[David Eaks]

Actually I just tested it, both the RM1BP and the RM1000BP have a zoom speed setting with fast/mid/slow. I guess I forgot about it because I just use the Libecs. The Slow setting gives a nice slow zoom that isn’t touchy, crank the rocker to full speed and it is still slow.

Probably just what your looking for.

[David Eaks]

I just deal with using that little zoom rocker as a dedicated slow-zoomer. Would be nice if a LANC remote would do it.

FWIW, I have the RM1000BP too. It doesn’t zoom slow either.

[David Eaks]

Are you sure? I’m talking about the little tiny rocker zoom on the top handle, and the switch by it with Off/Var/Fix.

It MUST be in fixed mode, and the menu setting for handle zoom on 1 or 2. If that doesn’t give you a super slow, creeping, constant speed, not touchy at all, slow zoom. I’ll have to go put a battery on a camera to make sure I’m not missing something or going crazy.

[David Eaks]

Julian, I don’t want to frustrate you further with comments about older hardware working fine but it really is doable, I swear. I’m running both a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 2.8 eight-core, 16GB RAM with Radeon 5770 and a 17″ 2010 i7 MBP 6,1 8GB RAM. Each with SSD System Drives and editing off internal RAID-0 or individual external FW800/esata drives respectively. Mostly Prores lt from my KiPro and maybe some avchd from Sony NX5s mixed in (not optimized). Haven’t updated to 10.8.3 or 10.0.8 yet.

Haven’t been experiencing these lags, one of my current projects (on the laptop system now but will be moved to the desktop for finishing, via sneaker net), is three days shooting with 7-8 hours of lectures each. Each clip is about 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Each day has a one hour, 2-angle avchd multicam clip. For fun I threw all the clips from each day on their own 8-hour timelines and started overlooking everything and then started making some global changes (the whole project is one main speaker). Performance was fine and I just kept working with those three timelines, duplicating and breaking them down into about 2 hour lengths for DVDs. Clicking around and scrubbing, keyboard trimming, range-selected audio adjustments, project switching/duplicating etc. all snappy as I could expect it to be (except the AVCHD Multicam clips, they bog down the laptop system a bit). Maybe the “loading project” window pops up for a couple seconds if I go into the Project Library. Barely any delay when hitting space and it playing, even when rapidly skimming to a different part of the timeline and hitting play/pause repeatedly.

I had a test project that was a huge mess of clips with heavy effects, keyframed zooms and moves, a 9-angle multicam clip with a couple offline angles, mixed formats, just tons of crazy stuff going on and it wasn’t particularly bad except skimming over the stuff that had so much going on that playback wasn’t even possible at all. In fact, part of a screen recording I recently posted regarding an audio bug was working in that project (during which, editing performance was notably terrible).

None of this is to say that I haven’t experienced my fair share of green frames, crazy purple flashes, beach balls and unexpected quits. But the regular trash renders/prefs/permissions, copy/paste to new project etc. stuff has got me back on track. I still get a glitch where the skimmer doesn’t work from time to time, simply going in and out of the project library fixes it every time. Through all the madness of switching to FCPX, I have been more confident that I won’t lose any work after a crash and that my project will be just as I left it when I come back than I have ever been (my humble beginnings in Premiere 5-6.5 (NOT CS) were filled with lost work and messed up projects, which scarred me for life).

One thing, is that I’ve been an obsessive clean-installer, mostly ever since I truly started the switch from FCP 7 to X at 10.0.3. I wait to update until matching OS X, FCP X and Matrox MXO2 versions are available and “COW-approved”, then I do a complete clean install to a new system drive (cycled from the shelf), keeping the old one on the shelf for a backup. Not that I’m absolutely sure that this is why I don’t have this problem, just throwing it out there. Maybe it’s because the vast majority of my projects are long clips with a relatively small amount of cuts and effects. Whatever the case, I’m quite happy with FCPX overall.

[David Eaks]

I have a couple each of the Libec ZC-3DV and Sony RM1-BP.

Definitely prefer the Libec, it has a little less play before the zoom “kicks in” and seems to have a softer start and allow slightly slower zooms.

For super slow zooms on my NX5s, I set the little handle zoom switch to fixed and the menu to 1 or 2.

[David Eaks]

All the more reason to get it while its free ; )

I picked it up a while ago and have used it too show off to colleagues more often than real world use (only a handful of total uses). As Julian guesses, most of it is pretty useless. I just can’t see an app like this replacing standard editing functions.

Now, if FCPX had custom window layouts, and this app (or preferably an Apple “Pro” App) had custom buttons/display/info etc. that changed to match your current screen layout. Assuming that a particular FCPX window layout dictates a specific process of the edit (like importing, organizing, color correction, audio, “general cutting” or whatever), sometimes the iPad is similar to the HUD in Motion 5, sometimes it’s displaying video scopes and others its big custom buttons or even something like the “scratch pad” I heard people talking about from some other NLE, where you could just throw clips to mess around with. The idea being that the ipad is a dynamic “extension” of the FCPX interface. I’m sure if it was thoughtfully designed with real world use in mind and customizable so it’s fit an individuals workflow, it could actually be something worthwhile.

Anyway, that’s my pipe dream of what I want in an FCPX iPad App in a nutshell, which this app definitely isn’t.

[David Eaks]

I read this article “Faking lighting for video with Motion 5” recently. Even though you’re using FCP7, I thought the techniques might be of interest to you.

Found it on the FCPX Master List at fcpx.tv

[David Eaks]

Good to know, thanks Bret.

[David Eaks]

Make the clip dual mono then turn off the bad track.

Select the clip, go to the audio tab of the inspector, change channel configuration to dual mono. Then drop down the audio channels so you can see them both (still in the inspector) and skim each to be sure you turn off the correct one. If, in the timeline, you have the clips audio components expanded, you can watch the individual tracks disappear from the timeline as you select/deselect individual tracks.

[David Eaks]

Fred, what’s your problem with Matrox? It becomes and orphan? Seems like you mean they don’t offer support, if so you are way off base.