[Craig Alan]

Working with curious beginners I have found that. X does send you down the rabbit hole more often than ideal. Or to use the OP – they get trapped behind one if those side doors in a room unfamiliar.

X has about the same number of windows/spaces as any other full featured NLE. Some are more developed some are less.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac

thunderbolt 3 is on its way. If you need it, it’s a good time to buy. If you didn’t need it, something better is around the corner. A new iMac should play real nice with FCP X.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Mac App Programming Guide explains how libraries should be organized and they’ve been used in many Apple applications.
And remember FCP X when it first came out: the library was designed by default to hold your entire media collection so that an editor had access to every video ever created at his/her beck and call.
More than any other design element, I think that was the one that most suggested to many that it was not ready for prime time.
When you import your photos into iPhoto, you can choose to have iPhoto automatically organize the photos into a single Event or several. And where are the events stored — why in a library.
That leaves “project”

You can read a tutorial for past versions of iMovie and see all these terms and their very similar structure.
I actually preferred one variation where within an event in a library you created a new “movie” (timeline) and then imported your media. They didn’t make this stuff up based on professional NLEs or starting from scratch and giving it heavy thought. They based it on iMovie and consumer media apps they had developed. I don’ think the name of a folder in a library container is too annoying though it shouldn’t then surprise anyone that by default the sub-levels of an event are based on dates. After all, an event took place on a certain date/time. Same concept in iCAL. But still it’s just a container within a container in the browser. I’d call it a folder or a container or a collection, really doesn’t matter much. But “project” is incommodious

That does not make FCP X less than a professional app. And personally, I like the idea that an app can scale from beginner to pro. But I would use pro vocab/concepts for beginners not the other way around.

Personally I find consumer level features often are much harder to use than pro features. Many consumer level devices seem to reinvent the wheel and add features for the sake of advertising rather than ergonomics.

Ever try to set the white balance on many consumer level camcorders? Some are three levels deep in the menu system and must be reset from every use. As opposed to zoom in on a white card and hit the freaking WB button.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Ok, first I have older Macs and don’t own one using SD drives so I lack experience here. But I’ve used Macs that use them and yes the SD drives are very fast.

BUT I did a simple test when this thread began and selected a relatively small clip on a timeline, applied a color correction, and then went the finder to see what happened as a result in the cache/render folder. It added a render file of over 1 gig. It was clear to me that render files are not small little files, they could quickly add up.

Second, other than when I am importing media using a usb 2 P2 card reader, I don’t find my system particularly slow. I guess if the SD drive speeds things up enough you could simple always delete your render files and have them repopulate when you need to edit a particular project. I just don’t understand the need to go down this road until SD drives are many TBs not 1.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

“Except perhaps capacity ”

My system drive in a Mac Pro was always fast enough for editing.

But was never a good practice.

media takes up space. Lots of it. Filling up your system drive is a bad idea.

I also think that managing this media would be more difficult if kept on the system drive. I can back up entire project s when I’m done editing and wipe a fast raid clean to start the next. Don’t really want to wipe my system drive clean unless it’s gotten slow and buggy which is more likely if I start asking it to hold and process media.

SD drives are still more expensive and tend to hold less than disc drives.

You can always daisy chain a single cheaper drive to hold the render files if you want.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

[Jeremy Garchow] “It only started to make sense after Libraries and Snapshots came to be. Before Libraries, the organization definitely made less sense, but those were just foundational building blocks.”

You mean back when FCP X only had one library per root level of a drive?

Huge improvement to allow each ahem “project” to be stored in its own library.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

try fcp>preferences>editing>timeline>check the options you want

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

On a Mac that is ancient compared to yours.

Thee internal 2 TB drives raid 0.

The OWC drive enclosure I showed you will accept the drives you are currently using (its empty) and you can take out those drives when you are done with a project and store them and add new ones. So for $500 you are now using thunderbolt 2. Bingo speed problem solved. And you can always use your usb 3 drive for other stuff like photos or backing stuff up. USB is great for that but not so much FCP or some other editing programs.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I think he’s being sarcastic. Meaning that whatever is the new thing has to for sake of sales be so much better than what came before even if it’s not all that significant. More resolution is good but is not the only variable. A good script is still more important than any technical improvement. Dynamic range is at least as important. And projected film with its wash of color rather than little pixels still looks if not better then more sensual. Through experimentation and years of experience, craftsmen do become masters. If you keep changing the tools no one quite masters them.

Yeah transforming works a lot better in 4K than 1080. And if you get up to 16 k or whatever, you could probably blow up the most extreme ECU and it will look vibrant. I really hope that directing doesn’t become a wide shot only craft since you can always compose the CUs in post. There is still camera angle and lighting to consider. I really don’t want test audiences and editors to decide how a movie should end. I think that belongs with the writer and director.

What would be a real step forward is a mike that could zoom and isolate. You know like what a lot of beginners think a shot gun can do.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I’m confused. Render files can take up a lot of space. It’s true you can delete them for projects you are not working on and FC will regenerate them when you go back to edit one of these inactive projects. I just did a test and I added a color correction to a short clip in a new project I am working on.

The cache folder increased in size after this short clip was color corrected by about 1 gig. On a large project this could add up quickly.

I’m also not sure how the system drive would be faster than a fast media drive. What I had always read is to store your applications and FCP project backups on your system drive (which should be cloned on a regular basis). Leave the media and render files on media drives. Not saying you are wrong, just haven’t heard this advice before. I get that rendering does slow things down. Nothing new about that.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.