Brett Sherman
Forum Replies Created
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You can right-click the title and open it in Motion. Then you can add as many text fields as you want and save it as a new title. If it’s a one-off then stacking is not a bad idea. But, if you need to do it continually then making a custom title will save you time.
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[Oliver Peters] “Plus X is still quite buggy”
No doubt there are bugs. But I find it more solid than FCP 7 ever was. Much, much fewer crashes. To me that is a remarkable accomplishment for version 1 software. And I’m glad that I don’t have to continually redo things anymore. Or throw my mouse against the wall when I realize the FCP 7 preferences had reset and my last backup is an hour ago.
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[Chris Harlan] I have also noticed that a number of X users seem unable to see the sugary, sparkly, diabetes-inducing, unicorn-frolicing, my-little-pony-like UI of X for what it is either.
Of course all of us FCP X users are delusional children. I mean come on! I worked with Media 100 for 5 years. I worked with Avid for 7+ years. I worked with FCP 7 for 7+ years. And now I’ve started working with FCP X. I’m no idiot. And let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing “sugary, or sparkly” about the interface. I find it the most efficient use of space that I’ve used. Now I do documentary-style work (which apparently puts me on a lower peg than Hollywood fictional work). So our workflows may not be the same. But to suggest FCP X is a toy, is simply without basis. Just because you can’t work with it, doesn’t mean that others can’t.
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Even without compound clips, media management is still lacking. I had an edit recently that pulled clips from 10 different drives. I tried to consolidate it to one drive so I could easily open it in the future. It took me a good hour and a half to track down duplicate file names so that it would allow me to to do it. And even after that, my 8 minute video took up 250 GB of space! Not exactly efficient. It would be nice if FCP X could do more than simply copy the exact file. Many times it’s a 15 minute interview that I use 30 seconds of. Other times a conference that I use 30 seconds of 2 hrs.
At this point I’ve pretty much given up on trying to consolidate for anything other than the most hairy projects. It just wastes too much disk space. Yes drives are cheap, but this is ridiculous.
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[Shane Ross] People insisting on trying to work native in NLE’s not designed for it are lazy.
I don’t think laziness has anything to do with it. Sometimes it is simply more efficient to open the MP4 directly in FCP X.
I have to find a 30 sec. clip in a 3 hr. MP4. Open MPEG Streamclip. Use the crappy player window to find it. Takes awhile. Export. Import into FCP X. Oh wait I now need a cutaway from the same MP4 clip. Back to MPEG Streamclip. Find the clip again, where was it? Around 1 hr. 13 min I think? Export. Import. Crap I need one more shot. Repeat.
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For me it’s a group of features that as a whole make finding footage a lot faster than it ever was in FCP 7 or Avid for that matter. Skimming, favorites, size of thumbnails, thumbnails update about 5X faster than in 7 when skimming (this makes a huge difference in finding the right material without accidentally jumping over it), keywords, thumbnails in the timeline, etc.
I won’t say I’m 100% sold on the relational/magnetic timeline. There are things it does well and things it does not so well. It is neither a panacea nor a disaster. But I’m just learning it. My guess is that eventually I will be slightly faster with it than I am with 7. Right now I’m a bit slower.
But since I tend to spend a lot more time in the finding shots and soundbites part of the editing, I’m faster overall. And I enjoy editing more with X. That’s the trump card.
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My solution so far, is that I found an AppleScript to automatically mount a specific volume that is ejected. I have it scheduled to do that at night. Then the backup will run. Then in the morning I’ll eject the backup drive.
Messy. But it works.
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Jeremy, you’re a wealth of knowledge. Thanks.
Still it should be a preference item.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “A backup is just that, a backup. For me, it is not a working copy, it is not a check copy, it is a fail safe.”
I wish I had that luxury. Many times I need to have two editors utilizing the same drive at the same time. It’s not the same FCP X Project but some other media on the same drive. Or transferring cards for project B while working on a project A for a deadline. Or making a DVD of raw footage while editing the program at the same time. There many advantages to this system that I’m not willing to give up at this point.
The idea of the additional backups is to be able to go back in time to an earlier version if something does go haywire or goes missing because there are multiple versions of the fcpproject and fcpevent files stored.
We’ll see, maybe disaster will strike at some point and I’ll have to change my ways, but right now it has worked well and I’d lose too much efficiency by doing it Apple’s way.
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[Jeremy Garchow] The thing is backing up to a separate folder doesn’t allow me to work with the backup drive which I do all the time. Now it might sound like a simple thing to just move the content out of the backup folder, but in reality what is going to happen is once in awhile I will forget to move it back. Then when I run my sync, it’s not going to backup any changes I’ve made on the Backup drive. I will not realize it until I don’t have both drives with me. And then I’ll be SOL. Not to mention it’s then going to have to copy duplicate versions of everything from the original drive to the backup drive.
Maybe I am playing with fire, but I don’t really see how I could lose everything because I’m running backups with Pro Versioner to a Dropbox account (basically similar to the Backups program Oliver Peters mentioned) Is there something other than the .fcpevent or .fcpproject file that can get messed up that I’m not aware of?
I also have a tertiary backup of events and projects using Synk 7 Pro that does exactly what Bob is suggesting.