

“Now after detaching the audio, compound it and adding the effects, I realized that I need to shorten one of the clips but the audio is detached so I can trim the video clip but not the audio that should go with it! This is a real pain!”

Many of us have been shouting this for 11 years now, and Apple seems to ignore us. Apple seems to think audio is not important when editing.

The only real way to REATTACH audio, is to select the video clip, Shift-F to find that range in the Browser, then do a replace edit. You’ll have the same clip with audio attached, but a fresh new unadjusted clip. So your color grading and audio sweetening will have to be done all over from scratch.

Come on Apple, the ONLY NLE that can’t mix and bus audio? Must less edit from text? Really?

[Ben Balser]

First thing I’d have done, turn off background rendering, then delete all render files.

Second thing, delete pref files, relaunch FCPX and try again.

Random gaps like that, could very well be corrupted render files, so delete them all.

Then if that doesn’t do it, as said already, copy all, paste to a new Project timeline.

[Ben Balser]

No, you can’t reattach them with the effects and adjustments in tact, unfortunately. This is where a for-real audio mixer with buses would make FCPX so amazing. Achilles heel so to speak.

I usually fix the audio on one clip, then copy that clip, then select all my other clips together, and do a Paste Attributes. Very fast, and my audio stays with my video.

You could just make it all a Compound clip, do your video editing inside the Compound, and your audio sweetening outside of it.

Really a pain that FCPX is so behind on audio tools.

[Ben Balser]

As much as I love Coremelt (been their friend and beta tester for over a decade), you don’t need it at all for what you want to do. So here’s a mini tutorial (and I think I answered this on the Apple forum, also). This is the most used and basic way to do it. If there are chroma/luma/IQ issues, you may need to use a mask along with this to help out. In really bad cases, sometimes a third party tool can help a bit. But if this won’t get it, it’s going to take a lot of work. Here we go…

Pull up the Hue/Saturation Curves.

Use the first option, the Hue VS Hue.

Click the eye dropper.

Click and drag on the color you want to isolate.

Three dots appear in the Hue Vs Hue panel, the middle one is the color you selected, it has a vertical grey line through it.

Drag that middle dot up and down to change the color of your selection.

If your selected color is too close to other colors, drag the two outer dots closer to the middle dot to more closely isolate that color.

Remember you can drag the edge of the Inspector pane to the left to make it wider, which helps with this particular tool.

[Ben Balser]

This is a super common mistake by both beginners and seasoned FCPX pros. Apple seriously needs to do something to either make entries into the search more obvious, or auto-clear the search field after the search is done. I chalk it up to bad GUI design.

[Ben Balser]

Clear your search field, please.

[Ben Balser]

OK, you select a title in the browser.

You use the keyboard shortcut “E” or “Q” to apply them to the timeline.

And you say they to not get applied to the timeline?

Simply clicking. a template/plugin in the browser does nothing by itself.

Can you do a demo video or screen shot to show us what’s happening?

Are they showing a missing template/plugin warning symbol?

Standard troubleshooting is to first delete the pref files. Launch FCPX while also holding down the command and option keys together. When prompted, delete the preference files. It is totally safe to do. Then select the Library in your browser inside FCPX, go to the File menu, and select the “Delete All Generated…” option. There you’re deleting ALL render files. Totally safe procedure.