[David Eaks]

Same as “remove through edit” in FCP7, select the edit point and delete it. But it only works on Multicam clips in FCPX.

Hopefully 10.1 will bring back this function for regular clips.

They’re also talking about it in the Merry Christmas thread.

[David Eaks]

No problem!

[David Eaks]

Yup, just select the splice and hit delete.

[David Eaks]

Mark- “Is this a known issue?”

Well, I think this is the first I’ve heard of someone else who’s actually encountered this bug. I haven’t investigated it too much, just figured out how to avoid it, then avoided it.

I think this is different than the bug in the other thread. This resize on export bug actually changes the scale of the clip but the problem doesn’t reveal itself until viewing the exported file.

I discovered this bug when changing the project setting of a completed HD timeline, to SD, then export an SD Prores Master Clip. The text in titles would look fine in the timeline but once exported the text would be huge and most of it lost off the edges of the screen. I found it to only occur in secondary storylines.

As far as I’ve narrowed it down, it only happens when-

1) the clip in the primary is not the same size as the sequence frame size

2) a connected clip is connected to that clip

3) the connected clip is in a secondary storyline

4) some other variable I can’t pin down

It seems to me that FCPX forgets to scale the clip in the secondary along with all the other clips. In the situation I encountered the bug it appears that the title is being displayed at its pixel for pixel HD size in an SD frame, instead of scaling down with everything else.

This behavior has persisted through clean installs and FCPX updates, so I don’t think it is a corrupt user or installation issue or a rouge plugin. It’s a bug. I reported it to Apple quite a while ago.

When I’ve asked, others were not able to recreate the bug and I’m sitting here doing test exports and can’t recreate it in any new test timeline. Testing with an existing project I can replicate the bug easily. Strange.

[David Eaks]

What is the original video’s frame size? 1080?

Does the issue only occur to clips that are in a secondary storyline with transitions on it?

[David Eaks]

It is pretty cool, but I’m guessing that it is actually many pictures stitched together because I noticed a few areas where the stitching wasn’t quite perfect. Something I wouldn’t expect to see if it was a single image.

Either way it would be interesting to read about how they did the shot. Is it detailed anywhere? I didn’t look.

[David Eaks]

For the video out, there is a 30 pin/Lightning to HDMI adapter. A while ago, just for fun, I plugged it into the DVI input of my Panasonic AW HS 50 switcher to see if the signal would work. It did. I imagine an AJA HA-5 would receive the iPads HDMI signal as well, giving you hdsdi out from the iPad.

Unfortunately not all Apps will output a video signal, so being able to use the iPads output is dependent on what app the client is running.

[David Eaks]

File be back.

(AE round trip)

[David Eaks]

I’m a big clean-installer, and you’re right, a clean install can be a huge, painful process if done without tons of prior preparation. I’ve been doing that preparation for a few years now.

Every time I get a new application, plugin, driver, stock audio or video and even my own custom templates, keyboard layouts and effects presets etc. I save it to an “All Install Files” folder with sub folders for organizing. Downloads are saved before even installing, Disc Images are made of physical installation discs. Custom presets are found and saved in a folder structure with subfolder names representing the file path that the setting needs to go in. This “All Install Files” folder lives on my current media drive (eating up 148GB of storage right now) and is transferred to new media drives when they’re replaced, always ready to install something I need. I imagine most would keep it on an external though.

License keys are saved to a text document, which can be saved on a secure USB stick.

This makes the clean install process quick and pretty painless. More mindless clicking than stressful hunting down of purchase confirmation emails and discs etc. Some things that I know have been updated several times since I last saved the installer, I’ll go download the newest version, save it, move the old installer into a new folder called “Old” , then install the newest version.

While I usually make a USB installer for new OS X versions, it is not necessary. The new drive can be connected externally and OS X downloaded from the Mac App Store as normal. Then open the installer and choose the new drive as the install location. Once the installation is complete, shutdown and replace the old OS drive with the new one and save the old disk on the shelf. Or instead of installing OS X to the new drive, this is the time to make your install USB, because the OS X installer deletes itself after installation and you’ll have to download it again.

With the new OS drive in place, connect the drive with the “All Install Files” folder, and the USB stick with license keys and begin the double click, copy/paste frenzy. Surprisingly, the “super convenient”, all in one place, no need for entering license keys, Mac App Store apps are the slowest and most hindering part of the process. Like FCPX, Motion and Compressor. My main tools. They must download every time. Boooo! And their extra content too. Hissss!

I don’t ever do any migration of my previous user. Since there are so many cases where an odd thing is happening on someone’s system and it does not exist if they log in as a new user, I figure the migration is defeating a main purpose of the clean install. It’s also a good idea to avoid saving any unique files to the OS drive, like documents, videos, project files etc. If there isn’t any of that stuff on the drive there’s no worry of losing your stuff. Though it’s inevitable that there will be some little thing, that’s where having your old drive on the shelf comes in handy.

Installing from a disc image stored on a hard drive (in my case they reside on a three drive RAID 0 and install to an SSD) is much faster than from a CD/DVD disc. For example Final Cut Studio 3 will install in its entirety from disc images in about 40 minutes IIRC, and without having to bother with “Please insert the Disc: Motion Content” or whatever, followed by waiting half an hour and repeating for four or so hours. Just mount all the discs at once and hit go. Choosing to install FCP 7 all on its own (or just opting out of all the extra content in the other apps) will install in a just a few minutes.

I can get a fully functional clean system installed in a few hours. Though I tend to only install the things I need on a daily basis and leave the little extras for when I actually need them. Most of those things install in seconds and it helps keep my system pared down, or streamlined.

For your install discs that are in storage in another country, you could have someone create disc images and send the files to you with Dropbox or similar.

All of this will take some time to get put together and sorted but I really feel that it keeps the oddities at bay, leaving you to only have to deal with the actual bugs.

[David Eaks]

If I understand what you’re trying to do correctly, which is to work in a 1920×1080 project and use the extra vertical resolution of 1920×1440 video to pan the image up or down while keeping the image at full width the whole time, it should be pretty easy, use Fill. Or none. In this case they should essentially be the same, but that is not always true.

I haven’t worked with 1920×1440 but here is what I think would work for you-

Select all of the 1920×1440 clips in the Event Browser then go to the Inspector and choose Spatial Conform> Fill. This will set the clips to “Fill” the 1920×1080 frame of the viewer so there are no black borders while maintaining the aspect ratio of your clip. Doing this in the Event browser now ensures that they are all the same and you won’t have to keep changing a clips setting every time you add one to the timeline. Now, add one of the clips to an empty timeline, when the video settings window pops up choose 1920×1080 and your frame rate (what is it?). If your project is anything other than 1920×1080 (it shows right under the timeline) hit command-J to open the project library and the inspector (if it isn’t already), then click the wrench and change the Project Properties to 1920×1080.

The result is that your videos 1920 width fits the screen perfectly and the extra lines of vertical resolution beyond 1080 at the top and bottom are cropped off (center crop). Ken Burns will still be “aware” of the extra resolution at this point and snap to the width at one end but the effect is intended to zoom in or out. So you will have to manually adjust the zoomed part to fit the full width perfectly. As you’ve discovered, that’s a huge PITA. On the other hand, Key framing the clips Y position will let you work with the extra lines of resolution to pan up and down without having to “un-zoom” the Ken burns effect.

If you use Fit, FCPX will “Fit” your entire image in the frame without altering the aspect ratio. In your case it needs to fit the vertical resolution, effectively leaving black pillar box borders on the sides. The other way around would be placing an HD clip set to Fit in an SD project. It would fit the width of the HD clip to the width of the SD frame, leaving black letterbox borders.

Choosing Spatial Conform “None” will display your image pixel for pixel in the viewer. So, in a 1080 timeline an SD clip set to none would be a tiny little box surrounded by huge black borders. On the other hand a 4K clip would be zoomed in 4x giving you all kinds of room to play with panning around in the oversized image. In your case this should result in the same framing as fill, pixel for pixel width and extra resolution cropped at the top and bottom.

I thought there was some case where a spatial conform setting would alter the aspect ratio. I either just can’t think of it, the behavior has changed in an update or it never existed.

Like Bill mentioned, key frame interpolation is a bit wonky and there are work arounds if you don’t want the default ease behavior.