[Craig Alan]

[Jamie Franklin] “There is when the professionals tool is fundamentally broken in favour of a more easily digestible (sellable) – grandma milly and students can learn in an hour – gui.”

The only thing that makes it more sellable is the price. Have you looked at the manual of a consumer level gear. It ain’t more easily digestible. To compensate there is auto everything – which is hit or miss.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being able to learn basic edits within minutes (particularly with someone showing you how).

There is something wrong with renaming these operations in the belief that it makes it easier to learn, which it dos not.

For the pro, even more so than for the casual user, ergonomics is paramount. Nothing wrong with basic edits being, well, basic. Missing features does make it the wrong tool for anyone needing those features, pros or not.

A professional camera/lens has an optical ring you turn to adjust the aperture/F-stop. Any consumer can turn it and learn what it does in seconds. Try to do the same with a mini-cam and you need to go into the menus or some other read the manual to figure it out digital version of this basic function. Workaround: auto exposure. A feature that was later added to many pro cams cause the technology evolved. It doesn’t replace the wheel, it’s just an option. Even more so with auto-focus. Some shots it does the job and some it don’t.

Being a professional tool means it meets the needs of pros. It rarely hurts a consumer to have a professional tool – they tend to last longer, have the ability to move up a notch, helps you learn professional practices, gets better results more easily (not less). Nothing complex about a well balanced hammer or knife, a tripod with a smooth operating fluid head, a camera with xlr plugs vs mini-plugs, SDI vs HDMI.

Pros often need to quickly produce product where as an amateur may take as long as it takes to get it right.

All great pros started off as unpaid beginners. And we all get old if we don’t die trying.

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]

[Charlie Austin] “It seems like these threads always devolve into veiled discussions of who is “more” professional. Which is stupid.”

I agree.

‘a pro’ =

1. getting paid for it/making a living at it

2. master of a craft (as my father’s generation used to call it, “a real pro”)

3. being able to express yourself in a unique way, finding your voice (as my mother’s generation used to call it, “an artist”)

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]

[Tim Wilson] “It’s part of why I’ve also never bought the idea that Final Cut X was EVER intended for consumers, AT ALL. iMovie a nifty product that does that just fine.”

Not sure how you would define this line or if there are any meaningful numbers to account for which sector is buying FCP X in what percentages, but X is an excellent step up from iMovie. I have students editing within minutes and students have other students editing within minutes.

The magnetic timeline is truly intuitive in terms of being able to shuffle things around without getting out of sync. Beginners tend not to keyword nor do basic videos really require this. But the basic import with keywords connected is kinda a nice gift to those getting started.

There are many many more people producing movies who are not pros than ever before and many many more prosumer level pros than ever before, and prosumer level non-pros than ever before.

PHOTO will replace both iPhoto and Aperture. Today’s consumers are much more computer literate than ever before.

There is nothing wrong with consumer level use of professional tools.

FCP X gives you lots of room to grow but its dead simple for basic edits. Much better than iMovie.

And a simple google search will help anyone who can follow directions on a feature they never used before.

Kids will spend $100 and up for sneakers that last a few months to wear the shoes that NBA players wear. $300 bucks to edit like the pros using your (soon) 4K $600 buck DSLR. Why not?

Video has become a new form of literacy. Not everyone can read and write but it ain’t rare.

What I find interesting is when there is a pro at an event, be it a party or wedding or presentation or whatever, they’ll also be a ton of other people shooting with phones, cameras, and even prosumer level cameras at the same event.

I shot stills at an event recently and my partner shot video. I was using a Canon 5D. There was guy there shooting with an expensive Nikon. At first I thought, wow, I better be good. But then it occurred to me that I was shooting full time and he was splitting his time between shooting and participating. And it actually takes some of the pressure off, cause if some shot gets missed, well there’s extra coverage. The event is more than covered. Over-covered. Likewise, there was a ton of people there that cook for their families; but just the same, there was caterer.

If you can go viral with a series on u-tube you can make a living with product placement.
If not, it was worth a shot and a nice hobby.

New world.

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]

Why do you need to do primary audio overwrites so often? Are you working with ADR?

Unfortunately, funding for my program does not work with Adobe’s billing practices.

I also seriously considered AVID but the learning curve was rather steep and then there were rumors of it being in the RED.

In premier you still need to select-copy-select-paste.

I don’t do a lot of primary audio overwrites. When I need to – connected audio and ducking the primary audio does the trick. However, if I ever needed to or just wanted to create a tracked timeline in X. I do think a secondary storyline is a viable alternative.

Since its all keyboard shortcuts except making selection’s (isn’t this generally true?) I think it goes pretty smoothly.

shift-F (instead of command-C)
D (instead of command-V).

Granted turning FCP X timeline into a hybrid tracked timeline is an extra step
And I do think it could be made more ergonomic.

Also granted simple copy paste would be more INTUITIVE since it is universal as you pointed out.

Very simple feature request: overwrite any connected clip with D or command-V.

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]

[Oliver Peters] “In my example I wasn’t talking about a way to paste-overwrite. I was addressing the statement that a master clip could only contain the original audio and video. In FCP X that’s not the case. A master clip is merely a container and it can be “destroyed” (requiring re-import) if you aren’t careful.”

Which is why I feel that Apple could add overwrite ability. and consistent copy paste.

But – once you open a clip in its own storyline what would be the workflow for replacing the audio and then returning to the original storyline with this new audio as part of the primary clip?

Also if you really need to do a lot of audio overwrite and other changes to the primary audio as I mentioned above you can

detach audio from the primary clips
create a storyline of these detached audio clips
select an audio clip within the new storyline
shift-F (reveal in browser)
select range to be overwritten
D (overwrite)

then if you wish to keep individual clips magnetic
break apart audio storyline.

and if you wish you can then create new compound clips using the now connected audio and the primary clips.

The only problem here is you end up with a whole mess of compound clips. And I keep hearing if you have compounds in compounds this could lead to file or project corruption.

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]

[Robin S. Kurz] “[Craig Alan] “command-9 is your friend”

Um… how so?”

Lets you know status of b.g. tasks.

Although FC lets you cont. to work when a b.g. task is incomplete, on the computers I’ve used, it simply pauses the task.

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]

Oliver,

Still not getting it.

You open a clip in its own timeline. It’s expanded in its own timeline. You select a range in the audio.
You have audio edit only selected and range in a clip in the browser selected. You try to over write and the visual clip get over written. So how do you overwrite audio only? Not with audio only but with and to audio only. With the exception of a storyline of all audio clips I can’t figure it out.

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]

[Brett Sherman] “What you suggesting is a bit convoluted (no offense) creating a compound that doesn’t behave like a compound. Remaining editable in the timeline but a container of sorts. It would be a whole new object in the FCP X logic. “

Well, I could certainly see it NOT happening. But it seems to me that compound clips shows that it could be done. Compounds seem to be an answer for so many needs within FC that its strange to me that the one that is in place saves it as a parent clip. That to me seems convoluted. How many times do you make a change to a clip in one instance and want that change to occur in projects you are not even actively editing? What I would prefer is to be able to save any clip to the browser since the browser is essentially a storage container. Now you can do that by making it a compound. But you best be careful that if you reuse this clip that you save it as a new master.

I’m not saying that if you have a TV series or show that you might not reuse the same opening clip, but it’s a very specialized need. The fact that as soon as you break the components of a compound clip apart you can’t put it back together is less than ideal though I guess creating a new one isn’t that hard. But now you have the uncorrected one left in the browser.

Here’s a common example where you might like to overwrite dialog in the primary: ADR.

Here’s another: comedies where you are putting words in people’s mouths and maybe even deliberately out of sync.

You could do either with connected clips.

But given how sloppy a non-tracked timeline can become beyond 3 or 4 layers, its kind of nice to form a compound to simplify things and make sure they stay in sync.

[Brett Sherman] “From the FCP X timeline design you can’t have an audio track within the primary that is a separate clip from the video that’s in the primary.
“

That’s true. So in order to overwrite just the audio in a dialog you’d need to detach the audio.

If it were possible for the code to be written so it could be done directly that would be great. But if not it could certainly be detached, overwritten, and then married again like or as a compound.

And even if this is a ridiculous convoluted idea on my part, certainly you should be able to copy and overwrite paste anything on the timeline without going back to the browser.

How many times do you want to over write an A/V clip in the primary with just a different audio clip. Cause that’s what happens now. Is that by design? Does it make sense? Don’t you think it would be cool if you could expand audio components, copy and paste between clips and then collapse audio?

My guess is that all this is really just a visual presentation on the timeline since back in the browser the original clips are just being referenced and not changed. So Apple could, I’m guessing, be able to write the code to present the timeline and add features however they like.

But let’s say I’m wrong and that my idea is convoluted cause its against FCP X basic design.

Certainly you should be able to over write a connected detached audio clip from either the browser or the timeline. But you can’t or correct me if I’m wrong. Cause if I have a connected clip of audio and I select something in the browser and click D it overwrites the primary even if the connected clip is selected. In fact even if I set a range on the connected clip it will overwrite the primary storyline. That’s pretty bizarre behavior. Now only if I am overwriting audio from one audio clip to another on the same storyline will this work as expected. In other words I need to create an audio only storyline. In short, it’s own track.

If there is another way, I’m all ears.

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]

If u can’t resolve the issue contact their technical support. I returned two raids that were corrupting files and got replacements. They shipped replacements even before I could send mine with return printouts they sent. They just took a credit card in case I didn’t send back the raids within a month.

Sounds to me like it was still formatting and that’s your issue.

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]

though blown up I can see that it’s a scrolling text.

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.