[D.z.gilad]

So, in other words, Mark, you’re telling me that FC can not, in fact, do what I need. You’re saying that I would need to adjust my workflow to conform to FCP’s limitations.

“Multiple editors accessing the same media? No problem.”
I did not ask if several editors could access the same media.

Why not save the “upres” until picture is locked? We’ve been using off-line RT for network review and approval for years.
Why not? Because I don’t want to. Or should I call the BBC and tell them that Mark Raudonis over in LA said they should just accept OfflineRT cuts for approval, because his networks do so?

I’ve spent many a night redigitizing media on a Symphony that “SHOULD” have relinked, but didn’t.
Then you should just hire someone who knows what they’re doing to help get you up and running.

Trying to do an “interim” upres … seems like a waste of time and an unecessary point of confusion.”
…just like responding to posts on a forum which do absolutely nothing to address the question being asked.

Are you saying that you’ve never been in a situation where you needed to do an “interim” upres? That’s strange; I’ve never been in one where I haven’t. (Of course I’m only referring to real, large, paying projects in the real world, with deadlines and teams of editors, and budgets and all that.) Or have you just given up on it because FC can’t do it without wasting hours of manual re-linking?

Your worthless answer merely reinforces my opinion that I should spend the time and money necessary to migrate this whole project to Avid, and return all our copies of FC.

I find it extremely amusing how every question I’ve asked on this forum draws at least several “Oh, don’t do it that way, do it the FC way!” and “Silly Avid user!” If those people harbor any desire that FC become an industry standard someday, they’re going about it the wrong way. It’s kind of funny how they seem to have an almost emotional attachment to a piece of software, and appear to take it personally when anyone suggests that it might be anything less than perfect. It’s like a religion … call it Mac-ism.

I suppose being in a minority makes one overzealous to the point of fanaticism.

I thought the point of these forums was to get help in learning new techniques and solving problems. Being told to “hire someone who knows better” is a waste of everyone’s time. Why did you bother to write? You could have just said, “No, sorry, FC cannot do what you’re asking.”

Incidentally, I am working with a team of experienced FC editors, and they are thinking we should switch to Avid as well. Maybe you could put me in touch with one of your super-expert people.

Cheers!

[D.z.gilad]

If I understand you correctly, the solution you’re proposing will only be effective if all the projects are completed and ready at the same time, and only once picture is locked. That is not a realistic scenario for a project of this size. We need to present up-rezzed cuts all along the way to sponsors and producers overseas.

So I am more interested in “intermediate” up-rezzing. In other words, we’ve loaded all 500+ hours at Offline RT. A first logging pass has got us down to about 300 hours of “useable” footage. So now we want to capture about half of this footage at DV. And we want to re-link any rough cuts that have been done so far to the new DV material. Later, we will want to capture some more at DV, and re-link that. And so on.

At some point, we will want to capture 1 or 2 sequences at HD. Then later, we will want to capture another seq or two at HD. And so on.

Each subsequent cut will no doubt re-use some material from an earlier cut that has already been re-captured.

Also: none of the editors are doing the capturing. That is done on separate workstations. So the reel names are consistent. We would like all the editors to work from the same “Master Log” project file. But as I understand the FCP manual, as soon as anyone uses a bit of a master clip from the “Master Project” in their own sequence, that clip becomes independent and unaffiliated from the matching master clip in the Master Project! So if up-rez clips in the Master Project, there is no way to have that same footage re-link to the up-rezzed media without doing it manually on a clip-by-clip basis!

Any ideas?

[D.z.gilad]

The whole idea of migrating to Avid only occurred to me because that’s exactly what a friend of mine found herself forced to do recently. She told me about the “dupe detection bug”. It is the main reason I am considering doing the migration now, rather than later.

Here is what she told me:

“The timecode issue we had was that FC kept randomly changing TCs on us. For example, we would batch digitize something in and once captured, FC would just change the TC and assign different numbers to the clip. If you captured on the fly, it would use random code instead of the correct one (and we even had a rosetta stone and ext. TC feeds, not only firewire). FC would also do this randomly once the media was captured. For example, I would work with a sequence one day, shut down and call it a night. On the next startup the morning after, the same exact sequence would all a sudden show all these duplicate frames. Yet, all the content of the footage and the cut remained intact When we investigated, we found that FC had somehow changed our TCs and now was showing the same TC for different clips of the same tape. So the bin of tape X had 3 or 4 clips with a TC of 00:04:00:00

[D.z.gilad]

debe —

I accept what you say; I do not pretend to be an expert on FCP after just a few months. (I did discover just now how to see the previous shot during color correction.)

However, there are certain “activities” which are basic to the editing process, and which have nothing to do with the workflow of a particular piece of software.

For example: finding a shot. Let’s say I have 40 hours of footage. How can I find a good shot most efficiently? Is it by individually clicking on a tiny clip icon, then viewing that clip, then repeating this process 800 times for the other clips in my bin? Or is it more efficient to string all those clips together into a 40 hour timeline which I can scrub or fast forward through, edit directly into my sequence, and add markers wherever I see something that I like? Every editor I know uses strings. And using strings is clearly limited on FCP. Why on earth would I want a platform that limits my strings to 12 hours, when I can have one which doesn’t? Why would I want to be forced to cut and paste between sequences, without even a shortcut for moving between them, when with Avid I can simply edit straight from one to the other? Seriously, if you have another approach which works for you on FCP, please tell me about it! What am I missing here? How do YOU go through gobs (i.e., >12 hours) of footage?

Or: let’s say I hand over a rough cut to you. All the shots are there. I just want you to trim the cuts so that the timing is better. Maybe match some beats in the music. Honestly, which app would you choose for this task?

Granted, if the task at hand is stacking up a ton of layers, FCP is better. But that represents a very small part of my job.

Apple has ignored the simple needs which constitute the bulk of editing, in favor of too many bells and whistles. Let’s say I’ve loaded a clip in the viewer, and I want to switch to the motion tab. Is there any way to do this without picking up my mouse and clicking on that tiny tab? Wouldn’t it be faster to just press ctrl-tab? Did it not occur to Apple to include this capability?

Let me ask you: if you had 6 months to edit a 2-hour documentary from 1,000 hours of footage, which platform would you choose? Be honest!

Obviously I could learn a lot by taking a course. That’s just not feasible right now; I’m in the middle of a project where I did not have the choice of which platform to use, and I came to this forum to get “quick answers” to my questions, from people with more experience. I’m sorry if my gripes came across as pissy. I’m annoyed that I’m editing 70% slower than I usually do.

You say, “I won’t address any specifics”, but that’s why I’m asking for. If you actually DID answer some of my questions specifically, that would help a lot, especially the ones which you say “would be moot if you had some training.”

I would be much obliged if you told me which those were, and what can be done about them!
Gimme a little training!

Respect back at ya,
Ze’ev

[D.z.gilad]

heh heh … I _almost_ wrote in my original post “let’s not even get into my issues with FCP”, because I was afraid this would degenerate into an Avid vs. FCP discussion, which for me is a no-brainer. Part of me wants very much to take this whole thing to Avid … but more on that later…

The main issue right now is, I’ve been getting extremely sluggish performance, “green screens” where there should be black, and having to manually render each piece of a sequence because FCP won’t auto-render, or all-render.

I spoke to a friend who told me I was suffering the “dupe detection” bug. She went through the same thing, did all the research, and insists that once you’ve used DD even once on ANY seq in a project, the whole thing is corrupt, and there’s no going back, even by turning DD off and trashing prefs, etc. After much banging of head against wall, she took out two weeks to migrate the gig to Avid, recaptured everything, and isn’t looking back.

I simply cannot afford, with our schedule and size of job, to “discover” during our conform several months down the road that my projects are corrupted. I need to nip this in the bud right now. i got rid of the “green screen” (trashed prefs, disabled DD) but am extremely nervous about unseen corruption which could surface later.

This is putting aside the fact that having to work WITHOUT dupe detection is a nightmare to begin with. I use it ALL the time. (e.g., When you’ve got 1000 hours of footage, how else are you supposed to quickly figure out which footage you haven’t seen? Or haven’t used in your 2 hour sequence? etc.)

And now for the ranting! (Anyone who has an emotional attachment to FCP, skip this section.)

(background: I’ve been a professional freelance Avid editor and motion graphics designer since 1996, mostly in NY; have spent 50% of that time on Macs, and 50% on PCs. Started working in FCP about 3 months ago.)

Here are the reasons that in 3 months have brought me to the conclusion that Final Cut junk.
PLEASE tell me if I’m missing something.

These are all tasks that I perform ALL the time, which FCP simply cannot do, or require several steps which on Avid require only one.

1. relinking to media of diff resolution based on reel and timecode:

I’ve got 1000 hours loaded at RT. My asst loaded selected chunks at DV. I want to relink whatever piece of my sequence to the hi res stuff. FCP does not relink based solely on reel and timecode. I’m supposed to manually reconnect to QT files? On Avid, I can just tell it to find those pieces of media, whether they’re part of a bigger clip or not, anywhere on my system, all automatically.

2. total running time of a group of clips.

If I select a group of clips, and want to know their total running time, I have to go to Media Manager, select “recompress”, and then hover over the lower green bar. On Avid, i just hit ctrl-i. Done.

3. show reel name (or anything else) in the timeline

The only thing FCP can show me in the timeline is the name of a clip. What if I want to display the reel name?

4. project size and time to open

FCP projects are several times larger (in MB) than on Avid. And they take MUCH longer to open. Many times, by the time I get a project open, i’ve forgotten what i wanted from it in the first place.

5. 12-hour timeline limit

Why can’t I have a seq longer than 12 hours? When working on huge jobs like this, I often put all the footage for a particular category or location in one giant timeline, for finding shots, finding dupes, etc. I’ve never hit a limit in Avid.

5B. seq in viewer

On Avid you can load a sequence in the viewer. This allows you to keep one of these huge footage seq’s available on the left. You find your shot, edit it in. Quick. On FCP, I have to switch between tabs, use cut and paste, which rarely works consistently. On large projects, you cannot be bothered to find footage by looking at individual clips in a bin. You put all your selects in a long “string” and find your footage from there. This process is infinitely more elegant on Avid.

6. “Find” errors

“Find Bin” or whatever it’s called in FCP, often don’t work. If I have umpteen browser windows open, it doesn’t pull the right one to the foreground.

7. change clip info

if i change logging info (location, day/night, etc) on a master clip, FCP does not automatically update subclips which are derived from it.

8. edits don’t assume playhead position as IN

If i’ve found a spot in the viewer, and then insert or overwrite with no IN point marked, FCP assumes I want the head of the clip, rather than where my playhead is! This is totally stupid.

9. cannot use page up/down in timeline

Moving around timeline is a slow, painful process. When I zoom in, it doesn’t automatically center on the playhead.

10. lose marks from master clips not in proj.

If I “match frame”, and the master clip is not “in” the current project, any markers I add are lost as soon as it leaves the viewer.

11. can’t make subclip from match-framed master not in proj

If I pull up a master clip by match frame from a seq, and that clip is not in the current project, I cannot make a subclip from it. I have to drag from the seq to the browser to make another copy of the master, and only then can make a subclip.

12. delete multiple audio level keyframes?

have not figured out how to do this. followed instructions in manual. can only delete one at a time.

13. cut/paste from seq to seq — track highlight ignored!

I select a bit of video on V1 in seq 1. I copy it. I go to seq 2. i want to paste into V2. V2 is highlighted, patched, etc. I paste. The video goes over V1! So i deselect v2, then reselect it, then paste again, and now it works! This is stupid.

14. change speed of clip within seq

I want to change the speed of a clip in a sequence. Unless it’s at the very tail, FCP says, “a conflict occurred during a trim operation”. Avid has no problem. This is stupid.

15. no “show media relatives” command.

16. no “sift” command. FCP’s “find all” is extremely slow and cumbersome.

17. To jump somewhere in a timeline, I have to click INSIDE that annoyingly narrow little timecode strip at the top. On Avid I can click ANYWHERE. Much faster, much smarter.

18. Why do I need so many track patch/select/etc buttons? On Avid, a track is either on or off. simple. auto patching. quicker.

19. no “fade” command. On Avid I position myself 13 frames from a cut, hit “fade”, and i get a dissolve exactly 13 frames long ending at the cut. On FCP I have to add a dissolve, THEN adjust the length.

20. Moving columns around in a bin is EXTREMELY slow. Extremely difficult to get it where you want it. No “scroll mark” to include frozen columns on the left.

21. No “main” browser window for a project. Very confusing which “tabs” are projects, which are bins.

22. No keystroke for moving from tab to tab.

23. Can’t use “tab” to move between fields in a dialog. Not consistently, anyway. Not in the “find all” window.

24. nested seq

If I’ve nested a bit of a seq, when I double click it to open the original, FCP does NOT take me to the corresponding point in time. This is stupid. 99% of the time you open a nested seq, you’re doing it to have a look at the same point you were just looking at! FCP makes me manually find that point.

25. non-layer-based effects

Avid allows you to construct your effects in layers, so if you change one, you don’t need to re-render everything.

26. mixing frame sizes

FCP is inconsistent about dropping footage of different dimensions. sometimes it “automaticall” scales and distorts the footage to fit the seq settings. sometimes it doesn’t, and i get “shrunken” RT footage in a DV seq. It should assume I want everything to fill the frame unless i tell it otherwise.

27. Extend edit

FCP makes me select the edit. Avid is smart enough to figure out where the extend should come from. An unnecessary extra step and mouse move.

28. TRIMMING

I can’t even begin to describe how awful FCP’s trimming functions are (including slipping, sliding, dynamic trimming, etc.) Avid simply blows it away. And at least 70% of editing is trimming. This alone would be a deal breaker.

29. COLOR CORRECTION

The main purpose of color correction is to achieve a consistent look from shot to shot. But FCP only shows me the shot I’m correcting!!! How am I supposed to compare it to the shot before and the shot after?! The only thing I could figure out was to (a) drag the color correction tab out of the viewer, (b) match frame the previous shot into the viewer, (c) go back to the CC window. Then when I move to the next shot, the CC window disappears, and I have to do it all again. This is absolutely stupid. Furthermore, making the corrections is excruciatingly slow.

Avid shows me three shots at once. More controls. Faster response.

30. snapping & scrubbing

I need to turn these functions on and off about 40 times per hour of work. On FCP, this means hitting a key to toggle their state each time. Annoying. On Avid, I simply hold a modifier when I need it. Much more intuitive, quick, and elegant. No “damn, need to let go of the mouse because I forgot snapping was on, then turn it off, then grab the clip again, then drag it again”

Those are the main problems for now.

Don’t get me wrong — FCP is far easier when it comes to resizing images, doing “boxes”, and … um, that’s all I can think of.

Maybe it’s good for small projects. Maybe it’s easier to learn. But for a large project, with tons of media, and in a professional setting where speed is everything, it lags FAR behind Avid.

It seems that Apple are intent on jamming it full of features, and making it user-friendly, but ignoring the logical needs of professional editors. I am forced to reach for the mouse much too often, where on Avid i can do nearly EVERYTHING from the keyboard.

As a whole, it runs much slower than Avid in the areas that count — updating the timeline, performing cuts, adding dissolves. (BTW, I am using a Dual 2.5GHz G5 with 4GB RAM. Avid Xpress Pro HD on my Dual 2.8GHz Intel machine is MUCH much faster.)

On top of all this, there’s the original fear I posted about getting corrupted projects.

Please tell me if there are quicker ways to do all these things. Every time I turn to one of my FCP-savvy assistant, they offer a “workaround” which involves 4-5 steps, where on Avid I could accomplish the same thing in one step.

Avid has no shortage of problems, bugs, and workarounds — i could rant about Avid, too — but these issues are NOT related to the work which comprises 90% of all professional editing, i.e., managing media, finding the footage you want, making edits, and trimming. In all these areas, FCP is pathetically cumbersome, slow, inconsistent, and illogical.
I know at least 50 working editors with over 5 years’ experience, and the ONLY ones who are using FCP are doing so because it was cheaper than Avid.

OK, I’m done ranting. Have at me.

Ze’ev