Brett Sherman
Forum Replies Created
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I prefer not having a proliferation of project files. So my inclination would be to make them compound clips and keyword them as “mini stories” or such in it’s own event are the event in which you have all the source material. There is really nothing different about a compound clip in an event and a project file. And putting them in an event will prevent you from having to go back and forth between project files.
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[Chris Harlan] “But X adding beta monitoring and multicam are hardly the source of Avid’s problems”
Funny how people get different things from the article. I don’t think the article is saying that FCP X caused Avid’s downfall. Rather that Avid’s attempts to lure former FCP customers was not successful. In part, because of improvements in FCP X. But whatever.
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For me a “control room” device like Mackie’s “Big Knob”, JBL MSC1, or on the cheap end, the Samson C-Control is better than a mixer. They are basically the control room section of a mixer without all the other unnecessary stuff. Smaller footprint, easier to find the volume knob and switch buttons, and the cables are not sticking out the top.
And unlike a mixer you can often switch between multiple speakers. This is good for evaluating sound on different speakers for more critical mixing. It’s always good to listen to mixes on crappy speakers also. In one studio I have a Samson C-Control. In another I have a Presonus Firestudio with the small remote control sitting right next to my keyboard. Unfortunately they discontinued that product.
Here is a good list of the available options:
https://www.sweetwater.com/c417–Monitor_Management -
Slightly off topic. But, I wish there was a way to “explode” the compound clip in place in the timeline. Make adjustments and then “implode” it again. “Ungrouping” just turns it into individual clips and then there is no easy way back to turning it into a compound clip again without reselecting everything.
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While it may be devoid of the finer points. I’m not sure what exactly is inaccurate in the reporting. FCP X did add features which allowed professional (including myself) to start using it.
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Get the free Pan and Zoom plug-in from Noise Industries. Works like a charm.
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I find the sparse images a much more workable solution. Especially for running backups. With Event Manager X, it duplicates folders in my backup since the project or event can be in two different locations depending on what I’m currently working on.
I also like having a single file to move around if I want to take it on the road with me. And when returning, since it is one file you don’t have to worry about inadvertently forgetting to copy a file back onto the system.
Backups can also be a little tricky with sparse images. As the “modified date” is simply when you last ejected the volume. So you have to be careful you are copying from the one you worked on the latest to the one that is older. You can’t go by the modification date. I wish there was a backup program that actually looked into the contents of the sparse bundle and ran a synchronizing backup within it. But I haven’t found one.
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[tony west] “when I’m shooting something I’m shooting it for the edit. I’m cutting it in my head as I’m shooting it.
I never want to get back to the edit without having what I need so I’m thinking about what I need while I’m shooting.”
This is exactly the way I work. Could it be X is ideal for the shooter/director/editor? Generally I know a rough structure of the edit before I’ve even sat down at the computer. For longer pieces I’ll type up a simple outline in Word to get organized. Often that is where I clarify my thinking.
Then it’s a matter of assembling the narrative content of the piece which is interviews and maybe writing snippets of narration. Having thumbnails laying around doesn’t help me at all in this phase because it is almost completely verbal. For short videos I just use favorites to easily find soundbites. If it’s a longer video, I keyword soundbites by topic area so they are easy to collect in one location. Once the structure of the piece is down, then it’s a matter of matching the visual to the narrative. And when I’ve shot it, I know exactly what I have so it’s a matter of finding it.
There are different kinds of videos. I just wonder how much of this discussion boils down to different types of videos and different roles in making the videos.
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[Oliver Peters] “But as a reminder, here are a number of examples of what *could* be done with “legacy”:”
Interesting article. I ended up not having a lot of different layouts because I used the same layout most of the time, because the familiarity allowed me to work faster. Also the timeline across both screens never worked because as soon as you exited the program or just switched to another program to check email it would snap back to one screen. It wasn’t worth it having to continually stretch it back again. I found thumbnail views in the bin weren’t helpful because the single still often gave little indication of what was in the clip, unlike the dynamic thumbnails and filmstrip view in X.
Timeline to timeline editing was how I ended up working. But, it was fraught with problems too. You either had to match frame into the viewer and insert from there (remember to mark your ins and outs again). Or you had to copy and paste which required you to split your clip in the source timeline thus losing the visual indication of where clips began and ended and also wouldn’t allow you to control what tracks it got pasted into. Loading a sequence in the viewer window was also problematic. It worked fine if the source sequence was 5-10 minutes or so. But with long sequences it was hard to skim through the clip to find your ins and outs. It just jumped over way too many frames to be efficient.
I guess my point is that I never found legacy FCP 7 all that great for organizing and finding material regardless of the flexibility of it. For me X works better. And I’m definitely a visual person. That being said, I’d like more control of the layout in X. I’d move that effects window beside the monitor so I could stretch the timeline across the width of the display. I’d move the Parameters window to second display beside the events window and stretch it down to the bottom of the screen so I don’t have to scroll so much.
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[Alex Gerulaitis] “Synology and QNAP will charge around $3-4K for a diskless appliance and will not support anything related to editing. (Been there, tried that.)”
Just curious. What about these NAS’ doesn’t work? Throughput, Access Times? Would using Sparse Disk images make these viable options?