[Douglas K. dempsey]

I am interested in how you do versioning of your short pieces? Do you use compound clips, multiple projects, etc?

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

I read a lot of comments on this forum by editors who cut various documentaries, network shows, cable shows etc.

If you are allowed to name the particular shows and episodes — and I understand if this is not desirable or allowed — I would love to actually see particular shows cut on X.

There is a vast difference in the needs and quality of various shows. An Aaron Sorkin-written episode of Newsroom shot on multiple Alexas, with tons of fast-paced, over-lapping dialogue … is very different from a guy in a garage arguing with his son about how to rebuild a motorcycle, documented over several days with HandyCams or DSLRs.

And documentaries, likewise, vary wildly in what needs to be accomplished with audio, with intercutting between un-matched cameras of vastly different quality and look, and managing hours and hours of material, vs ENG or presskit shoots made with far less over-shooting or coverage..

I would love to see various claims supported by examples! If possible.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

I’m doing fairly low-budget docu stuff, mostly short form, with FCPX. I don’t have an issue with Timeline behavior; I agree with Steve that it’s probably just getting used to it.

Many people posting on this forum have complained about re-creating their FCP7 work methods, e.g. shunting various clips off to the right within a sequence, as they build the timeline. Using the timeline as an active “workbench” in other words.

I do this all the time in X, and find it actually easier in many ways. You just need to develop your own little techniques. For example, I will select and opt-cmd-up arrow (“Lift From Primary Storyline”) various clips or trims that I have decided NOT to use, but want to keep close by and visible as outtakes… because I may reconstitute them into the edit at any moment.

Once I am done pulling out these “non-selects” from a section of the edit, I will drag and select them all, hit cmd-G to make them into a single “secondary storyline” container, and drop that item at the end of my timeline, after a title “Outtakes.” I can shuffle that collection of clips — still in the original order that I worked on them — around in the timeline, copy to another timeline, copy or pull an individual clip out of the container. Eventually, when I’m near my fine cut, and have only real “keepers” in my outtakes, e.g. an alt sequence I may want to show to a client, I will make the outtakes into a compound clip and delete it from my timeline/workbench. It’s up there in Event Library if I need to access it.

When I do a delicate edit, with overlaps, layers, transitions, effects and 4 or 5 pieces of detached audio that are overlapping and “mixed” f… I will collapse that entire section into a compound clip (opt-G).

The nesting of compound clips is so much better than in FCP7 that it has become an everyday tool. You can delete a CC from the timeline at any time; it exists in the Event Library when you need it. When the CCs are in your timeline, you can double-click and punch in at any time to tweak your mix, effects, etc, back out seamlessly.

Probably the first thing to get your head around is just stop thinking of the word “tracks.” Once you treat everything as a media “object” — video, audio, A/V combo, title, graphic/still — you can be happy shuffling things around.

It seems to me a pleasant and easy to use “think while you work” creative environment.

If you are doing the more technical and mundane aspects of building tracks into export-able media for other editors/collaborators … e.g. preparing a raw edit that must be sent to an After Effects artist or ProTools artist … then you probably should have Premiere CC or a copy of Legacy for that kind of work.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Tried to access reduser.net; it doesn’t work. Everything looks normal in posts, then suddenly “my final post” — sounds like they’ve been hacked

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Ronny:

I’m working with 10.0.8 and it seems to do the same thing, if this is what you are describing:

I bring a CC into the Timeline. I blade it and I DO NOT see rounded corners, but simply a faint vertical dotted line at the cut point. If I make two cuts, and drag the clip elsewhere, ALL corners appear to show the separate clips. If I return the untrimmed original clip to its original spot, corners disappear and the dotted lines return.

Still no “healing” procedure as far as I know, other than laborious trimming out to end, from one cut or the other.

Doug D

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

I have an entire EOL package frozen: MBP 17″ (last model before Thunderbolt), Snow Leopard and FCS3. It seems to be a sweet spot for FCP7, and I use it for the dozens of old FCP7 (and 6) projects that I often use.

But I am very careful about any updates to anything, and try to avoid ANY Apple updates for any reason.

I recall a couple years back when a ProApps update came thru, mostly to affect Logic. But the new frameworks files installed suddenly made DVDStudio Pro break (another obsolete app & format, right?). I had to wade into Time Machine and do a swap with the previous version files.

A subsequent ProApps update worked fine — but it scared me off touching anything on the machine.

Just talk to the video pros who cannot play old tape formats, or for that matter early Mac adopters who have a stack of floppies populated with old Word, MacWrite, FileMaker and other docs that are a nightmare to access.

Frozen in time!

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Think of Doc Brown loading a plutonium canister into the Deloreon, 1985 version …

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Ha ha some funny comments, “smoothies!” 🙂

But I seriously agree this IS the FCPX or Not forum and this machine is a big deal in an all-Apple ecosystem for Video Editing.

Phil, shouldn’t your operation be running on high-end HP workstations anyway?

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Also, zoom way in or use the “go to next/previous” keyframe, to make sure you don’t have an accidental extra keyframe in there, immediately adjacent to desired one. That will cause the problem.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Only other thing I notice is if you try to keyframe the “Ken Burns” effect you get trouble, as it is a “canned” effect designed to decelerate at end of shot, rather than the “keep moving at same rate” move that looks better at cut to next still. But if you are just using position, scale, keyframes…that result is baffling.

Doug D