Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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Another vote to upgrade to Lion.
I haven’t had any major problems in months since I did that and I have to believe that all the new development work in the ProApps division is being vetted on the current OS, not one that’s been out of service for so many months.
After all I thought this was a “test rig” for X. If so, what’s the possible objection to upgrading it? Is someone from the executive suite sneaking in after hours to use that machine to run a version of Solitaire that won’t run under Lion or something? ; )
Protect your core business stability by all means. But test modern new software on modern new OS rigs, IMO.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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It actually doesn’t so much “read the files.”
That’s what Legacy used to do. When you pointed it to a capture scratch, it hooked up anything with the correct name – whether or not it was the proper clip, I might add.
The X linkage is MUCH more sophisticated and more complex in design. It’s a giant lookup search and sort metadata database that must have absolute locations for all it’s assets so that the data linkages can be managed.
Essentially the X database expects it’s assets to be in VERY specific places. Assets MUST live in Events and Projects. These often live in the Movies folder in specific Event and Project Libraries – but X actually will “look for” Event and Project libraries on external disks, provided the proper X structure is there for the program to see.
These “location relationships” get properly constructed when you import your clips into events originally and when you express those clips into projects in the interface. You can’t just move stuff around without risking screwing up these links.
If your clip/event/project relationships are broken your best hope is to re-connect the original drive that the clips were stored on – and try using the “relink” command under X’s File menu to see if you can re-link things in the database. This will often work provided the path is exactly the same as it was when the database locations were originally written. If you’ve subsequently tucked asset files into sub-folders or re-named them – you’re kinda hosed unless you can precisely undo that.
If the relationships are undamaged, the next step would typically be to to try re-importing your clips one by one to see if they re-populate your event browser.
If that doesn’t work, then you may have somehow permanently severed the links between your database and your assets and you may need to start over and re-build things. That’s rare, and usually the result of new users trying to move clips around in the finder.
Good luck, and let us know how things work out.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[David Lawrence] “For anyone thinking about changing platforms, this basic editorial interaction design is a very big deal. I think this why you hear folks compare PP6 to the mythical Final Cut Pro 8.
I agree the workflow as a whole has to be factored in and in that regard it’s very different. But actual cutting feels very much the same.”
David,
If your focus needs to be on something that “cuts similarly” to Legacy, then I truly hope you’ve made a good choice.
Having just been through what turned out to be a more complex than I ever imagined transition to X from Legacy – with so much fundamental stuff to unlearn and re-learn – looking back, the point doesn’t appear to me to be the difficulty of the transition, but whether or not I was going to be happy with where I ended up.
Many here know I am very happy with X, and that many others saw difficulties and things they didn’t like or obstacles that they felt were insurmountable – and decided to take a different route. That’s life. But being forced to leave the place you’re in usually means you’ll end up in a place that’s either better, or worse.
I hope your path leads to something really good for you.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Oliver Peters] “For example, the metadata features built into FCP X are basically the same as what Adobe did in Prelude, except that Adobe decided to do it as a separate application. There is an argument to be made that Prelude is to Premiere Pro as iMovie is to FCP X. I don’t mean that as a slam at all. Rather, that iMovie in fact *could* function as an simple producer-reporter-client-assistant tool as the front end to FCP X. Not sure it actually works that way, but a business case could be made for this.
“Not sure I understand the analogy Oliver.
While iMovie files can feed X, I can’t imagine the business case for a producer, editor, or even executive to work with iMovie as a “pre-comp” utility when X’s price is so negligible and it’s much easier for someone to just use the primary tool rather than the consumer targeted one.
What’s the point?
Isn’t Prelude mostly a reflection of Adobe’s current orientation where product “suites” are packaged together in relatively complex groupings of distinct products and the owner is expected to own and operate a “bundle” of separate software tools that interact nicely, but are NOT marketed to be the single solution as a standalone?
It’s as if Adobe always expects that the producer needs their one tool, the assistant needs their one tool, the artist needs their one tool, etc, etc, etc.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, btw. There were lots and lots of people delighted to maintain FCP chops, Photoshop chops, ProTools Pro, Filemaker Pro chops and After Effects chops (or similar) Adobe appears to have simply modernized this model of specialty separate “sub-packages for everyone.”
Apple clearly feels that a single, unified program that allows editing, titling, audio sweetening, metadata management and basic motion graphics in a single unified construct to be a smarter approach.
There will surely be plenty of users who will value each vision over the other.
As to the Prelude metadata thing, I’m pretty much totally ignorant of how PPro works so I’ll totally accept your opinion of it’s strong metadata capabilities.
But as fascinated as I am with metadata in X being more useful and prominent in X than in Legacy, that’s actually not the thing that most interests me about X as an editing platform.
It’s more the “gestalt” of the whole approach. It’s “right sizing” (my opinion) the editing engine into something that does enough to make it easy to create compelling content inside stripped down code that can be easier to use in the field.
It’s also what I see as X’s “balanced” approach between editing and metadata management. And it’s rethinking the real-world input and export functions that are most needed by most editors today – even if that meant removing some robust capabilities that a large group of users historically depended upon. (DVD Authoring as a clear example)
Apple kinda did with it’s video editing software precisely what it’s built all of its other successes on – stripped away a lot of the less needed complexity and concentrated on making core functions that wrap a lot of power and capability in a simple, elegant user interface.
With the core re-built and operating well – we’re starting to see the FCP-X team re-building higher level functions – but in new and interesting ways. And they’re managing to do that without much software bloat. For instance, the new multi-cam construct did not seem to swell the program size very much at all, and in my experience, it hasn’t slowed anything else down. In fact the core editing engine is working faster than ever for me even tho there’s all that new multi-cam code inside.
Just Saturday, I produced a 12-camera four song music video shoot with a 5 piece jazz combo. I was already skimming the content, applying keywords, viewing scenes, and organizing assets within 10 minutes of wrap with nothing but a pair of MacBook Pros on set. Thanks to X, 48 hours later, the whole show is already in my event browser and I’m tagging my little heart out.
All I can really compare it to is my decade of editing in Legacy – and sorry, but I absolutely know I’d still be in red-line render hell if I was trying to accomplish this project the Classic FCP way.
Perhaps Premier would be as quick and stable as X is for me right now. And if so, that’s nothing but great for Premier editors. But I’m not one of those. I’m a FCP-X editor and happy to be one. It’s still both exciting and fun for me to sit here and operate it. Something I’d lost in Legacy after so many years. But I’m weird that way I guess.
I haven’t got a clue as to whether in the long run this “12 camera” edit will turn out to be a smooth process or clog up and grind to a halt with so much content to work with. Stay Tuned.
But so far, so good. New tool, new parameters to test. New approaches to take.
I continue to feel that the work the Premier Pro team has done to refresh their products and the promise of Smoke et al are good signs for editing overall. And I’ve expressed as much here before.
But I’m still fascinated with THIS tool. It’s changed much of my thinking about what editing might become for me in the future.
I understand that this approach will totally FAIL for other editors with different needs. But for me it’s been an extremely positive revelation.
There is certainly a lot of new thinking as a result of the changes announced at NAB. I’m delighted that others are exploring the alternatives. I’m good to go here with X.
Fun time to be a video creator!
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Jay,
When clips go offline, it’s the software telling you that it can’t find the source files it needs to create the display clips.
That might just mean the original clip is offline – which happens when you have media stored on a drive and that drive is dis-mounted.
It can also mean that the clips are still there – but that the software simply doesn’t know where to look for them. Since X is constructed around the organizing principal of a relational database, keeping the relationship between where assets are stored and where the program “thinks” they are stored is a big deal.
When you captured your clips, you got the choice (whether you realized it at the time or not) to either link to those assets wherever they were stored and merely have your events reference them – , or to duplicate copies of the footage into your actual Events for internal or external storage.
How and where you set that up to happen is likely the key issue here.
Removing a drive, copying files via the finder, or anything else that alters the specific location where the Database in X expects them to be can cause assets to go offline.
Sometimes getting them back is just a matter of “reLinking” the files in X. But I’ve seen users “think” they are relinking to their original files, only to discover that they’ve made multiple attempts at setting up the FCP-X storage structures with multiple events and multiple projects and that they’re actually NOT linking original files to original locations at all.
The X world of original clips, proxy clips, and links to useable copies of clips in the sharing libraries – any of which the software might use to populate your projects – is nowhere near as simple in X as it was in Legacy – where everything was just a pipe to a Capture Scratch and that could be re-linked easily because it was a simple lookup, not the central hub of a database where everything linked to it needs to expect to find it in a virtual spiderweb of metadata connections.
With this new complexity comes a lot of relational flexibility and power – but definitely requires some learning to manage.
I’d highly recommend you look on the web and read up on Events and Projects in X and how they operate and where they expect to find their assets.
Without that understanding, it’s easy to have stuff “go missing” and not have a clue as to why or where.
Let us know how your search goes.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Oliver Peters] “It certainly should never be an “either-or” scenario. However, there seem to be three models shaping up for many.”
Oliver,
I think that’s a very well-reasoned analysis.
Apple has definitely gone in a very different direction from the design goals of the past.
I remain convinced Apple’s approach is designed to better meet the needs those who will pursue editing as a personal craft at every level including creating professional business content – rather than as a corporate job specialty for those who occupy seats in larger institutional settings. But regardless, there should be tools for editors at all levels.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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I couldn’t agree with Shane more.
In the early part of my career, I spent a few years as the house videographers for the National Speakers Association – taping literally hundreds of professional speakers, including many of the finest in the land.
A true quality professional speaker typically needs minimal editing since their cadence, their command of their subjects and the constant practice and refinement they undergo leaves them understanding really well how to captivate and hold a crowds attention. So for one of those folks, I could simply keep the camera on them and let their polish and content do the work with hardly any edits.
If the presenter is less polished, the editor has to work harder to cut out digressions, lost trains of thought, and reiterations.
One trick I used way back when I was learning how to edit spoken content (back when I had the luxury of time!) was to turn off the picture and simply MARK your edits on the content as a sound track. That tends to reveal any structural problems without the distraction of judging video. Then watch those same edit points with the video – noting what you marked in the soundtrack. Often the visual content will remove the need for the audio edit. If not, you’ve revealed something with both weak audio and without redeeming video.
That’s a kind of obsessive approach a well seasoned editor usually doesn’t really need, but if you’re learning how to do this kind of work, it can sometimes be a useful exercise in both watching and listening.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Richard Herd] “That is, I would love to have footage import into X and before it even hits the timeline there is an adjustment layer added that I define, so all the footage looks the way I want it to look BEFORE I edit.)”
Thats precisely what happens if you apply your color correction to clips in the Event Browser rather than in the Timeline. Any color adjustment tags (metadata once again, technically) that you make in the EB, flow through to all subsequent timelines you use that clip in.
That’s the metadata “flow” I keep harping on that’s central to X. Clip data imports from the camera into the EB – merges with any additional metadata you append in the Event Browser and flows into the Timelines, then Timeline attributes are reflected to the Project Library – which reports them out via the Share menu options.
Working upstream is typically more powerful than working downstream. Since upstream stuff flows down, but downstream stuff doesn’t really “flow” back up.
I suppose one could argue that there is actually some limited data flow upstream via the Keywarding HUD and tagging interface that appears in the Timeline but the essential metadata “inheritance” flow is essentially always downstream.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Richard Herd] “What’s the sharing folder? I mean, is that a folder you create for just this purpose? Or is it something that X has done, of which I’m not yet aware?”
The latter.
Go to any Project Library. Select a project. Go to the “Share Menu” and take the first choice “Media Browser” – you’ll get a choice of export options. No matter which one you select, X will create and save a copy of your project (at the resolution you specify) in your Final Cut Pro Projects Folder in a sub folder called Shared Items. Once a copy is in there, the X database can use it to populate your Project Library with images and allow you to skim projects even if the source clips or evens are offline.
One thing I’m noticing quite a bit here is that so many people coming from Legacy are so “Timeline focused” that they don’t really spend much time looking around and exploring the other menus that aren’t directly related to editing functions in the Timelines.
This is an example of how the Share menu can help you manage your work and allow new thinking about storing project copies and links that can really make things easier for you once you understand the new structure.
So my advice is to take time and explore the hidden corners of the software she you have time. For instance, The Share function is primarily in it’s global menu up top, but it’s also reflected in a tab in the Inspector when you’re in the Project Library right next to Properties and there’s interesting functions built into both.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Chris Harlan] “[Bill Davis] “Geez, dude. Your slip may not be, but you’re arrogance is showing.”
What? Because I went to film school? Because I edit for a living? Because I engage in continued education?
“No, because you have a single focus and point of view in these discussions. You purport to represent the “hollywood industrial view” and you do so consistently and clearly by your own writing.
You’re the one who invoked AFI seminars and unionization as part of your foundational construct of what constitutes “professional” editing. You used that as a bit of a cudgel to try to make my initial post seem like it was coming from someone who didn’t “get” the fact that what I’m arguing for is already so widely incorporated in global editing that X’s propagation of it in a low priced tool is dismissible.
I think you’re dead wrong in that assessment and it’s evidence that you’re out of touch with other editing requirements that don’t dovetail with your parochial experience in Hollywood.
So it’s completely fair for me to point out that your thinking might be every bit as skewed as the thinking of someone like me who isn’t saddled with the “industry town” mindset that you espouse.
I’m suggesting readers here consider how new tools like FCP-X might impact an editor who works in the larger arena. You’re often trashing it as “not a big deal” largely because you elevate workflows in which it doesn’t excel (primarily precisely those large company workflows that hollywood values) and thereby skewing the discussion away form what may well be more universal concerns for working editors in a larger and more ecumenical pool.
I believe that’s a completely fair criticism of your posts above.
The readership here will determine for themselves whether my points are valid and whether their experiences better match mine or yours.
Simple as that.
BTW, I wasn’t lucky enough to do the film school thing. We hicks out her in Arizona were lucky to get “Radio and Television Broadcasting” in College. So I got sucked into Radio to start my career. But I can likely go toe to toe with you in aggregate hours in the editors chair and “continuing education” in the modern era must be a push since nobody survives without it on the planet as fast as things move today.
Heck, without “continuing education” I likely wouldn’t be in the Techniques forum so much trying to help other understand how to operate many of the functions of X they have trouble grasping. So I suppose while I don’t have someone tracking my CE credits, I’m doing just fine in that area too!
I only point this out as part of the larger theme that just because you’re in Hollywood, don’t think there’s not some editor in Cleveland who, without the benefits you enjoy of the seat in the “company town” surrounding you – might still be every bit as skilled an editor of the two of us combined.
And if the next editor gets there via X, instead of Legacy, PPro or a Steenbeck, so what?
That’s the real point of all this.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor